Category: Crap For Brains

Editorial calling for magazine ban misses tons of points

The day I see a pro-gun editorial from the Chicago Sun-Times will likely be the day that sites like this aren’t needed anymore. It’ll mean that we’ve so completely and totally won the gun war that gun control will be relegated to the dustbin of history; a museum-piece idea dead and gone, sitting on a shelf like eugenics and phrenology.

But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Today, they’re pushing for state-wide gun control. In particular, they want a magazine ban restricting people to just 10 rounds.

A new gun threat is painting a larger target on everyone’s backs. Lawmakers should figure out how to curb it.

As Frank Main, Tom Schuba and Stephanie Zimmermann of the Sun-Times and Chip Mitchell of WBEZ reported in Sunday’s Sun-Times, extended-capacity magazines — which hold 10 or more bullets and can be used with handguns as well as rifles — have become more common despite bans in some places.

Moreover, a surging number of guns with illegal attachments called “switches” on the street, which convert guns from semi-automatic to automatic weapons, are being seized by the police department, according to the investigation.

A shooter with a semi-automatic gun needs to squeeze the trigger every time a shot is fired. A shooter with an automatic gun needs only to squeeze and hold the trigger, and the gun will continue to fire, causing far more damage.

When weapons with high-capacity magazines are converted to automatic and are easily obtainable, young people who carry guns will want them. But we can’t afford to have these murderous weapons even further embedded into the gun culture.

When combined with illegal devices that convert guns into fully automatic firearms, the large magazines can spread almost unimaginable devastation and death in a matter of moments.

Twelve states ban high-capacity magazines. Illinois should join them.

That’s right. Illinois needs a magazine ban because an illegal device that cannot be possessed lawfully anywhere in the nation is a thing.

Yet what tickles me the most is how little they’ve thought this through.

Sure, such magazines are restricted in many areas of Illinois, but the argument is that criminals just go to where they’re legal and buy them, so by restricting them statewide, that can’t happen.

Really?

This is the same city notorious for blaming Indiana for the guns in criminal hands, and they think somehow these folks who get guns from another state won’t be able to get magazines?

Hell, they’ll get them easier.

In Indiana, there are still federal requirements for the sale of firearms from a licensed dealer. Yet criminals commit a crime in order to obtain these guns so they can sell them to Chicago criminals.

Magazines have no such checks or requirements. Anyone can stroll into a gun store and buy a higher-capacity magazine in any state without even having to show an ID.

If federal regulations and Illinois state law can’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals, how does the Chicago Sun-Times think a magazine ban in the state will? Especially when all the rules on the planet aren’t keeping these people from getting full-auto switches.

And yes, magazines can be 3D printed, which makes a ban even more pointless.

But do you want to know who will get hosed over by a magazine ban? The law-abiding citizens who might well need more ammo capacity to combat the heavily armed criminals who will still get these magazines, switches, guns, and literally anything else they want.

Newspaper editorials are often used to advocate for various laws. However, this is a prime example of how those who sit on those editorial boards often don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Always read articles at the Duke University blog using this simple key:
Judge strikes down gun law -> Wrong decision, confusing, it’s Bruen’s fault
Judge upholds gun law -> Right decision, they did their best to make sense of Bruen

Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s Ban on Firearms in Places of Worship

On October 20, a federal judge in the Western District of New York issued a decision in Hardaway v. Nigrelli granting a motion for a temporary restraining order and enjoining New York’s ban on carrying firearms in “any place of worship or religious observation.”  Notably, the decision by District Judge John Sinatra reached an opposite conclusion about this specific piece of New York’s sensitive-places list than an earlier decision by Judge Glenn Suddaby of the Northern District in Antonyuk v. Hochul (Judge Suddaby’s decision was appealed to the Second Circuit and is stayed pending that appeal).

The plaintiffs in Hardaway are a reverend and a bishop in upstate New York, both of whom have active concealed-carry licenses.  The plaintiffs allege that they consistently carried guns on church property “for self-defense and to keep the peace,” under New York’s prior law which permitted license-holders to carry in most locations, and would continue doing so but for the state’s new law which designated places of worship (among many other locations) as sensitive places where guns are prohibited.  The judge first engaged in a lengthy standing analysis, ultimately finding that the plaintiffs face a sufficiently imminent threat of prosecution, based on statements by New York politicians and law enforcement officials that the new law would be actively enforced.

Moving on to the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits of their Second Amendment claims, the judge summarized the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence, including Bruen, and applied the Bruen test.  New York cited laws passed by four states and two territories between 1870-1890 “that contained place of worship firearm restrictions.”  Relying on Bruen, the judge held that these post-ratification laws were insufficient to constitute a historical “tradition” because they did not “show endurance over time”—rather, in the judge’s view, the laws were “outliers,” “a handful of seemingly spasmodic enactments involving a small minority of jurisdictions governing a small minority of population” passed long after 1791.  According to the judge, “[t]hese enactments are far too remote, far too anachronistic, and very much outliers—insufficient, then, in the search for an American tradition.”  Emphasizing the continued danger that Americans face outside of the home, the judge found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims.

The judge also rejected New York’s argument that churches are analogous to historical sensitive places such as legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses.  The judge found that places of worship are unsecured and visited regularly by congregants, whereas the government buildings historically designated as sensitive are heavily secured areas that citizens visit “sporadically.”  The judge also held that “[t]he State’s argument that places of worship are analogous because the exclusion supposedly also minimizes the chance of violence between those with opposing views [was] undeveloped and, in any event, belie[d] the non-confrontational purpose drawing people to houses of worship in the first place.”

