Category: Rights
The Birth Of An American Freedom Movement
We may be witnessing the birth of a movement that could be the most important result of the COVID-19 nightmare: the anti-lockdown protests sweeping the country.
Per our usual agreement, the media is totally getting it wrong. It’s not about being able to go to restaurants or movies or even only about going back to work. It’s certainly not about a death cult or not taking the virus seriously.
The protests are, at core, about people who want their rights back — rights that have been snatched in just a few weeks time. It’s driven by people who understand the threat of tyrannical government, and that threat is very, very real. It’s happening right in front of our eyes.
Probably the best face of Orwell’s dystopian 1984 is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Although the Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is a close second. Mayor de Blasio is calling on residents to report their neighbors to law enforcement for violations of social distancing protocols. And it’s made super easy. Yay! How do you narc out your neighbors who don’t obey government edicts? “It’s simple: just snap a photo and text it to 311-692.” de Blasio said. “We will make sure that enforcement comes right away.”
Wow, wow, wow. Please read 1984. This is *exactly* what Big Brother teaches neighbors and children to do. Everyone is a snitch. People live in terror. In 1984, they disappear if they don’t follow the government line. We’re not there yet. But this is an astonishing step in the Big Brother direction.
Michigan Golfers Flouting Lockdown Rules Right Next Door to Governor’s Mansion
Seig Heil! THBBT!Heil! THBBT! Right in the Führer’s Face!
Country Club of Lansing allows members to ignore lockdown
The Country Club of Greater Lansing is again allowing its members to play on its course along Moores River Drive after a brief shutdown. And that’s despite guidance today from the state’s top law enforcement official that said otherwise.
“We cannot rely on the superfluous statements made by each respective office and must only rely on the text of the order itself,” according to an email from the Country Club to its members sent earlier this week, again allowing golf to be played. “If the governor intended the order to specifically ban golf, she would have included such specific language in the order.”
The Bill of Rights Matter – Even in a Pandemic
The Founding Fathers realized one of the most important aspects of life – our rights are not granted by man, but by God. They understood that if any government is responsible for giving rights to an individual, those freedoms and liberties can be quickly taken away. Instead, when the Bill of Rights was composed, they agreed and recognized that God is the authority of our prerogatives. Whether an elected official likes the Bill of Rights or not, they must adhere to them at all times, not just when it is convenient for them.
New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy was on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight this past week for an interview on the condition on the state. During the conversation, Carlson mentioned the widely publicized incident of 15 men arrested at a synagogue after attending an orthodox Jewish funeral, accused of violating the governor’s edict against large gatherings. Carlson asked Murphy,” By what authority did you nullify the Bill of Rights in issuing this order? How do you have the power to do that?”
Murphy’s response is indicative of an authoritarian. He chuckled at Carlson’s question and said, “that’s above my pay grade Tucker,” but did not say who’s pay grade it was. Murphy is the governor of the state of New Jersey. He sits in the highest political office. His decisions affect every citizen and anyone who passes through while traveling or on business. There is no one else above him politically. Murphy rejected responsibility.
Also, did you notice Murphy’s reaction to the question about the Bill of Rights? He chuckled. That is what he thinks about your rights as a United States citizen. His response should not surprise anyone. The Democrats laugh at the Constitution daily – they hate it. They abhor the fact that it restricts them from doing what they want to accomplish full-blown socialism.
Murphy could not answer Carlson’s question directly. He made excuses and blamed an imaginary person who is making other executive decisions in the state of New Jersey. Why? He knows that he cannot answer the question truthfully – the Democrats are in a power grab.
Carlson’s question was necessary for this reason: we have seen too many Democratic politicians act like the Bill of Rights does not apply to them. Since we are amid a pandemic, certain governors are governing by executive edict.
There were congregants cited for attending a drive-in church service in Mississippi after the Democratic mayor issued an executive order against them. The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, Democrat Greg Fischer, attempted to ban the same type of church service but failed after a judge overruled him. The Kentucky governor ordered the State Police to record all vehicle license registration plates of any vehicle in a church parking lot on Easter Sunday with the threat of forced quarantine.
It is ironic. Democrats are proponents for a more powerful federal government with less power handed to states, except now there is a Republican president in office. All of a sudden, they are enjoying States Rights, perhaps to the point of illegal decrees.
The Bill of Rights guarantees us individual freedoms in America. It gives power to the people and restricts the government from reaching too far into our lives. It is one of the most precious documents in the founding of our country – without it, there is tyranny.
The COVID-19 virus is dangerous. It is responsible for the death of thousands of people. Pandemics do not annul our Constitution, and Civil liberties are under assault by the left.
