Category: Goobermint

ATF to Return Legal Gun Parts, Leaving 16 Blue State AGs to Suffer a Collective Meltdown

The whole “bump stock” hooraw has been settled, for the time being, following the Trump administration’s settling of a lawsuit brought by the National Association for Gun Rights. These devices, more properly called “forced-reset triggers,” allow for firing a semi-automatic rifle more quickly, at the cost of some accuracy. In the interests of complete reporting, we should note that the action of one of these devices can be duplicated with such readily available things as rubber bands or belt loops. Following the settlement, the ATD has been ordered to return some 100,000 seized devices to their rightful owners.

To summarize, 100,000 pieces of legally owned private property are being returned to their owners.

So, of course, 16 blue state attorneys general are screeching and soiling themselves in terror. They are demanding that these people not be given back their property, and as is typical, they don’t even know what they’re talking about. Consider this, from Colorado’s AG, Phil Weiser:

“The law is clear: Machine guns, and devices that turn a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun, are illegal,” Weiser said in a statement. “We’re suing to stop the ATF and the administration from making our communities more dangerous by distributing thousands of devices that turn firearms into weapons of war.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. These are not machine guns, and they cannot turn a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun. With or without a forced-reset trigger, the weapon functions the same: One shot for each trigger pull. The device makes it easier to fire more quickly, but so can a thumb thrust through a belt loop.

Furthermore, machine guns are not illegal. The supply is restricted, they are very expensive, and one has to go through a defined process to own one, including a background check and payment of a “transfer tax.” But they are not illegal. Given money and patience, any law-abiding citizen can legally own one. Like this guy does.

Moving on: We’ve seen, time and again and in fact quite recently, that if you want to make your community less safe, the easiest way to do that is to elect Democrats to run that community. But the simple fact is that rifles, modified are not, are very rarely used in crime; you are about as likely to be killed by a falling vending machine as by a mass shooter with an AR-15.

And, finally, these are not weapons of war. Nitwits like AG Weiser, who know less than nothing about guns, can’t explain why an AR-15 is a weapon of war, but a functionally identical but less scary-looking Winchester 100 is not; and yet, the legislation they propose almost always prohibits the former while ignoring the latter.

It’s just stupid all the way down.

Why Is Governor Newsom Going Full Jefferson Davis?

Victor Davis Hanson

What triggered the American Civil War were state officials who refused to honor federal law and instead boasted of their open defiance of Washington.

That precedent apparently is the incendiary model for the weird, but dangerous recent behavior of an increasingly unhinged California Governor Gavin Newsom.

He is currently supporting the often-violent protestors in Los Angeles and their resistance to federal officials’ enforcement of immigration laws.

Newsom claimed that Trump’s use of ICE to detain those here illegally in the U.S. was “reckless”, “chaotic” and “eroding trust”.

Does he think that his own rhetoric is creating calm and building trust by opposing the lawful enforcement of federal statutes? Or is he following the baleful model of arch-Confederate rebel Jefferson Davis?

Does Newsom support the similar defiance of fellow resistor Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass? She all but called for official city resistance to the enforcement of federal law, with an added threat, “We will not stand for this.”

What does Bass—who recently was junketing in Ghana as entire swaths of Los Angeles were incinerated—mean by “we”? All of Los Angeles? The LAPD?

Will Bass use the LA police to stand against federal officers who are implementing the law and have a constitutional right and indeed requirement to enforce federal laws within the states?

Does the governor grasp that his reckless states’ rights rhetoric empowers violent protestors who torch cars, pelt passersbys, and assault officers?

Take, for example, fellow California Democrat, Congresswoman Norma Torres. She just messaged federal immigration officers with the obscene threat, “Get the f— out of LA.”

Does Torres believe that Los Angeles should become a modern-day South Carolina of 1861, boasting that it will defy the federal government?

Is Torres echoing Democrat and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries? He just boasted that he would dox endangered ICE agents, publishing their personal information and revealing their identities (“Every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will of course be identified.”).

How exactly does Rep. Torres think she is going to get federal officers “the f— out of LA”?

Does Torres consider the now outnumbered and often threatened ICE officers to be the modern versions of surrounded federal troops at Fort Sumner?

Newsom did just not stop at siding with violent resistors to federal officers.

He again took on the federal government and the Trump administration for reminding California that it is subject to federal fines for its current defiance of federal Title 9-related presidential executive orders barring transgendered biological men from competing in women’s sports.

Trump recently was merely following the precedent of the Obama administration that first issued such warnings of cut-offs to educational institutions that might not abide its own Title 9 federal policies and directives.

Here is how Newsom worded his threats of insurrectionary resistance to Washington:

“Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off”.

Cut that off?

Has the rebellious Newsom read the U.S. Constitution? Is he calling for us Californians not to pay our federal income taxes?

Does he know that he just de facto called for federal tax evasion—an act that could be construed as a felony under 18 U.S.C. Section 2 of the federal tax code?

States do not have the legal authority to override the federal government by arbitrarily withholding federally warranted income taxes from its U.S. citizens. In 1861 such defiance almost destroyed the U.S.

And does a clueless Newsom really believe that California’s $80 billion surplus of taxes versus receivables with the U.S. Treasury actually pays “the bills for the federal government”? Hardly.

In truth, it amounts to no more than 1.5 percent of the annual $5.5 trillion in federal revenue?