Judge Sinatra granted a TRO enjoining New York’s ban on guns in “places of worship or religious observation,” effective immediately with no stay, and set a preliminary injunction hearing for November 3.  There is no indication that the state has yet appealed the decision or requested a stay pending appeal, which would mean that the restraining order is currently in effect.

Hardaway reaches a contrary result to Antonyuk, which just three weeks ago upheld New York’s prohibition on guns in places of worship contingent on the state construing the provision to include an exception “for those persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace.”  In Antonyuk, Judge Suddaby weighed the exact same set of historical laws relied upon in Hardaway:  laws passed between 1870 and 1890 in Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Missouri, and the Arizona and Oklahoma territories.  But Judge Suddaby found that three historical laws constitute a tradition and, applying that threshold, upheld New York’s places of worship prohibition with an added exception for those responsible for keeping the peace in a church.  Judge Sinatra, on the other hand, used some unspecified higher number of laws as the cutoff.  Four state and two territorial laws were not sufficient, in his view, to form a tradition and were all outliers.  It’s difficult to say which approach is more faithful to Bruen, but—given such disparate outcomes at the district-court level—it’s clear that some guidance from the appellate courts is urgently needed.

The Hardaway opinion also highlights an issue lurking within Bruen’s historical test which I’ve written about before: judges seem all too willing to credit “colonial” history, even when that history is much further in time from the Founding than contrary post-ratification history.  Bruen states that “late-19th-century evidence cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.”  But “earlier evidence” here should only be persuasive to the extent it might illustrate the scope of the right established at the Founding.  The further back in time from the Founding one ventures, the less likely that evidence is to shed light on the meaning of the amendment ratified in 1791.  Both Antonyuk and Hardaway point to early-1600s laws requiring white men to carry guns to church, with Judge Sinatra’s opinion noting that New York’s late-1800s evidence is suspect especially in light of “colonial-era enactments that, in fact, mandated such carry at places of worship.”  The judge cites a 2014 law review article by Benjamin Boyd titled Take Your Guns to Church.

Many of the colonial-era laws Boyd catalogues long pre-date the Founding and ratification of the Bill of Rights (his article cites to other sources for some of these colonial-era laws, including Clayton Cramer’s Colonial Firearms Regulation).  Boyd starts his colonial journey with a 1619 Virginia law requiring weapons to be brought to church on the Sabbath.  Of eight colonial laws summarized in Boyd’s article, six were passed between 1619 and 1643—the other two were passed in 1738 and 1743, respectively.  So, the vast majority of these laws were passed 150 years or more prior to ratification of the Bill of Rights, in British colonies.  Yet, to Judge Sinatra, a law passed in a U.S. state in 1870—80 years after ratification and a mere two years after the 14th Amendment was ratified—is “far too remote [and] far too anachronistic.”  How can that possibly be?  Bruen itself cautioned that a colonial law passed “roughly a century before the founding sheds little light on how to properly interpret the Second Amendment” and noted that “[h]istorical evidence that long predates either date [1791 or 1868] may not illuminate the scope of the right if linguistic or legal conventions changed in the intervening years.”

As Dru Stevenson has observed, “eras in the distant past seem closer together in our perception than recent events separate[d] by the same amount of time.”  This is a documented phenomenon in psychology known as “temporal compression.”  Researchers have found “evidence that memories are [] logarithmically compressed with time: the farther from the present the memory, the less discriminable it is from an earlier memory.”  It stands to reason that historical analysis is susceptible to this same fallacy, and that judges and lawyers must guard against it when examining the historical record.  It is tempting to lump all of colonial history together as close in time to 1776—the most salient historical date, the signing of the Declaration of Independence—because that is how our minds naturally perceive history.  But the colonial period, which one might date to the 1607 establishment of Jamestown, stretched for almost 200 years.  Why should a cluster of laws passed in certain British colonies in the early 1600s be more indicative of an American tradition codified in 1791 than laws passed from 1870-1890 (a conclusion that Hardaway and other decisions treat as obvious)?

Moreover, the two “bring your gun to church” laws passed closer in time to the actual Founding, in Virginia and South Carolina in 1738 and 1743, respectively, warrant a closer look.  As Carol Anderson describes in her recent book The Second, Southern militia and gun laws in the 1700s were motivated by “an overwhelming fear among whites of the enslaved’s capacity and desire for retribution” that led certain colonies to pass laws effectively deputizing the white male militia into a slave-patrol force also prepared to suppress any slave rebellion.  And Virginia and South Carolina were the two colonies with the consistently highest slave populations.  By 1710 Blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina, and, as of the 1780 census, South Carolina was 53.9% Black and Virginia was 41% Black—the highest percentages by far in what would become the original 13 states.  There is little doubt, then, that the Virginia and South Carolina laws requiring militiamen to attend church armed were intended to address concerns about slave uprisings.  Indeed, Professor Anderson describes how the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina was conducted “[u]nder the cover of the Sabbath.”

These two laws were a direct response to slave-uprising concerns and not a recognition of any kind of widely-accepted right to bring guns to places of worship.  Notably, the very fact that South Carolina’s law was enacted in response to Stono suggests that the idea of having guns in church was not longstanding or deeply-rooted; rather, it was necessitated by the perceived exigency of potentially imminent slave rebellions and the need to keep Blacks enslaved in the colony.

