Hell hath no fury like a corrupt politician scorned.
You can’t help but notice that “Dark Brandon” isn’t exactly falling in line these days.
President Joe Biden finds himself a victim of the Democrat establishment mutineers, stripped of an opportunity at two-term greatness, and with quite a few interesting incentives coming into the November election.
More and more polling points to the possibility that Kamala Harris may lose by a significant margin in November. Donald Trump’s momentum keeps building, with nothing but tailwinds at his back. The Biden family is keenly aware of all of this, and they seem to be positioning the president for the ultimate “I told you so” moment for his legacy. Should Kamala Harris fall in defeat, President Biden becomes a man both wronged by a political establishment and righteous for being the one man who could defeat the GOP nominee.
We need not rehash the bizarre events of July 21, but it’s worth recalling that Biden was seemingly forced out of the running for his second term, and Democratic Party power brokers (Obama, Soros, Pelosi, Schumer, etc) hastily selected VP Kamala Harris as the nominee. Furthermore, they filled the lame-duck months on Biden’s schedule with instructions to stay quiet and soak up the sun in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Since that fateful week in Delaware, Biden’s tone has changed dramatically.
In his rare public appearances, the president is attempting to transition into political retirement as an elder statesman, and he’s almost always doing so far removed from the instructions of his teleprompter. His newfound rhetoric is far removed from his infamous verbal dumpster diving of the Biden-Trump debate (and the vast majority of his presidency). He’s now linking arms with supporters of the one-time “threat to democracy,” reframing his legacy as Scranton Joe, the bipartisan blue-collar president. He never once engaged in such deliberate bipartisan appeals, on or off script, for his entire presidency.
“There is a 50-50 chance AI will get more intelligent than humans in the next 20 years. We’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than us. And we should be very uncertain about what it will look like.”
Firearms rights advocates said they are expecting an increase of New Mexicans applying for concealed carry permits in response to new gun laws in the state that go into effect May 15.
One of the bills, which Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law this year, creates a seven-day waiting period for most new gun purchases, with an exception for customers with concealed carry permits. Another bill signed into law prohibits guns a certain distance from polling places when voting is taking place, but there is also an exemption for concealed carry permit holders.
Until the new laws take effect, officials with the New Mexico Firearms Industry said, many customers — despite the loud drumbeat of stories on the legal and political battle over guns during the 2024 Legislature — have no idea what happened and what has changed.
Tom Kaye, of the New Mexico Firearms Industry Association, sees a traffic jam ahead at local gun stores.
“Most people are unaware of this new law,” Kaye wrote in an email. “When they are told that if they had an NM concealed carry license they could take the firearm home the same day, it will generate much more demand for concealed carry classes.”
And that’s already beginning to happen, Kaye said. Although it’s not a tsunami, the increase is noticeable, he said.
Sometimes you’ve got to hand it to the bad guys for being so murderously clever in ways few could imagine. Or worse, in ways that a few forward-thinkers did imagine but that those in power didn’t take seriously.
One of those just happened in Jordan over the weekend, as I’m sure you already know, when Iran’s proxies in Syria used a drone to kill three U.S. servicemen in neighboring Jordan and injure at least 34 more. But Sunday’s attack wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill kamikaze drone strike — the kind we’ve seen more than 150 of on our forces in the region since Hamas launched its terror invasion of southern Israel on October 7.
This one was far more clever, exposing a weakness in our defenses and a failure in our imaginations — and not for the first time.
American Army Air Corps pilot and airpower pioneer Billy Mitchell died almost six years before Imperial Japan’s naval aviators crippled our battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but he predicted exactly such a scenario decades in advance. In 1910 he warned, “That increasing friction between Japan and the U.S. will take place in the future there can be little doubt, and that this will lead to war sooner or later seems quite certain,” and that Japan would initiate hostilities with an aerial bombardment of ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor.
Our top brass and political leaders dismissed the Japanese with racist notions about how they “were supposedly physiologically incapable of being good aviators because they lacked a sense of balance and their eyes were not right.” Navy leadership also insisted that it would be impossible for Japanese carriers to sneak up on us.
