Category: Rights

Never forget what they did to us.
Never forget what they meant to do to us.
Never.
Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt next time.
And did they forget we have guns?

CDC Planned Quarantine Camps, Nationwide

No matter how bad you think Covid policies were, they were intended to be worse.

Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed.

It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back.

Features of the CDC’s edicts did incredible damage. It imposed the rent moratorium. It decreed the ridiculous “six feet of distance” and mask mandates. It forced Plexiglas as the interface for commercial transactions. It implied that mail-in balloting must be the norm, which probably flipped the election. It delayed the reopening as long as possible. It was sadistic.

Even with all that, worse was planned. On July 26, 2020, with the George Floyd riots having finally settled down, the CDC issued a plan for establishing nationwide quarantine camps. People were to be isolated, given only food and some cleaning supplies. They would be banned from participating in any religious services. The plan included contingencies for preventing suicide. There were no provisions made for any legal appeals or even the right to legal counsel.

The plan’s authors were unnamed but included 26 footnotes. It was completely official. The document was only removed on about March 26, 2023. During the entire intervening time, the plan survived on the CDC’s public site with little to no public notice or controversy.

It was called “Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings.”

“This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings.

This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data.

Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available.”

By absence of empirical data, the meaning is: nothing like this has ever been tried. The point of the document was to map out how it could be possible and alert authorities to possible pitfalls to be avoided.

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I have only been to Minnesota twice. The first on a summer family vacation decades ago, and second, on a layover when flying to Alaska. Other than necessity required by the latter, I have no plans to ever visit that tyrant run state again

Is Your Private Vehicle a ‘Public Space’ When There’s a Gun Involved?

It’s an odd question stemming from an equally strange case, but that’s the question the Minnesota Supreme Court will soon answer after hearing oral arguments on Monday.

Back in 2022, a guy named Kyaw Be Bee was arrested for the misdemeanor charge of carrying a BB gun, rifle, or shotgun in a public place after police discovered a BB gun underneath the driver’s seat of Bee’s car. The deputy had become suspicious of Bee and another man when he spotted them standing near a vehicle in a parking lot around 2 a.m. Bee and his companion strolled back to their own vehicle when they became aware of the deputy, and once they drove away the deputy pulled them over, which is when he discovered the BB gun.

Bee’s attorney argued in a pre-trial hearing that a private vehicle should not be considered a public place and a judge agreed; dismissing the misdemeanor charge after reasoning that a private vehicle is not a public place, even when it’s on a public road.

Prosecutors appealed that decision and the Minnesota Court of Appeals found in their favor, ruling that private cars on public roads should be considered public spaces. Bee’s attorneys then appealed to the state Supreme Court, which heard from both sides yesterday.

“To focus the law on the method of transportation upon a public roadway, instead of the geographic area of the roadway itself, ignores the clear statutory text, renders portions of the statute ineffective, leads to absurd results and is therefore not reasonable,” Saint Paul city attorney Lyndsey Olson, who argued for the state, told justices Monday.

However Drake Metzger, an attorney for Bee, said the statute is “unambiguous” about what makes a space public.

The law defines public space as “property owned, leased, or controlled by a governmental unit and private property that is regularly and frequently open to or made available for use by the public.”

Lawmakers included exceptions for hunters; target shooters; people’s homes or business; and gun shows and shops.

What the law doesn’t address is whether or not a private vehicle is considered a public place; it simply says that if a gun is being transported in compliance with the law, the statute does not apply.

“At the end of the day, the inside of a motor vehicle is not a public space under this definition,” Metzger said Monday.

Metzger also argued that his client could have been charged with carrying without a license based on how the BB gun was stored in the vehicle, but accusing Bee of having a gun in a public place when it was in his car just doesn’t make sense given the language of the statute.

Olson, arguing for the state, saw it differently.

“I don’t think that this is saying that being in a motor vehicle inherently means that you’re in a public place,” Olson said. “It depends on the geographical place that the vehicle is on.”

Bee could have been charged with another crime as well, Olson said, public safety is at the root of gun laws.

“The consequences of a particular interpretation excluding vehicles on public roadways from public space could risk public safety by allowing the gun possession within vehicles without restriction,” she said.