It’s willful ignorance, a supercilious crap-for-brains condition of the elite

Biden’s Bottomless Ignorance on Guns

These days President Joe Biden seems confused when it comes to just about everything. However, the longtime gun control advocate still saves some of his most fallacious and unintelligible comments for the firearms debate. Biden’s latest comments on gun legislation suggest that the president lacks even a rudimentary understanding of how firearms operate.

On October 23, Biden hosted NowThis News (a subsidiary of left-wing Vox Media) at the White House for a question and answer session. During an exchange with a questioner, Biden touted legislation he supports that would ban commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms. The addled politician stated, “my legislation says there can be no more than eight bullets in a round, OK?”

No Joe, you’re not OK.

The most charitable interpretation of Biden’s gibberish would be that the president is seeking to prohibit firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of eight rounds. However, even if this was what the enfeebled politician was attempting to communicate, the policy is incoherent.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that the Second Amendment protects the use of arms “in common use” for lawful purposes. Americans own hundreds of millions of firearm magazines with a capacity greater than eight or ten rounds.

The few jurisdictions that have adopted legislation restricting firearm magazines have settled on a capacity limit of 10 or 15 rounds. The exception to this was New York, when disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo rushed through the ill-titled NY SAFE Act in 2013.

The original SAFE Act limited gun owners to only seven rounds of ammunition, but permitted the use of 10 round magazines due to the unavailability of magazines with a lesser capacity. This stratagem proved the common use of 10-plus round magazines.

In striking down the seven-round limit in NYSRPA v. Cuomo (2015), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit explained,

New York determined that only magazines containing seven rounds or fewer can be safely possessed, but it also recognized that seven-round magazines are difficult to obtain commercially. Its compromise was to permit gun owners to use ten-round magazines if they were loaded with seven or fewer rounds.

The court then determined, “we cannot conclude that New York has presented sufficient evidence that a seven-round load limit would best protect public safety.”

Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022), which reaffirmed the individual right to keep and bear arms and reiterated the proper framework for addressing infringements on the Second Amendment right, courts should prove more skeptical of all ammunition capacity restrictions. Biden’s boutique eight-round proposal should be dismissed out of hand as illegal and unworkable.

There are some alternative interpretations of Biden’s bizarre words. By “eight bullets in a round,” perhaps the bewildered politician was referencing shotgun shells, which most often contain multiple projectiles per round.

This, of course, would run contrary to Biden’s famously stupid self-defense advice.

In a 2013 Facebook “town hall” sponsored by Parents Magazine, Biden said that he had told Mrs. Biden how to defend herself at their Delaware home.

“I said, `Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony … take that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,”‘ the then-vice president stated.

Of course, reckless discharge of a firearm is a crime. At the time, former Delaware Deputy Attorney General John Garey told U.S. News that “it is not uncommon” for people to be charged under the scenario Biden described, adding, “I’ve seen cases where lawful citizens have used guns outside their homes and they end up arrested.”

Biden can’t seem to help himself when it comes to spouting nonsense about firearms.

At a 2019 campaign stop in New Hampshire, Biden told those gathered, “I believe in the Second Amendment, but nobody says you can have a magazine with 100 clips in it.”

On numerous occasions, while arguing for a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, Biden has falsely claimed that cannons are prohibited for purchase or were at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.

Putting on his physics professor cap, on August 30 the dubious scholar informed a Pennsylvania crowd, “the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun.”

Not only is the cartridge fired by the AR-15 not “five times” faster than “any other gun,” it is actually slower than many other modern cartridges that fire similar weight projectiles. The 5.56x45mm cartridge is limited to around 3,200 feet per second in standard loadings out of the 20 inch or shorter barrels common to AR-15s. Cartridges like the .204 Ruger and .22-250 can push similar bullets up to and beyond 4,000 feet per second.

Given Biden’s ceaseless malarkey, the American public should reject this president’s anti-gun assertions with the same zeal with which he rejects reality and his brain rejects lucidity.

“Watch me,” President Joe Biden told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart this week during one of the most awkward interviews in the history of American politics.

So we did. It was similar to watching John Fetterman, the stroke victim and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, bumble his way through a debate after his campaign allies in the media insisted he was fine.

“Am I don’t have the same pace?” the president asked Capehart during a discussion about his fitness for office. “Everything physically about me is still functioning well, so you know, and mentally too.” The evidence suggests otherwise.

Biden wandered around like a sluggish toddler chasing a butterfly, told a group of transgender activists about the Democratic Party’s plan to “overrule Dob,” meaning the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, which struck down Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that Biden couldn’t remember. He expressed concern that the American “pleople” are “vuedejegguli,” and pledged to encourage economic “innervation.”

The commander in chief, who turns 80 next month, insisted (without evidence) that Vice President Kamala Harris was doing a “great” job. (Just 38 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Harris.) A Washington Free Beacon analysis determined that Biden, Harris, and Fetterman would combine to form a single human being of average competence and speaking ability.

Have a great weekend!

I seem to remember this thing called the 1st amendment…..

Lawmakers Call on Biden to Make it More Difficult for People to Download Gun Blueprints

Lawmakers in , led by Congressman Mike Thompson, penned a letter asking the  administration to hold manufacturers responsible for homemade ghost guns.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Currently, it is relatively easy to buy gun parts, or make them at home with a 3D printer, and create an untraceable firearm. Ghost guns allow people to circumvent the background check requirement to own a gun.

“It is far too easy for anyone to download from the internet the computer code to 3D-print unserialized, untraceable, plastic ‘ghost guns,’” the letter said. “These 3D-printed weapons circumvent our system of gun safety rules and regulations, and pose a serious threat to public safety and national security.”

