Category: Politics

Yes, this is known, but it always bears repeating.

BLUF:
But that is really what Kulturkampf politics is all about: fortifying one’s own social status by exercising ritual domination over cultural rivals. That’s how you get punitive tax policies that don’t raise much revenue, “inclusiveness” policies based on exclusion, and gun-control proposals that don’t have anything to do with gun crime. It just feels good to exercise power over people you loathe or envy. That is the beginning and the end of it.

Gun-Control Laws Aren’t about Preventing Crimes

In the latest issue of National Review, I write about the lax enforcement of our gun laws and touch on a theme that is worth exploring a little more: Gun control is not about gun crime — gun control is about gun culture.

If we cared about keeping guns out of the hands of felons, we’d be locking up straw buyers. We’d be prosecuting prohibited “lie and try” buyers who falsify their ATF paperwork. And we’d be confiscating guns sold in retail transactions that were wrongly approved because of defects in the background-check system. But, for the most part, we don’t do much of any of that.

Instead of doing the hard work of enforcing the law on people committed to breaking it, we focus almost all of our efforts on the most law-abiding group of Americans there is: People who legally buy firearms from licensed firearms dealers, a group that, by definition, has a felony-conviction rate of approximately 0.0 percent. These are law-abiding people, but they also are, in no small part, the type of people who mash the cultural buttons of the big-city progressives who dominate the Democratic Party both culturally and financially. From that point of view, what matters is not that retail gun dealers and their clients are dangerous — which they certainly are not — but that they are icky.

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Anti-CRT Parents Sweep Connecticut School Board Primary, Besting GOP Incumbents

Five parents hell-bent on keeping critical race theory (CRT) out of the Guilford, Conn. school district swept the Republican school board primary Tuesday night, advancing to the general election in November.

Fending off a challenge from three old-guard Republican incumbents — who the anti-CRT parents accuse of rubber-stamping the racialized curriculum favored by the board’s progressives and the district superintendent — the cabal of five dominated the competition Tuesday, walking away with bids for the November ballot.

Political novices Timothy Chamberlain, Nick Cusano, Aly Passerelli, Bill Maisano, and Danielle Scarpellino outperformed their intra-party rivals by a three to one margin, according to figures provided to National Review.

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Almost forgot.
Happy Assault Weapons Ban Sunset Provision Day, Everyone!

On this day in 2004, the Assault Weapon Ban that had been enacted in 1994 reached its sunset date.
Lest anyone also forget, the NRA had a big hand in getting that 10 year sunset provision added.
Also, this law was one of the major factors in such a massive demoncrap loss in Congress when 8 Senators and 54 Representatives were sent packing.

BLUF:
The bottom line: There is simply no comparison in scale, act, motivation, or anything else between Sept. 11 and Jan. 6. And yet now, a former president suggests that those two enormously dissimilar events were actually similar, both coming from “the same foul spirit.”

George W. Bush’s dreadful 9/11 speech.

President Joe Biden was silent during Saturday’s 9/11 commemoration events. So were former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Former President Donald Trump visited a New York City police precinct and fire station, where he made a few impromptu remarks.

The only president who delivered a formal speech on 9/11 was former President George W. Bush. And it was terrible.

In two ways. First, Bush’s speech was as much about decrying today’s political divisions as it was about remembering the events of Sept. 11. But Bush showed an astonishing lack of self-awareness of the role his own actions played in creating those divisions. And second, Bush helped widen those divisions by endorsing a Rachel Maddow-esque argument that an equivalence exists between the plane-hijacking, murderous terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6, 2021 — a comparison that has no basis in fact but has done much to sour the national debate.

Bush spoke at ceremonies for Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was the site of perhaps the most heroic of many heroic acts by Americans on Sept. 11. The passengers who fought back against the hijackers sacrificed their own lives to save the victims the terrorists were targeting. In the process, they likely also saved the Capitol, or perhaps the White House, from attack.

