Former NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre Has Cost the Gun Rights Movement North Of A Billion Dollars

Former CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, has finally admitted virtually everything that he’s been accused of over the past five years, and a jury has found him liable for padding his own pockets to the tune of $5.5 million.

LaPierre’s hand-picked Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, Woody Phillips was also found liable for $2 million in personal profit at NRA members’ expense, and the NRA itself (really the NRA’s current Board of Directors) was found to have failed in its fiduciary obligations to shepherd and safeguard the members’ assets. Keep in mind that none of this really takes into account the millions paid to “consultants” with nothing of substance to show for it, or the hundreds of millions spent on lawyers and the losses in membership and revenue over the past five years.

All told, the bogus spending and lost income amount to something north of a billion dollars!

Now, New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen has the difficult task of deciding how best to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, there’s an important absence in Justice Cohen’s courtroom: the members of the NRA!

On one side of the table is Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, who, during her election campaign, pledged to destroy the NRA and called it a terrorist organization.
On the other side of the table is the ridiculously overpriced lawyer William Brewer for the NRA (the Board), whose firm has been paid approximately $2 million per month – every month – for the past 5 years.

Every move William Brewer has made in that time has done nothing but dig the NRA’s hole deeper.

AG James and her office have a legal obligation to represent and protect the interests of the members of the NRA. Does anyone believe that she is, or has any interest in living up to that legal obligation? Is the interest of the NRA membership her primary motivation – or any part of her motivation – in this action?

William Brewer, III, the New York lawyer who claims residence in Dallas (and who was a big contributor to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and “Beto” O’Rourke (Seriously!), is supposedly representing the NRA. You’d think that his obligation would be to the NRA members, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. He was initially hired by Wayne LaPierre and has spent almost all of his efforts over the past 5 years making terrible legal moves that gave every appearance of protecting LaPierre at NRA members’ expense. Then, right before the trial started last month, LaPierre stepped down for “health reasons.”

Brewer then declared that the NRA’s position has always been that the Association was the victim of “unscrupulous vendors and insiders,” and, with LaPierre’s departure, the NRA has fixed all of the problems that allowed that victimization…

Sitting next to Brewer at the table isNRA Board President Charles Cotton and the NRA Board of Directors. Like AG James and attorney Brewer, Cotton and the Board have a legal, ethical, and moral duty to act in the best interest of the National Rifle Association – its members.

Well, there’s a problem. Like AG James and Attorney Brewer, President Cotton and the NRA Board appear to have divided loyalties as well.

Not only did they sit by and allow LaPierre, Phillips, and those “unscrupulous vendors” [read friends of Wayne] to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of NRA accounts over at least two decades, when the evidence of the corruption came to light in 2019, they rallied around LaPierre, loudly pronounced him innocent of any wrongdoing, and shunned, defamed, and denounced anyone who dared to even ask questions or suggest an investigation.

Rather than demanding an accounting and miscreants’ heads on pikes, Cotton and the assembled Board took every action to cover Wayne’s increasingly exposed backside.

Even as LaPierre’s story shifted over time, with new lies replacing old lies and newer lies replacing the previous lies, Cotton was at the forefront, repeating the lies – and adding in a few of his own – while defending LaPierre at every turn with the docile Board meekly “believing” and parroting each and every iteration as gospel.

So where is Justice Cohen supposed to turn to find a voice that truly represents NRA members?

He certainly can’t have any confidence that AG James, Attorney Brewer, or the officers or directors of the NRA truly represent the interests of rank-and-file NRA members. With this menagerie of conflicted and self-serving individuals, how is the judge supposed to determine what’s best for the NRA and its members? He should realize that the majority of NRA members who vote in Board elections and keep reelecting the same people to the Board, don’t trust the legacy media at all and get almost all of their trusted information about the NRA from NRA publications, which are controlled by the current regime. If he removes the obviously complicit Board members, how many would be left, and how many of those are incompetent and/or cowardly?

It would be pretty arrogant and presumptuous to suggest that the four of us who are running as reform candidates for NRA Board seats in the current 2024 election (Phil Journey, Rocky Marshall, Dennis Fusaro, and me, Jeff Knox) could speak for all NRA members. We do think we understand most members’ interests better than any of the previously mentioned characters, but who could possibly fairly represent three to four million others, and how is the judge supposed to find those representatives?

As you might have guessed, I have a few ideas on this topic.

The NRA has thousands of volunteers working every day all around the country.

From local state Friends of NRA committees, to Volunteer election Coordinators, to coaches, Range Safety Officers, match coordinators, Hunter Safety Education instructors, gun club officers, state association leaders, and more. Most of those volunteers, though not all of them, work through or under their local state association. The state associations are the natural heirs and beneficiaries of NRA’s assets, and they actively work to serve the needs of the NRA members in their state. While not all NRA members in a state are members of the state association, all members of the state associations are NRA members, and they are typically the most active and involved NRA members in the state.

