The inch was seemingly given, so it is not surprising to see pursuit of the mile. Gun ban advocates are emboldened by their perceived victories in firearm production changes, and Ruger is the latest target on a list that won’t end until the firearm prohibition lobby decides what guns are allowed to be sold or courts step in to enforce the law.
But, of course, eventually we will have to start prosecuting these criminals before they will stop infringing on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
While it is a matter of entrepreneurial judgment and not economic theory to affirm gold’s superiority as the ultimate “store of value” and potentially even as the preferred replacement for fiat monies (though silver has often been a strong competitor to gold for the latter role), I must agree with Lagarde’s assessment of the empirical facts concerning reserve asset competition, not with Powell’s dismissive attitude about gold—when the chips are down and the world is forced to turn to an unconditionally trustworthy reserve of purchasing power, the world will turn to gold. What soaring gold prices might indicate is that the world is now turning to gold.
The prices are certainly rising. This is just this year:
I see the stumbling of Bitcoin. I see Trump and Elon fail to get the U.S. deficit under control. I see the mounting U.S. debt becoming a huge, unstoppable monster. I wonder if the price of gold reflects a lack of confidence in the U.S. dollar. I think of the Zimbabwe dollar (I have trillions of them). Our country is not Zimbabwe, Argentina, or Venezuela so if someday we do have runaway inflation, it almost for certain will not be on the scale of those countries. But if it does happen, it could happen very rapidly. These events frequently have high emotional content. It is like someone shouted fire in a large room with not enough exits. A lot of people get trampled who would have survived had everyone remained calm.
And, of course, gold may not be the thing that saves people in a stampede. Maybe it will be guns and ammo to defend against the looters searching for food or even, as in the movie Doctor Zhivago, stealing the lumber from your home to burn for warmth.
If you do decide to buy gold, please remember my advice.
Published reports confirm that many Jewish New Yorkers have been arming themselves in worrisome anticipation of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani—described by the New York Post as a “Muslim radical socialist”—taking office and opening a floodgate of hatred toward the city’s Jewish population.
Even The Times of Israel is reporting how Jewish gun owners, firearms instructors and security professionals in the Big Apple are witnessing a major surge in demand for firearms training, and applications for concealed carry permits. Anti-Semitic rhetoric has led to increased violence against Jews across the United States.
Deep down, I think most people know you can vote your way in, but you to shoot your way out. This is just another data point confirming that hypothesis.
I would like to welcome all the new gun owners Mamdani has created over to the right side of history. I think the NSSF should send Mamdani a thank you card on behalf of all the gun manufacturers.
The Civil Rights Division’s new focus on the Second Amendment, which is far outside its longstanding mission, is moving us even further away from our nation’s commitment to protecting all Americans’ civil rights.
Is she so “tone deaf” she cannot even hear her own words? She contradicts herself in a single sentence. How can the Civil Rights Division be moving away from protecting “all Americans’ civil rights” by protecting a civil right they have never protected in the past?
I would also like to point out the article authors don’t mention the contradiction either.
This is mental illness and/or a deliberate intent of manipulation.
I would like to emphasize the “former” in her title. She richly deserves it.
If the FPC (see also here) and SAF (see also here) have their way, then eventually the price of a Thompson clone could drop to a few hundred present day dollars.
Considering much of the justification for restricting the Second Amendment comes down to preventing violence, this distinction is strange.
The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s protections has expanded over the years. It’s almost impossible for a public person to win a defamation or libel lawsuit, since the Supreme Court ruled in the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan that the plaintiff must prove “actual malice,” which means knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard.
Commercial speech used to be unprotected. Now, it receives intermediate scrutiny after SCOTUS’ 1980 ruling in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission. Hate speech, flag burning, violent video games and lies about military honors are all protected now.
If the Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny to firearms regulations, they would fail due to the lack of historical tradition. Requiring a minimum age of 21 to own a firearm would fail, since 18–20-year-olds served in the 1791 militia. Red flag laws would fail, since there are no pre-deprivation hearings. Magazine limits would fail since there is no founding-era analogue. Many felons are nonviolent, so laws prohibiting their possession would fail as too broad.
Judges justify the hypocrisy by pointing to the need to prevent gun deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 44,400 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S. last year. However, when compared to a similar country, England (and Wales), which bans firearms, the U.S. has lower overall violent crime rates. This reveals that judges are making decisions based on emotion, not relying on a purely constitutional analysis.