The problem with Olson’s argument, at least from my perspective, is that it requires “interpreting” the statute instead of simply reading and adhering to the text. As Metzer says, the law in question defines what constitutes a public space, and while it does include some private property, that property must be “regularly and frequently open or made available for use by the public”. Your car, my truck, and (presumably) Bee’s vehicle aren’t open for use by the public, even when they’re on a public road, so how could they reasonably be considered public spaces?

Even if the Minnesota Supreme Court finds in favor of Bee (which, given the makeup of the court, is probably unlikely), as his own attorney pointed out, the state could still have charged Bee with improper storage of the BB gun. Whether that statute is constitutional under the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment is another question for another day, but when it comes to the question of whether a private vehicle is a public space, I think the answer is and should obviously be “no.”

Polls Are Now Open. The Fate of the 2nd Amendment Rests in Your Vote Today

If you are reading this, and you have not yet voted, stop what you are doing and go vote. And if it isn’t clear to you yet, Harris is not the one to vote for.

Has J. Edgar Hoover’s Spy Program Been Resurrected?
The Bureau Apparently Now Targets MAGA Activists

Although the legacy media has buried the story, it turns out that over the last several years the Federal Bureau of Investigation has resurrected a hated and unconstitutional spying program once directed by the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. His program, called the COINTELPRO program, targeted Americans who committed no crime, but simply sought to express their political views.

Former President Richard Nixon directed Hoover to aggressively infiltrate and disrupt many political movements in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. This included the Vietnam War activists, the Rev. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. They even spied on environmentalists, women’s rights groups and animal rights activists.

According to an exclusive Newsweek expose that was published three weeks ago, it now appears the ghosts of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were resurrected by the Biden administration with a new expanded government spying and infiltration program based on political views. The FBI apparently redefined extremism to include those whom the administration determined hold unacceptable political views.

We now learn that during the Biden administration, the Bureau changed its domestic violence definitions from the “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” They report that it was a “gigantic departure for the Bureau.”

As Newsweek explained, “For the first time extremist groups worthy of surveillance and even infiltration could be so labeled because of their politics.” The FBI’s main target: Trump MAGA activists.

A review by its investigative reporters of previously unpublished FBI documents shows, “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations are focused on Trump supporters and others suspected of violating what the FBI calls “anti-riot” laws.”

Although I’m not a MAGA activist, I personally abhor any government spying program against its citizens. In fact, I was a plaintiff in a 1970’s leftwing legal lawsuit against the COINTELPRO program. The United States Supreme Court ruled in the case, called Hobson vs. Wilson, that the federal government’s political surveillance program was unconstitutional.

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Shades of Commie East Germany and its STASI
The “monkey wrench” is for lots of tips on the demoncraps.

Michigan And Hawaii Launch Tip Lines To Encourage Anonymous Snitching On Gun Owners

Michigan and Hawaii, both Democrat-led states, have launched taxpayer-funded tip lines for individuals looking to report perceived firearms violations anonymously. While these dumpster fire states claim the lines are aimed at lawbreakers, Second Amendment groups are reasonably skeptical, as they should be, because such a system can easily be abused. Let’s face it, we know that the weaponization of this service against law-abiding gun owners is exactly what they are intended for.

On Thursday, October 10, Hawaii’s Democrat Governor Josh Green announced the state’s Department of Law Enforcement had established a confidential “Gun Tip Line for people to make anonymous reports of illegal gun ownership and gun crimes,” where tipsters can either call, text or drop a dime via the DLE’s website or a downloadable app where they can submit photographs and videos to back up their report.

The governor’s office went even further during the brown shirt recruiting exercise saying, “People reporting tips are encouraged to leave detailed information including the names of those in possession of illegal guns or committing gun crimes, a location where those people may be found and a description of the guns.” Sure, what could go wrong when hiring unpaid, untrained, overzealous, anti-Second Amendment sycophants typically knowing very little about firearms to play the role of a detective, spying on and recording their neighbors?

Meanwhile, Gretchen “Lockdown” Whitmer, known for hosting the most oppressive COVID lockdowns in America while still having more deaths per capita than any neighboring Midwestern states, signed House Bill 5503, a measure passed off as an education funding bill that allocates $1 million in School Aid Funding to support an anonymous tip line for students to report firearms thought to be “improperly stored.”