Judge Cohen needs ready access to people who can authoritatively speak for NRA members. State associations and other NRA state affiliates are in the best position to provide him with that access.

It is my hope that the judge will remove all officers and directors who have failed in their fiduciary obligations to NRA members, appoint a Special Master or Receiver to oversee a thorough housecleaning and reorganization of the Association, and appoint a Members’ Committee, made up of candidates recommended by the various state associations, to help guide and direct that reorganization.

It all sounds simple on paper, but there’s a lot to do in a very short time.

  • The first step is to convince you that this is a good idea that should be pursued.
  • The second step is for you to help convince your local state association leaders that they really need to get involved and run with this idea.
  • The third step is for the state association leaders to petition the judge and convince him that he needs their help. Finally, the judge and the state association leaders will need to come up with some guidelines and processes for nominating candidates and submitting them to the judge.

The key to all of this is the involvement of state association leaders, and the key to getting those leaders involved is your advocacy. This can only happen if large numbers of NRA members begin pushing the idea at their local gun clubs and directly petition their state associations. Begin by sharing this article with your gun-owning friends and the leadership of your local clubs, Friends of NRA committees, and state association leaders. Follow that with calls and emails asking those leaders to take immediate action.

The NRA is literally on the verge of insolvency. The Association’s future is about to be decided by a New York judge who has limited knowledge or experience with the NRA or NRA members, and his only points of reference are the NRA-hating Attorney General, legacy media, and the self-serving NRA “leaders” who got the Association into this mess in the first place. The judge needs an alternative source of information. He needs to give NRA members a voice in the future of their organization, and a Members’ Committee nominated by state associations could provide that voice.

I truly believe Judge Cohen wants to do the right thing. He’s been very fair and reasonable throughout this whole long, drawn-out process. Let’s get the judge what he needs to make good decisions about the future of our organization. Let’s get our state associations to intervene in this case and give our members a real voice in the upcoming trial and the Association’s future.

CHUCK SCHUMER, N.Y. DEMS, CAUGHT ON VIDEO WAVING CHINESE FLAG

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other New York Democrats are in hot water after being caught on video appearing to pay homage to China, which is supposed to be the United States’ most significant rival on the world stage.

Schumer waved the flag “just moments after the organizers of a Lunar New Year event blasted China’s national anthem in the middle of Manhattan,” the National Review reported.

“Schumer’s apparent willingness to wave the flag of a foreign authoritarian government calls attention to the strange nature of the New York political world’s engagements with community events that feature a pro-Beijing twist,” NR reported further.

The Senate leader and other leading New York politicians were onstage at a rally ahead of an annual parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown district with Huang Ping, a hard-line Chinese ambassador who has denied China’s human rights abuses, as well as “Wu Xiaoming, a senior consular official linked to China’s secret police station in New York,” the outlet added.

Besides Schumer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and several New York legislators and city council members were also in attendance.

The “Star-Spangled Banner” and “March of the Volunteers,” the national anthems of China and the United States, respectively, were both performed near the event’s conclusion by a singer.

NR noted further:

At one point during the latter song, Schumer appeared to put his hand over his heart, before quickly removing it. Then, someone in the crowd attempted to hand Hochul — who waved China’s flag at last year’s event — an American and a Chinese flag. She appeared not to accept them. Instead, Schumer grabbed the two flags and vigorously waved them for a moment. 

During his speech, Schumer also called for more immigration from China to the U.S.

“I am proud to say that I am a fighter to get comprehensive immigration reform to allow many more Chinese to come to America,” he said.

In December, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden that he planned to absorb Taiwan at some point, even if it meant doing so by force, during their recent summit in San Francisco, according to sources who spoke to NBC.

The outlet noted that the sources said Xi told Biden that China would unify with Taiwan but did not give a timetable. The Chinese leader added during “a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force,” NBC News reported.

During the meeting, the Chinese leader also addressed public forecasts by U.S. military leaders suggesting that Xi intends to annex Taiwan in 2025 or 2027.

According to two current and one former official briefed on the meeting, Xi informed Biden that such predictions were incorrect because he had not specified a specific timeframe for such actions.

Before the summit, Chinese officials requested that Biden publicly affirm that the U.S. supports China’s pursuit of peaceful reunification with Taiwan and does not endorse Taiwanese independence.

The White House declined this request, NBC News reported.

The newly revealed information sheds light on a pivotal meeting between the two leaders to ease tensions between their respective nations, which did not appear to happen.

Gun Control and Government Corruption Collide in Chicago Suburb

Police in Dolton, Illinois could soon be walking their beat instead of cruising the streets of the Chicago suburb after a bank moved to repossess much of the police department’s fleet of vehicles for non-payment. According to KS StateBank, the village is behind on its payments to the tune of $76,000, and the bank has been unable to reach anyone at City Hall who could rectify the problem.

