Quote of the Day
You can’t help but wonder how long before the border, for decades little more than a welcoming line on maps, becomes hardened somehow.
It already is, psychologically. It’s getting so you have to remind yourself that the two states are still part of the same country, with a common history and traditions. (The governors definitely need this counsel.) But when one side is threatening doctors in say, Coeur d’Alene, with a crime for even suggesting that citizens might travel to the other side — to Spokane, say — for their health care, wouldn’t a logical step at some point be to try to stop the citizens from going?
Same with buying assault weapons, except in the other direction?
I am not making a prediction that we will someday have a literal “Checkpoint Charlie” on the Idaho-Washington border.
But everything else written in this column sounds completely insane, yet it’s all true. So I’ve learned in this era of America fracturing — don’t shrug about the prospect that the crackup may be only just beginning.
Danny Westneat
April 22, 2023
The Cold War between WA and neighbor Idaho gets hotter
I have sometimes wondered about a similar checkpoint. Although I envisioned it at the line between King County (which contains Seattle) and anything east of there.
In any case, the difference in gun availability will be resolved in a year or two as the most oppressive of Washington gun laws will be struck down by the courts. I expect the abortion issue will remain for some time.
When I was stationed at Fairchild AFB (just west of Spokane) in the early ’90s, WA troopers would have folks watching the liquor stores just over the border in ID and would pull over folks coming back into WA.
This was because liquor stores in WA were (are?) state-run, and buying in ID was also cheaper due to a lower tax rate.
Massachusetts, long a tyranny, has done this for decades with plebes going to New Hampshire to buy fireworks and other controlled goods. Mass State Police will start staking out the parking lots of New Hampshire fireworks dealers in border towns a few weeks before July 4 with unmarked cruisers. Customers with Mass plates will be flagged for being pulled over when they cross back into Mass.
Mass even went so far as notifying sales tax free NH businesses, (Like Tire Warehouse) that they must collect Massachusetts sales or use tax on whatever they sold to Mass residents. Simply outrageous. The New Hampshire Legislature stepped in and specifically regulated that NH businesses were prohibited from such a practice.
I heard the way the Mass folks would get around that would be to buy all the stuff with one car, move off to somewhere else in NH, transfer all the stuff to a different car, then the now-clean car would do the “I do not consent to a search; I’d like to be on my way, but if you want to explain your PC to a judge, I suppose you can get a warrant that my lawyer would love to see” dance while the other car rolled on home.
People who were in the business off illegal fireworks wholesale would go to that extreme. When I was a kid there were people dealing in out off state fireworks from NH and elsewhere. Some adult would procure it from a NH source and warehouse it. Small scale sales would be through some kid relative to anyone who was interested in the schoolyard.
I vaguely remember reading something about the NH state police arresting MA cops that were lurking in NH.
The bit about state checkpoints reminds me of the CA “agriculture inspections” on the AZ-CA state line on the interstates.
I haven’t yet heard of MA doing this sort of stuff to enforce their draconian gun laws (vs. NH which has no constraints I know of beyond the Federal ones, and adopted Constitutional Carry a few years ago). That stuff is a pain for those of us living in the southern part of the state; consider a well known large shopping mall in Nashua, where the stores are in NH but the “food court” is in the part of the building that extends across the line into MA.
I have been half joking for more than a year about running rat lines into blue states. This is not going to end well.
If you think that the Washington band or any band is going to be struck down in part or info, you are delusional.
In Illinois the AWB recently passed, was upheld in full. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: an AWB will NEVER be Overturned.
SCOTUS will NEVER overturn an AWB as they are too scared to take a case, that sets a precedent they don’t want to set. And all the lower courts will simply openly defy and ignore Bruen as these judges in lower courts despise the conservative SCOTUS judges to the point they WANT the democrats to impeach all of them and then execute them without trial. And then fill the court with a bunch of far less lunatics that have the same opinion they do: private gun ownership is bad and the best thing for the United States, when it comes to guns is the complete and total ban of all guns, the complete and total ban of private gun ownership with the mandated literal door to door confiscation and literal extermination of every single gun owner in the United States, along with the literal complete and total extermination of the entire population of the United States in a home with a gun and the complete and total literal mandated extermination of the entire population of the United States that does not own a gun, but opposes the above. And support the use of nukes to do so. The reason why Democrats talk about using nukes is because majority opinion of the current Democrat party is that the use of nuclear weapons to kill all gun owners is an acceptable course of action to take. This is an opinion shared by our potato in cheif and our newest SCOTUS justice.