Bush praised their courage. He praised the courage of Americans who volunteered for the armed forces in the years that followed. And he praised the selflessness of Americans who helped one another at the time. There was great unity in that moment, Bush said. “In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people,” Bush said. But now, those days seem far, far away, and a “malign force” is at work in American life:

When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.

How could our politics have become so angry? Bush pointed to one reason, in the briefest way possible, just a moment earlier. Hailing Americans who joined the armed forces, he added, “The military measures taken over the last 20 years to pursue dangers at their source have led to debate.” Well, yes they have! But rather than elaborate, even a little, Bush instead went on to assure veterans that their service was not in vain.

What Bushed skipped was, first, his failures in the war in Afghanistan, and second, his failures in the war in Iraq. In Afghanistan, Bush failed to find and bring to justice Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. And with the major 9/11 player Bush did capture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bush failed to deliver justice through a military commission trial and execution. The architect of 9/11 remains alive and well today, imprisoned at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Also in Afghanistan, Bush set the war on a track of nation-building that was sure to fail and did, not only during Bush’s presidency but during Obama’s and Trump’s, until Biden clumsily put an end to it.

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Democrats Sink Into Delusion After Joe Manchin Crushes Their Hopes and Dreams

As RedState reported yesterday, Sen. Joe Manchin finally put a number on his proposed “pause” regarding the Democrat reconciliation bill. Far from being on board with $3.5 trillion in inflation-inducing spending, the West Virginia senator only wants to support as little as $1 trillion.

The next question would be how Democrats respond, and as per our usual agreement, the answer is not well.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he and his party are moving “full speed ahead.” And over in the House, the Bernie Sanders wing, partly led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, let it be known that $3.5 trillion is the “floor” for spending. That’s an insane contention, but that’s where we are.

What’s not discussed in either of those responses is how exactly Democrats can move forward without 50 votes? No amount of internet tough-guying will change the actual dynamics in the Senate. Further, while less discussed, there’s a margin-busting group of Democrats in the House as well who need to show themselves as moderates prior to 2022 to have any shot at re-election. These are representatives who won House seats in districts Trump won.

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It is always someone else’s fault with demoncraps

Right on Cue, the President’s Mistakes Are Our Fault Again

You can tell a Democrat is president, because we’re starting to see pieces blaming “us” for his mistakes. In The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago, Tom Nichols wrote that “Afghanistan Is Your Fault.” “American citizens,” Nichols suggested, “will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves.” Today, Max Boot makes the same argument in the Post. “Who’s to blame for the deaths of 13 service members in Kabul?” he asks. Answer: “We all are.”

This is of a piece with the tendency of journalists and historians to start muttering about how the presidency is “too big for one man” when the bad president in question is a Democrat. Under these terms, Republicans just aren’t up to the job, while Democrats are the victims of design or modernity or of the public being feckless. Last year, coronavirus was Trump’s fault. Now, it’s the fault of Republican governors and the unvaccinated (well, only some of the unvaccinated).

Still, this has happened pretty quickly with Joe Biden. Usually, it takes a couple of years before the press starts to sound like a bunch of hippies sitting around a fire saying, “you know, in a sense, you’re me and I’m you, and all of us are we — and so when the president makes a mistake, it’s really, like, the universe making a mistake, isn’t it? And, y’know, we’re in the universe, so we are the presidency. That’s democracy, man.”

Like this political grandstanding will actually go anywhere

House Republicans Introduce Articles Of Impeachment For Secretary Of State Antony Blinken

Two House Republicans introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary Of State Antony Blinken on Friday, saying he failed at his job after at least 13 U.S. service members were killed in one of the deadliest days for U.S. service members in Afghanistan in over a decade.

Republican Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Andy Harris of Maryland introduced the resolution, obtained by the Daily Caller, saying President Joe Biden and specifically, Blinken are solely responsible for the ongoing bloodshed in Afghanistan.

