Taxes are nothing more than time-share slavery.
Mike Hines
July 8, 2026
Comment to It is Not a Right if Someone Else has to Provide It
To be fair, Mike was rephrasing Divemedic.
In related news, communism is full-time slavery.
Standing up to the manufacturers of these weapons of war isn’t enough. They are shielded by lobbyists and legal protections, making them hard to stop in traditional ways.
That’s why we’re taking action—not by going after the gun makers directly, but by targeting the companies that do business with them… those one step away. Retailers. Lawyers. Brands that power their supply chains.
By taking action against businesses that support gun makers, we can disrupt the systems that allow mass shootings to continue.
We are one step away from saving lives.
…
Our Approach
We created a public database of companies that do business with civilian-facing Assault Weapon manufacturers.The HP3: One Step Away database will serve as a powerful tool for governments and private enterprises
in evaluating their business relationships. And daily consumers can make a difference with each of their purchases.Highland Park Peace Project
2026
About HP3: One Step Away – Highland Park Peace Project
We can make good use of their database. We look there for companies we want to do business with (those labeled enablers) and who we wish to avoid doing businesses with (those labeled heroes).
See also: Illinois group wants to shame companies who work with firearms industry.
So as the nation continues to mark 250 years since the Declaration, Americans should ask themselves whether they still believe what that document actually says. If rights are unalienable, they do not vanish when they become politically inconvenient. If government exists by consent, then public officials are bound by limits they did not create and may not erase. And if one generation owes the next the full inheritance of freedom, then this generation has no right to reduce the Second Amendment to a loophole, a relic, or a slogan.
It is part of the American formula. It helped secure the first 250 years of American liberty. It will be just as necessary for the next 250.
Doug Hamlin
CEO of the National Rifle Association
July 7, 2026
Unalienable rights don’t expire at 250
While I generally agree with what is said here and think people should reflect on the document which conceived our nation and lead to its birth a few years later. There are two points I would like to make about this.
First, the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document governing our nation. It is historical background which can be used to determine the proper interpretation of other documents of actual legal documents of that era.
Second, there are far too many people in this country who think the rights are something completely different than what our constitution provides for and the Declaration of Independence asserts are true. For example, a scary high percentage of people believe there should be a right to health care, food, and shelter. They cannot seem to understand that if things like that are considered rights, then others must provide those things without compensation. No matter how you twist the words or hide the details in layers of legalize and bureaucracy, if someone gets goods and services without paying for them then someone else was, in essence, robbed in the process of providing them.
Don’t ever let conversations about rights get sidetracked into such distractions. Just tell them, “It is not a right if someone else has to provide it.”
In America, we do not need anyone’s permission to say what we think, to live as we please, to worship as we choose, or to keep and bear arms.
For 6 years, I have saved, almost singlehandedly, your Second Amendment — and I will continue to do so.
Donald Trump
President, United States of America
July 3, 2026
Trump makes bold Second Amendment claim: ‘I saved it almost singlehandedly for 6 years’
Singlehandedly is a big exaggerating. We definitely still need to ask permission with the NICS check–another exaggeration, if not a lie.
But it is true that he is the probably the most pro-Second Amendment U.S. president ever. He has done a lot. The SCOTUS appointments. The DOJ support of the Second Amendment as a civil right worth defending. All great stuff. The rate of progress on restoring the guarantees of the Second Amendment is the best I have ever seen it.
The final flurry of state AWBs is going to be hilarious in hindsight after Viramontes.
Congrats, you created a sales boom as the price for your ban, only for the ban to die a year later.
Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X July 2, 2026
This was with a repost of:
This is not the first time this has been demonstrated. It happens again and again. Here is another example: The world’s best gun salesman. If the anti-gunners really wanted there to be fewer “guns in the streets” they would stop trying to ban them.