The bill goes on to mandate that Michigan’s Department of Education develop materials concerning improper storage of firearms, including tip line usage, and distribute those materials to school districts across the state. The Gestapo may not pay you for your work, but you will receive free training, whether you want it or not.

As the NRA-ILA points out, language regarding the tip line was added to the bill as an amendment that was then swiftly passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature.

“The expedited pace and the silencing of opposition when the bill came up for a floor vote underscores the reality that this was a political move and another attack on gun owners,” says the NRA.

These tiplines will ultimately create a situation that will lead to wasted resources, unwarranted confrontations with law enforcement and what could amount to unconstitutional searches of homes, businesses and other private property based on vendettas and other nefarious agendas. Not only does this negatively impact the community’s relationship with authorities, but those who abuse the tip lines will undoubtedly drive wedges within communities as well, drawing lines at a time when we need to be working together to strengthen and solidify those connections.

Opening Arguments Begin in ‘Ghost Gun’ Challenge

While so-called ghost guns get a lot of hype in the media, the reality is that they account for only a tiny fraction of those firearms used in illegal acts. However, because they’ve grown in supposed popularity–probably because of media hysterics cluing bad guys in that these are a thing–they’re the worst thing ever.

When the Biden administration took steps to try to regulate these firearms, the usual suspects in the media and anti-gun activism celebrated it.

However, such a decree was never going to go unchallenged. Today, opening arguments begin in that case. (Arguments begin at 11:00 AM Eastern; you can watch them here.)

Among those party to the challenge is the Second Amendment Foundation, which sent a press release about today’s opening statements.

On Tuesday, Oct. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF) challenge to ATF’s regulation expanding what constitutes a “firearm.”

Arguments will begin at 11 a.m. EST and will be broadcast live here.

SAF is joined in the case by Defense Distributed and Not an LLC (doing business as JSD Supply). SAF and its partners are represented by attorneys Charles R. Flores and Josh Blackman of Houston, and SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut.

In April 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) published its Final Rule amending the regulatory definition of the term “firearm” to encompass precursor parts that, with enough additional manufacturing operations, would become functional firearms frames and receivers, but in their current state were non-functional objects.

In seeking to regulate these “non-firearm objects” the ATF’s Final Rule directly contradicted Congress’ definition of “firearm” set forth in the Gun Control Act of 1968. The ATF’s re-definition of “firearm” in the Final Rule establishes a practical ban on the private manufacture of firearms – a constitutionally protected tradition.

In December 2022, SAF filed to intervene in an existing lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas known as VanDerStok v. Garland. The case challenges the lawfulness of ATF’s regulatory re-definition of a “firearm” under the Administrative Procedures Act. SAF scored a major victory in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated significant portions of the Rule. The Biden Department of Justice now seeks to resurrect the rule before the Supreme Court.

For more information about the case, visit saf.org. To listen to the arguments live, click here or follow SAF’s X page for live updates.

The key takeaway is that the argument will be that the ATF exceeded it’s regulatory authority by trying to redefine what is and isn’t a firearm. This is what the ATF did with bump stocks when they opted to redefine them as machine guns. The Supreme Court ruled they had no such authority, so it’s unlikely this will be any different.

That’s bad news for the anti-gun side because the reason Biden went the executive order route and had the ATF act unilaterally was because there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades that Congress was going to pass any bill trying to accomplish what the ATF tried.

Yet that’s not a valid reason to try and go around Congress like this and redefine things differently than Congress did.

Had there never been a law that specifically defined a firearm, they might could have gotten away with it. One could argue that the lack of definition would put the onus for defining what is and isn’t a gun on the ATF. The problem is that they did define it. The ATF has to work within that definition, not make up their own because they really don’t like that people do things they don’t approve of.

The Vanderstock case is likely to be another smackdown of the ATF’s overreach, much like what we saw in Cargill.

Biden’s agency bosses say Americans have ‘too much freedom’
The ‘swamp’ thinks you have it too good.

In an unusual look at federal agency managers, most believe Americans have too much freedom, and they back President Joe Biden‘s efforts to impose 

The bosses of federal agencies were asked in a new Napolitan Institute survey about the “individual freedom” Americans have, and 51% said they have “somewhat” to “far too much freedom.”

But just 16% of voters agreed and 57% believe the government has too much control over their lives.

