From PJ Media comes word that the feds have just announced and funded the “National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center.”
Joe Biden apparently thinks he isn’t going to make it to a second term. On Saturday, his attorney general announced a new resource program for Red Flag laws across America that will go on long after Biden is no longer in the White House.
Congressman Thomas Massie sounded the alarm, asking: “What the hell is this evil? A Federal Red Flag center; We did not authorize this. Announced, of course, just hours after the omnibus passes.”
So unelected bureaucrats are now making law and funding it out of the money Congress voted to give them? The out-of-control ring masters are planning to disarm all of the junta’s enemies. That means all white, conservative, right wing, extremist, Christian Nationalist, MAGA Republican men who object to a government that is trampling their God-given rights.
Red flag laws sound reasonable, don’t they, considering how often gun violence is preceded by the perpetrators dropping blatant warning signs of murderous intent (signs which the FBI and DHS then ignore)? But make no mistake – red flag laws, which enable authorities to disarm someone who has been deemed a potential gun violence threat by family members or others in close contact with the “suspect,” will be used to target political enemies of the Biden administration. Under the guise (as usual) of keeping Americans safe, the government will exploit these laws in totalitarian ways.
Own a MAGA hat or a Gadsden flag? The Biden administration sees you as a potential danger. Complain about woke schoolroom indoctrination at school board meetings? The FBI already considers you a domestic terrorist. Post support on social media for the J6 political prisoners? You’re a threat to American “democracy” (i.e. Democrat one-party hegemony). Does anyone doubt that the government will use red flag laws to neuter such “threats”?
Who decides who “poses” a threat? Who decides what constitutes a threat? They’ve already demonized whites, “MAGA” Republicans, “deplorables” and “bitter clingers,” anti-vaxxers, hoax-busters and others as the greatest threat to the country since sliced bread or something.
Red flag laws are unconstitutional because they offer no due process. Authorities can show up to take your lawfully purchased weapons based on a report from anyone, and you don’t get them back until the authorities say so.
If you have a firearm, you best be quiet about it.
The potential danger and violence that red flag laws pose is real.
Given the events of this past week, it's worth posting this again today.
These imposters in the federal government — they’re American in name only — intend to disarm the populace in the interest of “public safety.” Safety is a disingenuous head fake.
The truth is that these left-wing cultural Marxists and their enablers in the media and our formerly great institutions are the true threat to a safe and stable society.
Sorry I was AWOL last week. Lots of factors at play. Upside was keeping my eyes off the screen; downside was a lapse in my snappy, incisive commentary on the circus that is the United States of America these days.
I happen to live in Illinois and our esteemed governor, JB Pritzker, signed a broad ranging “assault weapons” ban in January this year that requires owners of any guns on the banned list to register them with the authorities by December 31, 2023. They can keep such guns (how benevolent! how gracious!) but if that person doesn’t register them with the Illinois State Police before the end of this year, they risk being fined or jailed or both.
This is, of course, an extreme infringement on our Second Amendment rights: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
INFRINGE, verb 1 : to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another
Whenever there is some kind of law or regulation enacted on the ownership of firearms, there you have an infringement. Making me fill out paperwork and register with the government is an infringement on my right to “keep and bear arms.” Making me pay a fee in order to own a gun is an infringement. A “right” in its purest form is not something that a government bestows or manages, but something that I already have, free and clear from government interference.
Yet that doesn’t stop the “””elected””” bureaucrats from trying to manage speech, religion, guns or any of a dozen other things that the US Constitution guarantees to its citizens.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A firearms retailer and a national gun rights group have filed an emergency plea with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block Illinois’ assault weapons ban.
The plea argues that law-abiding citizens in Illinois are facing irreparable injury as their fundamental right to keep and bear arms is being infringed.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency request for an injunction made earlier this year. I’m not overly confident that this will fare any better.
Meanwhile, the Illinois State Police is urging gun owners in the state to register their assault-style weapons in compliance with the Protect Illinois Communities Act. The legislation prohibits the sale of 170 firearms, but owners of previously possessed weapons can maintain them if they are registered with the state before January 1, 2024.
At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments vow to defy state assault weapons ban The sheriffs say they believe the law violates the Second Amendment.
By Peter Charalambous January 13, 2023, 6:01 PM
Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff’s offices.
At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.
You might pass the legislation, but enforcing it is a whole other world.
“On July 4, 2022, a shooter armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle and 30-round magazines opened fire on an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois. This weapon made it possible for the shooter to fire 83 rounds in less than a minute, killing 7 and wounding 48. A Highland Park ordinance prohibited the sale of assault weapons, but the shooter had legally purchased the murder weapon elsewhere in llinois.”
Yes, a heinous crime committed by a kid who bought the gun legally. The reaction by our state legislators—the Democrats—is to ban anyone and everyone from having any gun they deem an “assault weapon” so that such crimes are no longer committed.
