I have pinned this post to the top of my blog. It is to remind people of what many of our opponents want. Alison Aires wants a tyrannical government. They want summary execution for private possession of firearms.
This is why we have a Bill of Rights. This is why I created Boomershoot.
The political arms of three leading gun-control groups have massively outraised and outspent those of the three largest gun-rights groups in the midterm election cycle, with new Federal Election Commission reports showing them at about a three-to-one advantage on both fronts. The spending gap also appears set to widen thanks to a similar advantage in what they have left in the bank.
The Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords, and Brady Political Action Committees (PACs) have brought in nearly $18.8 million so far this cycle compared to a combined total of $5.8 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA), National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), and National Association for Gun Rights. The gun-control groups have spent $9.7 million to this point, while the gun-rights groups have spent just $3.8 million. The gun-control group arsenal sits at just over $13 million still in the bank, and the gun-rights groups have $3.8 million still in their coffers as of the end of the most recent reporting period in August.
Everytown and Giffords have also recently announced plans to spend another $10 million each on ads in the coming midterm elections, while the gun-rigths groups haven’t publicized any comparable spending sprees.
Julie Miller
October 8, 2026
Gun-Control Groups Dominate Midterm Fundraising, Spending | The Reload
Elections matter. And money influences elections. That makes this something to be concerned about. But we have losing in the legislative branches of state governments for years. Federal judges have been viciously stomping those legislative victories into the mud.
Hence, the total dollars spent don’t matter as much as how wisely they are being spent. If you are inclined to donate money to elections, I suggest you look at important U.S. senate elections. Being able to easily populate the Federal Judicial system and replace retiring SCOTUS judges is vital.
Another thing to pull away from the quoted article is that the gun control groups* are mostly funded by a few big donations and the gun rights groups are larger numbers of small donors.
* Notice they are openly saying gun control instead of the attempted deception with a “gun safety” descriptor?
It’s one of the biggest victories against federal gun control in American history; so we’re pretty happy with it.
…
We still think the ATF is unconstitutional. We still want to see it abolished, and we still want to see the entire NFA abolished.
Mark Jones
National director of Gun Owners of America
October 8, 2026
ATF Rolls Back Restrictions On Silencers, Short-Barreled Shotguns And Rifles | Cowboy State Daily
I believe he is correct on both accounts.
I remember donating money to a small group challenging the fingerprinting and extensive background check shortly after the NICS checks went into effect back in the late 1990s. “Why can’t we just do the NICS check and drop a suppressor in the shopping back along with your new Ruger 10/22 with a threaded barrel?” The courts didn’t see it that way and they lost in fairly short order.
That was nearly 30 years ago.
Next spring we will almost for certain have the “assault weapon” bans eliminated. It should be declared a national holiday or something. If it were to come out on “Juneteenth” we could piggyback two different freedom events in the same holiday.
It’s a great time to be alive and experience this.
Armed Self-Defense Belongs in the Public Record
The CDC’s correction does not establish an exact annual count or mean every defensive gun use saved a life. It does restore a fuller account of research on Americans using firearms for protection.
Government agencies should not bury that evidence because it makes gun bans harder to sell.
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms. That right does not depend on Gun Violence Archive’s bogus research or whether armed self-defense complicates the next gun-control campaign.
Shall not be infringed has no statistical threshold.
Duncan Johnson
October 8, 2026
CDC Corrects Defensive Gun Use Estimates After Anti-Gun Push
Emphasis in the original.
The article reenforces what we already knew. The anti-gun groups are opposed to the First Amendment too. The truth interferes with their agenda. All Falsehoods Have a Price and the price for their lies has been paid for with the lives of people who would have been able to save themselves had they not been legally prevented from using the best tools available to defend themselves.
“Shall not be infringed has no statistical threshold.”
I like that.
Americans traveling to visit family, work, or take a vacation have the same right to protect themselves that they have at home. The Denver lawsuit seeks to restore that freedom for Hoffman and others in his position, moving the country closer to honoring the right wherever Americans travel.
Restoring the Second Amendment means ending the treatment of armed self-defense as a privilege that expires at a state line.
Duncan Johnson
October 7, 2026
Denver Carry Ban: Latest Fight for Nationwide Gun Rights
There are so many fronts in this war that it is difficult to keep up.
I remember the Emerson case being a HUGE deal in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There was nothing even closely related going on in the courts. And now I would have trouble counting all the active 2nd Amendment related cases.
We live in historic times.
Under President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the policy of lies that empowered the terrorist Hasan is being purged from our government, our military and our immigration policy.