The question of banning the distribution of blueprints for 3D printed guns has been debated over the years, with much speculation that banning the sharing of blueprints is a  violation.

“President Biden can undo the Trump-era rule that has made the instructions for the 3D-printing of untraceable and deadly ‘ghost’ guns widely available online,” said Senator Markey. “The online distribution of these ghost gun blueprints only increases the risk of these weapons proliferating and poses a serious threat to public safety and national security. President Biden should fulfil his campaign promise and reverse the Trump administration’s weakening of these gun safety regulations.”

“They’re making firearms and they’re shooting and they’re killing people,” Thompson said.

“If you are a danger to yourself or to others, if you’re dangerously mentally ill, if you’re a criminal, you should not be able to get your mitts on a gun,” he added.

CBS13 asked Thompson about gun advocacy groups pushing back against manufacturers being held liable yet they did not commit the actual crimes.

“I have one word for these groups and that’s, ‘tough.’ We need these rules,” he responded.

Thompson is urging the Biden administration to tighten federal enforcement on these guns because he does not believe that such legislation would pass through Congress.

“Well, I’d like to see congress have the intestinal fortitude to pass legislation that would prohibit this nonsense from taking place. But as you know, as long as they have this 60-vote rule in the Senate, we’re never going to get a bill like that passed,” said Thompson.

Thompson wants the President to direct the ATF and DOJ to pass stricter rules that would hold manufacturers liable for ghost guns.

Gun control activist wants Glocks re-classified as machine guns

Not just Glocks, actually. The Violence Policy Center’s Kristen Rand (and a lot of other gun control activists) want the ATF to broadly reclassify semi-automatic firearms as machine guns, and it’s an idea that will likely gain more traction in the gun control lobby if Republicans take back one or both chambers of Congress in the midterms. With no chance of new gun control laws passing on Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court likely to undo some of the existing infringements already on the books, the White House and the executive branch agencies are going to be one of the only places where groups like the VPC can expect to find any traction, and they’re aiming big.

Rand’s argument (one that the gun control group Brady has also made in a recent lawsuit) is that many models of semi-automatic firearms are “readily converted” into machine guns, which would subject them and their owners to the provisions of the National Firearms Act.

As evidence, Rand and others point to the increase in the number of firearms recovered by police that have been illegally adapted with auto sears or switches that enable the guns to fire continuously. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that last year police in the city recovered more than 300 firearms that had been illegally modified to full-auto, and lays out in detail the struggles that law enforcement have in trying to combat their growing popularity among the city’s criminal class. The switches are small and easily available, both from online shippers who sent the switches from China and those who make their own on 3D printers, which is why Rand says the focus should be on the guns themselves.

In July, Democrats in the U.S. Senate introduced a bill to establish “a coordinated national strategy to prevent or intercept the importation and trafficking of automatic gun conversion devices.”

“Gun violence is an epidemic, and lawmakers must do all we can to combat this horrific threat — including by stopping the flow of illegal gun-modification devices into our society,” says U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, a lead sponsor.

With switches, though, the effort might be too late, says Kristen Rand, government affairs director for the nonprofit Violence Policy Center, which advocates for gun control. She says concentrating on the devices is “probably a lost cause.”

“The focus should be on why so many firearms are so easily converted to full auto,” Rand says, noting that Glocks and other guns can easily be modified. “Manufacturers must bear some of the responsibility to design their guns to be more resistant to conversion.”

From 2018 through late September, 643 of the 706 modified automatic weapons recovered by the Chicago police were Glock handguns, records show.

A spokeswoman for Glock didn’t respond to questions or interview requests.

Rand says ATF should consider using its authority to reclassify certain types of firearms that are easily converted into fully automatic weapons. Other firearms besides Glocks also are “readily convertible” into machine guns by machining or adding a few parts, she says.

“ATF should be looking at using their existing authority to classify some of these firearms as ‘machine guns’ as they did in the 1980s with the KG-9, MAC-10 and STEN,” Rand says. “This is a classic example of how the gun industry escapes responsibility for problems of their own making.”

If concentrating on the switches is a “lost cause” then so is focusing on the gun. After all, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of firearms that would fall under the type of re-classification Rand and other anti-gun activists would like to see from the ATF. But for Rand and other anti-gun activists, that’s not a bug, but a feature. In fact, the more guns that are re-classified the better.

At best the vast majority of U.S. gun owners would have to register their guns with the federal government and pay a $200 per gun fee or else become a criminal subject to ten years in an federal prison for possession of an unregistered machine gun. At worst, the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland could argue that since the Hughes Amendment prohibits the registration of any machine gun made after 1986, tens of millions of Americans need to hand over their legally purchased and lawfully owned pistols and rifles. Either one would be the most significant victory the gun control lobby has ever achieved, though one that would face an immediate court challenge.

The Supreme Court has already declared that arms that are in common use are, prima facie, protected by the Second Amendment. Only those arms that are dangerous and “unusual” fall outside of the Second Amendment’s protections, and it’s hard to argue with a straight face that semi-automatic firearms aren’t in common use for a variety of lawful purposes. I have no idea what would happen if “readily converted” meets “dangerous and unusual” inside the Court’s chambers, but if the gun control lobby gets its way we’re all going to find out soon enough.

When you don’t have facts or reason on your side and don’t care to learn the facts, what’s left?

Infantilization Of The Apocalypse.