Democratic “swamp” managers felt the country has too much freedom at the highest levels in the survey, at 68%. Among Republican federal agency chiefs, just 33% agreed.

But the partisan bureaucrats were more in agreement when it came to choosing who is best at deciding if new regulations are needed, found the polling outfit headed by Scott Rasmussen.

Said the analysis shared with Secrets on Friday, “Fifty-four percent (54%) of government managers say that if, after carefully researching an important issue, they determine that a regulation is needed, yet voters overwhelmingly oppose it, they should follow their research and issue the regulation anyway. This includes 49% of Republican government managers and 60% of Democrats,” it said.

Unlike Democrats and Republicans in America, and even on Capitol Hill, partisans that work in the swamp generally think like the other, according to Napolitan’s latest poll of America’s 1% elitists.

“On many topics, there is a disturbing level of bi-partisan agreement among federal government managers. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Republican government managers and 48% of Democrats believe the federal government should be allowed to censor speech that is posted on social media platforms. Forty-three percent (43%) of ‘Elites’ and just 16% of voters share this view. Seventy-four percent of Republican government managers and 79% of Democrats favor banning private ownership of guns. This view is shared by 77% of ‘Elites,’ but just 36% of voters,” said the analysis.

In his polling of elites, Rasmussen has found a stunning gap with Middle Americans, which could be a danger sign considering the outsize effect of elites, especially in the media.

Rasmussen said, “The ‘Elite’ 1% wield a tremendous amount of institutional power but are wildly out of touch with the nation they want to rule. Over the years they have built institutions and mechanisms of regulatory power that are immune to the checks and balances of elections. Worse still, these same ‘Elites’ own, operate, and control a large majority of media outlets, blocking out the true voice of the American people and broadcasting their own out of touch viewpoints.”

18th century America was influenced by the “Glorious Revolution” 0f 1688 in ‘mother’ England. And no one had a bigger impact on American attitudes towards freedom of speech than Englishmen John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who wrote about it in Cato’s Letter Number 15

…
Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together: And it is the terror of traitors and oppressors, and a barrier against them. It produces excellent writers, and encourages men of fine genius.

Tacitus tells us, that the Roman commonwealth bred great and numerous authors, who writ with equal boldness and eloquence: But when it was enslaved, those great wits were no more.

Postquam bellatum apud Actium atque omnem potestatem ad unum conferri pacis interfuit, magna illa ingenia cessere.
[After the battle at Actium ( when Octavian Caesar defeated Marc Antony) and when all power was brought to one peace (when Octavian was made Emperor Augustus), those great characters ceased.]

Tyranny had usurped the place of equality, which is the soul of liberty, and destroyed publick courage.

The minds of men, terrified by unjust power, degenerated into all the vileness and methods of servitude: Abject sycophancy and blind submission grew the only means of preferment, and indeed of safety; men durst not open their mouths, but to flatter.

No Second Amendment, No First: God, Guns, and the Government

 

Today’s Left endlessly preaches the evils of “gun violence.” It is a message increasingly echoed from the nation’s pulpits, presented as common-sense decency and virtue. Calls for “radical non-violence” are routinely endowed with the imprimatur of religious doctrine.

But what if such teachings were misguided, even damaging? What if the potential of a citizenry to exercise force against violent criminals and tyrannical governments is not just compatible with church teaching, but flows from the very heart of Biblical faith and reason? What if the freedoms we treasure are intimately tied to the power to resist violent coercion?

This is the long-overdue case John Zmirak makes with stunning clarity and conviction in No Second Amendment, No First. A Yale-educated journalist and former college professor, Zmirak shows how the right of self-defense against authoritarian government was affirmed in both the Old and New Testaments, is implied in Natural Law, and has been part of Church tradition over the centuries.

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BLUF
If there’s one thing the Democrats have proven without a doubt over these last three and a half years, it’s that they’re committed cheerleaders to censorship and shutting down opposing views.

CA Gov. Newsom Signs Ban Against Political Deepfakes; Elon Musk Mercilessly Trolls Him With… Deepfakes

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a strict new censorship law Tuesday that will make it illegal to produce or distribute AI political videos around election season. Tell me that this doesn’t sound like it infringes on the First Amendment:

The new law, the strictest in the country, takes effect immediately and aims to crack down on deceptive content which uses artificial intelligence to create false images or videos.