Does Newsom even realize that California taxpayers are American citizens first, and California residents second?

Or has his past advocacy for defiant sanctuary cities and current nullification of federal law made him a states’ rights rebel in the past fashion of George Wallace’s Alabama resistance?

Beside their Confederate-like defiant threats to resist federal laws, do Newsom, Bass, and Torres realize they are clearly on the wrong side of public opinion?

Despite the media and leftwing hysterias, even the liberal CBS poll just reported that 54 percent of Americans still support deportation as a legitimate means of enforcement of federal immigration law.

In contrast, Newsom’s latest polls show that just 2 percent of Democrats envision him as their 2028 party presidential nominee.

Worse, in the most recent average of some 30 polls, only 27 percent of those surveyed expressed a favorable opinion of Newsom.

Does he think that illegal aliens violently breaking the laws of the nation in which they demand to stay and burning its flag, while waving the flag of the foreign country to which they refuse to return, will win the support of the American people?

Does he grasp that 75 percent of Americans support the deportation of illegal aliens who commit criminal acts like many of those currently in the Los Angeles protests?

Or is Newsom signaling that given all these polls he prefers to end his political career—and so just blew it up?

Hobbs vetoes bill banning China from owning land in Arizona

Arizona’s Democratic governor has vetoed legislation that would have barred the Chinese government from owning land in the state.

The GOP-backed measure banned the People’s Republic of China — including enterprises that are totally owned by the Chinese government and subdivisions of the Chinese government — from having a substantial interest in Arizona property. The bill defines a substantial interest as a stake of 30% or more.

Sen. Janae Shamp, the Republican sponsor of Senate Bill 1109, said during a debate of the bill on Feb. 26 that it was aimed at protecting U.S. military bases from spying, and she alleged that has already happened in Arizona.

“The actual Chinese government, our enemy, was trying to lease buildings near the (Luke Air Force) base,” Shamp said. “(N)ot making sure that we are protecting our national security or our men and women on the ground here in Arizona is ludicrous to me.”

Reports about the Chinese government purchasing land near military bases in the U.S. has, in many cases, been misleading.

Democrats in the state House of Representatives and Senate shared concerns that the original version of Shamp’s proposal was unconstitutional and that it would lead to discrimination in land sales.

A substantial amendment to the bill, passed through the House on May 6, allayed some of those concerns. The initial version of the bill banned certain people and businesses from countries designated as enemies of the United States by the director of national intelligence from owning land in Arizona. There were exceptions for small plots of residential land more than 50 miles away from a U.S. military installation. The amended version narrowed the ban to only the Chinese government and its subsidiaries.

The Arizona House of Representatives approved the amended bill on May 7 by a vote of 41-17, with eight Democrats voting in favor alongside Republicans. The Arizona Senate gave its final approval of the bill by a vote of 17-11 along party lines on May 28.

In her veto letter on June 2, Gov. Katie Hobbs wrote that protecting infrastructure was important.

“However, this legislation is ineffective at counter-espionage and does not directly protect our military assets,” she said in the letter. “Additionally, it lacks clear implementation criteria and opens the door to arbitrary enforcement.”

In the language of the bill, Shamp claimed that its “protection of this state’s military, commercial and agricultural assets from foreign espionage and sabotage will place this state in a significantly stronger position to withstand national security threats.”

Far-right Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, of Flagstaff, on May 28 said that she had sponsored a similar bill a few years ago and was perplexed when it was voted down on the Senate floor. (Rogers sponsored her legislation in 2022 and 2023. Neither bill received a vote by the full Senate.)

“I hope it’s not too late,” Rogers said, before voting for Senate Bill 1109.

When a state goobermint, even one supposedly as ‘gun friendly’ as Tennessee, is the point of contact for NICS, (when the system was designed for individual FFLs to query) it means that no matter how much they may disclaim, they are recording the transactions for their own state police registry.

‘We’ve lost quite a bit’: Gun shops across the state lose revenue as TBI troubleshoots firearm background check system outage

GOODLETTSVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee’s Instant Check System was down for days, causing sales losses for gun store owners across the state.

The firearm purchase login page for Tennessee FlexCheck, which is the system used across the Volunteer State, displayed an error message reading, “We are currently unable to run background checks.  We are working quickly to resolve it. Please check your emails for more information and updates.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which helps oversee the system, told News 2 that the agency had been troubleshooting an outage. The TBI said that the outage was related to a “planned system change” from the agency’s vendor, which was outside of the organization’s control.

The vendor told the TBI they were working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue. It was tentatively restored around midnight Friday.

Phillip Arrington, who owns Goodlettsville Gun Shop and has been in the business for about 30 years, told News 2 the store had experienced about five or six outages so far this year — each lasting more than 24 hours — with other shorter outages throughout the year as well.

This outage lasted for about three days.

“It’s getting to a point where we can’t tell customers, ‘Yeah, we’ll get your background check! It’s an instant check!” Arrington told News 2. “It’s no longer an instant check because there is no pattern to when it’s going to be reliable.”

The TBI told News 2 that in 2024, TICS had been fully operational 99.46% of the time and is only closed on the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. The agency did not provide outage statistics for this year.

No firearms could be sold in the state of Tennessee due to the outage, Arrington said, nor could firearms be taken in on consignment or any pawned. Some customers have been unhappy and even angry as a result of the outage.

