Category Archives: Politics

Combine Them for Abolishment

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There has been talk of combining the ATF into the DEA. Gun rights groups are opposed to this (see also here). I’m not entirely convinced it is a bad idea. But that could be a bias of mine.

You see, I am of the opinion that the DEA should be abolished. Where in the constitution does it say the Feds have the authority to regulate recreational drugs? How many billions have they spend on the failed war on drugs? And if you don’t think it has actually failed, here are some things to consider:

The DEA was established in 1973, and tracking heroin street prices over the decades reveals some fascinating—and troubling—trends. Here’s a summary of the data I found:

📈 Heroin Street Price Trends (1973–2011)

The DEA’s Heroin Domestic Monitor Program began collecting consistent data in 1979, focusing on price per milligram of pure heroin. Here’s a snapshot of key years:

YearAvg. Price per mg Pure HeroinNotes
1982~$3.90Very low purity (~7%)
1992~$1.50Purity increased to ~28%
2007~$0.81Mexican heroin purity ~33%
2011~$1.35Mexican heroin purity dropped to ~17%

These prices reflect retail-level purchases made by DEA agents in major U.S. cities.

🧪 Purity vs. Price

  • As purity increased, price per mg of pure heroin dropped—making heroin more potent and affordable.
  • By the 2000s, heroin from Mexico and South America dominated the U.S. market, with regional differences in purity and price.

📉 Long-Term Trend

From the early 1980s to the early 2000s:

  • Price per pure mg dropped significantly
  • Purity rose, peaking in some cities at over 60%
  • This made heroin more dangerous and accessible, contributing to rising overdose rates

Since its founding in 1973, the DEA’s budget has grown dramatically—from $75 million in its first year to over $3.4 billion in recent years2.

💰 Estimated Total DEA Spending (1973–2023)

Using historical budget data from DEA.gov, here’s a rough cumulative estimate:

  • 1973–1980: ~$1.4 billion
  • 1981–1990: ~$2.7 billion
  • 1991–2000: ~$13.2 billion
  • 2001–2010: ~$22.6 billion
  • 2011–2020: ~$28.6 billion
  • 2021–2023: ~$9.5 billion

🧮 Grand Total Estimate: ~$78 billion

These figures are approximations based on annual appropriations and may not include all supplemental or off-budget expenditures.

📊 Spending Highlights

  • The DEA’s budget has consistently increased, especially during periods of heightened drug enforcement focus (e.g., crack epidemic, opioid crisis).
  • In 2023, the DEA requested $3.1 billion, a 6.3% increase over the previous year.
  • The agency now operates in 93 foreign offices across 69 countries, reflecting its global reach.

So… if the war on drugs was effective you would think the price would go up and the purity would go down. That is pretty much a well-known economic law, right? But that is not what happened. It seems to me that either the war on drugs was ineffective and the price and purity changes were unrelated, or the DEA somehow contributed to the lower prices and increased purity.

Either way we are faced with the fact that the war on drugs has either failed or it is not about making it more difficult for people to obtain recreational drugs. Perhaps it is more about acquiring power as in the famous Ayn Rand quote from Atlas Shrugged.

In my mind, combing the ATF and DEA sort of makes sense because we might be able to get more support from those opposed to the war on drugs who might be opposed to reducing gun regulations.

History Has Been Made

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Quotes of the Day

The NFA is nothing more than a tax scheme which has imposed an unconstitutional burden on Americans since 1934. The registration of these items was only justified as the means to ensure taxes on them had been paid. With the One Big, Beautiful Bill zeroing out the tax for silencers and short barreled firearms, the registration scheme serves no other purpose than to create an unlawful barrier to keep people from exercising their Second Amendment rights. Our intention with this new lawsuit is to completely remove these barriers.

