Category: Goobermint

Double whammy; SloJoe’s antigun policy and military increases ‘going back to cold war era postures’, look to be cutting into civilian ammo availability

Biden Administration Moves to Cut Off Lake City .223/5.56 Ammo From the Commercial Market

Apparently not content with its efforts so far to make gun ownership more difficult and expensive for America’s 100 million firearm owners, a source tells TTAG that the Biden administration is taking steps to reduce the availability of .223/5.56 ammunition available to the average shooter.

A person with knowledge of the situation tells us that, more than just “considering” the move, Winchester, which operates the US Army’s Lake City ammunition plant, has been informed that it may no longer sell M855 and SS109 ammunition produced in excess of the military’s needs on the civilian market.

How would that affect the civilian supply of .223 and 5.56 ammunition? We understand that as much as 30% of the commercial market’s sales volume of .223/5.56 is produced by Lake City.

Apropos of nothing in  particular……….

They’ve been ‘beginning’ since 1934….

Democrat Admits Senate Gun-Control Plan ‘Just the Beginning’

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) admitted something we all knew last weekend at the March for our Lives rally in Parkland, Florida, when asked about the gun control “framework” that a bipartisan group of 20 Senators have said they support.

It’s just the beginning, she said, and more “significant” gun control is coming.

“We were expecting moderate reform at best, I wasn’t expecting anything of significance,” Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC’s Alex Witt.  “Anything you can do to put an obstacle in the path of someone who would do themselves or someone else harm and save a life, is a step we should take while saying we should push for a lot more. This is only the beginning, it has to be only the beginning, not the end.”

Wasserman Schultz added that “extremists” will now likely target Senate Republicans and “everyone in congress.”

“We absolutely have an opportunity to move forward, and let me just be clear, Alex, for those of us who support much more significant reform, this is just the beginning,” she said. “We have to begin to make some progress, I’m glad that those 10 senators had the courage thus far.”

In Congress, Wasserman Schultz is far from being a back-bench first-termer. When she makes an admission like this – that the Senate plan is just the beginning and more gun control is coming – she is certainly not speaking out of turn. She has been in Congress since 2005 and serves as the Chief Deputy Whip of the Democratic Caucus. She was the first woman to chair the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee, and she also serves on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, which according to her website, “has vast jurisdiction over the government and private sector, and plays a key role in overseeing the Biden Administration.”

Wasserman Schultz’s comments prove that if we willingly give the gun banners a slice of bread every time we sit down with them, eventually, they’ll have the whole loaf. She just said the quiet part out loud. There will be no appeasement if we agree to let them infringe on our constitutional rights. All the Senate plan will do is whet their appetite.

It is clear based on the Congresswoman’s comments that their true goals remain “assault weapon” and standard-capacity magazine bans and restricting firearm sales to those over 21. These were their goals before the Senate “framework” agreement was announced. These remain their goals today.

Anyone who thinks that the bipartisan Senate plan will somehow stop the gun banners from trying to achieve their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament is deluding themselves. They will never stop. There will be no appeasement, regardless of what happens in the Senate.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BIDEN: TRANSCRIPT

I was looking for transcript in all the wrong places, i.e., for the official White House transcript of President Biden’s fabulations at the 29th quadrennial convention of the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia yesterday morning. The White House posted it under Statements and Releases here. I commented on it here based on the PBS video (below).

Today’s New York Post devotes a good editorial to Biden’s speech under the heading “The Post says: Biden pumps out more economic baloney.” The editorial concludes: “Until he gets his head out of … the clouds, inflation and all our other economic woes are only going to get worse.”

I found Biden’s speech a disgraceful and disgusting performance. The professional fact-checkers could have a field day with it, if only…but the stretchers, whoppers, and lies aren’t the worst of it. The worst of it would be the destructive mission on which he is gleefully bound.

I bet he’s weighing the political negatives of the deal vis-à-vis the number of calls he’s getting telling him where to go and how to get there.

Cornyn says “issues” remain in Senate gun deal

It doesn’t sound like Texas Sen. John Cornyn isn’t ready to throw in the towel on the Senate negotiations, but some hangups are apparently starting to emerge as Democrats and Republicans move from a “framework” to actual legislation.

Wednesday morning Cornyn met with a group of reporters to give them an update on the status of the bill, and Cornyn suggested that a deal might not be done this week because of a couple of “issues” that are popping up, starting with the language around giving

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Cornyn Proves Senate Republicans Didn’t Negotiate, They’re Giving Our Rights Away For Nothing

Following the weekend announcement of a compromise framework for a gun control deal in the Senate, Texas Senator John Cornyn apparently felt the need to address angry constituents who aren’t nearly as enthusiastic as he is about expanding “red flag” laws, enhancing background checks for those under 21 among other points in the deal.