A noble goal, but impossible to achieve. All they’re doing is stripping law-abiding citizens of their rights. The problem isn’t the gun; the problem is the person who’s using the gun.
This is where we try to use laws to tame the human heart—an impossible task. The only thing that can change a heart is the love of Christ, and that can’t be legislated.
For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:5-6)
Many of us don’t trust the government because it continues to encroach further and further into our lives. This is no longer a free society, but a surveillance society.
🚨 The federal government has mandated that all vehicles sold after 2026 must have a kill switch that can disable your vehicle based on your driving performance.
My amendment to defund that unconstitutional mandate failed tonight.
An amendment proposed by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to stop the federal government from basically taking over private vehicle ownership in 2026 and beyond has failed, meaning Americans will soon become prisoners in their own cars.
Massie, disappointed in his amendment, known as Part B Amendment No. 60, to H.R. 4820, the “Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024,” tweeted the following after it was shot down, including by 19 House Republicans who voted against it.
Don’t tell me the Republicans are the conservative party when they’re the ones helping the anti-American, pro-tryanny power-grabbing Democrats pass laws like this. And as I wrote last week, the garbage media is all about helping the elite consolidate power to force everyone into compliance with their way, not the highway (no pun intended).
It should be noted that prior to Massie’s amendment, the media was busy denying that there was even a kill switch provision in the Biden infrastructure bill at all.
USA Today, for instance, reported back in January that: “No, there’s no vehicle ‘kill switch’ in Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill.” The article continues to repeat this lie again and again, only to end the piece with an admission that:
“Whether or not the technology will become a part of the infrastructure bill’s final rule remains to be seen …”
It turns out that the infrastructure bill does contain provisions for a kill switch, prompting Massie to send USA Today a copy of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with the following entry in the “Definitions” section circled:
“The term ‘advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology means a system that … can … passively monitor the performance of the driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and … prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected …”
Again, the issue of “safety” is used to take away liberty. It sounds noble, but it is a gateway to further restrictions. What you’re reading there is the government giving itself the power to regulate your driving. Sure, it starts with monitoring for “drunk and impaired driving,” but it ends with “you support Donald J. Trump for president.” And don’t think it won’t.
In other words, new cars in 2026 and beyond will contain not just a breathalyzer ignition interlock but also an embedded kill switch that allows a third party, including the government, to turn off a person’s car, leaving him or her stranded until someone reengages the vehicle.
This has been coming for more than a decade, according to Ammoland. And that suggests to them that there is a pathway through this law for cars that allows them to come for your guns.
Some of us have been raising this warning flag for as long as we’ve been warning people about so-called “smart guns.” From “Things to Come,” a Guns and Ammo article I wrote in 2002:
But perhaps the most immediate and insidious threat we face from technology comes under the guise of “safety— for the children,” so-called “smart guns” under development and soon to be required in a state near you. Because…they’re also lobbying for another technology they developed to be required on cars— a “shutoff switch” that police can activate by remote control, making the rest of us pay for the infinitesimal fraction of drivers who lead them on car chases.
As writer Vin Suprynowicz warns (and I and some others independently predicted), this technology could be used by the police as “an `electronic master key’ to `disable’ any `smart guns’ in the house,” and be used as a pretext to “ban the manufacture of any gun that ISN’T a `smart gun’.”
So police can turn guns fitted with one “off” and incapable of firing—and that could be mandated. Anybody doubt it will be if remote shutoff technology becomes widespread?
Massie lists the 19 Republicans who joined 210 Democrats to defeat his amendment: Gus Bilirakis (FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Mike Carey (OH), Chuck Fleischmann (TN), Andrew Garbarino (NY), Mike Garcia (CA), Garret Graves (LA), John Joyce (PA), Thomas Kean, Jr. (NJ), Kevin Kiley (CA), Young Kim (CA), David Kustoff (TN), Mike Lawler (NY), Nancy Mace (SC), Michael McCaul (TX), Zach Nunn (IA), María Elvira Salazar (FL), Chris Smith (NJ), and Glenn Thompson (PA).
If any of them are your representatives, I suggest you get on the phone and ask them what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks they’re doing.
Brandon, the lying, dog-faced pony soldier who supposedly heads our government, was notably absent from any official 9/11 memorial service yesterday, adding to a long string of deliberate snubs meant to demoralize the country’s patriots who still put their hands over their hearts when our national anthem is sung and tear up at the sight of our flag. Resident Trunalimunumaprzure is merely carrying on the work of destroying what little is left of our national character, pulling it down brick by brick.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday announced a new public health order that, she said, will prohibit people from carrying firearms, either open or concealed, in Albuquerque and throughout Bernalillo County for the next 30 days, regardless of whether they have a permit.
The order takes effect immediately. It states “no person, other than a law enforcement officer or licensed security officer, shall possess a firearm … either openly or concealed, within cities or counties averaging 1,000 or more violent crimes per 100,000 residents per year since 2021.”
Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, issued an executive order Thursday evening declaring gun violence a public health emergency. During a news conference Friday, she said she expects legal challenges to the new public health order and expressed uncertainty about whether the order would prevail in court.
The order currently applies only to the city of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, Lujan Grisham said, and can only be enforced not by local authorities but by New Mexico State Police, whose presence in the state’s largest city would be “significant” over the next month.
Remember when conservatives warned that the Covid mandates and lockdowns were simply a dry run for future tyrannical orders? Remember how we were smeared as tinfoil-hat-wearing, conspiracy-mongering, disinformation peddlers?
Well, here you go: gun violence is now a “public health” emergency. Not a “crime surge” or an “increase in violence” but a matter of “public health” in the same way as a pandemic is a “public health” concern.
Defining “gun violence” as a “public health” crisis is like trying to make a twin sheet fit a king-sized mattress. It’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
But New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is defending her order, claiming it was necessary to protect “public health,” and besides, her oath to uphold the Constitution was not “absolute.”
“No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute,” she retorted after being asked whether her order violated her oath of office to “uphold the Constitution.”
It’s true there are exceptions to most of our Constitutional rights. We can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for example. There’s also the “fighting words doctrine” that makes incitement to violence illegal.
But anyone who claims there are exceptions to their oath needs to be impeached. The words “oath” and “absolute” pretty much go together. And this cretin of a governor is looking to separate them because she’s gotten herself in a heap of trouble.
If someone takes an oath and then later decides that it isn’t “absolute” then the oath is worthless. If someone can determine after the fact that the oath she took really didn’t mean what it said, nor did what she recited mean what it claimed, then you can’t trust the “oath.”
Republican state Reps. Stefani Lord and John Block announced on Saturday they are calling for the governor to be impeached.
“I am calling on counsel to begin the impeachment process against Governor Grisham,” Lord said. “This is an abhorrent attempt at imposing a radical, progressive agenda on an unwilling populous. Rather than addressing crime at its core, Governor Grisham is restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Even Grisham believes this emergency order won’t prohibit criminals from carrying or using weapons; a basic admission that this will only put New Mexicans in danger as they won’t be able to defend themselves from violent crime.”
Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, a Democrat party leader who was appointed by Ms. Grisham, joined Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Police Chief Harold Medina saying they, too, would not enforce the ban. A gun rights group filed a federal lawsuit within 24 hours seeking an immediate court order to block the order from taking effect.
Better yet, dozens protested in Albuquerque, NM by openly carrying their firearms, with one speaker saying, “This will not stand, we will not comply!”
This is good to see because I guarantee that there will be more unlawful attempts from our rulers to force unconstitutional orders on us peasants (that’s exactly how they see us). You have to decide now (with others, ideally) that you will not comply with unlawful demands. If the authorities demand that you wear a mask, let them try to enforce their mandate on millions who decide they’re not going to comply. If they declare that your guns are now banned, tell them molon labe or “come and take.”
The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts — not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.
September 16 and 17, 1859 | Notes for Speeches at Columbus and Cincinnati
I daresay that we are also the “rightful masters” of would be tyrants who can’t control crime and decide that forbidding lawfully (and constitutionally) armed citizens from carrying guns will solve the problem.
Why is the knee-jerk reaction of every Democrat Leftist Progressive Marxist (but I repeat myself incessantly) to violate the rights of the law-abiding? Because they can’t admit their “social justice” policies and progressive ideology is the problem.
And that’s why “we the people” must be vigilant and courageous and stand up to these ignorant anti-American extremists.
We don’t know a lot more about Audrey Hale, the young mentally-ill woman who shot dead three 9-year-olds and three 60-year-olds at a Christian school yesterday. But we’re learning a lot more about the trans community and their allies, of which she was a part.
Our noble media (*spit*) are blaming Republicans and Christians for what happened and spinning the story to make “trans” people the victims or to make the story about guns.
Forget that Audrey slaughtered six innocent people, including the three children. Instead, lecture those you despise with “Hate has consequences.” What are you implying, Trans Resistance Network? Seems to me the only one with “hate” around here is Audrey Hale.
And maybe you.
“Many transgender people deal with anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, and PTSD from the near-constant drum beat of anti-trans hate, lack of acceptance from family members and certain religious institutions, denial of our existence, and calls for de-transition and forced conversion,” TRN claimed.
“Anti-trans hate”? “Denial of … existence”? “Forced conversion”? You’d think the whole country was out hunting these people like fox hounds.
Matt Walsh addressed the shooting on his show yesterday.
Here’s a few paragraphs that I found helpful.
The transactivists are assured that, somehow, those who disagree with them are a threat to their very lives. Just by disagreeing. That those who do not affirm their self-identity are engaging in violence, simply by not affirming. That the refusal to affirm is essentially an act of murder, okay, because you’re murdering me by not affirming my self-identity, because my self-identity is the only identity that matters, and if you make me question my self-identity then you are basically killing me.