Oops.
Flash forward to 1994 and Tom Clancy’s latest techno-thriller, “Debt of Honor.” The book’s unlikely plot centered on a group of Japanese businessmen who, like the Imperial military in the 1930s, co-opted the government for their own ends. In this case, crippling the U.S. military in the Pacific to establish an all-new Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. At the end, with the cabal defeated, one desperate Japanese ultranationalist steals a grounded JAL airliner and crashes it into the Capitol Building while Congress is fêting our victorious president, killing nearly everyone present.
Not even Clancy had imagination enough to predict such an act committed with multiple planes, each full of terrified civilians. But no one in Washington made any preparations at all, even for the all-too-realistic scenario Clancy wrote about seven years before 9/11.
While not a failure of imagination on anything like the scale of Pearl Harbor or 9/11, Iran’s proxies showed real imagination in plotting their Sunday attack. A Defense Department official, speaking anonymously, told Politico today that the Syrian militiamen saw “an opportunity” in our defenses and “exploited” it.
They flew their drone into Tower 22 undetected by tailgating one of our own drones returning from a surveillance mission. It then struck the living quarters at Tower 22, resulting in those terrible casualties.
“Check your six” is a reminder to look behind you and see if there’s a bad guy sneaking up. We either didn’t think to do that, or the drone operator was unable to do that, and the results were deadly.
Multiple Pizza Hut franchises in California are planning to lay off delivery drivers as the restaurant chain braces for an increase in the minimum wage for fast food workers next year.
Several Pizza Hut operators filed notices to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act saying they were discontinuing their delivery services.
“PacPizza, LLC, operating as Pizza Hut, has made a business decision to eliminate first-party delivery services and, as a result, the elimination of all delivery driver positions,” a federal WARN Act notice filed by the fast-food operator with the state’s Employment Development Department said, Business Insider reported.
Another operator, Southern California Pizza Co. also announced layoffs of around 841 drivers across the state. The moves impact Pizza Hut locations in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties.
Many of the franchises will rely on third-party delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub and DoorDash.
The layoffs announcements came months before most fast food workers in California will begin earning a minimum wage of $20 per hour, beginning in April. The increase was proposed as a way to offset the increasing cost of living for Californians.
When Union leadership advocates for politics that don’t buttress the jobs their members have, why listen to them?
RemArms, which makes Remington firearms, is shutting down its New York plant. This isn’t news because, well, we’ve covered it already.
More than two centuries in one place is a feat, but now it’s at an end.
What isn’t at an end, though, is debate over just why RemArms is moving its operation completely.
Republican leaders, including U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik and state Sen. Mark Walczyk, who both represent the village of Ilion, have blamed New York’s “unconstitutional gun-grab policies,” as Stefanik said, for the company’s closure of the plant.
RemArms LLC — which has owned Remington Arms’ firearms manufacturing since the original company declared bankruptcy in 2020 — announced that the closure of the Ilion plant will come with them moving the New York manufacturing operations to their Georgia headquarters.
“RemArms is excited to expand our facilities in Georgia, a state that not only welcomes business but enthusiastically supports and welcomes companies in the firearms industry,” the company said in an emailed statement.…
The United Mine Workers of America, who represent the Ilion Remington facility’s hundreds of workers, disagreed that blame for the closure of the plant rests with the state’s gun laws.
“It is not our understanding or our belief whatsoever that this has anything to do with the laws,” said Erin Bates, the union’s spokeswoman. “They’re obviously moving to a very non-union state.”
Obviously, the union isn’t pleased with what’s happening, but RemArms is pretty explicit in saying that they’re coming to Georgia because it’s not an anti-gun state.
The fact that it’s also a Right to Work state probably doesn’t hurt, but why would Remington keep operating in a state that’s so explicitly hostile to them and the products they make?
More importantly, United Mine Workers has a long history of favoring Democrats, the same party that routinely favors gun control. Yes, there are exceptions to that, but most politicians with a “D” after their names favor restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
In other words, the United Mine Workers Union has a long history of favoring the very candidates that would have put some of their own members out of work.
