Category: Goobermint

The Drunk-Driver Detection Tech That Could Soon Take Over Your Car.

Your car may soon be tasked with determining whether you’re sober enough to drive—but how? As we explained recently, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law on November 15, 2023 gave NHTSA a year to gin up a standard compelling new vehicles to either “passively monitor the performance of a driver” to detect if they are impaired, or “passively and accurately detect” whether the driver’s blood alcohol level is above the legal limit, and then “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation.” Said standard could go into effect as soon as 2026. At CES 2024—held within the 60-day public comment period for this standard—the Tier-I supplier community showed off some tech aimed at fulfilling the sensing aspect of this proposed drunk driver detection standard.

Blood alcohol level is the gold standard, but the “passively” requirement rules out blowing into a tube. Walking a straight line, reciting the alphabet backwards, and other road-side sobriety test methods are equally impractical. But the eye test checking for nystagmus seems reasonably practical, so several suppliers are focusing efforts on this approach. That’s where an officer asks the subject to follow their finger moving left to right without turning their heads and checks for jerking or bouncing eye movements shortly before the eyes reach a 45-degree angle. It’s still anybody’s guess how best to detect cannabis use/misuse.

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NM governor unveils bills that ban assault weapons, raise age to possess a gun

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced support for several bills that she said were aimed at gun violence — banning assault weapons, raising the age to possess a gun and extending the waiting period to take it home.

“We have a gun problem, ladies and gentleman, and we have a public safety problem,” she said Friday , surrounded by public safety officials, law enforcement and the bills’ sponsors. “We have a responsibility to our children, to families, communities to solve it, and I believe this package goes a long way to do just that.”

One bill would ban assault weapons statewide, another would raise the minimum age to buy a gun, from 18 to 21 years old, and extend the waiting period to take one home from three to 14 days.

The bills were just a few of dozens related to public safety that will come up in the legislative session, which begins Tuesday.

At least three of the gun initiatives Lujan Grisham highlighted Friday reflected failed legislation from the Legislature’s last session. House Bill 101, which would have prohibited people from possessing assault weapons; House Bill 100, which would have established a 14-day waiting period for guns; and Senate Bill 116, which would have made it illegal for anyone younger than 21 to purchase an automatic or semi-automatic firearm, all died in committee.

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Can you say: “Replacement Migration“?
I thought you could

Biden Admin Has Allowed 5 Million Illegal Aliens Into the Nation — Outpacing Yearly U.S. Births

The immigration crisis has worsened as a result of President Joe Biden’s reckless open border policies and incompetence to do anything about it.

Under the Biden Administration, more than five million illegal migrants have crossed into the United States— outpacing the nation’s annual birth rate.

Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) is blaming Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for releasing at least 85 percent of illegal aliens into the U.S. without vetting them due to the administration’s Catch and Release program. Most of these immigrants will be given work permits— taking away vital work opportunities for American citizens.

“All told, DHS numbers indicate that well over three million inadmissible aliens have been released into our country on Secretary Mayorkas’s watch. Factor in the 1.8 million known gotaways, and that’s roughly the population of the state of South Carolina,” Green said, suggesting that Mayorkas has allowed more illegal migrants into the nation from 2021 through 2023 than the number of babies born annually in the U.S.— which is fewer than four million.

“In Fiscal Year 2013, according to [the] DHS’s own numbers, the Obama administration detained 82 percent of illegal aliens from the moment they were encountered until their case was decided, and another nine percent were held for at least some portion of that time,” Green continued. “In Secretary Mayorkas’ first year on the job, that 82 percent number dropped to just ten percent. Illegal aliens not detained at all jumped from nine percent in FY 2013 to 64 percent in FY 2021.”

Green’s comments come as billionaire Elon Musk issued a warning to New York City residents after students were forced to attend remote classes as their school was used to house illegal migrants.

In a tweet, Musk warned Americans that illegal aliens will soon come for American homes as schools, shelters, and hotel rooms become overwhelmed.

“This is what happens when you run out of hotel rooms. Soon, cities will run out of schools to vacate. Then they will come for your homes,” Musk wrote.

