Category: Bureaucraps

SAF Rips ATF’s Byzantine Pistol Brace Rule, Vows to Continue Its Lawsuit

From the Second Amendment Foundation . . .

The Second Amendment Foundation today accused the Biden administration of “once again trying to trample the rights of gun owners” by allowing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to adopt a “final rule” on arm braces for modern semiautomatic pistols.

While the definition of a rifle in federal law should be clear, noted attorney Chad Flores, who is representing SAF in a federal lawsuit filed two years ago that was stayed by the court in anticipation of this new rule, it is clear the Biden administration’s new definition of a rifle ignores tradition. SAF sued ATF and the U.S. Attorney General in 2021 in a case known as SAF et. al. v. BATFE, et. al.

SAF is joined in that case by Rainier Arms, LLC and two private citizens, Samuel Walley and William Green. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.

According to Flores’ analysis of the 291-page Final Rule, the definition of a “rifle” now turns on a bewildering six-factor test. This new definition can be controlled not by the firearm’s objective characteristics, but instead by what ATF agents in D.C. think of a manufacturer’s marketing materials or the firearm’s “likely use.”  The new rule itself is forced to admit its dramatic result: Under this new definitional regime, “a majority of the existing firearms equipped with a ‘stabilizing brace’ are likely to be classified as ‘rifles.’” 

“The Biden administration’s new rifle definition overrides the true wish of Congress, to upend the reasonable expectations of stabilizing brace users and makers nationwide,” Flores said.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb noted the foundation’s 2021 lawsuit raised critical points about what has now been adopted by ATF.

“When we started this process,” Gottlieb said, “we anticipated where the agency’s efforts would lead. With our co-plaintiffs, we will continue to challenge this new arm brace rule.”

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Just like what happened back in the 90s when some shotguns were redefined as ‘destructive devices’. A tax free amnesty.
This will have suits filed against it, and what with the Bruen ruling’s “Text-History-Tradition” standard (find me any law, state, or federal that required tax, or registration of a firearm from 1869 and earlier, on back to the founding ) could see the downfall of the National Firearms Act.

This has not been published in the Federal Register yet

Justice Department Announces New Rule to Address Stabilizing Braces, Accessories Used to Convert Pistols into Short-Barreled Rifles

Today, the Department of Justice announced it has submitted to the Federal Register the “Stabilizing Braces” Final Rule, which makes clear that when manufacturers, dealers, and individuals use stabilizing braces to convert pistols into rifles with a barrel of less than 16 inches, commonly referred to as a short-barreled rifles, they must comply with the laws that regulate those rifles, including the National Firearms Act (NFA). In April 2021, at an event with President Biden, the Attorney General directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to address the issue of stabilizing braces.

“Keeping our communities safe from gun violence is among the Department’s highest priorities,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Almost a century ago, Congress determined that short-barreled rifles must be subject to heightened requirements. Today’s rule makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles.”

“This rule enhances public safety and prevents people from circumventing the laws Congress passed almost a century ago. In the days of Al Capone, Congress said back then that short-barreled rifles and sawed-off shotguns should be subjected to greater legal requirements than most other guns. The reason for that is that short-barreled rifles have the greater capability of long guns, yet are easier to conceal, like a pistol,” said ATF Director Steven Dettelbach. “But certain so-called stabilizing braces are designed to just attach to pistols, essentially converting them into short-barreled rifles to be fired from the shoulder. Therefore, they must be treated in the same way under the statute.”

Since the 1930s, the NFA has imposed requirements on short-barreled rifles because they are more easily concealable than long-barreled rifles but have more destructive power than traditional handguns. Beyond background checks and serial numbers, those heightened requirements include taxation and registration requirements that include background checks for all transfers including private transfers. Often, when pistols are converted to rifles by the use of a stabilizing brace covered by the rule, they have barrels less than 16 inches in length and must comply with the same heightened requirements that apply to short-barreled rifles under the NFA.

The rule goes into effect on the date of publication in the Federal Register. The rule allows for a 120-day period for manufacturers, dealers, and individuals to register tax-free any existing NFA short-barreled rifles covered by the rule. Other options including removing the stabilizing brace to return the firearm to a pistol or surrendering covered short-barreled rifles to ATF. Nothing in this rule bans stabilizing braces or the use of stabilizing braces on pistols.

On June 7, 2021, the Department of Justice issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, and during the 90-day open comment period, the ATF received more than 237,000 comments.