Cornyn partnered with Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut to negotiate and broker the deal that got nine other Republicans to sign on, greatly increasing the chances of the final bill clearing the Senate once the legislation is actually written.

There’s only one big problem with Cornyn’s much-heralded achievement: his tweet proves that he wasn’t even trying to actually negotiate anything.

It’s pretty clear what his staffers (it’s doubtful he has the graphics skills or computer literacy to do that) were trying to do with yesterday’s tweet — damage control. By showing us all how the deal he struck with Democrats could have been so much worse, he’s trying to frame the agreement as a grand compromise that saved firearm owners from some of the worst that gun-grabbers had in mind.

The way Cornyn portrays it, if he and his fellow collaborators hadn’t rushed in to give some ground, we’d be facing magazine bans, “assault weapons” sales restrictions, waiting periods, safe storage mandates, and more if Democrats went ahead and scuttled the filibuster to force the House gun control bills through the Senate.

Then they could also pack the Supreme Court and we’d really be stuck, right?

I know the comments section is already filling up with “come and take it” and “shall not be infringed” declarations, but I want readers to notice something else — the things that aren’t on Cornyn’s list of rejected proposals that didn’t make it into the Senate deal.

Why doesn’t that list include anything from the Republican side? Why is there no plan for a federal law to allow armed teachers nationwide? Why wasn’t 50-state concealed carry reciprocity considered? How about deregulating suppressors or removing short-barreled rifles and shotguns from the NFA?

Surely if the Democrats really wanted “common sense gun control” as badly as they claim, they’d have stepped up and paid for it with some sort of compromise. Right?

Instead, what we’ve really learned from Cornyn’s sorry excuse at tamping down the blowback he’s undoubtedly getting is that he never really negotiated with Senate Democrats at all.

Cornyn and the other GOP collaborators who agreed to the framework showed up with no demands at all of their own. They were only prepared to haggle with Democrats over how much the rest of us will give up so he can become GOP leader in the Senate some day.

Senators like Cornyn and Romney didn’t give anything up in the Senate deal. They have security details, large houses in gated communities with armed patrols, and plenty of other measures to keep them and their families safe while the rest of us rubes have to fend for ourselves like nearly everyone else who has ever walked the earth.

Just as it’s awfully easy to spend other people’s money, Cornyn had no qualms about giving our rights away for his own political benefit. He never had any plan to actually negotiate for us, to get something in return in an actual compromise with Democrats. Instead, he got rolled and he couldn’t be happier about it.

Cornyn’s just another elitist who wants to see how we can better serve him. He won’t have to face Texas voters again for four more years, by which time he’s betting the folks back home will have mostly forgotten about this. Sadly, he’s probably right.

Them: ‘You Must Care!’ Us: ‘No.’

We refuse to care about stupid Democrat obsessions.

We don’t care about climate change. It’s a hoax designed to fill the hole in lib souls that used to be filled with faith, and for the ruling caste, it’s a tool to steal our money and freedom.

We don’t care about some alleged moral necessity to disarm normal Americans. When they whine, “The purpose of guns is to hurt people,” we nod. Yes, they are. Our guns never have and never will hurt anyone who is not a criminal or an aspiring tyrant. But when those categories of bad people get uppity, yeah, we reserve our right to hurt them within the bounds of proper laws and morality.

We don’t care about claims that America was stolen from other people. Like every other patch of inhabitable dirt on the planet, America was conquered from people who conquered it from someone else first. When we make a “land acknowledgment,” it goes as follows: “Yeah, we took it, and now it’s ours.”

We don’t care about their froth-mouthed accusation that America is some sort of racist cauldron of hatred. Many of us served in real racist cauldrons of hatred and have no time for the silly posturing of frivolous ninnies pretending to be white saviors by nattering on about non-existent “white supremacy” – which is a remarkably colorblind concept since anyone who rejects the ideology of the faculty lounge can practice it regardless of race or ethnicity, including people who are black and Latinx – hey, it’s our word now, commies, and we’re never letting you live it down.