The former Twitter CEO was responding to a LibsofTikTok account post featuring a video that showed illegal migrants exiting a yellow school bus to James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

Earlier this week, Mayorkas visited the U.S-Mexico border, calling on the Biden Administration to approve billions of dollars in supplemental funding to transport illegal aliens over the southern border.

He even went as far as claiming the DHS is enforcing the law despite millions of border crossers coming into the U.S. daily.

“Some have accused [the] DHS of not enforcing our nation’s laws. This could not be further from the truth,” Mayorkas said.

Well, I was-sorta-close. But I was right that complications arose.

Austin developed infection after prostate cancer treatment

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Jan. 1 hospitalization was due to a urinary tract infection that developed after he underwent prostate cancer treatment on Dec. 22, doctors from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center said in a statement Tuesday.

The infection was cleared as of Tuesday and he is expected to make a full recovery, Dr. John Maddox, Walter Reed’s trauma medicine director, and Dr. Gregory Chesnut, head of prostate cancer research, wrote.

“Secretary Austin continues to recover well and remains in good spirits.” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday during a briefing. “He’s in contact with his senior staff and has full access to required secure communications capabilities and continues to monitor the [department’s] day to day operations worldwide.”

Austin’s team did not inform the White House or Congress about his condition or hospitalization for several days last week following his New Year’s Day return to Walter Reed.

On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the White House was not informed that Austin had prostate cancer until earlier in the day and admitted that the lack of information from Austin was “not optimal.”

Illinois ‘Assault Weapons’ Registration Mandate Is Already in Shambles

It’s now been a week since the deadline passed for Illinois gun owners to register their now-banned “assault weapons”, and the big question at the moment is which agencies, if any, are actually enforcing the new law. We’ve seen plenty of sheriffs and some state’s attorneys publicly say that they won’t be arresting or charging anyone for non-compliance, and as my colleague Tom Knighton reported on Friday, the Illinois State Police has said much the same; they won’t be actively looking for those they know have guns but failed to register them, though if a state trooper finds someone in possession of an unregistered firearm they may still make an arrest.

The state police are also keeping the registration portal open just in case any gun owner feels like registering after the deadline has come and gone. Maxon Shooting Supplies owner Dan Eldridge says he’s not even sure if that’s allowed under the text of the Protect Illinois Communities Act, and wonders if registering after the deadline opens gun owners up to criminal liability.

It sounds like a terrible idea to us. It is not obvious from where the ISP derives the authority to modify the Act’s language, which was passed by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor.

The department says it won’t pursue criminal charges against late affadavits, but does this prevent an anti-gun Cook or Lake County state’s attorney from doing so? 

Put these failures, sloppy work product, and mis-steps together, and it’s easy to see that nobody knows with complete certainty what and when registration affidavits must be filed.  Even those tasked with enforcement don’t seem to understand the requirements of this act.

  • The Office of the Lake County State’s Attorney posted a notice on its facebook page warning law-abiding citizens that they must register their assault weapons and high-capacity magazines by December 31.
  • The Governor is on camera warning law-abiding citizens that they must register their automatic and semi-automatic rifles and magazines.

There is no requirement to register magazines, and the act does not mention full-auto. Yes, if a full auto is a selective fire device, the semi-auto capability would require registration, but it’s obvious that these politicians have no idea what they are talking about.

Even the Illinois State Police website warns that “individuals who possessed assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and other devices listed in the Act before it took effect are required to submit an endorsement affidavit through their Firearm Owner’s Identification Card account by JANUARY 1, 2024,” though the statute only requires owners of those magazines to submit an affidavit if one has been transferred to them after the deadline had passed.

If the people who wrote the law and the agencies tasked with enforcing it don’t even know the details of the Protect Illinois Communities Act, how can the average Illinois gun owner possibly be expected to be aware of all of the intricacies in the legislation? That confusion may be one reason why compliance with the registration mandate has been so low (Maxon estimates about 4.2% of gun owners have submitted their affidavits to the state police), but Maxon believes there’s a large amount of civil disobedience taking place as well.