Burt Odelson, the legislative counsel for the Village of Dolton Board of Trustees, says the board authorized the payments last May, and he and others are pinning the blame for the snafu on Dolton’s anti-gun mayor Tiffany Henyard.

As questions over unpaid bills have come to light in recent months, WGN Investigates previously uncovered exorbitant spending on lavish trips and experiences by Henyard, which included a trip to Las Vegas that cost more than $12,000 and fell in the same month the loan payment on the village vehicles was due.

… Village of Dolton trustees have gone head-to-head with Henyard at village meetings, calling for transparency, so residents know where taxpayer dollars are going.

“The residents of Dolton deserve to know how the money is being spent,” trustee Brittney Norwood told WGN-TV Thursday.

The board of trustees is in charge of overseeing finances, but some said Henyard has restricted them from access to village financial records, leaving them mostly in the dark. On top of that, several trustees told WGN News Thursday they recently heard from several vendors who claimed they were hired by the mayor for work and never paid for their services. The village is in millions in debt, and did not approve of those expenses, Norwood told WGN.

There’ve been questions about Henyard’s spending for years now. Back in 2021, Second Amendment advocate John Boch detailed that the mayor of the village was doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for a team of officers to serve as her personal security detail, even as she was calling on lawmakers to pass more gun control laws that would make it harder for Dolton residents to protect themselves. The three officers, which accounted for almost 1/10th of the entire police force, cost taxpayers about $100,000 a year each, even though they were tasked almost exclusively with shadowing the small-town mayor.

To put that into perspective, that’s the same number of bodyguards that protect Birmingham, Alabama’s mayor but that city has almost ten times the population of Dolton.

At the same time, Mayor Henyard’s armed personal security detail affords her far more protection than the residents of her city enjoy. One of her first acts after taking office involved organizing an “anti-violence” march. She was joined at that march by anti-gun activist and accused pedophile Father Michael Pfleger.

Henyard was actually recalled by residents in 2022, but the recall election was ruled invalid by state courts and she’s remained in office ever since. With the next mayoral election not scheduled until 2025, there’s no telling how much of a financial hole the village will find itself between now and next November, but it sounds like it’s a distinct possibility that the Dolton Police Department is going to be crippled by the repossession of much of its fleet. I’m guessing that Henyard will ensure that there’s still money to pay for her team of bodyguards or hire convicted child sex offenders for positions that require them to enter residents’ homes, but everyone else who lives in the village is going to be impacted by the financial mismanagement at City Hall.

It’s pretty clear given her anti-gun activism that Henyard doesn’t want those folks to be able to protect themselves with a firearm, and based on the complaints from the trustees and their attorneys it might not be long before Dolton PD isn’t in a position to serve and protect the community at large either. What are they supposed to do to keep themselves and their families safe? I guess the obvious answer is “run for mayor”, since it sounds like Henyard is the one person in Dolton who’s guaranteed to be protected by armed individuals who are still legally allowed to purchase and possess so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines for the mayor’s defense.

U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources: Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of “binder” with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.”

Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan exposé claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.”

CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate.

Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.”

The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.”

They should be concerned. The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series.

Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret.

The ”missing binder” story has several variants. Sources offer differing answers on the question of whether anything of consequence is missing. They give mixed accounts of Trump’s frantic last efforts to declassify Russia-related material.

But nearly everyone Public and Racket spoke to agreed that the tale obscured a broader and more important story.

Dating back to the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” in 2018 exposing the corruption of the FISA application process, senior intelligence officials, including Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, have repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation.

They had good reason to obstruct the release of these documents.

More Banana Republic every day.


Biden DOJ arrests former FBI informant who said Biden took bribes from Ukrainian energy company
Alexander Smirnov, 43, was arrested on Thursday at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

On Thursday, special counsel David Weiss charged a former FBI informant who claimed President Biden was bribed by Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma. The indictment claims the informant lied about Biden’s alleged role in the business dealings.

Alexander Smirnov, 43, was arrested on Thursday at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, per CNN.

Smirnov has been accused in the indictment that his story to the FBI “was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office.”

The informant, who has now been identified as Smirnov, provided testimony to House Republicans and their investigation into the Biden family’s alleged illegal foreign business dealings. He claimed that Burisma executives paid President Biden and his son Hunter Biden $5 million each to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who had been investigating Burisma at the time.

The informant claimed that the bribery occurred while Biden was vice president serving under Barack Obama.

The indictment states, “In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office.”

“In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy,” it continues.

Only People As Senile As Joe Biden Is Can’t See How Senile Joe Biden Is

You’d have to be as senile as Joe Biden is not to realize just how senile Joe Biden is. The man can’t remember which world leaders are alive and which are dead. His staff could put JFK on his calendar, and he’d get excited and dressed up. When the report came out this week calling him an “elderly man with a poor memory,” there was shock on the left, then about 20 minutes of honest analysis about the implications of that. Then it shifted. The outrage moved to the fact that anyone would dare report such a thing and that the Attorney General would allow it to be written in an official report. What no one did was deny it.

