Category: Deceit O’ The Day

That Warren Burger Quote Gun Grabbers Love Is Ahistorical — Not To Mention Sort Of Fake

Idon’t know how many times people have dropped this alleged quote from the late “conservative” Justice Warren Burger into my social media feeds:

The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies — the militia — would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.

If you find yourself in a debate over the Second Amendment, sooner or later someone is going to let you know that Burger believed an individual right to gun ownership was one of the “greatest pieces of fraud” perpetrated on the American people. Burger’s line is ubiquitous—it can be found in The New Yorker, Slate, Politico, NPR, every major newspaper, and in every anti-gun columnist’s pieces.

The first problem with the popular online iteration of the quote is that it’s actually cobbled together from three separate sources to give it more impact. Don’t get me wrong: Burger is mistaken in all instances, but he is mistaken in different contexts.

The second problem is that the quote often reads as if Burger—the “conservative” who voted with the majority in Roe v. Wade—offered this argument as a member of the Supreme Court. No high-court decision has ever defined the Second Amendment as anything but an individual right. And Burger never uttered a word about the Second Amendment while sitting on the court. For that matter, he never rendered a gun decision on any court, nor ever wrote a legal paper on the issue. And it shows.

Then again, the “collective right” theory was only a recent invention of revisionist historians and anti-gun activists when Burger adopted it. It’s also a tough one to sell to anyone who cares about history. Nearly every intellectual, political, and military leader of the founding generation, from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin to George Mason to Samuel Adams to George Washington to Patrick Henry to James Madison and so on, is on the record defending the individual’s right to bear arms. There is not a single record of anyone in that era challenging the notion.

Anyway, the part of the quote about the gun lobby is taken from a 1991 PBS interview in which Burger erroneously argues that the 18th-century conception of “well regulated” was the same as the contemporary one. The notion that the state, much less the federal government, would be empowered to “regulate” what kind of weapons you owned would have been alien to a person in 1789. “Well regulated” simply means a well-pulled-together militia, rather than a rabble.

Burger maintains that the real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies would defend state populations. This is an ungrammatical and ahistorical reading of the amendment. Sure, there was a debate over standing armies and control of the militias. But, as the late Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in Heller, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is the operative clause in the Second Amendment. The “well regulated Militia” part is the prefatory clause.

It makes zero sense to read the prefatory clause as a nullification or even limitation of the operative clause. It is tantamount to arguing that because the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, it’s not an individual right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment explicitly mentions “the right of the people” — people who generally used their own weapons as militiamen — just as it does elsewhere in the Bill of Rights when protecting individual rights. Many colonies enshrined the individual right to bear arms in their constitutions before the Bill of Rights was even written, most of them in much more explicit terms. No state defined it as a collective right. Some Federalists argued that special protections in the Bill of Rights were unnecessary because there were so many guns in private hands that it was unimaginable any tyrannical army could ever be more powerful than the public.

The other two parts of the quote are lifted from different passages in a column Burger wrote for the Associated Press. Here the former justice expands on his idea that guns should be regulated like cars.

“[A]lthough there is not a word or hint in the Constitution about automobiles or motorcycles,” Burger says, “no one would seriously argue that a state cannot regulate the use of motor vehicles by imposing licensing restrictions and speed limits based on factors of driver’s age, health condition, and driving record, and by recording every purchase and change of ownership.”

It is because automobiles and motorcycles — or transportation as an ideal — are not explicitly protected by the Constitution that you can heavily regulate those things. The better analogy would be due process or speech rights. (Although Burger wasn’t a great fan of the First Amendment, either.)

Besides all that, Burger should have known that Americans, even in 1991, did not have “unfettered” access to “machine guns.” In 1986, the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act law made ownership of fully automatic weapons pretty rare.

Burger also should have known that the Gun Control Act of 1968 established the first federal age limits for buying guns. Today there are tens of thousands of laws regulating gun ownership in the United States. That is not “unfettered” by any definition.

In fact, it doesn’t seem like Burger knew very much about the topic at all.

