Category: Rights

The Supreme Court dealt with this in Heller. That the gun grabbers still try to roll it out merely indicates they have nothing left but BS.

UNDOING THE MUSKET ARGUMENT

While Virginia gun owners are trying to take back their state this month from the radical far-left that pushed through most of Ralph Northam’s extremist gun control agenda in 2020, elsewhere around the country anti-gunners will once again fall back on their favorite boilerplate arguments to do the same in your state.

You can have some fun with these people, while teaching them a lesson and making the extremists look really foolish.
Good for the goose …

I’ve lost count of the occasions when someone has tossed up the argument that at the time the Second Amendment was written, there weren’t modern firearms. The Amendment, they argue, should only apply to muskets and flintlock rifles.

Here’s how I’ve responded to the premise: “Look, if you want to roll back the clock and calendar, I’m game. But remember, if that’s where you want to take this debate, there are a few things to consider.”

• When the Bill of Rights — for which the Second Amendment is the cornerstone — was adopted, we didn’t have television or radio, no cable channels, no web offset presses for mass-producing newspapers or the Internet and social media. So, under your suggestion, they wouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment, right?

• We didn’t have organized police departments, and if criminals came to your home, you were expected to deal with the problem, not call 9-1-1 for help because they didn’t have telephones, either.

• Nobody needed a license or permit to carry a firearm. There were no background checks. It was not unusual to encounter armed citizens doing business in towns and villages, and no one raised an eyebrow.

Naturally, they’ll try to ridicule these remarks but the Bill of Rights is an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s not a legal buffet from which you can pick and choose those rights you like while discarding those you don’t. The Bill of Rights is a 10-course banquet and it’s still today’s menu, not yesterday’s blue plate special.

This would be a good time to remind your opponent the U.S. Supreme Court could be taking on more Second Amendment cases to further define the parameters of the right to keep and bear arms.

Joe Biden has made a habit of contending the Second Amendment is “not absolute.” Five months ago, when he announced his “Comprehensive Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gun Crime and Ensure Public Safety,” he told a gaggle of reporters, “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

This is demonstrably false. Mississippi River keel boats were frequently armed with swivel guns; small cannons used to fend off river pirates or raiding war parties. Some on the frontier owned cannons to defend their stockades. Privateers sailed with cannons.
Last year, when quizzed about Biden’s campaign assertion regarding cannon ownership, a fact checker consulted David Kopel, research director and Second Amendment project director at the Colorado-based Independence Institute.

“I am not aware of a ban on any arm in colonial America,” Kopel said at the time. “There were controls on people or locations, but not bans on types of arms.”

In 2020, when the Biden campaign was questioned about his cannon allegation, a fact checker wrote in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, “the campaign was unable to come up with an example of a law banning private ownership of cannons, and historians of the period doubt that any existed.”

Where Humor Stops

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Apparently some parents have been listening

BLUF:
Roy Speed, in Bethel, noted that many of those behind the most radical political experiment in history studied in little, rickety houses, in medium-sized, mostly uncultured cities or on the edges of sprawling farmlands. They read with the aid of candlelight. They were Zoom-less. They squeezed their studies in between milking cows and learning how to use a rifle. They were steeped in the greatest minds of the ancient world and the Enlightenment. 

The Founders did not have the benefit of any playground or tablet or teachers union, but they were free thinkers. The Constitution, Speed pointed out, “was largely the work of people instructed at home.” 

American Homeschooling Goes Boom: Meet the parents yanking their children — some five million of them — from schools that they say aren’t working.

In March 2020, as the coronavirus engulfed America, Kristen Wrobel got the news: “We heard on Friday that there would be no school for two weeks. Which just turned into no school.”

That was the last time her children — one in third grade, one in first —  were in a classroom.

In the beginning, they did the remote-school thing. Wrobel, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mom with a bachelor’s degree in software engineering, called it a “nightmare.” The Zoom sessions, the Italian lessons on Duolingo, the stuff she had to print out, the isolation, the tears, the nagging, the shuttling the kids between her house, near Burlington, Vermont, and their dad’s, a half-hour away.

