Uplifting Judicial Wins and Inspiring Acts of Faith

What if defending your right to carry a knife could reshape Second Amendment protections across the nation? This Good News Friday, we spotlight a groundbreaking story of a man who successfully overturned a state law prohibiting switchblades. This victory, rooted in historical analysis and the original intent of the U.S. Supreme Court, underscores the enduring principles of self-defense and arms definitions. We'll explore the broader implications of this case, celebrate the reaffirmation of Second Amendment rights, and reflect on key decisions like District of Columbia vs. Heller that bolster our understanding of these constitutional protections.

Then, we shift focus to other inspiring legal victories and societal milestones. From the debate on judge appointments versus elections in Massachusetts to Texas' robust efforts in election security, removing one million ineligible voters from the rolls, there's much to celebrate. We'll also discuss a federal court ruling regarding the right to own machine guns, highlighting its historical context and how it aligns with recent Supreme Court decisions. Plus, don't miss the heartwarming story of a Christian revival at Ohio State University, led by college football stars, and Congressman Jim Jordan's commendable push for transparency and accountability in Congress. Join us for this compelling episode, packed with uplifting updates and powerful stories of resilience and justice.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intersection of Faith and the Culture
• 9:35 Legal Good News in Federal Courts
• 13:30 Athlete-Led Christian Revival and Gun Ownership

Transcript

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You joined us on a Friday, so it's Good News Friday. Today we're going to dive into that good news with David Barton and Tim Barton. David's America's premier historian and our founder at Wall Builders. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach and a former Texas legislator. You can learn more about all three of us at wallbuilders.com Wallbuilders.com for our main site, and then wallbuilders.show, if you want to catch up on some of the programs from earlier this week or the last couple of weeks. Wallbuilders.show Okay, guys, let's get into some good news. We had some good news earlier in the week from a couple of our programs, but now we're going to do a whole program. That's all good news, and I am going to guess we're going to get at least I don't know eight pieces of good news. So you guys got to talk fast today. So, David, you're first Go.

David Barton

Okay. So it may turn out only to be one good news story, but it's still going to be good news, and it goes back to the fact that we've had a Supreme Court starting to go back toward original intent. We've seen that with religious liberty cases. We saw that with the Bladensburg Cross getting rid of the limit test. We talked about that a number of times. But the court has also gone back toward original intent with self-defense cases, second Amendment cases, and so one of the things that came out and I think you guys helped me here I think they started changing this some back in 2010, maybe. But then, after Trump justices got on, they came out with the Bruin decision in maybe 22. And it said look, you have to be able to show a historical precedent for what you're trying to do now. If you're trying to take some weapon out now, you have to be able to show that the founding fathers also tried to regulate that weapon back in their day. And so if you can't show a historical precedent, then you're misinterpreting the second amendment. They knew what it meant, they showed how to apply it, and so that's how you have to apply it today.

So, with that framework, here's the situation. We've got a state. We've got a guy in a state and he was arrested for carrying a dangerous weapon. He was arrested in 2020 and it's taken this long to get through the courts and the dangerous weapon he had was a switchblade. So he had a switchblade with him and he admits that he knew that it violated the state law to have a switchblade and he had it anyway because he said that state law violates his Second Amendment rights. So he's carrying a weapon the state says you can't carry.

But he said but wait a minute, what's the state saying is not consistent with history and the Second Amendment and so this goes to court on a Second Amendment kind of violation. So when it gets in court, this is the state Supreme Court talking about. Well, as the prosecutor for the state came forward with the case, they weren't able to show any historical precedence on switchblades anywhere in history. They couldn't find anything that relates to switchblades and the closest thing they could find was pocket knives and there was no ban on any type of pocket knives throughout history. Now there was in Tennessee. There was a ban on bowie knives, but this is not a bowie knife, this is closer to a pocket knife and this is what the court said. The court's saying the state prosecutors here didn't show anything about the founding fathers regulating these knives.

Tim Barton

This already seems super bizarre. Tennessee had a time when they banned Bowie knives. Jim Bowie, Tennessee. What are you doing right now? And I'm sure it's not right now, I don't know. When they banned that, it would not be for this current mega from Tennessee. That just seems. I mean, that's like Texas banning something from Sam Houston or Daivy Crockett. It's utterly ridiculous to think about.

