The Curse Of The Gunnies strikes again.

California Democrat Eric Nuke’Em Swalwell resigned from Congress yesterday having been accused of sexual misconduct and was facing efforts to have him expelled.

1775-
General Gage begins preparations to send an expedition to Concord, Massachusetts to seize and destroy military supplies hidden in the town. He issues orders to the Boston Garrison to select 700 light infantrymen and grenadiers for the mission. Despite Gage’s effort to keep the expedition a secret, the movements of ships and troops are noticed by the patriot spies in Boston and reported to Joseph Warren, head of the Committee of Safety.

Elitist Chicago Doc: Average Citizens Don’t Need Armed Self-Defense Because the Poor ‘Don’t Benefit’ From Guns

Dr. Anthony Douglas, the smug University of Chicago trauma resident and arrogant mastermind behind Illinois’ Responsibility in Firearms Legislation (RIFL) Act, stepped up in a legislative hearing last week and belched up a heaping helping of elitist bile blended with a soupçon clinical detachment: “I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms,” he pronounced.

What the little people need, the good doctor says, is more “education and resources.” Translation: more tax dollars funneled to “non-profits” with little to no return on the taxpayers’ investment.

Besides, the physician and gun-control researcher claims it isn’t good guys or gals with guns who stop evil predators…all evidence to the contrary. As such, it really should be harder for the poors to get their hands on firearms to defend themselves and their families.

His solution, then, is pricing guns out of reach of law-abiding, responsible citizens who lack bodyguards, private security details, or live in gated enclaves. In Murder City, USA—Chicago—where gang thugs roam free, that’s not social policy, that’s sadistic malpractice.

Was this clown high? Does he have a full punchcard at the local dispensary? Because this delusional drivel sounds like it was baked in a dorm room cloud of weed.

Let’s drag his elitist fantasy out into the reality that is Chicago, the city that’s been mercilessly documented by Wirepoints.org through FOIA records from the Chicago Police Department itself.

High-priority 911 calls—Priority Level 1 and 2, the ones defined as “imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage”—are the exact emergencies Chicagoans face every day: shots fired, person shot, assault in progress, armed robbery, domestic battery. In 2019, before the progressive crime wave fully metastasized, 19% of those urgent calls had “no officers available” for immediate response.

By 2021, Wirepoints found that number had exploded to 52%—406,829 high-priority incidents in which dispatchers literally had zero cops to send. In 2022 it hit roughly 60%.

Through all of 2023, 56% of high-priority calls—437,000 of them—sat in backlog with no units available. Even in 2024, through mid-May, getting a response was still a coin-flip 50%: 127,000 out of 256,000 urgent calls in which nobody came.

That’s not “delayed,” that’s “we have no police available to send to you.”

Wirepoints documented thousands of “assaults in progress,” “batteries in progress,” “person with a gun,” and “shots fired” calls where callers were told to shelter in place while the city’s response system collapsed. In some districts, entire shifts passed with zero proactive patrol time because every available cop was already buried in backlogs that stretched 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes as long as four hours. Chicago’s own inspector general has long since confirmed the department can’t even log arrival times for huge chunks of emergency calls.

So Dr. Douglas’s prescription isn’t compassion, it’s pure, venomous elitist contempt. He (allegedly) stares at blood-soaked gurneys every shift, but still demands that we disarm the victims instead of the criminals—or fix the catastrophic policies that left over half of emergency calls with “no units available.” He wants to tax gun makers into oblivion so that self-defense becomes a rich man’s luxury that only hypocrites like him can afford.

Spare us the sanctimonious impacted fecal matter, Doctor. The poor in Chicago aren’t sipping lattes in faculty lounges debating “resources.” They’re barricading their doors and praying they make it to and from work safely and survive day to day while the failed system in which you have so much faith leaves them twisting in the wind.

They have and need the same constitutional right to armed self-defense that you take for granted from the comfort of your bubble. In the real Chicago, where cops aren’t available to show up half the time, that arrogance and contempt leaves innocent people to be victimized and slaughtered.

The Center Square has the full testimony. Read it and seethe . . .

A proposed bill gun owners say will price lower income buyers out of the market continues to get attention at the Illinois state capitol.

Opponents of House Bill 3320 estimate the Responsibility in Firearms Legislation, or RIFL Act could tack on thousands of dollars in taxes to one firearm purchase, and that would price lower income people out of exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Advocates for the bill, like Dr. Anthony Douglas, said there’d be minimal added cost.

“I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms,” Douglas said during a House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force subject matter hearing of the bill Wednesday. “I think more people benefit from access to education, access to resources.”

State Rep. Patrick Windhorst, R-Harrisburg, said that’s an elitist opinion and people of lesser means want to be able to protect themselves.

