Category Archives: Politics

Joshua Smith from Break The Cycle @JoshuaAtLarge

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In 1993, the ATF and FBI burned 76 people alive in Waco, Texas, including 25 children and two pregnant women.

The DOJ would go on to lie about how the fires started.

This all happened despite the fact that those involved could have, at any time, picked up the person they were after outside of the compound.

Federal agencies have only grown in size since then. They are so big that there are too many agents to focus on the things they were built to focus on solely, and they have now started doing things like infiltrating catholic groups, calling mothers worried about their children’s education “domestic terrorists,” and creating an entire false plot to kidnap a governor.

These agencies must be cut back to a size so small to non-existent that they only have enough time to focus on real issues, like multi state serial killers and child sex trafficking. Those left after 70% layoffs will either focus on actual crimes or go work in mailrooms at building across the country.

The ATF headquarters building must be demolished and turned into a dog park to honor all the fallen dogs.

Joshua Smith from Break The Cycle @JoshuaAtLarge
Ex-Vice Chair of the Libertarian National Committee Candidate for POTUS
Tweeted on September 22, 2023

This is the type of guy I want as our next United States President.

It is a nice fantasy. The reality is I need an underground bunker in Idaho.

Vetting Gun Laws

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At this point we need a remedy the mirrors the old Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  CA should not be allowed to pass ANY gun laws unless they are first vetted by a federal judge.

Don Kilmer (@donkilmer)
Tweeted on September 26, 2023

This sounds reasonable to me. And it might be more achievable than criminal prosecutions of the perpetrators.

Moving the Overton Window

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We also need to FOIA or subpoena any and all documents related to the writing and passage of these laws. If there is intent to deprive people of their rights, file a 1983 claim. If that bears fruit, then demand the feds file 18 USC 242 charges. You might only get a few with that one, like governors, they are chief LEO’s, but it would be a start.

zmunitions @zmunitions1
Tweeted on September 27, 2023

18 USC 242 is one of the laws I reference when I talk about “Enjoy your trial.” I first became aware of 18 USC 241 and 242 in 2003. Off and on I would bring it up, but few people said much about it.

In 2019, at my private urging, Brian K. came up with the #EnjoyYourTrial idea to promote those two laws. I have been using that for over four and a half years now with no apparent traction. I do not recall any public mention of 18 USC 241 or 242 in conjunction with violation of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms… until the last 10 days:

Perhaps the Overton Window really has been moved.

90% of Professors Self-Censoring

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Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens Jr. surveyed almost 2,500 professors right in the middle of the Red Scare on whether or not they were self-censoring in light of the political climate. Nine percent of professors said they were, which by historical standards is really quite bad. Today, in 2023, that number is almost 90%.

Greg Lukianoff
September 25, 2023
The new Red Scare taking over America’s college campuses

And what was the self-censor rate in the USSR? My guess is 99.9% or higher. It is what communists do. They have to do this because the system is so broken it can only exist upon lies. The truth must be censored to avoid the abandonment and/or destruction of the communist organization.

A good rule of thumb is that the more acceptable censorship, the more the society depends upon lies to exist.

The Solutions are Simple

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  • The personal solution is easy. Make sure that someone can shoot back.
  • The public solution is time tested. We’ve done it for the last decade, and we’ve never had a school attacked where they had a public program of armed school staff.
  • The legal solution is simple. Make property owners responsible when they disarm the people who obey the law. If you stop me from protecting my family, then you become responsible for their safety.
  • The media solution is easy as well. Most mass-murderers kill innocent people so the mass-media will show us their face, their name, and their manifesto. Stop giving mass-murderers a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign.
  • All that might sound simple, but the political solution is harder. We have to ignore quack cures that have failed in the past.

Rob Morse
September 19, 2023
Can There be Good News About Public Violence?

The public solution is difficult, in part, because most politicians put up a vigorous fight when they are to lose even the smallest amount of power. And having an armed populous seriously shifts the power balance away from them.