“The Biden Administration’s handling of Afghanistan has been an unmitigated catastrophe. This preventable tragedy rests solely on the shoulders of President Biden and his Administration, and in particular the Secretary of State. We are the most powerful nation on the planet, and we must make clear to the Taliban that we will stay to get our people out as long as that takes,” Harris said in a statement.

“Secretary Blinken’s complete and utter failure of managing this avoidable catastrophe makes him unfit for leadership, and I hope my colleagues will join me in pushing for his removal,” Harris added.

I think they are going to have to learn to live with disappointment.

Activists Urge Biden to Bypass Congress, Create Gun Violence Office

Advocacy groups are urging President Joe Biden to bypass Congress by creating a White House office of gun violence as the confirmation of his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives remains in jeopardy, Politico reported.

Four groups send Biden a letter on Wednesday and complained the president’s actions on guns “fall significantly short of the promises you yourself made while running for the presidency,” Politico reported Thursday.

The activists said weapons had not been a Biden priority as 28,000 Americans have died from gun violence this year.

“Your administration is hard at work pursuing important priorities from infrastructure reform to reducing the disastrous impacts of climate change,” according to the letter obtained by Politico.

“But with rising gun deaths and the heightened threat of armed political extremism, gun violence can no longer be seen as a back burner issue.”

With David Chipman’s nomination to lead ATF languishing in the Senate, the groups asked Biden to establish a White House office led by a Cabinet-level aide, who would not need Senate confirmation.

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Don’t Be Surprised if Gun Owners Don’t Comply With Gun Control Laws

Media outlets love reporting the results of polling on hot-button policy issues, but they rarely tell you if the people supporting proposed legislation (especially when it’s restrictive) are the same people who would be affected by it. That matters in several important ways, not least of which is that getting a law passed is not the same thing as getting people to obey. Nowhere does that matter more than in the heated debate over gun laws.

“Fifty-seven percent of registered voters in the March 24-26 survey said there should be more laws regulating guns in the country,” The Hill reported earlier this year of the results of a Hill-HarrisX poll. That the story might be a little more complicated is hinted at later in the article where the numbers are broken down along partisan lines to reveal that 79 percent of Democrats support tighter gun laws, but only 36 percent of Republicans agree.

Why does the partisan divide on gun policy matter so much? Because gun ownership has traditionally been divided just as starkly along partisan lines, “with Republican and Republican-leaning independents more than twice as likely as Democrats and those who lean Democratic to say they own a gun (44% vs. 20%),” according to 2017 polling by Pew Research. That may indicate an ideological difference, or it may be evidence that familiarity with firearms encourages a more relaxed attitude towards their legal status, or both. Whatever the reason for the deep disagreement, enforcing “tighter gun laws” would require the cooperation of the people who actually possess them and oppose such policy changes.

Recently, though, the partisan divide on gun ownership seems to be shifting. More people from the left side of the political spectrum and members of Democrat-leaning constituencies have been acquiring them as a means for self-defense. They’ve lined up to make purchases at gun stores as faith in police and institutions erodes and society fractures. But even as their partisan identity becomes less predictable, gun owners and non-owners continue to disagree on policy.

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Analysis: What Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster Means for Gun Policy

When it comes to gun policy, there are two big takeaways I see from the debacle of the past week in Afghanistan.

The first is one that we really didn’t need this disaster in order to learn. It’s one that’s been demonstrated countless times throughout human history. But it’s also one that President Joe Biden has yet to learn: Military superiority doesn’t guarantee victory.

In June, as he’d done before, the president insisted that resisting a modern military’s overwhelming force is effectively impossible.

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

Of course, the Taliban have recaptured the whole of Afghanistan without the use of F-15s or nuclear weapons. They did it without ever being capable of taking on the American military in open combat or creating soldiers anywhere near the quality of our own.