Nearly every county sheriff and most of the county State’s Attorneys have stated that they will not enforce this Act.  Residents of those counties have little incentive to register.

The act is highly offensive to otherwise law-abiding Illinois gun owners.  It is a mess of legislation put into law:

  • by individuals who know little to nothing about firearms
  • who are willfully ignorant of the difference between lawful ownership and criminal misuse of firearms
  • and who abused (again) the proper process for introducing and debating bills, jamming this through in the middle of the night on the last day of the 102nd General Assembly.
The great Milton Friedman is said to have remarked:

“The British follow all the laws, good and bad, the French ignore all the laws, and the Americans follow the good ones and ignore the bad ones”

Non-compliance with unjust laws: It’s as American as apple pie.

So long as Illinois gun stores like Maxon Shooter’s Supplies aren’t selling these now-banned arms, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other anti-gunners in Illinois will still consider PICA a win even if the lack of compliance with the registration mandate makes a mockery of their latest anti-2A effort.

The legal battles to have the gun and magazine ban (along with the accompanying registration requirement) declared unconstitutional are continuing to play out in federal court, and there’s a strong likelihood that U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, who denied a request for an injunction against the registration mandate shortly before it took effect, will revisit the issue before long and hopefully put the mandate on ice while the litigation runs its course.

Either way, I don’t see any signs that hundreds of thousands of Illinois gun owners will be registering their banned arms now that the deadline has passed, even if the Illinois State Police is encouraging them to do so.

Lipo? Nah, I figure he had a colonoscopy and the tech punctured his bowels.
One of my Uncles had that happen and spent a few days in ICU.

Why would Biden talk to anyone?

He isn’t in charge of his own bowel movements, much less anything that’s happening on the world stage.

Let’s think about this for a minute. Joe Biden, who is supposed to be the commander in chief, didn’t know for four days that his own defense secretary, a member of his cabinet, was in the hospital. Now, considering what’s going on in the world right now—the Israel-Hamas war, the Houthi attacks on container ships in the Red Sea, and many other things—how is it possible that Biden isn’t talking to his defense secretary daily? Sure, he has time to give speeches about how Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, but he didn’t even know his defense secretary was incapacitated for days?

Joe Biden can barely read from a teleprompter these days, and even when he CAN read from the teleprompter he can’t even enunciate the words that are being fed to him. Joe Biden is a drooling Chinese hand puppet, a senile dementia patient being led around by Obama’s staffers and told where to go and what to do. OF COURSE nobody told Biden about Lloyd “I fuck the troops over for lunch” Austin. Biden isn’t making any decisions, he’s being told what to do, just like Lloyd “I’m a political whore” Austin. They’re BOTH tools.

And I still want to know what the surgery was. I’m betting on lipo.

The Secretary of Defense – and ONLY him, not some underling – by law is in the direct chain of command of the U.S. military from POTUS to the Combatant Commanders. This was blatant dereliction of duty what with a senile delusional dotard sitting in the oval office.

BLUF
Austin’s Department of Defense is a barking shambles. It is incompetent in action and not trustworthy. It not only lies to the people and to Congress, but to the White House and itself…okay, maybe that isn’t all that unusual. As the old saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. If Biden lets this slide by, he’s a much bigger imbecile than even I had considered possible.

SecDef Austin Did Not Tell Biden’s National Security Adviser He Was in the ICU

The Department of Defense didn’t notify the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in the Walter Reed National Medical Center intensive care unit until Thursday. That’s it.

I’ve posted twice on the growing mystery of why the Defense Department failed to notify Congress that Secretary Austin was in the hospital. In the first episode, it was revealed in a Pentagon statement on Friday that Austin had been in the hospital since New Year’s Day due to “complications” from an “elective medical procedure.” This came as a shock to the Pentagon Press Corps and Congress.

BACKGROUND: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin Has Been Hospitalized for a Week and Just Told Congress Today

The second act materialized earlier on Saturday with the report that Austin hadn’t just been in the hospital; he’d been in the intensive care unit from Monday to Friday evening. His deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time. While he was incapacitated and she was sunning herself, the US ordered a drone strike on the leader of an Iranian militia; the US Navy was trying to make the Red Sea safe for commercial traffic without upsetting the Iranians or Houthis, a war raged between Israel and Hamas, and North Korea lobbed a couple of hundred artillery rounds into South Korean waters.