Office of Gun Violence Prevention

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I am appalled that Joe Biden is putting the gun prohibition lobby on the White House payroll. I know that many pro-gun rights members of Congress are working on legislation to prohibit funding for this obnoxious scheme.

I wonder how much of their time will be spent keeping guns out of Hunter Biden’s hands now that he has been indicted on gun charges?

Alan Gottlieb
September 20, 2023
CCRKBA CHAIR ‘APPALLED’ GUN GRABBERS WILL BE ON WHITE HOUSE PAYROLL

For more information about what President Biden is planning read these articles:

I wonder about something different than Gottlieb. I wonder if these people realize being on the government payroll with their jobs being the infringement of specific enumerated rights can be used as evidence at their trials. The same goes for those who vote for such an office.

Get Government out of Research

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Promote the alarming papers! Don’t even send the other ones out for review. If you wanted to advance in your career, like be at a prestigious university and get a big salary, have big laboratory space, get lots of grant funding, be director of an institute, there was clearly one path to go.

Judith Curry
August 10, 2023
Scientist admits the ‘overwhelming consensus’ on the climate change crisis is ‘manufactured’

This sort of thing happens in research about crime and guns too.

Getting government out of the funding of most research* is probably part of the solution. Biases will always exist. But at least none of the biased parties will be spending essentially unlimited public money to produce garbage.

* I can see research directed at military objectives as being constitutional and appropriate.

People are Not Rational

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It would appear that New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s emergency order banning the carrying of firearms in Albuquerque has had an unintended consequence: Sales in the city’s gun stores are booming.

Melissa Fine
September 16, 2023
‘Busiest day I’ve had in months’: Guns flying off shelves in Albuquerque after gov’s anti-2A move

People buy banned books because they are, or are about to be, banned. The same applies to guns.

In this case the buying more guns in the face of a ban to carry them in public doesn’t make quite as much sense. But maybe they were buying them so they could carry them in public in defiance of their criminal governor.

You would think that a politician capable of getting elected governor would have a better sense of human nature. For someone that opposed to gun ownership one would think she would not engage in behavior that would, obviously, increase gun ownership and public carry. But, yet, she did.

People are strange. Rationality is just a thin veneer over a whirl of emotions. And many people don’t even have that veneer.

USC 241 Could be Applied to Governor

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The progressive activists who run the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in Democratic administrations see civil-rights statutes as their license to overhaul the nation’s police departments and other institutions under the guise of “systemic racism.” There is no reason, however, why a Republican administration could not invoke them for their proper purpose — protecting the federal rights of all Americans.

Obviously, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D., N.M.) and her subordinates have conspired to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate Americans in New Mexico in the free exercise and enjoyment of their Second Amendment rights. Indeed, her acknowledgment that she expects to be challenged in court underscores both her criminal intent and the fact that the rights she has decided to “suspend” are well established in constitutional law.

Andrew C. McCarthy
Former Chief Asst. U.S. Attorney
September 11, 2023
Why Not Arrest Governor Lujan Grisham . . . Pursuant to the Civil Rights Law the Biden Justice Department Is Using to Prosecute Donald Trump?

The Overton Window is moving.

I hope she and her co-conspirators enjoy their trials.

Biden Banned High School Shooting Teams

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The BATF has been having a rough time recently in the courts with its attempts to redefine terms already well-defined in the law. But the BSCA gets around that obstacle and opens the door to new regulations that will cost lives.

Banning high school shooting teams and creating a comprehensive national gun registry makes the long game for gun control advocates clear—they are working to eliminate legal gun ownership in America.

John R. Lott, Jr. and Thomas Massie
September 13, 2023
Biden’s Gun Control Law Will Radically Change U.S. Gun Ownership

This isn’t about what Biden wants. This is what Biden achieved with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). There is more. It is worth the read.

The courts will almost certainly strike down most of it but it will do a lot of damage before that happens.