Adam Kraut
SAF Executive Director

SAF has been fighting for more than 50 years to remove unnecessary burdens to our constitutional freedoms, and we welcome the opportunity to fight for the further dismantling of the NFA in court. The reforms in the One Big, Beautiful Bill represent the biggest blow to the NFA since its inception, and we fully support its complete repeal. Just like we’ve done for more than five decades, SAF will continue to fight so all Americans can have the freedom to exercise their Second Amendment rights for generations to come.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF founder and Executive Vice President
July 3, 2025
SAF ISSUES JOINT STATEMENT ON NFA REGISTRATION CHALLENGE – Second Amendment Foundation

This is historic.

Celebrate and then do what you can to continue the fight for the freedom promised by the 2nd Amendment. I, with the help of my employer, donate thousands of dollars each year to FPC and SAF.

Big Beautiful Lawsuit

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Quote of the Day

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dismantle one of the most abusive federal gun control laws on the books. With the tax struck down by Congress, the rest of the NFA is standing on air.

Erich Pratt
Senior vice president
Gun Owners of America
July 4, 2025
Gun groups plan lawsuits to end National Firearms Act in wake of ‘big, beautiful bill’

It was appropriate that the bill was signed on July 4th.

Once we get rid of the registration, fingerprints, and extended background check aspects for the suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns we will have created a very powerful legal weapon. The precedents established will make the elimination of restrictions on machine guns obvious and achievable.

Socialism is Economic Cancer

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Quote of the Day

Thanks to a clip surfacing on social media today, we see that Mamdani is not hiding this. In fact, he has been strikingly open about what he believes and what he plans to do. You can listen to his comments for yourself here.

Speaking in 2021 at the Young Democratic Socialists of America Organizing Conference, Mamdani said his goal is to “continue to elect more socialists” and to be “unapologetic about our socialism.”

He followed that with two key objectives: boycotting Israel and “seizing the means of production.”

The phrase “seizing the means of production” is not some vague slogan—it is the core tenet of Marxist revolutionary ideology. It means that private property, businesses, and industries are taken from their owners and turned over to collective or state control.

Historically, this has been done not through elections or peaceful reform, but through authoritarian rule, state violence, and mass suppression.

Quoth the Raven
June 30th, 2025
“Seize The Means Of Production”: Mamdani Lays Bare His Agenda

Part of me wants to say, “Go for it! You can be a bad example for the current generation.” But that would be like rooting for cancer in your foot. It is already stinky, and it is not something you show off to your friends, but cancer is still a really bad thing.

Over 50 Years of Failure

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Quote of the Day

According to a Gallup poll taken the year after NCCH’s founding (1975), when asked “Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?,” 41 percent of Americans stated that there should be. Asking the same question in 2018, only 28 percent of those polled supported such a measure.

After 45 years of failure to achieve their goal, a more introspective group might consider that there may be a defect in their ideas rather than their marketing. However, history suggests that it is only a matter of time before “Brady” undergoes yet another name change. They should spare themselves the consulting fees. Continuing the trend of creating ever more concise names, the group should further truncate “Brady” to just “Y.” As in: Why does this decrepit handgun prohibition organization still exist?

National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action
March 26, 2019
Blast from the Past: Proof Found That Brady Campaign Still Exists! | Buckeye Firearms Association

Y indeed? That was in 2019. It has now been over 50 years of mostly failure, lies, and more lies.

Their founding goal was to ban all handgun possession except for a few exceptions. They have failed after trying for over fifty years. And they have even lost ground with public carry now being (mostly) acknowledged as a constitutionally protected right in all 50 states.

Since 2019 they have changed their name, yet again, to “Brady United” and cannot even afford to hire an intern.

The dustbin of history is their future.

Spending Less Triggers Collapse

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Quote of the Day

The dynamic that leads to collapse is as invisible as the extremes. Once the organization–household, institution, corporation or nation-state, the dynamic is scale-invariant–has hardened into a brittle state of stasis, it’s impossible to shrink the budget without collapsing the entire structure.

I call this the Rising Wedge Model of Breakdown: as expenses, self-interest and debt all expand, it becomes increasingly difficult to slash expenses without triggering the implosion of the organization.

