Category: Goobermint

We must Doooooo Something!™

Tennessee Governor Announces Special Session for ‘Red Flag’ Style Gun Law

The Tennessee General Assembly will officially reconvene this summer to consider legislation aimed at preventing future mass shootings.

On Monday, Governor Bill Lee (R.) formally announced a special legislative session starting August 21st. The goal of the session will be to “strengthen public safety and preserve constitutional rights,” according to Lee, and will likely involve debate over his take on legislation aimed at temporarily taking guns from those determined to be a threat to themselves or others.

“After speaking with members of the General Assembly, I am calling for a special session on August 21 to continue our important discussion about solutions to keep Tennessee communities safe and preserve the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Lee said. “There is broad agreement that action is needed, and in the weeks ahead, we’ll continue to listen to Tennesseans and pursue thoughtful, practical measures that strengthen the safety of Tennesseans, preserve Second Amendment rights, prioritize due process protections, support law enforcement and address mental health.”

The announcement sets the stage for what is shaping up to be one of the most interesting debates in gun politics as a Republican-controlled state legislature debates a policy that has rarely seen adoption in red states. It comes weeks after a shooter murdered three students and three staff members at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. While he remained non-specific in his announcement, Lee’s “order of protection” proposal is expected to be a key feature of the special session.

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Gavin Newsom tries anti-gun attack that backfires

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will probably run for president someday. I wouldn’t be surprised to see President Joe Biden decide to replace Vice President Kamala Harris with Newsom–it would keep California locked up electorally and Harris is…well, she’s just bad all around.

For now, though, Newsom is content to just act like an idiot when and where he can.

And that’s what he did when he went on the attack following the shooting in Allen, TX.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately criticized the Republican controlled Congress after a deadly mass shooting at a mall in suburban Dallas, Texas killed at least 8 and injured 7 others on Saturday afternoon, slamming Congress for not passing gun control reform.

“This is freedom?? To be shot at a mall? Shot at school? Shot at church? Shot at the movies?” the Democrat governor wrote in a Twitter post shortly after police confirmed the causalities. “We have become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live.”

Oh, sick burn.

Except, of course, it’s total male bovine excrement.

I challenge Gov. Newsom to show me one place in the United States that actually has a “right to kill.”

Sure, many have taken steps to preserve the right to self-defense, but that’s fundamentally different. Even Newsom will acknowledge–publicly, at least–that you have a right to defend yourself if you find yourself being threatened.

That’s not “the right to kill.”

So where is it, Newsom? Where is this “right to kill” that Congress is supposedly so focused on?

Nowhere. That’s where it is. At least, not with a firearm.

California, however, wants to be an abortion mecca for people who feel like they can’t get one in their home state. For a lot of people, that sure looks like California and Newsom are worried about an actual “right to kill.”

There’s also California’s euthanasia law that allows anyone who has lived in the state for six months to get assisted suicide–another thing that sure looks like killing to a lot of other folks.

In other words, a case can easily be made that Newsom’s California is one of the few places that actually does have a right to kill.

The truth of the matter is that no matter what gun control you pass, there will be a potential for mass shootings. I reported on three from Europe just recently, including two in Serbia just days apart. Another was in Portugal.

Those three were within the span of a week, folks, and there is no nation in Europe that is particularly gun friendly. Not by American standards, anyway.

Newsom and people like him would do well to stop focusing on the guns and start looking at what we can do that might actually work.

That’s not going to happen, though. It’s not going to happen because Newsom wants to square up his anti-gun credentials prior to his presidential run, whenever that actually happens.

The thing is, I don’t think that will work the way he intends.

‘What is citizenship worth if you can get better benefits by being illegally here?’

Campus Reform higher ed fellow Nicholas Giordano joined Fox Business‘ Maria Bartiromo to discuss a recently announced spending package in Boston that includes funding for illegal migrants to go to college.

“Americans are facing the highest inflation in forty years, you have food cost at all time highs, you have people struggling to pay bills, students parents taking on enormous debt burdens and officials are looking to provide illegal immigrants with college tuition,” said Giordano

The illegal immigrant funding provision comes as the latest part of a trend where states and municipalities are showing increasing interest in these spending programs.