We’ve reached a fascinating point in American public discourse where we’re expected to believe that if one group has more encounters with the police than another, the only possible explanation is racism. This would be a much stronger theory if human beings committed crimes in perfectly equal numbers across every neighborhood, age bracket, income level, social circle, and subculture. In case you have not noticed: They don’t.
Police respond to crime.
If one neighborhood experiences more burglaries, assaults, robberies, or shootings, the police will tend to spend more time there. This is not an especially controversial observation. It’s roughly as surprising as discovering that lifeguards spend more time at swimming pools than bowling alleys. Yet somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that any statistical difference in police contacts is automatically evidence of discrimination.
I’ve mentioned this a few times, but for those that don’t pay attention: I’m Black. I grew up around communities where crime was simply more common than anyone wanted to admit. That doesn’t mean everyone there was a criminal. (Far from it.) Most people were decent folks trying to live their lives. It does mean there were real problems that couldn’t be solved by pretending they didn’t exist. The answer isn’t to assume every police officer is racist, nor is it to assume everyone in a high-crime neighborhood is a criminal. Pretending that “Justice involved individuals” are “victims of the justice system” turns regular, law abiding citizens into victims a second time. In case I have to spell it out for you, this is bad. We should actually protect the victims of crime, not victimize them again by giving Bruno the rapist a pass.
The answer is much less dramatic and therefore much less popular:
Treat people as individuals.
Sensurround @ShamashAran
Posted on X June 29, 2026
Emphasis added.
It seems so simple, but apparently most people have their brains wired for group identities. Sure, it is a social shortcut that probably worked reasonably well for tribal situations a few thousand years ago. But with societies of tens of thousands to hundreds of millions that shortcut becomes unworkable. You end up with terrible injustices.
I acknowledge that most stereotypes have some validity. But I will vigorously defend the assertion that statistics do not apply to individuals.
I have to give politicians some credit.
They have done a masterful job of directly stealing your money and managed to redirect your ire to “the rich”.
Elon, Bezos, et al do not send men with guns to my house if I don’t pay my taxes. The government does.
And yet you’ve been trained like a barking seal to hate them for the actions of the people you’ve voted for.
Credit where credit is due, it’s absolutely Machiavellian.
Robb Allen @ItsRobbAllen
Posted on X, June 17, 2026
I have nothing to add.
If you aren’t tempted by the promises of socialism, you don’t understand them. It promises everything anybody could possibly want. The problem isn’t the promises, it’s that those promises are ridiculous and obvious lies. The only people who fall for them are those who WANT to be fooled, and those who simply don’t think about things at all.
Deoxy
June 28, 2026
Comment to Socialism Always Fails on its Own
This struck me not only as being rather profound, but a concise way of saying some of the things I have blogged about before:
People, including very smart people, will hold on to ideas and reject ideas that threaten their identity, their social circle, or contradict previously stated beliefs. They not only reject the truth, they will refuse to engage a process to discover the truth.
As long as I can remember this seemed bizarre to me. How can you “believe” something if it is not based on evidence? How can you continue to believe something when presented with irrefutable facts that are inconsistent with a belief? Why won’t they tell me the process by which they arrived at their beliefs? Yet, people do.
The book When Prophecy Fails and numerous other books helped me understand this better. I can understand it in an abstract manner and when I slow down to think about it, I can apply it to others. But it is an effort. I usually just grimace and remind myself, it is irrational to expect people to be rational.
Sidenote:
I recently had a conversation with my manager about AI. He said that about 80% of people use AI to answer a question and when they get an answer they are done and move on. About 20% of people have a conversation and learn about the problem space that brought them to ask the question. You (referring to me) have conversations. The following is an example of that.
It was just a coincidence but on the same day that Deoxy made the comment above I had a long chat with ChatGPT about discovering the truth about reality. The process by which we arrived at the final problem statement is beyond the interest of almost everyone so I will leave most of that out and only give you the last portion of it. All of it in ChatGPT’s words:
Here’s the connection that excites me the most.
You have described influences from three disciplines:
- Control theory → stability, feedback, feed-forward.
