Category: Goobermint

How SBRs and SBSs Got Trapped in the NFA’s 1934 Gun Control Scheme

The story of how short-barreled rifles (SBRs) and short-barreled shotguns (SBSs) ended up regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 is one of the clearest examples of unnecessary federal overreach, bureaucratic accident, and enduring infringement on Second Amendment rights. What began as a panicked response to 1930s gangster violence morphed into a permanent regulatory trap that punishes law-abiding Americans for owning common, useful firearms, configurations that have legitimate sporting, defensive, and historical purposes, while doing virtually nothing to stop actual crime.

In the early 1930s, America was gripped by sensational headlines about organized crime: the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde’s exploits, and Al Capone’s Thompson submachine guns. Politicians and the media hyped “gangster weapons,” with sawed-off shotguns singled out as tools of the underworld. Attorney General Homer Cummings and the Justice Department pushed for federal action, but they knew an outright ban on firearms would likely violate the Second Amendment. Instead, they cleverly used Congress’s taxing power to create a de facto prohibition through heavy fees, registration, and paperwork.

The initial bill, H.R. 9066, was far broader than the bill that passed. It targeted machine guns, silencers, short-barreled shotguns and rifles (under 18 inches), handguns, pistols, and revolvers.

The $200 transfer tax (equivalent to roughly $4,800–$5,000 today) was designed to be prohibitive, pricing ordinary citizens out while supposedly tracking criminals. To close an obvious loophole, drafters added short-barreled rifles and shotguns: if handguns were taxed and registered, a criminal (or citizen) could simply buy a cheap rifle or shotgun and saw it down to handgun-like concealability, bypassing the rules entirely.

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Trump’s ‘wishy-washy’ is him shooting off his mouth “NOO YAWK” style with the first thing that pops into his head. No, I don’t trust him, but he’s 10,000 times better than any demoncrap would be.

Trump’s Wishy-Washy Support of Second Amendment Drawing Mainstream Media Attention

President Donald Trump has, without a doubt, done more for gun rights than any prior administration, at least within my lifetime. Even the great Ronald Reagan managed to take us a step backward with the 1986 machine gun ban, so Trump has that going for him.

The problem, as I’ve already hinted at, is that the bar was so low, an amoeba couldn’t limbo under it even with the help of a shovel.

It didn’t really take all that much.

Which is why I can acknowledge where he stands in gun rights history and still have a problem with the wishy-washy nature of how the Department of Justice looks at gun rights.

The problem is that now, it’s not just us noticing. NBC News is seeing it, too.

WASHINGTON — Soon after President Donald Trump took office last year, he issued an executive order proclaiming his steadfast support for the right to bear arms, but a year later, gun rights advocates say the administration has failed to live up to his promises.

Even as the administration has challenged some state firearms laws, it is also defending long-standing federal gun restrictions in court, including one being considered by the Supreme Court on Monday. That case concerns whether users of illegal drugs can be barred from possessing guns.

Gun rights advocates who are challenging those laws say they are frustrated to see the Trump administration defending the restrictions.

“The Trump administration has been very good on gun rights issues that are coming up in the states. The same isn’t true at the federal level,” said Cody Wisniewski, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition Action Foundation.

While the federal government generally has a duty to defend federal law, there have historically been exceptions when the Justice Department concludes a particular measure is unconstitutional.

Wisniewski expressed some bafflement at the government’s strategy, adding: “I haven’t received an explanation.”

Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs at Gun Owners of America, similarly praised Trump for taking some actions to further gun rights, but criticized the Justice Department for a “very mixed record on the Second Amendment” overall.

Honestly, Johnston is putting it mildly, to say the least.

While I applaud every step the DOJ has taken to address state and local infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, they seem unwilling to look at any federal measure with a critical eye. In fact, every federal law has gotten a vigorous defense from the DOJ, regardless of how stupid it might be.

The latest is defending the law prohibiting marijuana users from owning guns.