“The biggest problems is we see these programs expand, so its not just Boston. New York City Mayor Eric Adams also announced a similar program where he wanted to take it statewide, and he was working with Gov. Hochul to do this,” he added.

When You Don’t Police Crime, Civilians Will

This week, the media found its latest iteration of its favorite narrative: white man harms black man.

That iteration featured a 24-year-old white Marine from Queens attempting to suppress a 30-year-old homeless, psychotic black man, Jordan Neely, via use of a suppression hold. Neely was apparently threatening people on the subway when the Marine took him down from behind, keeping him in the suppression hold for 15 minutes; Neely died shortly thereafter.

The extraordinarily inflammatory and insipid Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., immediately rushed to Twitter in order to gin up outrage: “Jordan Neely was murdered. But bc Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges. It’s disgusting.”

Meanwhile, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine tweeted, “I saw Jordan Neely perform his Michael Jackson routine many times on the A train. He always made people smile. Our broken mental health system failed him. He deserved help, not to die in a chokehold on the floor of the subway.”

So, who was Neely? A career criminal. He wasn’t just shouting threats at passengers—he had been arrested more than 40 times in the past. Those arrests ranged from drugs to disorderly conduct to fare beating. When he died, he carried an outstanding warrant for assaulting a 67-year-old woman. A bevy of people apparently report that he had attempted to shove people onto subway tracks more than once.

Why was Neely out on the streets? It was clear to everyone that he was a mentally ill psychotic man with a serious drug record, a rap sheet longer than the phone book, and an alleged history of violent incidents. The answer is that the city of New York has decided no longer to prosecute crime. To do so might raise the unpalatable spectacle of racial disparity in crime statistics—and it is apparently more important to preserve egalitarianism in arrest statistics than to take active threats off the streets.

The consequences of such idiocy are dire, for both the general public and for people like Neely. How long can the authorities in New York expect everyday citizens to experience hostile and violent encounters before taking action?

Commentator Toure tweeted, “It is normal to see loud, disturbing mental breakdowns on the NYC subway. I’m not defending that; I’m saying it’s a regular occurrence. What’s not normal is to murder people having loud, disturbing mental breakdowns.”

But short of prophecy, how can those watching such a breakdown, complete with threats against others, know who is harmless and who isn’t? Normally such questions are outsourced to law enforcement. When law enforcement is prevented from doing its job, crime rises—and citizens are forced to engage in acts of self-defense.

All of this would be perfectly obvious were Neely white and the Marine black in this case; then, the media and political class would declare the Marine a hero for protecting others on the subway car. But the narrative must be preserved—the lie that crime by minority members must be ignored for the greater good of society, lest response to such crime facilitate systemic racism.

Often, it’s innocent victims who pay the price. In the case of Jordan Neely, it was the criminal himself, who never would have died were the system rational enough to have policed him decently years ago.

Democrats’ scheme to bludgeon the Supreme Court exposed at Senate Judiciary Committee hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday on “Supreme Court Ethics Reform.” The title implies that Supreme Court ethics need reform and that Congress can do the reforming.

The hearing failed to make that case.

Everyone agrees on the critical importance of public confidence in the judiciary’s impartiality and integrity, and that that confidence is on the decline. That observation, however, raises the question of what’s causing the decline.

Democrats and their allies among left-wing groups and the media, after all, have relentlessly accused the current Supreme Court of partisanship and bias, even warning certain justices not to make the “wrong” decisions in certain cases.

There was Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Supreme Court steps in March 2020, calling out Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and shouting that they had “released the whirlwind” and would “pay the price” if they continue making “awful decisions.”

And there was Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and four Democratic colleagues filing a brief in a Second Amendment case that closed this way: “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself” before being forced to do so.