“We’ve lost quite a bit [of money], but nothing compared to what some of the bigger stores have lost,” Arrington added. “…We have nothing to tell our customers. It basically stops everything we’re doing. There’s no sense in advertising because we can’t sell anything.”

Additionally, the TBI confirmed that some agencies lost access to the National Crime Information Center as a result of the outage. Law enforcement agencies utilize the NCIC to input information about missing children as well as information about crimes and criminals — like apprehending fugitives.

Neuroscientist Accidentally Reveals Democrats’ Dark Strategy Behind Biden’s Mental Health Cover-Up.

Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris recently admitted he was misled about President Joe Biden’s cognitive health, conceding that he once believed claims that Biden remained sharp behind closed doors—but now doubts that assumption, citing what he describes as an “effective” cover-up.

In a candid discussion, Harris acknowledged he used to defend Biden’s mental acuity by separating the president’s communication struggles from his decision-making abilities.

“It’s at least intelligible to say, ‘Okay, he’s not a good communicator. He was never a good communicator, he’s only getting worse,’” Harris said. “You can’t reliably stick him in front of a microphone and trust that something good is gonna come out of his mouth.”

Harris once accepted the idea that while Biden fumbled public speaking engagements, he was still competent when it came to deliberating important issues in private.

“The truth is… when you sit with him and deliberate about the war in Ukraine or anything else, he is compos mentis, he clearly understands the issue as well as he ever did,” Harris claimed he previously believed. “He’s just not a fluid speaker, and less and less fluid by the hour. Neurologically speaking, that is an intelligible claim to make about a person. That’s what I assumed was true.”

However, Harris now says he doubts Biden was ever as mentally fit as some insiders had claimed. “Because of how effective this cover-up was, I no longer believe that to have been true,” he admitted. “I think it’s quite possible that he was just checked out to a degree that I did not suspect at the time.”

Now, we’re supposed to believe this explanation, which is basically the same thing that Democrats and their allies in the media are saying. According to them, they were duped. But, Harris, like everyone else on the left who defended Biden’s mental acuity, was lying.

How do I know? Because he flat-out contradicted himself moments later, and it wasn’t subtle.

While you might assume that Biden’s obvious mental decline would be a deal-breaker for a neuroscientist, Harris made it clear that it didn’t matter one bit. The truth is, Biden’s cognitive state was irrelevant to him. His only real concern was stopping Trump—no matter the cost.

“Even that is preferable to me and to, I think, many Democrats, than having someone who we consider to be genuinely evil—genuinely 100% purposed to serving himself in the office of the presidency,” he said, drawing a sharp contrast between Biden’s frailty and Trump’s leadership.

Harris went even further, laying bare the mentality behind the left’s support of Biden in 2024: “I would rather have a president in a coma, where the duties of the presidency are executed by a committee of just normal people,” he said. “And that’s the choice that many of us believe was before us.”

In doing so, Harris admitted that Biden’s competency wasn’t just misunderstood—it was irrelevant. The real goal, for many Democrats, was to stop Trump at any cost. “Not much materially changes once you reveal just how insane and despicable this cover-up of Biden’s infirmities actually was,” Harris concluded, suggesting that the deception—however egregious—was worth it to keep Trump out of office.

Here we have a neuroscientist—someone with the education and expertise to spot cognitive decline a mile away—claiming he was duped by the Biden White House. But then, in the same breath, he admits it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Why? Because he’d rather see a cabal of unelected leftist operatives quietly steer the country into a constitutional crisis than let Trump win.

Spare me the victim act. He wasn’t fooled—he willingly ignored what was right in front of him because his hatred for Trump clouded his judgment.

Just like every other partisan on the left, he helped prop up a mentally unfit president and now wants to pretend he was misled.

He wasn’t. He was complicit.

We Were All ‘Domestic Violent Extremists’ According to the Biden Administration.

The COVID pandemic feels like a distant, bizarre dream now—but the remnants are still around if you look closely. A lone mask-wearing Karen at the grocery store… faded social distancing stickers no one bothered to peel off… reminders of just how absurd—and sometimes terrifying—that era really was. It’s almost laughable to recall some of the things that were forced on us. Other times, it’s downright chilling—as when Joe Biden tried to impose sweeping mask and vaccine mandates on the entire country.

At PJ Media, we pushed back hard against those mandates from the beginning. For that, we were likely branded “domestic violent extremists” by the Biden administration.

It’s true. Newly declassified intelligence documents reveal that the Biden administration categorized Americans who opposed COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates as potential “Domestic Violent Extremists” (DVEs). This wasn’t mere rhetoric—the DVE designation grants federal agencies expanded surveillance and investigative powers against targeted individuals, according to intelligence records recently declassified and obtained by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports.

The report, which the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has declassified, claims that “anti government or anti authority violent extremists,” specifically militias, “characterize COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as evidence of government overreach.” A sweeping range of COVID narratives, the report states, “have resonated” with DVEs “motivated by QAnon.”

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) coauthored the December 13, 2021 intelligence product whose title reads, “DVEs and Foreign Analogues May React Violently to COVID-19 Mitigation Mandates.”

The report flags opposition to mandates as one of the so-called “prominent narratives” linked to violent extremism. Among the flagged beliefs: that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe—particularly for children—that they’re tied to a government or global effort to strip away civil liberties and livelihoods, or that they’re part of a broader push to usher in a new political or social order.