Rick Green

Anyway, well, maybe that's why Crockett and Bowie and all these guys came to Texas. There you go. Maybe now we know this. We need to go all the way back and find who passed that legislation, and is that what ran those good guys out?

Tim Barton

So at some point somebody in Tennessee was like hey, no, you can't have a knife. And they're like that's not a knife, this is a knife.

David Barton

Crockett. Good call, good throwback to a movie, that's right. So in going through this just kind of this is the background of the court explaining it says the US Supreme Court has also found that the right to bear arms includes items such as stun guns. In the decision District of Columbia versus Heller, justices said that quote arms refers to, quote weapons of offense or armor of defense, and that quote anything that a man wears for his defense or takes into his hands or uses in wrath to cast at another is a weapon. And so this is how the court went through it and so this is the way the court concluded. They said, in short, folding pocket knives, switchblades not only fit within contemporaneous dictionary definitions of arms. They encompass a broader category of knives that include switchblades, and on he goes. So all of this to say, the guy gets to keep the switchblade and the state law against switchblades gets knocked down. Now you guys tell me which state. This is Tennessee Redemption. No, not Tennessee.

Rick Green

Oh man.

David Barton

It's impressive. They quoted history, they quoted the Supreme Court, they quoted precedent. They measured everything up against history.

they did the historical research 

Rick Green

the fact that you're asking us. That always skews my thinking. Right, tim, it's like. It's like as soon as your dad, yeah, as soon as he's like. You guys know you will never guess this. It's like I know it's got new york, massachusetts.

David Barton

It’s not New York, Rick, you got, it's Massachusetts. Oh, second guess, the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld this wild Second Amendment Up there. This has got to be, I don't know. This has got to be like electing Trump out of Massachusetts. It's got to be that unusual for them to uphold original intent on something that is not in the woke direction, not in the liberal direction, not in the progressive direction. And the psychological effect of a switchblade that always seems like a really, really severe weapon on movies and stuff, and usually that's where they go. It's not whether it's severe or not, but whether it seems like it is. And so the Massachusetts Supreme Court is the one that actually said no, no, no, you can't have a ban. We're striking down the state ban on switchblades. Amazing, I was trying to find it.

Rick Green

Do you know off the top of your head, guys, if they are elected or appointed? I was trying to look that up real quick. I don't remember, but yeah, very, very shocking. That's almost like when you hear a Bill Maher clip where he's basically talking conservative or talking about defending free speech and how crazy the liberals have gotten all the people that he used to hang out with. It's almost as shocking as that when it comes from Massachusetts, something this good from the courts in Massachusetts. I feel like I just watched one of those pro-Constitution Bill Maher clips. Wait, was that the same guy? Is that the same state that I'm thinking of when I think of Massachusetts? That's great. It means they're hearkening back to you know, lexington and Concord, maybe. All right, tim, your first piece of good news We've already surpassed one. So so we got. We got past one story. We'll see if we get past two.

Tim Barton

Well, this one is coming from Texas, and this is a headline we've already been talking about internally. It says Texas removes one million ineligible voters from rolls, including non-citizens and dead people. Now it's staggering to think that one million people were removed from the voter roll. When you go through this article, it actually identifies nearly half a million of them were people that have already deceased, and there are many states, and specifically liberal states, where they have pushed back against removing dead people from the voter rolls, which, of course, the joke, to kind of write themselves. That is because the Democrats don't want to lose their base, whatever else you might want to say, but why else would people want to keep deceased individuals on the voter roll? They're dead, they can't vote anymore, unless maybe they get a mail-in ballot. Somebody fills it out for them, right? There's jokes and accusations you can make, but in Texas, the good news is that this is over.

The last three years started in 2021 when Governor Greg Abbott he signed Senate Bill 1, which was intended to support election integrity and security, cleaning up the voter rolls. When he signed it, he said I've signed the strongest election law in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crack down on illegal voting. In the midst of some of these numbers that came out, there's more than 6,500 non-citizens that were registered to vote and nearly 2,000 of them have a voter history, meaning that they have voted in elections. And so, when people maybe would want to slough off, and well, cheating doesn't happen and it's only citizens and illegals can't vote, and blah, blah, blah. Whatever people used to say to try to defend against this notion, there's far too much evidence now that reveals the reality that there is fraud that happens, that people are being dishonest in some of this process, but also the good news from this article.