The Democratic Party does not care about liberties and freedoms as initially intended. They are more concerned with creating a victim mentality nationwide, making their victims feel entitled to certain rights, government checks, and social entitlement.
Pandemics are not new and have been around for thousands of years, causing countless deaths. The Founders did not place anything in the Bill of Rights about widespread illness, and there are no clauses in the Constitution about them. Freedom is inherently dangerous. Much less perilous than security granted by the government, however.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
We are approaching April 19. It’s an important date in history because it brings to our recollection the events of 1775 when the British Monarch sent troops to disarm his subjects at Concord, Massachusetts. The patriots who would not get off the Lexington Green were shot and or bayoneted. The British [or the Colonists – no one really knows ed.] fired, “The Shot Heard Round the World,” and history took a different path than that the people of the day may have anticipated on April 16th.
We have a republic and the only way that we will keep it is through eternal vigilance. I understand that we face a Chinese Plague, but the Chinese and their plague have not canceled the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We have the right to assemble peacefully, the right to worship according to the dictates of our conscience and the right to be armed and to defend ourselves.
The situation in some US states where governors have offered bounties for denouncements on people who may be walking a dog or sitting on a park bench by themselves taking air are most disturbing. The situation in Virginia with the recent passage of intolerable acts, or laws if you will, which are in direct violation of the Bill of Rights, also create concern.
Drivers swarm Michigan capital to protest coronavirus lockdown measures
Hundreds of cars, trucks and SUVs descended on Michigan’s state capital Wednesday afternoon as part of a noisy protest against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s social-distancing restrictions that critics say have gone too far.
Dubbed “Operation Gridlock” and organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, the protest did just that – creating bumper-to-bumper traffic throughout downtown Lansing as demonstrators blasted their horns, waved Americans flags and hoisted placards deriding Whitmer’s orders and demanding that she reopen the state’s economy.
The lockdown measures are meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, but Whitmer has gone further than some other governors — and the backlash in Michigan is among the most heated in the country.
“Let’s start with the fact that some counties have no or very few COVID cases and yet are totally shut down,” Rosanne Ponkowski, president of the Michigan Conservative Coalition, said in a statement. “When did a one-size solution solve everyone’s local issues? Governor Whitmer will put you out of business before allowing mere citizens to be responsible for their own behavior. That is madness.”
Whitmer announced over the weekend an expansion to her state’s stay-at-home orders, which among other things prohibits residents from visiting family or friends with exceptions for providing care, bans public and private gatherings regardless of size or family ties, and places restrictions on what types of businesses may operate and in what capacity.
Michigan has the fourth-largest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, with more 27,000 being reported as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The orders, which are in place until at least May 1, quickly drew criticism from conservative Republicans in the state, who argue that the governor is turning Michigan into a “nanny state” and impeding their civil liberties.
“Quarantine is when you restrict movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people,” Meshawn Maddock, an organizer of “Operation Gridlock” with the Michigan Conservative Coalition, told Fox News. “Every person has learned a harsh lesson about social distancing. We don’t need a nanny state to tell people how to be careful.”
Attorney General Bill Barr announced Tuesday that the City of Greenville in Mississippi appeared to have “singled churches out” as essential services that may not operate according to state social-distancing guidelines, Fox News reported.
The Justice Department intervened in Temple Baptist Church’s lawsuit against Greenville police for ticketing congregants during a drive-in service amid coronavirus social-distancing rules, saying that it “strongly suggests that the city’s actions target religious conduct,” according to Fox.
Police began issuing $500 tickets to congregants who refused to leave a parking lot where the church was holding a drive-in service, prompting the Justice Department to file a statement of interest following the church’s lawsuit. “The United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of its citizens’ fundamental right to the free exercise of religion, expressly protected by the First Amendment,” the statement says…………..
Too bad. So sad…..not
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York closing centers, laying off staff
NEW YORK — Planned Parenthood of Greater New York has begun laying off and furloughing employees and will temporarily close a dozen of its health centers, citing a strain on resources posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The organization — which formed in January through the merger of five Planned Parenthood affiliates, including the Mohawk Hudson affiliate in the Capital Region — began terminating and furloughing staff on Monday, according to emails obtained by the Times Union. Staff will be reduced by about 28 percent across all departments, either through permanent termination, or through furloughs and reduced hours through June 30.
The temporary closure of health centers will leave some communities, such as Rome and Oneida in Central New York, with no nearby options for sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing or abortion services, according to staff at those centers.
In August 2013, DEFCAD released the public alpha of its 3D search engine, which indexes public object repositories and allows users to add their own objects. The site soon closed down due to pressure from the United States State Department, under the pretense that distributing certain files online might violate US Arms Export ITAR regulations.