So it’s not surprising that they are trying to make this about Georgia’s position on mandatory union membership–there are still unions in Georgia. They just can’t make you join if you don’t want to–rather than their rather long history of supporting anti-gun politicians.
The truth of the matter is that if New York got its way, those Remington jobs were going to disappear anyway. The difference is that by going to a pro-gun state, they still exist for someone.
New York has long been hostile to the Second Amendment. The state’s actions against the NRA are, in part, predicated on the belief that if they can make the NRA go away, gun control will somehow magically pass, which would hurt Remington as a company.
Those jobs were likely to disappear sooner or later if the state got their way.
At least now, they’re going to stick around for a lot longer. Possibly even another 200 years.
What many may not realize is, that if a relative sent in their DNA sample, yours was compromised as well.
As it turns out, there were a lot of “other users” who were victims of this data breach: 6.9 million affected individuals in total.
In an email sent to TechCrunch late on Saturday, 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to automatically share some of their data with others. The stolen data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and self-reported location.
Mayor Brandon Johnson blames the city migrant crisis on the far-right, January 6th, and not accepting the Civil War outcome. pic.twitter.com/eimODTqiDG
New York State declared war on citizens making their own firearms. To crack down on privately manufactured firearms (PMF), the New York State Police (NYSP) are showing up in force at people’s doors. The reason for the informal visit seems to be an inquiry related to purchased pistol parts from the website eBay. Ammoland News has learned from Law Enforcement Sources that the New York Police Department released a “ghost gun” handbook explaining PMFs and how to identify them.
Two weeks ago, NYSP “Ghost Gun” Team members began visiting citizens in the New York City area requesting information about parts purchased from eBay. The parts were purchased from multiple sellers across the auction platform.
Most disturbing, the officers had printouts of everything purchased by the individuals from the website, leading to the question of how the State Police came into possesion the item list.
When the officers show up at New York residents’ doors, they show up in force with between nine and twelve officers. Only two to three officers will speak to the person while the others stand far back in the yard looking bored. The police will ask about the parts and ask to see any firearms that the resident owns. The New York Police are knocking on doors requesting to see the individual’s firearms.
AmmoLand News spoke to several of the residents that the State Police visited. None of the individuals allowed the police to inspect their firearms. The officers would state, “We know what you have.” When the residents still refused to hand over any information, the State Police let them know they could turn in anything violating New York law to the State Police. None of the residents we spoke to were threatened with legal action, and the interactions were between five and fifteen minutes.
Could eBay be handing over private transaction information to the police?
Since the task force had a complete list of the items purchased on eBay, eBay is the most likely source for the information. AmmoLand News reached out to both the New York State Police and eBay, but neither would confirm or deny what information was shared. All interactions AmmoLand News was able to track down are from the greater New York City area. We also have not identified any visits within the city’s five boroughs.
At the same time the New York State Police are going door to door, the New York Police Department (NYPD) released a handbook to identify “ghost guns.”
This guide was leaked to AmmoLand News but is now being widely circulated across the internet.
Ghost Guns: Past, Present, and Future NYPD Intelligence Division Major Case Field Intelligence Team
The guide comes from the NYPD Intelligence Division and aims to help officers identify PMFs. Although the intention is to help police identify PMFs, it reads like a “how-to guide” to firearms building. It lists all the parts needed, where to get them, and examples of homemade guns.
The guide lists a gun’s parts and gives an example of a lower receiver. According to the guide, “all lower receivers need to be serialized” because the federal government considers them firearms. Next to this statement is a picture of an 80% AR-15 receiver. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Final Rule on frame and receiver is very clear on this topic.
The ATF has never and still does not consider 80% AR-15 receivers to be firearms.
The document also incorrectly states that all lower receivers must be serialized under federal law. Once again, the document is incorrect. The ATF says a frame or receiver must only be serialized when transferred. According to federal law, it is legal to have an unserialized firearm unless it previously had a serial number. Many are concerned that these inconsistencies between the law and the guide could lead to false arrests. AmmoLand News contacted the individual contacts listed in the document to see if the misinformation would be corrected, but none responded.