“Everyone was freaking out all the time,” she said.

By May, at the risk of violating state truancy laws, Wrobel had stopped fighting and let her kids log on (or not) whenever they felt like it. It was, she said, “the darkest hour before dawn.”

That September, she started homeschooling. She didn’t like all the restrictions her kids’ private school had implemented: Students seated six feet apart. Masked. In wedding tents. Outside.

She figured she’d send her kids back to the school in 2021, after everything had gone back to normal.

That was then. Now? “There’d have to be a revolution in schooling.”

She’s hardly alone. Wrobel is one of hundreds of thousands of moms and dads across the nation who have decided to become the principals of their very own, very small elementary schools. 

The number of kids going to school at home nationwide has doubled over the past two years. In 2019, there were about 2.5 million students learning at home. Today there are nearly 5 million. That means more than 11 percent of American households are educating their children outside of traditional schools.

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Why Southerners Don’t Care About New York Times Op-Eds

I was born and raised in the Deep South. I have a deep affinity for the place of my birth, one that I wouldn’t have imagined I’d have in my teenage years.

Down here, we have our issues, to be sure, but one thing we’ve never been really big on are people from the North trying to tell us how to live our lives. Call it a holdover from Reconstruction or just plain stubbornness, but when the New York Times tries to tell Southerners how to live, it usually doesn’t work out well.

Yet, that’s pretty much what the Times decided to do with an op-ed titled, “Southern Republicans Cannot Be Trusted With Public Health.”

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Comment O’ The Day:

I don’t view gun grabbers as an enemy because of politics, I don’t think they’re evil because of politics. I don’t care about the (D) or (R) after your preferred candidate’s name.

I view them as an enemy because the only possible reason someone would want to disarm me is if they intend to do me harm. If they intend to interact peacefully with me, my level of armament doesn’t matter to them.  I’m a peaceful person and have never given anyone a reason to doubt that. The only people with a vested interested in my disarmament are those that intend to get violent with me and don’t want me to be able to fight back.

Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant #2744

There are some people I know that would actually relish the idea of this happening, just for the ‘opportunities’ it would present. And they are the kinds of opportunities I think all my readers can readily imagine.

Biden Administration May Consider ‘Vaccine Passports’ For Interstate Travel

President Joe Biden really wants Americans to get vaccinated, and after rolling out all the stops, from free beer to free Uber rides to child care, the administration has plans to penalize those that either won’t get the shot or don’t feel obligated to prove to the government or businesses that they’ve gotten the shot.

The administration may consider creating vaccine requirements for interstate travel for citizens within the US.

The AP reports that “…while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.”

“That’s not to say they won’t be implemented in the future,” the AP writes, “as public opinion continues to shift toward requiring vaccinations as a means to restore normalcy.”

The Biden administration has forced many federal employees to vaccinate, and has urged US businesses to force their employees to get vaccinated as well, under penalty of losing their position or persistent COVID testing.

The Biden administration said they would work with businesses to create a vaccine credentialing system, but has repeatedly said that there would be no federal database of vaccine recipients.

Disney, United, and Google issued vaccine mandates for their employees. More than 600 colleges and universities are requiring the vaccine as well, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“We are essentially saying there are different paths you can take, but the path that you cannot take is doing nothing—that’s the one unacceptable position right now,” said deputy director of strategic communication and engagement for Biden’s COVID-19 response team Ben Wakana.
Georgetown Law took up the question of Americans’ rights to travel freely within the United States under the Trump administration at the start of the pandemic. At the time, Americans in many parts of the country were asked to “lockdown” for two week and to “slow the spread” so that when Americans got sick and ended up in the hospital, they didn’t all end up there at once, overwhelming the medical infrastructure.

Meryl Chertoff, Executive Director, SALPAL writes: “The right of Americans to travel interstate in the United States has never been substantially judicially questioned or limited. In 1941, the Court declared unconstitutional California’s restriction upon the migration of the ‘Okies’—whose travails are famously documented in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ Justice Douglas referred to ‘the right of free movement’ as ‘a right of national citizenship,’ and the rights of the migrants were upheld under the Commerce Clause.”