Or there was Whitehouse claiming, through the liberal American Constitution Society, that the GOP appointees to the court consistently deliver decisions that “advantage the big corporate and special interests that are, in turn, the political lifeblood of the Republican Party.” Not surprisingly, his methodology is itself deeply ideological, but even if he were right about the pattern, his own analysis would show that the Democratic appointees just as consistently oppose those interests. It’s funny that Whitehouse’s diatribes on this subject are always focused in one direction.

He and other Democrats were just as glaringly one-sided in Tuesday’s hearing.

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New Footage Shows El Paso Engulfed in ‘Mass Migration Dumpster Fire’ as State of Emergency Declared

On Monday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre made an absurd claim: “When it comes to illegal migration, you’ve seen it come down by more than 90%” under the Biden administration. And if that was the case, why did a Democrat mayor of a Texas border town declare a state of emergency?

Well, new footage from border town El Paso, Texas, shows a sobering view of a worsening migrant crisis that the Biden administration, liberal media, and progressive politicians have ignored for two years while calling anyone who pointed it out ‘racist.’

Illegal aliens waiting to cross into El Paso due to expiration of Title 42

Anybody who is pro-open borders has never been to border towns like El Paso which are plagued with mass migration dumpster fires like this )

“It’s difficult to describe, Jim, with words… The magnitude of the number of individuals,” a CNN reporter said. If CNN can no longer cover for the Biden administration, then they’re in trouble…
The situation in El Paso is so bad that even CNN is flabbergasted.

Even MSBC has been forced to cover the migrant crisis.

El Paso is transforming into what appears to be a ‘third world’-like country, primarily due to the surge in illegal border crossings.

With the upcoming expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy that allows border agents to turn migrants away on public health grounds, this will only indicate a new wave of illegal border crossings is imminent.

“El Paso mayor has declared a state of emergency. Biden is sending 1500 troops. The border has been lost,” Citizen Free Press tweeted.

Indeed.

All the President’s Islamists

by Daniel Greenfield

In 2014, Abdullah Hasan was a recipient of the CAIR-SFBA Islamic Scholarship Fund. He went on to defend BDS for the ACLU. Now he’s an assistant press secretary at the White House.

CAIR is an Islamist organization that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in one of the largest terror financing trials in America. Its founders were linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and it has opposed efforts to protect the United States against Islamic terrorism.

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad had declared.

When Hasan received his scholarship in 2014-2015, the Islamic Scholarship Fund’s board members included Hatem Bazian, one of the country’s most notorious Islamic bigots, the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, and an alleged supporter of Hamas, who has spent decades trafficking in antisemitism.

Hasan’s fellow CAIR-SFBA recipients included Salmah Rizvi, a former fellow at Al-Haq, a BDS group listed by Israel as a terrorist organization over its connections to the PFLP. Al-Haq’s general director is allegedly a key terrorist leader in the PFLP. Despite this background, Rizvi got an intelligence position in the Obama administration and produced materials that went into the President’s Daily Brief. After leaving the administration, she bailed out her best friend,

Urooj Rahman, who had been accused of throwing molotov cocktails at a police car.

After conducting research around “primary Islamic texts and within a post-9/11 surveillance culture”, Hasan went into activism, opposing anti-BDS measures on behalf of the ACLU.

In an op-ed co-written by Hasan, he defended “lawful boycotts of Israel” and claimed that opposition to BDS was a “loyalty test”.

In 2019, Hasan ranted that, “Islamophobia is rampant even in our highest democratic institutions” like the Supreme Court.

Now he represents the Biden administration as one of its press secretaries.

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No charges to be filed after man claims self-defense in fatal Keene shooting
Attorney general’s office say prosecutors would be unable to disprove self-defense claim

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Almost one year after a man shot and killed another man outside his Keene home, investigators said Wednesday that no charges will be filed.

Shane Frazier said he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Kristopher Chagnon, 27, in May 2022. Officials with the attorney general’s office said there was insufficient evidence to disprove that.

Investigators said witnesses told them that before the shooting, Frazier found one of his children next door, which upset him. After Frazier and his child went home, a group of people followed them, standing outside his door, and one of them went into the house.