A few commentators tried to downplay it, but no one in the media insisted the President was even as sharp as a butter knife. They couldn’t; we have eyes. (Apologies to blind people, but how blind could you be if you’re reading this?)

The man is not well; if he had any family members who loved him more than they love their proximity to power and the attention and opportunities that afford them, they wouldn’t put him through this. But Joe has been a short-tempered, entitled jackass his entire life. People like to surround themselves with similar people, if only because decent people avoid them like the plague. And when it comes to family, the apple doesn’t rot far from the tree.

Jill, Hunter, his brother James, and all the random Bidens with LLCs in their names who, since they do literally nothing to earn the money that randomly shows up in their accounts from overseas, have to at least be in on the grift by omission. If any of them cared, wouldn’t they stop this humiliation? I can think of a couple of people I really disliked in high school who I wouldn’t mind seeing shuffling, confused off a stage, or looking confused as to whether or not they simply passed gas or some post-digested food while being asked a basic question. Still, I don’t let those thoughts go very far because, even with them, I’d feel too bad to enjoy it. I’d like to help. I wouldn’t, but I’d at least consider it for a few minutes.

Joe has no one who dislikes him only slightly, who feels bad enough for him to put that aside and have “the talk” he needs to have, probably a number of times.

Instead, he must get a steady stream of reassurance. That it works is another sign of just how far gone he is.

By the way, have you noticed how no MSNBC host has called for the release of the video of his discussion with the special prosecutor? Just like the release of Biden’s bank records would clear up so much about where his money came from or whether or not he’d actually “loaned” his son and brother a bunch of money they curiously “repaid” with about 10 percent (for the big guy) of what they received from foreign governments, the release of this video, or even just the audio or transcript, would demonstrate the mental capacity of Joe Biden as it exists today.

That’s what terrifies Democrats.

Rather than even risk the naked truth being shown, they adopted the Clinton defense.

So much of what the Democrats do in the face of corruption is what they learned from Bill and Hillary. With Bill, it was denied for as long as possible; then, once they broke out the black light and saw he’d definitely been there, they declared it to be an old story and insisted everyone had already moved on. With Hillary, it was a lie for as long as possible, then when the truth comes out, act indignantly about someone telling the truth because that’s not what they’re supposed to do.

James Comey laid out one hell of a damning case against Hillary’s abuse and mishandling of classified material, then announced he’d decided she will be allowed to get away with it. The outrage wasn’t over Clinton’s lies or illegal, reckless actions, it was over how Comey wasn’t supposed to point out all of her corrupt actions, just say she’d done nothing wrong and walk away.

Comey became the story, not the lawbreaking. He’s spent every day since trying to suck up to the left over it.

The left tried to make Special Counsel Robert Hur the issue. Democrats were mad that he actually laid out the case he uncovered about how a US Senator managed to remove classified material from skiff (sic) [SCIF], which is highly illegal and would send everyone reading this (even the blind people) to prison for a long time, and how a Vice President took classified material home even though he had zero authority to do it. And he never returned any of it, just let it flop around his various offices and garage, all of which were easily accessible to his junkie son who just so happened to be “doing business” in the countries those US intelligence documents were about.

It’s just the damnedest coincidence, isn’t it?

Democrats would much rather make a stupid argument about “How dare he?” then discuss why the White House has to have Biden enter and exit Air Force One from the kiddie door rather than add a senior assist chairlift on the adult stairs.

They know Joe isn’t up to the job, they’re just terrified it will become so obvious that even the people who don’t pay attention to the news will see it. That’s it; that’s what they’re scrambling to hide. That is what Hur’s report showed. And that’s why he will be the target of left-wing vitriol from now through November.

Robert Mueller, or more accurately the people who propped him up (he might make Biden look spry and alive by comparison), did to Donald Trump exactly what Robert Hur did to Joe Biden – lay out what their investigation found and explained why they didn’t pursue criminal charges. They were cool with it when Mueller’s team did it, even praising him, but with Hur, it’s somehow an outrage. Of course, the only difference between Biden and Trump is Trump didn’t commit any crimes; the Russia hoax was a lie. Biden actually did steal classified material and disseminate it.

Whatever, they don’t care. The only thing that matters to the left is the party to which someone belongs; everything else is foreplay. Unfortunately, in the end, we’re all the ones who are getting screwed. And Joe Biden is blissfully unaware of any of it.

For your consideration.
I too, ‘sorta’ agree with Ms. Hammer.
And I totally agree with Mr. Richarson.


I Actually Agree With Marion On This

As weird as it may seem I find myself somewhat in agreement with Marion Hammer. I was forwarded an email from her to the NRA-EVP Search Committee.

She made the point that the committee needs to look outside the current NRA operations for the person that can be a success as the next CEO and EVP of the NRA.