The final rule, as submitted to the Federal Register, can be viewed here: https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/factoring-criteria-firearms-attached-stabilizing-braces

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and the chief bureaucrap finds himself between a rock and a hard place.

AG Garland Announces Special Counsel to Probe Biden’s Classified Document Scandal

In an awkward turn of events, President Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday afternoon that the Biden DOJ was appointing a special counsel to investigate President Biden and his apparent mishandling of classified government documents that were found in Biden’s Delaware garage and a University of Pennsylvania office he used in D.C.

Garland announced that Robert Hur — a veteran of the Justice Department and the former U.S. Attorney in the District of Maryland under Trump who handled high-profile national security matters — would conduct an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents following his service as vice president in the Obama administration to determine whether any illegal activity took place.

The appointment of a special counsel follows an initial investigation of the mishandled documents by a U.S. attorney in Illinois, and an FBI assessment to discern if classified information was mishandled by Biden in accordance with federal law, the result of which led Garland to appoint Hur as special counsel to carry out a full investigation of President Biden’s actions.

After being named by Garland, Special Counsel Hur released a statement saying “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment” and he intends “to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”

Garland explained the timeline that led to Thursday’s special counsel announcement:

On November 4, 2022, the National Archives Office of Inspector General contacted a Department of Justice prosecutor to tell DOJ that the Biden White House notified the Archives that classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, which was not authorized for storage of classified documents.

On November 9, 2022, the FBI commenced an assessment to discern if classified information had been mishandled in violation of federal law.

On November 14, 2022, Garland assigned U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to conduct the initial investigation to inform Garland’s decision on whether to appoint a special counsel.

On December 20, President Biden’s personal counsel informed U.S. Attorney Lausch that additional classified documents were found in Biden’s private Wilmington, Delaware, residence.

While it’s too soon to say for sure, the fact that the initial investigation necessitated Biden’s attorney general appointing a special counsel to investigate his own boss suggests that there was some “there,” there worthy of further scrutiny.

Some shared healthy skepticism that the special counsel investigation will lead to any concrete legal issues, but the political impact of this significant development could bring sweeping political implications.

This is a developing story and may be updated. 

IRS Audits Targeted Poor at Higher Rate Than Millionaires in ’22

New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in his acceptance speech repealing the funding for “funding for 87,000 new IRS agents” will be “our first bill” – and that came amid a recent report finding a far-higher audit rate for lower-income taxpayers than millionaires.

Still, the report spins that data to suggest more agents are needed to go after millionaires more, rather than reduce the effort to scrape from the poor to fund the Democrats’ big-spending agenda.

“The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates — five and a half times virtually everyone else — were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reported this week.
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TRAC called the poorer taxpayers “easy marks,” but President Joe Biden is an alumnus of Syracuse, and the report does argue the IRS “doesn’t have the resources.”

Regardless, the data showed a bias to audit the poor over millionaires if you throw out “correspondence audits” that merely send a letter in the mail.

“If one ignores the fiction of auditing a millionaire through simply sending a letter through the mail, the odds that millionaires received a regular audit by a revenue agent (1.1%) was actually less than the audit rate of the targeted lowest income wage-earners whose audit rate was 1.27%!” the report read.

“While these small differences may sound trivial, the difference represented tens of thousands of low -income families. And the question remains, should these low-income families be the ones targeted when millionaires are responsible dollarwise for most tax underreporting?”

With inflation raging and recession talk still a potential drag on the economy in 2023, McCarthy’s speech vowed to try to repeal the funding of 87,000 new IRS agents in the new Congress – even with Democrats’ control the Senate and Biden is in the White House.

“There is nothing more important than making it possible for American families to live and enjoy the lives they deserve,” McCarthy said in his speech early Saturday morning. “That is why we commit to stop wasteful Washington spending to lower the price of groceries, gas, cars, and housing and stop the rising national debt.

“We pledge to cut the regulatory burden, lower energy costs for families, and create good-paying jobs for workers by unleashing reliable, abundant American-made energy.

“Our first bill will repeal funding for 87,000 new IRS agents. Because the government should be here to help you, not go after you.”

Buttigieg Gives the Most Ridiculous Excuse Ever for Using Private Jets.

Embattled Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has come under fire recently for basically being terrible at his job, has also been criticized for his regular use of private government jets, a practice he tried to defend during an appearance on Fox News.

It did not go well.

“You’ve been a big advocate for the environment—the administration’s climate change policy. What do you say to people who ask, is it environmentally responsible to fly on private government jets when commercial options are available?” host Bret Baier asked.