Bruen is going to be ignored and sidestepped by judges in the future that want nothing less than the literal complete and total ban of all guns, and the genocide of the entire gun owning population of the United States. Much like how how the entire ninth circuit, minus three maybe four justices not just desire all the above but view the deployment of the entire nuclear arsenal, all 6000 of them to be used to exterminate every gun owner and do you the literal extermination of over 90% of the entire population of the United States in that effort to achieve that goal. Much like most of the Democrat party currently thinks that the extermination of 300 million people is acceptable action to take to achieve gun free utopia.
And since the Democrats will never lose an election again, it is only a matter of time before the Supreme Court is filled with far left lunatics that think the same.
The federal, complete and total ban of all private gun ownership with door-to-door confiscation with a 100% military deployment and 100% deployment of all federal agencies, and extermination of all who oppose is coming.
“The federal, complete and total ban of all private gun ownership with door-to-door confiscation with a 100% military deployment and 100% deployment of all federal agencies, and extermination of all who oppose is coming.”
And with all that, they would have a hard time trying to control a 100 mile radius around DC.
Not with a 100 million gun owners they won’t be going D2D. If they could they already would have.
And the more we see the legal system being abused? The less power it has over that 100 million.
The largest, best equipped standing army in the world, by any measure.
If Joe Biden told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?
Ya, that’s why gun sales are up in spite of AWB’s.
DE’s AWB and mag ban were just upheld in full…….well, I should say the injunction was denied, but since the same judge who denied the injunction will be deciding the case…..
There’s absolutely no way these laws should survive court challenges, given Bruen and, in DE, given our state constitution and yet here we are.
The Courts remain our best hope though, since other remedies are well, not so pleasant
They will. EVERY ban will be upheld in full. The Illinois ban was upheld in full and the Washington ban WILL be upheld in full.
There will NEVER be a ban that is overturned. WHEN the democrats pass an AWB on the federal level it WILL be FULLY upheld in EVERY court by EVERY JUDGE. If it goes before SCOTUS they WILL uphold the ban in full.
WHEN the democrats pass the complete and total ban of the ownership of ALL semi-auto weapons; the complete and total ban of the sales and ownership of EVERY semi-auto rifle, shotgun and handgun and possibly the complete and total ban of ALL handguns including revolvers EVERY COURT and EVERY JUDGE WILL uphold that in full.
WHEN the door to door confiscation begins EVERY COURT and EVERY JUDGE WILL uphold that in full..
When the democrats pass the complete and total ban of all guns and and the outright ban of all private gun ownership meeting that don’t worship is now literally totally illegal nationwide for everyone EVERY COURT and EVERY JUDGE WILL uphold that in full..
WHEN the democrats pass legislation mandating the full deployment of the United stares military and all federal agencies to go door to door to confiscate all guns by force with the mandated complete total extermination of every single gun owner and every single person in a home with a gun EVERY COURT and EVERY JUDGE WILL uphold that in full.
And this includes SCOTUS. We already have one if not two justices that already support everything I just posted. At this point SCOTUS would rather see the United States government implement the genocide of every single gun owner, person in a home with a gun as well as the complete and total nationwide extermination of quite literally the entire population of the United States that opposes or is this the extermination of gun owners up and including deploying 6,000 nuclear weapons killing over 330 million people in the United States than rule against a ban. SCOTUS is so scared of overturning an AWB that to them it is morally and ethically better for the Democrats to literally kill every single solitary man woman and child in the United States via nuclear carpet bombing in rule against it. And this is SCOTUS. As of right now more than 85% of all judges in the United States fully support all of the above. As of right now over 85% of all judges, 98% of the Democrat party and 100% of the military leader ship fully support the compute and total literal extermination of all human life in the United States except for themselves to bring about gun free Utopia. To them 330 million dead is acceptable course of action. It is morally justified and righteous. Bruen? It’s a relevant. The judges in the lower courts are simply going to ignore it and it will be overturned eventually just like Roe versus Wade by the inevitable far left activist Supreme Court.
I know what I typed sounds batshit insane. I know that. The problem is I’m right. And everyone else who owns a gun knows it too. It’s just a matter of how much they’re willing to admit to themselves. I simply take “they hate you and want you dead“ to the ultimate conclusion.
Citation needed. Or, perhaps more on point, what color is the sky in your universe?