And we don’t care about a minor tussle – punctuated by an unpunished government murder of an unarmed trespasser – from over a year and a half ago, except to the extent that the political persecutions that followed must be remedied and avenged. Every non-narc victim of this Stasi witch hunt should be pardoned and the next GOP administration should settle their civil rights suits for the outrageous violation inflicted upon them by a politicized DOJ for huge sums. The guy who shot Ashli Babbitt should be prosecuted – there’s no statute of limitations on murder – and the GOP, once it takes Congress back in November, should investigate the federal agents on the scene, the systemic denial of rights, and the selective prosecutions that followed. That would make for an interesting set of primetime hearings, as opposed to the tedious political onanism of the current kangaroo kommittee.

We don’t care about any of it. And that is important. The left can only impose its will when it convinces us to choose to let them do so. They have to make us care. Look at them. They are a gaggle of mutated misfits, neurotic chicks, academic parasites, grievance hustlers, and femmy doofuses who can’t do a push-up. They can force nothing on us. That’s why they attempt to enlist the power of the state to do it for them, but their real power comes from us going along. When you watch some stupid Star Wars spin-off on Disney, you empower them. When you refuse to vote because you are convinced your vote will never be counted – despite huge election reforms in places like Georgia – you help them. When you let yourself think, “Gosh, maybe this androgenous fatty screaming that I am a privileged tool of the patriarchy has a point because s/he/it would never lie to my face,” you let them win.

No.

Instead, fight for what you care about.

We care that America neither be humiliated by seventh century savages nor abandon our allies to them. We’re going to reform our military into what it was meant to be – an awesome and awesomely unwoke killing machine that strikes terror in the hearts of communists and other terrorists around the globe.

We care that American warriors are no longer sacrificed in stupid wars by people who never pick up a weapon except to shoot their hunting buddies in the face by accident. We’re going to oust the Beltway Cowgirl and her ilk. But not Adam Kinzinger – his new Democrat friends already ousted him through gerrymandering, and it must sure be humiliating to have been so publicly treated like a cellblock punk. No, we’re electing based Republicans who know what time it is. It’s time to fight.

We care that our schools are hardened to protect themselves from the little psychos this sick culture breeds. And we care that they not teach woke nonsense. We’re going to clean them up one school board insurrection at a time, and if the FBI thinks that makes us terrorists, then that’s just another reason to close it down.

We care about the culture enough to make it clear to woke companies that if they side with our enemies, they are our enemies, and there is a price for choosing to be our enemies.

We care about it taking $140 to fill up the tanks of our SUVs when oil is sitting there untouched under the surface of our great land because to get it would offend Gaia and all her followers in Manhattan and Santa Monica. We’re going to elect a new president from the “Drill, baby, drill” caucus.

We care about our kids not becoming the psycho-sexual playthings of skeevy perverts, whether hired by some idiot principal or elsewhere in the culture. We’re going to punch back so hard on these mutants that they’ll understand that der kinder are off-limits or else.

We care about America. We’re well aware that this is the greatest country on earth, the greatest country in human history, and we are not about to give it up to mollify a bunch of tantrum-throwing weenies trying to draw us into the psycho-drama created by their daddy issues.

And we care enough about America to tell these freaks demanding that we care about their Toobin Zoom call litany of gripes, “No.”

Here’s some updated material

Today’s Senate ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Proposal Is Just as Bad as You Feared It Would Be

Sunday, a bipartisan group of Senators agreed to an expanded package of ‘common sense’ gun control measures. The Vichy Republican contingent consisted of Pat Toomey (PA), Susan Collins (ME), Lindsey Graham (SC), Thom Tillis (NC) and Bill Cassidy (LA) under the leadership, if I may be so bold as to use such a word, of John Cornyn (TX). My colleague Bonchie covered the deal in Republicans Prepare to Play the Sucker After ‘Gun Safety’ Bill Is Revealed. This is how he sums it up:

Here’s the thing. There is going to be another mass shooting. No matter how many laws we pass, evil people will get their hands on the tools necessary to commit evil acts. When that mass shooting occurs, Democrats are going to scream about how the last “gun safety” bill wasn’t enough and how we must “do something.” That “do something” will include confiscation and outright bans on common weaponry. By compromising now without laying a marker down they are willing to stand by, they are simply handing Democrats the leverage to take the whole pie the next time around.

The left-wing push to ban semiautomatic weapons is not going to end here. Republicans that don’t recognize that are being suckers.

Now Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has released more detail on what is included in the deal, and “suckers” hardly does the Republican participants credit for their duplicity.

NEWS: We have a deal. Today a bipartisan group of 20 Senators (10 D and 10 R) is announcing a breakthrough agreement on gun violence – the first in 30 years – that will save lives.

 

2/ Major funding to help states pass and implement crisis intervention orders (red flag laws) that will allow law enforcement to temporarily take dangerous weapons away from people who pose a danger to others or themselves.

