Denver police union joins opposition to ‘red flag’ bill
We stand with our members, sheriffs, and law-abiding citizens who oppose this legislation. We encourage our elected officials to continue the conversation and include all stakeholders as we strive to keep our communities safe.
I don’t know if it’s really true or not but it feels like more and more people with some authority and, potentially, real physical power are telling the tyrants, bullies, and useful idiots it’s time to behave.
Banks serve customers who are geographically and politically diverse, and it is wrong to use essential banking services as a way to choke off such services to lawful, creditworthy businesses.
I write to express my concern with recent news reports suggesting that large banks may withhold access to credit and services to customers and companies that are operating businesses that comply with federal and state law (and in some cases, are engaged in Constitutionally-protected activities), but are politically disfavored.
Mike Crapo
Senate Banking Committee Chairman
March 26, 2019
Mike Crapo warns big banks against caving to progressives on guns
[The last few days sort of feels like the adults have walked into the room where the bullies have been tormenting the other kids for days and getting away with it. I would like to see the bullies taken out to the woodshed and get their bare bottoms spanked until they couldn’t sit comfortably for a week. But I’d settle for them just leaving us alone in the future.—Joe]
I’ve been getting copies of scanned pictures from my brothers recently and I thought I would share some of them. They show what it was like growing up as a privileged white male. Continue reading
One election after the next, we have seen how much the results of the US presidential vote impact not just the 50 states, but the rest of the planet too. And if the future of foreign countries is shaped to a significant extent by what goes on on US Election Day, shouldn’t they get a say in who gets to lead the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years?
In other words: shouldn’t foreign countries have a right to vote in the US presidential election?
Clémence Michallon
March 23, 2019
America should allow other countries to vote in the 2020 election
[No and no.
Next question.—Joe]
Although it was not well known until a few days ago (and here), last March an Illinois court ruled that requiring a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card was unconstitutional.
Last Friday a court threw out a ban on “assault weapons”.
Over the weekend Mueller’s report was released and stated, “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” And today it is reported Trump is looking at turning the tables on those involved in the witch hunt.
Today it was ruled anyone who is a member of the Firearms Policy Foundation, Madison Society Foundation, Inc., and Florida Carry, Inc.can keep their bump stocks while the case goes through the courts.
Now this:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced that it is siding with a district court ruling that found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.
The move is an escalation of the Trump administration’s legal battle against the health care law.
The DOJ previously argued in court that the law’s pre-existing condition protections should be struck down. Now, the administration argues the entire law should be invalidated.
Perhaps the mass delusion is coming to an end and the political left and mainstream media (but I repeat myself) will get in closer touch with reality.
…
Just kidding!
I’m expecting an outbreak of exploding heads.
We’re dealing with enemies. They are not rivals. Rivals agree, but want the power. They wish to do their authoritarian thing, AND they wish to never ever again see anyone live free. The authoritarian mind cannot abide seeing one man free, no matter how good or harmless that one man may be. The authoritarian mind hates that free man specifically because he is good and harmless.
Today’s leftist agitators speak of being “Woke” and suchlike, but one man’s state of being “Woke” is, in another man’s assessment, blatant and utter cluelessness.
Lyle
March 22, 2019
Comment to Quote of the day—James Howard Kunstler
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
The next Dem/Progressive president just has to stand up to the NRA and implement a sweeping ban. Call the gun nuts bluff and just lock it down.
Mike B @actorhustle
Tweeted on March 21, 2019
[Nice.
No legislation needs to pass the House or the Senate. No consideration for constitutional issues. No consideration for the refusal of law enforcement to enforce new gun laws. No consideration for the states which say such a law would not apply within their borders.
And, most importantly, no consideration that gun nuts own 400 to 600 million guns, billions of rounds of ammunition, and… Might. Not. Be. Bluffing.—Joe]
The Left had better sober up and join an intelligible good faith debate about US immigration policy and the enforcement of existing laws or this will lead to exactly what Brent Tarrant laid out and what Mr. Trump maladroitly hinted at. Instead, of course, we will more likely commence another bootless campaign over guns. Here are some plain facts about that. There are already enough firearms of every sort loose in this land to commence hot civil warfare and they will not be surrendered by their owners. The horses are out of the barn on that one, even if sales of military-style weapons are outlawed. Any effort to confiscate them from people already possessing them will only provoke more overt antagonism between the two poles of American politics — and would probably lead to exactly the sort of violence that sober observers discern on the horizon.