The DOJ could go out today and shut down all the dispensaries throughout the country. They could end the idea of legalized marijuana usage on any level, at least outside of the medical field–the Department of Health and Human Services plays a role in where a drug is scheduled, after all–and put all of this to rest.

They haven’t and they won’t.

But they’ll allow it to be used openly for recreational purposes in several states and do nothing but defend the law prohibiting the right of those who do so to even own a firearm.

That’s the inconsistency that bothers me.

What’s more, though, is that while NBC News isn’t particularly trustworthy–it’s just part of the mainstream media, after all–the fact that they’ve seen this and are amplifying it means that some of those who like the Second Amendment but aren’t the die-hard pro-2A advocates are going to see how lukewarm the Trump administration really is on our gun rights.

Is this an artifact of Pam Bondi being in charge? She defended Florida’s post-Parkland gun control laws, after all, and we all know she didn’t have to.

So yeah, this could be a Bondi issue.

However, she still works for Trump. If he tells her to stop, she’ll either stop or be looking for work.

He hasn’t.

President Harry Truman had a plaque on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.”

That applies to any president. The buck stops in the Oval Office, which means even if Trump isn’t completely in favor of what Bondi is doing, he’s still ultimately responsible.

With the midterms coming up, Republicans need every vote they can get. Rallying Second Amendment supporters by actually accomplishing something is the best option.

But NBC News figures that’s not going to happen, which is why I think they’re running this. Since they didn’t have to make all that much up, so much the better.

Minnesota Dems Push Bill Allowing Law Enforcement to Enter Homes to Check Gun Storage

Minnesota Democrats are pushing to allow law enforcement to enter homes to check compliance with semiautomatic gun storage requirements.

On February 20, 2026, Breitbart News reported that Democrats in the Minnesota House were pushing a ban on the ownership or transfer of AR-15s and numerous other semiautomatic rifles.

The legislation, HF 3433, bans the mere possession of a Colt AR-15 and at least 25 other specific semiautomatic rifles and pistols. It then goes beyond those specific guns to ban “any firearm that is another model made by the same manufacturer as one of the firearms listed…and has the same action design as one of the listed firearms, and is a redesigned, renamed, or renumbered version of one of the firearms listed.”

If passed and signed into law, HF 3433 would take effect January 1, 2027. It contains a grandfather clause allowing the current owner of what will be a prohibited firearm to obtain a “certificate of ownership” from law enforcement in order to keep the gun.

However, anyone keeping a prohibited gun must “safely and securely store the device pursuant to the regulations adopted by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” And to be sure the gun is stored as mandated, owners of prohibited guns must “agree to allow the appropriate law enforcement agency to inspect the storage of the device to ensure compliance[.]”

BLUF
Draconian restrictions on the right to armed self-defense in public don’t make peaceable and law-abiding citizens safer. They just render them far less capable of defending themselves and others.

Look at the Defensive Gun Uses that Hawaii Wants to Criminalize.

Late last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, a case challenging a newly imposed Hawaii law that presumptively bans concealed carry permit holders from any private property open to the public (like gas stations and shopping malls) unless they first get express permission from the owner. Combined with other restrictions, the law has the practical effect of making lawful public carry virtually impossible in Hawaii.

Fortunately, the nation’s highest court appears likely to strike down the new restriction. But there’s still so much work left for the court to do when it comes to protecting the right to keep and bear arms—including, specifically, against infringements by the Hawaiian government. Even without the express permission requirement hanging over their heads, Hawaiian concealed carry permit holders will still be prohibited from exercising their rights in an absurdly long list of “sensitive places.”

These include, among other locations:

  • Any bar or restaurant that serves alcohol, regardless of whether the permit holder imbibes;

  • Any “stadium, movie theater, or concert hall”;

  • Any place at which any sporting event of any level of competition is being held;

  • Any beach, playground, or park, including “any state park, state monument, county park, tennis court, golf course, swimming pool, or other recreation area or facility under control, maintenance, and management of the State or a county”;

  • Any parking area adjacent to the prohibited locations above.