3/ Billions in new funding for mental health and school safety, including money for the national build out of community mental health clinics.

4/ Close the “boyfriend loophole”, so that no domestic abuser – a spouse OR a serious dating partner – can buy a gun if they are convicted of abuse against their partner.

5/ First ever federal law against gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This will be a difference making tool to stop the flow of illegal guns into cities.

6/ Enhanced background check for under 21 gun buyers and a short pause to conduct the check. Young buyers can get the gun only after the enhanced check is completed.

7/ Clarification of the laws regarding who needs to register as a licensed gun dealer, to make sure all truly commercial sellers are doing background checks.

8/ Will this bill do everything we need to end our nation’s gun violence epidemic? No. But it’s real, meaningful progress. And it breaks a 30 year log jam, demonstrating that Democrats and Republicans can work together in a way that truly saves lives.

9/ So grateful to @JohnCornyn @kyrstensinema @SenThomTillis @SenToomey @Sen_JoeManchin @SenBlumenthal @SenatorCollins @LindseyGrahamSC @ChrisCoons @TeamHeinrich @BillCassidy and others for their amazing work to get us this far.

10/ Drafting this law and passing it through both chambers will not be easy. We have a long way before this gets to the President’s desk. But with your help and activism, we can get this done. This time, failure cannot be an option.

I’ve already expressed my opinion about the cravenness of Republican officeholders who crawl over broken glass to appease Democrats; see Don’t Bother Me With Your ‘Common Sense’ Gun-Grabbing Ideas, I’m Not Playing the Game, and Matthew McConaughey Sold the White House’s Gun-Grabbing Agenda Today Just Like He Has for Years. In my opinion, the problem is less a case of needing more laws and more one of chickensh** prosecutors with a political agenda refusing to enforce the laws already on the books. If we passed a law making prosecutors criminally liable for future gun crimes of anyone not prosecuted for a gun offense, I’d go along with that plan.

Let’s look at the items on the list.

2/ Red Flag laws are a civil rights non-starter as far as I’m concerned. Giving a disgruntled neighbor, a deranged leftist relative, or a vindictive current or former “partner” the ability to have your weapons confiscated while you bear the burden of proving you are not dangerous is antithetical to our system of justice. Above and beyond the Kafkaesque process, the procedure is a sham. A judge will not deny a “Red Flag” order and risk that person killing someone with a firearm. They are never giving your firearms back for the same reason. This is simply a backdoor for anti-gun activists to harass and intimidate gun owners. Any Republican who votes for this is not worthy of our support.

3/ I’m not convinced “community mental health clinics” do very much other than provide a sinecure purple-haired transgenders with an MSW degree. Be that as it may, linking these clinics to a bill ostensibly designed to prevent school shootings means that schools will be pressured to refer students to the clinics for evaluation and treatment. If they don’t, their reason for existence will be revealed as a fraud (SPOILER ALERT: it is). Those mental health referrals will be made by the same people who teach Critical Race Theory, make your elementary school student experiment with “pronouns,” and groom them towards transgenderism and the remainder of the alphabet soup of perversions. If we want more “community mental health clinics,” then authorize them independent of any gun control law. By the way, mental health people are pretty adamant that mental health is not a factor in the overwhelming majority of shootings. The problem is Evil, not crazy.

4/ If you want to understand what “closing the boyfriend loophole” opens the door to, check out what goes on in Title IX sexual harassment/assault hearings in colleges. Without a cohabitation requirement, you are fair game for any woman you went out with one time who wants revenge. If you feel in danger, get a restraining order and stay the hell away from the person. If you can’t qualify for a restraining order, then maybe vindictiveness, not personal safety, is your goal.

5/ Straw purchases are already illegal. Gun trafficking, unless you have a Federal Firearms License, is illegal. Without seeing an actual proposal, my best guess is that this will end the private sale of weapons, the so-called “gun show loophole” that the anti-gunners have been after for years.

6/ Other than the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), I don’t know of any other systems available for background checks that do not involve field investigators. I suspect there is no such system, and this law will try to create any additional level of surveillance of American citizens. The problem with NICS continues to be incomplete and inaccurate information entered into the system. I am at a loss of what an “enhanced” background check would include that isn’t a restraining order, a felony conviction, or a civil commitment order. Just joking, those “community mental health centers” will feature prominently here. I also don’t know how you make a juvenile record available for “young” buyers without making it available to nearly everyone and why only “young” buyers would be subject to such an “enhanced” background check

7/ What constitutes a “licensed gun dealer” is damned clear. This is aimed at shutting down the private sale or gifting of firearms.