“The Privileges and Immunities Clause protects the rights of US citizens,” Chertoff goes on to say, “who are each also the citizens of a state, against discriminatory treatment under the law of a different state. In a 1985 case, the Court found that the Privileges and Immunities clause prohibited discrimination against a non-resident except where (i) there is a substantial reason for the difference in treatment; and (ii) the discrimination practiced against nonresidents bears a substantial relationship to the State’s objective.

In deciding whether the discrimination bears a close or substantial relationship to the State’s objective, the Court has considered the availability of less restrictive means.”
“The baseline, then, is that freedom of movement within and between states is Constitutionally protected,” Chertoff concluded.
On Thursday, the CDC was asked outright what they would be doing to make sure that counterfeit vaccine cards were not in circulation, and if they’ve reconsidered creating a federalized system to track vaccine recipients and issue identification for the vaccinated to enable them to move freely through society while those who don’t have the credential are shut out from public life.

Biden administration COVID spokesperson Jeff Zients was asked “Is the administration reconsidering something like a QR code, or a passport, to help verify people’s vaccination status and if not, what are you doing to stop the proliferation of fake vaccine cards?”
“There are a number of ways people can demonstrate their vaccination status,” Zeints said. “Companies and organizations and the federal government are taking different approaches, and we applaud this innovation.”
“Through vaccination requirements, employers have the power to help end the pandemic,” Zients said.

But, Zients said, “There will be no federal vaccination database as with all other vaccines, the information gets held at the state and local level. Any system that is developed in the private sector or elsewhere must meet key standards, including affordability, being available both digitally and on paper, and most importantly protecting people’s privacy and security.”
Biden said on Thursday “I know there are a lot of people out there trying to turn a public safety measure, that is children wearing masks in school so they can be safe, into a political dispute. And this isn’t about politics. It’s about keeping our children safe.”
“I saw a video and reports from Tennessee, protestors threatening doctors and nurses, who before a school board were making the case that to keep kids safe there should be mandatory masks. And as they walked out these doctors were threatened, nurses were threatened. Our health care workers are heroes. They are the heroes when there was no vaccine. They’re doing their best to care for the people who are refusing to get vaccinated,” Biden said.

“And unvaccinated folks are being hospitalized and dying as a result of not being vaccinated,” the president continued, harkening back to his statement that COVID is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
“To the mayors, school superintendents, local leaders,” he said, “who are standing up to the governors who are politicizing mask protection for our kids, thank you, thank you as well. Thank God that we have heroes like you. And I stand with you all, and America should as well.”

The people in Washington calling it an insurrection are doing so to justify their own attempt to illegally seize power.

Dare I Say That January 6 Was Not an Insurrection?

Please don’t share this article with anyone except for your neighbors, friends, enemies, relatives, and coworkers — I don’t want to get into trouble — but I remain adamant that January 6 was not an insurrection. To say otherwise is a despicable lie.

Insurrection was not on the mind of anyone serious at the Capitol on January 6. It was a very large demonstration aimed at protesting the way an election was conducted. No matter what anyone thinks of the November 2020 election, there was something wrong with states changing their election laws months, even weeks before balloting. In addition, social media monopolies suppressed the news of the Hunter Biden laptop, which would have been a game changer.

In the face of all that stuff, many thousands came to Washington, D.C. to protest. They did not come to seize the reins of power. There were no U.S. military generals or captains or colonels or lieutenants leading or strategizing a coup. There was no shooting of rifles or taking of hostages. Rather, people came dressed like it was a carnival, such as the men dressed in bear or wolverine outfits.

Anyone who ever has read or learned anything about military coups or Bolshevik-style revolutions knows that January 6 was a demonstration that got out of hand, as did scores of racist, anti-Semitic “Death to the Police” Black Lives Matter demonstrations all summer. 

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“…right in Der Grëtchënführër’s face!”