Teaching us to Hate Guns and Despise Gun Owners

We all know how to sell something. We also know how to discredit an idea or action. All we have to do is ignore its benefits and inflate its costs. Are those lies exactly? A comedian can lie to us, but we don’t go to a comedy club to hear the truth. Here is how the mainstream media and anti-rights politicians teach us to hate guns and to despise gun owners.. and yes, they lie about it.

Tell half the truth about armed defense. The easiest way for the media and gun-prohibition-politicians to blame gun owners is to show us the harm that criminals do with guns and to ignore the lives saved when honest citizens use their firearms. The mainstream media tells us about the horrific murderer who used a gun. The news ignores the common events of armed defense that happen every day. It is hard to overstate this since the media bias isn’t a few percent, but over a thousand-fold. That level of distortion is commonly called a lie.

We can test that right now. See if you can remember a time when the news told you about a murderer who used a gun. Of course you can, but do you remember when the news media showed you an example of armed defense where the good guys and good gals stopped the attacker and saved lives? That happens more than 4,600 times a day and yet you can’t remember seeing more than one or two news stories about it. It is easy to blame guns and gun owners for murder and robbery when the mainstream news media hides half the story.

Misrepresent gang activity as firearms accidents. If you look, you will find more and more stories of young men engaging in violent crime. We now see 12-year-olds as part of armed carjacking gangs. It is easy to assume that when a 11, 12, or a 13 year old gets shot that it was a firearms accident. That might be true in a small rural town but 12 year olds are part of violent gangs in our failed cities.

It is certainly true that many youngsters are shot as innocent bystanders but that isn’t a “firearms accident” at all. We have to make the clear distinction between a firearm accident and involuntary manslaughter. The great news is that both the number and the rate of real firearms accidents have been falling for years. Firearms education prevented accidents.

Mix suicides in with homicides. The largest fraction of gun-related deaths are from suicide. Long ago we passed laws that made suicide illegal. Notice that someone who is willing to take their own life is not concerned with breaking the law. We passed “red flag” laws that take firearms from gun owners. We took their guns but we didn’t offer them mental health counseling. We’ve also seen some states impose mandatory waiting periods of 3 to 14 days before you can pick up the gun you bought.

The claim is that mandatory waiting periods will reduce the rate of suicide. We are told that we might impulsively use the next gun we buy to commit suicide, but you would not use the firearms you already have in your home. You read that correctly and waiting periods for existing gun owners don’t make sense.

Suicide is a real problem that deserves more than an imaginary answer. The number of suicides rises and falls each year, but we have not found clear evidence that gun-control laws reduced the rate of suicide. I have seen the large and sustained effort that firearms manufacturers, ammunition manufacturers, gun shops, and individual gun owners have put into mental health counseling for gun-owners in crises. They helped establish and fund programs like Walk-the-talk America and Hold My Guns.

Confuse gun owners with criminals. We don’t see the rate of crime drop after states impose gun-control laws. The reason is obvious since honest people obey gun laws but criminals are the ones who commit crimes. Unlike us, criminals don’t use gun shops to get their guns. Criminals get their guns the same place they get their drugs. They buy them on the street from other criminals.

The news media tells us that making it harder for honest citizens to get guns will somehow change the way criminals behave. That is magic rather than reason, but the media tells us that honest gun owners are to blame for what criminals do with guns.

Blame gun owners for mass-murderers. Honest gun owners are blamed each time a mad-man commits murder in a “gun-free zone” where the victims are disarmed by law. We were told that we need to have mandatory background checks to stop mass murderers. We were not supposed to look at that statement too closely since mass-murder is pretty much a one-and-done career. When we looked, we found that some mass murderers did have a criminal record that should have disqualified them from having a gun. That prohibition scheme doesn’t work when prosecutors don’t prosecute criminals.

What surprised us is that the crazy mass-murderers actually told us why they wanted to kill. We’ve read their journals and their manifestos. They want to be famous and will kill to get what they want. The news media is all too eager.