10/ Dude, you are in Congress. Failure is always an option.

This is all eyewash. Besides funds for hardening schools, the whole plan is an exercise in “doing something.” Literally, nothing in this proposed bill would have done any good in any major shooting. It wouldn’t even have an impact on Saturday night in Chicago or LA, which is where the focus should be for anyone serious about ending firearms deaths. I’d done playing this game. As Bonchie and I have pointed out, this is not an end state but a waypoint. This is just the anti-gun left getting Republicans to buy into the concept of silly measures that can’t work so that at some point in the future, the left can say we’ve tried everything, and they know there will be quisling Republicans to help them ban firearms.

New gun laws won’t fix the problem

Another senseless act of violence against children and anti-gun groups are blaming gun advocates for this violence, but the answer could be closer to home.

Gun control has been with us since 1968 and since then a myriad of gun laws has emerged. Clearly, they haven’t worked. Totally ignored are the shooters who have been from broken homes, isolated, prone to other types of violence, had interactions with police and been active on social media. Their behavior was excused or ignored.

The politicians say it’s easy to get a gun, but if the system was effective and criminals prosecuted, it could be more of a deterrent to block sales to potential shooters. While enhanced background checks may sound good, if the local authority doesn’t inform the investigating agency, and in most cases they don’t, then a shooter will be able to get guns. Reporting agencies aren’t obligated to inform them.

If all factors are considered, then it is not a gun problem, and a new gun law will not fix it. The legal gun owner is not the problem, and within the context of self-defense they prevent potential victims in defense of self or others, often without shots fired. The gun-owning public has grown and includes women, minorities and prior gun control advocates due to violent criminals having gun charges disappear in plea bargaining, as well as being released before the ink is dry on the booking form.

The danger of being a victim has increased because of an agenda that puts criminals ahead of the public’s safety. Unfortunately, many mass shootings are ignored by the media such as in Chicago or New York, but gang violence has become commonplace and non-newsworthy except to those affected in the inner cities. Poor minorities tend to bear the brunt of ineffective political policies.

President Joe Biden has suggested that the Second Amendment is “not absolute” and if so, then freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press are also “not absolute.”

William Aherin, Southampton

Biden Admin Dropping COVID-Testing Requirements for International Travel

The Biden administration has finally dropped a Covid-19 testing requirement for travelers entering the country, the White House announced on Friday.

The rule, established during the Trump administration and later enhanced by Biden, required all inbound travelers — including US citizens — to show proof of negative Covid test before boarding flights headed for the US…….

Hmm. Inciting insurrection?

Biden Warns of ‘Mini-Revolution’ if Roe V. Wade is Repealed

 

President Joe Biden on Thursday warned of the potential for a “mini revolution” in November’s mid-term elections should the Supreme Court decide to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which made the right to have an abortion a constitutionally protected right.

Biden’s remarks come hours after a man travelled from California to Maryland with the intent on taking the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has voiced his decision to repeal Roe v. Wade in a leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion earlier this year.

Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night show which aired on Thursday, Biden said that overturning the court precedent would be “ridiculous,” and motivate large numbers of Democrats to turn out to vote.

“I don’t think the country will stand for it,” Biden said. “If in fact the decision comes down the way it does, and these states impose the limitations they’re talking about, it’s going to cause a mini revolution and they’re going to vote these folks out of office.”

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Don’t Tell Joe: A Federal Government Study Showed 1994 ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Didn’t Reduce ‘Gun Violence’

Do something.

This is a response—and perhaps a natural one—to a human tragedy or crisis. We saw this response in the wake of 9/11. We saw it during the Covid-19 pandemic. And we’re seeing it again following three mass shootings—in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa Oklahoma—that claimed the lives of more than 30 innocent people, including small children.

In this case, the “something” is gun control. In Canada—where no attack even occurred—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the introduction of legislation that would freeze handgun ownership across the country.

“What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” Trudeau said in a press conference.

In the United States, the rhetoric has tended to be more heated but also vague, though some specific proposals have emerged.

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an all-out ban of “assault weapons.”

“We know what works on this. It includes, let’s have an assault weapons ban,” Harris told reporters in Buffalo after attending the funeral of a victim.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden, while speaking from the White House before a candlelit backdrop, called on Congress to pass new gun control legislation, including a ban on assault weapons.

“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” Biden asked.

There are numerous problems with this proposal, starting with the sticky question of defining what an “assault weapon” is.