Investigators said Frazier told police he grabbed his gun at that point and got ready to fire. He said he told the group never to come inside his home again.

Frazier told investigators that’s when Chagnon ran up the stairs, pushed the door open and got in Frazier’s face. Frazier told police he warned Chagnon several times to get back or he would shoot and eventually fired the gun.

Investigators said that there was some evidence supporting Frazier’s self-defense claim, but there is also differing information police got from witnesses, as well as a lack of objective evidence for self-defense. But the attorney general’s office determined that prosecutors would be unable to meet their burden of disproving Frazier’s claim of self-defense at trial.

‘Assault Weapon’ Bans Look More Legally Vulnerable Than Ever
A preliminary injunction in Illinois may signal the demise of a long-running public policy fraud.
Supporters of "assault weapon" bans insist that the weapons they cover are good for nothing but mass murder.

These two guns fire the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity. But the one on top is an “assault weapon,” and the one on the bottom isn’t. (Illustration: Lex Villena)

Three days after Washington became the 10th state to enact an “assault weapon” ban, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a similar law in Illinois. That decision, which was published last Friday, may signal the demise of a long-running public policy fraud that falsely depicts an arbitrarily defined category of semi-automatic rifles as good for nothing but mass murder.

“Assault weapon” bans, which typically cover specific models along with features such as adjustable stocks, pistol grips, flash suppressors, and barrel shrouds, have always been logically dubious. And under the constitutional test that the Supreme Court recently established, they look more legally vulnerable than ever.

These laws never made much sense. With or without the features that states such as Washington and Illinois have deemed intolerable, a rifle fires the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity.

Even President Joe Biden, who wants Congress to revive the federal “assault weapon” ban that expired in 2004, has conceded that the law left would-be killers with plenty of alternatives that were “just as deadly.” And contrary to the claim that the rifles targeted by this sort of legislation are the “weapon of choice” in mass shootings, handguns account for more than three-quarters of the firearms used in such crimes and an even larger share of the firearms used in gun homicides generally.

The Supreme Court’s precedents suggest that “assault weapon” bans are unconstitutional as well as illogical. The Court has said the Second Amendment applies to firearms that are commonly used for lawful purposes, and last June it explicitly rejected the sort of “interest-balancing” test that lower courts had previously used to uphold “assault weapon” bans.

Instead of weighing a law’s purported public safety benefits against the burdens it imposes, the justices said, courts should ask whether it is “consistent with this Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation.” In a federal lawsuit they filed immediately after Washington enacted its “assault weapon” ban last week, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) argue that the state cannot meet that test.

“The only historical tradition that can remove a firearm from the Second Amendment’s protective scope,” the complaint says, is “the tradition of banning dangerous and unusual weapons.” But that category does not include “arms that are in common use” for legal purposes, “as the firearms Washington has banned unquestionably are.”

The SAF and the FPC note that AR-15 style rifles covered by Washington’s law “are among the most popular firearms in the nation, and they are owned by millions of Americans.” They cite survey data indicating that “about 24.6 million Americans have owned AR-15 or similar modern semiautomatic rifles.”

The SAF and the FPC made the same argument in Illinois, and U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn found it persuasive. In granting a preliminary injunction against that state’s “assault weapon” ban, McGlynn concluded that the law was probably inconsistent with the right to keep and bear arms, adding that Illinois legislators seem to have ignored that likelihood and the Supreme Court decisions underlying it.

In the survey cited by the SAF and the FPC, two-thirds of the respondents who reported owning AR-15-style rifles said they used them for recreational target shooting, while half mentioned hunting and a third mentioned competitive shooting. Sixty-two percent said they used the rifles for home defense, and 35 percent cited defense outside the home.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, nevertheless insists these rifles “have no reason other than mass murder,” because “their only purpose is to kill humans as rapidly as possible in large numbers.” Illinois Senate President Don Harmon (D–Oak Park) likewise maintains that killing innocent people is the “only intent” of the rifles his state banned.

Ascribing intent to inanimate objects reflects the magical thinking of politicians who argue that certain guns are inherently evil. That position is plainly at odds with a reality that courts may no longer be able to ignore.