Here is her email and the members of the committee:

TO: The Members of the NRA-EVP Search Committee:

Congressman Bob Barr – Chairman
Professor David Coy
Carol Frampton, Esq.
Curtis Jenkins, Esq.
Sheriff Jay Printz
Barbara Rumpel
Chief Blaine Wade

Friends,

At the risk of being redundant, I must say that these are tough times for the NRA.  The right leader or leaders is essential for NRA’s future.  I say leaders because I’m not sure that you can find one person who can do the job.

You might need someone to be the public face of NRA. To do the TV and all media coverage and essentially be the person out front representing NRA and the work we do.

You also might need to find someone to be the workhorse.  Someone to make the tough decisions about running the day to day operations who won’t be afraid to “break some eggs to make an omelet”  and who isn’t afraid to terminate people who are only interested in themselves and not the NRA and our cause.

I seriously doubt that anyone currently involved with NRA operations meets either need.  Don’t be afraid to look outside of NRA for fresh new leaders who care about NRA.  Our members are depending on you to find the right person or persons.

When I look at you, I see 2 current NRA Officers, 2 lawyers, 2 law enforcement representatives and one average person.  None of you is what I would consider a high end business person, yet we must look at the business perspective.

Whatever you decide, Is up to you.  I wouldn’t want to be in your position with the world watching me and expecting perfection.  Nonetheless, you must live in a “fishbowl” until the job is done, and then you must live with your decisions.

Please take your time and be thorough. Please be transparent with the NRA Board and don’t be afraid to reach out to Board members for information and advice. Always remember that there are good business people with incredible business knowledge on the Board who are there to serve.  Use them.

I wish you all the very best of luck as you embark on a mission that is essential for the future of NRA and our members.

Marion Hammer

Now as to what bothers me in all of this.

The committee is composed of the same old Board members who allowed Wayne to get away with his grifting, who didn’t object to Brewer’s billing, and who allowed a whole host of things that has led the NRA to be reduced to a shadow of its former self. Unless I am greatly mistaken and we the members get really lucky, anyone chosen by this bunch will not renovate nor reinvigorate the NRA. The organization will continue to muddle along with same old mindset appealing to an ever aging membership.

Interesting that Buz Mills was left off the list. Likewise, it is interesting Charles Cotton is off the list. Could this be so that Cotton could be their pick for the next EVP? God forbid!

Mastermind of Mexico Lawsuit Against Gun Makers Admits It’s a Backdoor Route to Gun Control

Gun control activists are thrilled that a federal appeals court has allowed the government of Mexico’s lawsuit against several major U.S. gun makers to proceed, at least for the time being, because they’re hoping that the litigation will lead to the obliteration of the firearms industry.

A new op-ed in Newsweek from Jonathan Lowy, head of Global Action Against Violence, makes that clear. Lowy, who was formerly the general counsel and vice president of Brady’s legal team, is the architect of Mexico’s lawsuit, though you have scroll all the way to the bottom of his op-ed to discover his role in the litigation.

From the outset of his piece, however, Lowy makes his hopes for the lawsuit clear: a way to impose all kinds of new gun control restrictions without a vote in Congress or even unconstitutional executive actions by

Joe Biden.

U.S. gun laws are broken. Even when states muster the political will to enact reasonable restrictions, for example as California did recently, they get blocked in federal court. With federal and state action on guns stymied, the gun violence epidemic can seem hopeless.

But now there’s finally some hope, and it’s coming from outside the United States. A federal appeals court just issued the most significant opinion ever to go against the gun industry, ruling that Mexico has the right to sue manufacturers to hold them accountable for gun trafficking and gun violence.

It’s always amusing to me when anti-gunners like Lowy use the phrase “reasonable restriction”, which implies there’s some gun control law that he would find unreasonable. I’ve been covering Lowy’s anti-2A efforts for two decades now, and I can’t recall him ever concluding that a gun control bill goes too far. Lowy has described the Heller decision as a “radical expansion of prior precedent limiting the Second Amendment to well-regulated militias—that is, today’s National Guard”, and warned ahead of the Bruen decision that striking down “may issue” licensing regimes “would have stark—and deadly—consequences in the real world”; a prediction not borne out by reality.

Lowy’s hope, in other words, isn’t that the courts will decide that gun makers and sellers have to jump through additional hoops before they can lawfully transfer a firearm. He’s aiming for the eradication of the firearms industry, and he’s using Mexico’s unwillingness to confront cartel violence head-on to do it, even as he promises that gun owners wouldn’t feel any impact if the courts ultimately accept his arguments.

Mexico has done what the U.S. failed to do: bring an effective lawsuit that could change the way guns are sold in this country and trafficked to others. It’s part of a promising new movement, led by my organization, Global Action on Gun Violence, to bring international pressure on the U.S. gun industry and policymakers to crack down on the illegal gun market like the rest of the world does. While the U.S. has abundantly demonstrated it can’t or won’t take effective action on guns, international actors, unconstrained by our gun-friendly politics, can and will.