There are other options. It is possible, even probable, that it is not an emotional basis for the decisions. It could be there are “just” different principles at work. A disarmed population is a compliant population. Political power grows from the barrel of a gun, etc.
In his role as Deputy Director, we have worked closely with Robert Cekada to ensure law-abiding gun owners have a seat at the table in shaping policy.
If confirmed, he would be the first ever truly pro-Second Amendment nominee to head the agency. By nominating an ATF Director who understands our community and respects our constitutional rights, President Trump and his administration are further underscoring their commitment to standing up for the Second Amendment and gun owners. We urge the Senate to confirm him without delay.
Unless they can privatize the ATF and make it into a chain of convivence stores, I can’t consider anyone nominated to head the ATF to be “truly pro-Second Amendment.”
The police don’t have the power to protect you now either. They only have the power to investigate and potentially arrest people after a crime has been committed.
Objection! Presumes facts not in evidence.
The post presumes private citizens who carry concealed guns are all criminals. The evidence is that people with concealed carry licenses are far less likely to commit a crime than even police officers.
Objection! Presumes facts not in evidence.
Allowing people to carry the most effective self-defense tools available increases public safety. It is only a dangerous agenda for violent criminals.
While many Americans still believe the courts are the key to restoring liberty, gun rights leaders say it’s time for a reality check — because the courts aren’t coming to save you. That’s the blunt warning from Hannah Hill, Vice President of the National Foundation for Gun Rights, who says far too many liberty activists have fallen into the trap of thinking they can sue their way back to freedom.
“No. The courts are NOT coming to save you,” Hill said in a recent statement. “If you’re waiting for a judge to fix this country, you’re going to be waiting forever.”
According to Hill, too many well-meaning conservatives are convinced that “one big lawsuit” will topple gun control laws or fix deep-rooted corruption, when in reality, the legal system is stacked against liberty from top to bottom.
I have been saying just the opposite for quite a while now. The legislatures in so many states are completely hopeless. I think the courts and/or prosecutions are the only hope in those gun-rights hellholes. If we can maintain an originalist majority on the SCOTUS long enough, we can get most of the bad laws removed from the books. Once the bad laws are off the books we can create a history of life without oppressive gun laws. The more history we can create the better our chances for a non-oppressive gun law future.
The risk is losing the majority on SCOTUS via the anti-gun politicians packing the court in the next five to ten years.
That said, having all the bad law the Federal level is plausible even without the support of SCOTUS. And if we can get rid of all the bad laws at the Federal level and in half or more the states then we have additional leverage for the remaining states.
I see the point of the article, and I am not entirely in disagreement with them. And redundancy in protection and plans are always a good thing. If we can get both the courts and the legislatures to see the plain and clear language of the 2nd Amendment that would be great. It would be much better than having just one or the other. So, both right?
The problem is that resources are limited and must be allocated to best accomplish the final goal. With the current SCOTUS I believe the path forward is more certain and less resource intensive than attempting to make similar progress in the legislatures. Hence, I’m going to be expending my resources on the courts for now. But I’m certainly not going to fault someone who can make a difference at the legislative front.
Despite his website promising “compassionate leadership for a just future,” Smeltzer vowed in a recent post to “round up EVER [sic] SINGLE red hat wearing MAGA and put them in hard labor camps for the rest of their lives.”
While locking up those with whom he disagrees appears to be one of his key objectives, Smeltzer told the Washington Free Beacon that he is running a “health care and tax-the-rich campaign” and would use a role in Congress to advocate for his fellow “furry” fetishists.
He certainly has the attitude I would expect from a socialist. The compassion part may not seem obvious in the current context. But if he really thinks all “red hat wearing MAGA” should be lined up in front of a ditch to be shot, then I suppose hard labor for life could be considered compassionate.
This is why we have the Second Amendment. This is why I created Boomershoot.
I wish this were not true. But it has been true for decades. I remember one of my daughters bringing home a paper from college when she was going to the University of Idaho. I recall it being from a set of papers assigned by an economics professor. The students were to report on the errors they found in them. The paper was about some set of people in South America having freedom forced on them and how bad it was.
How do you argue with someone like this? How can you even have a conversation? We do not even share the definitions of words. Is there even a common basis for communication? Is it some sort of alternate reality?