I wrote articles including “Biden Can Shove His New Vaccine Mandate up His Donkey,” “The FDA Is on the Verge of Approving COVID Vaccines for Kids Under Six. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Do It,” and “Screw the CDC — I Won’t Give My Child the COVID Vaccine.” At the time, we thought the biggest problem with publishing articles such as these at PJ Media was that they’d get demonetized. It turns out that the real issue was that the Biden administration probably flagged us as “Domestic Violent Extremists” as well. If you commented on articles like these and agreed with them, they may have flagged you, too.

By defending individual liberty and questioning government overreach during the pandemic, PJ Media and our readers apparently earned ourselves a spot on Biden’s domestic terrorist watchlist. The irony? We were right about the mandates all along—their ineffectiveness, their  unconstitutionality, and their use as tools of control rather than as public health measures.

This was a national security apparatus designed to target political opposition and further evidence that the United States was transitioning to a police state under Joe Biden. When questioning public health mandates gets you branded as a potential terrorist, we’ve crossed a line that should concern every American, regardless of his or her stance on COVID policies.

If it’s that advanced, it means he likely was suffering from it YEARS ago Maybe even before 2020!
And his physical exams (PSA) lab work should have indicated it.
So…. what else is new about covering up for SloJoe?

Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive form’ of prostate cancer with metastasis to the bone

Former President Joe Biden’s office confirmed on Sunday that he was diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer.

“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” Biden’s team shared in a statement. “On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement said.

ALEX BERENSON: Why we need to humiliate Joe Biden
It may seem cruel, but we must prevent similarly addled men from clinging to power

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. was even more demented than we knew.
Last night, excerpts leaked from Biden’s October 2023 interview with Robert Hur, the federal prosecutor who investigated him for possessing classified documents.

They are awful. They show a man in severe cognitive decline. Biden couldn’t recall even basic facts, like when elections are held. Yes, Joe Biden — who had lusted for the presidency his entire life — thought Donald Trump had won in November 2017, not 2016. It wasn’t a verbal slip. He didn’t know. An aide had to correct him.

BIDEN REPEATEDLY SAYS ‘I DON’T REMEMBER’ REGARDING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS IN NEWLY RELEASED HUR INTERVIEW AUDIO

Even that summary doesn’t capture Biden’s struggles.

What he says is bad. How he says it is worse. His voice is weak and whispery. He goes silent for stretches, loses his train of thought, offers oddly emotional asides about his son Beau — though he could not remember when Beau died. He seems not to remember being vice president; he speaks of being a senator and then jumps to running for president.

In the end, the classified documents investigation went nowhere. (Like the similar case involving Donald Trump, it shouldn’t have). But along the way, Hur — a well-respected prosecutor who had been the U.S. Attorney for Maryland in Trump’s first term — discovered something far more important: proof of Biden’s incapacity.

The Hur interview is so crucial because Biden and his handlers went to such lengths to protect Biden from press or public scrutiny even before the 2020 election.

Biden used teleprompters for his speeches, of course. His press conferences were rare and closely scripted. He had been told what questions would be asked in advance. Biden’s few unscripted, live interactions visible to the public generally came when he left the White House to walk to Marine One. He would occasionally stumble over to the “gaggle” of reporters yelling questions at him and speak for a few seconds.

Hur’s interview with Biden was likely the only time during Biden’s entire presidency when he faced lengthy questioning he could not control. It shows why Biden and his handlers tried so hard to avoid similar situations.

Hur wrote in his report on the investigation last year that Biden was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The audio suggests that description was kind.

You wouldn’t trust the guy in this interview to drive to the grocery store.
Biden had the nuclear codes.

Still worse, Hur interviewed Biden in 2023. If Biden and the people around him had had their way, he would have been president through January 2029. The interview suggests he’ll be nearly vegetative by then — if he lives that long.

When the Justice Department released Hur’s report on his investigation in February 2024, the legacy media immediately downplayed its importance and attacked Hur’s motives.

… the legacy media is only the second-most important villain here. It was Biden and the people around him, most notably his wife Jill and son Hunter, who insisted that he was fit to serve, and would continue to be until he was 86. 

“In what is supposedly a legal document, these inclusions certainly looked gratuitous—to say the least,” the New Yorker wrote in an article about Biden’s “righteous fury” over the report.

Two days later, the Washington Post would claim in a headline Hur had a “five-hour face-off” with Biden and write:

“Hur’s description of Biden’s demeanor as that of a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” would infuriate Biden’s aides, who saw it as sharply at odds with what occurred as the president sat for voluntary questioning.”

Sharply at odds, huh?

I have written before about the media’s dereliction of duty in covering Biden’s decline, both before and after the Hur report, which continued until his disastrous June 27 debate in Atlanta made covering for him impossible. And I will come back to the media’s failure. Hur’s report made clear that Biden’s cognitive impairment was severe and the White House was covering it up. That scheme should have been the story of the 2024 campaign from the moment the report became public.

This is not 20/20 hindsight on my part. On Feb. 9, 2024, the day the report came out, I wrote that it actually might be WORSE for Biden than an actual indictment.