Under the guise of cutting the fat to save the muscle, what actually happens is the muscle is cut to save the fat. This is a complex process, but in summary, the most competent realize the organization is dysfunctional and cannot be salvaged in its current bloated state of denial, and so they immediately jump ship.

The naive who believe they can turn the situation around give it their best effort but the resistance to any meaningful sacrifices is so tenacious that they burn out and quit.

That leaves the delusionally incompetent who reckon they’re finally getting the power they long deserved. This leads to the substitution of PR and artifice for actually reducing the organization to a sustainable level, for what’s required is not just a revised spreadsheet but an entirely new culture and value system.

…

The story of the next decade is the playing out of the Rising Wedge Model of Breakdown / The Ratchet Effect throughout the entire status quo: households, institutions, corporations and nation-states will all hasten to cut muscle to save the fat and then wonder why everything is imploding under the weight of delusion and denial.

As noted previously, what’s required is not just a revised spreadsheet but an entirely new culture and value system. Without that, we get zip, zero, nada in meaningful adaptation to new realities.

charles hugh smith
June 5, 2025
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Ratchet Effect: Easy to Spend More, Spending Less Triggers Collapse

The key takeaway is that spending less triggers collapse.

Prepare appropriately.

Prosecute the Swamp Rats

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Quote of the Day

In the National Instant background Check System (NICS) data, it appears most of the denials are false positives. Hard data on the errors found in the NICS system are not available.  John has pointed out there are very few prosecutions of people who have been denied by the NICS system compared to the number of those denied. John stated  NICS denials are often based on the phonetic spelling of the last name. The denials are not done with high levels of certainty. Because many people in the same ethnic group have similar sounding names, and because Blacks and Hispanics have much higher rates of felony convictions than Whites or Asians, it is likely Black and Hispanic people are denied from purchasing firearms in the NICS system at a much higher rates than people who are not Black or Hispanic.

In October of 2020, John Lott was appointed as a senior adviser for research and statistics at the Office of Justice Programs. This was the second time he had worked for the government in D.C. When John got to DC, John went to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and proposed a study of the NICS denials including data on race and sex. The BJS thought it was a great idea.

The the BJS sent the request for data to the FBI. went through the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The BJS thought the idea of analyzing the NICS data was very good. When the Bureau of Justice Statistics contacted the FBI, The FBI responded, claiming there was no way we can get this done before January 20th. In any case, we are sure the Biden Administration will not be interested. After more emails and calls, the FBI response was: we just can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to break down this data by race and sex.

John responded: You guys break down everything by race and sex. What’s the big deal with this?

The BJS tells the FBI, it is not your decision to make. We decide what to look at and study. Your job is to collect and give us the data.  The FBI refuses and the BJS persists. Finally, the FBI says the BJS will have to submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

…

The AG, Bill Barr, orders the FBI to stop mucking around and send the data to the BJS.

…

The FBI dithers and delays. After a couple of weeks, the BJS receives the data, but something is wrong with it. It does not make any sense. The BJS complains, and the FBI apologizes, says they do not understand what went wrong.  There are more delays, then the FBI sends another batch of data, which still doesn’t make an sense. This sequence happens a couple more times. The last time the FBI sends data which does not make sense is on January 19, 2021. Then the Biden administration takes power.

Dean Weingarten
June 22, 2025
GUN WATCH: John Lott Expounds on FBI Politicized Resistance to Data Sharing (corruption?)

End NICS. Drain the swamp. Prosecute the swamp rats.

Via JPFO.

Socialism is Like Polio

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Via The Atlas Society @TheAtlasSociety:

If only there were a vaccine that did not have such a high lead content and a corresponding high rate of serious side effects.

The Sprint Towards Communism

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Quote of the Day

The Left sprints towards Communism.

The Right jogs behind tut-tutting and muttering about the lesser evil.

Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Posted on X, June 4, 2025

She is not wrong.

Prepare appropriately.

On Obedience

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Via The Atlas Society @TheAtlasSociety:

[sarcasm] Give up your guns. It is for the safety of everyone. [/sarcasm]

Her Vote Counts as Much as Yours

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Amazing.

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Read When Prophecy Fails for what to expect next.

Economic Forecasts

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Quote of the Day

We have a lot of dollars sloshing around the world thanks to years and years of artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing, and more of those dollars are going to be coming home as foreigners get out of U.S. financial asset.

You’re seeing a global exodus out of U.S. stocks, out of U.S. bonds, and all that cash is going to come back home, bidding up prices.

The solution involves much higher interest rates. Now, I understand that’s going to be very painful, given the economy that we’ve created, built on a foundation of cheap money.

It means stock prices come down, real estate prices go down, companies fail. There’s going to be bankruptcies. There’s going to be defaults. There’s going to be a protracted recession, probably a much worse financial crisis than 2008, but all that has to happen because the alternative to that is even worse.

The U.S. is on the path to “runaway inflation” that could become “hyperinflation.”

Peter Schiff
Euro Pacific Asset Management Chief Economist
June 18, 2025
Peter Schiff warns of stagflation for US economy | Fox Business

Is this true? It does resonate with me. Hyperinflation is one of my big concerns in life. And because of this I have socked away $100 Trillion for a rainy day. But I have never even taken a class in economics. Perhaps I should invest/prepare differently.

For me the big wildcard in all this is that economists can’t really accurately model the economy. The math does not exist to account for the emotional reactions of what people do with their money and other assets. It could be a one sentence post on social media by the U.S. President or Elon Musk changes the entire dynamic.

One could argue that short term blips are unpredictable, but the long-term averages adhere to some math model(s). But then, how do you explain economic Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman having such an uncanny knack for getting nearly everything wrong? Economically blinded by TDS?

If so, then how do we know most other economists are not also economically impaired by the same or similar syndromes?

Oh, by the way, I ran out of Markley’s Law posts. The sources dried up early this year.

Another 20 Year War?

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The U.S. dropped a bunch of bombs on Iran and:

In his remarks, the president described the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites as a “spectacular military success.” He warned of “far greater” attacks if Iran does not “make peace.”

I am far from an expert in the psychology of the political leadership of Iran. But my model of their behavior is that punching them in the nose and giving them a command is not going to result in them following the order given.

I really do not want them to have a nuclear bomb. And when the enrichment of typical reactor fuel is 3% to 5% of U-235, while Iran has enriched their uranium to 60%… well. I think one can make a great case for putting an end to their nuclear capabilities.

It seems to me the U.S. was in the position of having to choose the least bad of only a few options.

What are the consequences of holding the position of “make peace or else”? Will it be another 20-year war? And instead of goat herder technology we are up against an almost nuclear and ICBM capable society?

What was the alternative? Waiting a few years and definitely being in a hot war with a country possessing nukes and ICBMs?

I want my underground bunker in Idaho.

Crazy Talk or Deliberate Misdirection?

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Reference material:

This is a summary created by Copilot:

The letter exists and was addressed to the FBI, reportedly intended for Director Kash Patel. It was found in a Buick Boelter abandoned near his home2.

The contents are described as rambling, conspiratorial, and incoherent, spanning about one and a half pages. Boelter allegedly claimed that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz instructed him to assassinate Senator Amy Klobuchar so Walz could take her Senate seat3.

The letter also includes references to other political figures, including Senator Tina Smith, and claims Boelter was trained by the U.S. military “off the books”.

Authorities have found no evidence supporting the claims in the letter. A spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office emphasized that the allegations against Walz are unsubstantiated3.

Boelter is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, including the killings of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shootings of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife1.

Investigators recovered additional materials, including a hit list and notebooks naming dozens of Democratic lawmakers and abortion rights advocates2.