From 2013 to 2018, DEFCAD remained offline, pending resolution to the legal case Defense Distributed brought against the State Department, namely that ITAR regulations placed a prior restraint on Defense Distributed’s free speech, particularly since the speech in question regarded another constitutionally protected right: firearms. While the legal argument failed to gain support in federal court, in a surprise reversal in 2018, the State Department agreed that ITAR did in fact violate Defense Distributed’s free speech. Therefore, for a brief period in late 2018 DEFCAD was once again publicly available online.
Shortly thereafter, 20 states and Washington DC sued the State Department, in order to prevent DEFCAD from remaining online. At its core, this new suit (correctly) cited a procedural error: the proper notice had not been given prior to enacting the change in how ITAR applied to small arms. As such, DEFCAD was once again taken offline, pending the State Department providing proper notice via the Federal Register.
On March 28, 2020, DEFCAD once again became publicly available online
Gun-Rights Activist Releases Blueprints for Digital Guns
Cody Wilson calls the move impervious to legal challenge
A U.S. technology company made thousands of digital-gun files publicly available, including blueprints that will enable users to make plastic guns with three-dimensional printers, a scourge of gun-control advocates.
Cody Wilson, a director of the company, Defcad, has waged a multiyear legal battle against the federal government over the right to share 3-D-gun-related materials. This was the third time he has released such files, but the first time he has abided by U.S. foreign export controls online, using what he said are digital verification tools to ensure legal file downloads.
Mr. Wilson said he believed his release of the files would be “impervious” to legal challenge and would help normalize the distribution of such material for easy download in the future.
Mr. Wilson is offering access to the files for an annual fee of $50, characterizing his service as “Netflix for 3-D guns.”
His opponents quickly condemned the action, saying that he is bypassing federal gun laws, including those providing for background checks of gun buyers. Foes are also concerned about the proliferation of 3-D-printed guns, which don’t have serial numbers, making it difficult for law-enforcement officers to track them should they be involved in a crime.
“The biggest concern with 3-D-printed guns and the technical data for them is that they’re not traceable,” said Kelly Sampson, counsel at Brady: United Against Gun Violence, a gun-control group. “It’s a huge loophole and opportunity for people who would otherwise be unable to access firearms to be able to do so.”
Federal law generally permits the manufacture of guns for personal use.
The State Department, which oversees the distribution of 3-D-gun blueprints, regardless of export intent, has the responsibility of scrutinizing Mr. Wilson’s new effort. The department declined to comment.
Mr. Wilson said he is fighting the imposition of limits on personal freedoms and that he expects people to download the 3-D-gun files not necessarily to manufacture guns, but “as a form of internal resistance.”
“For me, this is a political battle,” Mr. Wilson said.
Mr. Wilson first alarmed lawmakers when his company, Defense Distributed, published 3-D-gun design files in 2012. In 2013, the State Department ordered him to take down the plans.
The Obama administration ultimately reasoned that the files could be downloaded by foreign nationals and were thus classified as exports regulated by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, a U.S. control on the export of defense and military technology.
Mr. Wilson had run afoul of laws designed to control sales for export, not those restricting domestic transactions.
Mr. Wilson engaged in a lengthy legal fight with the federal government, ultimately prevailing in 2018 when the State Department amended its policy and allowed the files to be posted, issuing Mr. Wilson a license to do so.
President Trump waded into the discussion that summer, writing on Twitter that he was “looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!”
Mr. Wilson again published the plans on his site, before a group of 19 state attorneys general brought suit against him in Seattle federal court. U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik issued an injunction ordering Mr. Wilson to take down the plans.
In his ruling, Mr. Lasnik wrote that Mr. Wilson aimed “to arm every citizen outside of the government’s traditional control mechanism.”
Mr. Wilson said he had been waiting for a long-planned transfer of 3-D-gun oversight from ITAR to the Commerce Department to go through before reissuing the blueprints. Commerce Department oversight is in some respects more lenient than that of ITAR, as it isn’t subject to congressional approval.
But when a new suit was brought in Seattle federal court last year, blocking the transfer of 3-D guns to the Commerce Department’s oversight list, Mr. Wilson charted a new course.
Instead of openly publishing the plans, he said that he would now first vet people who would like to download them, ensuring that they are U.S. citizens or legal residents and that they are located within the U.S., maintaining compliance with ITAR export rules.
To achieve this, Mr. Wilson said he would employ four levels of security, including IP geolocation and proxy detection and technology developed for credit bureaus and anti-money-laundering specialists.
“The internet is not an airtight, hack-proof system,” Ms. Sampson said. “Even some of our most secure databases are vulnerable. It’s not quite living in reality to assume that you can 100% secure information that’s online.”