In addition to those retailers, the guide also covers the Ghost Gunner. The Ghost Gunner is a tabletop CNC machine that allows users to mill a firearm. It also lists the sites that sell the device and shows a picture of the founder of Ghost Gunner and Defense Distributed, Cody Wilson. The document references Defcad, which is another Defense Distributed project.
AmmoLand News spoke to Cody Wilson, who found the New York Police Department handbook to identify “ghost guns” document hilarious. He believes it is an excellent advertisement for his company.
“New York has produced the best getting started guide on the market,” Wilson said. “We will be emailing it to all of our customers.”
The document also explains how to 3D print a gun. It breaks down the printers needed, including the Creality Ender 3, and lists the filament types. It also gives an overview of the most popular slicing software. A current bill in the New York Legislature would require background checks to purchase a 3D printer.
The document also lists the most popular sites for downloading “gun CAD” files. Even if someone were to download the files, they would be unable to turn that 3D-printed model into a working firearm without certain parts. Fortunately for the building community, the NYPD documentation lists the parts and links to sites selling everything a person could use to finish the homemade firearm.
Oh No! Crypto!
The documentation touches on Glock switches purchased off of Chinese sites. These are auto sears and turn a regular Glock into a machine gun. In addition to auto sears, the document also worries about importing solvent traps to make suppressors.
The handbook also states they will attempt to get postal data to track shipments. The NYPD will also try to get Micro Center and Amazon data to track 3D printers and supply purchases. The police attend gun shows in other states to follow the selling of firearms parts.
The document also states that many who print guns are involved in cryptocurrency. The NYPD points to several gun-part retailers that accept BitCoin as a payment option. Many non-gun sites accept cryptocurrency as payment.
It also lists items to look for when executing a search warrant. These include packages, pre-paid credit cards, invoices, gun parts, storage locker keys, 3D printers, flash drives, cell phones, and micro SD cards.
The NYPD will offer a one-hour class to officers to help them identify PMFs. The content of the class has yet to be released, but when made available by the department, AmmoLand News will publish it.
Neither the NYPD, NYSP, nor eBay responded to requests for comment for this story.
LEAKED: Ghost Guns: Past, Present, and Future NYPD Intelligence Division Major Case Field Intelligence
BLUF
“These poor liberals. They spend their lives righteously defending minorities from conservatives — not realizing that minorities can be conservative themselves.”
Liberals believe the price Muslims should pay for sticking up for them is giving up their religious beliefs.
HAHAHA.
The real story of course is that Christians and Muslims have found a common ground. Both want to protect their children from LGBT indoctrination in schools.
The LA Times reported, “For months, hundreds of religious parents have regularly rallied outside a Maryland school board building, aghast at curriculum featuring books that portray LGBTQ+ families to elementary school kids.
“Waving American flags, they have chanted against indoctrination of children. They’ve sued to pull their kids from lessons and argued their case on Fox News.
“In battles against LGBTQ+ acceptance [the paper’s way of saying grooming kids], it is often white evangelicals pushing for book bans [no books are banned] or boycotts over beer brands or bathing suits. In this case, Muslims are leading the fight.
“The controversy in an overwhelmingly blue Washington, D.C., suburb highlights a shift. For decades, Muslims have been focused on fighting back against accusations of terrorism. But now, in clashes in left-leaning, diverse areas from the coasts to the heartland, they’re speaking out about what they see as intolerance of their faith.”
Sounds like the left is having some buyer’s remorse. It was OK when Hillary was branding those deplorable Trump supporters as Islamophobic, but now they are discovering that Trump supporters are not as Islamophobic as she said they were. In fact, they have found common ground; both Muslims and Christians are tired of being bullied by fanatic LGBT operatives who have taken over sex education in schools and expanded it to kindergarten.
CAIR — once heralded by the left as the sole arbiter of what is Islamophobic — organized a protest against a schoolboard in suburban Washington.