James Comer and Chuck Grassley have just released a statement claiming the FBI has proof showing then-Vice President Joe Biden committed bribery in exchange for policy decisions with a foreign national.

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FBI Record Allegedly Reveals Biden Was Engaged In Criminal Bribery Scheme With Foreign National

In a new development, an unclassified whistleblower disclosure received by the United States Congress has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation possesses a record allegedly linking former Vice President Joe Biden to a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, the whistleblower documents describe the alleged scheme in detail, including the exchange of money for policy decisions.

Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative James Comer, in a joint statement, said that “The DOJ and the FBI appear to have valuable, verifiable information that you have failed to disclose to the American people. Therefore, Congress will proceed to conduct an independent and objective review of this matter, free from those agencies’ influence.”

The scheme suggests as Vice President, Biden abused his position for personal gain. “Transparency brings accountability,” the letter finished.

Supreme Court Requests Brief in Case Against Illinois Town’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

Naperville, Illinois, will have to defend its ban on the sale of AR-15s and similar firearms before the Supreme Court.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who oversees the circuit the case against the ban is happening in, asked the city to respond to an emergency request for an injunction against the ordinance on Monday. That means at least one justice wants to hear more about the case before the High Court decides whether or not to weigh in. The city has until May 8th to answer claims that the ban violates the Constitution.

“We’re thankful the Supreme Court is taking the Second Amendment rights of Illinoisans seriously,” Dudley Brown of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), a plaintiff in the case, said in a statement.

The move may indicate the Court is getting closer to taking up a case against so-called assault weapons bans. After it handed down a new test for gun cases in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court ordered the Fourth Circuit to rehear a case upholding Maryland’s ban. Federal judges have been split on whether the bans violate the Second Amendment under the new test, opening the door for potential Supreme Court intervention and clarification.

Illinois enacted a statewide ban earlier this year, but it has since been blocked in state and federal court. It has also faced substantial backlash from Illinois sheriffs, a majority of which say they won’t enforce the ban because they consider it unconstitutional.

NAGR was denied a preliminary injunction against the Naperville ordinance in February, and the Seventh Circuit rejected the gun-rights group’s request to block enforcement of the law while its appeal is being processed. Now, the group is making the same request to the Supreme Court.

If the Court does issue an injunction against the ordinance, it will signal similar bans adopted by ten states are unconstitutional. That could upend the debate over gun control in America, which has largely centered around prohibitions on the AR-15 and similar guns. But, while Barrett’s request for a brief increases the odds the case will see action, most cases where briefs are requested do not get a full hearing.

NAGR said it is confident it will prevail in the case, though.

“Any ban on so-called ‘Assault Weapons’ is plainly unconstitutional, and now it is on the city of Naperville to explain the legal justification for their ban,” Brown said. “Of course, there isn’t any. The bans were ludicrous from the start, and if Illinois had any sense, they would wave the white flag now and save us all some time.”

Naperville did not respond to a request for comment.

INSLEE’S TRAINING REQUIREMENT FOR GUN BUYERS SAME AS LITERACY TEST FOR VOTERS

BELLEVUE, WA – Washington Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee this morning signed legislation requiring gun buyers to provide proof they have completed a firearms training course before being allowed to complete their transaction, but the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is calling this the equivalence of a “literacy test” that was used to discourage voting by minorities in the South.

“We’re talking about rights in both cases,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “For Jay Inslee or any other Democrat to contend ‘this is different’ suggests they’re either dishonest or delusional, and perhaps a little bit of both.”

House Bill 1143 explicitly states on Page 2 that the purchaser of a firearm provides proof of completion of a recognized firearm safety training program within the last five years that complies with the requirements set down in the second section of the bill. The legislation is part of the radical Democrat push to make Washington gun laws prohibitively restrictive when the Article 1, Section 24 of the state constitution explicitly states, “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired.”