Mr. Wilson’s proposed system can’t prevent people who download blueprints from sharing them with others, including with those outside the U.S. “I can only tell them that it’s against the law to do so,” Mr. Wilson said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Wilson said his approach adheres to export rules. “I’m a compliant part of the system,” he said.
Defcad has so far made 3,680 files available. Mr. Wilson said that the site will ultimately offer more than 25,000 files, the great majority of which will be for traditional guns and gun components. Many of those are already in the public domain.
Mr. Wilson, who lives in Austin, Texas, timed his Friday release to coincide with the anniversary of the 1836 execution of several hundred soldiers in the Texas revolution in the town of Goliad.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Does The Coronavirus ‘National Emergency’ Endanger The Constitution And The Bill Of Rights?
Original copies of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights remain on display at the National Archives in our nation’s capital. Many Americans consider that the system of government established by those documents is as strong as the pieces of parchment themselves. Quite the contrary. The system of government bequeathed to us more than 230 years ago – one of defined and limited powers designed above all else to protect individual liberty — is far more fragile than most citizens realize.
At no time is the fragility of guaranteed individual liberty more at risk than in times of “emergency;” including, as we face today, one posed not by outside human forces, but by nature. Many in our country clamor for the federal government to control virtually every aspect of dealing with the COVID-19 virus, including use of the military and virtual suspension of civil liberties (as some cities and states are already doing).
If the system of limiting government power and maximizing individual liberty as delineated in the Constitution is to continue in any meaningful degree, we need to remember that our Founders and their generation faced challenges far beyond those we face today. They knew the country they were establishing would face serious threats, including military threats from beyond our shores. They knew as well that Americans would be challenged by Mother Nature, whether by natural forces or by disease.
Yet knowing all that, the system of government they created was one of deliberately limited and defined powers and premised on fundamental pre-existing individual liberties. Our Founders clearly understood that individual liberty protected by the limitations on government power incorporated in the Constitution, could not survive if temporal challenges were permitted to justify circumventing those very restrictions.
In the intervening decades, of course, many U.S. presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and others, have ignored the profound and correct understanding of human nature reflected in the Constitution. Predictably, civil liberties suffered with little if any real or lasting “safety” gained in return.
Nineteen years ago, the United States faced a serious and very real challenge. Some of the measures undertaken by the federal government in response to the 9-11 attacks violated existing laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Other measures, imposed in accord with the hurriedly enacted USA PATRIOT Act, were clearly at odds with the Bill of Rights. But all such steps were justified by government officials at the time because they would “make us safe.”
Less than four years after the World Trade Centers were attacked, one of America’s oldest cities – New Orleans – was beset with a disaster not of terrorists’ making, but of nature’s wrath. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, officials in that city worked to disarm law-abiding citizens trying to protect their homes, families and businesses from looters and other criminals. In one of the most counter-productive government decisions in modern history, officials deliberately swept aside the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to arm one’s self in self-defense simply because the city faced an “emergency.”
The precedents set by those constitutionally ill-advised actions present troubling questions today for officials in our nation’s capital and in cities across the country. As I wrote in this publication just one week ago, troubling steps already have been taken that severely limit the civil liberties supposed to be protected by our Constitution as against infringement by federal, state and local governments.
Now, it appears the federal government is readying additional measures that would undercut one of our Founders’ deepest fears – use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.
Steps likely under consideration include further expanding exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act (the law designed to prohibit use of the Armed Forces in domestic matters), and broadening the president’s power to deploy the military to quell an “insurrection” in circumstances having nothing to do with such a domestic uprising. Additionally, federal officials may impose other clever sleight-of-hand measures to undercut the “great writ” of habeas corpus to facilitate arresting and detaining individuals for the duration of the declared “emergency.”
Whether it is these contingencies, or others creatively contrived by lawyers in Washington, none would be in accord with the principles and mechanisms mandated in the Constitution. “National Emergency” Phase Two would be even more constitutionally troubling than Phase One.
Second Amendment supporters attend militia muster in Amherst County
1st & 2nd Amendments in action.
1st Amendment you ask? The ‘right of the people peaceably to assemble’!
AMHERST CO., Va. (WSET) — Amherst County has joined the growing list of militias.
Residents of Amherst County gathered on Saturday, March 7 to participate in a militia muster call.
Over 130 people lined up to volunteer as part of the militia.