Zainab Chaudry, the Maryland director of CAIR, told the LA Times, “The school system believes it is being inclusive toward LGBTQ parents and students. But in doing that, it is not being inclusive toward another set of parents and students.”
The U.S. Navy confirmed on Tuesday it has discontinued an online recruiting initiative featuring an enlisted drag queen that was aimed at bringing new sailors into the service.
In May, The Daily Caller revealed that the Navy brought on Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley — an active-duty drag queen who goes by the stage name Harpy Daniels and identifies as non-binary — to be a “Navy Digital Ambassador.” The Digital Ambassador Pilot Program, which ran from October 2022 to March 2023, was reportedly “designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates” for military recruitment.
In a letter sent to Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., on Tuesday, Erik Raven, the under secretary of the Navy, confirmed that the branch’s Digital Ambassador Pilot Program “will not be continued.”
“The Navy learned lessons from the pilot program that will inform our digital engagement and outreach going forward,” Raven wrote. “Our digital outreach efforts will maintain the important distinction between Sailors’ official activities and their personal lives.”
Tuberville — who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee — previously sent a letter to Admiral Michael M. Gilday, the chief of Naval Operations, in May, demanding to know the identities of the officers tasked with funding and promoting drag queen shows aboard naval vessels. The letter was sent the same day the Alabama senator and his Republican colleagues submitted a separate communique to Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro on the branch’s embrace of Daniels and whether Navy leadership is encouraging its “digital ambassadors” and public affairs personnel to use TikTok — which the Pentagon banned its members from using on government-issued devices — “on their personal devices” in order to skirt the agency’s prohibition.
In his Tuesday letter to Tuberville, Raven claimed the Navy followed existing guidelines restricting the use of TikTok and that while some sailors partaking in the digital ambassador program “had [a] personal social media presence on TikTok,” the branch did not issue government devices for purposes of participating in the venture. Raven further contended the branch will “continue to communicate” to its members the “national security risks associated with their use of TikTok on personal devices.”
The Navy’s embrace of Daniels — which generated backlash among many military veterans — comes amid the branch’s failure to meet existing recruiting targets. On Thursday, acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti confirmed that the Navy is expected to miss its fiscal year 2023 recruiting goals by roughly 7,000 sailors. The revelation came days after the Air Force announced it would miss its “active-duty recruiting goals for the first time since 1999.”
The U.S. Army and Coast Guard are also expected to miss their respective fiscal year 2023 recruiting targets.
BLUF:
“We welcomed you. We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
Though Democrats have blamed conservative Republicans for the growing outcry from the Muslim community over the radical LGBTQ agenda being forced on children in public schools, the belief still exists among woke leftists that if they continue to play nice they can coexist with—and win over—devoutly religious, socially conservative Muslims who have become disaffected with Democratic Party.
It’s almost an understatement to say that theory has been put to the test in one city in Michigan, which saw an all-Muslim city council and mayor unanimously vote to ban the Pride flag and some other flags from being displayed on city property, a vote they held during ‘Pride Month’:
And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.
Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.
Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
The only flags that can be displayed on city property, per the WaPo‘s report, are “U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners.”
My first thought when I read this was “What the heck did they expect?” My second was to remind myself that the far left always expects mindless subservience from their core voting blocs.
Though there seemed to be general agreement from Twitter conservatives with the vote to only allow the American flag and related flags on city property, some other observations were made about the widening political rift in Hamtramck which ranged from serious to downright hilarious:
It would appear that New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s emergency order banning the carrying of firearms in Alburquerque has had an unintended consequence: Sales in the city’s gun stores are booming.
ABQ Guns owner Arnie Gallegos told The Epoch Times, “Today was the busiest day I’ve had in months.”
“I’ve been getting a lot of people who have never come into a gun shop before who are rightfully concerned about their freedoms,” Gallegos added. “A lot of people are saying, ‘I can’t rely on the police anymore, and I need to be able to protect myself.’”
