Fast and Furious was a Justice Department program that allowed assault weapons — including .50-caliber rifles powerful enough to take down a helicopter — to be sold to Mexican drug cartels allegedly as a way to track them. But internal documents later revealed the real goal was to gin up a crisis requiring a crackdown on guns in America. Fast and Furious was merely a pretext for imposing stricter gun laws.

…

Team Obama conspired to derail investigations into who was responsible by first withholding documents under subpoena — for which Holder earned a contempt-of-Congress citation — and later claiming executive privilege to keep evidence sealed.

But thanks to the court order, Justice has to cough up the “sensitive” documents. So far it’s produced 20,500 lightly redacted pages, though congressional investigators say they hardly cover all the internal department communications under subpoena. They maintain the administration continues to “withhold thousands of documents.”

Paul Sperry
May 21, 2016
The scandal in Washington no one is talking about
[Via Say Uncle, Miguel.GFZ, and Andrew Branca.

Will the criminals finally be brought to justice?

Check out the date on the quote. That was over three years ago. So the answer is, almost for certain, no.—Joe]

I think we are ultimately headed for some kind of violent showdown between the left and everyone else. They no longer know when to back off, and they lack the moral filters necessary to coexistence. We’re going to end up in an existential fight for our most fundamental rights, and literal self-preservation.

The Annoyed Man
June 22, 2019
Comment to MN: Self defense shooting trial built on gun control bumper sticker
[Certainly a case can be made for that. But it seems to me that they back off when they get some serious push back. I think at least some of them are more in touch with reality than we sometimes give them credit for. They may be crazy but they may not be stupid. They can “sober up” for short periods of time if they really need to.

Think about it. For a while there were marches with vandalism and sometimes riots nearly every week all over the country. And now how often do you see that?—Joe]

If your candidate fascist is ideologically pro-free-market, false match. Even if he merely displays an affection for large scale corporate capitalism, that ain’t fascist. For the very direct reason that big corporations are a power center, or collection of power centers, competing with the unitary state. Fascists never tolerate that well.

Something else fascists never tolerate well is unregistered civilian firearms, or registered ones in the hands of anyone not signed up in one of the leader’s thug militias. A fascist looks at these and sees a civilian insurrection waiting to happen, and generally has a pretty keen sense of how quickly said civilian insurrection can end up with him hung up dead in the town square someplace like Giulino di Mezzegra.

Eric Raymond
Spotting the wild Fascist
April 30, 2019
[Via email from Chris M.—Joe]

…it should be concerning to ALL Illinoisans that proponents of these laws are after the shield (constitutional rights) and the spear (guns) against tyranny. We must not give up the legislative fight and must resort to the third co-equal branch when two branches have failed in their constitutional duties. Expect this all to end up in the courts if ever enacted into law in Illinois.

Andrew Chesney
Illinois State Representative
May 21, 2019
It’s not about your guns; it’s about your rights
[Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged by the number of politicians who demand we give up our rights. It’s sometimes easy to believe we have few, if any, political allies in government.

It’s a relief to find that even in a repressive state like Illinois there are politicians who are fighting for our rights.—Joe]

Unconstitutional to require training and tests for a right > Oregon v Mitchell
Unconstitutional to license a right > Murdock v Pennsylvania
Unconstitutional to ban #guns > DC v Heller
#gunsense is stupidity
#guncontrol is statist trash
#2a trumps your feelz

Dstroyr (@Dstroyr_U2b)
Tweeted on May 11, 2019
[Just because something is illegal or even unconstitutional doesn’t mean the politicians won’t do it anyway. Remember what Henry Kissinger said:

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.

This is why we have the 2nd Amendment. It is to slow them down, stop them, and reverse directions when they will not abide by the restrictions placed upon them.—Joe]

More than half the likely electorate thinks we are more than 70% of the way to being at the edge of civil war.

Ed Goeas
April 29, 2019
Georgetown University poll: Nation at edge ‘of civil war,’ but voters reject compromise
[Some things must not be compromised. Some people must not negotiated with. Some things are worth fighting for. Some things are worth fighting against.

Evil must not be tolerated.—Joe]