Most of the media looked the other way, even as Biden’s flubs and lapses visibly worsened in the spring of 2024 despite the protective cocoon around him. But the legacy media is only the second-most important villain here.
It was Biden and the people around him, most notably his wife Jill and son Hunter, who insisted that he was fit to serve, and would continue to be until he was 86. Both Jill and Hunt had their reasons. Jill’s lust for the trappings of power would be almost comic in its nakedness if it weren’t so dangerous; Hunter has champagne taste and a beer budget (or, more accurately in his case, cocaine taste and a meth budget).

But, of course, all of them, including Biden, knew the truth. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to hide it.

Imagine if Biden had won. Imagine if he had somehow found his way through his debates with Trump and then gone back to the presidential cocoon. Imagine if the media had insisted through Election Day that the videos showing his decline were merely “cheap fakes” – as it did throughout the spring. We’d be approaching a Constitutional crisis. Our system is not parliamentary; it has no way to replace an unfit President quickly or easily. And in running for a second term when he did not have to, Biden showed that he would not give up power unless he was forced to do so.

Robert Hur spoke truth to power. He’s a hero.

Biden and the people around him lied about his basic ability to function as he tried to convince American voters to give him the world’s most important job for four more years. He shouldn’t be forgiven. His misdeeds belong in the first line in his obituary.

We need to remember what he did, even if he can’t.

Politicians……..

Missouri Lawmakers Adjourn Without Final Vote to Get Rid of This ‘Gun-Free Zone’

Concealed carry will remain off-limits on public transportation in Missouri for at least another year after Republican senators ended their legislation two days earlier than mandated on Wednesday. The early adjournment was the result of a rarely-used parliamentary move meant to cut off debate on two bills dealing with voter-approved referendums on abortion and paid sick leave.

It was the 5th year in a row the Senate was unable to make it to the 6 p.m. Friday constitutional deadline for the session to adjourn. Even the House decided to adjourn early, announcing that it would work on bills Thursday then head home for the year.

It marks the first time the House has not worked on the legislative session’s final day since a fixed adjournment date was set in 1952.

House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said despite the Wednesday meltdown, the Senate actually functioned much better than any year since he joined the legislature.

“With the Senate, you just have to keep your expectations in check,” he said. “But I’m actually very happy with the way things went. You can’t always end the way you want.”

After years of the Senate’s discord being caused by internal GOP squabbles, Republican leaders celebrated soon after the early adjournment Wednesday by touting party unity and a host of big-ticket accomplishments.

They pointed to legislation sent to the governor enacting state control of the St. Louis police, exempting capital gains from the income tax and pumping $50 million into a private school voucher program, among others.

“This session proved what’s possible when Republicans lead together,” said Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican.
… Republicans cut off debate using a procedural maneuver known as “calling the previous question,” or PQ.

Used regularly in the Missouri House, it is used rarely in the Senate because the chamber has a tradition of unlimited debate and negotiations over difficult issues. Wednesday was the first time since 2020 when a PQ was invoked and the first time since 2017 when it was used during a regular session.

In addition to HB 328 failing to receive a vote in the Senate before the chamber adjourned, the legislation known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act also ended up on the cutting room floor. That’s a little less surprising to me, given the opposition by law enforcement groups across the state and the fact that a previous version of SAPA had been ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, but it’s incredibly frustrating that the bill that would have allowed lawful gun owners to legally carry a firearm on public transportation appears to be dead in the water for the rest of the year.

Gov. Mike Kehoe has said he’ll call lawmakers back into session to vote on a stadium funding plan for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, and some senators have also suggested a special session to address a $500 bill funding various construction and infrastructure projects across the state, but at this point there’s no indication that HB 328 would be brought up for a vote if and when lawmakers return to Jefferson City.

The bill repealing the prohibition on lawful carry in public transit passed the House on a 106-45 vote on April 10, but had yet to receive a vote in the Senate  Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee despite a public hearing on the measure that was held on April 22. It’s possible that even if the Senate had stayed in session until Friday the measure wouldn’t have made it to the Senate floor for a final vote, but the parliamentary move deployed on Wednesday guaranteed that it wouldn’t get to Kehoe’s desk anytime soon.

It’s ridiculous that a Second Amendment-friendly state like Missouri still deprives lawful gun owners from being able to carry on buses and light rail in places like Kansas Cit and St. Louis, and there were high hopes that this year lawmakers would finally get rid of those “gun-free zones”. The Senate president can pat herself on the back if she wants for “proving what’s possible when Republicans lead together”, but from a Second Amendment perspective she and other Senate leaders don’t have anything to be proud of, especially when those Missourians who rely on public transportation to get around continue to be denied their ability to protect themselves throughout their daily routine.

2A Groups Urge Congress to Pass Full Hearing Protection Act

While a move to zero out the $200 tax on suppressors has initial approval on Capitol Hill, Second Amendment advocates stress there is still a lot of work to be done.

Following a marathon overnight markup battle from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, the nearly 400-page reconciliation package approved in a party-line vote by the House Ways and Means Committee included a section that dropped the long-standing $200 tax on suppressors to $0.

The bill now goes to the House Budget Committee for further consideration before heading to the House floor. That, argue NFA reformers, allows another chance to drop the regulation that would remain even if the tax remained zeroed out.

“Now, we call on the full House to do the right thing by inserting Section 2 of the Hearing Protection Act to permanently remove suppressors from the unconstitutional NFA tax scheme,”  stressed Knox Williams, president and executive director of the American Suppressor Association. “We have every confidence House leadership will deliver on decades-long promises to stand up for the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”

Even the NRA, which for years resisted suppressor deregulation in the past, is calling on its members to reach out to the Congressional switchboard. 