I was poised to post a comment then saw yours, Joe.
I have a somewhat more basic question: “Never mind about the color, does your Universe even have a sky?”
Wow, all 6,000 nukes too? Shawn, are you a robot? You sound a lot like a Chat GPT comment dude.
There is a giant difference in passing a law and wanting to kill us all. (Which I admit they do want to do.) And actually getting it done.
They don’t have what it takes.
There is a chance that you are wrong, and I’d like to think that the herd insanity that has overtaken this country will somehow dissipate, but based on history we know that the herd itself will have to make that decision. We already know that logic using Plato’s Idealism will not work. But we also know that things never stay the same. Yes, the future is unknown, but just look at the response to Tucker’s firing!
Still, I do sense the SCOTUS itself is getting cold feet. But again, if there is a sense that the herd is changing then I expect that SCOTUS itself will follow. I know that they are supposed to lead, but they too are political animals.
And do keep in mind that the herd has a tenancy to eat their own. Carried to the extreme their philosophy will mean that even an ant will become protected. Ultimately, everything we humans do harms something, so nothing is what we’ll be allowed to do. That will not last long as stomachs growl with emptiness.
We need to be patient, support what we can, be prepared, and cheer with $ those voices that are trying to swing the herd around. And for God’s sake leave Fox in the dust in the dust bin of history. We too can eat our own if they transgress. Anyway, the only corner that Fox was in was $$$. As Morris said the Deep State Puppeteer has found out that its Puppet has escaped, but it is never over until it is over. The high stakes of N dimensional chess continues.
Mencken had a good saying about relying on courts to protect our liberties, since they are staffed by lawyers, who are people “professionally trained in finding plausible excuses for dishonest and dishonorable acts.” Along the same lines, L. Neil Smith observed that you should consider who signs the judges’ pay checks.
It certainly is obvious with a modest amount of research that judges have disrespected the Constitution, with very rare exceptions, ever since it was first printed. The same goes for all the other politicians in all the other branches. St. George Tucker wrote a good book showing this in detail — and he wrote that all the way back in 1803, before things got as bad as they are today.
As you say Joe. But it’s always funny to hear certain people in Olympia that are run by a few in Seattle lay claim to the whole state. Tells you everything you need to know.
And so, is the author tacitly admitting the state government/police are allowing drugs into Washington state? I mean if they can stop unlawful acts at will? With just maybe a checkpoint or two?
And hell yes. If he is talking about some parent in Idaho taking their minor child into Spokane for child mutilation?
The parent, doctor and staff are violating the Mann act. And are committing several felonies against the child under all states law.
As for guns. Well the state doesn’t have any authority over those. As in, if your law is notwithstanding, then enforcement is several felonies on there own.
But hey, it’s an article from the Seattle times for a very narrow focus group, right? So, very narrow logic.
He is referring to abortion rather than transition surgery.
OTOH, there is a bright side: https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/04/24/washington-gun-ban-n69767
“But some Washington residents told VICE News that they’re worried the ban creates a situation where “traditional” gun owners—white, male conservatives—are sitting on an arsenal of high-powered weapons, which emerging demographics of gun owners, like LGBTQ people, leftists and minorities, no longer have access to.”
Will be fun to watch. “Unequal protection under the law,” anyone?
I do find myself wondering when California will try to institute such measures at their border. And, it won’t necessarily start with guns or abortion. It might be over vehicle emissions or something similar.
CA is already talking about testing diesel motorhomes for smog at the border before letting them enter. Those cost, new, from $200k to $5M. They really want to chase anyone with money away from their incipient utopia. (Have a $1M income? Kiss off about 1/4 of that for state taxes, not counting county and city)
They absolutely hate diesel engines, and I expect them to totally ban them at some point. Can’t register a diesel truck in CA that is older than 2010, IIRC. Unfortunately, the new trucks have major problems with their smog equipment. Mitsubishi Trucks might bail out of the US, they are having so much trouble with the mandates. My local dealer closed shop.
Joe, I am not sure where your legal address is but given that you go back and forth between WA and ID, watch out for the importation ban in the WA gun ban. It clearly does apply to private individuals. I see that the SAF et al has already filed a lawsuit. Key is whether they can get an injunction or not. Otherwise, it will take years even if we are successful in the end.
While Shawn is over the top in terms of the end game, he is fundamentally right about depending on the courts to fix this. The only real solution is separation from the evil ones.