But those same lies are still told today in academia and medical systems, in city and state bureaucracies from Dearborn to New York City, and in Western European, Australian and Canadian government and military circles.
And Fort Hood teaches us that lying about the nature, the sources and the political purposes of Islamist terrorism inevitably carries a heartbreaking body count.
Reed D. Rubinstein
October 5, 2026
Fort Hood jihadist faces death — now Washington must purge its policy of lies
All falsehoods have a price. Sometimes the price to reward ratio is low. Deception to get your child to first open the present with the pet first is certainly acceptable. As is telling your terrorist kidnappers you are not a CIA agent even though you are.
Lies told by thousands or 10s of millions that affect society for years, decades, or centuries… No. Even lies with the best of intentions are better faced and dealt with.
You will never win the war of emotions against gun control advocates. But you can’t afford to lose that battle either.
…
The gun control side does not have a monopoly on emotions. They do not have a monopoly on caring about victims of gun violence, and I am tired of ceding that ground to them because they did not earn it.
Amy Swearer
September 2026
Winning the Fight: ‘Strategic Art of Legislative Testimony’
I realize I’m not normal, but I get turned off or even angry when hearing emotional stories without valid numbers or rational legal analysis intended as a persuasion technique in a gun rights debate.
Know your audience and prepare appropriately.
Americans — a confession from Japan you were never meant to hear.
We are terrified of fascism. Not the version in your textbooks. The version that lives inside us.
In 1941, no dictator dragged the Japanese people into the dark. We dragged each other. Neighbor watched neighbor. Mothers reported their own sons. One doubtful word at the fish market and the police came in the night. The village went silent. That silence lasted four years and killed millions.
That is how a free nation dies. Not with jackboots. With whispers.
And right now — the same silence is being built again in Japan. Not by the right. By the Left.
They throw our gates open. Strangers pour in by the millions — Muslims, Africans, people who will never bow to our dead. And when a Japanese grandmother dares to say, “wait — slow down — let us think,” she is dragged into the public square and branded a fascist. A racist. A monster.
Hear me clearly: in our country, “racist” is no longer a moral word. It is a muzzle. A weapon. A silencer pressed to the mouth of every citizen who still loves Japan.
If we fall, Beijing feasts. Moscow carves the atlas. The lights of the free world blink out — Tokyo first. Seoul next. Washington within a generation.
So I come to you — Americans. The one nation on earth that still salutes its own flag without flinching.
Do not let the Democrats take your country again.
Do not let your patriots be shamed into silence.
When America stands, the free world stands.From one wandering samurai in Tokyo, to every patriot across your fifty states —
You are not alone.
You are the wall.
Stand.NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga
Posted on X October 1, 2026
Prepare and respond appropriately.
Via Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy:
Nothing says relationship goals like watching unconstitutional gun bans get absolutely wrecked together.
I find it “interesting” that nearly all the comments to the post are about the mixed-race couple.
In 1917 Sears, Roebuck and Company published a Military Equipment catalog. They offered a 30-caliber Colt machine gun for $865 (about $25k in 2026 dollars).
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Military Equipment, by Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras
Posted on X October 3, 2026
From a Sears and Roebuck catalog and available to anyone with the money. We still have a long way to go.
Note the suggested use case:
Machine guns are used largely by police organizations, home guards and municipalities in case of riots.
Had the police used the riot control methods of 1917, the “summer of love” would not have resulted in Kyle Rittenhouse being put on trial.
Many declining churches don’t adapt. Its leaders don’t demand change, and its members don’t pursue it until it’s too late. Doblmeier, an award-winning filmmaker who has been making documentaries about faith for decades, thinks he knows why.
The same reason many go to church is the same reason why many churches struggle to survive: the allure of the familiar.
“Church is the place you go to because you feel as though it’s not changing,” he says. “People look forward to the same rhythms, prayers and rituals that they’re so used to … This is the one place where they can have comfort and stability.”
John Blake
October 1, 2026
A ‘tsunami’ of church closings is poised to remake America
Emphasis added.
While I can accept the emphasized sentence may be true, I still find it very odd. Admittedly, as an atheist, I am not in a good position to pass some sort of judgement on the reasons for going to church. But I would have thought the primary reason people would go to church would be include some of the items from this list:
I didn’t find any of those types of things mentioned in the story. Perhaps the author intentionally avoided those topics. But I find it hard to believe the people interviewed did not mention some of those things as important reasons for the continuation of church services.
<shrug>
In many ways the fading of Christian beliefs in America will be sad for me. The poorly maintained and empty churches near where I grew up induce sadness. I remember the social events held there. Seeing the empty and dying buildings I am reminded of all the adults who had an influence in my life who are almost all dead as well.