Michigan Senate Repeals Emergency Powers Law, Whitmer Unable to Veto.

Michigan’s Senate on Thursday approved a petition that repeals Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers, with another approval expected by the state’s lower chamber.

Whitmer, a Democrat, cannot veto the petition.

The Michigan Senate’s 20-15 vote came two days after the Board of State Canvassers certified the petition, which was started by a group called Unlock Michigan that gathered over 340,000 signatures.

The board deadlocked 2-2 in April but voted 3-0 this time around.

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BLUF:
While anti-gun Democrats like Carolyn Maloney will use this GAO report to push for more gun control laws, what the study tells me is that a) we’ve got much bigger issues that are driving up healthcare costs and b) banning or tightly regulating items doesn’t solve the problem. Even if the right to keep and bear arms wasn’t protected by the Constitution, gun control wouldn’t be the best answer to bring down the rate of violent crime and firearm-related injuries, but the Second Amendment makes the idea a non-starter. Want to reduce gun-related injuries? Reduce the number of violent criminals, and leave the 100-million responsible gun owners alone.

The Fuzzy Math Behind The GAO’s New Report On The Cost Of “Gun Violence”

Democrats have a new talking point in their continued push for new federal gun control laws – restricting the rights of Americans doesn’t just save lives, but money too. A new report from the Government Accountability Office claims that that the United States spends $1-billion per year on hospital costs related to “gun violence,” and anti-gun politicians are already pointing to the new report as a reason to pass more anti-gun legislation.

The nonpartisan GAO found gun violence accounts for about 30,000 hospital stays and about 50,000 emergency room visits annually. More than 15 percent of firearm injury survivors are also readmitted at least once after initial treatment, costing an additional $8,000 to $11,000 per patient. Because the majority of victims are poor, the burden largely falls on safety-net programs like Medicaid, including covering some of the care for the uninsured.

The report, the first of its kind from the watchdog agency, is based available data on caring for people who suffer non-fatal gun injuries each year. It’s expected to fuel Democrats’ calls for expanded background checks amid a stalemate on gun control legislation.

“Congress must do whatever it takes — including abolishing the filibuster if necessary—to address this public health crisis,” said New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who led the coalition requesting the GAO study.

Do you get the feeling that Maloney was going to use this report to call for an end to the filibuster no matter what it said? This report is a means to an end, and the end result that Maloney and her fellow Democrats are aiming for is the end of the filibuster and the establishment of one-party rule; from enacting sweeping gun bans with 51 votes to packing the Supreme Court full of anti-gun justices that will uphold every new infringement on the Second Amendment approved by Congress.

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H.Res.388 – Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that President Biden’s gun policies are unconstitutional and should never be approved.

117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 388

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that President Biden’s gun policies are unconstitutional and should never be approved.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 12, 2021
Mr. DesJarlais (for himself, Mr. Norman, Mr. Rogers of Alabama, Mr. Steube, Mr. Weber of Texas, Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Budd, Mrs. Harshbarger, Mr. Brooks, Mr. Perry, Mr. McClintock, Mr. Keller, Mr. Rose, Mr. Aderholt, and Mrs. Miller of Illinois) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that President Biden’s gun policies are unconstitutional and should never be approved.

Whereas the right of the people to keep and bear arms is enshrined in our Constitution as the Second Amendment;

Whereas our Nation’s Founders believed this right to be fundamental for Americans to protect themselves and the state of freedom;

Whereas President Biden has directly attacked this right by issuing numerous Executive orders and calling for stricter gun control policies;

Whereas President Biden’s Executive actions on pistol-braced firearms are an unconstitutional attack on Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights;

Whereas President Biden’s Executive actions on homemade firearms, such as 3D printed firearm files or unfinished receiver blanks, are an unconstitutional attack on Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights;

Whereas President Biden has called for Congress to pass unconstitutional laws requiring background checks on all firearm transfers, unconstitutionally banning “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines”, and holding law-abiding gun manufacturers liable for the acts of criminals;

Whereas President Biden’s gun restriction proposals would effectively ban commonly owned firearms and magazines used for lawful purposes;

Whereas President Biden’s gun restriction proposals would criminalize private firearm transfers; and

Whereas President Biden’s gun restriction proposals would seek to hold gun manufacturers and dealers civilly liable, encouraging abuse of the court system to drive them out of business through meritless litigation: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—

(1) it should be the policy of the United States to strengthen the Second Amendment rights of Americans and prevent the potential erosion of these rights; and

(2) Congress should never stop fighting to protect the Second Amendment.