The letter appears to be part confession, part delusion, and part political provocation. It’s unclear whether it reflects genuine belief or an attempt at misdirection.

My assessment is that I think the chances of Walz having any contribution is extremely close to zero. I would like to know if it was deliberate misdirection or delusional. But that will be tough to determine and perhaps we will never know.

Copilot elaborates on my assessment:

That’s a sharp analysis, Joe—and you’re right, disentangling delusion from calculated misdirection is notoriously difficult in cases like this. When someone mixes fantasy, ideology, and violent action, it creates a kind of narrative smokescreen. And unless the person is rigorously interrogated by trained professionals—or leaves behind clearer motives—it’s often impossible to pin down intent.

It might help to think about it in terms of probabilities and cognitive patterns. If Boelter was mentally ill or under extreme cognitive strain, then the conspiracy narrative could be symptomatic—a way to rationalize his actions through a grand, distorted frame. On the other hand, if he was more lucid and consciously attempting misdirection, invoking a powerful figure like Walz could be a strategic move to muddy public discourse and inject partisan chaos.

But here’s the kicker: in either case, the claim acts like a rhetorical grenade. It’s out there now, and even if completely disproven, it gets repeated and distorted online. That’s part of the real damage—manufacturing ambiguity to destabilize trust.

What fascinates me is how these tactics mirror propaganda techniques from information warfare: blending the unbelievable with the politically inflammatory so that people argue about truth instead of confronting violence directly. And that phenomenon, unfortunately, doesn’t require the original author to be fully rational to be effective.

If we could get access to forensic psychiatric evaluations or trial testimony (if it comes to that), they might offer clues. But as you said—odds are high this stays in the realm of “we’ll never quite know.”

Let the conspiracy theories begin.

Is it a Crime Against Humanity or is it Cancer?

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Quote of the Day

Collectivism is cancer.

Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X, June 19, 2025

MTHead frequently asserts communism and/or socialism and/or gun control are crimes against humanity. He is not wrong. But the cancer metaphor resonates more with me. Collectivism, in all its forms, starts out small but grows and metastasizes. It is more than just its nature. It creates societal problems, and it always demands more control to fix the problems it directly or indirectly created.

Almost as a side note… I asked Copilot to explain the difference between an analogy and a metaphor to make sure I was using the correct word here. That resulting in a short chat and Copilot offered to contribute to this blog post. Here is its suggestion:

Quote of the Day – Saturday

> “Collectivism is cancer.” > —Firearms Policy Coalition via X

This is not an analogy. It’s a metaphor—brutal, condensed, and surgical. Cancer isn’t merely unpleasant; it hijacks the healthy systems of the body and redirects them toward uncontrolled destruction. That’s precisely the charge being leveled here: that collectivism corrodes the moral immune system of individual rights.

Ayn Rand’s words, featured in the image, drive the point deeper: “The smallest minority on earth is the individual.” The meme unpacks the metaphor into a worldview—one where individual autonomy is not just precious, but sacred, and any system that subsumes it becomes existentially malignant.

Whether you find that view compelling or inflammatory, it’s a vivid reminder: how we frame ideas matters. A well-placed metaphor can do more in five words than a dissertation in fifty pages.

I found that to be rather insightful.

Screaming in their Collapsing Reality

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Quote of the Day

The facts don’t lie. But antigun politicians do. And they’re doing so more loudly now than ever.

Larry Keane
June 16, 2025
Antigun Lawmakers’ Lie Loudly Over Suppressors • NSSF

Their alternate reality is collapsing in on them. And since lies are all they have, they are screaming in a hopeless effort to avoid facing reality.

Anthropogenic Climate Change is Utter Fiction.

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Quote of the Day

I’ve commented repeatedly that the term “climate change” was adopted (replacing “global warming”) because it isn’t falsifiable. Climate change has existed since the Earth acquired an atmosphere, and will continue to exist so long as that atmosphere exists. Ask any dinosaur.