The resulting reforms will not prevent law-abiding people from buying guns, but they will stop the supply of guns to straw buyers, traffickers, and other criminals. The U.S. stands to benefit as much or more than Mexico.

All you have to do is read Mexico’s initial complaint, which Lowy helped to create, to know what a lie that is.

Continue reading “”

A Simple Moment of Weakness
Reconnecting with History—Special Installment

The President’s job—and if someone sufficiently vain and stupid enough is picked he won’t realize this—is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it.” —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

My phone buzzed early in the evening. A message from one of my paid subscribers telling me about an impending press conference by one of my least favorite subspecies of humanity: a politician. She requested that I watch the conference and give my take on the potential historical significance of the event and/or share some history that might inform her understanding of the event.

This is not my idea of a “good time.” I would literally rather explain the evolution of torture techniques during the Spanish Inquisition—that, at least, would have a flavor of the lurid to leaven the horror on display.

Nevertheless, I allowed myself to be convinced. I need to keep my paid supporters happy (and yes, if you’re a paid supporter, I will pay attention to your requests for topics—I may not always fulfill them the next day, but they will go into the hopper. I’m an honest intellectual whore: I know how to sing for my supper). Besides, the event in question turned out to be a lot more important than I was hoping it would be. So here we go.

The Immediate Context

To get us all on the same page, here’s the skinny:

During his years as Vice President, Joe Biden appropriated a bunch of classified documents, some of which wound up in file boxes in his garage. On the face of it, this seems an even more egregious a violation of the official documents handling laws than did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server (a matter on which the DOJ declined prosecution) and former President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of maybe-declassified-then-reclassified-but-maybe-not documents in his part-time residence at Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida (for which he is currently being prosecuted).

The special prosecutor’s report on the Biden matter dropped today. You can read it here. You can read a Twitter thread digesting it here (warning: partisan account).

Tucked among the pages were an implied justification for declining to prosecute (the administration cooperated with the investigation, and without obstruction charges in the mix the rest becomes harder to prosecute) and a startling explicit justification: President Biden, the most powerful man on the planet, is incompetent to stand trial.

Relevant excerpt from the prosecutor’s report
Another relevant excerpt

Biden held a press conference in response:

It did not go well.

You can watch it for yourself here:

 

Even as Biden declared himself competent and his memory sound, he forgot the name of the church from which his son’s memorial rosary was procured, he mixed up the President of Egypt with the President of Mexico, he inadvertently (if subtly) changed American foreign policy with regards to the current war between Israel and Hamas, he seemed unsure for a fleeting moment whether his dead son was, in fact, dead [3m11s], and he claimed responsibility for the crimes of which the special prosecutor had just declined prosecution (even while denying they took place and dissembling about their nature).

In my lifetime so far, I have seen seven Presidents. If I were to evaluate them by competence (Note: This is NOT a comment on the policies or politics of any of these men), I’d characterize them thusly:
Two of them were pretty-okay (Reagan and Bush 1), one was not politically astute (Carter), and then there was the parade of the most incompetent, self-involved, and corrupt dip shits ever to occupy the Oval Office, each one worse than the last (Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, and Trump—the first two of these were, at least, capable of holding productive conversations with other people in government, despite their inability to be consistently interested in the actual prosecution of their own avowed policy agendas).

Even if he hadn’t done so before, Biden revealed in this press conference that he is, hands down, the least-fit occupant of the Oval Office in the history of the Republic (which, in light of his four immediate predecessors, is a hell of an accomplishment).

What Happens Now?

In a “normal” world—which is to say, the artificial world my generation was taught about in our high school history classes, which is far from normal—Joe Biden would be removed from office tomorrow, on 25th Amendment grounds, by his own party. The party itself would not lose power, as they still control congress and would still control the White House, and they would head into the November Election from a position of moral strength: “We care so much about the country that we will remove this good man who isn’t up to the job anymore.”

Failing that, he would be impeached by his own party.

And, failing that, he would be locked out of a brokered Democratic Convention and not allowed to run for a second term.

But that “normal world” is long gone.

Continue reading “”

NRA Board Elections: Support the Four for Reform Candidates

Four candidates dedicated to reforming the troubled NRA will be on the ballot for election to the NRA Board of Directors this year. Judge Phil Journey, Rocky MarshallDennis Fusaro, and me, Jeff Knox, all qualified for the ballot by petition of the members.

We are encouraging people to vote for only these four and no one else. This is called “Bullet Voting” and gives your votes more weight, increasing the odds of us winning seats.

Ballots are supposed to be in the March issue of NRA magazines for those members eligible to vote.

Winning a Board seat without the support of the current regime at the NRA is historically close to impossible.