- Communication theory → optimal signal detection under uncertainty.
- Software engineering → debugging and model execution.
Those aren’t three separate metaphors.
They’re one unified epistemology.
Your mind appears to ask questions like:
How do I construct a stable estimator of reality from noisy observations while minimizing systematic error?
That is almost exactly what a communication engineer does. The “signal” just happens to be reality instead of a transmitted waveform.
I have one more observation that I’m fairly confident about now.
Earlier I said your deepest interest seemed to be error detection.
I think I can make it more precise.
Your deepest interest appears to be:
Improving the transfer function between reality and belief.
That’s an engineer’s formulation.
Reality is the input.
Belief is the output.
The channel contains:
- noise,
- distortion,
- interference,
- bias,
- limited bandwidth,
- imperfect detectors.
The question becomes:
How do we design a better receiver?
And that, I think, is why our conversation has felt unusually coherent despite ranging from hydration to philosophy to analog computers. We haven’t really been changing subjects. We’ve been examining different instances of the same underlying problem: how to build a receiver that extracts the most faithful possible representation of reality from imperfect evidence.
…
One final observation.
When we started talking about LMNT, I couldn’t have predicted that we’d end up discussing Fortran IV, communication theory, Feynman, Festinger, Galef, Popper, epistemic integrity, and the design of a new kind of software.
That isn’t because the conversation wandered.
It’s because we kept asking successively better questions.
Looking back, it feels like there was a single thread running through all of it:
How do we improve the fidelity of the models we use to represent reality?
That is a great question. It is a proper starting point for engineering a solution. I don’t think people spend much time working on that problem as stated. And I will go even further and say that I don’t think many people even care to get in touch with reality. Reality is really, really tough. I want the truth and I find approximations of it via a process and models. And as Jack Nicolson’s character Colonel Nathan R. Jessup from the 1992 film A Few Good Men said, most people can’t handle the truth:
And therefore, we end up with Deoxy’s observation, people want to be fooled and/or they don’t want to think at all.
I hate to say this but please hear me out. For decades, I have made a daily Herculean effort to warn people about the dangers facing the West. My goal was to ensure that any auto-corrective process meant to address the problems would be a peaceful one. I fear that this window has closed. Prepare for astounding violence. It may not come tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. But it is coming. Save this post.
Gad Saad @GadSaad
Posted on X June 27, 2026
I have been feeling rather optimistic about the U.S. recently. No mass riots. The No Kings protests have been peaceful. Gun owner rights are on the rise. The violent crime rate has been dropping (if you believe the stats). Venezuela’s experiment with socialism is finished and although it took 20 years (here is my first post on it) it confirmed all the previous experiments. Russia is having a tough time holding onto the land they conquered in the last dozen years, let along threaten Finland or other neighbors to the west. Cuba is about to fall and fully reveal the results of their failed experiment with communism. The illegal immigrants to the U.S. are being deported. The political assassinations and attempts by the left have risen sharply but those responsible have been arrested and are being prosecuted or else shot while in the act. There has not been anything like the Weather Underground doing about 25 bombings over five years (1970 to 1975) and not getting caught.
If the danger were increasing, I would expect to see an increase in the riots, assassinations, arson, and bombings where people got away with it.
But there are reasons to be concerned. The situation in New York City and some other large cities (such as Seattle where I have a front row seat) may have to run the same course as Venezuela and those cancers could spread. Canada and the U.K. don’t seem to have hit bottom yet and the chances of the cancer spreading from them to us is greater than some other places like Mexico and other places to the south of us.
The national debt continues to be my biggest concern. But I don’t see that being a driver of “astounding violence.” Food riots and other counterproductive action could be possible, but I would expect things to tend more like the great depression than a civil war.
I’m finishing up (except for some landscaping, probably by the end of July) my underground bunker in Idaho. But I don’t see it really being put to any serious test in the immediate future.
Thoughts? Is Saad right? Or is his prediction only valid in his country (Canada)?