My message is, I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones and all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives, for what? The country of today?
“No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.
…
What we fought for was our freedom, but now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.
He is talking about the U.K. I cannot help but conclude this means people must be thinking their government of today is tyrannical. With the surveillance society, restrictions on free speech, firearms ownership, and even knife ownership I can see how a strong case can be made for that.
The actual figure really is innately unknowable. You can legally build an AR-15 rifle at home with a wee bit of mechanical skill and a router. However, for the sake of discussion, let’s pin that number at 30 million.
A fixed-stock AR-15 is 39 inches long. An M4 carbine with a 16-inch barrel is 33 inches long with the stock collapsed. Let’s therefore establish an average length for an AR-15 as 36 inches. If the typical “assault weapon,” whatever that truly is, spans 36 inches and you arrayed every one of them muzzle to butt, that line of guns would stretch from Boston to Los Angeles 6.5 times. That’s 17,045 miles’ worth of weapons. Starting to appreciate the scope of this thing?
There are around 400 million firearms in the U.S. A Glock 19 is 7.3 inches long. That M4 was 33. Some pistols are shorter. Some rifles are longer. Let’s just guess that they average around 20 inches across the board. Place every gun in America end-to-end, and now you have an unbroken line of weapons that will circle the globe five times.
There are 77 million lawful gun owners in the U.S. That’s 2.5 times as many Americans packing heat as there are soldiers on Planet Earth. We are some seriously well-armed rednecks.
After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the Australian government outlawed most guns, confiscating some 650,000 firearms. Gun control enthusiasts often look lustfully at our friends Down Under as role models. Even in a slow year, we gun-crazy Yanks buy that many new firearms every two weeks.
Although the numbers above might seem definitive to gun owners, I’m not so sure it will have the desired effect on anti-gun people. I have often said gun grabbers don’t even understand arithmetic and some don’t even understand numbers. And with that blindness they may just double down. They may view this as all the more justification in saying, “There are too many guns on the streets.”
You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.
“The media couldn’t blame Kirk’s murder on a so-called ‘assault rifle,’ so they’re doing the next worst thing,” he added. “They’ve slapped a defamatory label on commonly-owned hunting rifles, hoping to make them the new bogeyman for the gun ban lobby. The Daily Mail has pulled a page out of the gun control playbook simply for the purpose of sensationalism. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
* Via Grok: No, it would not be accurate to say the bullet hit him in his throat.
The precise point of impact was the right side of his neck, specifically in the lateral cervical region (near the sternocleidomastoid muscle, approximately at the level of C5–C6 vertebrae). Medically and forensically:
The throat refers to the anterior neck (front), including the larynx, trachea, and thyroid area.
The neck is broader, encompassing anterior, lateral, and posterior regions.
The bullet entered the right lateral neck, not the anterior throat. It traversed obliquely leftward and downward, damaging the right carotid sheath and spinal structures before lodging near T1 on the left side—never entering the throat proper.
Saying “throat” would be anatomically incorrect and could mislead, especially given conspiracy claims misidentifying blood from internal vascular rupture as an anterior wound. Official autopsy diagrams and surgical reports consistently label the entry as right posterolateral neck.
** Via Grok: The rifle in this case was grandfather’s hunting rifle, modified with a shortened barrel and basic scope—functional for a 200-yard shot, but far from a modern sniper system.
…
Bottom line: Calling it a “high-powered sniper rifle” is inaccurate and inflammatory—it was a vintage bolt-action hunting rifle, effectively used but not technically either “sniper” or “high-powered” in the modern sense.
Today’s topic addresses a pet peeve, which is how every single time some human-shaped monster attacks a school in America, the resulting commentary heavily features the line: “This never happens anywhere else!!” Really? Nowhere else? In no other country, in the entire world.
…
But here’s the linguistic game they play. Any time an incident involves a gun, it’s no longer a massacre. It’s a shooting. I insist on pushing back with that one. Of course they can say “it never happens elsewhere” if they make sure that it exclusively refers to only one specific type of massacre.
As for the argument that it makes the killing easier, therefore there will be more killings — that presumes some population of people who are a hair’s trigger away from killing everyone they see, but only stopped by the fact that they don’t have an “easy” way to do it. No, I argue that the important part is the line between “peace” and “killing”, and that once someone crosses that line, the weapon matters little.