That’s the logic. And it is a logic that gives a green light to carry out atrocities. It is intended to do that. That is how it is intended. Let’s stop beating around the bush and pretending otherwise. This is what they want.
Every time someone, someone in the media, someone in D.C., anyone else, points at Christians, at conservatives, at any of us, and says, “They want genocide!” what they’re really saying is, “Deal with them! Shut them down! Silence them! Take them out!” That’s how the words are interpreted. How else could they be interpreted?! After all, if somebody was really carrying out a genocide, then violence would be the appropriate response.
Nobody I know wants to be targeted by transactivists for refusing to “affirm” a transsexual’s “identity.” But for most Christians, this poses a problem because it is clear that a person who is confused about whether they are a female or a male has some psychological issues. We don’t “affirm” someone who makes irrational claims. We get them help.
As believers, we also let them know that God loves them, right where they’re at, but we don’t let them stay in that confused state. We get them help. They need healing.
It’s a tough needle to thread.
This is the evil that we are up against. And evil is the point, here. Because, y’know, no matter who’s responsible for the latest burst of demonic evil, what lies at the root is the reality of human evil and a society that fosters this evil, and fertilizes it, to help it grow.
I think this is an important point. It’s not just that the people in charge are cultural Marxists; it’s not just that they celebrate the crazy over honoring historic and traditional norms; it’s that they encourage what is evil, what goes against “Nature and Nature’s God.” Our institutions, our politics, our universities, our entertainment, our mainstream heroes, are fostering evil.
We’ve become an evil empire. And why?
Whether it’s a trans person or anyone else carrying out the latest mass murder, the root is always a culture in a state of spiritual and moral decay. We’ve become a country filled with numb, detached, empty, desensitized people with no sense of underlying purpose.
Again, I’m brought back to John Adams’s statement because it so clearly underscores why things are off the rails in our country.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams, Letter to the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798
While there are exceptions, especially in our churches (but not always), the institutions that drive culture are no longer populated by “a moral and religious People.” And, therefore, says Adams, the Constitution they created is “wholly inadequate” to govern us.
Guns aren’t the issue. We’ve had guns for hundreds of years but it’s only been recently that “guns” have become a problem — that comes in the wake of a society that has forsaken God and actively fosters evil.
And that evil will go after the only thing standing in it’s way: Christians.
Daily Verse | Job 36:16 “He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.”
Tuesday’s Reading: Job 38-39
There have been a handful of dreadful shootings over the last few weeks, including the NYC subway shooting, the racially-motivated bloodbath in a Buffalo, NY grocery store, and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There have also been several smaller, “one-off” shootings.
None of them should have happened. They aren’t what our Founders envisioned when they enshrined the right to be armed in our U.S. Constitution. What they envisioned was the right of the people to protect themselves from a tyrannical government.
America has a problem. We are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. But we are no longer the society in which that right was declared.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams
I’ve quoted this from Adams before, but I’ll keep doing so because the more I sit with it, the more profound it is. The Founding Fathers knew that freedom without virtue is license. If there’s anything that describes our society today, it’s “license.” And license is only a step removed from anarchy. All restraints, all standards, all guidelines are being thrown off in order to indulge our most naked desires or to give ourselves over to the darkest corners of our inner life.
When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. But whoever obeys the law is joyful. — Proverbs 29:18 (New Living Translation)
Yet the Founders took the risk and bestowed on us our inalienable rights, including the right to keep and bear arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. — Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution
Brandon is going on these days about the Second Amendment not being “absolute.” (Actually, he has said that “There’s no amendment that’s absolute.”) What he means by that with 2A is that there were always some kind of limits on what “Arms” a person could keep and bear. His now (several times) debunked example is that private citizens couldn’t own a cannon.
I’m not a constitutional scholar, but a straight-forward reading of the text seems to be absolute. The modal verb “shall not” is absolute. My right to keep and carry (bear) an arm may not, will not, cannot, shall not be infringed.
“Infringed” here means to limit, to undermine, to encroach upon.
Rep. Donald Beyer (D-Va.), who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, is looking to put a 1,000% excise tax on AR-15-type rifles as a means of making them less affordable to the public.
“What it’s intended to do is provide another creative pathway to actually make some sensible gun control happen,” Beyer told Business Insider. “We think that a 1,000% fee on assault weapons is just the kind of restrictive measure that creates enough fiscal impact to qualify for reconciliation.”
With the affected guns ranging in price from $500 to $2000, the tax could add as much as $20,000 to the final sale price of the weapons. While bullets would not be taxed at the high rate, high-capacity magazines would be.
Hey Don, what is it about “shall not be infringed” do you not understand? He says, right there in his quote, that it “is just the kind of restrictive measure” they want. To restrict means to limit and 2A says, absolutely, that the government SHALL NOT do that.