Dumping milk onto floors. Hurling food onto walls. Refusing to eat. Gluing body parts. Throwing paint. Refusing to leave. Threatening to pee and poop in your pants. Screaming accusations. Are those the behaviors of a toddler’s temper tantrum? Yes. But they’re also the dominant tactics of today’s climate activists.

Consider the case of Gianluca Grimalda. On October 19, Grimalda, along with 15 other members of a climate activist group called Scientist Rebellion, glued himself to the floor of the visitors center next to a Volkswagon factory in Germany. The VW security guards brought pizza to Grimalda and the other activist scientists, but Grimalda felt disrespected and so he declared a hunger strike in retaliation.

Grimalda immediately expressed outrage at his treatment. “VW told us that they supported our right to protest,” he complained on Twitter, “but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued, and have turned off the heating.”

Many were quick to point out the childish nature of the protest. “I’m a serious scientist protesting against fossil fuels,” wrote one user. “Now turn the gas heating on and bring me my potty.”

The activists say that such childish tactics were necessary. Grimalda tweeted that he and his colleagues are protesting “until our demands to decarbonise the German transport sector are met.” On Sunday, after climate activists in Germany threw mashed potatoes on a Monet painting, they screamed at the nearby museum-goers. “We won’t be able to feed our families in 2050” because of climate change, they alleged.

But Volkswagen already agreed last year to end the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035, and the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts rising yields under even very high temperatures so long as farmers keep using fertilizer, irrigation, and tractors. That is, yields will continue under climate change so long as farmers don’t take the advice of climate activists.

The activists who keep degrading precious works of art, and themselves, claim to be concerned about food and energy supplies, but in opposing oil, gas and fertilizer production they are actively reducing both. Over the last several months, I have described the demands of climate activists as fanatical and pointed to a large body of evidence suggesting that nihilism, narcissism, and feelings of personal inadequacy are the primary motives.

But nihilism, narcissism, and personal inadequacy alone do not explain why climate activists have chosen temper tantrum tactics. After all, the greatest protest movements of all time engaged in far more grown-up and dignified tactics. Think of the Salt March led by Gandhi, the Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Martin Luther King, and the anti-whaling protests of Greenpeace.

Where protesters in the past asked to be treated like adults, climate protesters today demand to be treated like children. Civil rights activists in the 1950s sat at lunch counters and demanded to be treated like full adults. Notably, it was racist counterprotesters who poured milkshakes over them. Today, it’s the protesters who are spilling milk and throwing food.

Why is that, exactly? Why have Left-wing activists regressed in their tactics?

The people in the protests are themselves apparently dignified people. Grimalda is an economist who works at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He has published for the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Nature Communications, and other prestigious publications. Why, then, are he and his colleagues acting like babies?

Role Reversal

Racist counterprotesters dump milkshakes over a white social science professor and his black students sitting at the “Whites Only” counter in Woolworth’s store lunch counter in May 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi (left). Climate activists dump soup over Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in October 2022 (right).

Crap For Brains Quote O’ the Day
Sen. Nia Gill (D- Essex) pushed back on some of Durr’s claims about the bill violating the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s June ruling……
“This is an exercise in legislation that we must do in order for the court to determine the legislative constitutionality of it,” Gill said.

Fast-tracked bill to limit concealed carry stumbles as constitutional concerns mount

A fast-tracked bill to limit concealed carry in New Jersey hit a snag Thursday when Assembly leaders yanked it from a scheduled vote, conceding its broad restrictions could fold under constitutional scrutiny.

The canceled vote came the same day a Senate panel approved the bill along party lines — and with about 15 amendments that appear to be aimed at appeasing critics who have vowed to fight any new law in court. The bill, introduced two weeks ago, has already been approved along party lines by three Assembly committees.

Assemblyman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden), one of the bill’s sponsors and the majority leader in the Assembly, said legislators plan to revise language in the bill to ensure “it’s directly in line with our legislative intent.”

“That may help constitutional arguments at the end of the day,” Greenwald said. “There’s a focus on making sure that it’s not too broad, not too vague, and that it withstands a challenge.”

Greenwald said lawmakers still aim to pass the bill by the end of November.

“Obviously, the day that the governor signs it, there’s going to be legal challenges — those against it have already made that clear,” said Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex), another bill sponsor. “So we’re just doing everything we need to do to cross our t’s and dot our i’s. There’s no lack of resolve. If anything, we’re even more determined to get something to the governor’s desk.”

Legislators say they drafted the bill to counter the uptick in gun usage they anticipate after about 300,000 gun owners applied for concealed carry permits in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that affirmed a constitutional right to carry. In that ruling, the nation’s highest court struck down a New York law requiring gun owners to prove a reason why they need to carry a concealed gun, prompting New Jersey to remove its similar “justifiable need” requirement.

New Jersey’s bill would create new hurdles for gun owners seeking carry permits and carve out 25 categories of sensitive places where guns are prohibited, which range from beaches to bars to parks.

But gun rights advocates have singled out various provisions of the bill they find problematic — and grounds for a court challenge. A federal judge in New York last week temporarily halted a similar ban there on guns in sensitive places, citing constitutional concerns.

Some of the amendments made to New Jersey’s bill since its introduction have addressed critics’ concerns. After gun supporters complained about one provision that would allow the state’s 565 municipalities to define their own sensitive places where guns would be banned, lawmakers amended the bill to remove it.

Scott Bach, president of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, on Wednesday sounded the alarm about other language in the bill referring to “weapons.” Such vague wording could refer to any everyday tool, including mops, kitchen cutlery, and knitting needles, the association warned in an alert to members.