I ended that update with this note.

While we are focused on Congressional notification, no one has yet asked if the White House was told.

Now we have the answer to that question.

The Pentagon did not inform senior officials in the White House’s National Security Council of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization until Thursday — three full days after he arrived at Walter Reed Medical Center, two U.S. officials said.

The news came as a shock to top staff, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as they were unaware the DOD chief was dealing with complications following an elective medical procedure, the officials said. NSC staffers were surprised it took the Pentagon so long to let them know of Austin’s condition. The Pentagon didn’t make the information public until Friday evening, notifying Congress about 15 minutes before releasing a public statement.

For three days, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the National Security Council, and, it seems, a lot of senior Pentagon officials did not know where Austin was, nor did they miss him.

The Pentagon did not inform senior officials in the White House’s National Security Council of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization until Thursday — three full days after he arrived at Walter Reed Medical Center, two U.S. officials said.

The news came as a shock to top staff, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as they were unaware the DOD chief was dealing with complications following an elective medical procedure, the officials said. NSC staffers were surprised it took the Pentagon so long to let them know of Austin’s condition. The Pentagon didn’t make the information public until Friday evening, notifying Congress about 15 minutes before releasing a public statement.

In what is probably a monument of understatement, one unidentified US official said, “This should not have happened this way.”

Ya think?

There is a Paul Harvey “Rest of the Story” angle that remains to be teased out. What possible elective surgery could Austin have had that he’d literally go AWOL for a week and put the Nation’s security at risk rather than discuss?

Still, there are apologists at work. Democrat apparatchik Brad Carson doesn’t see anything wrong.

There is no standard protocol for when to announce a defense secretary’s hospitalization or temporary inability to do the job, said Brad Carson, formerly under secretary and chief management officer of the Army, though he added it could depend on the severity of Austin’s condition. If Austin were incapacitated, Congress would surely want to know. But if he were still capable of making decisions, even under a doctor’s supervision, “I don’t think Congress has to be notified in such cases.”

This is bullsh**. It makes no sense to say Congress doesn’t need to know if the Secretary of Defense is in the ICU because that affects national security. It certainly makes no sense to imply the national security adviser doesn’t need to be told.

It’s childish and unprofessional to tell the leaders of both chambers of Congress to FOAD by not informing them you are incapacitated. It is dangerously disloyal not to let the Jake Sullivan, idiot that he is, know. It is a sure bet that if Sullivan didn’t know that Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines were also out of the loop.

Austin’s Department of Defense is a barking shambles. It is incompetent in action and not trustworthy. It not only lies to the people and to Congress, but to the White House and itself…okay, maybe that isn’t all that unusual. As the old saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. If Biden lets this slide by, he’s a much bigger imbecile than even I had considered possible.

For gun rights advocates, a ‘Bruen’ bonanza
Upholding weapons ban just one development

In a Dec. 22 press release, the Attorney General’s Office trumpeted the fact that it had successfully defended the state’s assault weapons ban in federal court.

But not only has the final chapter in that case, Capen and National Association for Gun Rights v. Campbell, not yet been written, there is no end in sight — here and across the country — to the battles spawned by the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In Bruen, the Supreme Court refined the Second Amendment jurisprudence it had previously laid out in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, clarifying that it believed that appellate courts had gone astray in interpreting Heller.

Since Heller, the appeals courts had developed a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges, combining history with means-end scrutiny, which the Bruen court said was one step too many. The proper test should involve drawing analogies to the country’s history of firearm regulation alone, the Supreme Court ruled.

The court stressed that it was attempting to create “neither a regulatory straightjacket nor a regulatory blank check.” As courts were engaging in “analogical reasoning,” they need only find “a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the six-member majority in Bruen.