“Well, when we’re making a decision about what kind of aircraft to use, we weigh a lot of things. That’s one of the things we consider. So is saving taxpayers money. Now, I fly the majority of the time in economy class on an airliner, just like everybody else,” Buttigieg claimed. “But there are cases where we use an FAA jet, a jet that’s assigned to my department. I’ll give you an example. I went to Wisconsin recently. This was last year, I think. […] We saved taxpayers $2,000 by using the FAA jet instead of buying those airline tickets.”

After Baier pointed out several other private jet flights Buttigieg has taken, the secretary claimed, “taxpayers are usually saving money when we do that.”

The FAA reportedly charges federal agencies $5,000 per hour for the use of a private jet. According to a recent analysis of his flight records by the New York Post, Buttigieg has used private jets 18 times since taking office. His predecessor, Elaine Chao, was criticized for using private jets seven times in 2017.

Baier noted that former HHS Secretary Tom Price was essentially forced to resign from Donald Trump’s cabinet for his use of private jets. Of course, according to Buttigieg, that was different because, allegedly, when Price did it, it wasn’t saving taxpayers money, but when he does it, it is. For Buttigieg’s explanation to be true, we’d have to believe that the FAA offers a ridiculously huge discount for anyone working in a Democrat administration.

BLUF
It is essential for the perseveration of a free society for citizens to have greater control over their government than that government has over citizens. The balance of power has in recent decades been tilting in favor of government, and this move by the Biden administration would undoubtedly continue that disturbing trend. It must be stopped immediately.

Biden wants your next airport visit to include a face scan. That’s a huge threat to your freedom
Face-scanning technology already abused by authoritarian states like China and Russia

In December, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an agency within Biden’s Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged it has significantly expanded facial recognition technology at security checkpoints in airports across the United States.

Under the expanded program, 16 of the nation’s largest airports are now using face scans as a way to verify the identities of travelers, including in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, and Los Angeles. The TSA’s initial test facial recognition program started under the Trump administration in 2017.

The system asks passengers to insert a photo identification into a security kiosk and then look at a camera. After a few seconds pass, the machine uses artificial intelligence to compare the face scan with the photo ID. If the system says the two match, the passenger can move forward to his or her gate. If a potential mismatch is identified, a human TSA agent will determine whether to deny access to the traveler. Eventually, humans will be removed from the verification process altogether.

If the new program is deemed successful, TSA plans to expand facial recognition at airports nationwide, making it one of the largest efforts to collect advanced biometric data of law-abiding citizens in US history.

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ATF Plans to Finalize Pistol Brace Rule in January

In a recent court filing, the Department of Justice claimed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “expects to publish a final rule in January 2023.” That rule is the Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached “Stabilizing Braces” which was first proposed by the agency in June 2021. And, is the most recent in a long line of ATF guidance, rulings, and rules regarding firearms with attached stabilizing braces.

If finalized, the rule would likely subject most firearms with attached braces to the provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA), which include additional taxation, long wait times, and registration.

Since 2012, when Biden was serving as then-President Barack Obama’s vice president, ATF has recognized that stabilizing braces serve a legitimate function, and the inclusion of a stabilizing brace on a pistol or other firearm does not automatically subject that firearm to the provisions of the NFA. That’s because stabilizing braces were first designed and intended to help disabled veterans fire large format pistols.

NRA has repeatedly pushed back on administration attempts to classify firearms with attached braces under the NFA. When the most recent rule was proposed NRA submitted comments, which you can find here.

More recently, on December 20, 2022, NRA-ILA staff met with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which was conducting its review of ATF’s final rule. OIRA review is generally the last step that an agency must cross in order to publish a final rule. At the meeting with OIRA, NRA staff voiced the many concerns that gun owners had with the proposed rule.

Now, it looks like ATF intends to move forward with the final rule despite the numerous problems that have been identified with the rule. While no definitive date has been set for the release in January, ATF has in the past released various rulings immediately before the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT). SHOT Show 2023 is scheduled to begin on Tuesday January 17th.

Please check nraila.org regularly for updates on this terrible rule and other regulations, legislation, and litigation that impact your Second Amendment rights

CDC Puts Anti-Gun Politics Over Science

As astute gun owners know, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been engaged in gun control politics for decades. In the 1990s, their gun control activism most often took the form of funding anti-gun social “science” aimed at convincing Americans and policymakers to forego and diminish the right to keep and bear arms. Now further evidence has come out showing that the agency not only promotes junk science, but suppresses legitimate research into the benefits of gun ownership.