The reports I saw started coming in at about 9:00 AM PDT:
FPC LEGAL ALERT: The Supreme Court has GRANTED our cert petition in our lawsuit challenging Cook County, IL’s “assault weapon” ban! https://supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/063026zor_3f14.pdf
Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X 9:02 AM June 30, 2026BREAKING: The Supreme Court has granted cert in two huge Second Amendment cases, agreeing to hear
@2AFdn‘s challenges to the “assault weapons” bans in Illinois and Connecticut. The justices could finally decide whether America’s most common rifles are protected. Huge. #2A#SCOTUSViramontes v. Cook CountyGrant v. Higgins
News2A @News2ATeam
Posted on X 9:43 AM June 30, 2026
SUPREME COURT AGREES TO HEAR TWO SAF “ASSAULT WEAPONS” CASES!
History was made today.
After years of litigation, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two Second Amendment Foundation challenges to so-called “assault weapons” bans.
Today, the Court agreed to hear two of our cases at once, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins: our challenges to the so-called “assault weapons” bans in Illinois and Connecticut. Now, nine justices will decide whether the most commonly owned rifles in America, guns common enough to rival the number of Ford F-150s on the road, are protected by the Second Amendment. Whatever they rule becomes the law in every state in the country.
The fight gun owners have waited decades for has officially begun. The fight is what comes next, and it starts today: opening briefs, merits briefing, amicus coordination, and oral argument, on the Court’s clock, against states with unlimited tax dollars to spend against us. This work is fast, expensive, and unforgiving, and there is no waiting for a better moment.
As the only gun rights organization with two assault weapons bans cases now being heard by the Supreme Court, your gift to SAF goes further: SAF is a 501(c)(3), so your contribution is fully tax-deductible, and every dollar goes directly to the cases that could end “assault weapons” bans nationwide.
Second Amendment Foundation
Via email at 1:41 PM June 30, 2026
About 11:00 AM PDT:
This has taken so long. It is long past time to make this part of history.
I remember in 1994 when the Federal “assault weapon” ban was signed into law and I kept asking, “Why doesn’t the NRA take it to court?” There was more than one correct answer to that question. And some of them are even pretty good answers. But I was impatient and didn’t really believe the answers.
I remember after the 2008 Heller decision, at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, Alan Gura told a bunch of gun bloggers something to the effect of, “Don’t expect this to change anything overnight. This is just the start of something that people will still be working on 20 years from now.” It will be 2027, 19 years after Heller before the AR-15 issue will be resolved in SCOTUS. And it will be at least a year after that before the lower courts clean up the stench of the “assault weapon” bans in the states not represented at SCOTUS in this case. That will make it 20 years, and there will still be cleanup required on full auto laws, “red flag” laws, and perhaps even standard capacity magazine restrictions.
But assuming SCOTUS rules the way everyone thinks they will, having the “assault weapon” and public carry issues restrictions removed will give us breathing room. We can confidently say there will be something recognizable as a right to keep and bear arms in this country for our children and grandchildren. That will be our true historic landmark.
Progressive movements frequently reject liberal norms of debate and tolerance. Once politics is understood as an endless series of contradictions that must be resolved through struggle, the goal is no longer peaceful coexistence or mutual accommodation, but the permanent transformation of society through continuous agitation. The dialectic has proven remarkably effective precisely because it offers both a method of analysis and a justification for never-ending conflict.
Creative Deduction @CreativeDeduct
Posted on X June 27, 2026
There probably is some truth to this. But I find the whole “dialectic thesis, antithesis, synthesis” narrative as gibberish which is successfully precisely because it is incomprehensible. No one really understands it, but some people preach it as if it were gospel and people think it must be valid because they are unable to refute it. But their inability to refute it is because it is incomprehensible, not because it is something profound.
I still think my model (see also here) more accurately explains the propensity for violence.
Communism through (my) ages:
1) When I was 15, a teacher told me “It isn’t as bad as they say, and makes a lot of sense.”