Why am I not happy with the fading of religious belief? I regard it as delusional, but mostly a useful delusion. Just one example: I know people with severe drug and alcohol problems who found church attendance and belief in a god a great help in remaining sobor. That alone has tremendous value.
Many of the rules of behavior don’t make sense to me, but as I frequently say about government rules, “It doesn’t have to make sense, it is just a rule.” And rules have a place in social life. They are a social lubricant. And it is far better to have social rules from hundreds of different types social groups than have governments take up the slack in that same domain.
Seven hours before the law was set to take effect, a federal judge late Wednesday blocked Connecticut’s new ban on the sale of “convertible pistols” that users can easily turn into hand-held machine guns firing 1,000 rounds per minute.
The preliminary injunction against the “Glock switch” bill does not strike down the law, which was the heart of a gun-control bill proposed by Gov. Ned Lamont last spring and adopted by the state legislature.
Rather, the order by Judge Kari A. Dooley sets up a potentially long legal battle over the provision, between the state and the parties that won the block after filing for it on Sept. 21: Glock Inc., the maker of the highly popular pistols at issue; the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry group; a separate manufacturer; and a firearms retailer.
Dooley, in Bridgeport federal court, said in her order that the disputed provisions “are likely unconstitutional under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,” and therefore cannot take effect Thursday.
Dan Haar
October 1, 2026
Judge blocks Connecticut’s ‘Glock switch’ gun law from taking effect, setting up a battle
This is not the final word. It is just a temporary injunction. Still, at a bare minimum the law is going be delayed for many months and perhaps permanently thrown out.
Even if the mortar has not been applied it is still another brick in the wall.
See also:
The biggest thing I’ve learned is to ask: Do our detectives have every available resource to investigate and make an arrest? We have reached more than a 90 percent clearance rate. That means if you kill somebody in the city, the Birmingham Police Department is making an arrest.
Perception and reputation are two intangibles that are part of this public safety conversation. The city of Birmingham had to get very serious about sending a signal to people, whether they live here or outside the city: If you commit gun violence, we are coming after you, and you will be held accountable.
Randall Woodfin
Mayor of Birmingham Alabama
September 1, 2026
Is Birmingham Bucking Its Long Struggle With Gun Violence?
Notice this was from The Trace and written by Chip Brownlee. I have quoted Brownlee before:
The second post is the reason I went looking for current Brownlee writings. I quoted Brownlee as saying:
One of the greatest, perhaps the most dangerous, foes that we face in the gun violence prevention movement is hopelessness. It’s a feeling that nothing can make this problem better.
I wondered if his concern about hopelessness had materialized. What appears to have happened, as least in part, is that I don’t see much said about gun restrictions as the path forward. But I also see him marking progress in reduced “gun violence” where the mechanism which achieved the reduction was things other than gun restrictions. And in fact, in this interview of the mayor, constitutional carry came to the state, and they still made tremendous progress in reduction the homicide rate. Of course it wasn’t called “constitutional carry,” The mayor said, “The state Legislature removed the requirement for concealed carry pistol permits.” But that Brownlee put this in print, in The Trace, is very telling. He is admitting the claimed goal of homicide reduction can be achieved by means other than, and even despite losses in, gun control.
Brownlee is realizing that gun control is not necessarily the answer to the stated goal of a safer society. Perhaps soon we can welcome him to the correct side of history, and he can leave his dark past behind.
AI companies can do an enormous amount of public good by empowering chatbots to share evidence-based information on gun safety. They should seek advice from law enforcement and gun violence prevention experts on when to highlight gun safety information to users. In training their models and in governing their behavior after release, AI companies should give greater weight to vetted or evidence-informed information about gun safety practices, firearm laws, and gun violence statistics that comes from credible sources.
A non-exhaustive list of pro-safety chatbot responses includes:
- Informing new firearm owners that storing a firearm unloaded and in a locked storage device is the best way to prevent unintentional child shootings, theft, and unauthorized access to the gun.
- For new firearm owners or users interested in acquiring their first firearm, identifying training courses that cover state and federal firearm laws, safe handling of firearms, and the risks of keeping a gun in the home.
- Informing users of the importance of separating loved ones who are in acute distress from firearms.
- Providing accurate information on extreme risk protection orders to users concerned about a loved one engaging in self-harm or harming others (including state-specific resources explaining where this safety tool exists) and providing accurate information about locations where a person in crisis can temporarily store their firearm out of the home.
- Providing accurate information about firearm-prohibiting court orders and local violence prevention resources to users afraid of being victimized by intimate partner violence or interpersonal gun violence.