In mid-December, internet publication The Reload published an article titled, “Emails Show CDC Removed Defensive Gun Use Stats After Gun-Control Advocates Pressured Officials in Private Meeting.” The item detailed email correspondence between the CDC and anti-gun activists in which gun control supporters sought to suppress research from Florida State University Criminology Professor Gary Kleck indicating that Americans use firearms to defend themselves millions of times per year on the agency’s website.

[NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert readers are encouraged to read this important article from The Reload in its entirety by clicking on the link in the article title above.]

Describing the anti-gun lobbying influence effort on the CDC, the article stated,

The lobbying campaign spanned months and culminated with a private meeting between CDC officials and three advocates last summer, a collection of emails obtained by The Reload show. Introductions from the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s (D., Ill.) office helped the advocates reach top officials at the agency after their initial attempt to reach out went unanswered. The advocates focused their complaints on the CDC’s description of its review of studies that estimated defensive gun uses (DGU) happen between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the United States–attacking criminologist Gary Kleck’s work establishing the top end of the range.

Explaining how the CDC cooperated with the anti-gun pressure campaign, the item noted,

Despite initially standing behind the description in the defensive gun use section of its “fast facts” website on gun violence, the CDC backtracked after a previously-undisclosed virtual meeting with the advocates on September 15th, 2021.

“We are planning to update the fact sheet in early 2022 after the release of some new data,” Beth Reimels, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, said in one email to the three advocates on December 10th. “We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.”

The research at issue is Professor Kleck’s findings in the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey, the results of which were published in a 1995 Journal of Law and Criminology article titled, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun.” The article stated that survey data indicated that “each year in the U.S. there are about 2.2 to 2.5 million DGUs of all types by civilians against humans.”

After Kleck’s findings were published, the CDC conducted its own surveys of DGUs in its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey from 1996 to 1998. However, the agency didn’t make its research public at the time – perhaps because the results did not conform to the CDC’s institutional anti-gun bias.

The CDC survey data finally came to light in 2018. Analyzing the CDC survey along with his own survey, Kleck found that the CDC data indicated that there are likely more than 1 million DGUs per year.

A subsequent survey, conducted in 2021 by Georgetown University Political Economist William English, placed the number of DGUs somewhere in between what the CDC and Kleck’s survey data indicated. In a research paper summarizing his findings, English noted,

The survey further finds that approximately a third of gun owners (31.1%) have used a firearm to defend themselves or their property, often on more than one occasion, and it estimates that guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year.

In speaking to The Reload, Kleck referred to the CDC’s most recent actions against science as “blatant censorship.” The professor went on to say “CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups… It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do.”

Explaining how CDC’s suppression hurts public understanding of the firearms issue, Kleck added, “You can’t understand any significant aspects of the gun-control debate once you eliminate defensive gun use… It becomes inexplicable why so many Americans oppose otherwise perfectly reasonable gun-control measurements. It’s because they think it’s gonna lead to prohibition, and they won’t have a gun for self-defense.”

On December 22, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) wrote to the CDC demanding answers about the removal of DGU data from the CDC’s website. The letter stated,

Lobbying groups should not be able to influence your research and reporting. This is a dereliction of duty by the CDC. The CDC must return to providing transparent and data-driven reporting on DGUs, and to provide Congress and the American people with an explanation of why the CDC allowed gun control advocates to censor valid research and reporting conducted on the subject of defensive gun use.

NRA-ILA looks forward to the agency’s response to the senators and will continue to monitor this unacceptable anti-gun activism at the CDC moving forward.

Once more; a ‘known wolf’ on the FBI’s radar.
“It’s not a bug, but a feature!”

Times Square machete wielding suspect was on terror watch list: report

The suspect being held in a machete attack of three police officers in New York City on New Year’s Eve was previously on the FBI’s radar and was interviewed by agents in the weeks before the attack, according to CNN.

Trevor Bickford, 19, had indicated he wanted to travel overseas to help fellow Muslims. His family reported him to the Wells, Maine police department in December after he said he wanted to join the Taliban. He was later interviewed by FBI agents and placed on the agency’s terrorist watch list.

New York City police said Bickford approached an officer late Saturday and, unprovoked, attempted to strike him over the head with the machete. He then struck two other officers on the head with the machete. One officer shot Bickford in the shoulder, the police department said.

The three injured officers were released from the hospital on Sunday. Bickford has not been charged in the attack, CNN reported.

Law enforcement sources also told CNN that investigators found a diary belonging to Bickford that included a last will and testament, including instructions for his burial.