Since that ruling, courts in Massachusetts and elsewhere have begun fleshing out the standard, often prompted by cases filed by emboldened gun rights advocates. Recent weeks have not only seen U.S. District Court Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV’s denial of the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction in Capen but a Superior Court judge similarly rejecting a post-Bruen challenge to Massachusetts’ ban on anyone under the age of 21 obtaining a license to carry a handgun outside their home.

Meanwhile, gun rights advocates are celebrating a Lowell District Court judge’s decision to dismiss a charge of carrying a firearm without a license that a New Hampshire man had been facing for bringing the weapon he was licensed to carry in his home state across state lines.

Bruen has also revived a challenge to the state’s “gun roster” in the federal case Granata, et al. v. Campbell, et al., and spawned a new lawsuit challenging gun license delays of six months or more in Boston in White, et al. v. Cox.

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A STERN WARNING

The Houthi terrorist group is an Iranian proxy that Iran has found increasingly useful. The Houthis have attacked American assets stationed in their vicinity at will and disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea. American forces sunk three Houthi boats attacking a commercial freighter this past Sunday.

The Biden administration has politely warned the Houthis to knock it off. Going a step further, the Biden administration has organized Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a multinational naval task force to protect commercial ships in both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden,” according to the recent New York Times story.

And yet the Houthis persist. Yesterday the Houthis claimed responsibility for the latest attack on a merchant ship in the Red Sea, as the vessel’s operator sharply raised prices between Asia and Europe. The Times of Israel reports that story here (with credit to AFP).

It’s come to this: A Joint Statement from the Governments of the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. This is the statement in its entirety as posted by the White House:

Recognizing the broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023, as well as the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea, and in light of ongoing attacks, including a significant escalation over the past week targeting commercial vessels, with missiles, small boats, and attempted hijackings,

We hereby reiterate the following and warn the Houthis against further attacks:

Ongoing Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing. There is no lawful justification for intentionally targeting civilian shipping and naval vessels. Attacks on vessels, including commercial vessels, using unmanned aerial vehicles, small boats, and missiles, including the first use of anti-ship ballistic missiles against such vessels, are a direct threat to the freedom of navigation that serves as the bedrock of global trade in one of the world’s most critical waterways.

These attacks threaten innocent lives from all over the world and constitute a significant international problem that demands collective action. Nearly 15 percent of global seaborne trade passes through the Red Sea, including 8 percent of global grain trade, 12 percent of seaborne-traded oil and 8 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas trade. International shipping companies continue to reroute their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding significant cost and weeks of delay to the delivery of goods, and ultimately jeopardizing the movement of critical food, fuel, and humanitarian assistance throughout the world.

Let our message now be clear: we call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews. The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways. We remain committed to the international rules-based order and are determined to hold malign actors accountable for unlawful seizures and attacks.

I wish Henry Kissinger were available for comment. I’m quite sure this is not how he did these things. Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that a rhetorical escalation will produce the desired deterrent effect, but that is only a guess. We shall see.

Typically Tyrannical: Biden Admin Slips Out Slew Of ‘Regulations’ Over Holidays

As tyrants so often do, on December 29th the Biden Administration quietly slid out a “slow-news/Holiday-hidden” announcement of many more “regulations” it is imposing on your market choices of home appliances.

And to add insult to injury, it’s all for their religion-like claim to be preventing a Kali-esque demigod, “anthropogenic climate change” from destroying the world.

It’s a false religion, backed by fake claims of “science” and false claims of “savings” that they’re imposing on you.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

Indeed, as American families gathered for the Holidays, the Biden Department of Energy (DOE) under slick, smarmy, “enriched by stock options received from palsy corporations” DOE head Jennifer Granholm and her cult released the song of Kali.

Nick Pope reports on it, for DailyCaller:

“The Department of Energy (DOE) finalized or proposed a bevy of regulatory actions cracking down on numerous appliances on Friday.

The DOE proposed new rules designed to promote ‘energy efficient’ commercial fans and blowers, and also finalized energy efficiency standards for refrigerators and freezers, the agency announced Friday. The regulatory actions are the latest in a string of moves by the Biden administration intended to phase out a host of fossil fuel-powered appliances and replace them on the market with more energy efficient, and often electric, equivalents.”