Greenwald on Thursday conceded the weapons verbiage was one tweak legislators would make before rescheduling the bill for a full Assembly vote.

We’re just doing everything we need to do to cross our t’s and dot our i’s. There’s no lack of resolve. If anything, we’re even more determined to get something to the governor’s desk.
– Assemblyman John McKeon

Earlier in the day, during the Senate’s Law and Public Safety Committee, Sen. Linda Greenstein (D-Middlesex), the committee’s chair, agreed some unclear language in the bill needs further consideration.

The committee made 15 amendments to the bill. Two amendments would remove requirements that someone with a carry permit stopped by police produce the gun for inspection and show proof of liability insurance. Two more would allow active and retired law enforcement officers to carry a handgun in sensitive places where the public can’t take them.

Still, supporters and critics spent nearly three hours debating the bill Thursday, with some especially testy exchanges between the panel’s Democratic members and Sen. Ed Durr (R-Gloucester), whose political campaign centered on Second Amendment rights.

 Sen. Ed Durr (R-Gloucester) testifies against a bill that would limit concealed carry at the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee on Oct. 27, 2022. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor) 

“If I were to sit here and list all the problems with this bill, we’d be here until sometime next week,” Durr told the panel.

Durr especially objected to the increased fees proposed in the legislation, complaining they would “make it impossible for a person of modest means to protect him- or herself.”

He questioned the state’s ongoing effort to reduce its prison population while tightening gun control at the same time.

“You were making room (in prison) for all the responsible but unlucky gun owners who are going to unintentionally violate this bill,” he said.

Sen. Nia Gill (D- Essex) pushed back on some of Durr’s claims about the bill violating the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s June ruling.

“I’m a lawyer,” Gill told Durr.

He responded, “I’ve seen many lawyers get things wrong.”

Gill retorted: “I’ve seen legislators get them wrong too.”

After almost three hours of testimony, the panel advanced the bill.

“This is an exercise in legislation that we must do in order for the court to determine the legislative constitutionality of it,” Gill said.

Well, maybe because demoncraps like criminals?

NY Gov. Hochul Doesn’t Know Why Putting Criminals in Jail is ‘So Important’ to Challenger Lee Zeldin.

In the race for governor of New York, Republican Lee Zeldin has been hammering Democrat Kathy Hochul on crime and it has been working.

Last night, during their only debate, Zeldin kept up the pressure on this issue and it led to one of those definitive debate moments that people remember.

This is when Hochul lost the debate. The New York Post reports:

‘Don’t know why that’s so important’: Hochul baffled when Zeldin talks jailing criminals during NY gov debate

Gov. Kathy Hochul stunningly said she didn’t know why it’s “so important” to lock up criminals when confronted by Republican challenger Lee Zeldin over the state’s controversial bail reform law during their first and only debate Tuesday night.

Zeldin, who’s pledged to declare a crime emergency and suspend cashless bail if elected, brought up the issue midway through the televised face-off.

“My opponent thinks that right now there’s a polio emergency going on but there’s not a crime emergency — different priorities than I’m hearing from people right now,” the outgoing congressman from Long Island said.

“They’re not being represented from this governor — who still, to this moment…hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes.”

Hochul responded by saying, “Anyone who commits a crime, under our laws, especially with the changes we made to bail, has consequences.

“I don’t know why that’s so important to you,” the incumbent Democrat added. “All I know is that we could do more.”

Here’s the video

Continue reading “”

Make their behavior more painful than it is rewarding and they will stop.

The Quiet Desperation Of Woke Fanatics.

What’s driving them? And how can they be defeated?

Protesters with “Just Stop Oil” after throwing tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London, October 14, 2022. (Photo Credit: Just Stop Oil.)

“The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause.” 
— ERIC HOFFER, THE TRUE BELIEVER

Over the last few weeks, climate activists in Britain have blocked highways (because cars emit carbon dioxide), poured milk onto the floors of supermarkets (because livestock emits methane), and thrown tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” (because climate change is more important than art. Or something). The activists are a kind of reboot of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate protests in the UK in the fall of 2019.

People in the UK are at risk of dying from natural gas shortages. Still, the climate activists with “Just Stop Oil” think it’s outrageous that their government is desperately trying to produce more natural gas for its people. But without more natural gas, there could be three-hour-long blackouts, which threaten the operation of medical equipment, and thus the lives of vulnerable people.

The various media stunts appeared authentically grassroots but were, in fact, financed by a $1 million grant from a philanthropic group called Climate Emergency Fund, which is funded by their heirs to the Getty and Rockefeller oil fortunes, and founded in 2019. The Board of Directors consists of a who’s-who of climate alarmism including “Don’t Look Up!” film director, Adam McKay, who donated $4 million, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben, and New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.

The Fund and their grantees have been cheered on by the Secretary General of the United Nations and much of the mainstream media.Image

A portion of the web page of Climate Emergency Fund.

In a series of recent articles I have argued that what lies behind climate fanaticism and narcissism is an apocalyptic religion born from nihilism. The power of science to explain humankind’s place in the universe (e.g., the big bang, evolution by natural selection) resulted in a dominant narrative coming out of society’s elite institutions for over 100 years that human life has no inherent meaning or purpose (nihilism). We’re just animals like any other.