As BizPac Review reported, last week, Lujan Grisham declared that firearms could not be carried in Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County for a minimum of at least 30 days in response to several recent shootings that left children as young as five and eleven dead.
“The recent shooting deaths of a thirteen-year-old girl on July 28, a five-year-old girl on August 14, and an eleven-year-old boy on September 6, as well as two mass shootings this year spurred the governor to declare gun violence a public health emergency on Thursday,” her office said in a press release.
According to the order, “no person, other than a law enforcement officer or licensed security officer, shall possess a firearm … either openly or concealed, within cities or counties averaging 1,000 or more violent crimes per 100,000 residents per year since 2021.”
The move sparked immediate backlash, even from those within her own party.
Having already said what I had to say about the most recent indictment of the former president (“Banana Republic, U.S.A.”), I thought perhaps readers might want to know what liberals are saying about it.
That’s the headline on an “analysis” by CNN reporter Stephen Collinson, and this might be the first time I’ve ever the verb “augur” used in a headline. “Portend,” maybe, but “augur”? No, can’t recall ever seeing that one, and it might help to know that Collinson is not American. He’s from England, where I suppose schoolboys at posh academies are taught to use references to the ancient Roman practice of augury, but I digress . . .
As former President Donald Trump left Washington after answering charges of trying to subvert democracy, it felt like all the previous trauma and divisions of his eight-year journey into the nation’s psyche were just the start.
America now faces the prospect of an ex-president repeatedly going on trial in an election year in which he’s the Republican front-runner and is promising a new White House term of retribution. He is responding with the same kind of extreme rhetoric that injected fury into his political base and erupted into violence after the last election. Ominous and tense days may be ahead.
Trump spent the afternoon at a federal courthouse within sight of the US Capitol that was ransacked by his supporters on January 6, 2021. He pleaded not guilty in the gravest of the three cases in which he has so far been indicted – on four charges arising from an alleged attempt to halt the “collecting, counting and certifying” of votes after the 2020 election. Live video of Trump motorcading to an airport and sweeping into yet another city for yet another indictment on his branded jetliner has become part of a sudden new normal. But if the arraignment of a former president seems routine, it’s a measure of the historic chaos Trump has wrought since he bulldozed into politics in 2015.
Wearing his classic dark suit and long red tie, Trump on Thursday rose to his full height in court and slowly and clearly elucidated the words “not guilty” in a hearing in which his fall from president to defendant was underscored when he had to wait silently for the judge to arrive. He was irked, sources familiar with his mindset told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, that the judge referred to him simply as “Mr. Trump,” rather than with the presidential title he still used at his clubs.
The 45th president and special counsel Jack Smith – who has also indicted him for the alleged mishandling of classified documents – shared several glances, before a proceeding that, unlike when he was president, means Trump’s fate is now out of his control. The entire day was surreal, but given its historic implications – after Trump became the first ex-president formally charged in relation to alleged crimes committed in office – also sad.
Thursday was a day when the country crossed a point of no return. For the first time, the United States formally charged one of its past leaders with trying to subvert its core political system and values.
It was Trump who forced the country over this dangerous threshold. A man whose life’s creed is to never be seen as a loser refused to accept defeat in a democratic election in 2020, then set off on a disastrous course because, as Smith’s indictment put it, “he was determined to stay in power.”
Trump is steering a stormy course to an unknown destination. If he wins back the White House, the already twice-impeached new president could trigger a new constitutional crisis by sweeping away the federal cases against him or even by pardoning himself. Any alternative Republican president could find themselves besieged by demands from Trump supporters for a pardon that, if granted, could overshadow their entire presidency. And if Trump is convicted, and loses a 2024 general election, he risks a long jail term, which would likely become fuel for him to incite his supporters to fresh protest. . . .
Well, enough of that. Notice how Collinson pretends that all of this was Trump’s fault, as if nobody else involved — Attorney General Merrick Garland or Special Counsel Jack Smith — had any choice or discretion in the matter. No, they had to indict Trump. Because Trump “forced the country over this dangerous threshold,” which I suppose is pretty much how the Roundheads explained themselves after they beheaded King Charles I: “We had no choice! He made us do it!” The Roundheads then set up a “Republic” far more tyrannical than anything Charles ever did, much the same as those later regicides in France imposed a tyranny more brutal and repressive than the monarchy of Louis XVI, and likewise the Bolsheviks were infinitely worse than Czar Nicholas.