The incident is being investigated as a possible terrorist attack, according to ABC News.

Everything in the Narrative, nothing outside the Narrative, nothing against the Narrative. (with no apologies to the deadhead fascist)

Total media blackout of the scariest Second Amendment story of 2022

Stephen Gutowski at The Reload, one of the rare honest voices in firearms-related journalism, published some bombshell revelations two weeks ago. What was uncovered, in my opinion, is the biggest Second Amendment story of 2022. The extent and depth of what happened at the CDC is flat-out alarming.

Gun control activists know that Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) are a thorn on their side because they make selling gun control harder. Therefore, in what can be uncharitably described as a conspiracy against the civil rights of The People, they mounted a months-long pressure campaign, using influence from a Democrat Senator and the White House, to privately meet with CDC officials to get higher-end DGU statistics removed from the CDC website.

One CDC official called the gun control activists “partners” in an email.

Beth Reimels, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, said in one email to the three advocates on December 10th. “We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.”

While conspiring with gun control activists behind closed doors, the CDC at the same time did not bother reaching out to the researcher whose higher-end DGU estimates were yanked from the CDC website:

Kleck, Professor Emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, stood by his research. He said the CDC did not reach out to him for his perspective before making the change. He argued the removal of the reference to his estimate was “blatant censorship” and said it was evidence of the politicization of the agency.

Not everything was recorded either:

The three advocates met with CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director Deb Houry, Associate Director of Science for the Division of Violence Prevention Tom Simon, and Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication Beth Reimels. The half-hour meeting was conducted over Microsoft Teams, but a transcript of the call either wasn’t kept or wasn’t turned over as part of the FOIA request. The CDC did not respond to questions about what was said during the meeting.

[…]

Some of the FOIAd emails also show officials setting up plans to talk about potential changes “off-line.” Additionally, 18 of the 131 pages released by the CDC were completely redacted.

There was a failed attempt at redacting a comment about the connection between activists from different organizations:

The CDC attempted to redact Mercy’s comment about the tie between GVA and the gun-control group, but it only applied the redaction to one of the several copies of the exchange included in the release.

The CDC did not bother talking to the researcher whose work they yanked at the behest of the gun control activists.

Kleck, Professor Emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, stood by his research. He said the CDC did not reach out to him for his perspective before making the change. He argued the removal of the reference to his estimate was “blatant censorship” and said it was evidence of the politicization of the agency.

What the CDC did was indeed censorship, but there’s more censorship at play here. And that’s the mainstream media’s complete and total blackout of this story. I have been following the news just about daily to see who does and doesn’t cover this story. So far, to the best of my knowledge, the only coverage from a large media organization has come from Fox News, who reported on the collusion between the CDC and gun control activists, and then followed up with another story on some Republicans in Congress demanding that the CDC reinstate the statistics. Other than these stories, there’s minor coverage at The Daily Caller, Real Clear Politics, and the New York Post which reports it as the “grumbling” of a researcher.

This is not the first time that the CDC has been up to no good, but that an agency that was founded to combat malaria has been repurposed to attack the very rights of the people who created it with their hard-earned money and vested it with its powers is infuriating to say the least.

The Fourth Estate is supposed to keep an eye on things like this. Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty, and when the mainstream media abdicates its duty, liberty is imperiled.

Polymer80 Statement Regarding Recent ATF Letter to FFLs

DAYTON, Nev. (December 29, 2022) 

Polymer80 Family,

As you may have seen or heard, on Tuesday ATF published an open letter to FFLs declaring that certain Polymer80 blanks are considered “Firearms” under their latest – and unprecedented – interpretation of Final Rule 2021R-0F5. I wanted to personally address this with all of you, our loyal customers, many of whom have been with us since we started in a rundown old maintenance shop on Callen Street in Vacaville, CA.

Over the past several years, Polymer80 has shouldered a considerable amount of legal expenses fighting egregious, unwarranted, and naked assaults on us, our products, and the natural and inalienable rights embedded in the Second Amendment and enshrined in our history.

I want to make three things VERY clear.

1. Polymer80 is not – and I am not – taking the bait. While Polymer80 vehemently disagrees with the open letter, we will take appropriate steps to ensure we continue to remain in compliance with applicable laws or regulations.

2. In addition to continuing to produce quality products and innovate, we are also modifying existing product lines taking into careful consideration – as best we can given ATF’s constantly changing interpretations of its own rules – ATF’s various positions, statements, and guidance, as well as the Final Rule and challenges to it across the country.

3. Finally, we are going to fight, as vigorously and fervently as ever, using every resource available to us in the legal system, against the open letter and reclaim our rights.