Political Reality

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Lujan Grisham’s diagnosis of the problem is surely correct; her proposed solution, however, is astoundingly misguided. The governor has leveraged an emergency health law to suspend a right protected by state statute, the state constitution, and Supreme Court precedent. Whether that right should exist is beside the point; it does exist in New Mexico today, pursuant not only to court decisions but also democratically enacted laws. By suspending it unilaterally, Lujan Grisham has claimed an alarming new power to revoke well-established individual rights by executive order. And she has done so in the most blundering way possible, ensuring a backlash that will only empower citizens, activists, and politicians who view all firearm restrictions as an existential threat to personal liberty.

Mark Joseph Stern
September 13, 2023
A Democratic Governor’s Public Gun Ban Is Already Backfiring

Stern is no friend of gun owners but he does have a reasonably good grasp of political reality.

In related news:

A federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order in a Second Amendment Foundation challenge of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Sept. 8 edict suspending the constitutionally-protected right to bear arms, in Albuquerque and surrounding Bernalillo County.

District Judge David H. Urias issued the TRO, which extends to Oct. 3, when a hearing on the preliminary injunction request will be held. The TRO was effective immediately.

The executive order was dropped last Friday, SAF filed a lawsuit and had it blocked in three business days.

Take THAT Governor Grisham!

I still want her prosecuted. But that isn’t a political reality. Yet.

Crazy Talk! Or is it?

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Why do Republicans still fight for their beliefs knowing they will be wiped out, like any other minority group in history? Their beliefs are archaic and improper, so why fight against the advancement of the human species?

Anonymous question from Quora
2023

You have to wonder… Yes, it is crazy talk. But, it could be Russian or other bad guy trying to stir things up. Or it could be just some troll getting their jollies. But it also has a small chance of being someone sincerely believing what they are saying and not afraid to say, “the quiet part out loud”. Hitler’s Mein Kampf wasn’t taken serious by the majority of people when it was first written either but within a few years the mindset took over a nation.

Ideas are more dangerous than tools…

Biden Told to Stop Infringing

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The panel of judges, which is made up of two Bush nominees and one Trump nominee, asserted that it is inappropriate for President Biden, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI, and the surgeon general to exert pressure on social media platforms to remove content they deemed troublesome.

Froilan Bersamina
September 10, 2023
Appeals Court Upholds Louisiana Judge’s Ruling, Affirms Biden Admin Likely Violated First Amendment

I haven’t read the ruling yet but I’m disappointed it doesn’t apply to every representative of all government entities. But, it is a decent start down a long path. Does anyone know, assuming the ruling stands, whether the administration will have to pay reparations for this infringement?

Somewhere on that path I want the courts to issue a similar ruling stating it is inappropriate for a government representatives to exert pressure on gun stores to remove guns and other arms they deem troublesome.

And, of course, gun owners need reparations too.

Sending a Message

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But here’s what I do think. It’s a pretty resounding message.

Michelle Lujan Grisham
New Mexico Governor
September 9, 2023

The above quote was obtained from the video embedded in this tweet:

See also New Mexico governor issues order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque.

It’s interesting to me that she openly admits the order will not be obeyed by the criminals, but it is about “doing something” and sending a message.

Hence, you can believe she knows it is ineffective in the stated goal of making ordinary people safer and she is doing it anyway to “send a message” that she could not have sent by sending a statement to the media. Or her real goal is to infringe upon the rights of hundreds of thousands of people and use the old tired excuse of, “for the children”.

Via Kyle Seraphin @KyleSeraphin:

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Via the NRA:

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And perhaps one of the most surprising takes on the topic is from David Hogg:

I support gun safety but there is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution.

Even the anti-gun people realize one of their own has gone too far, too fast.

I assess, that with high probability, Governor Grisham’s order will not last the 30 days she proclaimed it would, Furthermore, with all the people pointing out 18 USC 242 and other legal remedies, she may even be removed from office over this.

She sent a message. The people are sending their own message. Who has the most effecting messaging?

We live in interesting times.

So Many Lies in so Few Words

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Gun violence is the leading cause of death for kids in the United States. Ending that should be bipartisan. … We should stand on the right side of history.