We were not told that 49-out-of-50 mass murders occur in gun free zones. We’re not shown that honest gun owners stopped 104 attempted mass-murders in the last seven years. Where we were allowed to go armed, we stopped more than half of the attempted mass-murders in the last few years. If that comes as a surprise to you then you know that the mainstream media has been lying to you. Armed citizens are the cure rather than the disease that caused public-violence and celebrity-murders.

Call out gun owners as an emotional threat. We’ve seen politicians question our right to defend ourselves. The news media and anti-rights activists demean not only guns and gun owners but the people who tolerate them.

We’ve talked about facts, but we haven’t talked about feelings very much. There is a reason for all this animosity directed at gun owners.

Gun owners are guilty of wrongthink. Questioning the effectiveness of gun-control laws undercuts the utopian fantasy of gun-control. We think we are discussing facts but we are actually shattering their dreams. We are considered a threat since we ask ordinary people to question the utopian vision of gun-control.

It is comforting to think that getting rid of guns would get rid of violence. Some politicians and activists are strongly attached to that fairy tale. Unless we shout our support for gun-control, we are considered a threat since we make the utopians feel insecure.

How dare you put your safety and the safety of your family ahead of my comforting fantasy! 

We talked about facts, but if you want to make someone uncomfortable then question their dreams. That explains the vitriol thrown at ordinary citizens who want to protect themselves.

Facts matter to those who are influenced by facts. Dreams matter to those who live in dreams. I will not call my virtue a vice simply to make other people comfortable. Life is too precious for that. I have dreams of the future too, and so do you.

So, those who want to ban guns from the citizenry are liars.
Yes, we know that.

Fact-Check: Mass Shootings Actually Increased During Federal ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

A widely cited study used to push for more state ‘assault weapons’ bans is flawed and does not show that the 1994 federal ban saved lives.

“Assault weapons” ban proponents say that such bans will save lives. A recent opinion column published in the Chicago Sun-Times claims that the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower during the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban. The column was published while the Illinois state legislature was debating a state-wide assault weapons ban, which passed a few weeks ago.

The study on which that claim was based is flawed and its conclusions unreliable. Yet gun-control advocates such as the Giffords Law Center, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Sandy Hook Promise continue to use the study as they push for more assault weapons bans like the one in Illinois. Legislators, media reports, and opinion writers have cited the study, and the column published in the Chicago Sun-Times has appeared in several media outlets.

The study was produced by Charles DiMaggio, lead author; Michael Klein, the opinion column’s author; and seven other medical professionals. It examined data from three open-source mass shooting databases. The study identified 44 mass shootings from 1981 through 2017 in which four or more fatalities were reported (not including the shooter), resulting in 501 fatalities. It determined that 34 of these shootings were committed with so-called assault weapons, which accounted for 430 (86 percent) of the fatalities.

The study found that mass shooting deaths decreased during the years the federal ban was in effect. It claimed that had the federal ban been in effect for the entire period from 1981 through 2017, it might have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the non-ban years.

Defining ‘Assault Weapons’

Measuring the effect of the federal assault weapons ban requires distinguishing mass shootings with assault weapons from mass shootings with non-banned weapons, such as handguns. After all, the point of an assault weapons ban is to reduce mass shootings with the banned firearms.

There is no consistent legal definition of “assault weapon,” so one must look to how each law banning such firearms defines them. An “assault weapon” under the 1994 federal ban included both specific firearms by name and any semiautomatic firearm capable of accepting a detachable magazine and having two or more features such as a folding or telescoping stock, pistol grip, barrel shroud, flash hider, or threaded barrel. Subsequently enacted state and local bans typically require only one such additional feature.

To identify whether a mass shooting occurred with an assault weapon, the DiMaggio study’s authors made no attempt to determine whether the weapons used actually met the 1994 ban’s definition of “assault weapon.” Instead, they simply searched the databases’ text for “AK,” “AR,” “MCX,” “assault,” and “semiautomatic.” (Klein claimed in his column that the authors “chose to use the strict federal definition of an assault weapon,” but this methodology belies that statement.)