Constitutionally, it’s abhorrent. As a matter of public policy, it’s laughable – and dangerous.

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All The Laws That Failed In Canadian School Shooting

It’s never a great morning when I wake up and see there’s been a mass public shooting anywhere in the world. I don’t like seeing them, and not just because they bring up some rather painful memories.

But when it happens in an anti-gun country, I have to take a moment and think about the laws that are in place in that country as well, because these are all things that someone here either has demanded as a way to stop mass shootings, or will if they get half a chance.

For example, Bondi Beach.

Yet on Wednesday, we got another example when we found out about the shooting in Canada that killed nine innocent people.

Canada has a lot of gun control on the books right now, so let’s take a look at the laws that are in place that completely and totally failed.

Canada’s strict gun laws include a ban on assault-style firearms and a national freeze on the sale, purchase and transfer of handguns.

The Canadian government has banned more than 2,500 makes and models of assault-style firearms in recent years.

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an immediate ban of more than 1,500 models on May 1, 2020, two weeks after a gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia. The ban included two weapons used by that gunman as well as the AR-15 and other weapons that have been used in a number of mass shootings in the United States. “Canadians need more than thoughts and prayers,” he said at the time….

The national freeze on the sale and purchase of handguns took effect in October 2022. It does not apply to those who already were authorized to carry handguns and those involved in shooting sports covered by the International Olympic Committee or International Paralympic Committee.

Additionally, Canada has a licensing requirement for all gun owners that includes “enhanced” background checks, as well as character witnesses who are interviewed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

And yes, the killer reportedly had a gun license at one time, and clearly still had some degree of access to guns, despite a long history of mental illness long before he decided he was trans. None of those managed to stop his access to guns despite all of the laws on the books that we’re told prevent mass murders in the Great White North.

So what gives?

Maybe–and just hear me out here, because I’m going to get a little radical–the problem isn’t access to guns, but that some people are broken internally enough that they should be getting treatment. Maybe they should be dealt with as individuals, including determining whether they should be walking around, rather than treating every gun owner as a potential mass killer.

Because 2026 isn’t even two full months old yet, and we already have two prime examples of how gun control doesn’t prevent mass killings.

Yes, they’re rarer in Canada and Australia than in the United States, but they were rarer before the gun control laws were put in place, too. They don’t seem to do anything to make things better.

They just put the blame on law-abiding folks who have done nothing wrong.

And make no mistake, just like in Australia, I expect the Canadian government to double down.

Glenn Beck

I said I would give Pam Bondi a year to prove herself as an Attorney General who would dismantle the Deep State, let Americans see the truth, and finally bring to justice the criminal elites who have been “too big to jail.”

Today, that year is up, and I haven’t seen evidence that she has done ANY of that.

Bondi’s handling of the Epstein case was one of the worst fumbles I have ever seen. But we all remember that.

What about the lack of prosecution against anyone who tried to weaponize the justice system against political opponents like Trump?

Or the failure to prosecute the perpetrators of the Russiagate hoax like Clapper and Comey? That’s not weaponization. We’ve had the EVIDENCE for years that they lied and colluded with the press!

Where are the prosecutions related to the Mar-a-Lago raid? We keep finding out that it was even WORSE than we were told, but NOTHING has happened yet?

Can we get an update on any George Soros investigations? Why has it taken so long to go after him?

Or how about investigating the Clintons for NON-Epstein related scandals: Gazprom? Uranium One? Benghazi? Hillary’s email server? Claims of fraud in Haiti? Anything the Clinton Foundation has touched?!

How about the failure to drain the Swamp of Deep State actors working against the American people and their elected officials?

Or the PROVEN lies from Capitol Police about Jan. 6?
Or the FBI’s lies about the number of agents in the crowd?
Or investigations into possible 2020 election fraud?
Or follow-up on DOGE’s fraud findings?