James Howard Kunstler
March 18, 2019
Deadly Serious
[H/T to Chet M.
I don’t think the political left, especially some of the more recent elected representatives, is capable of “an intelligible good faith debate”. Their connection with reality is so tenuous that it will take a very serious application of a figurative “clue-by-four” for them to even see a ghostly outline of want we see as real.
Immigration is an important issue. But I think the gun issue is more likely to initiate their reality check. The widespread refusal of the police to enforce their oppressive laws is a gentle wakeup call. They won’t have to go down the path into Delusion Land much further before the gentle wakeup call becomes an air-raid siren.—Joe]
Now we must say goodbye to this fair country whose government toiled tirelessly to create the safety, fairness and luxury that all demanded, and that everyone knew could be created by passing just the right laws. Through it all, the people vigorously safe-guarded their tradition of firearms ownership. But they never knew – and never learned – that preserving a tradition and a way of life is not the same as preserving liberty. And they never knew – and never learned – that it’s not about guns.
Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards, Walter Mitty’s Second Amendment, page 150.
[Further insight, extrapolation, and consequences made possible by this observation is left as an exercise for the reader.—Joe]
Culture changes over time, of course, but it normally does it slowly as we creep towards a more civilized future.
England doesn’t feel more civilized — quite the opposite. It feels more feral. And the UK has just accepted its fate.
The lack of an American culture means Hungarians don’t know what’s missing, because they never had it. But there is a gaping hole in America: something is obviously broken. America is collapsing on itself.
Mark Bollobas
December 2018
Discovering The New Old Country
[Via email from Peter G.
I have nothing to add.—Joe]
From the New York Times:
The Black Gun Owner Next Door
…
I was left having to examine myself. “You’re not anti-gun,” Mr. Toure told me. “Ask yourself this. It’s a zombie apocalypse. Tomorrow, you wake up, and you can’t find your children. You go out to search for them. Do you want a gun now?” His analogy was not outlandish. This was, of course, the constant threat enslaved people endured. Had I been fooling myself about my anti-gun stance? I don’t think so, but I did come to realize through a series of unexpected exchanges that the issue was more complicated than I had allowed and that my views of just coexistence and human flourishing might not require the absolute prohibition of arms.
I concede that Lewis Hayden could be viewed as a champion of the right to bear arms in defense of freedom. But more than that, he dedicated himself to community building, forging a complex, self-funded, interracial network of people joined in common cause. Guns were there to defend those things. The home he made with Harriet was a gathering place for the Boston Vigilance Committee, for progressive white Bostonians and for members of the enslaved and free black population. Mr. Kantrowitz observed that Hayden sought to build “a world of common struggle against slavery in which racial hierarchy seemed to dissolve into human unity and affection.” Together, Lewis and Harriet Hayden opened their doors to those on the run, turning their home into a haven for strangers whom the federal government deemed illegals.
This is the essence of his example that I hope our community and country will follow.
Imagine the Democrat party with the votes of blacks stripped away because of gun control.
This is how we win.
It concerns me because it legitimises a party, being the Shooters Party, who support the reduction or dilution of our guns laws.
Gladys Berejiklian
Premier New South Wales
March 16, 2019
Daley says ‘I’ll resign’ if NSW guns laws change but deal with Shooters Party remains
[This is what they think of gun owners. If a group of people advocate for the right of people to own guns they cannot be considered legitimate.
This is how I view that mindset. One cannot expect a slave to remain a slave if they are armed. And you cannot expect a free person to remain free if they are not allowed arms.
Therefore Berejiklian wants to to keep slaves and/or enslave people and she does not have the moral character to serve in government at any capacity.—Joe]
The political left dominates both conventional and Internet social media outlets. This bias is so overwhelming that it probably isn’t possible to recover from the adverse public perception generated by their bias by public discourse. If an environment where the free exchange of political thought is possible has to be someplace other than the media. Gun ownership is but one case in point. Our retention of gun owner rights and even freedom of political thought must be recovered via other means. I’ve been thinking for some time now that other means is the courts. That is why it was absolutely critical that Hillary Clinton not be allowed to appoint Federal judges.