 

Legislation proposed to make Ky. Second Amendment sanctuary state

FRANKFORT, Ky. (KT) – Kentucky would become a Second Amendment sanctuary state if legislation being proposed for the 2022 General Assembly is enacted.

The measure, which will be sponsored by Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mt. Vernon, would bar state and local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal restrictions on the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. It would also prohibit local governments and other public agencies from allocating public resources or money in the enforcement of federal firearm bans. It includes firearms themselves, ammunition and firearm accessories.

“President Biden has declared gun control a priority for his administration, and we know that if he doesn’t get what he wants from Congress, he will abuse his executive authority through rulemaking,” said Bray, who represents all of Garrard and Rockcastle counties and a portion of Madison County. “This sends a clear message that Kentucky is a Second Amendment sanctuary and that there is no question we will defend the Second Amendment against any attempt to infringe upon it.”

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Dangerous, Threatening Rhetoric is the Tactic of Tyrants

Only tyrants threaten the use of force against their own people. On Wednesday, President Biden remarked,  “If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

This is reminiscent of California’s infamous Chinese-spy-bedding Congressman, Eric Swalwell’s threats via Twitter back in 2018, when he said about a hypothetical war against gun owners, “And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes….”

Both references to nuclear weapons is designed to do one thing: to intimidate America’s  armed populace.

 

Drilling down, the core question is why do these politicians distrust the people with the arms the Constitution guarantees their right to keep and bear? What are they doing, or planning, that makes civilian disarmament a priority? If civilian gun ownership isn’t a threat, why are lawful gun owners constantly conflated with criminals, scapegoated for crimes they didn’t commit, and their rights under incessant, incremental attack?

The reason is the power of an armed civilian populace is not to be underestimated, and they know it.

All men have the potential to be tyrants. As Aristotle warned . . .

The three aims of the tyrant are, one, the humiliation of his subjects; he knows that a mean-spirited man will not conspire against anybody; two, the creation of mistrust among them; for a tyrant is not to be overthrown until men begin to have confidence in one another — and this is the reason why tyrants are at war with the good; they are under the idea that their power is endangered by them, not only because they will not be ruled despotically, but also because they are too loyal to one another and to other men, and do not inform against one another or against other men — three, the tyrant desires that all his subjects shall be incapable of action, for no one attempts what is impossible and they will not attempt to overthrow a tyranny if they are powerless.

Wednesday’s speech was a prime example of attempts to humiliate, foment mistrust, and lay the foundation for plans to render popular action ineffective, just as Aristotle described. Biden’s ham-handed remarks about the government’s arsenal of F15s and nuclear weapons were intended to mock and humiliate anyone who believes she is free citizen, not a subject. Anyone who believes her life if worth defending against those who wish her harm. Anyone who subscribes to the historic values enshrined in our Constitution.

The second tactic was intimidation, the use of divisive language, stoking fear and mistrust amongst our fellow citizens by scapegoating gun owners. He all but blamed us for higher crime rates rather than looking at other, more politically inconvenient factors such as defunding, demonizing, and demoralizing police forces throughout the nation.

Biden tried to stoke fear of modern sporting rifles, of which there are about 20 million in common use in the United States. Attempting to ban them over arbitrary, mostly cosmetic features defies all logic. If it wasn’t so clearly tyrannical, it would almost be humorous.