This depressing story has led the ostensibly secular elite, which are educated and indoctrinated in universities that teach nihilism as unquestioning scientific gospel, to create a new apocalyptic religion (climate catastrophe), complete with a new victim-god (nature), a new reason for guilt (sins against nature), and a path for redemption (renewables and low-energy living). It, and the broader Woke religion, have found intellectual ballast since World War II from Rousseau, Malthus, and Foucault.

But that account only partly addresses the motivations of the fanatics. It doesn’t answer why some people become fanatics and others don’t. It doesn’t explain the specific role of fanatics, particularly in relation to other actors, such as the intellectual architects of the movement, and the institution-builders. Nor does it address how fanaticism ends and what, if anything, can be done to hasten its expiration date.

As such, we need to ask, who exactly are the climate fanatics? And how can their power over Western cultural and political life be reduced?

Continue reading “”

His brain is acting like a computer with defective RAM.

Observation O’ The Day
Given how much editing NBC and its sister networks must do to get usable footage of Biden, that they allowed this to air could be a preview of how the networks will start treating him post-midterms. –Ed Driscoll

Awkward! Zoned-out Biden, 79, gives excruciating pause when MSNBC host asked if Jill wants him to run again in 2024 — before dodging question by saying First Lady thinks he’s doing ‘important work.’

 

FED. JUDGE LETS ANTI-GUN GROUP JOIN SAF MAG BAN CASE AS DEFENDANTS

BELLEVUE, WA – A federal judge in Tacoma, Washington has allowed a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group to intervene as a defendant in the Second Amendment Foundation’s challenge of an Evergreen State magazine ban which became effective July 1.

The billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility requested intervention only days after the law took effect. Their motion was supported by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and State Patrol Chief John Batiste, who are defendants in the case. The Alliance supported the magazine ban as part of its gun prohibition political agenda, and Ferguson requested the legislation earlier this year.

“Apparently the Alliance is worried Ferguson isn’t capable of defending his own magazine ban in this lawsuit,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Obviously, after the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision last June, the gun ban lobby fears the state may not be able to defend any of its gun laws, including a couple passed by initiative campaigns the Alliance financed.”

SAF is joined in the lawsuit by the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Rainier Arms, LLC and two private citizens, Daniel Martin and Gabriela Sullivan. The case is known as Sullivan v. Ferguson.

“A few days after the high court handed down its ruling in Bruen,” Gottlieb recalled, “the Supreme Court granted certiorari to two other magazine ban challenges, in California and New Jersey. The court vacated lower court rulings in both cases and remanded the cases back to the respective appeals courts for further action in compliance with the language in Bruen.

“Based on the Supreme Court’s action in both magazine ban cases,” he added, “it is clear such restrictive laws might be in serious trouble, which explains why the Alliance is interested. Courts in California have already ruled that state’s magazine ban is unconstitutional, and that position may now stand when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has to reconsider the case under the new guidelines set down in the Bruen ruling.

“If the Alliance wants to hold hands with Ferguson,” Gottlieb said, “that’s their business. Maybe he needs the moral support.”

Okay, update on the Raleigh massacre.
Why the type of gun wasn’t mentioned?
Nailed it: Shotgun. And that doesn’t fit the gun banner’s narrative, so this will be shoved down the memory hole by Monday. And all SloJoe could do is replay he want’s to ban ‘assault weapons’.

Raleigh Active Shooter VIDEO: Multiple Dead

A 15-year-old active shooter, wearing camouflage and wielding a shotgun, randomly shot and killed five people near a trail in Raleigh, North Carolina. Video emerged from the scene, showing a massive law enforcement response.

See the source image

Majority Of Democrats Now ‘Concerned’ About Biden’s Mental Health, Poll Finds.

Finally, Democrats are starting to get it.

After yet another mental gaffe by President Joe Biden, a new poll has found a majority of Democrats are at least “concerned” about his mental health.

The Issues & Insights/TIPP survey of 1,376 adults released Monday showed 64% of Americans are either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned,” a 5-point jump from its last poll in August.

But the percentage of Democrats now concerned about Biden’s mental lapses leaped 13 points in two months.  “Virtually all of October’s gain came from Democrats, who went from just 39% expressing ‘concern’ over Biden’s mental health in August, a high number in itself, to 52% in the latest poll,” the pollsters wrote.

“Is Biden’s mental infirmity a danger to this country? Is it time for the president, who turns 80 next month, to be tested by competent medical experts and have the results openly released to allay public fears?” said the pollsters.

“Recent video snippets show Biden wandering off stage, apparently lost, after speaking briefly; forgetting the name of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s founding document; not remembering that a congresswoman he was honoring at a ceremony was in fact dead, asking Where’s Jackie (Walorski)?’; invoking the possibility of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ after Vladimir Putin’s military suffered setbacks in Ukraine; and so on.”

On September 28, Biden delivered a speech at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in Washington, D.C. He recognized those involved in the effort, including Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN).

In his shout-outs, Biden said: “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here.”

She wasn’t there because Walorski is dead. She died, along with three others, in a head-on car crash on August 3.

Biden, 79, had clearly forgotten that Walorski had died, even though on the day of her death, the White House released a statement from the president mourning her.

“Jill and I are shocked and saddened by the death of Congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana along with two members of her staff in a car accident today in Indiana,” Biden said at the time. He also ordered the U.S. flag at the White House to be lowered for two days.

What made the whole mess worse is that the White House decided to lie about Biden’s confusion, implying that he knew Walorski was dead but that she was simply “top of mind.”

“So, of course, she was on his mind. She was of top of mind for the President,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the next day. “He looks — very much looks forward to discussing her remarkable legacy of public service with them when he sees her family this coming Friday.”