She gives several examples, including her childhood in China, which disprove the assertion that “This never happens anywhere else!!” And, more importantly she offers some suggestions to deal with the fact, “Human beings are NOT SANE as a general rule and sometimes insanity leads to serious problems.”
[On March 14, 1943] we found out that they were gathering a group of people that would be sent to the cemetery to dig a hole ( … ). There were 150 of us. We dug a hole that was several hundred metres long and few metres deep. After some time, flatbed carts began to arrive, loaded with the murdered people from ghetto B. The first few hundred of the killed were dressed, while the successive carriages were bringing along corpses that had already been undressed ( … ). The corpses were laid in the grave one by one, and when a whole layer had been laid, some soil was scattered around, and another layer of corpses followed ( … ). Some of the people were busy collecting the valuables found on the dead ones. The valuables were put into chests. Such was our 6-hour shift at the graveyard.
Jan Mischel A clerk, aged 34 From an exhibit in the Schindler factory museum, October 4, 2025.
Earlier this month Barb and I went on an abbreviated WWII tour of Europe. The administration building of Schindler’s factory was our first stop after settling into our Airbnb.
From the same exhibit:
Our guide had numerous things to tell us I had not heard before. The following is my paraphrasing. We were not allowed to record the tour.
The Nazis regarded the Poles as subhumans as well as the Jews. We were all to be removed to make room for the classic Aryan Germany, tall, blonde, and blue eyed. They did not destroy Krakow as they did many other cities. In part this may have been because the Polish military did not defend Krakow. It was also a very nice city. The plans were to resettle the Aryan Germans to the city.
One thing that was different in Poland compared to the other conquered countries such as France. For example, in France, it was a death penalty if you were caught hiding a Jew. In Poland it was a death penalty if you were caught helping a Jew. Giving a Jew a glass of water or a slice of bread could result in you being killed. If a Jew was found hiding in a home or shop, everyone in the home or shop, even the current customers were murdered.
When the Germans took control, it was a death penalty to possess a gun or listen to the radio. They shut down the schools because Poles did not need an education to be slaves.
In the movie Schindler’s office was at the top of the stairs on the right. In real life it was in a different place.
The picture above is of the real office.
These are pictures of some of the Jews Schindler saved:
Schindler’s factory mostly made pots and pans for the military:
And Schindler:
After four years of occupation by the Germans Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union for 45 years. The Poles have some rather strong opinions about that. But other than the picture of Stalin, I will save that story for another day.
The injunction is significant—not only for its immediate protection of NRA members but also for the precedent it sets in reining in agency overreach. Beyond striking down a single rule, the ruling reasserts a fundamental principle: that the power to make or change laws lies with Congress, not unelected bureaucrats.
For the firearm community, Butler v. Bondi is more than a courtroom win. It is a reaffirmation that the boundaries of federal power must be respected, and that constitutional rights cannot be redefined by agency decree.
This is good, but it reminds me of something else I want the gun rights organizations to work on… How does anyone believe the 2nd Amendment allows restrictions on interstate sales of firearms? Why can’t someone in California legally buy a gun in Oregon or Nevada without it being shipped to a California FFL?
It is not that I think the interstate sales restrictions should be a higher priority than semi-auto rifle bans, standard capacity magazine bans, and the “sensitive places” B.S. But it should be on the radar.
Also, in an era of President Trump pushing the envelope with executive orders, this precedent will be interesting in its application to recent events.
They see this as a fight about how Democrats can start winning again, which makes it not merely tactical but also existential: Party officials, strategists, and activists have spent a year sifting through the wreckage of an election that was calamitous to the Democrats’ governing plans as well as their very understanding of themselves. And there is no shepherd to guide them. The party’s erstwhile leader, Joe Biden, is widely scorned. Harris, its would-be standard-bearer, is busy promoting a backward-looking volume of grievances.
“Permissive” isn’t a word you would use to describe Democrats over the past few years. The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing. Litmus tests aren’t just applied to gun policy, but to policies on LGBT rights, immigration enforcement, policing, and other matters.
But losing power has a way of shaking up party canon. And there are some signs that Democrats are ready to move past this era of ideological purity and rigidity.
I have my differences with Republicans, but the Democrats have been the sworn enemy of the Second Amendment for 60 years. To see them struggle with relevance, self-doubt, and even identity, invokes a fair amount of schadenfreude.