It highlights that also Virginia, alabama and Ohio have also come out acknowledging they're working to clean up some of their voter rolls, removing non-citizens, and this is 6,300 from Virginia. It's over 3,000 from Alabama. Ohio has removed 137, which I almost wondered. Why do you want to tell people if that's how low your number is? Have something you're proud of and then brag about it. Nonetheless, it is really good news that you are seeing states take action to protect voter integrity. Of course, texas, removing 1 million ineligible voters is a significant deal when it comes to voter integrity. So kudos to Texas, good job on getting this one done and good job on some of these other states for working to follow Texas' lead on this.

Rick Green

Well, I would never admit publicly on radio that I wasn't listening to one of you guys, as you shared a good news story, but I will tell you that I looked up Massachusetts and their judges are in fact appointed, not elected. So not that I have no idea what you just said, Tim, but I'm sure it was a wonderful piece of good news. Did I just doubt myself?

David Barton

I like the fact that you get distracted over whether they're elected or appointed. I was going to say appointed, because I don't think Massachusetts does much of accountability, but the fact they're appointed and the fact that you've not had any conservative governor up there and how many since John Hancock maybe, I don't know you got to go back a long way it's going back a little ways, yeah.

David Barton

I think that makes it even a bigger good news story. The fact that you have appointed justices there who have no accountability at all actually voluntarily following the Supreme Court when it's considered a conservative decision by the Supreme Court. That's pretty wild.

Tim Barton

Rick, the good news I had was that the one million ineligible voters were removed from the Texas rolls. So good news Texas is working on election security, that is very good news.

Rick Green

That is very good news, and I will be a better host and not be distracted like that. Anyway guys, good news, all right.

Tim Barton

Yeah, go ahead In fairness. I mean, we are a group that does a lot of research and so when we have questions, it's what we do we look it up, we research it, we find the answer. So you're just being consistent with who we are answer.

Rick Green

So you're just being consistent with who we are. There we go. There we go Some intellectual honesty which we got from the Massachusetts Supreme Court. How's that for a segue? Let's take a quick break. We'll be back with more good news. Stay with us. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on the WallBuilder Show. It is Good News Friday, so let's jump right back in and get some more good news. David, where are we going next?

David Barton

Well, if something works well, let's do it again. So let's go back to the Second Amendment. This time it's not a state court. We're in a federal court and, using the same requirement that you have to be able to show historical precedent for regulating it, the federal court has said it's okay to own machine guns and that the ban on machine guns has no historical precedence, with the founding fathers and the federal judge actually, which is a good point.

the founding fathers never banned machine guns. That's right, that is not something they imposed.

The federal judge actually says in this case the government has not met its burden under Bruin and Rahimi, which are the Supreme Court press decisions, to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation's history of firearm regulations and grab this. Indeed, the government has barely tried to meet that burden. So he's actually criticizing the government for not even trying to show historical precedent on anything at all, bringing the case prosecuting they got no historical basis for doing so. So that is that's not quite as amazing as Massachusetts doing this. But again a federal court doing something that that this has got to drive the left and all the woke people really crazy. That individuals, private individuals, can own a machine gun, and this was a lady, this lady on the machine gun, and of course that was ruled to be legal and not anymore. The federal court has said it's okay to own a machine gun. So pretty wild.

Tim Barton

Well there's no doubt that's going to be challenged. I'm very curious also with some of the regulations surrounding firearms is you normally would have to have a class C license, and so I'm curious if because you can own a machine gun if you have a class C license, but usually then you are a firearms dealer and so then you would sell whatever else. So it sounds like then they're saying that she can own one without having certain licensing, which would be super interesting but maybe more consistent in line with some of the original intent from the Second Amendment.

David Barton

So you know going to that point. Having a Class C license, you can own one, and the fact they're going after her would suggest she probably didn't have a Class C license. I mean maybe not, but the fact they went after her. How did it get in court, I don't know, but nonetheless they didn't like her having it for whatever reason, whether that was a violation of license or otherwise, and the federal court has thus far ruled in her favor and, as you said, it will be challenged, it'll go up, but that's a good start. When you get a good decision in the lower court, they're a lot more likely to be upheld as they move up. It's just you do really well when you win the lower court decision when you're going up to the DPL chain.