“Before final passage of this important legislation, the U.S. House has the opportunity to improve this provision to fully remove suppressors from the NFA,” said the group in a statement. “This provision, along with any other provision in the bill, could be altered or removed at any time before final passage of the bill.”

Advocates point out that the registration mechanism and red tape – not the tax – that come with NFA regulation are the most onerous parts of the current strict controls on the sound moderating devices. Leaving the process intact retains an artificial barrier to acquiring a suppressor, has a negligible impact on crime as ersatz, illegally made suppressors are easy to produce, and a bait-and-switch of simply dropping the tax can easily be undone by future reconciliation bills.

Colion Noir had a good take on the issue in the below piece of video advocacy.

“They’re not doing this because it’s better for us. They’re doing it because it keeps control in their hands. This isn’t about safety, it never was. This is about setting precedent because if they remove suppressors from the NFA today, tomorrow, we’ll ask, ‘why are SBRs still there,’ then after that, ‘why is the NFA even a thing at all.’

That’s what terrifies them. Not the hardware. The idea that we might reclaim authority over our own rights. And I don’t care who’s in office. Republicans, Democrats, bureaucrats with pin collections and zero range time, if you’re in government, the last thing you want to give up is power– and I know it.

That’s why they’ll toss you a $0 fee like a bone and act like they did you a favor because they think you’ll settle for scraps instead of demanding the whole meal.”

As for where Guns.com stands:

Try “well known but – poorly – covered up, before the 2020 election”

Yes, Our President Was Senile for a Long Stretch.

On the menu today: Before we dive into the latest detailed anecdotes of President Joe Biden’s undeniable senility in his final year in office, we ought to look back at the on-the-money prediction of these all-too-late tell-all books from back in 2022. I knew this was coming and there’s an extremely good chance you knew this was coming, too. Democrats can’t wait to move on; it’s humiliating to learn Biden couldn’t function in the evenings, his staff told Democratic donors that Kamala Harris was incompetent and unelectable, and that Tim Walz was terrified of debating JD Vance. But how do you learn from a mistake if you refuse to ever admit them?

Everyone Recognizes George Clooney . . . Except Biden

The Morning Jolt, June 20, 2022:

I think the single most predictable “bombshell” of the coming years is that sometime in 2025, someone like Bob Woodward or Robert Costa will publish a book with a title like “Perpetual Crisis: Inside the Biden White House,” and we will “learn” something like:

The president’s official health report said he was in fine shape for his age. But behind the scenes, Jill Biden, Ron Klain, and Susan Rice were deeply concerned the president’s health was rapidly declining, and that he would soon be unable to perform his duties.

His speech was becoming less and less coherent, his thinking more erratic, his mood shifts more intense, and he angrily lashed out at routine advice or recommendations. He insisted he had not been told things he had been briefed on and that his wrong statements were correct. He repeatedly insisted the U.S. had committed to protecting Taiwan, when no treaty required it.

When asked about this, Biden insisted no policy had changed. At almost every public appearance, no matter how much he had been instructed to stick to the teleprompter’s prepared remarks, Biden would go off script and add some comment or outburst — like “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!” — that undermined his message and created new foreign-policy headaches.

But the first lady, Klain, and Rice all concurred that Biden’s problems could be hidden from the public, at least for now, and that Vice President Harris taking over was unthinkable — both because it would be too traumatic for the country and because they had little faith in Harris’s ability to defeat Trump or DeSantis in 2024.

Either man entering the Oval Office in January would put nothing less than all of American democracy at risk. For the good of the country, Biden had to stay in place, and his cognitive decline hidden — much as FDR’s disability, JFK’s back pain, and Woodrow Wilson’s stroke had been hidden before. 

Biden’s public appearances grew less and less frequent, and he virtually stopped doing sit-down interviews. Late at night, Klain and Rice would get together, satisfied they had kept the ship sailing for another day. All the while, the public had no idea that Biden was in such rough shape.

Though it will be treated like a bombshell revelation, the fact is we all have eyes and ears and can see and hear Biden.

I just wish the lottery numbers were so easy to predict.

Enjoy these days of Joe Biden getting knocked around like a piñata, because after Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have sold all the books they can, the story of the coverup of Joe Biden’s failing physical and mental health is going to disappear like the subject of a David Copperfield prime-time special. It’s just too embarrassing, too harmful to the Democrats’ priorities now, too much of a benefit to Donald Trump and Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday, on CNN:

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While it is better than nothing, I don’t really know just how “good” this actually is compared to what we could get by pushing these goofball politicians a little harder.
As it is my Rep -Burlison- is hardcore pro-RKBA already.

Sometimes We Have to Take the Good When the Perfect Isn’t an Option

When Donald Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term in November, along with GOP control of Congress, all of us who care about gun rights once again got stars in our eyes. Visions of 50-state carry reciprocity and silencers being sold at Harbor Freight and Home Depot danced in our heads.

That was fun and all and the requisite bills were written and introduced in Congress. Some of it was done in earnest and some of it was nothing more than performative fan service by politicians who knew good and well that the legislation was as doomed as the Cretaceous dinos who saw that big flaming rock hurtling toward them 65 million years ago.