I suspect that you, too, might be wondering where their vaunted US Constitution hides the so-called “authority” for the feds to create a DOE, let alone tell private makers of appliances what they can and cannot offer you to freely purchase or leave on the showroom floor. Perhaps, you, also, might be scratching your head over the easy way elitist bureaucrats and politicians claim to define for US what is “efficient.”

Well, you’d better extend the sentiment of “Silent Night” to your potential protestations about those matters, because, of course, the mandates are for YOUR OWN GOOD, to stop their magic monster of “anthropogenic climate change,” and if you should question either their mandates or their faulty claims of “science,” you are an apostate of the new religion.

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Looks Like There’s Massive Non-Compliance With Illinois Gun Registration

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The Biden Administration Hasn’t Just Abandoned You, It’s Actively Trying to Subject You to Invasion

Honolulu Has Cut Off Gun Sales

Gun sales have been blocked for much of December in Hawaii’s largest city.

That’s what the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, a local gun-rights group, claimed in a statement on Wednesday. It said the Honolulu Police Department (HPD) has advised gun purchase or carry permit applicants they won’t process them without a currently-unattainable training certification. And it’s unclear when those permits might become available again.

“It has been brought to our attention from multiple sources that the Honolulu Police Department, under the guidance of Police Chief Logan, is no longer processing ANY firearms permit applications or concealed carry applications until after the new year, and he has the ability to verify or certify instructors,” the group posted on social media. “The department requires all applications submitted after December 18th to provide proof of instruction by a certified/verified instructor before processing their application.

“The problem?????? He hasn’t certified or verified any instructors.”

The Honolulu Police Department did not return multiple calls seeking comment on the situation.

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With One Week Remaining, 99.4% of Illinois Gun Owners Have Said ‘No Thanks’ To Gun Registration

The Democrats who run Illinois decided long ago to blame gun owners for the results of the woke, soft-on-crime policies that have led to proliferating crime in the state. Instead of targeting the relatively small number of violent gang members who make Chicago live up to its Murder City USA moniker, politicians have instead targeted law-abiding gun owners with gun bans and a new gun registration scheme.

The so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act demanded existing owners of particularly frightening firearms register their magazine-fed, semi-automatic rifles. These include guns best-suited to self-defense including America’s favorite rifle, the AR-15.  The law also bans many semi-auto shotguns and handguns. Then there are the accessories and .50 BMG ammunition that must be registered as well.

With a December 31 deadline fast approaching, the Illinois State Police released their Week 11 compliance update on Wednesday and it’s a doozy. While thousands of Illinois gun owners have dutifully complied, millions have not. Holders of 15,164 Firearms Owner ID cardholders have registered an average of about 3.5 covered items each.

Put another way, 2,400,317 FOID holders have registered…nothing. Running that through some public school math, that yields a 99.4% non-compliance rate.

Why are so few Illinois citizens complying? Aside from the fundamental 2A conflicts, there’s also the leak from the Governor’s inner circle to “close the existing owner loophole” as reported by Guns Save Life.

So what is next?  Following a mass-casualty incident, especially if it happens in the Land of Lincoln, the Governor will announce a plan to “close the existing owner loophole.” Their words, not ours.

Governor Pritzker will back legislation to call for those who have registered guns and accessories to surrender those registered items to the police after 90 days or so.  Failure to do so would result in felony charges.

By mandating the surrender of those registered items, they can determine who has complied and who has not. Those who have not can expect ISP-led “firearm compliance teams” to knock on their doors.

That should surprise no one. Firearm registration has always had only one real purpose…to facilitate confiscation when politicians finally get up the testicular fortitude to press their anti-gun antipathy to that extent. That’s always been clear and it’s why there’s a law prohibiting federal firearm registration.

While achieving a compliance rate of more than one percent might be seen as some kind of psychological milestone of “success” by Governor Pritzker, it’s actually a humiliating public repudiation of Pritzker’s radical left anti-gun politics.

The little people have made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of complying with Illinois politicians’ gun-grabbing schemes. Don’t expect their attitude toward “closing the existing owner loophole” to be any more enthusiastic.