Although all assault weapons are semiautomatic, not all semiautomatics are assault weapons. A semiautomatic firearm fires only one round with each pull of the trigger and automatically loads the next round after firing. The federal ban did not apply to all semiautomatic firearms, as the study’s authors assumed, but only to those with detachable magazines and two or more of the specified features. The vast majority of semiautomatic handguns do not have the additional features required by the federal ban.

Study Includes Non-Banned, Common Handguns in Statistics

Using “semiautomatic” as a search identifier vastly overstated the number of mass shootings committed with so-called assault weapons. The study’s weapon data set for the 34 incidents shows that in at least 20 (almost 60 percent) of the shootings, non-banned semiautomatic handguns — in 9mm, .45, and other popular calibers — were wrongly identified as assault weapons. This obviously skewed the study’s results.

Common semiautomatic handguns should never be confused with “assault weapons.” No federal or state assault weapons ban has ever included such handguns.

Perhaps the study’s authors were confused about what constituted an “assault weapon.” This is unsurprising. The term “assault weapon” was popularized in the late 1980s not to address a particular problem, but to enliven a waning gun-control movement by confusing and scaring the public about firearms. A report from gun-control advocacy group The Violence Policy Center explains:

Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

The study’s misidentification error was pointed out in a public letter to column writer Klein and his study co-authors by University of Massachusetts Professor Louis Klarevas, a well-known academic expert on mass shootings and author of “Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings.” After reviewing the study’s data set, Klarevas challenged the study’s conclusions based on this “large number of misclassifications.”

The authors responded: “We make no claim to have retroactively determined whether these guns would have been illegal under the original statutory language.” But both their study and Klein’s column are about the effectiveness of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.

Ignoring the need for fidelity to what the statute actually banned in determining whether that statute was effective, they claimed that assault weapon definitions don’t really matter, but only the “main message” of the study, which is that “fewer people died in mass shooting incidents during the ban period.”

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Another problem with Gun Violence Archive’s numbers

Supporters of gun control love to use Gun Violence Archive as an authoritative source on the number of shootings we have in this country. The number of mass shootings as compiled by the site–a number that doesn’t reflect what most people think of as a mass shooting, it should be remembered–is presented uncritically by the media.

It happens all the time, and in the wake of two shootings in California, it’s happening yet again. While we know plenty about those two shootings and will likely learn more as we go forward, proponents of gun control site Gun Violence Archive’s total number of mass shootings to show it’s more than those two incidents.

Take this editorial as just one example.

History is full of horrific events in which we shake our heads and ask, “How did that happen? What were they thinking?”

The Holocaust and slavery are two prime examples.

It begs the question of what is transpiring today that will be regarded by future generations as deplorable. That historians will record with the hope that they will never be repeated.

Climate change, yes. And then there is gun violence.

California has had three mass shootings in the last four days. Seven people were killed and one injured in Half Moon Bay on Monday. One person was killed and six injured at an East Oakland gas station later that evening. Eleven people were killed and nine injured in Monterey Park on Saturday.

We are not even at the end of the first month of 2023. Yet the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shootings bring the number of mass shootings (in which four or more people were killed or injured) to 39 this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That follows the 647 mass shootings recorded in 2022 and 690 mass shootings in 2021.

Of course, what follows is the true-to-form call for gun control we typically see from many editorial boards.

Now, in the wake of two deadly mass shootings, I sort of get it. However, they’re not just holding those two incidents up as why we somehow need gun control. They’re holding Gun Violence Archive’s numbers up as well.

And yet, what do we know about any of those shootings?

Well, we know three or more people were injured at those shootings–the low standard the site uses to categorize something as a mass shooting in the first place, which includes gang warfare, drivebys, and so on–but little else.

If we’re going to have a conversation about how we need gun control, about how certain guns shouldn’t be allowed in private hands, or how certain people should be legally barred from buying guns, shouldn’t we also need to know about any of those hundreds upon hundreds of so-called mass shootings?

I ask because I know statistically where most of those weapons came from, and it’s not from lawful gun sales.

How can you say that the gun laws are insufficient when so few of these hundreds of “mass shootings” were carried out with a lawfully-obtained firearm in the first place?