Rick Green

We regret to inform you that Rick Green is not here to host the second half of the program because as soon as David shared that last piece of good news, he ran out of the studio to go find the nearest dealer where he could buy a machine gun. I'm excited about that, man. That is really really good news. I remember one of our friends talking one time about this and saying you know, I forget how many tens of thousands of licenses like you guys are talking about, where you get that special license or stamp or whatever it is that you do to get it fully automatic that out of all of those, not one of them has committed a crime. So you know, it's actually a good sign. We should have more people that own those. They're less likely to commit a crime. Anyway, good, really good news. And uh, I am still here anyway, Tim, go ahead, man. What's your next piece of good news?

Tim Barton

Well, this one is coming from Ohio, uh, and, and people, uh, depending on your, your collegiate affiliation and what teams you cheer for, they might be upset if I didn't say, um, like the ohio state university. Nonetheless, uh, the article says nearly 1 000 people attend Christian revival led by college football stars, and it identifies there were multiple ohio state football players, uh, that led a Christian revival at the university campus. It included their running back, a wide receiver, defensive end, a former OSU wide receiver, and I can't pronounce most of or many of their names, so that's why I just kind of told you their positions. But, really cool, they were there to share their testimony. There were several churches that were involved in the process and they actually brought in four tubs is what it says, filled them with water and 60 students were baptized.

Rick Green

Wow.

Tim Barton

Really cool. We've talked about it in multiple occasions. We think that there's an awakening happening in many ways in America, and it's not because everything's getting better, but it's because it's so clear that God is moving, that God is still doing things, that people are waking up all over the nation. And so when you're seeing now universities, that you have these athletes at a very prominent football program that are standing up boldly sharing their faith, that students are getting saved, that they're getting baptized, this is a really, really cool thing to recognize that, in the midst of the craziness, as we're looking at the election cycle and the drama and so much happening, so much crisis around the world, god is still on the move. God is still doing things here in America, and this is just another really cool testimony of that, coming from Ohio State University.

Rick Green

And I'll tell you, tim, just to add to the good news from that particular story, when I scroll through social media, sometimes a story will really catch fire and you'll see it being shared multiple times and I saw that story over the last couple of nights so many times, which is so good. That means people, when they see that, they share the same excitement that we do. In other words, they know that the good news is being told, they know that, seeing those, I didn't realize, I didn't even notice that part about the baptisms. But to see the worship of the Lord and the gospel being shared on a college campus like that, I mean people recognize that. That is good news, that's something to celebrate. And you know, maybe that's just my echo chamber on social media, but I'm telling you people were excited about it and that to me is a double whammy good news there. So, david, what's next?

David Barton

Well, this goes to our friend Jim Jordan in Congress, who's over the Judiciary Committee. He's actually playing the role of public press in some ways. It used to be the press would bring out things and bring things to life, and that used to be, as Bill Bennett, former Secretary of Education, said, under Reagan, sunlight's the best disinfectant, and that's something the media used to do was bring to light corruption or bring to light collusion or whatever was not going on. But now they're part of it, and so the media no longer serves that role of helping bring sunlight to things. But Jim Jordan has done that. He has had a lot of hearings and in those hearings a lot of the clips will get populated around the country, just sent out and just they fell. All sorts of different venues and people start hearing things that they're not getting through the media. The media should have been covering, and so what we're seeing with Jim Jordan is he's having hearings on things where government officials should be held accountable, but this administration is not holding them accountable. So Jim will have a hearing on that. It's just it's been a good thing that he's done. He's taken the Jud, the judiciary committee, an erection of trying to hold government accountable, trying to shine the light on the bad things they're doing, and so as part of that, uh he was. He was trying to get into the collusion thing that happened. What three years ago, four years ago, between the government and covet? Uh, where that the people talking about covet got censored online or the platforms would stop them or shut them down if they said certain things. Even jokes that were made about fallacy were taken down and you got your platform suspended for however long. And so Jim had Mark Zuckerberg in. I guess it's matter now. He used Facebook at the time and it's been quite an interesting week.

Over the last week, zuckerberg has come out with some very strong statements that, unless he's being completely disingenuous and I don't think he is, because he said some things on record now that he can be held accountable for publicly he would be in trouble, I think, if he backed up from this. For example, zuckerberg this week said that he made a mistake when he did the $400 million in Zuck bucks and he is not going to give to anybody this year any part of the campaign, any side. So the fact that he's not doing that, the fact that he is backed out of giving those Zuck bucks which was supposedly for the infrastructure and low turnout areas, and it got used in all these blue areas to turn out these blue you know real questionable votes stuffed ballot boxes. He said that was a mistake. He's not doing that again.