Gun deaths rise along with gun control grade

Gun control advocates should have reason to celebrate. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence upgraded Colorado’s grade on the “annual gun law scorecard” from a C+ in 2021, to a B in 2022 and an A- this year.

As reported in Gazette sister publication Colorado Politics, Colorado earned its A- for imposing waiting periods, banning “ghost” guns, enacting legislation on victims’ legal access, increasing the minimum age to purchase firearms and investing $1 million in community violence intervention.

The grade would deserve accolades — if it correlated with a decrease in gun violence. It does not. The year Colorado moved from a C to a B was the year Colorado’s rate of gun deaths reached a 40-year high. It is also the year Colorado set a record for the most people injured in mass shootings in a single year.

Since the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, Colorado has understandably pursued more gun regulation. The state enacted background checks at gun shows in 2000. It later passed a 15-round limit on bullet magazines. In 2013, Colorado required universal background checks.

From there, the state passed a red flag law in 2019. The next year, it enacted mandatory reporting for lost or stolen firearms and a safe firearm storage law.

Despite a 23-year gun-control effort, gun sales and gun crimes have risen.

Colorado’s gun sales in 2022 were 26% higher than in 2019. Early indicators suggest this year’s Colorado holiday gun sales will set a record.

An A- for gun control — after a significant rise in gun crimes — amounts to accolades for policies that don’t work.

It frustrates Colorado’s political leaders. Gov. Jared Polis and state’s Attorney Gen. Phil Weiser want to spend $600,000 to hire outside lawyers. They would lend the attorneys to the federal government to prosecute gun crimes.

If federal enforcement saves lives, this proposal could pay off. Properly written and enforced, gun regulations should allow guns in the hands of stable, sober, law-abiding adults.

It should keep guns from substance abusers, criminals, domestic abusers, severe mental illness patients, and others given due process and deemed likely to misuse them.

If Colorado subsidizes enforcement of federal gun laws, Polis and Weiser should take similar action regarding federal drug laws.

Colorado has undermined federal drug laws and enforcement for years, even as fentanyl became the number 1 killer of young adults. We legalized recreational pot in 2012. More recently, our state decriminalized fentanyl, heroin, crack cocaine and other deadly street drugs.

Likewise, Colorado has consistently undermined federal immigration laws. The combined chaos of immigration, rising crime, drug deaths, homelessness and needles in parks probably led to escalating gun ownership in Colorado and the rest of the country.

“There are many communities with sustained levels of crime that have not abated,” said National Shooting Sports Foundation spokesperson Mark Oliva, as quoted in Gazette sister publication The National Examiner.

“Those concerns, along with the punishing anti-gun measures by the Biden administration and threats of more gun control promised by the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, cannot be discounted as contributing factors (to rising gun sales).

“Americans have demonstrated month after month and year after year, (that) Second Amendment rights matter, and they are investing their hard-earned dollars to exercise their right to lawfully possess firearms before the right can be further infringed (upon).”

Reducing gun violence means more and better mental health care. It means restoring harsh penalties for crimes. It means controlling the border. It means enforcing drug laws and offering help for addiction. It means more looking out for those who suffer.

Sadly, it seems we don’t save lives by simply churning out gun laws — even if handed a medal for doing so.

The Gazette Editorial Board

2024—the Year of our Reckoning
Will we meet the challenges or ensure the ongoing decline?

We should remember the now modern proverb of Nixon-era economic advisor Herb Stein to the effect that what cannot go on (without destroying the nation), simply will not go on.

In some sense, the country for recent years has been cruising on the fumes from prior and likely better wiser generations and institutions. In 2024, the tab for our current apathy, toxic politics, and incompetence will come due.

So next year we will likely see the climax to a number of current dangerous ideas, events, and forces, which finally will either overwhelm us or be addressed and remedied. We live in a Neronian age but can recover if we first understand how we got here and the nature of the suicide we are committing.

In 2023, it became clear, to even the most loyal supporters of the Biden administration, that the U.S. has simply lost or indeed forfeited American deterrence abroad. Our enemies do not fear us; our friends do not trust us; and neutrals do not care either way.