“This requirement, along with the 10-day waiting period, seem like impairments to us,” Gottlieb stated. “When the governor earlier this year compared this requirement to getting training before being issued a license to drive, he ignored one very important point, and he knows it. Driving is a privilege, but keeping and bearing arms is a right protected by both the state and federal constitutions, and there is nothing in either of those provisions about training, or waiting.

“Inslee and the Democrats can couch this any way they want,” he continued, “but it adds up to the same thing. These requirements are designed to discourage Evergreen State citizens from exercising their constitutionally-protected and enumerated rights.

“Democrats in the Legislature are not only at war with Washington gun owners,” Gottlieb concluded, “they have also declared war on the state and federal constitutions, and the built-in protections for law-abiding firearms owners. As we’ve said many times, this isn’t about guns, it’s about rights.”

But, of course, we knew this

Democrat Cities Have Biggest Homicide Rate Problem, Study Finds

The Democratic Party aggressively promoted the idea of ‘defunding the police’ after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer in 2020, which was supposed to improve public safety. A few years later, a new study found the homicide rate in Democrat cities is on the rise and a sign progressive policies are failing.

In a study published by WalletHub, researchers found “homicide rates have risen by an average of roughly 10% in 45 of the most populated U.S. cities between Q1 2021 and Q1 2023, and are still rising.”

The cities with the biggest homicide rate problems include Memphis, Tennesse; New Orleans, Louisiana; Richmond, Virginia; Washington, DC; and Detroit, Michigan. Democrat mayors lead all five cities.

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Insurance isn’t “the way forward” on guns

When San Jose passed an insurance requirement for gun owners, many people figured that was a new frontier they could exploit in their war against the Second Amendment.

The fact that the requirement basically just said you should have homeowner’s insurance didn’t really do much.

But it was sold as if it were the answer.

Now, an insurance-focused publication reports that a poll shows many believe it’s the answer on guns.

According to a recent ValuePenguin survey, 75% of Americans believe that gun owners should be required to have liability insurance on their firearms.

This finding suggests that insurance companies could be a possible solution to gun control. Gen Zers, those earning more than $100,000, and parents with children younger than 18 were among the most likely to support insurance requirements.

Additionally, 82% of Americans think that gun owners should be held accountable for how their guns are used. This sentiment was especially prevalent among parents with children under 18, as well as millennials.

Divya Sangameshwar, an insurance expert with ValuePenguin, believes that insurance may be the smartest way to push for gun control. “Insurers have always led the way when it comes to safety,” Sangameshwar says.

Except actual accidents with guns are relatively rare, especially compared to things like auto accidents, fires, or pretty much everything else covered by insurance.

Where guns take lives are either through suicide or intentional homicide.

Guess what’s not going to get covered by any insurance? Exactly.

Insurance does not ever cover an intentional act. I can’t run someone on purpose with my car and expect Geico to foot the bill. That’s going to be on me, as it should be.

Similarly, with guns, liability insurance isn’t going to cover any intentional act. It won’t cover a homicide and it won’t pay out with a suicide.

Further, it’s unlikely that anyone polled understands that. I’d expect a publication named Insurance Business to at least understand the practicalities of trying to implement some kind of requirement like that and at least mention that.

Then again, a lot of people think gun accidents are a lot more common than they are. Still others likely think gun owners should be on the hook for firearms that are stolen from them for some idiotic reason. They apparently think the insurance would cover the misuse of a stolen firearm, but it won’t.

Look, I get that people want to find solutions to the violence we see on the news every single day.

What I don’t get is why people can’t get beyond trying to punish law-abiding citizens for the actions of those who are anything but.

An insurance requirement is just another step, another hurdle designed to keep guns out of the hands of anything but those financially better off while doing little to nothing to actually reduce crime. It’s insane that we’re even having this discussion in the first place.

Then again, we live in Clown World where anyone can just up and decide to come up with restrictions that have no basis on reality.

This crap-for-brains is nothing more than petty politics. They’re against it simply because it’s something they see as opposite to their politics

‘Level of ignorance is embarrassing’: Dems push to ban silencers they claim are designed for discreet murder

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) reintroduced the Help Empower Americans to Respond (HEAR) Act, which would ban the importation, sale, manufacturing, transfer, and possession of gun silencers or suppressors.