In other words, we’d all like to have national reciprocity. And we’d all like to see suppressors delisted from the NFA. But given the realities of razor thin majorities in both the House and the Senate, along with pathetically few politicians with spines of sufficient stiffness to make any of that happen, it’s just not happening. We’d love to tell you there’s a realistic chance that either will come to pass, but we don’t make it a practice to lie to our readers. Still, isn’t it pretty to think so?

Over the weekend, our friends at Ammoland published a story about what’s happening with the Hearing Protection Act in the House Ways and Means Committee. As John Crump writes . . .

The Hearing Protection Act (HPA) might be in trouble in the House Ways and Means Committee, and anti-gun lobbyists are NOT the ones holding it up.

David Kustoff (R-TN) has been actively pushing to lower the tax stamp to $5 from $200, which would be a welcome change, but the better alternative is to remove suppressors completely from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). That would eliminate the tax stamp fee and remove all other NFA requirements.

Yes, delisting cans would certainly be better. If that’s doable.

Heavy lobbying is being done by the former head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), Chris Cox, a paid lobbyist. Cox is working to lower the tax stamp fee to $5 and keep suppressors on the NFA!

The current NRA-ILA has pushed for the removal of suppressors from the NFA, and Cox’s actions are contrary to that stance. Mr. Cox no longer has any connections to the NRA. Mr. Cox has also lobbied for a gun company that produces suppressors, which has strongly advocated removing silencers from the NFA, and could make millions of dollars if the hearing protection item is delisted from the NFA.

Yes, this sucks. There’s no reason why metal tubes that save shooters’ hearing should be regulated like machineguns (not that machineguns should be regulated more than semi-autos either). But while I’ve had no contact with anyone involved in the HPA process at all, none of this sounds nefarious.

Politics has accurately been called the art of the possible. Believing the bill could pass on its own and get 60 votes in the Senate (let alone wrangling all of the House Republicans) to get it though to the President’s desk is a fantasy. Could the bill be tacked on to some other “must pass” item like budget reconciliation (no filibuster, simple majority to pass)? Maybe…again if and only if Republican have the cojones to do that.

In other word, don’t bet your mortgage on it. So what’s happening to the bill in the Ways and Means committee? We’d guess it’s realpolitik. It sounds like Cox and Rep. Kustoff have recognized that they have a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing the bill delisting suppressors and rather than throwing their hands up and saying, ‘Oh well, we gave it the old college try,’ they’ve decided to take a big step in the right direction.

Think about it for a minute. A tax stamp has cost $200 since it was enacted as part of the NFA in 1934. While inflation has whittled the real value of that away over the decades, it’s still not nothing. Add that amount to the price of a good suppressor — which will run you anywhere from $300 to $1300 depending on caliber, materials, features, etc., that’s still enough to discourage a lot of people from buying one. Beside the fact that it’s just plain insulting to pay Uncle Sam $200 for no good reason at all, most people would rather put those two Benjamins toward more ammo.

But what if a tax stamp costs only $5? That would be much more than just “a welcome change.” Lots of us pay that much for coffee every day. A $5 tax stamp would effectively be de minimis. Combine that with the fact that average eForm 4 wait times these days can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the hurdle to suppressor ownership would be almost nonexistent.

Yes, you’d still have to fill out the Form 4. Yes, you’d still have to submit fingerprints. Yes, that’s all blatantly unconstitutional (or should be adjudicated as such in a Supreme Court ruling).

But once again, we live in the real world. A world inhabited by sniveling, linguini-spined politicians on the “good” side and venal gun-hating hacks on the “bad” side. A world with billionaire-backed civilian disarmament operations run by hoplophobic gun-grabbers who operate by sowing fear and work on a daily basis to limit Americans’ gun rights. A world where anti-gun stenographers in the media are only too happy to further the messaging of the gun control industry.

In short, delisting silencers from the NFA simply isn’t in the cards. We’d love to be proven wrong, but it’s just not a realistic possibility now (or likely any time soon). And that probably accounts for what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington.

So…what if the average gun owner could sidle up to a SilencerCo kiosk at their local gun store, fill out the Form 4, submit their fingerprints right there, and pay only $5 on top of the cost of the can? And what if they could then pick up their can the same week? That would open up suppressor ownership to tens of thousands (if not more) people than today. And that’s something that should be done if it can be.

While it’s not ideal, it’s unquestionably a big step in the right direction. And if that’s what can be achieved right now, we’d call that a win.

Police Raid Shatters British Gun Control Myth. Again

“We need sensible gun control laws like the UK has.”

How many times have you heard something like this? Often, the country is different, but a lot of times it’s not. Far too many Americans forget we fought an entire war because of British attempts at gun control and think we should import it here.

In fairness to them–well, sort of–they actually think it would work.

The problem is, it doesn’t. Like, at all.

Police have arrested seven people after uncovering a stash of guns, knives and machetes during a raid at a petrol station.

Armed officers swooped on a row of businesses around the Gulf Petrol Station in Birmingham today amid a major operation.

Firearms officers, drones officers, dog handlers, and officers from the Organised Crime and Gangs team descended on the complex at around 2.30am, where they seized several dangerous weapons.

Two stun guns, shotgun cartridges and a large number of knives and machetes were all recovered and are now being examined by officers….

Photos taken from the scene show forensics officers handling a number of guns including what appears to be a shotgun and a revolver.