So, its off to the courts and this looks like a good start:
Nunes sues Twitter, some users, seeks over $250M alleging anti-conservative ‘shadow bans,’ smears
California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes filed a major lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and a handful of its users on Monday, accusing the social media site of “shadow-banning conservatives” including himself to influence the 2018 elections, systematically censoring opposing viewpoints and totally “ignoring” lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior.
…
Although federal law ordinarily exempts services like Twitter from defamation liability at all levels, Nunes’ suit said the platform has taken such an active role in curating and banning content — as opposed to merely hosting it — that it should face liability like any other organization that defames.
“Twitter created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon,” Nunes’ legal team wrote. “Twitter is ‘responsible’ for the development of offensive content on its platform because it in some way specifically encourages development of what is offensive about the content.”
If Twitter and other leftist social media platforms get slapped down for their bias and collaboration in defaming those with different political beliefs it will not only make them less inclined to do this in the future it will also enable more people to realize the political left has an evil streak.
Of the 10 states in the country with the lowest murder rates, half of them have some of the loosest gun laws in the country, and of those, the lowest consistently have murder rates comparable to Europe. I’m not going to tell you what to make of that, but in my mind, those states have essentially, intentionally or not, solved their violence issues, and they did it without gun control. Perhaps you may have a differing opinion, and that’s fine, but to me, knowing there is a solution to violence out there that doesn’t involve restricting rights, means that’s the only path we should pursue.
Good Snek
December 29, 2018
Gun Control: How the Media Manipulates You to Give Up Your Rights
[A stronger statement can be made and defended, such as, “Rights are not negotiable and not in any way conditional upon crime rates.” But you could get more political support for Snek’s weaker version.—Joe]
Liberals collect scalps, conservatives collect moral victories. This isn’t a battle for local dog catcher, it’s a fight for the future of the country; it’s time for the right to fight back the way they’re being attacked. Mutually assured destruction is the only way to stop these fascists in their tracks.
Derek Hunter
March 14, 2019
It’s Time For Conservatives To Choose: Fight Back Or Surrender
[There is more than a little truth in this.—Joe]
I can picture that woman walking around a gulag with a notebook taking complaints from prisoners, and then reminding them that they are there because they are considered problematic by the communist party, with a smile on her face. She is that scary.
Jean-Pierre Rupp
March 13, 2019
Comment to Joe Rogan Experience #1258 – Jack Dorsey, Vijaya Gadde & Tim Pool:
[Rupp’s comment may be a little overstated but it’s not wrong.
This was an fantastic podcast. Daughter Jaime strongly recommended it to me. She was super impressed with Tim Pool. I’m really glad I listened to it.
Jack Dorsey is, of course, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter. Vijaya Gadde serves as the global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety at Twitter.
If you are following the suppression of speech in social media issue you must listen to this. After faltering a bit in the beginning Tim Pool articulates the case for free speech extraordinarily well. There were times when he would say something so clearly and compelling I could not think of anything other than, “Wow!”. More than once, in response, Gadde would respond with, “I don’t know what that means.” They apparently live on a different planet.
I did form the opinion that they are probably not being deliberately malicious. Everyone agreed that the political left wants to ban anyone opposing them from social media. Twitter’s own internal data shows that the political left has a strong tendency to only follow those of a similar political view while the political right are much more likely to follow a political mix. Even if Twitter employees were politically neutral, which they are not, there would be difficult challenges in creating a social media platform that was “comfortable” for all participants. Because the political left exercises their Outrage Culture with the tiniest or even fabricated justification and the political right tends to shrug it off, the “squeaky wheel gets greased.” This comment by Vokzmedizen is a good summary of this aspect of the discussion:
The left wants to suppress free speech, and is cowardly in its willingness to rat people out to accomplish this, and hypocritically willing to deliberately exaggerate and distort context to claim offense they do not actually feel (In fact, they are overjoyed to discover something ‘actionable’ in what the other person said, even when they know full well something else was meant!) They right is loathe to suppress free speech, and does not wish to show gutlessness by reporting people, and would rather contend with the offender directly.