Amherst County residents have gathered today for a militia muster call. @ABC13News pic.twitter.com/zpjyTsD5rW
— Brhett Vickery (@BrhettVickery) March 7, 2020
BIDEN’S HATRED OF GUN OWNERS CLEAR BY NAMING BETO AS POINT MAN: CCRKBA
BELLEVUE, WA – Democrat Joe Biden made it clear in Texas that he despises American gun owners by declaring former rival Beto O’Rourke, the gun-grabbing former Texas congressman, as his point man on what he called “the gun problem,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
“For Biden to embrace Beto should erase any doubt where the former vice president truly stands on gun rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Months ago, we vowed to let nobody forget O’Rourke’s brazen threat to take away people’s firearms, and we meant it.”
O’Rourke’s presidential campaign crumbled after he declared during a debate in Houston, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR15, your AK47.” When nobody else on stage at the time made any effort at all to counter the statement, Gottlieb said Democrats had officially become the “Party of Gun Confiscation.”
Biden told O’Rourke in front of his Dallas audience, “You’re gonna take care of the gun problem with me, you’re gonna be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you, I’m counting on you, we need you badly.”
“I’ll tell you what Biden needs even worse than O’Rourke,” Gottlieb responded. “He needs to kiss any credibility he ever had with gun owners a permanent goodbye. Beto O’Rourke represents everything that is wrong with today’s gun ban extremism, and he is one of the worst enemies of the Second Amendment. While he was campaigning, he said gun owners would be given the option of turning in their guns in exchange for cash, or risk being prosecuted. Then he outright threatened to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding Americans.
“We’re not sure how to explain this to Biden,” he added, “but accepting O’Rourke’s endorsement and then vowing to put him in charge of national gun policy, should he win in November, amounts to quid-pro-quo.
“Biden’s mask is completely off,” Gottlieb concluded. “He’s not just a doddering Democrat pushing to become president, he’s an extremist anti-gunner who just promised to put a gun prohibition fanatic in charge of his administration’s gun policy. That’s not just a difference in philosophy, it’s a declaration of war.”
Gun Control And Demographics: I
mmigrants Vote Against American Gun Rights
So Virginia gun owners just dodged a legislative bullet in the form of a proposed ban on so-called assault weapons. But a demographic bullet is still aimed right where it can do the most damage: the ballot box. The Great Replacement that Leftists celebrate—even as they call it a racist conspiracy theory—is the primary reason gun rights are in the crosshairs in Virginia and throughout the country. Immigration has consequences, meaning foreign-origin voters, and if the GOP doesn’t figure that out soon, gun rights will go the way of Confederate statues, along with other American rights currently undreamt of.
Consider the most recent near miss: Four moderate Democrats sided with Republicans in Virginia’s Senate to block a ban on semi-automatic sporting rifles such as the AR-15. Magazines of more than 12 rounds were targeted, too.
This provoked some eloquent opposition. “The people of Virginia are demanding that someone, anybody that is in power, please stand up and defend the Second Amendment,” said Sen. Amanda Chase, a gun-rights champion and GOP gubernatorial candidate. “If I am going to continue to do the law-abiding work of the people I am going to have to arm myself, so I went through all the training, got the licensing and all that and I will just tell you—I won’t miss” [‘We don’t need weapons of war’: Va. Gov. Northam reacts to failed assault weapons ban, by Tim Barber, WJLA.com, February 18, 2020].
Senator Chase was right: Real Virginians are indeed demanding that someone defend their rights, as the massive gun-rights rally on January 20 surely showed. But the last election results showed something else: Non-white Third World immigrants in Richmond and Northern Virginia who put the Democrats in power last election are doing their best to take those rights away.
“The 2020 legislative session kicked off shortly after noon with several history-making firsts as women and people of color assumed leadership roles previously held only by white men for the last 400 years,” gloated The Associated Press:
One of the House’s first acts was to elect Del. Eileen Filler-Corn as the new speaker, the first woman to serve in that role. She is also the first Jewish speaker.
Her top deputy, House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, is the first black woman to hold that role, and the House elected Suzette Denslow to be the first ever female clerk. Ghazala Hashmi, who unseated a Republican incumbent to help Democrats flip the Senate, became that chamber’s first Muslim female member.
[Newly empowered Virginia Democrats promise action, by Alan Suderman and Sarah Rankin, January 8, 2020]
The New York Times has published two separate articles that celebrate the immigrant-driven demographic displacement of white Virginians and what it means for those who still “cling to their guns or religion,” as the presidential scion of a Kenyan immigrant famously put it.
“Guns, that is the most pressing issue for me,” Indian engineer Vijay Katkuri told the Times of his vote for a Democrat. “There are lots of other issues, but you can only fix them if you are alive.” Enthused the NYT, “once the heart of the confederacy, Virginia is now the land of Indian grocery stores, Korean churches and Diwali festivals” [How Voters Turned Virginia From Deep Red to Solid Blue, by Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff, November 9, 2019].