Sure, the DOJ is looking into the Somali fraudsters. But what about everyone in the banks, state government, and federal offices that HAD TO have known about the fraud?!

What about Biden’s autopen scandal? Who signed off on everything if it wasn’t Biden?

And the Biden administration was FULL of government weaponization worth prosecuting: the COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates, the unjust FACE Act arrests, everything the Twitter Files exposed. Where is a SINGLE arrest?

And speaking of COVID, what about investigations into AMERICA’S role in creating the virus and covering up its true origins? And dare I mention Fauci?

To be fair, I understand that you can’t just rush to prosecute cases as massive as Epstein, Russiagate and COVID. It takes years if you want to do that right. We’re not looking for show trials. But all I’ve seen so far is hearing after hearing with NO results.

Maybe there’s a reason for that. But – and I believe this alone is enough to FIRE her – Bondi has failed to communicate any of this to the American people. We want results. But even more so, we want the HONEST TRUTH.

Minnesota’s Muslim AG to Christians: Church Ambushes Are ‘Just Something You’ve Gotta Live With’

Somewhere out there in the great cosmos, Saul Alinsky is cackling with glee over the way Democrats are providing top cover for the commie radicals running roughshod over the rule of law in Minnesota.

The latest elected official to earn Alinsky’s approval, while also making a mockery of law and order, is Minnesota’s Attorney General himself, Democrat Keith Ellison. Ellison, who is Muslim and the top law enforcement officer in the state, appeared Monday on Don Lemon’s livestream to discuss the Sunday ambush of services at Cities Church in St. Paul by a horde of anti-ICE agitators.

Lemon, it should be noted, could be in a great deal of legal trouble himself over the disgraceful incident, having possibly colluded ahead of time with the agitators who stormed the church. As Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, revealed Monday, Lemon could face federal charges, saying, “He went into the facility, and then he began ‘committing journalism.’ As if that is a shield from being an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”

During his conversation with Lemon about Sunday’s ambush, Ellison remarked, “None of us are immune from the voice of the public.”

Here’s exactly what Ellison told Lemon:

“The protest is fundamental to American society. This country started in a protest. It’s freedom of expression. People have a right to lift up their voices and make their peace. And none of us are immune from the voice of the public. So I, quite honestly, I think that you’ve got the First Amendment freedom of religion and First Amendment freedom of expression – and I think it’s just something you’ve just gotta live with in a society.”

Harmeet Dhillon likely sees things very differently from Ellison. Dhillon noted Monday that both the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act could be used to prosecute those who “threaten[ed], hurt, or intimidate[d] people to prevent them from exercising their God-given rights.”

Keith Ellison knows full well that the ambushers had no right to enter the private property of the church and stop the faithful from worshipping. He’ll happily turn a blind eye to it, of course, as long as the brown shirts for whom he provides cover continue to create chaos. Chaos, of course, is Ellison’s justification for seizing more power.

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DeStefano flown to New York City, prepping for court hearings

by Lee Williams

Indie Guns owner Lawrence Michael DeStefano was picked up from Florida’s Orange County Jail by New York detectives this week after serving nearly 90 days in custody and flown to New York City aboard a private jet.

When they landed, the officers took a group photo and then rushed DeStefano to an NYPD precinct to be booked, and then to a quick court hearing in Queens. Afterward, he was taken to Rikers Island, a notorious 413-acre state prison located in the East River near the Bronx, where he remains incarcerated.

At the court hearing, a New York State prosecutor tried to portray him as an “evil gun runner,” DeStefano said, but the judge cut her off.

“The judge looked at her and said, ‘I have a 65-year-old man with no criminal record and you’re saying all these bad things about him.’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘You’ve got some real serious charges against you. If you’ve got somewhere to stay, I will let you out on bail,’” DeStefano said over a jail phone Friday morning. “This is going to be a fight and the gloves are off. I am going balls-to-the-wall on this. It’s going to get ugly.”

DeStefano’s court-appointed defense attorney was of little help. She showed up just seconds before the hearing began.