Every time another “gun control” law is passed or another “gun free zone” is created, our absolute right to be armed is infringed upon. In other words, a case could be made that such laws or regulations are illegal.
Now, I’m not an absolutist in the extreme. Given that we are now an immoral and irreligious people who no longer view self-control and an orderly society as virtuous, we may have to admit that some regulations are in our best interest.
But let’s be honest: regulations don’t control the heart or behavior. At best they only tell us what is “legal” and what the penalties are for breaking the law. And that’s a poor substitute for personal virtue and responsibility. Take California for example:
An FBI report on ‘Active Shooter Incidents’ in 2021 shows that California was the number one state for such incidents, with six incidents total.
California is also number one for gun law strength, the Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety noted …
… California has universal background checks, an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, a 10-day waiting period on gun purchases, a red flag law, gun registration requirements, a “good cause” requirement for concealed carry permit issuance, a ban on carrying a gun on a college campus for self-defense, a ban on K-12 teachers being armed on campus for classroom defense, a background check requirement for ammunition purchases, and a limit on the number of guns a law-abiding citizen can purchase in a given month, among other controls.
All potentially illegal controls, I might add, because they violate the people’s right to “keep and bear Arms.” But the people in positions of power don’t care about our rights. They only care about getting and keeping power.
None of the gun control laws on the books stopped any of the killers I mentioned at the outset. And adding more laws—apart from confiscating all of our guns, which is the goal—would have done nothing more to prevent the tragedies.
Frankly, the driving force behind all the “gun control” laws is to make it as difficult to own a firearm as possible, if not make it outright impossible. Jack the price of a firearm up by 1000% and you can plausibly deny that you’re infringing on anyone’s right to keep and bear Arms. “I’m not saying you can’t keep and bear a weapon; of course you can. I’m just going to make it so expensive that most people won’t be able to.”
That’s infringement.
Worse still is a growing attitude of contempt for the U.S. Constitution. Here’s Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) expressing his feelings about constitutional rights:
Cicilline: You know who didn’t have constitutional right to life respected? The kids at Parkland and Sandy Hook and Uvalde… so spare me the bullshit pic.twitter.com/xji3Cv7lFr
“… so spare me the bullshit about constitutional rights.” Really? Why is this guy in Congress? Didn’t he take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States when he took office?
Then there’s Brandon.
FLASHBACK
Joe Biden said “bingo!” when asked if he was “gonna come for” Americans’ guns. pic.twitter.com/kk9uPKLzjP
This is what the erosion of liberty looks like. When you have “representatives” in the legislature and executive branch who have contempt for the very ideas they swore to protect, it’s a house of cards.
And that’s an infringement on the security of our rights as citizens.
Daily Verse | Job 4:15 “A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end.”
Thursday’s Reading: Job 8-10
Thursday and I’m back after a short visit with my mom for another milestone birthday. I hope to be remembered as one of those children who “arise and call her blessed” (Prov. 31:28).
I was in upstate New York during my time away, about an hour away from the Tops grocery store in Buffalo where a white 18-year-old self-described “mild-moderate authoritarian left[y]” shot and killed ten people in a racially-motivated massacre. On my trip home, another massacre occurred, this time in Texas, where an 18-year-old Hispanic, Salvador Ramos, killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
The two massacres bookend a string of shootings; in a church in California where an Asian man shot and killed one and injured five, and in a Dallas hair salon where a black man shot and injured three Korean Americans. All come just a month after a black man, Frank Robert James, was arrested for shooting and wounding ten people in an attack on a New York City subway train.
I remind you; I only mention their skin color because the Klown Klub in Washington DC is convinced that “white supremacist domestic terror attacks are the number one threat we face, you guys!” and of the five shootings I just mentioned, only one was a white dude—and he wasn’t even of the correct political persuasion. I mean, of course, that he wasn’t a right-wing conservative Trump supporter protesting a stolen election while bitterly clinging to his guns and religion.
These are horrific crimes not only for the loss of life, but the fact that these are innocents—people just going about their daily lives. Particularly heinous is the killing of the children.
Worse still are the absolute hot takes of our political class in the wake of these killings. Progressives waste no time in capitalizing on these calamities because they are, for the most part, heartless trolls who have a political life to juice with outrage. If they can just get in front of the cameras and gnash their teeth with the latest sound bites, it keeps them in the news to advance their political agenda.
Here’s Irish-American Robert Francis O’Rourke, otherwise known as “Beto,” the fake Latinx and failed presidential candidate, storming a press conference held by Texas governor Greg Abbot and other officials as he gives an update on the shooting.
The bodies weren’t even cold yet. I’m sure Beto, who’s currently challenging Abbot for the governorship, thought this stunt would “fire up his base” and he’d be heralded as “speaking truth to power.”
Nah. He’s a disgusting male Karen who steps on the bodies of dead children to score cheap political points.