My ask: Polymer80 has been beyond blessed with the best customers in this industry, hands down, bar none! Out of our respect for you, we have never asked you to donate to assist us or crowdfunded to support our mounting legal expenses. We have always felt that we will prevail because people buy our products and believe in their quality and the outstanding service and support we provide. I stand behind that philosophy – and continue to put you first – to this day. In the coming days, you will see more promotions and activity from our retail website than usual, and I ask that you support us by buying our products and being active and engaging customers. In return you will get great products at great prices, and we will use those funds to fight each of the outrageous attempts made to shut us down, including the open letter. I am calling this sales campaign “The War Chest,” because it will enable us to continue to fight and take legal action.

Please join us. Buy our products and support Polymer80. Together, we can take lawful action to stop the continuous encroachment on our lives, the American way of life, and the Second Amendment.

Thank you all and may God bless you all.

Loran Kelley
Founder, CEO

The FBI’s Response to the Twitter Files Is Not Going Over Well

As Matt covered, the FBI responded to revelations from the Twitter files that the federal law enforcement agency worked with the social media platform to categorize Hunter Biden’s laptop as “Russian disinformation” by hurling accusations about “conspiracy theorists.”

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers,” the FBI released in a statement Wednesday. “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the statement concluded. “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

That response isn’t going over well, especially among First Amendment advocates with deep concerns about the government using private companies to censor information.

Continue reading “”

BLUF
In a nutshell:
To summarize #TwitterFiles
— FBI knew Hunter’s laptop was real & incriminated Joe Biden
— FBI began seeding gossip of a Russian hack
— FBI used that rumor to orchestrate a vast censorship operation
— After operation concluded & Biden’s elected, agents congratulate each other
During the Trump presidency and the Russia collusion investigation, we heard people in liberal media say “this is worse than Watergate” quite a few times.

In fact, what the FBI and DOJ did with Twitter was worse than Watergate.

#TwitterFiles Part 7 – FBI and DOJ Worked To Discredit Reports of Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business Dealings.

“we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published”

Brian Flood of FOX News provides an overview:

Twitter Files Part 7: FBI, DOJ ‘discredited’ information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings

The lengthy Twitter thread reveals what Shellenberger calls an “influence campaign” by the FBI that eventually “worked” when Twitter censored Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop.

Elon Musk had been vocal about being transparent when it comes to Twitter’s past and present actions curating content on the platform, including censored content. The Twitter owner has enlisted independent journalists to slowly release evidence of these actions in a series dubbed the “Twitter Files” that continue to expose once-secret communications.

“In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published,” he continued.

 

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The CDC kowtowing to gun control groups is the very definition of political corruption

CDC ISN’T FOLLOWING SCIENCE. IT’S MANIPULATING IT FOR GUN CONTROL

By Joe Bartozzi

Last week’s bombshell report by The Reload showing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purposefully omitted defensive-use data sets after being lobbied by gun control groups shows serious concerns with the government-funded agency charged with saving lives and protecting people from health threats.

The revelation of twisting data to meet pre-determined conclusions is the antithesis of science. It is nothing short of censorship.  It is, in fact, dangerous that CDC researchers are cherry-picking data to force an outcome. What’s worse, is that these researchers aren’t acting in good faith to determine the outcomes from where the science leads. They are acting as agents of special interest groups. That’s not only scientifically irresponsible, it is also a violation of the law.

Corrupt Science

Researchers at the CDC deleted a reference to a self-defense gun use study after gun control groups complained that including the data would prevent them pressuring Congress to pass more gun control laws, The Reload reported. It was the result of months of political arm-twisting by three different gun control groups – Gun Violence Archive, GVPedia and Newtown Action Alliance.

The groups took issue with a study by Gary Kleck, award-wining Professor Emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Kleck’s study estimated defensive gun uses (DGU) happen between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the United States. That 2.5 million figure was too much for the gun control groups to accept. Instead of providing refuting evidence, they killed the study and censored the data.

“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant, one of the attendees who also runs Gun Violence Archive – the source for mainstream media’s “mass shooting” statistics. He wrote to CDC officials after their meeting, according The Reload, complaining of Kleck’s study. “It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value – even as an outlier point in honest DGU discussions.”

Professor Kleck stood by his research. “CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups,” Kleck told The Reload. “It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do.”

It’s more than that. That’s what the CDC is forbidden by law from doing.

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 You Knew the Deep State Was Bad. Did You Know It Was This Bad? 