Finally, Aristotle recognized that tyrants desire to render their subjects incapable of acting. In Biden’s case, through civilian disarmament. How would one actually accomplish this? Enter Biden’s ATF Director nominee and current gun control lobbyist, David Chipman. The man refused to identify what constitutes and “assault weapon” because he knows it will be far more convenient to let that definition be whatever the tyrants want or need it to be.

In the end, Biden’s speech was embarrassing and his empty threats pathetic. America’s gun owners will not be intimidated. If gun-grabbing politicians didn’t fear the people, they wouldn’t spend so much time, energy, resources, and linguistic wrangling attacking Second Amendment rights.

We rest easy knowing our constitutional foundations, and the pre-existing rights codified therein, have brought us to this. Not to disappoint the President, but we know that the Supreme Court has already ruled that we have an individual right to possess arms in common use. That’s a feature, not a bug as this very moment was thoughtfully crafted and designed by the Framers. Our duty and responsibility is to uphold the Constitution.

 

F-15S & NUCLEAR WEAPONS: BIDEN SHRUGS OFF 2A IN GUN CONTROL SPEECH

Just over a week before the country’s Independence Day celebrations, President Biden delivered a speech on gun control in which he ridiculed the meaning, feasibility, and intent of the Second Amendment.

In an event meant to be the kickoff for another round of anti-gun legislation and executive actions for an Administration just 155 days in the White House, Biden tried to frame the Constitutional gun rights argument to justify his proposed efforts.

“The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon,” he said.

While the first part, about the Amendment “limiting the type of people,” is somewhat true– for example, the gun rights of enslaved and in some cases even freed blacks were often denied in the Southern States from the earliest days of the Constitution despite the Second Amendment– Biden fails the fact check on cannon ownership. As we have covered before, anyone with the desire and extra cash could acquire their own battery of fully functional cannon without any government paperwork or permission until 1968. 

With that being said, modern breechloading artillery is still available in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave,” provided it is registered with the federal government and properly taxed. Still, legacy artillery systems such as muzzleloading black powder field guns, do not require tax stamps.

Biden also went further into the woods against what the Second Amendment protects, arguing the enumerated right had something to do with hunting, although many in the gun rights community point out that Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to a duck blind.

“No one needs to have a weapon that can fire over 30, 40, 50, even up to 100 rounds unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something,” he said, although magazine capacity restrictions have only been adopted in nine states– and have been recently found to be Constitutionally suspect by a federal court. Further, industry data suggests consumers in the U.S. own at least 230 million detachable magazines, with about half of those able to hold more than 10 cartridges, the traditional threshold for a “large-capacity magazine” in restricted states.

Then, Biden seemed to paint the Second Amendment’s potential check against tyranny, a concept that dates to the days of Constitutional framer James Madison, as ludicrous in the days of modern warfare, notwithstanding the realities of multi-domain modern insurgency.

“Those who say the blood of lib- — ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” he said.

The quote Biden ramblingly alluded to, drawn a 1787 letter from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson– author of The Declaration of Independence and later third U.S. President– to William Smith, John Adams’ secretary, can be argued to be directly related to the right to keep and bear arms and was penned at the time of Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts.

We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.

It is not the first time that Biden trotted out the Jeffersonian quote in relation to his view on gun policy. In February 2020, while on the campaign trail for the Democratic nomination for President, he argued at a town hall event in New Hampshire that, “Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”

BLUF:
The cold civil war is being fought in civic meetings. The battles are local and the battle maps cover streets rather than continents, but it is a conflict driven by the impetus of revolutions and civil wars in which one people, as Jefferson wrote, seeks to part ways with another, not to rule over them, but to be free of their thievery, their abuses, and their tyrannical rule

The Small Secessions of the New Civil War: Neighborhoods secede from cities, cities from counties, and counties from states.

That a battle over Atlanta would play nearly as pivotal a role in the country’s second civil war as it did in the first might have surprised few historians. What might have surprised them is that the battle would involve civic meetings rather than bullets. There are plenty of bullets in Buckhead, a part of Atlanta coping with runaway crime under the pro-crime rule of Mayor Keisha Bottoms, and those bullets have inspired local residents to secede and form their own police force.