And they are far from the first to do so. The lesson has been taught repeatedly throughout the years. Whether by the Viet Cong or our own Founding Fathers. Many didn’t need a new teacher, let alone one composed of terrorist barbarians already imposing their own civilian gun-confiscation scheme, to learn this lesson. And I’m not sure President Biden will learn it this time either.

The second takeaway is a bit more subtle but also more directly applicable to the immediate political situation around guns in America.

The president’s stubborn refusal to change course or even admit any failure in the face of calamity provides further evidence for how he’ll handle the rest of his agenda. Or, at the very least, the parts of his agenda he is particularly invested in personally.

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Not surprisingly, it’s a demoncrap that supports this relic from the Jim Crow era.

Repeal of NC pistol permit law heads to governor’s desk

RALEIGH, N.C. — State senators voted Wednesday to repeal the state’s pistol purchase permit requirement.

Current state law requires people who want to buy a handgun to get a permit from their county sheriff’s office. The sheriff performs a background check on the applicant.

Gun rights supporters have advocated for the repeal for years, saying it’s duplicative because there’s now a national background check system, NICS.

Sen. Chuck Edwards , R-Henderson, said the additional permit requirement infringes on gun owners’ rights.

“It’s been brought to my attention that purchase permits are used to obstruct gun purchases by sheriffs who just simply do not want to allow citizens their Second Amendment rights,” said Edwards. “This, it’s become obvious to me, is tired law that’s ready to go away.”

However, NICS is required only for federally licensed gun dealers. Many people buy guns online, from individuals or at a gun show, purchases that don’t require a federal background check.

Sen. Natasha Marcus , D-Mecklenburg, said the pistol permit is “the only background check” in those cases, and eliminating it would create a huge and dangerous loophole.

“It would suddenly become completely legal for anyone to purchase a handgun, without any background check required, so long as they buy it from an individual or at a gun show, or via the Internet with an in-person handoff,” Marcus said. “Instead of creating these dangerous loopholes, we should be strengthening gun safety.”

Marcus also pointed out that the federal system includes only criminal convictions. It doesn’t include recent arrests, pending charges or charges that were dropped. The local check, she said, catches all those.

In the past fiscal year, she said, over 2,300 permit applicants in Mecklenburg County alone passed their NICS check but failed the local background check.

“It is irresponsible, in my opinion, to allow someone who’s awaiting a hearing on a domestic abuse charge, for example, to purchase a handgun. The permit was in place to stop that, and we should not repeal it,” Marcus said.

She noted that several sheriffs don’t support the repeal. But Sen. Ralph Hise , R-Mitchell, countered that the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association does.

“This has only been a process that is effective for making sure that sheriffs in large urban areas are able to slow down the process,” Hise said.

The bill passed the Senate 27-20, with no Democratic support. The measure passed the House earlier this year. It now goes to the desk of Gov. Roy Cooper, who has so far vetoed any attempts to relax state gun laws.

Susan Rice is the secret puppet-master behind Biden’s war on guns

Joe Biden got lost in the bushes outside the White House Wednesday, after returning from a long weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden walked right past a Secret Service agent who was pointing the right way and stumbled into the bushes until he saw a side door, which he had to open himself. The President of the United States does not open his own doors at the White House.

Biden’s declining cognitive skills have become blatantly obvious – fodder for tweets and late-night comics. He cannot complete a simple sentence unless he’s reading from a teleprompter. His handlers have tried to offer the excuse that Biden suffers from a stutter, but what’s wrong with Joe is far more serious than a speech impediment. Biden drifts off mid-sentence and appears to lose touch with reality. It’s happening far too often for comfort.
The President of the United States has become a puppet, who has to be led – sometimes by the hand – to waiting news cameras, where he stumbles through speeches that someone else has obviously written. So, who is pulling Biden’s strings?