- Providing accurate information about home defense alternatives to firearms.
- Ensuring that chatbots share vetted and accurate gun violence statistics and studies on gun violence prevention topics, avoiding dangerous misinformation or hallucinations.
Krystal LoPilato, Sriraman Madhavan, Ruhi Bengali, Olivia Li, Justin Wagner
September 26, 2026
Artificially Assisted Gun Violence: Chatbot Risks and Preventative Steps for Responsible AI Companies | Everytown Research & Policy
Via:
The best response in the thread was from Entropy Generator who uploaded some quotes from the Everytown paper to ChatGTP, asked its opinion, and asked for an image with its quote to post. The result was:
To be fair I read the entire post and there is some good content in there. But it seems they could not help themselves from going too far.
We examined whether these outcomes differ between monogamous, consensually non-monogamous, and infidelity (i.e., non-consensually non-monogamous) relationships in a multinational online sample (Study 1; N = 888) and Finnish population-based data (Study 2; N = 10,503). In Study 1, women with multiple partners reported greater desire and satisfaction with their non-primary partners (vs. primary partners), and greater arousal with non-primary partners compared to monogamous women with their partners. Polyamorous individuals were more likely to have ever been tested for sexually transmitted infections but not more likely to have been diagnosed with one.
Michelle A. Larva et al.
Augst 18, 2026
Sexual Health in Monogamous and Non-Monogamous Relationships: Evidence From Convenience and Population-Based Samples – Michelle A. Larva, David L. Rodrigues, Annika Gunst, Patrick Jern, Sabina Nickull, Marie-Pier Larose, Markus J. Rantala, Justin K. Mogilski, 2026
I’ve been reading “non-monogamous people are no more likely to have STIs than monogamous people” for many years, and it still doesn’t really make sense to me. And to further bafflement, there have been numerous women who have told me they don’t use condoms most of the time even when having sex with five to ten different men in a single evening and go many years without contracting any sort of STI. What? Shouldn’t they be like the biological equivalent of an EPA Superfund site, have sores large enough to threaten the loss of their legs, and glow in the dark?
The literature hypothesis is that these people and their partners all get tested frequently and receive treatment quickly. I’m not convinced this explains it. My alternative hypothesis is that these people develop some sort of immunity from the frequent contact.
Also, and the literature doesn’t even expand on this for some reason, if the monogamous couples were really monogamous then their STI would be essentially zero. It is not exactly zero because some bacterial infections can be contracted non-sexually and then transmitted sexually. So, what does this mean? Many of the people who believe (or at least say) they are in monogamous relationship must not actually be in monogamous relationships, right?
The first SpaceX Starship to go into orbit:
Impressive and historic.
As we have seen in the past, gun control always starts with incrementalism – They start with less contentious restrictions, like a ban of concealed carry in public spaces, then move the ball forward from there. Why should the rest of Seattle’s citizens pay the price for the actions of 900 dangerous thugs? There’s no logical reason other than control. The goal is not to solve crime, the goal is to exploit crime as a vehicle to add new laws.
Tyler Durden
September 21, 2026
Seattle Mayor Calls For New Gun Laws While Letting Repeat Offenders Roam Free | ZeroHedge
In her master plan she says:
Seattle will work to advance gun violence prevention legislation that strengthens community-led firearm safety efforts and increase firearm enforcement and regulations.
There is also a lot in plan that is not associated with increasing the burden on firearms ownership, such as given free services to criminals. Most of it will not do anything to reduce “gun violence.” The evaluation I asked of Grok concluded:
If the question is “which items have evidence they will actually work against the kind of gun violence Seattle is seeing,” the honest ranking is:
- A real focused-deterrence / GVI program aimed at the small number of people driving shootings — strongest city-level evidence; the plan only gestures at it.
- Hot-spots presence and problem-solving on the actual shooting blocks — strong evidence; bike patrols help only if they are that precise.
- ERPOs used on high-risk individuals — solid for suicide and promising for individual violent offending; weak as a population homicide strategy.
- Well-run CVI with interrupters who actually reach the people at highest risk — mixed but often positive for shootings when fidelity is high.
- Homicide review councils — one strong city case plus a plausible accountability design.
- Targeted summer jobs for high-risk youth — good individual-level evidence.
- Generic after-school, late-night rec, mental health access, college promise, and org-chart changes — mostly prevention infrastructure, not proven shooting reducers.
The plan’s most evidence-based sentence is the one about concentrating on “the small subset of individuals involved in the majority of gun violence.” The least evidence-based move is treating coordination, youth amenities, and 911 integration as if they were substitutes for that targeting. Implementation quality will decide more than the PDF’s structure.