Buckhead is not the first part of Atlanta to try and secede. Sandy Springs had already successfully seceded from Atlanta and a number of cities in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have tried to break away to form Milton County. These efforts to escape the blight and corruption of Atlanta aren’t new, but Buckhead’s fight to escape Atlanta’s pro-crime government has captured the imagination of millions of Americans from one coast of the country to the other.

The cold civil war is being shaped not by national, but local secessions like the one in Buckhead as neighborhoods try to secede from cities, cities from counties, and counties from states in a powerful struggle by conservative and centrist communities to define their own way of life.

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Yes, Gun Control Did Help Facilitate The Holocaust

The Holocaust is one of the most horrible events in human history. It became the benchmark by which we compare atrocities, and for good reason. Millions of Jews slaughtered. Millions more put through some of the worst abuses a person can visit upon another. It was awful in so many ways.

However, we on the gun right side have pointed out over and over again that if the Jews had been able to have guns, the Holocaust may never have happened.

Unsurprisingly, some people disagree.

But the freshman congresswoman is hardly the only figure in the nation to have manipulated the Holocaust. The National Rifle Association, or at least its modern leaders led by its now embattled CEO, Wayne LaPierre, have long searched for “proof” that gun control is nothing more than a slippery slope to genocide. And in recent years, the NRA has manipulated the Holocaust to claim they finally found it, funding research that has allegedly discovered a new link between gun control and the Holocaust that generations of scholars have yet to find.

In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League said “Nazi Analogies Have No Place In Gun Control Debate” after a half dozen commentators including Sean Hannity and Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News out of the blue all raised the matter of gun control and the Holocaust.

“If the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had had the firepower and the ammunition that the Nazis did, some of Poland might have stayed free and more persons would have survived the Holocaust,” claimed Napolitano.

It’s as if they were all laying the groundwork for the book, “Gun Control in The Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ‘Enemies of the State,’” published later that year by the Independent Institute, a small think-tank in Oakland. Research for this book was partly funded by the NRA. Its author, Stephen P. Halbrook, is the nation’s best-known pro-gun lawyer. Several years before, during the watershed gun rights case Heller vs. District of Columbia that established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep arms, Halbrook filed a successful amicus brief on behalf of 250 members of the House of Representatives, 55 senators, and the president of the Senate, then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Halbrook’s thesis about gun control and the Holocaust is novel at best. Most Holocaust scholars, like Alan E. Steinweis, director of holocaust studies at the University of Vermont, say that the idea that gun control was a factor in the Holocaust is “simply a nonissue.” But Halbrook claims that prior gun control laws during the Weimer Republic, or Germany’s democratic years before Hitler took power, were used to seize firearms from Jews, enough to have helped enable the Holocaust.

Never mind the weak evidence, the NRA’s house organ crowed about the book’s supposed breakthrough.

The problem with this line of “reasoning” is that they’re demanding pro-gun voices provide proof for something that wasn’t allowed to happen.

Did the Weimar Republic ban guns? Yes.

Were the Jews in Nazi Germany armed? No.

As such, were they able to offer armed resistance when herded into concentration camps? Also, no.

No one is saying that the Weimar Republic actively sought to empower those that followed them to commit genocide against the Jewish people. No one is claiming that things proceeded along a set plan all built around the idea of exterminating not just the Jews but also homosexuals and gypsies.

To make that claim, you’d need a great deal of evidence and that evidence likely doesn’t exist.

However, there’s ample reason to suggest that the Nazis could capitalize on the existing laws and take advantage of a disarmed population. In fact, no one disputes the fact they were disarmed and while some claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, I don’t really care about their opinions on much of anything.

Now, let’s also be clear that we can’t be certain that an armed population would have prevented the Holocaust. Even in the modern United States where guns outnumber people, a lot of folks are unarmed by choice. That would likely have been true right up until the Nazis decided to put the Jews in concentration camps. How many would have been able to fight back?

Frankly, we’ll never know.