Anthony Portantino
California state Senator. (D-Burbank)
September 7, 2023
California Democrats approve new taxes on gun and ammunition dealers and manufacturers

I sometimes admire the ability of anti-gun people to pack so many lies into so few words. It takes me far more words to expose his lies than for him to express them:

  • The only way the claimed statistic is true is if they deceptively redefine 17 year-old’s as “kids”.
  • The 11% tax on all guns and ammunition cannot possibly reduce the gang violence which results in the death of the young thugs.
  • Bipartisan support cannot be expected when the legislation is clearly unconstitutional and cannot achieve the stated goals.
  • The trend now, and into the foreseeable future, is for laws like this to be struck down. The “right side of history” is more likely to be senator Portantino enjoying his trial than for laws like this to persist.

Chicago Arrest Rate is 5%

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The decision to commit a crime in Chicago has never been easier. Criminals are almost guaranteed to profit because the chances of getting caught and punished have collapsed to near-zero.

…

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Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
September 5, 2023
Chicago criminals have green light to rob, loot, burgle as odds of punishment collapse to near zero.

It seems all the major “blue” cities are getting overrun by criminals. And those criminals are not just the politicians. The criminal politicians appear to be deliberately catering to their constituents, the thugs, to the detriment of the peaceable citizens.

I just want retreat to my underground bunker in Idaho for a decade or two and wait for things to get better.

Existential Threat to the ATF

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The ATF has brought it on.

Time to challenge many of the 1968 Gun Control Act provisions.

There are no historical analogs for requiring a gov’t license to buy/sell used guns.

No analogs for stopping private sales of used guns across state lines.

2A Rights aren’t wheat.

2A History @2aHistory
Tweeted on August 31, 2023

While I’m in strong agreement with the goal and the correctness of the assessment, I am not certain the timing is optimal. The ATF has a lot of support with the current administration and will view this as an existential threat.

This existential threat to the ATF could likely be made an election issue and pull votes from the side of freedom.

Bonus points if your comments indicate you know what the reference to wheat is about.

We are at War

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We are at war. It has never been about Donald Trump—it’s about forcing Americans into submission. The sooner we realize it, the sooner you will begin to fight, and win.

Allen Mashburn
September 1, 2023
The Left’s Relentless War on Donald Trump and Everyone Who Disagrees with Them

Some people, particularly those who have little control over their own lives, have a burning desire to control others. This is symptomatic of most cases of personality disorders. This is an indicator that the claim, “Liberalism is a mental disorder” has more than a little truth to it.

It Should Not Even Exist

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Recently, the Secretary of Health and Human Services advocated for gun violence to be declared a public health emergency to grant HHS power to restrict Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.  The Department of Health and Human Services was never intended to implement gun control of any kind.

Mike Braun
US Senator from Indiana
July 21, 2023
Senator Braun’s offers amendment to protect Second Amendment from “national emergency declaration” gun control

It goes deeper than that. The Department of Health and Human Services was never intended to exist. There is no mention of it or the “services” it provides in the U.S Constitution.

But, I suppose, limiting its scope should be considered a good thing.

Bumper-Sticker ‘Solutions’

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In Jacksonville, lives were saved by an armed campus security officer who approached and deterred the gunman before he could fire a single shot on university grounds. Meanwhile, Gun Control, Inc., rakes in money for mocking the idea of a “good guy with a gun” while failing to acknowledge the obvious: the faster a violent threat is confronted by armed resistance, the faster that threat ends and the fewer people die.

We deserve better than the current list of bumper-sticker solutions to the most surface-level and fringe aspects of violence.

Until we force ourselves to change the way we collectively approach mass public shootings, we will keep spinning in circles while people die.

Amy Swearer
Senior Legal Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
September 1, 2023

I don’t think “bumper-sticker solutions” is accurate. It is closer to a deliberate deception to more effectively infringe up our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. The mass shootings and death of innocent people are just a means to an end for those advocating for disarming the public.