Over the last several years, we’ve been inundated with news showing the overreach and abuses of federal agencies — in particular, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Recent revelations in the Twitter Files — exposed by owner Elon Musk and his team of investigative journalists — demonstrate that the FBI, among other things, helped to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, embedded agents within social media companies, and used the platforms to spread state-created propaganda. We’ve also seen, over the last few years, excessive, dangerous raids on pro-life Christians and others who refuse to go along with The Narrative. To make matters worse, the agency has gone woke and even refuses to call out terrorism. And, of course, there was the armed raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

For the last 50 years, we’ve been conditioned by media and Hollywood to believe that the FBI is a heroic institution that is beyond reproach. The FBI has been portrayed in movies, books, and TV series as true-blue Americans who would rather die than compromise their principles. While most FBI agents are likely dedicated law-enforcement agents who get up and go to work every day trying to stop the bad guys, there are many, especially within the bureaucracy (it’s literally in the name!), who have other goals and motives — namely to help Democrats win elections and to oppose those who support traditional American values.

Back in 1994, then-Congressman Ron Paul (L-Texas) — father of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — warned us about the dangers of the police state in a floor speech.

He began by pointing out that “many Americans justifiably feared their own government.”

“This fear has come from the police state mentality that prompted Ruby Ridge, Waco, and many other episodes of an errant federal government,” he said. “Under the Constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century, yet today, fueled by the federal government’s misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the states where they have no legal authority.”

Indeed, “The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive,” Paul explained. “We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as a people have become less vigilant of our liberties.”

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The Feds’ ‘Misinformation’ Scam.

The biggest political story of 2022 was not the midterm election. It was the release of the “Twitter Files” by Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter. In the sixth installment published last week on Twitter in a thread by journalist Matt Taibbi, the headline was “Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary.” The FBI had its own channel of communication for tipping off Twitter executives as to authors of tweets who needed to be censored, if not banned, for posting “election misinformation” during the 2020 election season. What was insidious is that some of the offending tweets were satirical in nature and posted by people with relatively few followers.

At least 80 FBI agents were assigned to a social media task force. The Department of Homeland Security had its own operation. Both were inspired by the alleged foreign interference in the 2016 election, known now as the “Russian collusion hoax.” However, it was just days before Election Day for the 2022 midterms that we learned that censorship has been a secret project for over two years of the DHS, the FBI, and “Big Tech.” Apart from Twitter, that included Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon Media.

The mission creep into attacking political speech, which is entitled to the greatest protection under the First Amendment, was inevitable. During the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign, the New York Post was blocked by Twitter and other Big Tech giants from publicizing its story on the incriminating evidence on the Hunter Biden laptop. It was the smoking gun of influence peddling by Hunter Biden to enrich himself, Joe Biden, and his uncle to the tune of millions of dollars. We now know that the FBI joined in that censorship effort. It worked. A poll in 2022 showed that most Americans believe full coverage of the “laptop from hell” would have cost Biden the election.

To its discredit, most of the mass media joined in suppressing the news. Time magazine even ran a story bragging about how the media “fortified” the election to ensure Donald Trump’s defeat.

The other big free speech story of 2020 was the suppression of the doctors and scientists who refused to get with the program for an experimental mRNA therapy that was sold to the public as a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The subjects targeted for suppression have included the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. Facebook created a restricted access portal to facilitate censorship requests from government bureaucrats.

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Twitter Files Part 7: The Guns Begin to Smoke

This starts to bring it all together.

This isn’t smoking gun proof yet.

But this begins to show us where to find the smoking guns.

And it tells us that yes, the FBI deliberately ran a coordinated disinformation campaign against the people of the United States of America, and a coup against the lawful government of the United States of America that the people had elected.

Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMDIn Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.

The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him

On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden’s laptop.

By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to
@nypost

Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.

Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.

7. At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter.

 

Are you kidding me?

So in other words, the FB knew the Post was about to publish, so they directed Chan to start priming Twitter to suppress the story.

8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.9. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.

Why is that? What, exactly, happened?

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I have inadvertently joined a Major Killing Force™

WHO Labels Unvaccinated People a ‘Major Killing Force Globally’

The World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled unvaccinated people a “major killing force globally” in a new campaign being promoted on social media.

The WHO is promoting a new video that targets “anti-vaccine activism” by blasting those who choose not to be vaccinated for supporting “anti-science aggression.”

The video features pediatrician and vaccine advocate Dr. Peter Hotez who laments the “devastating impact of misinformation and disinformation” regarding Big Pharma’s Covid shots.

