Austin Petersen, Second Amendment, CNN.

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Nicholas Amato
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Petersen

Welcome to the fifth installment of In Case You Missed It, a weekly news roundup that focuses on some of the biggest news stories from around the globe every week. So, in case you missed it, here’s your week in review:

Austin Petersen: Republican for Senate, 2018

On July 4th, former Libertarian presidential candidate Austin Petersen announced his bid for the Missouri Senate seat currently held by Democrat Claire McCaskill.

He shocked the libertarian community by announcing that he was leaving the Libertarian Party in favor of the Republican Party for this bid. He wrote the LP a goodbye letter in which he cited that “over 98%” of the thousands of people he spoke to stated that he should run in the Republican Party.

After Petersen announced his bid to ardent supporters at a special gathering at his family’s ranch, an article he wrote was published by the Kansas City Star publicly announcing his intention to run for Senate.

Petersen garnered the support of Anti-Trump Republicans during his presidential bid, and was endorsed by high profile conservatives like Mary Matalin and Erick Erickson, as well as receiving interest from Glenn Beck. There is much hope that he could do the same, if not more, in his run for Senate, while also being able to pull some votes from Democrats disenchanted with McCaskill’s term thus far.

Austin Petersen, if elected, would be one of the most libertarian, if not the most liberty-minded congressman in the country, along with Rand Paul, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie.

You can find his campaign website here if you’d like to donate, or learn more.

Second Amendment Victory in California

California, a far-left state, saw two surprising victories for Second Amendment rights in the past week.

A federal judge blocked a law last Thursday that would “have barred gun owners from possessing high-capacity ammunition magazines,” according to Fox News.

There is already a law in place banning the purchase and sale of high-capacity magazines, but the new law would have also banned the ownership of them for citizens that already possessed them.

The new law would prohibit people from owning magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds, and had the ban taken effect, owners of these magazines “would have been required to get rid of their magazines by sending them out of state, altering them to hold no more than 10 bullets, destroying them or turning them into law enforcement agencies. Possession could have been punished by $100 fines or up to a year in jail.”

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that the ban amounted to confiscation and prohibition of private property without compensation. The ruling protects private property rights and the right to bear arms.

Democrats are confident that the process is only halted, and that they will soon be able to pass a law of similar stature.

California’s Office of Administrative Law blocked regulations this week that would have required gun owners to register certain types of guns as “assault weapons,” according to The Daily Wire. The regulation would’ve encompassed weapons that were clearly not “assault” weapons, and could’ve led to the banning and confiscation of those weapons.

CNN Apparently Can’t Take a Joke

The big news of the week that has been eating up almost the entirety of mainstream news air time has been the fiasco that all started when President Trump tweeted a GIF of himself tackling CNN — a clip from a WWE even he took part in years ago that was made into a meme.

The media quickly denounced Trump’s actions, but what ensued was even more bizarre.

CNN tracked down the creator of the meme on Reddit, and — from the looks of it — harassed him and blackmailed him until he took it down.

Here’s an official statement from CNN:

“CNN is not publishing ‘HanA**holeSolo’s’ name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again,” the article stated. “…CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”

They also published this tweet to the same effect:

People are rightly pointing out that CNN’s actions are extremely unethical for a media organization. Though they’re denying that they threatened the user, their statement essentially proved that they were willing to dox the user if he did not comply with their demands.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Friday for another weekly news round up, in case you missed it.

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Nicholas Amato

Nicholas Amato is the News Editor at Being Libertarian. He’s an undergraduate student at San Jose State University, majoring in political science and minoring in journalism.

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