Apart from that, paleoclimate data (readily available on-line) is very clear: temperatures have varied dramatically throughout the entire time of record. For example, for Greenland we can refer to the GISP-2 data, which is temperature data of the past 50k years obtained from ice cores drilled out of the central Greenland ice sheet. The first 38k years or so of that are ice age, but then about 12k years ago you see a dramatic warmup leading to the current interglacial era. Within that period, temperatures vary up and down by 4 C or so. And looking at the past 10k years, we see that (a) current temperatures are at least 1 C below the average of that period, (b) in the days of Leif Eriksson’s journeys to Greenland it was about average, i.e., 1 C warmer than now, (c) in the days of C. Julius Caesar it was 1 C warmer still, (e) the “pre-industrial” reference point used by the warming cult (including the UN) was — most likely intentionally — taken to be 1850, which is within a fraction of a degree of the coldest of the past 8000 years.

Or to put it in one sentence: science shows very clearly that anthropogenic climate change is utter fiction.

pkoning
June 18, 2025
Comment to Ignoring the Obvious

Yesterday, pkoning sent me the image via email.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Never a Free Market or a Free Mind

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Quote of the Day

“We are entering moments that we have never experienced before,” Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., told constituents at a town hall in Pittsburgh last week. “The country as we know it may never exist the way that it had. And the reality is that the way that the country had existed was never its best form anyway.”

“The moment is here to build what comes next. My argument is that we should be fighting harder than they are to be the author of what is next,” she said of progressives. “Because if we are not the ones who build it, then they are building it, but it’s getting built one way or another.”

Emilia Rowland, a progressive strategist, said Democrats need to better deal with the consequences of rapid tech advancement that is continuing to reshape society and further concentrate power as the government and other institutions struggle to keep up.

Progressive Strategists
April 26, 2025
Democrats want a great new society post-Trump. They just can’t agree on what it would look like.

I read the entire article twice, just to make sure. There is not even a glimmer of liberty in their thoughts. It is all about what government programs and institutions they can “be author of.” It is about the ways and means for them to ascend to power. They never consider a free market or a free mind.

And, of course, it included “combating gun violence.”

I view their activities being analogous to the Trump administration is attempting to extinguish a forest fire. The progressives are brainstorming about what to replace the forest fire with.

Prepare and respond appropriately.

Moving the Overton Window

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Quote of the Day

President Donald J. Trump has instructed his Administration to “protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.” Executive Order No. 14,206, Protecting Second Amendment Rights, 90 Fed. Reg. 9503 (Feb. 7, 2025). Attorney General Pamela Bondi has likewise instructed the Department of Justice “to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.” Memo. from the U.S. Att’y Gen., Second Amendment Enforcement Task Force (Apr. 8, 2025).

This case poses important questions about the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections. The United States has strong interests in ensuring that these important questions are correctly resolved; that the Second Amendment is not treated as a second-class right; and that law-abiding Americans in this Circuit are not deprived of the full opportunity to enjoy the exercise of their Second Amendment rights.

U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
June 13, 2025
BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS-APPELLEES AND SUPPORTING AFFIRMANCE

Pam Bondi doubters of her support of the 2nd Amendment should consider reevaluating their opinions.

Via:

Mark W. Smith:

AAGHarmeetDhillon @AAGDhillon:

Chad Mizelle @ChadMizelle47:

And others.

This is a big deal. I see it as moving the Overton Window in the direction of prosecutions under 18-USC-241 and 242.

Rules of Engagement

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Quote of the Day

If you throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at. Because we will KLL you, graveyard DAD. We’re NOT gonna play.

If you spit on us, you’re going to the hospital, then jail.

If you hit one of us, you’re going to the hospital, and jail – and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs we have here.

If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County – gather around it, refusing to let the driver leave? In our county, you’re most likely gonna get RUN OVER, and dragged across the street.

Wayne Ivey
Brevard County Sheriff
June 12, 2025

Those rules of engagement sound reasonable.