“She had no idea what was going on,” he said.

He will appear in court for a bail hearing in two weeks, DeStefano said.

“I need to figure out how to get a message to the gun community,” he said. “If I am out on bail, I could win this. I know what I need to do to win this. I need to do research, but they’re seizing it for evidence. They already deleted my Telegram account after they got my password,” he said.

Throughout the trip, the detectives were talking furiously with the New York State Attorney General’s Office about whether to issue a press release, DeStefano said.

“It was chaos. Everyone was on their phones. They decided to issue a press release,” he said. “You guys really think you’re doing a press release? You’re helping me. The gun culture is a tight-knit family.”

New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued a massive press release late Wednesday, titled, “Attorney General James and NYPD Commissioner Tisch Announce Indictment of Florida Man for Illegally Shipping Firearms and Ghost Guns to New York.”

It contains a link to a 42-page indictment that charges DeStefano with 71 felonies, which could see him jailed for a total of 521 years.

“Lawrence Destefano and his company Indie Guns are accused of flooding New York with illegal firearms, and we are determined to bring him to justice,” James said in the press release. “I will not tolerate illegal and dangerous weapons in our communities, and I thank our partners in law enforcement for their work to shut down this ghost gun supplier.”

Despite the allegation and the centuries behind bars DeStefano faces, the press release indicates that only a dozen actual firearms were recovered, along with “two ghost gun kits, 28 high-capacity magazines, and over 1,400 rounds of ammunition, which were mailed to locations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau County.”

The press release also mentions the default judgement James won in a civil suit against DeStefano, which he ignored.

“In March 2024, Attorney General James secured a $7.8 million judgment and court order against Indie Guns prohibiting it from selling firearms in New York,” the press release states.

The lengthy press release even includes quotes from NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, HSI New York Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel and USPIS Inspector in Charge Ketty Larco-Ward of the New York Division. All strongly supported James for “disrupting the dangerous illicit weapons pipeline,” and for “dismantling gun trafficking networks.”

DeStefano knows he will be severely outgunned in court.

“I am ready for the fight,” he said.

Portland Police Chief Cries After Admitting Suspects in Border Patrol Truck Attack Are Tren de Aragua Associates
Portland Police Chief Bob Day knew on the first day but withheld this information from the public as leftists urged violent revenge against federal agents

Portland Police Chief Bob Day broke down and cried at a press conference on Jan. 9 after being forced to concede that DHS was right all along: the illegal Venezuelan migrants accused of trying to run down Border Patrol agents the day before in Portland have ties to the violent Tren de Aragua gang. Day admitted he hesitated to tell the public the truth.

What’s worse is that he and the PPB were aware the day prior that DHS was correct in their statement, but refused to confirm it at the initial press conference, which preceded leftist rioting outside the Portland ICE facility. PPB had the names of the couple from their investigation into a July 11 Portland shooting, where the victim said the assailants are members of Tren de Aragua.

On Jan. 8, Border Patrol agents non-fatally shot Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras in east Portland after the suspects allegedly tried to ram them down with a red pickup truck during a targeted stop. Almost immediately, internal details falsely claiming it was an ICE shooting were leaked to the extremist group PDX ICE Watch by a Multnomah County first responder.

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Luis David Nico Moncada
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Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras

Instead of waiting for facts, Portland and Oregon leaders — all Democrats — rushed to stage an emergency press conference condemning federal agents, rejecting DHS’ statements, and publicly siding with the violent suspects, whom they repeatedly described as “victims.” Corporate media followed suit, misleading the public and inflaming tensions. The Portland Police chief refused to share the truth about the suspects’ Tren de Aragua ties.

At night on Jan. 8, an angry far-left mob descended on the Portland ICE facility, attempting to attack it and forcing police to make six arrests — all sparked by misinformation pushed by elected officials, activists and media.

What Separates Tim Walz From Other Democrats Is He Got Caught.