The paper gleefully noted that 10 percent of Virginian voters are foreign-born, up from 3.6 percent in 1990, and that the white population in Katkuris’ district has plummeted from 91 percent to 64 percent.
Such is the shift, the New York Times reported in its second tribute to The Great Replacement, that a Muslim woman born in India, Ghazal Hashmi, defeated an incumbent Republican in suburban Richmond:
At the root of this district’s—and Virginia’s—political transition is a slow-moving demographic change, a new kind of suburbanization that is sweeping through national politics. From Atlanta to Houston, this pattern is repeating itself—suburban housing developments gobbling up rural areas and farmland and lifting Democrats to power.
[What Made Virginia Change Its Mind on Guns? by Timothy Williams, January 30, 2020].
Of course, the GOP didn’t help its cause last year by leaving 33 General Assembly races uncontested—10 in House, 23 in the Senate—particularly given that Democrats control the House by a slim two votes and the Senate by 11. Nor can one ignore Michael Bloomberg’s 90-caliber shot at gun rights: $2.5 million that overwhelmed the National Rifle Association’s popgun [Mike Bloomberg’s gun-control group just vastly outspent the NRA to help Democrats win in Virginia, by Lauren Hirsch, CNBC, November 6, 2019].
But demographics are what mattered in the election and will matter long term, as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough cheerily explained.
Tweeted the ex-conservative:
https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1226906496170102795
Bloomberg Tries To Control Others Because He Can’t Control Himself
He’s an arrogant snob, but we already knew that.
There used to be a social stigma against believing and behaving as if one is entitled to tell perfect strangers how to speak, what to do, or how to live.
Sadly, that stigma is all but gone today. More people than ever are willing to use the force of government to compel their fellow citizens to comply with their own changing set of mandates.
I am fascinated by the causes that have compelled so many Americans to lose perspective on this fundamental principle of freedom.
Take Michael Bloomberg, please! What drives this man with the freedom to enjoy his wealth in 65 billion different ways, to spend his time trying to curtail the freedoms and choices of others, even down to the size soda they drink and the amount of salt they ought to be allowed to sprinkle on their spinach?
Coloradans know all too well that the former New York Mayor and Democratic Presidential Candidate spent boatloads of cash pushing state legislators to clamp down on their God-given right to defend themselves and their families. He has pushed freedom-sucking and blatantly biased “Red Flag” bills in numerous other states around the country.
Mayor Busybody simply can’t stop telling others what to do. It seems to be an obsession with him—or maybe, a compulsion too. I gained insight into this when I returned to a New York Times article from 2009 that described Bloomberg’s eating habits.
“He dumps salt on almost everything, even saltine crackers. He devours burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches. He has a weakness for hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and fried chicken, washing them down with a glass of merlot. And his snack of choice? Cheez-Its.”
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is about control. Controlling one’s out-of-control thoughts, feelings and behavior by attempting to control his external environment. Consciously or unconsciously, those afflicted do this in vain, to the point where they feel unable to control the compulsion as well (as in excessive hand-washing).
Most sufferers aren’t dangerous unless they have 65 billion dollars and a God-complex.
The Times went on to report this delicious insight:
“…he (Bloomberg) is known to grab food off the plates of aides and, occasionally, even strangers. (“Delicious,” he declared recently, after swiping a piece of fried calamari from an unsuspecting diner in Staten Island.)”
Behavior like this exhibits a staggering and extreme lack of boundaries. The Times seems to only snicker at this, but it’s painfully clear that Bloomberg has great difficulty respecting the basic boundaries of civil society. No wonder it’s so easy for him to help himself to your freedoms and your choices, when he can’t stop helping himself to your calamari.
As a rule of thumb, the most flawed and arrogant people are most likely to believe they know what’s best for everyone else and should be allowed to trample on our freedoms. Those who are secure and comfortable in their own skin do not have a need to control others. They have the basic self-confidence to tolerate and even enjoy the uncertainty of others’ choices and behavior. They reserve more extreme action for times in which there has been the actual commission of a crime.
These cultural underpinnings of freedom have been essential to what is America. Socialists have been systematically unraveling these norms in a big way. They have not only been more open about their ideology, they have been working feverishly to put it into practice and prepare more Americans to accept it.
How can we put an end to the presumptuousness of these troubled, would-be tyrants? First, we can return the stigma attached to telling other adults what to do and how to live. We can once again elevate the notion that the right to think one’s own thoughts, make one’s own choices, and live one’s own life is sacrosanct, regardless of how flawed, unpopular or even offensive those choices might be.
The imperative of Liberty requires that the individual take responsibility for his own successes and failures so he can learn from his mistakes. In protecting others’ freedoms, he protects his own. We used to know this but it has been unlearned.