Beto really used a press conference about dead children to pull a political stunt to help his campaign. What an utterly soulless piece of shit. These people are just absolute demons. My God.
Then there’s Resident Teleprompter, another fake humanitarian who, to his credit, started with some heartfelt words.
To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There is a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you are being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out. Suffocating. It is never quite the same. It is a feeling shared by the siblings and the grandparents and the family members of the community that is left behind.
[…]
So tonight, I asked the nation to pray for them and give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel right now.
But then he raised his voice and began a rant filled with lots of rhetoric and no specifics. He also called on “God’s name” a lot.
“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” he said.
Oh good. He’s identified the culprit: the “gun lobby.” And he knows what needs to be done.
Good.
Good.
What are we going to do?
Next, he invoked the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Santa Fe High School, Oxford High School and other shootings.
“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act.”
Good.
Good.
What are we going to do?
“And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.”
Wait. This is a flat-out lie. The “assault weapons ban” of 1994 had no discernible impact on mass shootings. Yes, the number of shootings with so-called “assault weapons” tripled—but only in 2012, eight years after the so-called ban ended. Otherwise, the number of shootings remained essentially the same.
So “don’t tell me” that we should do what you did in 1994—which did nothing.
“What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for, except to kill someone? Deer aren’t running through the forests with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake!”
This lame joke was from his “campaign” for resident. He thinks that “assault weapons” are some kind of military-grade guns that are powerful enough to penetrate “Kevlar vests.” The truth is that an “assault weapon,” often (wrongly) called an “assault rifle,” is a semi-automatic rifle that shoots .223 caliber rounds that pack less punch than the .308 caliber rounds used by the M-1 rifle the AR-15 replaced.
“For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.”
OK, finally. We’re going to stand up to the “industry.” Great. When? How?
“Most Americans support common sense gun laws.”
Define “common sense gun laws.” Then show me the data.
“These kind of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world. Why?”
Well, in Australia they took everybody’s guns away. In a lot of other countries, citizens are not allowed to possess guns. That might have something to do with it.
Wait. Is that what you’re suggesting?
“Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”
Who said we’re “willing” to live with it? Why are you blaming us for “letting this happen”?
“Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to stand up to the lobbies [sic]?”
It’s the lobbyists’ fault. I have heard this before.
“It’s time to turn this pain into action … It’s time to act.”
Right. You said that.
“It’s time for those who obstruct or delay or block the common sense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget.”
Is that what time it is?
“We can do so much more. We have to do more.”
So I gather.
What I think I heard was, we need to act. We have to “stand up” to the gun lobby, implement “common sense gun laws” like the failed 1994 assault weapons ban, and we must not forget those who oppose “common sense gun laws.”
Like I said, short on specifics.
Here’s the bottom line: nothing that Brandon or any other politician says or does will “fix” this problem we have because it’s not a “gun” problem.
It’s a heart problem.
“But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’” — Jesus, Matthew 15:18-20
We were a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values, and our Founding Fathers understood that only a virtuous citizenry would be able to responsibly handle the freedom that our Constitution gave us. As John Adams said,
“We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.“
As I’ve argued before, we are clearly no longer “a moral and religious People.” If Adams was correct, then our Constitution is wholly inadequate to govern us. It will take a return to faith and the virtues of Judeo-Christian values.
Hancock added, “At the heart of the problem is the fact that the majority of the young men that were involved [in shooting incidents such as the one in Uvalde, Texas] do not have an active father at home. It points to something that’s relatively recent in our society: a national boy crisis.
“We are praying that God will be near in this time of pain and loss, that the church will rise up, and that amid tragedy, courageous men of faith will stand in the gap to love, serve and mentor a generation of hurting boys struggling to understand what it means to be a godly man,” added Hancock of Trail Life USA.
Not a single politician is asking: 1) How did this murderer get into the school? 2) What security did this school have and how can we protect schools like we protect our concerts, banks, museums? 3) WHERE WERE HIS PARENTS AND THE ADULTS IN HIS LIFE? 4) How did he buy a handgun? 5) Did he pass a background check? 6) No one in his house saw what was going on?
These are the questions asked by people who not only want answers, but solutions.
The “gun lobby” didn’t head his household, the “gun lobby” didn’t neglect to monitor his behavior, the “gun lobby” didn’t neglect to secure the school, the “gun lobby” didn’t leave any doors unlocked, and the “gun lobby” didn’t tell him to murder anyone.
Right.
We have to rebuild a virtuous culture. “Culture is a powerful force for good. When good behavior is normalized and deviant destructive behavior is ostracized, shamed, and marginalized, you get more good behavior.”
The foundation of a virtuous culture is a return to God.
Daily Verse | Haggai 1:5 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.”
It’s Thursday and the last day of September 2021. What does it mean when you dream of waterskiing across a desert of wood?