One might notice a historical pattern here, and then — since we’re speaking of ominous auguries — contemplate America’s future once Our Leaders save us from Trump’s alleged threat to “subvert democracy.”
If you tune in to the weekly VIP Gold live chat with HotAir’s Ed Morrissey and myself (which is coming up at 1:30 ET today), I’m sure you’ve heard me say that “everything is stupid and it’s only getting worse” in response to the latest social media-fueled outrage of the day. That phrase definitely applies to the hysterics from the left when it comes to Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town,” which has now been yanked from rotation on CMT and is in the crosshairs of anti-gun activists like Shannon Watts, who’s claiming credit for CMT’s move and now trying to get the country singer cancelled from a fundraiser benefitting Covenant School in Nashville.
When I first wrote about this “controversy” a couple of days ago, I figured it would be a one-off. After all, how much traction could Watts and her allies in the tribe of the perpetually outraged really get by complaining about a song in praise of small town living, even if it did mention those small-town residents keeping their guns instead of allowing them to be “rounded up”?
Well, we’re now on day three of the attacks on Aldean and his song, and the outrage mob is still gathering their torches and pitchforks. Aldean has been accused of fostering racism and violence with his lyrics, even as the singer himself has pushed back on the criticism.
Aldean denied the allegations against his song in a tweet on Tuesday.
“In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song … and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” he wrote. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it- and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage -and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music- this one goes too far.”
On social media some users were offended by the lyrics, especially since Aldean was performing onstage at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas in 2017 when a shooter opened fire and killed 60 concertgoers and injured hundreds more. In his tweet, the Grammy-nominated star referenced the tragedy: “NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.”
“‘Try That In A Small Town,’ for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief. Because they were our neighbors, and that was above any differences,” he continued. “My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this Country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to- that’s what this song is about.”
I have a theory about why Watts is so incensed by Aldean’s song, and it isn’t just that he’s warning against trying to round up guns; something gun control activists swear they’re not interested in doing anyway. I think it goes back to the Las Vegas shooting, and Aldean’s comments not long afterwards that it was “too easy” to get a gun in the U.S. As long as the singer was siding with Watts, there was no reason for her to complain. But now that Aldean is singing about hanging on to the guns we already own, instead of stumping for gun control it’s time for him to be cancelled.
AUSTIN, Texas — In 2013, Cody Wilson printed the Liberator. The Liberator was the first 3D-printed firearm. His goal was simple. It was to make all gun control obsolete.
Wilson hoped that the gun world would embrace 3D printing and other methods of getting around gun control. Wilson’s dream came to fruition. Talented gun designers used computer-aided drawing (CAD) software to design and print firearms at home on 3D printers that cost as low as $100. At the same time, companies like Polymer80 sprung up to sell kits that let home users finish a piece of plastic into an unserialized firearm frame.
The revolution caused the Biden administration to order the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to make new rules to prevent the dissemination of these kits that he and other anti-gun zealots demonized as “ghost guns.” The ATF rolled out a new rule that would make it a crime to sell a frame blank with a jig, but the market adapted. This adaptation once again forced the ATF’s hand. Two days after Christmas in 2022, the ATF would give anti-gun groups a belated gift. It would unilaterally declare frame blanks firearms. Giffords, Brady, and Everytown celebrated the closing of the so-called “ghost gun loophole” and the banning of “tools of criminals.”Their victory would be short-lived as the injunctions from Federal courts in Texas started rolling in. First, it was 80% Arms, then Wilson’s Defense Distributed, and finally, Polymer80, meaning the original kits were back on the market. Although most of the industry was now back to selling the original product, liberal states started banning the sale of unfinished firearm frames and receivers.