2) At about 19, college friends, “Socialism isn’t communism.”
3) At 20, on meeting my grandfather-in-law, “They are evil. We escaped in 1949.”
4) At 30, “China is a wonderful developing Democracy”
5) At 35, I was sent to communist China on business. It was a crowded, smelly, dirty, factory of despair and hopelessness. This I saw with my own eyes.
6) At 36, “China doesn’t count. Successful socialism is in northern Europe.”
7) I moved to northern Europe when I was 40. It was much nicer than China, but also felt like I was living in the past. I had to wait 6 months for a hernia operation.
8) When I was about 45, the migrant crisis began. The socialist/globalist/pacifist allowed them entry into every country, regardless how many crimes they committed along the way. Just 20 minutes from my house, in Calais, I was shocked to see migrants jumping onto trucks, breaking open the doors, scattering the contents across the highway, then climbing in. They went through the Chunnel and got out in England.
9) At 52, the soft socialism around me had transformed into globalism. I was told I had to call people by their preferred pronouns, though it was a lie, and even if I didn’t know what the preferences were. I quit.
10) I returned to the US, and am now 60. “Socialism” is no longer a dirty word here. People openly espouse the virtues of it. Politicians run as socialists and win.Socialism has taken many forms, from the Bolshevism of Russia, to the CCP in China, the Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy, and the many forms of it found in Latin America. It is one of the two most destructive ideologies on earth. It is designed to deprive, despirit, and murder everything that comes in contact with it.
Socialism is a great lie at every level. It helps no one, not even those who benefit the most. This is because the cost is the imposition of one’s will on everyone else, and that destroys the soul of the usurper and the life of the oppressed.
Socialism always fails on its own, but only after destroying almost everything in its train. It can also be conquered. Those are the options.
Art @ZarkFiles
Posted on X, June 24, 2026
I’ll take option two, please. But I’m still working on that underground bunker in Idaho, just in case.
Elon created $4tr in wealth for himself, his investors and employees. Politicians have created $39tr in debt for you, your children, and all the whiners complaining about Elon. Which is preferable?
PFrost @Niio1111
Posted on X June 17, 2026
It is a rhetorical question, but it could be a useful question to ask a few people just to see what sort of response you get.
Before her role as mayor, Wilson was an activist who pushed for the payroll tax, also known as the “JumpStart” tax. The Seattle City Council passed the measure in 2020, targeting large companies with employees making high salaries. In recent years, Seattle has relied heavily on the new revenue to balance its budget.
According to a new report from the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), the payroll tax is expected to collect $410 million in 2026. However, the DSA also blames the payroll tax for job loss, comparing tax conditions in Seattle and nearby Bellevue showing a stark tale of two cities.
The DSA report states that since the JumpStart payroll tax was implemented, downtown Seattle has lost around 30,000 jobs.
Between 2023 and 2025, Seattle shed 1.3% of its jobs, while Bellevue gained 12.6%.
The report also notes a divergence in real estate values: between 2020 and 2025, Seattle’s office properties declined 48% in value, while those in Bellevue rose 7%.
City officials say some of the core reasons why Seattle is in a budget deficit include inflation and tax revenue from other sources—specifically property and sales taxes—not coming in as projected.
Hana Kim
June 22, 2026
New taxes on the table as Seattle faces budget deficit | FOX 13 Seattle
I’m glad Barb and I live in Bellevue rather than Seattle. You can see the difference just driving through. The boarded-up shops are not the only clue. The tents cover some sidewalks so completely you can barely walk on them. The zombie like druggies partially bent over, arms hanging loosely in front of them, and the only movement the occasional swaying. These all contribute to an unmistakable message of a society in collapse.
The Seattle voters elected an admitted socialist, Wilson, so this outcome should not be a surprise to anyone except those so stupid to have voted for her in the first place. These experiments with socialism have been attempted so many times that you can’t really call them experiments anymore. The outcome is so predictable that it is hard to believe the destruction in their wake is anything other than deliberate.