“The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States guarantees that to them,” Windhorst said. “And it’s really not our place to say, ‘well, we think you’re better off not having this thing,’ which is the tone of this committee.”

BLUF
The Second Amendment’s purpose is to ensure that people can meaningfully defend their natural and unalienable rights, including the right to life. No policymaker can claim to take this protection seriously while, in practice, proudly limiting victims to a 3-inch knife in a gunfight.

Gun Control Advocates to Victims: Just Bring a Knife to the Gunfight.

Last month, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., a gunman opened fire in a classroom full of ROTC cadets. He killed the ROTC instructor and injured two others before several cadets subdued him — with one cadet using a knife to stab him to death.

To rational people, the shooting clearly evidenced the combined failure of gun control and soft-on-crime policies to protect innocent victims. The perpetrator, who’d been convicted of terrorism charges in 2016, was supposed to be serving an 11-year prison sentence but had been released early under a drug treatment program for which he was supposed to be ineligible. He’d then simply ignored the state’s laws regarding gun possession by felons, background checks, and carrying guns on college campuses, all on his way to ignoring laws prohibiting murder and acts of terrorism.

The responses from many anti-gun public officials were telling: in their view, the attack on disarmed college students clearly evidenced a need to further restrict the right of innocent victims to keep and bear arms in self-defense —and suggested that armed self-defense isn’t that important in the first place.  After all, as one Virginia Democrat insinuated, if the cadets at Old Dominion could subdue their assailant without a gun, why can’t you?

All of it missed the point entirely.

Despite what gun control advocates would have you believe, the right to keep and bear arms plays a vital role in public safety. Americans use their firearms to defend themselves and others far more often than many people realize. Even the notoriously anti-gun Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged that most studies on the issue find that between 500,000 and several million defensive gun uses occur every year in the United States. An extensive 2021 national survey conducted by a Georgetown professor further substantiated this reality, concluding that Americans used their firearms defensively an average of 1.2 million times a year.

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Giffords Hit With FEC Complaint From National Shooting Sports Foundation

The gun control group Giffords has been slapped with a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, courtesy of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

The firearms industry trade group claims that Giffords, through its political action committee Giffords PAC, has failed to comply with the FEC’s rules on joint fundraising while soliciting funds for both the PAC and the candidates it’s supporting.

“Giffords PAC has been playing fast and loose with how they are soliciting funds to support themselves and their preferred gun control candidates for elected office,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “The FEC’s joint fundraising rules are clear but Giffords ignores them because they believe they are above accountability.

Their fundraising misleads consumers by falsely claiming these joint fundraising solicitations are not authorized by any candidates or their campaign committees. Giffords PAC and these candidates are knowingly ignoring mandatory FEC disclosure requirements.”

Giffords PAC sent fundraising emails in partnership with preferred federal and gubernatorial candidates for office that ask potential donors to “split a donation between my campaign and Giffords PAC…” yet it has failed to properly follow the required FEC joint fundraising procedures.

FEC regulations require the appointment of a joint fundraising representative or formation of a joint fundraising committee with the associated campaigns, yet Giffords PAC’s most recent FEC Statement of Organization does not reflect its involvement in any joint fundraising efforts.

Further, these emails soliciting donations stated they were “Paid For By Giffords PAC” and “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.” However, the joint fundraising emails are obviously authorized by candidates. In fact, the emails are signed by candidates and jointly solicit contributions for the campaigns.

Those email solicitations sent donors to an ActBlue website that asked donors to support candidates and Giffords antigun agenda. FEC regulations require that mass mailings of 500 or more substantially similar communications include appropriate disclosures, however Giffords PAC has not included appropriate joint fundraising disclosures in either their emails or ActBlue contribution pages, and falsely claim that these communications are not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Giffords PAC has sent these solicitations that enriched their own antigun agenda in coordination with U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) and Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Ariz.).

We can expect Giffords’ fundraising operations to ramp up as the midterm campaigns start to take shape, so this is a timely complaint by NSSF. It’s also the latest allegation about the gun control group playing fast and loose with rules and regulations. As we reported last week, a Giffords staffer may have violated Vermont’s laws regarding the registration of paid lobbyists.

Billy Clark serves as the group’s Senior Litigation Attorney and “Second Amendment Issues Manager.” When he recently testified before a legislative committee in Vermont, Clark acknowledged that he had “been in touch with committee members” about a piece of legislation. Giffords’ website says Clark “consults with local governments and other organizations, providing guidance on how to actualize gun safety policies,” which sure sounds like lobbying activity to me, but Clark is not listed as a registered lobbyist on the Vermont Secretary of State’s website.