In my humble opinion, in the Biden-Harris Administration’s war against our guns, former Obama national security advisor and UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, who now serves as Biden’s domestic policy advisor, is clearly calling the shots. Rice has a staunch anti-gun pedigree, coupled with direct access to Biden – and Obama – and the means, ability and desire to orchestrate the war against our God-given, constitutional rights.

The evidence is everywhere.

The anti-gun forces love this woman. They were overjoyed when Biden appointed her as one of his closest advisors.

“Ambassador Susan Rice recognizes that gun violence is one of the most urgent threats facing our country, and through this appointment, President-elect Biden is continuing to build the strongest gun safety administration in history,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement heralding her appointment. “As Ambassador Rice said in our Demanding Women conversation this summer, ‘the American people want common-sense gun laws’ — and we’re excited to work with her to make that happen.”

“Ambassador Rice is committed to ending our gun violence epidemic, and she understands that COVID-19 has dramatically exacerbated our gun violence crisis,” Shannon Watts, leader of Moms Demand Action, said in the same statement. “Her appointment is proof positive that this administration is wasting no time in addressing the gun violence that takes 100 lives every day and wounds hundreds more. I know Ambassador Rice will be instrumental in helping tackle these dual public health crises.”

Susan Rice

Extremist views

Rice’s anti-gun history is well documented.
In 2018, according to Everytown, then-Ambassador Rice signed a letter calling “gun violence” a national security threat. The letter called on officials to “ban assault weapons, mandate background checks and waiting periods, and raise the minimum age to purchase guns.”

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CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY BILL INTRODUCED IN SENATE

A group of Republican lawmakers in the Buckeye State recently filed a permitless carry bill in the Ohio state Senate.

The proposal SB 215 was filed by Dr. Terry Johnson, state senator for Ohio’s 14th Senate District, and has eight co-sponsors. The measure joins HB 227, filed earlier this year in the Ohio House, which has 22 co-sponsors.

The move is a priority for state Second Amendment advocates.

“Ohioans have proven themselves to be overwhelmingly law-abiding over the past 17 years since concealed carry became law,” said Dean Rieck, the Buckeye Firearms Association’s executive director. “And Ohio is ready to join the 21 other states that now permit concealed carry without a license.”

The legislation proposed would not change Ohio’s lethal force laws or the locations where guns can already be legally carried in the state. Likewise, it would not do away with the state’s popular shall-issue concealed carry licensing program. Roughly 700,000 Ohioans held active licenses in 2020, according to a report from the Ohio attorney general. What the measure would do is codify that such licenses are not needed to carry a legal firearm in the state.

Republicans hold a commanding control of the Ohio General Assembly, counting 25 of the 33 seats in the Senate and 64 of 99 in the House. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has already this year signed a stand your ground bill into law, and DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney previously told the Ohio Capital-Journal that the governor has not yet taken a position on the proposed constitutional carry legislation.

The move, if successful, would make Ohio the 22nd state to recognize such permitless carry laws. So far this year, five states – Iowa, Tennessee, Montana, Utah, and Texas – have adopted similar protections.

State Opportunities to Repeal Bans on Gun Mufflers

The same person who invented the muffler for the automobile invented them for guns.  Hiram Maxim, the inventor, called them “Silencers”.  An obvious reason they were not invented earlier is the inside of a gun muffler is more complex than a gun barrel. Early silencer designs were made of mild steel, making them subject to corrosion. A silencer for a gun using black powder would require a significant effort to clean after each use.

Smokeless/non-corrosive gunpowder did not become common until about 1900. At that point, gun mufflers became more practical. Increasing prosperity in society, brought about by technical innovation and the use of fossil fuels, made target shooting more economical for more people.

Hiram Maxim invented the gun muffler in 1902. It was moderately popular. President Theodore Roosevelt owned several and found them useful for target shooting and pest control.