Assault rifles, which by definition are capable of selective fire, are already banned under the National Firearms Act of 1934. The vague phrase “assault weapon” is basically a tautology—by definition, any weapon can be used to assault someone—and virtually useless. The term might be effective politically, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the guns politicians choose to define as “assault weapons” typically “are no more dangerous than others that are not specified.”

We know this because the US had a ban on “assault weapons” as recently as 2004, something gun control supporters recently pointed out on Twitter.

“We had an assault weapon ban for 10 years: 1994-2004,” said Dr. Joanne Freeman, a historian at Yale University. “The world didn’t end. People kept their (other) guns. They bought new guns. It was hardly an attack on gun ownership.”

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994 targeted firearms deemed “useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or self-defense.”

Freeman is right that the ban lasted a decade before expiring on September 13, 2004. She’s also right that the world “didn’t end” and Americans continued to use and purchase other types of firearms.

What Freeman didn’t bring up was the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the government’s Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Nearly two decades ago the Department of Justice funded a study to analyze this very topic, and it concluded that the assault weapon prohibition had “mixed” results.

Researchers noted there was a decline in crimes committed with firearms classified as assault weapons, but noted “the decline in AW use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns.”

In other words, there was a decline in crimes committed with firearms that were banned, but the drop was replaced by crimes committed with other types of firearms that were not banned.

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As gas prices surge, Michigan sheriff asks deputies to manage some dispatch calls by phone

With average gas prices at well over $5 a gallon, at least one Michigan police force says it is about to go over its fuel budget and is now asking officers to handle “whatever calls are acceptable” by phone.

The Isabella County Sheriff’s Office announced this week that it is “feeling the pain at the pump,” and has “exhausted what funds were budgeted” for gasoline with “several months to go before the budget reset.”

The county, in the heart of central lower Michigan, is not alone.

Local governments are experiencing the same pain as commuters and trying to make adjustments, Dan Gilmartin, the CEO Michigan Municipal League, said Wednesday. He added that the problem is likely to get even worse.

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Since all the previous laws didn’t work, let’s try it harder!

New York governor signs gun control package into law

The Supreme Court has yet to officially opine on the constitutionality of New York’s “may issue” permitting laws for concealed carry licenses, and now a host of other newer restrictions will likely be getting court attention in the days ahead. On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed several sweeping new restrictions into law, including a ban on sales of so-called assault weapons to adults under the age of 21, new registration requirements for all owners of modern sporting rifles, and an expansion of the state’s “red flag” law that could have some unintended consequences for those in need of mental health services or counseling.

The laws were rammed through the Democrat-controlled legislature last week as a response to the mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store in which ten people were murdered by an 18-year old suspect, and during today’s signing ceremony Hochul and other Democrats made it clear that even more restrictions are on the way.

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Food security is national security and a crisis is coming.

I first drove the semi on my family’s farm when I was around 12 years old. My dad and I were leaving the field with a full load of corn, when he told me to take the wheel, giving his only advice before climbing down: “Make your corners wide.”

From my family’s farm to the State Committee for the USDA Farm Service Agency to the House Agriculture Committee, I have worked in agriculture in some capacity since I could walk. Now as South Dakota’s governor, I serve alongside a third-generation cattle rancher, Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden. We are the only farmer-rancher pair to lead a state’s executive branch, and we are both deeply concerned: America’s food supply system is at risk.

To keep our food supply consistent and affordable for all families, it is essential that no one else controls it. When another nation controls your food, it controls you. Our leaders recognized this threat and put in place risk management tools and programs to ensure Americans would never go hungry because of a foreign entity’s influence.

But for years now, foreign countries have been investing in our food supply chain, buying up the chemical and fertilizer companies that make American agriculture possible. Purchasing processing facilities, they have introduced vulnerability into the food supply chains Americans rely on to eat. Today, China is buying up millions of acres of land across the United States, following the same blueprint they have used in other countries for years.

While Americans have awakened to China’s military expansion and its grab for critical minerals worldwide, we have not yet realized our strategic vulnerability when it comes to our nation’s food supply.

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Poor Baybee. Maybe if he stampy foots, it’ll get better

Awww: Joe Biden Is Angry That He’s Now More Unpopular Than Donald Trump.

Joe Biden has been underwater in the polls for nearly a year now. His polls were driven down sharply by his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and only worsened due to his incompetence in dealing with the nation’s most significant issues, including the border crisis, COVID-19, the supply chain crisis, gas prices, and inflation.

But as bad as Joe Biden’s poll numbers became, they were still better than Trump’s, who came into office with low approval numbers. So whether or not you trusted Trump’s poll numbers, they were never good.

And now Joe Biden’s are worse… and he’s not happy about that.