Defense Distributed would take these states head-on by releasing a 0% AR-15 lower receiver for the company’s Ghost Gunner, a desktop CNC machine. The 0% lower was a hit with the gun-building community. All the user had to do was mill out the middle section of the lower and attach it to a top piece and a lower portion. Even if a state were to ban 80% AR-15 lowers, it would be impossible to ban a block of aluminum, although states like California have tried to ban the Ghost Gunner itself.
Wilson and Ghost Gunner are now tackling handguns by releasing a 0% handgun fire control unit (FCU).
All the user has to do is mill out the FCU using the Ghost Gunner 3 (aluminum) or the Ghost Gunner 3S (stainless steel) and install Gen 3 Glock parts. The user can then print the chassis on a 3D printer using the files supplied by Defense Distributed or buy a pre-printed chassis from the Ghost Gunner website and add a complete slide and barrel.
Mr. Wilson, who has faced some controversy over a relationship with a 16-year-old girl who lied about her age and claimed to be 18, recently had the case against him dropped, which frees him up to keep attacking ATF regulations.
“This is a homecoming ten years in the making,” Wilson told AmmoLand News. “The 0% pistol allows anyone to make a Glock type pistol in their own home with just a Ghost Gunner and a 3D-printer.”
This move by Defense Distributed, along with advancements in 3D printing, is the downfall of gun control. No matter what bans the government institutes, the market will adapt. With the rise of cheap 3D printers and machines like the Ghost Gunner, it has never been easier to circumvent gun control laws.
Let me make it clear, 3D-printing and CNC machining firearms are not illegal on a federal level. I also do not believe there is a will in Congress to attack that aspect of gun control because it will highlight that technology is empowering the people. The machines are available everywhere, from Amazon to Microcenter. The files live in cyberspace, where anyone can download them. Even if the files were banned (huge First Amendment legal challenge), they still would be traded anonymously on the Dark Web and by using VPN services.
The signal cannot be stopped. The internet has ushered in the fall of gun control, and there is nothing the Biden administration or states like California can do about it.
And with CHF and CAD/CAM-CNC manufacturing, such ‘forensics’ are even more problematical
Last February, Chicago circuit court judge William Hooks made some history. He became the first judge in the country to bar the use of ballistics matching testimony in a criminal trial.
In Illinois v. Rickey Winfield, prosecutors had planned to call a forensic firearms analyst to explain how he was able to match a bullet found at a crime scene to a gun alleged to be in possession of the defendant.
It’s the sort of testimony experts give every day in criminal courts around the country. But this time, attorneys with the Cook County Public Defender’s Office requested a hearing to determine whether there was any scientific foundation for the claim that a specific bullet can be matched to a specific gun. Hooks granted the hearing and, after considering arguments from both sides, he issued his ruling.
It was an earth-shaking opinion, and it could bring big changes to how gun crimes are prosecuted — in Chicago and possibly elsewhere.
Hooks isn’t the first judge to be skeptical of claims made by forensic firearms analysts. Other courts have put restrictions on which terminology analysts use in front of juries. But Hooks is the first to bar such testimony outright. “There are no objective forensic based reasons that firearms identification evidence belongs in any category of forensic science,” Hooks writes. He adds that the wrongful convictions already attributable to the field “should serve as a wake-up call to courts operating as rubber stamps in blindly finding general acceptance” of bullet matching analysis.
For more than a century, forensic firearms analysts have been telling juries that they can match a specific bullet to a specific gun, to the exclusion of all other guns. This claimed ability has helped to put tens of thousands of people in prison, and in a nontrivial percentage of those cases, it’s safe to say that ballistics matching was the only evidence linking the accused to the crime.
But as with other forensic specialties collectively known as pattern matching fields, the claim is facing growing scrutiny. Scientists from outside of forensics point out that there’s no scientific basis for much of what firearms analysts say in court. These critics, backed by a growing body of research, make a pretty startling claim — one that could have profound effects on the criminal justice system: We don’t actually know if it’s possible to match a specific bullet to a specific gun. And even if it is, we don’t know if forensic firearms analysts are any good at it.