So, while Giffords is trying to impose all kinds of rules, regulations, and laws on gun owners, there are allegations the group is treating some of the rules surrounding campaign fundraising and lobbying activities as optional. I’m interested to see what the FEC’s response to NSSF’s complaint will be, and if any action will be taken ahead of Election Day this November.

VA Ground Zero on Guns: DOJ Legal Action Threat

By Dave Workman

Editor-in-Chief

In office only four months, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has found herself in the middle of a gun rights battleground, and the fault lies squarely in her lap and with her Democrat colleagues in the legislature for passing a slew of gun control bills, including one which brought a promise of federal legal action: Senate Bill 749.

Spanberger faces a deadline of 11:59 p.m. tonight—one minute before Midnight—to either sign or veto the bill. A third option, as noted by WVEC News, would let the bills become law without her signature.

In a sharply-worded letter to Spanberger, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which includes the newly-created Second Amendment section, Spanberger was warned the DOJ “will commence litigation in the event the Commonwealth of Virginia enacts certain bills that unconstitutionally limit law-abiding Americans’ individual right to bear arms.” The letter specifically mentioned SB 749, which would “unconstitutionally” restrict the manufacture, purchase or sale of AR-15 rifles “and other semi-automatic firearms in common use.”

This was no idle threat. Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division has already taken legal action against the Virgin Island police and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over delays in approving gun permit applications.

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DC Circuit Slams Brakes on Boasberg’s Criminal Contempt Probe of Those AEA Flights

Judge James Boasberg, Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court, has become a bit of a household name over the past year or so — in large part because of the rather notable rulings he’s made in the case arising from the now infamous flights removing suspected Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador, pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act, in March of 2025.

The J.G.G. v. Trump case has already made its way up to the Supreme Court once, and while the case is still working its way through the courts on the merits, there’s been a contemporaneous contempt proceeding, in which Judge Boasberg has been assessing whether he’d hold certain members of the Trump administration in criminal contempt over its actions following his order to effectively turn the planes (already in transit to El Salvador) around.

In connection with that, the administration sought a writ of mandamus from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, essentially asking that Boasberg’s contempt inquisition be shut down. On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit granted the writ and halted the district court’s ongoing contempt investigation into the administration’s March deportation flights, blocking further testimony and fact-finding aimed at determining whether officials defied a temporary restraining order.

In a 2-1 decision, the appellate court ordered Boasberg to terminate the criminal contempt proceedings in the case. Judge Neomi Rao (Trump) authored the majority decision, with Judge Justin Walker concurring (Trump), and Judge J. Michelle Childs (Obama) penning a lengthy dissent.

The crux of the majority decision is this:

The Supreme Court vacated the district court’s order because it was premised on a legal error and the plaintiffs’ suit was brought in the wrong court. Nonetheless, the district court threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt unless they complied with the now-vacated order by, for instance, taking back custody of the plaintiffs. We issued a writ of mandamus vacating the court’s first contempt order.

Undeterred, the district court is proceeding with criminal contempt for the government’s decision to transfer the plaintiffs to the custody of El Salvador. To cooperate, the government identified then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as the official responsible for the transfer decision. The district court previously said this was the only information it required to make a referral for prosecution. But the district court has now expanded its inquest and ordered hearings to extract more information from government counsel about exactly what happened last March. The government petitions for mandamus.

The widening gyre of the district court’s investigation again calls for the extraordinary remedy of mandamus to halt the judicial “impairment of another branch in the performance of its constitutional duties.” Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 390 (2004) (cleaned up). The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy. These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion, as the district court’s order said nothing about transferring custody of the plaintiffs and therefore lacks the clarity to support criminal contempt based on the transfer of custody. Moreover, the government has already provided the name of the responsible official, so further judicial investigation is unnecessary and therefore improper. In these circumstances, mandamus is appropriate to prevent the district court from assuming an antagonistic jurisdiction that encroaches on the autonomy of the Executive Branch.

 

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Two Researchers Suggest ‘New Firearms Tax Design’ To Combat ‘Gun Violence’

By Dave Workman

Writing at ProMarket, two researchers have declared it’s time for “alternative tax regimes to replace” federal excise taxes on handguns and long guns—which generate revenues to fund federal wildlife restoration programs—and doubling the taxes to “produce meaningful gains to society through a reduction in violence.”

Liberty Park Press reached out to authors Luis Armona and Adam Rosenberg, but did not recieve replies.

However, the National Shooting Sports Foundation noted that one year ago, an Op-Ed published on the NSSF website took Armona and Rosenberg to task for also pushing a gun tax proposal, leading off with this blistering observation: “Leave it to the ‘scholars’ at Harvard Kennedy School to come up with a scheme that combines the arrogance of the ‘intellectual elite,’ increasing taxes, administering gun confiscation plans and – again – purposefully conflating “public health” policies for crime control for the latest pie-in-the-sky gun control plan.”