Does it or does it not feel like the wheels have come off not only here in the U.S., but increasingly, around the world? It’s like the whole world has gone mad all at once, while we deplorables (aka. normal citizens) look around in disbelief while searching for remote hideouts we can run to when the jackbooted thugs are given permission to ignore our laws and our rights.
Speaking of jackbooted thugs, have you seen what’s going on in Australia, the former British penal colony? The continent is now one big police state. Here’s a video of three police officers questioning a homeowner about his knowledge of any protests he’s been to or any he knows are being planned.
Let’s get to the good stuff. Here are some officers arresting two elderly people, while one of the officers snatches one of the women’s phones while she’s videoing their conversation about being placed under arrest.
The Australian police terrorizing an elderly couple sitting on a bench without a mask. The police steal her phone so she can’t film to protect her civil rights. pic.twitter.com/q225p1yO0R
Australia as the world knew it, is dead….. New dystopian medical terrorism is here….. Special forces are out on the street in numbers…… Asking for vaccine certificates from people at random….. Violent crack downs on streets..
More insane police overreach in Melbourne. Guy put in handcuffs for being a few hundred metres from his home. Police say “he has no valid reason to be there” & “wasn’t wearing a face mask”. He says he was getting lunch & having a cigarette.pic.twitter.com/7iQvVDkUcg
Unvaccinated NSW [New South Wales] residents have been delivered a major blow, with officials confirming those in regional areas who haven’t received the vaccine will have some of their new-found freedoms reversed within weeks.
Deputy Premier John Barilaro said the 70 per cent roadmap, which is due to kick in on October 11, will apply to the whole state.
This means unvaccinated people living in areas that aren’t currently in lockdown will no longer be able to enjoy the same freedoms they have in recent weeks.
“So there will be individuals in regional and rural NSW who choose not to be vaccinated who will lose their freedoms on October 11,” Mr Barilaro.
“So my message to everybody in regional and rural NSW is to continue to get vaccinated. We are seeing vaccination rates climb right across the state including in the regions.”
Semi-automatic rifles and shotguns were prohibited, with a few exceptions, all firearms were required to be registered, a proof of reason would be required for all gun-licence applicants and gun purchases, with self-defence not considered a reason [or protecting yourself from government overreach. dLo]. Licenses would be reviewed, and ammunition sales were to be restricted to those licensed for the specific firearm. A national integrated registry was to be formed.
Notably, the reforms included a buyback of semi-automatic weapons and guns from owners no longer qualified to possess them. About 650,000 guns were destroyed, as part of the reforms that cost $500m.
My emphasis. That agreement came in the wake of a massacre of 35 people, the worst in Australia’s history. Gun deaths dropped in the years that followed, “from 516 in 1996 to 229 in 2019″— a reduction of 287 deaths in 13 years.
Not to minimize any life lost whatsoever, but they took your guns over 516 gun deaths? Out of a population of 25.3 million? At what cost?
Looks like personal freedoms to me. Australia is run by a parliamentary government, similar to the UK. They claim to have a system of checks and balances. So does the United States.
We don’t got guns in Australia. If we did, govt may act differently.
Keep that in mind, my friends. And buy ammo. Lots of ammo. Really. I mean it.
This is not a direct endorsement because everyone’s experience is different, but I’ve purchased from AmmoMan and had good results. I’ve also purchased from local shops near me and had good results.
Whatever you choose, do your homework and buy ammo.
Daily Verse | 2 Chronicles 20:12 “O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”
Wednesday and it’s Cinco de Mayo. I’m sure that someone out there thinks I shouldn’t mention it because that’s “cultural appropriation,” or something, but I live in the United States of America and I’m not appropriating it, I’m recognizing it.
In the wake of the mass shooting in Indianapolis last month, Resident Biden lashed out against gun violence after eight people were killed at a FedEx warehouse by a former FedEx employee. Here’s what he said:
And I strongly, strongly urge my Republican friends in the Congress, who refuse to bring up the House passed bill, to bring it up now. This has to end. It’s a national embarrassment. It is a national embarrassment, what’s going on. And it’s not only these mass shootings that are occurring every single day. Every single day, there’s a mass shooting this year in the United States if you count all those who were killed out on the streets of our cities and our rural areas. It’s a national embarrassment and must come to an end.
The folks who own weapons, the folks who own guns, they support universal background checks. A majority of them think we should not be selling assault weapons. Who in God’s name needs a weapon that can hold 100 rounds, or 40 rounds, or 20 rounds? It’s just wrong. And I’m not going to give up until it’s done.
I agree that the number of people killed by guns in the United States is a “national embarrassment.” I think it’s embarrassing that a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles and given the chance to govern themselves through self-control and belief in the inherent dignity of their fellow man has completely blown their opportunity.