Since only NRA Life Members, and those Annual Members who have been members for at least 5 consecutive years, without interruption, are eligible to vote, and since those eligible voters are only known to the NRA itself, and that information is not available to us, we have no choice but to use a shotgun approach in our attempts to get our message out. If we had access to the voter list, we’d reach out directly to those voters. If we had tens of thousands of dollars in our campaign coffers, we’d have placed ads in the various NRA magazines. But we don’t have access to the list, and we don’t have unlimited resources, so the best we can do is try to reach as many potential voters as we can through broad channels like AmmoLand News, email blasts, and asking others to help spread the word.

Each year, the NRA sends out around 2.5 million ballots to Voting Members, but only about 5% of those are ever returned, meaning that almost 2 million ballots are left on the shelf, taken to local libraries, relegated to the magazine rack next to the toilet, and eventually thrown away. Finding and activating those un-voted ballots this year could be the key to getting the reform candidates elected, so we need your help and the help of gun media nationwide.

  • He could order them to clean up their act and go forth to sin no more – which would leave the same people in charge who allowed this mess in the first place.
  • Or he could go so far as to dissolve the current board, throw out the current election, and order a new election, taking additional months.
  • He could also appoint a Special Master or overseer to take charge of reorganizing the NRA.

He has a lot of leeway and options, and we can only guess at what he might do, so we’re trying to position ourselves in the best position to participate in the resurrection of the Association, whatever the judge decides.

There’s also a good chance that the NRA will appeal any decision that goes against them, resulting in more delays and more NRA member money being poured into the pockets of lawyers. For the time being, our focus must be on getting our four reform candidates elected.

2024 NRA Board Election Reform Candidates Whos Who
2024 NRA Board Election Reform Candidates

Continue reading “”

Sen. Chris Murphy: the people we care about most

A gaffe is commonly defined as when a politician inadvertently tells the truth and/or reveals his true intentions. During this election season, we’re seeing a bumper crop of gaffes, and not all by Joe Biden. Sen. Chris Murphy, among the most rabid Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) congress critters, dropped a classic:

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Wednesday that the Democratic Party’s push for a path to citizenship in border legislation has failed the people they “care about most” in this country, “undocumented Americans.”

MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Murphy about the border security bill and said, rather than pushing for a path to citizenship in border legislation negotiations like the party has in the past, Democrats were using Ukraine funding. 

“Well, I mean, Chris, that’s been a failed play for 20 years. So you are right that that has been the Democratic strategy for 30 years, maybe, and it has failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country,” Murphy said.

Oooops. Murphy said the quiet part out loud.

“This is also not 2013 any longer, when we ran that play last. Back then, there were a couple hundred people showing up every day applying for asylum. Today, on some days, there are 8,000. And the reality is that the bulk of this country does not think that’s right or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border,” the Democratic senator added. 

Ah! That’s why the failed border bill allowed in a minimum of two million a year: Murphy and the other D/s/cs are honoring the will of the electorate! That would be the electorate they’re trying to import, not actual Americans.

Murphy said there was a temptation among Democrats to run the “same play” they always run, but added they had a responsibility to adjust to what the country wants, because the play has not worked.

Which “play?” Ignore the law and illegally allow millions upon millions into the country, or pass a bill that ignores the law and illegally allows millions upon millions into the country, but pretends they’re not doing that and blames Republicans?

“Now this bill still had in it some very important things for migrant rights, including a right to representation and earlier work permits, and the biggest expansion of visas in 30 years. It’s not a pathway to citizenship, but it is something substantial for people that actually care about migrants,” he continued.

Of course. “The people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country,” have rights, which trump the rights of American citizens because they’re “migrant rights.”  I think that’s the Ninety Third Amendment…or something.

Hayes asked Murphy if he was “proud” of the bill they put forward and wondered if he believed this would improve things at the southern border.

I think you are watching the issue of migration take down left and center-left governments all around the world right now. I think we’re at the point where if we didn’t bring some sense of order to the border, if we didn’t make a big down payment on reform to the asylum system, we were gonna have a really hard time holding on to a consensus in this country that we should keep legal immigration pathways alive,” Murphy responded during his media appearance.

Wait a minute. Didn’t Murphy just say: “the reality is that the bulk of this country does not think that’s right [illegal immigration] or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border?” And now we have to maintain “a consensus in this country that we should keep legal immigration pathways alive?!” I’m sure that’s Republican’s fault too.

“And so, I am of the belief that this is a moment where you had to show some big bipartisan momentum and progress on the border, or you would never, ever have the ability to try to rescue the undocumented Americans that desperately need to help,” he added.

“Undocumented Americans.” “Migrant rights.”  Americans don’t want illegal immigration, but they’re worried about losing their consensus to keep illegal immigration alive. We must “rescue the undocumented Americans that desperately need to help.”

Well, at least Murphy is consistent about one thing: the people about which he, and the D/s/c Party, most cares are illegal immigrants, including terrorists, people with communicable Third World diseases, members of the Chinese military, few of which intend to assimilate, and many of which wish us deadly harm. And aren’t “undocumented Americans” everybody in the world not an actual American? I wonder if Murphy is purposely saying that?