This was back on April 4, 2025. Writer Salam Fatohi observed about their alternative tax scheme, “They just need to tax the snot out of them.”

In their new article, Armona and Rosenberg acknowledge “we know surprisingly little about how these markets operate, including how consumers make choices between the thousands of firearms available to them, how much they value these weapons, and how suppliers set prices or react to taxes. Without this information, it is impossible to know whether a tax of, say, 50%, 10%, or 0% is the “right level” to raise federal funds and reduce gun-related crimes, or what the effects of these taxes would be.”

Nowhere do they explain how y would mitigate the loss of federal aid funds for wildlife to the states, which have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars since the Pittman-Robertson fund was enacted in 1937. Under this dedicated fund program, which is strongly supported by industry and sportsmen’s organizations, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service provides annual apportionments to the states for wildlife-related programs, which include range development and hunter education.

While the researchers push the argument that violent crime is a public health issue, NSSF’s Fatohi noted last year, “…crime isn’t a public health crisis, as much as gun control advocates want to profess it is. Crime is a law enforcement issue. There is no prescription that prevents people who have no respect for life or law to make them not want to harm their victims. There’s no pill to cure that ill-minded intent.”

He reminded readers that “Criminals, typically, don’t legally buy guns. That means they wouldn’t pay the tax. The Department of Justice (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics own reports show that 90 percent of criminals convicted of crimes involving a firearm admit they obtained those firearms through illicit means. In other words, those criminals stole those firearms or bought them on the black market.”

Mark Oliva, managing director of Public Affairs for NSSF, called this new tax suggestion “a non-starter.”

He says the proposal pushes the premise “that law-abiding gun owners must subsidize (and pay an illegal poll tax) for the crimes committed by criminals.”

“I’m not aware of a tax on library cards to combat illiteracy,” Oliva said via email. “Or a tax on voting to combat election interference. The ‘right tax’ comment tells you everything. Criminals aren’t paying the tax when they illegally obtain guns. That would be forced on you and I.”

Whether the idea is a non-starter or may gain some traction, it underscores how wide the gap between common sense and nonsense, critics would argue. The gap is growing wider, and at stake is a funding mechanism which has served the nation’s wildlife programs for generations.

NRA Foundation Triples Down on Not Being Transparent

The NRA Foundation has gone silent after being sued by the NRA. The attorney general of D.C. stepped in and the Foundation still refuses to disclose their leadership structure.

The ongoing saga of the National Rifle Association v. NRA Foundation continues. Last year there were rumors that the Foundation changed their bylaws and they were contacted about their leadership structure. The Foundation did not reply to those queries. Rumors of a conflict turned out to be true, as the NRA filed a lawsuit against the Foundation. To date, the Foundation refuses to publicly disclose who their trustees are. This lack of transparency continues even after the Office of the Attorney General of Washington, D.C. got involved to mediate. The Foundation still won’t disclose who makes up their current leadership structure.

The NRA made several allegations in the lawsuit. NRA alleges the Foundation was illegally using the NRA trademark as well as not distributing funds promised to NRA programs. The Foundation rebukes those claims stating that they are simply upholding their fiduciary duties. The Foundation also moved to have the case dismissed and that request was denied.

The NRA v. NRA Foundation story runs deep and there are many elements to it. Right now, there are a lot of allegations that have been made through the lawsuit and some public comments from NRA officials and leadership. There’s been near complete silence from the NRA Foundation outside of a press release noting the Foundation’s motion to dismiss the NRA’s lawsuit, a public statement after filing, and some decline to comment replies to queries.

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Why you never forget how to ride a bike: The brain stores skills differently than facts, making them harder to forget.

There are some among us who can’t remember which pants they wore yesterday or whether they have plans tonight. Take that person and put them on a bicycle, however, and if they had any kind of comfort level riding in the past, odds are, they’ll have no trouble balancing and steering, even if it’s been years—or decades—since their last ride.

The axiom “like riding a bike” exists for a reason, and it’s supported by ample amounts of evidence that casts light on the weird neuroscience of memory. So why is it, exactly, that we seemingly never forget how to push the pedals and ride?

The many types of memory

On the surface, remembering a skill like cycling and also being able to call to mind your spouse’s birthday seem similar. After all, these are two things you learned in the past, so it stands to reason your brain would process them the same way. That, however, is not the case, explains Dr. Andrew Budson, a professor of neurology at Boston University and co-author of the book Why We Forget and How to Remember Better. 

Humans have three distinct kinds of long-term memories, he explains, each of which are processed, stored, and accessed via different pathways in the brain.

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