So it is obvious that a policy that relies on reporting frequency and simply accepts statements of harm in the report, and seeks for context in the ‘tweets’ that supports the report rather than exonerates the speaker, is going to manifest serious skewing to the left. This is simply because the left is going to report anything opportunistically, while the right will only report on the truly egregious.
A fair policy would take THIS ‘context’ into account, and tend to give LESS credence to reports that are essentially harassment themselves (left), and MORE credence to reports that come from the right. The REALITY is most likely that Twitter CREATED the policy in order to FACILITATE the left methodology. There are many other facilitations that source a DELIBERATE skew. For example, accusers are anonymous. The accused is allowed to face his accuser in our culture, anything else is generally considered Stalinist. Again, as mentioned, the policy against misgendering is politically left. Again, they consider dog piling bannable, but yet a coordinated mass reporting is considered legitimate.
My impression is that Tim Pool completely outclassed Dorsey and Gadde. They were overwhelmed.
I suspect Tim is right in that Twitter will continued down the path of good intentions not realizing that this path cannot turn out well. Twitter management doesn’t really want to facilitate the avalanche even if they do have strong signals it is coming. Because they view themselves as just another snowflake (Pool’s analogy) they will not realize they were a contributor when the avalanche (civil war was discussed) happens.—Joe]
As sheriff of Nye County, I agree with Sheriff Watts: I will not participate in the enforcement of this new law and certainly won’t stand silent, while my citizens are turned into criminals due to the unconstitutional actions of misguided politicians who, for the most part, are trying to do the right thing.
Sharon Wehrly
March 7, 2019
Sheriff of Nye County, Nevada
Letter to Governor Sisolak
[I think she is being generous with the “misguided politicians”. But I can understand why saying, “You are a bunch of evil, communists, SOBs!” would not be helpful at this point in time so I give her a pass on that.
We’ve known, and have been saying, for a long time now that the law enforcement will ignore these stupid and unconstitutional gun laws. We now have proof, not just anonymous polling data, in several states, that much of law enforcement is on our side on this issue. And this one is about simple background checks! This isn’t about something as extreme as banning most semi-automatic guns.
If the political left does not, or cannot, pull themselves out of this downward spiral into a confrontation we could see their first trials in a few years or perhaps even months. Give them fair warning. Tell them to enjoy their trials. Give them these links http://bit.ly/EnjoyYourTrial1 for private citizens and http://bit.ly/EnjoyYourTrial2 for government employees.—Joe]
Drive around Caracas, and you see long lines of cars waiting for hours at the few gas stations still operational.
Motorists park on highways, cell phones aloft, searching for a signal. The rich have taken refuge in luxury hotels. The poor stand in lines in the street.
Philip Reeves
March 11, 2019
‘This Is Going To End Ugly’: Venezuela’s Power Outage Drags On
[It already is ugly:
Venezuela has been in the grip of a crippling blackout for four days — and the humanitarian situation there is growing increasingly dire.
As we have been predicting (read the comments) for a long time this is ending badly.
Don’t let it happen here. We need a landslide against the socialists in 2020.—Joe]
At this point in the political climate, it is my belief that talk and debate is and has been useless about this issue and others with regards to the Left.
I’m not telling others what to believe about guns, but my mind is made up and I have severe doubts as to my being assuaged at this point.
Grog
March 9, 2019
Comment to GUN CONTROL which had this as the entire post:
[I can see his point. But, being a ridiculous optimist, I still have hope the courts will settle the problem in a satisfactory manner and the bullets will be used for punching holes in paper rather than in people.—Joe]
I think they don’t want these regulations properly enforced because if they were, they fear they’d have less justification to demand new gun laws.
Which is what their entire existence is about these days anyway.
Tom Knighton
March 7, 2019
Did USA Today Admit Gun Control Laws Not Enforced?
[I agree but there is more to it. True criminals are their allies. They don’t want their allies to be put in prison.—Joe]