The problem is not guns. It’s not “easy access” or “loopholes” in the laws. The problem is the human heart. By and large, the country has thrown God out of the public square and it shows. As John Adams wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts Militia in 1798, “Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.“
I bring this up because yesterday we learned that U.S. firearms sales rose for the thirteenth straight month in April, according to The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). “In April this year, 1.694 million background checks took place, a 0.9% increase over April 2020, according to the NSSF’s adjusted data. The data also shows there was a 21.1% increase in unadjusted NICS numbers, compared to April 2020.”
One of the greatest increases in gun ownership has been among black Americans, which is up 58.2%.
The reasons for the continued spike in gun sales are pretty obvious. It doesn’t take a genius to watch the Burning Looting and Murdering over the last year as the anarchists ran wild in multiple cities or to realize that the junior commies in government want to take your guns away.
“Americans are buying firearms for concerns for personal safety and for White House and Congressional efforts to limit and deny the ability to purchase certain firearms,” NSSF’s Director of Public Affairs, Mark Oliva, said in a statement. “The continued gun control statements by President Biden, many of which have been fact-checked and debunked as false, are driving sales.”
So it’s clear that people hear Biden, but aren’t listening to what he’s saying. In spite of his adamant denunciation of gun violence and his promise to curb the violence, people recognize that in a culture that is demonizing the police, they may have to be their own first responder. And if they’re going to be their own first responder, they better get a gun now before the government finds a way to severely restrict having one.
The greatest danger, however, is that should guns be outlawed or severely restricted, the government then has no meaningful resistance to whatever malevolent plans they have for We the People. To answer Biden’s question, “Who in God’s name needs a weapon that can hold 100 rounds, or 40 rounds, or 20 rounds?”—We the People, do. To prevent you and your minions from putting us all in reeducation camps.
Daily Verse | 1 Kings 12:8 But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him.
It’s Friday and the end of another week under the heel of Chairman Cho Bai Den and his communist acolytes. Dear Leader, “claiming that shootings are a ‘public health crisis,'” just announced several gun control measures.
“Today we’re taking steps to confront not just the gun crisis, but what is actually a public health crisis.”
That’s is an interesting way to frame this “discussion.” Why is he using the phrase “public health crisis”? What does he mean? A mental health crisis? An anger management problem?
He probably means lead poisoning.
As Paula Bolyard worries, “After what our country has been through over the last year with the endless COVID-19 lockdown orders, the words ‘public health crisis’ are very ominous indeed.”
I fear it’s only a matter of time before someone gets the idea to regulate gun ownership by declaring a public health emergency. Is that what Biden’s up to with the language above? Time will tell, but don’t be surprised if whoever is running the show at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue tries to make an end-run around Congress to push through emergency orders to confiscate guns from those deemed a “health risk,” beginning with anyone who attended the Trump rally on Jan. 6.
“Nothing I Recommend Impinges on the Second Amendment”
“Nothing, nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment. They’re phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake for what we’re talking about.”
Funny to hear Biden talk about “phony.” The man is a walking, talking textbook example of phony. If he tells you that nothing he is about to say “impinges” on the Second Amendment, grab your guns and hold on for dear life, because the word he’s looking for isn’t “impinges” but “infringes.”
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
— The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
“Shall not be infringed.”
“Shall not.“
Sounds absolute to me.
In fact, a good case can be made that all federal gun restrictions are illegal infringements.
The truth is, the intentions of those who debated, wrote and passed the Second Amendment are clear: The purpose of the amendment is to protect individual liberty by, in part, stopping the federal government from instituting gun restrictions of any kind, because America’s founders wanted to ensure citizens had the ability to defend themselves against a tyrannical national government and other domestic threats, as well as from foreign invaders.
“No Amendment to The Constitution Is Absolute”
This is another worrisome statement. If no amendment is “absolute,” what does that mean for the First Amendment, much less the Second? Biden uses the example of the freedom of speech to press his point.
“You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater. Recall the freedom of speech.”
First, Resident Biden, don’t presume to lecture us on “you know, the thing.” You’re no constitutional scholar, nor are the cabal of Leftists you’ve surrounded yourself with. Second, the “yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theater” maxim is associated with one of “the most odious free speech decisions in the Court’s history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.”
Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as the final word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”
Biden goes on to say, without evidence, that “From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons.”
Really? You expect us to believe that? Please, give us all the examples you’ve collected. As Tyler O’Neil writes,
Biden is laying the groundwork for carving out exceptions to key constitutional rights. It’s not just gun control: Biden supports the Obamacare contraception mandate and would remove religious freedom exemptions for Catholic nuns like the Little Sisters of the Poor. Biden also supports the Equality Act, which explicitly undermines the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Biden supports H.R. 1, the Democrats’ election boondoggle that, among other things, eviscerates free speech in politics by mandating donor disclosure.
This is tyranny dressed up as concern for “safety.” Are there too many shooting deaths? Too many people in pain from the loss of loved ones? Yes, there are.
But the answer isn’t to violate the Constitution. The answer is to make men fear God again.