See, Gun Violence Archive is a favorite among the media and anti-gun set (but I repeat myself), yet it only shows part of the picture. To cite their numbers without important context on where those guns were obtained amounts to little more than trying to view a masterpiece by only looking at one single bit with a microscope.

It’s not a full picture by any stretch.

And it matters because while actual mass shootings make headlines, the real violence problem in our country happens in our inner cities. They get counted by Gun Violence Archive to try and push gun control when all the gun laws in the world aren’t going to help.

Der apfel fält nicht weit vom baum (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree)

Klaus Schwab’s Father Ran ‘National Socialist Model Company,’ Exploited Nazi Slave Labor.

Davos frontman Klaus Schwab’s daddy, Eugen Schwab, while the Third Reich was ravaging Europe in the 1930s and 40s, served as managing director of Escher Wyss Ravensburg, an engineering firm that constructed turbines and fighter plane parts for the regime.

While the elder Schwab worked in this capacity, the Nazis awarded Escher Wyss Ravensburg the prestigious title of “National Socialist Model Company” for all of its hard work in the service of the Führer.

To achieve this recognition, Escher-Wyss Ravensburg, under Eugen Schwab’s leadership, utilized Nazi slave labor and prisoners of war in its facilities.

Ravensburg itself, aside from the slave factory, was the site of numerous Nazi crimes against humanity, such as forced sterilization for the purpose of “racial improvement.” But to Eugen Schwab, that was just the cost of doing business with the Third Reich.

You want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs, right?

Klaus Schwab’s sanitized Wikipedia page contains none of the gruesome details of his daddy’s wartime activities, other than to say “his parents had moved from Switzerland to Germany during the Third Reich in order for his father to assume the role of director at Escher Wyss.”

Newsweek ran a corporate “fact check” in which they cherry-picked a falsely attributed image of Eugen in a Nazi uniform as a way to seem to disprove his connection to the Third Reich entirely. But deep into the article, Newsweek subtly admits that it’s all true — which almost no one will get to, thanks to short attention spans:

The posts shared online in May, 2022, claim Klaus Schwab’s father, Eugen Schwab, was a close ally of Hitler, and include a photo of the World Economic Forum leader alongside a man in Nazi uniform… the photo shared online is not of Eugen Schwab, but of Nazi general Walter Dybilasz… Klaus Schwab’s father, on the other hand, was the managing director of a subsidiary of Zurich-based engineering firm Escher Wyss. 

The history of Eugen’s relationship with Nazism in general is complex… Eugen Schwab was a member of some National Socialist organizations, but that alone does not prove any relationship to German high command or a belief in Nazi ideology. While the Escher Wyss branch in Ravensburg, Germany, (which Eugen managed) used prisoners of war and forced laborers, it is not clear whether the company was forced to do so by the Nazis or because of a lack of workers.

So, Eugen Schwab was an avowed National Socialist, and yes, okay, his firm did use Nazi slave labor. But, you see, that doesn’t mean he was a Nazi. And maybe Escher Wyss had to use slave labor to make their products for the Nazis because of a worker shortage.

This is a common tactic in corporate media: Take a false claim that circulates on the web (in this case, an image incorrectly identified as Eugen Schwab) and use that single post to discredit the entire factual connection between Schwab and the Nazis.

This took a study?

Study: The Case for Pediatric Gender Transitioning Is Built on Lies.

The transgender cult may be the most dangerous threat targeting today’s youth. Sadly, there are forces willing to go to extreme lengths to justify the barbaric brainwashing of kids.

In fact, it turns out that two famous Dutch studies that were the foundation of modern gender medicine are complete trash.

Last week, a group of American doctors published a paper criticizing the two studies that are considered the foundation of current pediatric gender medicine. These studies claim to have determined that patients’ mental health improved after they underwent gender transition procedures when, in reality, the methodology and conclusions of those studies were deeply flawed.