The Progressive regime of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to make the interstate transportation and marketing of silencers prohibitively expensive in 1934.   There was no clear reason to do so in the legislative record. Placing prohibitive taxes on machine guns, silencers, and short-barreled rifles and shotguns was the booby prize in 1934. The main aim of the proponents of the law had been to require registration and licensing of all pistols.

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When you don’t have enough people that will vote the way you want, will do what you want, will allow themselves to be controlled the way you want, well, replacing them is an option.

The Democrats Finally Did It on Immigration…And It’s the End of Us If They Succeed

Why wouldn’t Democrats do this? They need to address their base’s lust for left-wing activism. They want to get as much done as possible before the 2022 midterms likely wash them off the Hill. When it comes to illegal immigration, amnesty is a top item. For weeks, Democrats floated that they might incorporate some form of amnesty into this $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that’s just a progressive goodie bag of wasteful spending. And, of course, you knew they were going to make the argument that legalizing these people impacts the budget in some fashion.

Now, with the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill looking to pass the Senate, the reconciliation bill is next, though House Democrats want this package done first and will block the former until that’s done. It’s all talk, no action. It’s pure theater. It’s meant to press this up against the September 30 government funding deadline. Regardless, if Democrats succeed in this effort, we’re done.

The $3.5 trillion package that the left-wing of the Democratic Party wants has a framework that allocates some $107 billion to get this amnesty push going. And only through the reconciliation process can this be done (via Breitbart):

The cost of the amnesty to taxpayers is just slightly lower than Senate Budget Committee chairman Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) amnesty plan, which was projected to cost $150 billion.

Any amnesty plan crafted by Democrats is expected to give green cards, which lead to naturalized American citizenship, millions of illegal aliens eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), those working on U.S. farms, and those considered “essential” workers.

Democrats’ amnesty via the reconciliation plan hit a serious roadblock last month when Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) announced she will oppose their $3.5 trillion budget. With Sinema’s opposition, Senate Democrats do not have the 50 votes necessary to pass the budget via reconciliation with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie with Republican opposition.

Most recently, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told donors amnesty would only be possible if Senate Democrats shove it through the reconciliation process.

“If we don’t have reconciliation, I’m not sure that there’s a pathway forward,” Menendez said.

How many will be legalized? What’s the exact number? We don’t know. It doesn’t say. But given the fact that Democrats are hanging onto their majorities by a thread ahead of a key midterm election with Biden’s numbers rapidly sinking, you can bet the mortgage that the “millions” figure is correct. I’m not saying anything new—Democrats need to get as many on the fast track as possible. And they know there will be zero Republican support to do get this done.

This has all the makings of a doomsday situation. The House Democrats are purposefully delaying until all this nonsense is pressed against the deadline to keep the government open. Oh, and on top of trillions in new spending, an estimated $256 billion will be added to the deficit over the next eight years, and a soft amnesty push—the reconciliation package has no mechanism to increase the debt ceiling. The deadline for that was August 2. The Treasury is now in “extraordinary measures” mode. It only has enough reserves to fund government obligations for no more than three months.

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Bill Aims To Add ALL Semi-Automatic Rifles With Detachable Magazines To NFA

Back when candidate Joe Biden was running for president, he had laid out several different things he wanted to do in the way of curbing so-called “gun violence”. Multiple times on episodes of Cam and Company, Cam stated we should be taking Biden at his word on what he wishes to do. From his wish list:

Regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act. Currently, the National Firearms Act requires individuals possessing machine-guns, silencers, and short-barreled rifles to undergo a background check and register those weapons with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Due to these requirements, such weapons are rarely used in crimes. As president, Biden will pursue legislation to regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act.

Let’s first note the laziness and candor in Biden’s plan by linking to a fact sheet on Giffords Law Center’s webpage. Biden is clearly in bed with this group, why else would his website link to them? I don’t think it would have been too hard for the team to come up with a similar document to link to or come up with their own ideas on the subject, but I digress.