An alternate view as to the motive of her weak plan is that the admitted socialist mayor views criminals as her natural ally in removing firearm from her political opponents:
Via email from Rolf.
Approximately one-third of Democratic-leaning respondents said they would have a positive reaction to the president of the United States being murdered. This 32% cohort matched the “very negative” group, which also accounted for 32%. An additional one-quarter told the pollster that this outcome would engender a “neither positive nor negative” sentiment. That’s a substantial majority who would feel good, conflicted, or neutral about this president being intentionally killed.
Guy Benson
September 26, 2026
Leftism lurches toward assassination culture
A certain amount of this is not new. I know people who threw a party to celebrate the death of Rush Limbaugh. But a substantial majority admit to this is concerning. This makes it easy to for people to believe their bubble is reality. It becomes ever more likely that more people think they can be a hero or at least not be shamed for violent behavior of all types.
Political violence for democracy! Yeah. That makes total sense.
Prepare appropriately.
Good to know: Study on firearm safety pours cold water on anti-2A storage law assumptions.
The frequency of safely storing firearms in the home is unrelated to legislation requiring safe storage. It was highly correlated with firearms training which included safe storage.
The referenced study is Locked and Unloaded: Assessing American Gun Owners’ Safety Training and Use of Secure Firearm Storage Mechanisms:
The objectives of this study were to analyze the prevalence of firearm safety training and secure gun storage practices among American gun owners. We used nationally-representative survey data to estimate the impact of previously untested predictors of secure firearm storage. Findings show that older gun owners, gun owners living in metropolitan statistical areas, and low-SES gun owners are less likely to use secure firearm storage methods. Gun owners who receive formal, informal, or both forms of safety training are more likely to store firearms securely than those who receive no training. Additionally, results indicate that state-level secure gun storage laws have little influence on gun owners’ use of mechanisms to securely store their firearms. Findings suggest that firearm safety training has a demonstrable impact on improving gun owners’ use of secure firearm storage mechanisms.
Democrats can be unintentionally hilarious sometimes. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) reposted a chart on X Tuesday claiming housing prices are “the most unaffordable in history,” and that it was Trump’s fault.
There was just one huge problem.
The chart Newsom shared showed that the housing affordability gap actually widened during Joe Biden’s presidency, and X users noticed almost instantly, flooding his replies with screenshots of the very data he’d just posted as though it helped his argument. It didn’t take long for the pile-on to turn Newsom’s own post into a meme about his reading comprehension.
But the funny thing about it is that Democrats keep doing this. In July 2025, the Democratic National Committee posted a chart that they thought proved grocery prices were spiraling out of control in Trump’s second term.
The chart told a different story. It showed a huge spike under Biden. The DNC had unwittingly undermined its own attack on Trump. Social media users mocked the party within hours, dissecting the chart line by line, forcing the DNC to quietly delete the post… not that that stopped us from making fun of them anyway.
Matt Margolis
September 15, 2025
Democrats Still Don’t Know How to Read Charts – PJ Media
That is just the beginning. There is much more complete with the actual charts.
It is not limited to charts. It is not just mathematics. It is not just arithmetic. There is evidence to indicate they don’t understand numbers.
And yet, for a time, they seemed to be an unstoppable political force.
Your brain did not evolve for 24-hour cable or a phone that never sleeps. It evolved for a band of 150 people, a horizon you could walk, and a predator you could see.
The amygdala does not read policy papers.
It reads threat. Once a face, a slogan, a hat, a pronoun, a flag becomes tagged as not-us, the prefrontal cortex…the part that does slow, expensive, adult thinking…gets shoved out of the driver’s seat.
That is not poetry. That is threat circuitry doing what it was built to do.
Dopamine is not your friend here.
Variable-ratio reinforcement…the same schedule that makes slot machines addictive…is how feeds work.
Outrage, in-group applause, the little hit when your team “owns” someone. You are not informed. You are trained.
Skinner would have wept with professional pride.
Mirror neurons and identity fusion do the rest. You stop evaluating claims. You evaluate who said them. A lie from your tribe feels like loyalty.
A truth from the other tribe feels like betrayal.
That is not stupidity in the insult sense. It is a predictable failure mode of a social brain under industrial-scale stimulation.
LHGrey
September 7, 2026
IT’S ALL OF THEM – LHGrey’s Substack
Grey claims to be a forensic psychologist.
As something of an amateur psychologist, what she says here strikes me as true. It explains a lot of what I see in politics.
I also find it profoundly depressing.