“In crisis after crisis, the White House has found itself either limited or helpless in its efforts to combat the forces pummeling them. Morale inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is plummeting amid growing fears that the parallels to Jimmy Carter, another first-term Democrat plagued by soaring prices and a foreign policy morass, will stick,” reports Politico. “The president has expressed exasperation that his poll numbers have sunk below those of Donald Trump, whom Biden routinely refers to in private as ‘the worst president’ in history and an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.”

Politico did its best to provide some cover for Biden, arguing that the White House is powerless to address the nation’s problems as if Biden is a mere observer with no influence over the country whatsoever. But, sure enough, Biden has spent his entire presidency blaming anyone and everyone else but himself for the nation’s problems.

However, the American people aren’t buying the finger-pointing, and Biden’s approval ratings have hit new lows despite various efforts by the White House to “reset” Biden’s presidency.

And he’s angry about it. Really, really, angry.

Far more prone to salty language behind the scenes than popularly known, Biden also recently erupted over being kept out of the loop about the direness of the baby formula shortage that has gripped parts of the country, according to a White House staffer and a Democrat with knowledge of the conversation. He voiced his frustration in a series of phone calls to allies, his complaints triggered by heart-wrenching cable news coverage of young mothers crying in fear that they could not feed their children.

From where I stand, it seems Joe Biden should care less about how these crises make him look and more about fixing them. Biden claimed to be the adult in the room who knew how to solve problems. Yet, he’s only shown himself to be the petulant child who doesn’t know what he’s doing and takes responsibility for nothing.

Biden’s Inner Trudeau: On Guns, the President seems to be Operating Under the Wrong Constitution

Below is my column in The Hill on the calls for gun bans after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. The massacre has already been used as the basis for calls to end the filibuster, pack the court, limits on gun ownership, and outright bans. One member called for all of the above. The rhetoric is again outstripping the reality of constitutional and practical limits for gun control. Last night, President Joe Biden formally called for banning “assault weapons” while repeating the dubious claim that an earlier ban sharply reduced mass shootings.

Here is the column:

In our increasingly hateful and divisive politics, there are times when our nation seems incapable of coming together for a common purpose. Tragedies — moments of shared national grieving and mutual support — once were the exception. Yet one of the most chilling aspects of the aftermath of the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, was how the moment of unity was quickly lost to political posturing.

Politicians have long admitted that a crisis is an opportunity not to be missed — the greater the tragedy, the greater the opportunity. After the mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) called for censorship to “silence the voices of hatred and racism.” After the Uvalde massacre, some Democrats renewed calls for everything from court packing to ending the Senate filibuster.

The most immediate response, however, was a call for gun bans. Vice President Kamala Harris got out front of the White House by demanding a ban on AR-15s, the most popular weapon in America. Then President Joe Biden created a stir by suggesting he might seek to ban 9mm weapons.

Such calls are not limited to the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government is introducing legislation to “implement a national freeze on handgun ownership.” He said Canadians would no longer be able “to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” adding that “there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives.”

The difference between the push in the two countries is the existence of the Second Amendment in the United States — a constitutionally mandated “reason” why Americans are allowed to have guns; they don’t have to prove it to the government.

While the White House subsequently tried to walk back his comments, Biden saying there’s “no rational basis” to own 9mms and AR-15s sounds like he’s channeling his inner Canadian.

There is now a strong majority for gun control reforms. However, politicians are once again ignoring what is constitutionally possible by focusing on what is politically popular with their voting base.

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Tools and puppets don’t have plans, and Biden is both.

There is no plan.
The closer attention you pay to Biden, the less he has to say.

President Joe Biden is “rattled,” according to NBC News, and “looking to regain voters’ confidence that he can provide the sure-handed leadership he promised during the campaign.”

How? By trying to change the media narrative. On May 30, Biden published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that explained “My Plan for Fighting Inflation.” The next day, Biden wrote a “guest essay” for the New York Times on “What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine.”

Bad poll numbers and a collapsing domestic and international situation have excited the typically drowsy president into action. There’s a problem, though. The closer you read Biden’s op-eds, the less he has to say. This new, annoyed, engaged Biden may be a prolific writer and speaker. But he’s not an incisive one. He won’t admit that there is a connection between his ideology and America’s problems. He can’t decide between giving Ukraine the weapons necessary to defeat Russia or settling for a war of attrition.

Biden’s Journal op-ed is a masterclass in passing the buck. He doesn’t bring up his “plan for fighting inflation” until midway through his thousand-word piece. My inner college professor wanted to send the article back to him with suggestions for revision. Number one: Always move your best material to the top!