The law makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes ahead of Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties, per The Associated Press.

The blowback was immediate. Former Republican State Senator Melissa Melendez (R) predicted this law will have a short shelf life:

A free speech group called The Fire argued that this is not the way to attack the problems posed by AI:

In targeting “deceptive” political content, California’s new law threatens satire, parody, and other First Amendment-protected speech.

A.B. 2839 bans sharing “deceptive” digitally modified content about candidates for office for any purpose. That means sharing such content even to criticize it or point out it’s fake could violate the law.

The law also requires satire and parody to be labeled, like requiring a comedian to preface every joke with an announcement he’s making a joke.

That’s not funny — it’s scary. Whatever concerns exist about AI-generated expression, violating the First Amendment isn’t the way to address them.

Newsom was triggered by a (hysterical) Kamala Harris campaign ad that Musk retweeted without telling everyone a fact that was completely obvious to any sentient being—it was a fake. I wrote about the “commercial” when it came out in July:

But Gavin grew cranky and failed to appreciate the humor. In fact, he said that the measure was in direct response to Musk’s post:

But what perhaps the elegantly coiffed governor failed to take into consideration was that Musk is kind of like a hornet’s nest: poke him, and he’ll come back at you like a swarm. He masterfully mocked the failed guv with several tweets, including one Tuesday where he retweeted the original fake Kamala ad (which currently has 55 million views) that so upset Gov. Grumpy:

He wasn’t done, though; remember that I said that it was like poking a hornet’s nest; you’ll probably get bitten more than once. On Wednesday, the X owner fired off another fake video, this one produced by the parody site The Babylon Bee. (Note to Mr. Newsom: the Bee openly says they are a parody site. I’m sure if they run afoul of this ridiculous new law, their lawyers will make that very clear.)

It is absolutely brutal—and brilliant:

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, and I am not qualified to deliver a detailed legal analysis of the law. However, I can nevertheless confidently tell you that there will be plenty of court action surrounding it, and that it could ultimately be struck down.

The incredible power of AI is a serious issue, and sensible laws will have to be considered as it gets better and better. That being said, I’m sure not comfortable letting folks like Gavin Newsom decide what we can and cannot say. If there’s one thing the Democrats have proven without a doubt over these last three and a half years, it’s that they’re committed cheerleaders to censorship and shutting down opposing views.

You can’t stop the signal when the horse is already out of the barn

Law enforcement leans on 3D-printer industry to help thwart machine gun conversion devices
Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming semi-automatic weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America.

The rising threat of what are known as machine gun conversion devices requires “immediate and sustained attention,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Friday. That means finding ways to stop criminals from exploiting technology to make the devices in the first place, she said.

“Law enforcement cannot do this alone,” Monaco said during a gathering in Washington of federal law enforcement officials, members of the 3D-printing industry and academia. “We need to engage software developers, technology experts and leaders in the 3-D-printing industry to identify solutions in this fight.”

Devices that convert firearms to fully automatic weapons have spread “like wildfire” due to advancements in 3D-printing technology, according to Steve Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021.

“More and more of these devices were being sold over the internet and on social media, and more and more they were actually just being printed by inexpensive 3D printers in homes and garages everywhere,” Dettelbach said.

The pieces of plastic or metal are considered illegal machine guns under federal law but are so small they run the risk of being undetected by law enforcement. Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a sweet sixteen party in Alabama last year.

The devices “can transform a street corner into a combat zone, devastating entire communities,” Monaco said.

Monaco on Friday also announced several other efforts designed to crack down on the devices, including a national training initiative for law enforcement and prosecutors. The deputy attorney general is also launching a committee designed to help spot trends and gather intelligence.

Kostas Moros

A lot of people foolishly believe that the gun control movement’s motivation is a misguided but good faith desire to stop criminal violence.

While that’s true of some people who have been personally affected by gun-related crime, for the party leaders and financiers of the left, it’s not really true. If stopping crime were the big concern, they wouldn’t embrace so many policies that quickly release violent criminals back into society.

Criminal violence isn’t the real target, the fact that broad gun ownership is a check on the erosion of other liberties is. What is happening in the UK and Brazil right now is much harder to do in the US. Millions being armed is a major deterrent to it.

Everything the modern American Democrat party does makes sense when you realize the goal is to turn us into docile and harmless western Europeans.