Menendez, a founding member of the Senate Gun Violence Prevention Caucus, took to Twitter to tout this gun control effort and in the process proved that he knows very little about that which he seeks to regulate.

“Gun silencers are designed to suppress the sound of gunfire from unknowing victims and reduce the chances they can run, hide, and call the police,” the Democrat said in a statement. “I’m reintroducing the HEAR Act to prevent these deadly devices from making shootings even more dangerous.”

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) reintroduced the legislation in the House and she was no better informed.

“Silencers are not tools of self-defense, they are tools of murder. They have no legal application, which is why law enforcement officials around the country have called for their elimination,” Coleman said. “The HEAR Act will save lives and is part of the common sense approach to firearms legislation that has widespread support among voters on both sides of the aisle.”

Dana Loesch, a former NRA spokesperson, took to Twitter to call attention to their “level of ignorance.”

“Tell me that you have NO IDEA what silencers do without telling me you have no idea what silencers dSo. Holy wow, this level of ignorance is embarrassing,” she tweeted, before explaining,  “They’re literally required for hunting [in] Britain to protect hearing. It merely reduces decibel levels to that of concert PA system. Moron.”

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What’s in the Washington State Gun Ban

Things went from bad to worse for Washington state gun owners on April 25, when anti-Second Amendment Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed a punitive ban on many common semi-automatic firearms.

As he did so Gov. Inslee chided each and every owner of the more-than-24-million semi-automatic rifles currently owned and used for hunting, sport shooting, competition and self-defense in the United States, by saying, “No one needs an AR-15 to protect your family. You only need it to kill other families.”

Inslee later said, “We know we need to continue this effort on a national basis.”

H.B. 1240 is now the country’s most-comprehensive ban on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and firearm parts, according to the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA). “HB 1240 is the worst of such schemes in the country, exceeding what California imposes on its citizens,” reported NRA-ILA.

The new law bans the future manufacture, transfer and import of many semi-automatic firearms—including 62 enumerated firearm models and the “AR-15 in all forms”—on a list that includes shotguns, handguns and rifles. All semi-automatic rifles with an overall length of less than 30 inches are banned, as are any firearms with one or more of the features that exist on many modern designs. Semi-automatic pistols with threaded barrels, which are commonly used for self-defense, are included in the ban, as are semi-automatic shotguns with thumbhole stocks.

Additionally, the new law bans spare parts and what it calls “combination[s] of parts” that can be used to assemble banned firearms, but that are simply pieces of metal and plastic on their own. Because the bill included an emergency clause, the ban took effect immediately.

Proving that lawmakers recognize such firearms as being effective for defensive purposes, the law exempts, “The manufacture, importation, distribution, offer for sale or sale of an assault weapon by a licensed firearms manufacturer for the purposes of sale to any branch of the armed forces of the United States or the state of Washington, or to any law enforcement agency for use by that agency or its employees for law enforcement purposes.”

Of course, the NRA has already filed suit challenging the Washington ban.

“A state may not ‘prohibit an entire class of arms that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for a lawful purpose.’ Yet that is precisely what Washington State has just done,” the lawsuit says. “HB 1240 takes the radical step of banning nearly every modern semiautomatic rifle—the single most popular type of rifle in the country, possessed by Americans in the tens of millions. Indeed, Americans buy more of the most popular type of semiautomatic rifle (the AR-15) each year than the most popular type of automobile (the Ford F-150), and there are more AR-15-style rifles in private hands in America today than subscribers to all daily newspapers nationwide combined.” The lawsuit asks the court to declare HB 1240 unconstitutional and enjoin the state from enforcing it in the future.The other two measures signed into law by Gov. Inslee on April 25 were S.B. 5078 and H.B. 1143. S.B. 5078 undermines the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), and will subject licensed firearm manufacturers and sellers to frivolous lawsuits brought to recover damages for the criminal misuse of their products.