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Dumb, Disarmed and Diseased
Dumb, Disarmed and Diseased

Have you noticed how the elite is bent on creating the perfect serf? From ensuring we are unarmed to pushing pot – yeah, America needs more of a drug that makes people lazier and less interesting – to hyping the pandemic, everything the ruling caste has been doing lately seems focused on turning us into drones. And far too many people are just letting it happen.

And now the US government will be pimping BLM to foreigners. Great. How could that go wrong? Our nonpartisan government is now fully partisan – weren’t norms important just a few months ago?

Building The Perfect Serf

With a hat-tip to Aaron, whose tweet alerted me to the painfully dumb meme of the commie gov of Pennsylvania, the campaign to change Americans from proud, industrious citizens into submissive, dependent subjects is going full-throttle. The governor, recently rebuked by the citizens who voted away his dictatorial flu powers in a welcome bit of push-back, decried the fact people can buy guns from each other without his permission but can’t have dope without a medical ID card – I guess requiring ID for getting high is as onerous as it is for voting. So, in his optimal universe, people can’t get arms to protect themselves unless he thinks it’s okay and grants them a dispensation to do so, but it should be open season at the dope dispensary. And, of course, they have to be masked while doing it, at least until they wrap their lips around the bong.

Being able to defend yourself: Bad.

Being stoned on a couch watching Scooby-Doo: Good.

Being masked all the time: Better.

Guns allow people to break the monopoly on force held by the government, creating a limit to what the government can do. No wonder liberals hate that. This right gives people the impression that the consent of the governed matters. Bunch of wicked “insurrectionists” they are, daring to think they should possess some sort of ultimate veto power over their betters!

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leftist tyrants gotta tyrant.

Biden Supports Suppressing Online “Misinformation” Press Secretary Says

President Joe Biden supports efforts to crack down on “misinformation” on Big Tech platforms, the White House said.

“The president’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections. And we’ve seen that over the past several months, broadly speaking. I’m not placing any blame on any individual or group; we’ve seen it from a number of sources,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington……..

Senator Klobuchar Says Facebook’s Trump Ban Doesn’t Go Far Enough

The recent decision by the Oversight Board to uphold Facebook’s decision to indefinitely suspend President Trump reignited calls for antitrust laws against Big Tech companies. But Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who is leading a team that could reshape the country’s antitrust laws, says the ban was not punishment enough.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Klobuchar called her political opponent the “ultimate conveyor of misinformation,” adding he should be permanently banned from social media platforms…….

BLUF:
Compared to nearly the entire rest of the world, people in the United States have retained the ability to choose to be legally armed or unarmed. Most people in the USA want to keep the option. Nearly all the rest of the world does not have it.

The Case for More Guns, Learn to Think Like The Sheep Who Chose to Be Unarmed

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- People in the gun culture often express amazement about people who want them disarmed. They ascribe the desire to hostility and malice. It may be true for a minority of those who actively wish for a disarmed population.  A significant number, likely a majority, have made a voluntary decision to be unarmed.

It is important to know your opponent and to understand their motives.

Three years ago, this correspondent wrote an essay on how to understand people who want a disarmed population. It was popular but did not appear on AmmoLand News at that time.

I have updated the essay for current conditions.

There Is An Easy Way To Understand People Who Wish You To Be Unarmed.

It takes a little discipline. You may have a little mental discomfort, but it is not particularly difficult.  For the ability to understand the other side, assume you have deliberately chosen to be unarmed.

Choosing to be armed is more difficult. It requires action. It requires training. It requires an investment in money and time. You think about unpleasant realities and plan for unpleasant possibilities. You devote time and money to be armed. A higher level of responsibility is required.

Once you internalize the decision to be unarmed, arguments on the other side become understandable. The voluntarily unarmed people we are attempting to understand are those who have moved from the decision to be unarmed, to the policy statement “guns are bad”.

Guns are Bad
Guns are Bad

Armed people have a power advantage over unarmed people. People do not want others to have a power advantage over them. It makes them uncomfortable. To prevent this, the voluntarily unarmed often want everyone else to be unarmed.

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