The plan itself is gauzy and thin. “The Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation.” You wouldn’t know that from listening to Progressives, including some of Biden’s nominees to the Federal Reserve, who argue that the Fed’s interest in price stability distracts it from promoting full employment, green energy, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now Biden wants the Fed to correct not only its mistakes, but his own. Let’s see if his faith in an independent central bank can stand the test of higher interest rates, higher unemployment, and lower incomes.

Parts two and three of Biden’s inflation plan are the remnants of his Build Back Better agenda: some clean energy and housing subsidies here, a few tax hikes there. He mentions his use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices, but not his appeals to Venezuela and OPEC to boost the oil supply. As for the obvious answers to America’s energy problems—a complete reversal of Biden’s hostility to oil and gas exploration and production, huge investments in nuclear power, and emergency efforts to increase refinery capacity—Biden has no words. His devotion to the environmental lobby and to green energy blinds him. If the Progressive Left rejects nuclear power, the “clean energy future” it desires won’t arrive.

This mismatch between ends and means is visible in Biden’s Ukraine policy. The president tells New York Times readers that the United States sends Ukraine weapons “so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” The desired end state is “a democratic, independent, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.” And Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is in the driver’s seat. “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government—in private or public—to make any territorial concessions.”

All good. Why, then, limit the weapons deliveries to systems with ranges of 40 miles? Why slow-walk and agonize over each tranche of support? Why engage with Russia in farcical and dangerous negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons? Why not take a more active role in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia? The Biden policy is static even as the shape of the war changes in ways that favor the aggressor. The president’s goals are laudable. But his tactics are calibrated for a war that Ukraine is winning.

And Ukraine is not winning. At least not now. The Ukrainians defeated Russia’s attempt at regime change. But they have been less successful in removing Russia from eastern Ukraine and from their port cities in the south and southeast. Absent a change in Biden administration policy—in the ranges of weapons systems America provides Ukraine, in the establishment of a humanitarian corridor to relieve the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, or in a major diplomatic effort—the war will turn into a frozen conflict with no clear resolution and with mounting humanitarian costs. How that situation would help anyone, including Biden, is unclear.

Then again, little Biden says or does makes sense from the vantage point of either policy or politics. He’s right to be rattled. He’s also clueless.

They’ve only cared about the Constitution when its powers were a benefit to what they wanted.

To confiscate guns, Democrats demoncraps are ready to destroy the courts and the Constitution

Most Democrats demoncraps in Congress do not care about institutions or the “commonsense” gun control proposals they profess to support. They want full-scale gun confiscation, and they don’t care how many norms and institutions they need to destroy to accomplish it.

Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) laid out where the Democrap Party stands and why Republicans should not humor any Democratic “deal” on gun control. “If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it,” Jones said. “If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it, and we will not rest until we’ve taken weapons of war out of circulation in our communities.”

Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) put it more bluntly: “Spare me the bulls*** about constitutional rights.”

Does Jones or Cicilline know anything about these “weapons of war” they want to ban and confiscate? Of course not. Cicilline said that he couldn’t think of a “single incident” where “an assailant using an assault weapon” was stopped by someone with a gun, even though such an example happened just last week in West Virginia. More prominently, there was Stephen Willeford, the man who confronted a shooter at a church in Sutherland Springs. Grabien’s Tom Elliott has a list of self-defense stories, with 315 examples going back to Jan. 1, 2019.

Jones is embarrassingly uneducated as well. When asked, he said that “semiautomatic weapons would qualify as assault weapons.” He then said that handguns “would not qualify” as assault weapons, even though the vast majority of handguns are semiautomatic. “Semiautomatic” simply means the gun fires one bullet every time the trigger is pulled and that you don’t need to cock or load the gun after every shot. Jones is either lying about not wanting to ban handguns or, more likely, he has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.

The same is true for President Joe Biden, who wants to ban 9 mm guns because “a 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” and “there is no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection.” Biden wants you to think that the most popular handgun caliber in the country is like a sci-fi weapon. The White House then walked back the idea that Biden supported a handgun ban. Either the White House is lying now, or Biden, who has been advocating gun control for years, still has not learned a single fact about what guns are or how they work.

Democrats constantly trip over themselves on gun control, repeating blatant falsehoods and calling for gun control policies that contradict their rhetoric. While they claim their policies are commonsense and moderate, their rhetoric indicates that the only way they can get what they want is through gun confiscation, whether they are openly pursuing it or not. As Cicilline and Jones helpfully illustrated, they will destroy the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution to do so.