Then there is the progressive golden boy, former ATF agent, David Chipman, who’s falling from grace, but still an entity to deal with, and his views. As reported on The Hill:

David Chipman, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent, on Monday said AR-15 rifles should be regulated like machine guns.

“What I support is treating them just like machine guns,” Chipman, who is now a senior policy adviser at Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on “Rising.”

“To me, if you want to have a weapon of war, the same gun that was issued to me as a member of [the] ATF SWAT team, it makes sense that you would have to pass a background check, the gun would have to be in your name, and there would be a picture and fingerprints on file,” he continued.

Anyone paying attention? Just to connect the dots, we all know about Chipman’s involvement with Giffords. Biden linking to Giffords? Chipman working for Giffords? Swampy.

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Gun Control Activists Blame Biden As Chipman Nomination Nears Collapse

On Wednesday, advocates for David Chipman told POLITICO that they were pushing for a full vote to confirm the gun control activist as ATF director before the Senate starts its August recess. By Thursday afternoon, however, Chipman’s biggest supporters appeared resigned to the idea that senators will most likely skip town without holding a vote and had started pointing their fingers at the White House and Joe Biden himself over the crumbling prospects of installing one of their own as the head of the agency overseeing the nation’s gun laws, regulations, and the firearms industry.

Frustrations became evident during a Zoom call on Thursday afternoon with Cedric Richmond, senior adviser to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement — the latest in months of meetings in which advocates have brought up Chipman’s nomination.

According to two people familiar with the call, a small group of survivors and those pushing firearms restrictions urged the White House to be more aggressive on the nomination. They also encouraged the administration to support ending the filibuster to allow firearms legislation to more easily pass the evenly-divided Senate, the people said.

If Biden can’t move senators like Joe Manchin to publicly support Chipman’s nomination, how exactly is Sleepy Joe supposed to convince red state Democrats to nuke the filibuster? The White House isn’t the hang up here, it’s a number of Senate Democrats themselves who are the biggest roadblock in that regard. But with Chipman’s nomination in serious trouble, gun control activists have to place blame somewhere, and they’re certainly not going to blame themselves for pushing Chipman as a candidate in the first place.

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Well, maybe they ought to careful about that. And ‘hoping’ for a backlash? What does the author think would happen? Any major form of crackdown and there’s quite a few that have made it plain that things can go kinetic.

BLUF:
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was written at a time when fathers were kings of their homes and wielded total, unquestionable authority. It’s Paul’s biblical warning to fathers not to behave as tyrants lest they produce restless or rebellious children who ultimately resent them.

That same warning should be heeded by public officials who forget we’re a republic and “consent of the governed” is still the order of things.  Ignoring that fact will produce a “restless and rebellious” electorate, too.

And that’s just what the provocateurs in charge are hoping. 

They’re Provoking Us, You Know

If you grew up with siblings, you know what it’s like to feel provoked.  If you watch sports you’ll often see visiting players show-boat to provoke the home team and their fans after they make a great play.  Provocation is such a powerful psychological tool the Bible expressly forbids it when bringing up children. Ephesians 6:4 says “Fathers do not provoke your children to anger…”

We’re living in a time of great provocation directed at the American people from those in elected office.  Virtually all levels of government are barely hiding the disdain and contempt they have for the people they’re supposed to serve.

The pandemic has given county commissioners, school boards, health directors, mayors, governors and federal officials an emperor complex, lording over our daily lives deciding which privilege they will or won’t allow based on their whims.

They justify it by calling it science.  It’s not.  It’s provocation and it’s working for the left on many fronts in very effective ways.

Take for example the foiled plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer last year.  Originally reported as a group of pro-Trump insurrectionists bent on punishing Whitmer for her aggressive lockdowns of 2020, only a year later do we learn the truth.  The men involved may well have agreed with the plot, but were set up and goaded into it by embedded federal informants.

Left-leaning BuzzFeed reported, “Working in secret, they (FBI informants) did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.”