As for Michael Bloomberg, he has begun to help our side more than he could have imagined. His off-the-scale ignorance and arrogance was hilariously exposed in his first Democrat primary debate.
If we play our cards right, Bloomberg could help us take a “Big Gulp” toward returning a sensible social stigma of proclaiming oneself as lord and master over the rest of us.
It’s a reasonable strategy, and it shouldn’t cost 65 billion dollars.
Secession fever spikes in five states as conservatives seek to escape blue rule.
You’ve got Oregonians seeking to cascade into Idaho, Virginians who identify as West Virginians, Illinoians fighting to escape Chicago, Californians dreaming of starting a 51st state, and New Yorkers who think three states are better than one.
Separation fever is sweeping the nation as quixotic but tenacious bands of frustrated rural dwellers, suburbanites and conservatives seek to break free from states with legislatures increasingly controlled by liberal big cities and metropolitan strongholds.
“Oregon is controlled by the northwest portion of the state, Portland to Eugene. That’s urban land, and their decisions are not really representing rural Oregon,” said Mike McCarter, president of Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho. “They have their agenda and they’re moving forward with it, and they’re not listening to us.”
In Virginia, the newly elected Democratic majority’s progressive legislation on issues such as gun rights has spurred “Vexit,” or “Virginia exit,” a campaign to merge right-tilting rural counties into neighboring West Virginia that organizers say has the potential to catch fire nationwide.
“To be honest, if this works — you’ve got a lot of red areas in this country that are totally dominated by a blue metropolis,” said Vexit2020 leader Rick Boyer, a former member of the Campbell County Board of Supervisors. “If it works in Virginia, there’s no reason it can’t reshape the political map.”
Such campaigns can only be described longshots — no state has split off since West Virginia was carved from Virginia in 1863 — but the growing interest comes as those living outside cities wrestle with the consequences of the 1964 Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims.
The ruling established the principle of “one man, one vote,” effectively eliminating state legislative districts apportioned by county or geography instead of population, which hobbled in the influence of smaller and rural communities.
Illinois state Rep. Brad Halbrook, who has introduced a resolution to spin off Chicago and declare it the 51st state, said that “downstate voices are simply not being heard because we’ve been forced into this democracy that’s concentrated power into a small geographical area of the state.”
“Sen. Everett Dirksen said that with Reynolds v. Sims, the major metropolitan areas, the large population centers, are going to control the rest of the state, and that’s what’s happened with Illinois, California, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, New York,” the Republican Halbrook said.
Voicing refusal to comply with new gun laws has historical precedent
The utterly American history of ‘We will not comply’
On Jan. 20, as Americans remembered civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., an estimated 10,000 people peacefully rallied in Richmond, Virginia, to protest the recent introduction of highly contentious gun control bills into the state Legislature.
Motivated in part by the “Second Amendment Sanctuary” movement that has seen more than 100 Virginia counties and cities pass measures denouncing—and in some cases, preemptively refusing to enforce—constitutionally suspect gun laws, some Virginians at the rally began chants of “We will not comply.”
Many gun control advocates have denounced these chants (and the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement itself) as undemocratic and anti-American. While this reaction was predictable, voicing a collective refusal to comply with laws perceived as unconstitutional or unjust is a fundamental part of American democratic discourse.
In fact, the mantra “We will not comply” helped set the stage for America as it exists today.
In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on nearly every piece of paper used by the American colonists. The colonists considered this a direct tax on them without the approval of the colonial legislatures—a flagrant violation of longstanding legal precedent and an affront to their rights as Englishmen.
Threats of noncompliance and public protests so troubled Parliament that the act was repealed before ever being put into effect.
Thus began nearly two decades of actual and threatened colonial noncompliance with British laws that increasingly threatened the rights and liberties of the colonists. This included widespread noncompliance with laws that severely curtailed the ability of colonists to keep and bear arms.
Americans routinely circumvented or ignored bans on the importation of firearms and powder, and eventually resorted to armed defensive action against British attempts to confiscate guns and powder stores from colonial communities.
Noncompliance with federal laws mandating the return of escaped slaves was rampant throughout northern states prior to the Civil War. In 1850, the Vermont Legislature went so far as to pass a law effectively requiring state judicial and law enforcement officers to act in direct opposition to the federal Fugitive Slave Law.
Even in jurisdictions that did not act officially act to condone noncompliance, individual noncompliance with federal slave laws was nonetheless widespread. Moreover, a generally lax approach to local enforcement in the North raised the ire of Southern states, where calls abounded for the federal government to send in military units to ensure adequate enforcement.