Hotez goes on to link the so-called “anti-science aggression” of people who refuse the Covid vaccines to “far-right extremism.”

The professor continues by making several unsupported claims that “anti-vaccine activism” now “kills more people” than terrorism, gun violence, and several other crimes.

He then alleges that “anti-science” has become a “political movement.”

The WHO has made this wholesale condemnation of “anti-vaccine activists” despite the emerging risks of the experimental mRNA shots.

As Slay News reported, a Swiss study discovered evidence of heart injury, due to elevated troponin levels, across all vaccinated people, with 2.8 percent showing levels associated with subclinical myocarditis.

Furthermore, a group of scientists recently conducted a risk-benefit analysis which showed that getting a COVID-19 “booster shot” is at least 18 times more dangerous than catching the virus itself for young people under the age of 30, as LifeSite News notes.

However, the WHO’s showcased physician did not acknowledge these facts in his rant.

“We have to recognize that anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally,” Hotez said in the video, using a backdrop of photos of protestors against the Covid shots.

The University Professor of Biology at Baylor College of Medicine claims that “during the Covid pandemic in the United States, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused a COVID vaccine, even after vaccines became widely available.”

“And now the anti-vaccine activism is expanding across the world […].”

“It’s a killing force,” Hotez proclaimed.

“Anti-science now kills more people than things like gun violence, global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or cyber-attacks.”

The scientist did not provide evidence for this dramatic claim.

“And now it’s become a political movement,” he continued.

“In the U.S. it’s linked to far [sic] extremism on the far right, same in Germany.”

“So this is a new face of anti-science aggression.

“And so we need political solutions to address this.”

WATCH:

 

Neither Hotez nor the WHO provided any evidence to support the claims in the video that opposition to the vaccines is linked to extremism.

Hotez is a pediatrician who works in the field of vaccine research and development and, in addition to his post at Baylor College of Medicine, is the Chair of Tropical Pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Emails Show CDC Removed Defensive Gun Use Stats After Gun-Control Advocates Pressured Officials in Private Meeting

The Center For Disease Control (CDC) deleted a reference to a study it commissioned after a group of gun-control advocates complained it made passing new restrictions more difficult.

The lobbying campaign spanned months and culminated with a private meeting between CDC officials and three advocates last summer, a collection of emails obtained by The Reload show. Introductions from the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s (D., Ill.) office helped the advocates reach top officials at the agency after their initial attempt to reach out went unanswered. The advocates focused their complaints on the CDC’s description of its review of studies that estimated defensive gun uses (DGU) happen between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the United States–attacking criminologist Gary Kleck’s work establishing the top end of the range.

“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant, one of the attendees, wrote to CDC officials after their meeting. “It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value – even as an outlier point in honest DGU discussions.”

Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), argued Kleck’s estimate has been damaging to the political prospects of passing new gun restrictions and should be eliminated from the CDC’s website.

“And while that very small study by Gary Kleck has been debunked repeatedly by everyone from all sides of this issue [even Kleck] it still remains canon by gun rights folks and their supporting politicians and is used as a blunt instrument against gun safety regulations every time there is a state or federal level hearing,” he wrote in the same email. “Put simply, in the time that study has been published as ‘a CDC Study’ gun violence prevention policy has ground to a halt, in no small part because of the misinformation that small study provided.”

Despite initially standing behind the description in the defensive gun use section of its “fast facts” website on gun violence, the CDC backtracked after a previously-undisclosed virtual meeting with the advocates on September 15th, 2021.

“We are planning to update the fact sheet in early 2022 after the release of some new data,” Beth Reimels, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, said in one email to the three advocates on December 10th. “We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment on the decision, but none of the emails the agency released related to it did not show any attempts to obtain other outside points of view either before or after the meeting with the gun-control advocates. Hannah Bristol of the White House Office of Public Engagement did not respond to a request for comment on her role in the discussions beyond what the emails reveal. Emily Hampsten, Senator Durbin’s Communications Director, told The Reload their office’s only involvement was “simply connecting” “stakeholder organizations” with a federal agency as part of the “basic function of our work.”

The decision to remove a CDC-commissioned report from the agency’s website on gun statistics at the apparent behest of gun-control advocates may further strain its relationship with Congressional overseers, especially pro-gun Republicans who are set to take control of the House next year. The relationship between the two, already frayed over the Coronavirus pandemic, could reach new lows not seen in decades. During the 1990s, Congress put restrictions on CDC funding in response to officials openly working with gun-control groups to try and ban handguns.

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