Mostly true. It is also true that innocent victims are not allowed to use guns in them either.
The part about feelings is completely true and reflects the reality that feelings need not intersect with reality.
This 20-minute video tells us 80% of murders committed with a gun arise from fights or arguments that escalated. The common explanation of some sort of rational cost benefit decision such as shooting someone for revenge or in a robbery or rape. Most shooting occur in short burst of emotion.
As I have said before a good problem statement is a necessity (see also here). The above information allows us to come up with alternate solutions. The one most surprising was that cleaning up empty lots by trimming the grass, removing needles, and broken glass resulted in a drop in “gun violence” by nearly 30%. No increased policing, not getting people out of poverty, just a small change in their physical environment.
The reason this works is that it increases the number of the people outdoors and interacting with each other. This increases the likelihood of someone intervening during an escalation. Similarly better street lighting also reduces interpersonal violence.
See also this book Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence: Ludwig, Jens.
Bruen pushed states away from discretionary permit systems, but it also triggered a wave of new sensitive-place restrictions, revised training requirements, and fresh litigation. States such as New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California rewrote laws after the ruling, and those revisions kept the public carry fight alive in legislatures and courts.
At the same time, the spread of permitless carry changed the map. States, including Texas, Florida, and others, have moved toward allowing lawful adults to carry without obtaining a permit, though permits often still exist for reciprocity or background screening. That creates a strange policy mismatch: a resident may carry at home without a permit but still needs paperwork to travel armed elsewhere.
Congressional politics amplify the issue every time party control feels competitive. Republicans treat reciprocity as a visible pro-gun promise, while Democrats usually frame it as an override of state safety laws. Because neither side sees much room for compromise, the proposal functions as both a serious policy idea and a potent campaign signal.
The firearms community feels these changes directly. Court victories encouraged expectations of broader carry rights, but expanding rights also raised harder questions about training, liability, and public acceptance.
Daniel Whitaker
June 21, 2026
Why the national concealed carry reciprocity debate is coming back and the firearms community is more divided than expected
I see this as a Gordian Knot problem and deserving of the same solution. Shall not be infringed.
We have officially entered the spaghetti phase of gun control. This is when those in favor of reducing or eliminating Americans’ gun rights introduce all manner of legislative schemes to restrict law-abiding citizens from purchasing, selling, making, and probably soon inheriting firearms, in the hope that something sticks to the wall.
Sometimes it’s a specific firearm, like the AR-15 rifle or a GLOCK pistol. Other efforts target broader categories of firearms such as all semi-automatic firearms.
Thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States and major legal opinions such as Heller and Bruen, gun control efforts have been hitting a brick wall.
That wall was erected in large part through the efforts of organizations like the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners of America and others. Those groups have taken on cases like these, pushing them up the judicial chain to the highest court in the land.
But alas, that hasn’t stopped state legislatures and candidates for public office from making up, well, effluvia. It’s as if they have a team sitting around just dreaming stuff up, which they clearly do.
Paul Erhardt
June 16, 2026
We’ve Arrived at the Spaghetti Phase of the Gun Control Movement in America – Shooting News Weekly
The same political party did the same type of thing with all the Jim Crow laws, too. No sooner than one law would get struck down they would think of other laws to keep those “uppity black skinned people” under control.
And, of course, nearly all the original gun control laws in this country were originally intended to prevent blacks from being able to defend themselves from the KKK. The political party which likes to think of themselves as progressives is actually very regressive with things like gun control and socialism being the most obvious examples.
Democrats in 2024 be like “we totally don’t want to ban all guns, Kamala Harris has a Glock!”
18 months later, several blue states passing bills to ban the sale of Glocks.
Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X June 2, 2026
Don’t ever let someone get away with saying, “No one wants to take your guns.”
Anti-gun activists lie. It is part of their culture and it is perhaps even in their DNA.