A black Vauxhall was also pictured at the site of the raid, with a large dent and several scratches along the front passenger door.

Yeah, not a lot of guns, but let’s also remember that they regulate stun guns and bladed weapons, which also don’t seem to be much of a problem for some people to get.

I don’t know the specifics of this raid, nor do I care.

For me, this is just another example of how criminals will get guns, even on an island with only one roadway leading into the country. If the UK can’t keep guns out of the country, how would we?

We have a porous southern border, which isn’t as porous as it was, but is still bad enough. Once it becomes profitable enough, some criminal enterprise would start importing guns into the United States, rather than out of here.

There’s very little in the way of legal gun sales in the UK, which clearly doesn’t stop bad people from getting guns, and people want this here? They claim, “I support the Second Amendment, but…” and then want to completely gut it by doing exactly what the British were trying to do at Lexington and Concord, all without a hint of irony at the fact that it doesn’t work in the UK.

It’s absolutely bonkers, and yet, here we are.

No, the UK’s gun control doesn’t work. It never worked. As I’ve noted before, our non-gun homicide rate is higher than their total homicide rate, which means looking at them as a guide on guns makes absolutely no sense due to significant differences in our culture.

So excuse me if I don’t bend over and accept that the empire we kicked out of our borders in the 18th century and that has since shrunk to a minuscule portion of where it was, a nation that now arrests people for mean words on the internet, is a country we can learn anything from other than how not to become a totalitarian hellhole in the making.

Part of that is not giving up our guns, because I promise you, if Europeans as a whole were armed like Americans, memes wouldn’t be the thing the powers that be over there fear.

Trump Administration Position on Machine Guns – Not 2A Protected
This Position Undermines Its Second Amendment Credibility

“Trump administration says machine guns aren’t protected by Second Amendment,” The Washington Times reports. “The Trump administration is taking heat from gun rights advocates after the Justice Department argued in court that machine guns fall outside the scope of firearms guaranteed by the Second Amendment.”

The story quotes Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Case, who, in arguing a brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court ruling, asserted “Machine guns are not the kind of arms protected by the Second Amendment.”

District Judge Carlton Wayne Reeves of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi had properly ruled that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, codifying that text, history and tradition at the time the Constitution was ratified, defined the standards to be used in determining Founding Era intent.

Besides, the Second Amendment says “arms.” It doesn’t say “kinds of arms.” Continental Congress Delegate Tench Coxe’s views were reflective of what the understanding was at the time, when he wrote, “Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…. [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”

And for what purpose?
“As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms,” Coxe declared.

Where’d you pull “kinds of weapons” out of, AUSA Case? She’s relying on the “in common use at the time” artificial construct that restricts “legal” ownership to what has not been banned by infringements, and limits gun uses to “self-defense.”

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Minnesota Gun Owners Take Aim At Taxpayer-Funded Anti-Gun Activism.

Fed up with their tax dollars being wasted by a University of Minnesota program advocating for more restrictive gun control laws, a Minnesota pro-gun organization is asking both the federal Department of Justice and the Department of Education to investigate.

In a recent social media post, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus (MCGO) announced that the organization had sent a letter to the DOJ and DOE asking them to investigate the University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Control Litigation Clinic.

The clinic is ostensibly in business to provide students with experience on cases related to so-called “gun violence,” more appropriately called criminal violence.

“The Gun Violence Prevention Clinic will offer students a unique experiential learning opportunity to work on litigation affecting a significant societal problem,” the organization’s website states. “The Clinic will litigate affirmative cases that will reduce injuries, deaths, and trauma caused by gun violence, challenge overreaching gun laws, and defend gun laws and regulations against legal challenges.”

MCGO says, however, that the clinic, which is led by a former litigator at extremely anti-gun Everytown Law,  is little more than a partnership with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office and is operating as a political and legal arm of the Walz/Ellison Administration’s gun control strategy.

“Their activities are not good-faith exercises in legal education, public service, or even legal education,” the tweet stated. “Instead, they are engaged in taxpayer-funded litigation activism aimed at dismantling one of our nation’s core constitutional freedoms—the Second Amendment. There is no place for this at a public university.”

In the letter, MCGO provided more details about the clinic’s partnership with the state’s anti-gun administration.

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This is another one of Trump’s, or his ‘advisors’ goofs. Taking a Republican out of the House, requiring a special election to replace him. Now, while both he and Matt Gaetz were replaced with other Republicans, any election always has a certain amount of risk involved, and if the demoncraps retake the House in 27, the only thing we’ll see is a continual series of impeachments of Trump, simply out of hate.

BREAKING: Waltz Out at the White House

Three weeks after inadvertently adding Atlantic reporter and long time Trump foe Jeffery Goldberg to a Signal group chat, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong have reportedly been ousted from the administration. Others in the chat included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and more.

The Atlantic published details of the chat, which included sensitive discussions about bombing Iranian backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Waltz admitted to accidentally adding Goldberg but maintained he didn’t know how the number ended up in his contact list.

“The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen,” Goldberg detailed. “I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”

President Donald Trump continues to stand by Secretary of Defense Hegseth and others who were in the discussion. Signal is a legal and approved way for government officials to communicate so long as the information shared is unclassified.

On Thursday morning, Waltz was still at the White House discussing the newly inked economic deal with Ukraine.