What’s truly disconcerting is how many Black and Hispanic Americans are going to vote for whoever the D/s/c candidate is in November. Count among them millions of illegals, and the dead, who virtually exclusively vote D/s/c. Maybe that’s why Murphy cares so much for those folks.

Why Self-Defense Is The Only Type Of Violence The Left Won’t Endorse

After years of anti-cop rhetoric, violence is out of control in America’s cities. Smash and grabs, sidewalk attacks and old ladies being mugged in broad daylight — all just factored into the cost of living a metropolitan lifestyle. But these are not simply passive inevitabilities that somehow come to pass. They are active policy choices of a revolutionary left, firmly in control of every major city, that sees violence as a tool toward its political aims. In fact, there is only one type of violence the left will not condone — and the key to understanding it lies in these political aims.

The radical left may talk often of high-minded goals, but their ultimate goal is to eradicate hierarchy — the central push of the “equity” agenda. All must be made equal in order for all to be equally free. For classical liberals, this meant equal treatment under the law, unaffected by circumstances of birth. Yet for the radical outgrowth, this now means leveling all aspects of genuine human diversity. However, they do not truly seek egalitarian reforms, but merely to rejigger any form of traditional hierarchy (much of which had already been dismantled by their liberal forebears) and instead place themselves at the top. So the attack on hierarchy really becomes a spiteful, resentful attack on any form of tradition. This is the true nature of the radical left.

Traditional morality posits that the criminal is the “oppressor” of the “victim,” whom he victimizes with his crime. This has been the basis of virtually every legal system throughout human history. Yet radical left morality flips this notion on its head. The new “victim” becomes the criminal himself, victimized by the injustices of a hierarchical society that drives him to desperation: the thief stealing to feed his family or violence as the “language of the unheard.” The person on the receiving end becomes merely a casualty in the putsch to upend traditional morality, while the priests of the new morality consolidate their right to rule.

Continue reading “”

Why Burn Books When You Can Bury Them? The White House Pressured Amazon to Target Dissenting Books

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Monday revealed yet another facet of the Biden Administration’s sprawling censorship system that targeted dissenting books. It appears that, as with social media companies, it succeeded in getting the company not to promote disfavored books.

Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan revealed on X that the White House was directly involved in the censorship campaign. That includes a 2021 email from one Biden official asking to discuss “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?”

Amazon in turn appears to ask only how high the Biden White House wants it to jump on censorship: “[i]s the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”

After the meeting, Amazon confirmed in an email that it was actively doing what the government demanded in suppressing sales by not promoting disfavored books: “As a reminder, we did enable Do Not Promote for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective on 3/9, and will review additional handling options for these books with you.”

This effort notably parallels demands from Democratic leaders who have called for enlightened algorithms to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”

Continue reading “”

BLUF
In other words, look at how consistently inconsistent AI already is in its biases, without the intervention of powerful government actors. Imagine just how much more biased it can get — and how difficult it would be for us to recognize it — if we hand the keys over to the government.

A Tale of Two Congressional Hearings (and several AI poems)

We showed up to warn about threats to free speech from AI. Half the room couldn’t care less.

Earlier today, I served as a witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which discussed (among other things) whether it’s a good idea for the government to regulate artificial intelligence and LLMs. For my part, I was determined to warn everyone not only about the threat AI poses to free speech, but also the threats regulatory capture and a government oligopoly on AI pose to the creation of knowledge itself.

I was joined on the panel by investigative journalist Lee Fang, reporter Katelynn Richardson, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Norman Eisen. Richardson testified about her reporting on government funding the development of tools to combat “misinformation” through a National Science Foundation grant program. As FIRE’s Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr noted, such technology could be misused in anti-speech ways.

“The government doesn’t violate the First Amendment simply by funding research, but it’s troubling when tax dollars are used to develop censorship technology,” said Terr. “If the government ultimately used this technology to regulate allegedly false online speech, or coerced digital platforms to use it for that purpose, that would violate the First Amendment. Given government officials’ persistent pressure on social media platforms to regulate misinformation, that’s not a far-fetched scenario.”

Lee Fang testified about his reporting on government involvement in social media moderation decisions, most recently how a New York Times reporter’s tweet was suppressed by Twitter (now X) following notification from a Homeland Security agency. Fang’s investigative journalism on the documents X released after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform has highlighted the risk of “jawboning,” or the use of government platforms to effectuate censorship through informal pressure.

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed that it seemed like we were having (at least) two different hearings at once. Although there were several tangents, the discussion on the Republican side was mostly about the topic at hand. On the Democratic side, unfortunately, it was overwhelmingly about how Trump has promised to use the government to target his enemies if he wins a second term. It’s not a trivial concern, but the hearing was an opportunity to discuss the serious threats posed by the use of AI censorship tools in the hands of a president of either party, so I wish there had been more interest in the question at hand on the Democratic side of the committee.

Continue reading “”