A Chilling Effect

Quote of the Day

While it’s not always possible to evade government mandates, registering your guns just puts them on a shopping list for sticky-fingered officials. That’s true of registering anything that you value and that powerful people might fear or covet.

Even more concerning, though, is the prospect of governments in supposedly free societies conducting intelligence operations against their people and punishing those who hold disapproved ideas. That’s a great argument for getting rid of the need for government permission to go about our lives. Politicians will never approve of those who disagree with them, but we shouldn’t need their approval.

J.D. Tuccille
October 25, 2024
New Zealand Government Punishes Gun Owners for Their Political Beliefs

Way back when I started getting into guns, I thought everyone was in agreement that free speech was a good thing. While considered extremely bad form, it was legal for Nazis to have a peaceful march through Jewish neighborhoods. As near as I can recall, 30 years ago there wasn’t any real consequences to not believing the 16th Amendment was properly ratified, or that the moon landings were faked.

That is not the case anymore. New York passed a law (recently thrown out by the courts) requiring people to hand over your social media accounts to the government before you can get a concealed carry license. People have lost their jobs at Facebook for donating a couple thousand dollars to President Trump’s campaign. Others have lost their jobs for saying men, in general, were better at certain things and women were better at other things.

There currently is a deliberate chilling effect on the exercise of fundamental rights. There is some push back, as in the repeal of the New York law, but it is going to take a lot more time and resources to restore the free exercise of our rights to where they should be.

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8 thoughts on “A Chilling Effect

  1. Show me a way to not register your bank account. Debanking is a lot easier than gun confiscation. Couple of key strokes back in NYC vs physically confronting pissed off people.

    • Yes. That was done in Canada to all those truck drivers who were peacefully protesting.
      This truth makes the proposed (?) (Planned? Rumored?) move to a cashless society as dangerous as anything Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot ever did in an effort to gain power.

      And I think in the UK there is already a law that purchases of gold are automatically reported to the government. This was a major plot point in a short story by Frederick Forsyth.

      • Yup, your both right. But what happens is where does all that end? You keep defunding people for smaller and smaller infractions.
        Soon you’ve created a movement larger than you can control.
        And that doesn’t count the people that get pissed and do something back?
        They defund you, you just going to starve and freeze to death cause J.P. Morgan and crew don’t like you anymore?
        To me, the Canadian truckers weren’t armed and ready to fight back.
        What would have happened should they have turned off the lights in just the capital building and every police station in a 20 mile radius?
        Leave them freezing?
        Flatten the tires of every government car they seen?
        Like Michael Yon says. It only goes one of two ways. Either you testosterone up and fight. Or you estrogen out and die.
        You’ll lose with half measures against government every time. Cause from Ruby Ridge through Waco to J6 and witnessing them putting grandma in jail for praying at a children’s genocide center.
        The government ain’t afraid use full on violence.
        Getting defunded is just a polite way of murdering you.
        And we need to look at it exactly that way.

        • That’s right. Eventually they’ll require you to mask everywhere you go and roll up your sleeve and take an experimental gene therapy, shut down small businesses, and close down schools and all, and then people will rebel and start shooting, right?

          …oh, wait….

  2. In a word, enforcement. Humans are being subjected to enforcement of unnatural rules.
    That’s why they are wrote down as restrictions on government in the (to me, miss named), bill of rights.
    Without said enforcement we will go back to our natural state of free speech, bearing of arms, getting drunk, beating each other up and the like.
    What we’re living under is 60+ years of manipulative coercion under the heavy hand of totalitarian elitism. They use to talk about nudging us to do what they wanted. Of late the talk was of forcing you to do what they want. Thus, the over-reach of the government. (And the push back of electing Trump.)
    Enforcement is key though, and without the funds to enforce their agenda? We go back to our native selves in a hurry.
    If Trump defunds the BS, it will damn near end overnight.
    But like the Zen master said, we’ll see.

    • “Zen master, how do we know we are human.

      When you check all the boxes with bicycles.”

      Government is not the only threat.

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