Reporters lashed out at Jean-Pierre, who simply repeated her scripted lies. But Fox News’ Peter Doocy delivered a zinger, telling the flack: “Karine, I have John Lennon top of mind just about every day, but I’m not looking around for him anywhere.”

Biden would eventually apologize to Walorski’s family when he met with them for a bill signing in the Oval Office two days later.

Maybe he should apologize to all Americans for being president.

‘plays’? He is old and ugly. He’s also stupid.

Joe Biden Plays the Old Ugly American
Having shut down America’s oil-producing abilities, Biden believes that he can strongarm his enemies to send us more of such taboo energy that we won’t produce ourselves.

The Left used to accuse imperialist, resource-hungry Yanquis in Washington of cutting selfish deals with illiberal dictatorships in Latin America to grab their natural resources.

How odd then that Joe Biden is now begging the despicable Maduro regime in Venezuela—corrupt, murderous, and anti-American—to produce more of its oil solely to send northward to America.

Biden is quite willing to ease sanctions and condone the human rights abuses of Maduro—if his dictatorship will just open its oil spigots before the November midterm elections.

Biden in 2020 campaigned on the supposed evil nature of the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Yet after vainly entreating Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, it was inevitable that Biden would once again supplicate the Saudis to pump more oil.

Biden even pleaded with OPEC to increase its output and thus lower the world price of energy—again before the midterm elections.

Biden, remember, has a bad habit of bragging that he lowered gas prices at the pump when the natural volatility of the petroleum markets leads to a fractional decrease. But once prices spike, he is utterly silent about his own role in limiting U.S. oil and gas output.

So, was it any surprise that the Saudis became the fourth non-democratic regime to refuse Biden’s entreaties? During the 2020 campaign, when gas prices were dirt cheap, and when then candidate Biden was demagoguing about ending fossil fuel, he opportunistically libeled the Saudis a “pariah” state.

Biden also claimed that his opponent Donald Trump had cozied up to these supposedly awful Saudi royals. That accusation was especially ironic given that Trump was the first American president who had no need for Saudi oil.

His administration had managed to make the United States the largest producer of gas and oil in history— precluding any energy dependence on illiberal regimes abroad.

Trump was the first U.S. president whose interest in Gulf State monarchies was not energy-driven.

Continue reading “”

The first lawsuit, against manufacturers, was thrown out. This one is against dealers and distributors. I think it’ll fare no better, but you never know. In any case, most of the weapons the cartels have are stolen from the Mexican military, or sold to them by corrupt people in the Mexican military. You don’t buy M2, M240, M4 & automatic AK machineguns at the local gun store

Mexico files 2nd lawsuit against arms dealers in US

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government filed another U.S. gun lawsuit Monday, this time against five U.S. gun shops and distributors it claims are responsible for the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.

Mexico’s first lawsuit, which was recently dismissed, targeted U.S. gun manufacturers. The second, which Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said was filed in Arizona’s federal district court Monday, targets gun dealers.

“We are suing them because clearly there is a pattern, we contend that it is obvious that there is weapons trafficking and that it is known that these guns are going to our country,” Ebrard said.

Ebrard promised last week the new lawsuit would target gun shops or dealers in U.S. border states who sell guns to “straw” purchasers who pass them on to smugglers, who then take the weapons into Mexico.

Mexico is suing for unspecified monetary damages and to demand the gun stores hire independent monitors to ensure that U.S. federal laws are followed in gun purchases.

Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, the legal adviser to Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department, said Mexico had chosen “the five worst stores” to name in the lawsuit, including three gun outlets in Tucson, one in Phoenix and one in Yuma, Arizona.

“They are not careful when they sell products, so they allow straw purchasers to buy guns,” said Celorio Alcántara, adding they sold multiple guns, multiple times to some purchasers. “We are saying they are negligent and facilitate straw purchasers, to the point of being accomplices.”

He claimed that U.S. criminal investigations had traced weapons purchases back to the stores, and said there was evidence that the shops had not filed required information on some purchases.

“The main argument of our lawsuit is that these businesses are an organized part of a criminal enterprise, a mechanism, to facilitate criminals and cartels in Mexico being able to use their weapons,” said Celorio Alcántara.

He said the first hearing on the suit might not come until the summer.

Ebrard said about 60% of the weapons seized in Mexico in recent years were believed to have been sold in 10 U.S. counties, mostly along the border. Mexico has very strict restrictions on weapon possession, but drug cartel violence has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the country in recent years.

“We are going to show that many of these outlets where they sell these products in these counties I mentioned, are dealing with straw purchasers, and criminal charges have to be brought,” Ebrard said last week in an appearance before the Mexican Senate.

A recently enacted U.S. law defines straw purchasing as a crime, and sets out sentences of as much as 15 to 25 years if the offense is related to drug trafficking.

Celorio Alcántara said that was a key difference between this and Mexico’s earlier lawsuit: in the Arizona suit, Mexico is arguing a violation of U.S. laws.

The announcement comes several days after a U.S. federal judge dismissed Mexico’s first lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers; Mexico has said it will appeal that decision.

The judge ruled Mexico’s claims against the gun makers did not overcome the broad protection provided to firearms manufacturers by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in 2005.

The law shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm.

Mexico was seeking at least $10 billion in compensation, but legal experts had viewed the lawsuit as a long shot.

The Mexican government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the U.S., according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. It said that in 2019 alone, at least 17,000 homicides in Mexico were linked to trafficked weapons.