Importantly, many abolitionists refused to keep their intentions quiet—they, too, were vocal about their refusal to comply with laws they considered both unconstitutional and morally unjust.
“We will not comply” was very much a general refrain of the now-beloved abolitionist movement.
Noncompliance permeated democratic discourse throughout the 20th century, as well. Some of the most revered figures of the civil rights era were actually brought to the national spotlight by acts of noncompliance.
Rosa Parks refused to comply with a city ordinance mandating segregated buses that would force her to the back of the bus. Hundreds refused to comply with state laws by engaging in sit-ins. King spent periods in jail for his repeated refusals to comply with court orders.
Of course, America’s history with noncompliance and civil disobedience has also been complicated. Not all acts of noncompliance are later held to be meritorious. Many times, one side’s appeal to a higher law is another side’s accusation that the rule of law has been betrayed.
Noncompliance with school integration orders resulted in sometimes-violent standoffs among local, state, and federal agencies, and history has not treated these acts of noncompliance kindly.
Noncompliance with alcohol laws during the Prohibition era helped foster the rise of gangster violence (though, interestingly enough, widespread noncompliance was one of the major underlying factors leading to Prohibition’s eventual repeal).
During the Vietnam War, an estimated tens of thousands of young draft-eligible men faced severe criticism and legal consequences for refusing to comply with what they perceived to be an unjust draft system that would send them to fight in an unjust war.
But the fact that history judges some acts of noncompliance more harshly than others does not negate the reality of history itself. It merely reminds us that threats of noncompliance should not be undertaken lightly. They should be based on well-reasoned and principled appeals that will withstand the judgment of our descendants.
Threatening noncompliance is not unique to modern gun owners, nor unique to modern American discourse.
“We will not comply” is neither an undemocratic threat nor an un-American resolve.
It is a long-standing part of democratic discourse, and an utterly American promise to strive for compliance with a higher law.
Yes, 3D Printed Guns Render Gun Control Moot. That’s The Point
However, some are upset by this revelation. They argue that 3D printing completely renders gun control efforts null and void, as if that’s an argument for, well…anything.
3D-printed guns are dangerous because they circumvent existing policies. They are considered “ghost guns,” a term used to describe firearms that do not have an identifying serial number that can be used to match gun purchases to their owner. By law, legal firearms sold in a gun store or by a manufacturer must have a serial number. Printed guns and their parts do not.
All firearms must contain enough metal in the weapon to be able to set off a metal detector. With a 3D-printed firearm, the person printing the weapon must add that metal themselves and there is no way to ensure they have done so. In a licensed gun store, background checks are required to see if the user should be allowed to own a rifle. But with 3D-printed guns, no background checks are done and anyone can buy the blueprints and use a 3D printer to create the weapon.
Yes, that’s kind of been my point. That’s why Cody Wilson worked so hard to develop a viable 3D printed firearm. The very point was to make gun control less than useless. After all, gun control has only ever applied to the law-abiding citizen anyway.
Campbell County (Virginia) militia muster announced
CAMPBELL COUNTY — Groups in Campbell and Bedford counties are now organizing militia musters. Organizers said the purpose of their county’s muster is to preserve tranquility, peace, and civil order by organizing volunteers in the event that a militia is required to defend the rights and liberties of the citizens of Campbell County and Bedford County.
The Campbell County muster is set for noon-2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 29 from 12 p.m. – 2 p.m. at Timbrook Public Library on Leesville Road.
Three Bedford County citizens including Chad Oaks, Anthony Burke and Scott Sewing came before their county’s board of supervisors at its Jan. 27 regular meeting Monday, asking for the county’s support in forming a militia, entirely comprised of volunteer citizens.
“I think a county directed, county controlled and county leadership appointed militia is something that would benefit our county at this point,” Sewing said. “I believe that it’s crucial for a citizen to possess the ability to defend themselves. I believe that and I believe that’s what the second amendment represents.”
Last month, the board approved to become a second amendment sanctuary and not enforce any stricter gun laws that are considered to be unconstitutional. Sewing, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, expressed his gratitude to the board for this.
“I was a part of the group that went to Richmond to stand up for second amendment rights,” Burke said. “We weren’t heard there, it’s pretty obvious with the laws that keep on passing. I am seeking to get the topic discussed however about forming a militia.”
Burke said that he has already spoken with the sheriff’s office about where everyone stands.
For information on the Campbell muster, email campbell@gunownersofvirginia.org.
VEXIT: West Virginia governor invites Virginia counties to join his state amid gun control push back
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, announced that legislation has been passed to send an open invitation to any Virginia county that wants to join West Virginia amid gun control push back in Richmond.
It’s an interesting idea.
The only problem is that the Virginia legislature as well as the U.S. legislature have to sign off on it too.