Similarly, the events at the US Capitol on January 6th have led many eyewitnesses, journalists, and at least one United States senator to ask who was involved in that day and what planning went into it.  Given what BuzzFeed reported on the Whitmer plot, is it difficult to imagine the same for January 6th?

As Revolver News summarized, “If it turns out the federal government did in fact have undercover agents or confidential informants embedded within the so-called militia groups indicted for conspiring to obstruct the Senate certification on 1/6, the implications would be nothing short of seismic. Especially if such agents or informants enjoyed extremely senior-level positions within such groups.”

These events are still sold by media and Democrats as organic uprisings of unhinged opposition posing a constant, present danger to our very republic.  They have been used throughout the last eight months of Biden’s presidency to paint any opposition to any authority, order, or edict as potential “insurrection” and wing-nuttery.

Any questions raised about the election, the virus, the lockdowns, the vaccine, the border and the insinuation is, “What are you, one of THOSE people?”

They’re provoking you.

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BLUF:
The odd election of 2020 does not sit well with a great many Americans. They are not in the mood to engage in the equivalent theatrics of Ben Cohen’s mockery of Bush or the pussyhat feminists’ sneers against Trump.

President Biden is, in their view, a hollow figure not even worth mention. Their complaint lies far deeper as they see the purposeful destruction of American values by an elite that bullies and derides them.

What will come of this? How might revolt manifest itself? I hope it will be a successful recapture of key institutions, perhaps beginning with the schools. But the political elite that prefers to scorn the common people for wanting a say in their government is playing an awfully risky game. Despair breeds wrath and that fire, once ignited, will engulf us all.

OLD GLORY, NEW ANGER

America is no longer just angry. We have become a nation of wrath. It is a risky emotional condition, recognizable by our desire to obliterate our opponents. Wrath doesn’t seek reconciliation. It wants revenge. Nor does wrath want to accommodate what it can’t control. It wants to rub the slate clean.

There is a wrathfulness of the political left, stemming from visceral hatred of Trump and his supporters. But as the left is ascendant in the seats of power, it can pursue its effort to extinguish its opposition via the instruments of state. The wrathfulness on the political right is another story. Wrath reaches its zenith when people feel not just abused but hopeless in the pursuit of any redress. American wrath right now is the white-hot anger of the millions of people who have concluded the country is being destroyed and they have no legal redress.

I have been writing about anger in America for close to 20 years. That is a period that encompasses the ‘I hate George W. Bush’ manifestos; Revd Wright’s ‘God damn America’ sermons; Obama’s ‘They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them’; Hillary’s ‘basket of deplorables’ characterized by ‘racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic’ views; Trump Derangement Syndrome; the 2020 George Floyd ‘peaceful protests’; and the QAnon Shaman at the January 6 Capitol riot.

All of these are instances of American rage, specifically from its political branch. But the quality of the anger differs from one instance to another. Anger against George W. Bush, first ignited by his disputed 2000 victory over Al Gore, was vehement but theatrical. Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, for example, mounted a national ‘Pants on Fire’ tour in 2004, exhibiting a 12-foot effigy of Bush with fake flames shooting out of his trousers.

The pussyhatted protesters at Trump’s inaugural in 2017 had some similar goal of deflating a man they saw as pompous and overbearing, but the tone of the protest shifted from exaggerated disrespect to something approaching bitter enmity.

Both are instances of what I call ‘new anger’, a self-congratulatory, look-at-me styling of the old emotion. New anger is a post-World War Two phenomenon that followed from the breakdown of an older ethic. For centuries American culture had upheld an ideal of self-control, in which easy resort to anger was stigmatized as a weakness and a personal fault. The arrival on these shores of Freudian analysis, emphasizing that repressed anger causes neurosis, and the simultaneous importation of the existentialist idea that unleashing anger is the path toward finding your authentic self, opened the door to this emotional rewiring of the American temperament.

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