That Tim Walz is abandoning his reelection campaign for Minnesota governor amid a maddening multibillion-dollar welfare fraud scandal should serve as a big reminder: Democrats are robbing you every day and hardly even trying to hide it.

Recall Walz as the stereotypical self-abasing Democrat white male, presumably heterosexual, who was inexplicably chosen to be Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election. His stint in that role was the equivalent of a 300-pound belly flop into a pool full of sand, with memorable moments like when he said he rode his bicycle as a child and was “proud of that service” or otherwise was proven to have lied when he referred to “the weapons of war that I carried in war.” (He never saw combat.)

Now, however, Walz is most known as the Minnesota governor who oversaw and enabled a years-long scam in which Somalis occupying large swaths of his state were pocketing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with fake child care and health care operations that provided no services to anyone at all. The scheme was uncovered mostly through federal prosecutions, which were then covered by our dying national news media. But most devastating for Walz and the state’s whole government was a 45-minute video produced by a 23-year-old YouTuber who demonstrated just how brazen the fraud was by simply knocking on “child care center” doors — only to be greeted by savage Somalis who spoke next to no English and had no kids inside.

The mass fraud was made possible by obscene welfare programs that Democrats like Walz — especially Walz — champion in order to lock in votes from impoverished foreigners and otherwise ne’er-do-wells who have no interest in working. “We have to make it easier for folks to be able to get into that business and then to make sure that folks are able to pay for that,” Walz said at the vice presidential debate last year. “We were able to do it in Minnesota.”

When he announced his withdrawal from reelection this week, he did so with typical Democrat energy, which is to say he claimed to be the victim honorably stepping aside, selflessly putting the well-being of others first. “Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” he said.

They play in your face and then call you the problem for noticing. Walz’s Minnesota welfare scheme was every bit a fraud as his and Kamala’s 2024 campaign was. That pathetic 100-day operation likewise saw more than a billion dollars shoved into the pockets of consultants and production companies based on the media-perpetuated lie that Kamala Harris was a legitimate contender for the presidency and that Walz, a fraudster, was capable of serving in the White House, too.

Remember how Democrats recoiled in absolute horror when Elon Musk’s DOGE effort attempted to clip a few million from the federal budget, including the unending flood of money that we send overseas called “foreign aid”? That’s all your money, and they claw for each and every dollar in order to send it all to people just like those Somali scammers.

Democrats lie and steal. Then they resent you for finding out.

BLUF
If Donald Trump and the mostly useless GOP Congress really want to actually make America great again, starting in 2026 they will turn their metaphorical guns and scalpels on the government itself and begin to bring back the primary idea that made America great in the first place:  Limited government. Without that, everything else is little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and the outcome will be the same.

The Very Revolutionary United States Constitution
The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary; what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution.

During college one of my professors in Political Philosophy said that the only real revolutions in modern Western civilization were the French and the Russian.  He was right, but I didn’t quite get it at the time.  I do now.

While the American revolution was ostensibly a revolution, in reality it was more of a divorce where the kids kept the same parents, they just lived with their Mom.  Their Dad was still their Dad, but they didn’t have much to do with him. In contrast, the French and Russian revolutions were basically the children taking their parents out back and shooting them….

The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary. But what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution.

For the first time in history, a government was formed by a written constitution that described rights that were inherent from God (as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution of most of the original 13 states) upon which the government could not impede.  What’s more, the entire thing was created for the specific purpose of limiting the power of government. This was made clear by the Bill of Rights, which—beginning with Massachusetts—became the quid pro quo for getting the Constitution ratified. And in case anyone missed the point, the last of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

That was every bit as revolutionary as the French sending King Louis XVI to the guillotine or the Bolsheviks shooting Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family in a basement.  But what’s more, unlike those other two revolutions, the American Constitution didn’t result in rivers of blood and a collapse of society.  On the contrary, it set the American experiment on its slow but methodical march to revolutionize the world and unleash the potential of man.