H.B. 1143 implements a 10-day waiting period, so purchasers will have to wait to take possession of their firearms. The law also denies law-abiding Washington citizens their Second Amendment right to acquire firearms unless they present proof of completion of official, sanctioned firearms training, paid for at their own expense, within the past five years.

Kentucky Supreme Court overturns rulings that allowed the removal of a Confederate statue

The Kentucky Supreme Court has overturned lower court rulings that allowed leaders in Kentucky’s largest city to remove a Confederate statue from a prominent location three years ago.

The 6-1 ruling issued Thursday said Louisville violated due process in getting approval to remove the John Breckenridge Castleman monument from Cherokee Triangle, news outlets reported.

The statue was vandalized several times over a few years before it was removed from its pedestal in June 2020 following a decision from Louisville’s landmarks commission.

A group called Friends of Louisville Public Art filed a lawsuit challenging the landmarks commission ruling. They argued the statue was a local landmark and said some commission members should not have been allowed to vote because they have a conflict of interest.

While the group acknowledged Castleman’s Confederate ties, they argued that he later renounced his allegiance to the Confederacy. Castleman later served as a brigadier general in the U.S. Army. He was partially responsible for establishing Louisville’s park system and fought to keep the city’s parks and playgrounds open to Black residents.

Kentucky’s Court of Appeals upheld a Jefferson Circuit Court judge’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit. The appeals court ruled that there were “no facts to support the conflict of interests claim.”

The Supreme Court disagreed. Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter said it was a “patent” conflict for city employees to vote on the application to remove the monument.

“… Their employment and their being asked to sit in review of an application filed by their employer were sufficient to raise a reasonable question of impartiality such that recusal was required as a matter of law,” he wrote for the majority.

Plaintiff Steve Wiser said he was pleased with the court’s ruling.

Kevin Trager, a spokesman for the city, said officials were reviewing the opinion before deciding how to proceed.

Analysis: Will Tennessee GOP Governor’s Red Flag Proposal Change the Debate?

The Volunteer State is the place to watch for the country’s most interesting gun law debate right now.

As gun policy moves forward along preestablished partisan lines in red and blue states, Tennessee is the one place where a policy outside those lines has some chance of passing. Republican Governor Bill Lee, motivated by last month’s Nashville school shooting, is pushing the Republican-controlled legislature to pass a modified “red flag” law, which he has relabeled an “order of protection” law. But, unlike many previous proposals, Lee appears to be working to address common critiques levied against the temporary gun confiscation orders.

“Throughout the last couple of weeks, I have worked with members of the General Assembly – constitutionally minded, second amendment protecting members – to craft legislation for an improved Order of Protection Law that will strengthen the safety and preserve the rights of Tennesseans,” Lee said last week. “We all agree that dangerous, unstable individuals who intend to harm themselves or others should not have access to weapons. And that should be done in a way that requires due process and a high burden of proof, supports law enforcement and punishes false reporting, enhances mental health support, and preserves the Second Amendment for law-abiding citizens.”

Since gaining prominence as a possible solution for mass shootings in the wake of the 2018 Parkland shooting, “red flag” laws have been dogged by complaints that they don’t offer sufficient protections for the rights of those accused of being a threat to themselves or others.

In most states that have adopted them, the civil orders can be filed by a wide array of groups, including some where nearly anyone can file for one. They don’t provide a public defender for those accused. They can be granted in ex parte hearings where the accessed isn’t even notified of the proceedings. And it can take weeks after their guns are seized before subjects of the orders can challenge them.

Lee identified these shortcomings as the main problem with policies in other states that he said “don’t deliver the right results.”

“They don’t actually preserve the constitutional rights of Tennesseans in the best way possible, and they don’t actually get to the heart of the problem of preventing tragedies,” he said. “This is hard. I’ve said that all along.”

He’s announced plans for a special session to pass the expanded protection orders. That was requested by GOP House Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison, who said it was unlikely a bill could be put together with enough support to pass before the end of the regular session. While Lee hasn’t backed any specific bill yet, he has announced the sort of changes he wants.

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