After the 2021 Kabul debacle, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea, many of America’s opportunistic enemies drew conclusions and adopted strategies that would have been previously unthinkable.

Either adversaries will be so emboldened to start regional wars—an impotent Iran now brags it will block the entire Mediterranean—or a United States will be shocked into action and have to deter Iran, the Houthis, and Islamic terrorism, while dealing with an opportunistic China eager to annex Taiwan, and Russia determined to finish off Ukraine.

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Incompetent ‘Contagious Disease’ Diagnosis for Guns a Prescription for Tyranny

“New Mexico Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham held a recent press conference to praise herself for implementing dubious gun control measures,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported. “‘I won’t rest until we don’t have to talk about (gun violence) as an epidemic and a public health emergency,’ the governor said.”

If a prominent politician declares an epidemic and imposes edicts and orders to enforce them, it’s fair to ask, “Where’s the science?”

“Lujan Grisham was born in Los Alamos and graduated from St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe before earning undergraduate and law degrees from the University of New Mexico,” the governor’s official biography states. Neither her education nor her claimed career highlights show her qualified to make such a proclamation on her own, which makes it fair to ask, “Who’s advising her?”

That would be Patrick M. Allen, her New Mexico Health Department Secretary.

“In simple terms, violence, especially gun violence, behaves like a contagious disease,” Allen pontificates in his op-ed, “Tackling Gun Violence: A Public Health Challenge — DOH secretary says rapidly-spreading violence behaves like a contagious disease.”

“Imagine treating violence as if it were an infectious disease. Just as we study diseases’ origins to combat them effectively, we can apply the same approach to violence,” Allen proclaims. “How do we address gun violence as the contagious disease it is? Gun violence is a public health emergency.”

He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t he? The thing is, like the governor, the secretary in charge of the Land of Enchantment’s public health doesn’t have a qualified medical background, either.

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The Great Legal War Over Your Freedom

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022, the lower courts have been either trying to apply, or to resist, its directive to decide the validity of restrictions on the basis of the text of the Second Amendment and historical analogues from the time of the Founding. According to the ruling, an activity is presumed to be protected if it involves keeping and bearing arms by the people. The burden is then on the government to find historical precedents to show that a restriction is part of the nation’s history and tradition.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals applied Bruen to the federal ban on gun possession by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) and found it to violate the Second Amendment. State DVROs are often issued with little pretense of an adversary hearing or are mutually agreed upon in divorces without knowledge that it evokes a federal gun ban.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, U.S. v. Rahimi, and a barrage of amicus briefs have been filed on both sides. Mr. Rahimi faces several state charges involving actual violence, dwarfing the federal possession charge. The amicus brief of the National Rifle Association put it this way: “Rahimi should not only lose his Second Amendment liberties, but he should also lose all of his liberties—if the allegations against him are ultimately proven true with sufficient due process. But constitutional safeguards cannot be set aside to obtain those ends.”

Consider the supposed historical analogues cited by Biden’s Justice Department and its amici—discriminatory laws disarming Catholics, slaves and “tramps”; confiscation of arms by oppressive British monarchs and by our own patriots in the American Revolution (there was a war going on, after all); and wholly irrelevant laws against gun sales to children and intoxicated persons. The Court heard oral arguments in the case on Nov. 7, 2023.

The Third Circuit, in Range v. Merrick Garland, held the federal ban on gun possession by felons to be unconstitutional as applied to a person convicted of a minor, non-violent offense.  Again, no laws in the Founding era disarmed persons who were not dangerous. The government is asking the Supreme Court to hear that case after it decides Rahimi.

When it decided Bruen, the Supreme Court directed the Fourth Circuit to reconsider its upholding of Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban in Bianchi v. Frosh. That court had held that ordinary AR-15 semi-automatic rifles are not really different from machineguns and are “weapons of war most useful in military service,” even though no military force in the world issues them as service rifles.

The Fourth Circuit got right on it, holding its oral argument on Dec. 6, 2022. A year later, crickets. Still no decision. Is it really so hard to apply Bruen’s simple tests, or would the court not like the result?

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