The American experiment worked… for almost 200 years.  Of course it didn’t work perfectly for everyone all the time, nor for some people any of the time, but for the overwhelming majority of people who have lived in the United States over the course of its existence, life has been better here than almost any other place on Earth.

But that experiment is in the process of collapsing. Why?  Simple.  Because the nation that was birthed with a constitution specifically geared toward limiting government power has metastasized into a nation where the government controls virtually everything.

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A state that never allowed slavery, wants to make residents who never owned slaves, pay reparations to people who never were slaves.

San Fran mayor signs bill that could give black residents $5M each — but admits city is too broke to pay.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie quietly signed a questionable bill to create a reparations fund for black residents — but acknowledged the city is too broke to pay, sparking a swift backlash from critics who call the plan blatantly illegal.

The bill, which was passed unanimously by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors earlier this month, creates a fund to accept private or public money for a controversial reparations plan that calls for cash payouts of $5 million each to eligible black residents, debt forgiveness, 250 years of tax abatements, and income subsidies.

“We are not allocating money to this fund — with a historic $1 billion budget deficit, we are going to spend our money on making the city safer and cleaner,” said Lurie in a statement.

Still, critics have called the reparations plan unlawful “virtue signaling” even if private dollars are used.

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U.S. Postal Service (USPS) quietly changed its postmark rule effective December 24, 2025, clarifying that a machine postmark shows the date of the “first automated processing,” not necessarily when you dropped the mail off, which can be days later, impacting deadlines for taxes, ballots, and legal documents.

To ensure your mail is postmarked the actual date of deposit, you must request a free, manual hand-stamped postmark at a USPS counter or use Certified/Registered Mail, as machine stamps may be delayed due to network consolidation.

What changed?
Old understanding: A postmark reflected when you dropped mail in a box or at the counter.
New rule: The date on a machine postmark is when it first enters the automated sorting system at a regional facility, which could be days after you deposited it.

Why does it matter?
Deadlines: Federal and state laws often rely on the postmark date for timely filing of taxes, votes, and legal papers, potentially leading to late penalties.
Example: A tax payment dropped off on Dec 31 might get postmarked Jan 2, making it late for the Dec 31 deadline.

How to ensure an on-time postmark:
Go inside: Visit a USPS retail counter and ask the clerk for a manual (hand-stamped) postmark for free.
Use secure services: Send items via Certified Mail or Registered Mail for dated proof of mailing.
Mail early: Send time-sensitive items well before the deadline to allow for processing delays.

 Deflating another gun control bogeyman.

Deflating Another Gun Control Bogeyman

There is a problem with the term “gun violence.” Not just the term itself, but the whole idea that firearm-related injuries and deaths are qualitatively different or special. Violence is violence regardless of the weapon or method used.

Gun violence is a handy bogeyman for gun control and other groups advancing similar agenda. By lumping homicides, suicides, and accidents together, gun grabbers of every stripe can use this family-sized phantasm to alarm the public. Even better, it can be used to make a variety of claims since the overwhelming percentage of Americans won’t check the underlying numbers.

Gun control addicts use this to confidently claim there is an “epidemic” of gun violence. In June 2024, Vivek Murthy, Joe Biden’s surgeon general, declared “firearm” violence was a public health crisis. Murthy went on to recommend the adoption of the gun-grabbers’ wish list despite the fact that none of those measures have been shown to be effective based on results reported by the U.S. government.

When most people hear the word “violence” they associate it with one individual deliberately using force to harm another individual, i.e. assault or murder. It’s also the type of violence most alarming to the public. Supporters of 2A restrictions focus their rhetoric and “remedies” on exploiting this fear.

But there is a problem with this: Far from being a looming threat, the U.S. homicide rate has been declining.

FBI statistics for the 65 years from 1960 to 2024 prove this. The decade from 2010 to 2019 had a lower average murder rate than any comparable period going back to the last year of Eisenhower’s term. In fact, the 2010-2019 average was 12% lower than in the previous decade.

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