And the other thing he said and this is just quoting from him it had to do with the Biden administration putting pressure on Facebook meta to take down certain postings that disagreed with what the government was saying about COVID at the time. And so vaccines and vaccinations and boosters, all the stuff. And at that time, zuckerberg was, as he said, succumbing to the pressure. So I'm just going to read part of this statement here. He says in 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. He said ultimately it was our decision whether or not to take the content down and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure. But he said that with hindsight and new information, he would not make the same decisions today.

The platform is ready to push back if the government tries to interfere again.

I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.

Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration, in either direction, and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again. So that's a really pretty big myoclopa from Zuckerberg on not only the Zuck bucks but even using the platform to censor speech that the administration told him to censor. Now I've got real problems with anybody in the administration who's taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and has tried to censor speech they disagree with. I mean, that's a fundamental problem with the First Amendment. It's a fundamental problem with government overreach at all. But for big corporations to join with the government in violating constitutional rights that are very expressed is wrong. But I do appreciate the fact that Zuckerberg was very clear to Jim Jordan that this was a big mistake. We regret it. I'm not going to participate in this going forward. I'm not going to do Zuck bucks going forward. Those are two big, big good news pieces from where I'm sitting.

Rick Green

Well, it could have a major impact going forward, not only this election but in the future, but also just a pushback against. As you said, this is government coercion, and so, when some of these big players that fell for it are willing to admit they shouldn't have done it, that's very, very good news. Tim, what are you closing us out with today? Man Well, this last one is coming from Israel.

Tim Barton

It says Israel military says October 7th, hostage rescued from Gaza tunnel, and this is one I saw several times on different news outlets. But the IDF said and I don't know how to pronounce his name, but it's Al-Qadi's last name 52. He's in stable condition and was taken to a hospital for medical checks. His family's been updated with the details, details and the IDF is accompanying them. This was an individual the article identifies he was held in captivity for 326 days before he was rescued and so just really remarkable that he was alive, had survived.

The IDF says there's still 108 people unaccounted for that are hostages. Whether they're living or dead is still unknown. They are still being held hostage, whatever that situation might be, and so this is something that is still ongoing. Israel has estimated that they have eliminated nearly 17,000 Hamas fighters, but Hamas had about 30,000, was estimated fighters at the war's onset, so they've made some significant dent in Hamas's ability and capacity with their numbers in their military. But it's also interesting because then Yahoo and Israel in general, their government, their IDF is facing increasing international pressure.

The article highlights that so many nations are coming and saying hey, y'all need to quit, y'all need to slow down, and it is worth pointing out that Israel is the one who was absolutely willing to come, bring this to an end, saying give us the hostages, we can find a peaceful resolution, and Hamas has yet to show up, actually, at the discussion table.

They've had different people speaking for them, different nations arguing on their behalf, but they have not shown up yet, and so this is something that is yet to be determined what's going to happen for the conclusion of this war and what's going to happen with the recovery of those 108 individuals which, by the way, some of those hostages that were taken, that included Americans, and this is one more of many of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration where they have left Americans behind, whether it was in the Afghanistan pullout or when the Ukraine war started. Now, in this case, even in Israel, where they have not worked as diligently as they should to try to help rescue Americans. Nonetheless, good news that the IDF is still on the forefront of this and they're still rescuing hostages, with this one individual being yet another example. So, overall, really good news and definitely something we should continue to pray for as we look at the nation of Israel.

Rick Green

Yeah, in fact, tim, that's a great way to close out the day is just encouraging everybody. We're supposed to pray for the nation of Israel. Yeah, in fact, tim, that's a great way to close out. Today is just encouraging everybody. We're supposed to pray for the peace of Israel and, you know, pray for wisdom and discernment in the leadership. And you know there's a lot of, obviously a lot of turmoil. There's a lot of political, just like we have over here. You know the fights that we have politically over here. They're having that over there and a lot of people are using this situation to try to create a political change instead of being unified to stop Hamas. And, of course, even over here, we need to be praying for our leadership, to be supporting Israel, and pray for a good outcome in the election here in 2024, that we get leaders that will actually support Israel, not just say they're supporting Israel and then undermine them behind the scenes. So lots to pray for folks. Thanks so much for listening to our Good News Friday. You've been listening to the Wal Builder Show.