According to the new study, the widely-cited Dutch studies, which were published in 2011 and 2015 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Pediatrics, systematically excluded the experiences of participants who dropped out of the studies over time, creating a bias in favor of participants who reported positive experiences.

“The key problem in pediatric gender medicine is not the lack of research rigor in the past—it is the field’s present-day denial of the profound problems in the existing research, and an unwillingness to engage in high quality research requisite in evidence-based medicine,” the new study’s authors explain.

Related: The Rhetorical ‘Double-Bind’: How LGBTQ+++© Activists Rig the Discourse

“The field has a penchant for exaggerating what is known about the benefits of the practice, while downplaying the serious health risks and uncertainties,” the study reads. “As a result, a false narrative has taken root. It is that ‘gender-affirming’ medical and surgical interventions for youth are as benign as aspirin, as well-studied as penicillin and statins, and as essential to survival as insulin for childhood diabetes.”

The big problem with these bogus studies is that the medical community often cites them to justify so-called “gender-affirming care” for young people. Joe Biden’s assistant health secretary, Richard “Rachel” Levine, has falsely claimed that “there is no argument” about “gender-affirming care” among pediatricians and doctors who specialize in adolescents.

“The positive value of gender-affirming care for youth and adults is not in scientific or medical dispute,” Levine falsely claimed. Not only is there no consensus on this issue in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, and France have all dialed back on pushing transgender “treatments” for children. Why? Because they recognize the harm it does to kids. But the Biden administration has gone all in on pushing the transing of kids—including pushing for taxpayer dollars to fund these so-called “treatments.”

In recent weeks, experts have concluded that there is no biological evidence for gender identity, and another study has confirmed that so-called “gender-affirming care” for children has no medical benefits.

Pfizer’s Shots Aren’t Safe and Were Never Shown to Be.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a member of Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB), was previously a paid adviser to Pfizer. DSMBs are supposed to be independent, and aren’t if members have previous relationships with the company
  • German autopsies found “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab, and investigators suspect the inflammation observed would be fatal. They also found spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, but not another key part of SARS-CoV-2. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab
  • Data from the German health insurance provider BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans, show 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab
  • The largest German statutory health insurance dataset, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out
  • December 13, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs. He also established an independent Public Health Integrity Committee to analyze and assess federal health guidance before they’re implemented in Florida

Contrary to the official narrative (and hence popular belief), the COVID shots have no demonstrated safety. In Episode 298 of The Highwire, Del Bigtree interviews attorney Aaron Siri about the various lawsuits his firm has brought to reverse COVID jab mandates.

Siri describes a recent deposition of Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a world-leading vaccinologist who sat on Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB). This five-member committee oversaw the safety of Pfizer’s jab. A DSMB is supposed to be an independent group of experts, whose responsibility it is to monitor patient safety and treatment efficacy data while a clinical trial is ongoing.

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“No one wants to take your guns”………….

Incrementalism in Action: Anti-Gun Governor Targets Lawfully Registered Firearms for Seizure

There are two absolutes in gun control strategy, and both were on display recently when Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) proposed to renege on a promise twice made to the state’s law-abiding gun owners: that they could keep their newly-banned firearms if they registered them with the state.

Connecticut has passed two bans on so-called “assault weapons,” one in 1993 and then an expanded version in 2013.

Each time, the law affected common and popular semi-automatic firearms already owned by law-abiding residents of the state. And each time, the state assured those gun owners that their lawfully-acquired guns would be “grandfathered” under the law if the state were apprised of who owned them and where they were kept.

This led to the sad and ominous spectacle of gun owners who were under no individual suspicion of wrongdoing queing up to report their own identity and constitutionally-protected property to police. As a news report noted, “The application requires information such as the individual’s name, address, telephone number, motor vehicle operator’s license, sex, height, weight and thumbprint, as well as information about the weapon, including the serial number, model and any unique markings.” It was eerily similar, in fact, to the information used when booking someone for a crime.

Meanwhile, some well-meaning but naïve gun owners thought they were simply doing their civic duty by complying with the mandate. “If they were trying to make them illegal, I’d have a real issue, but if they want to just know where they are, that’s fine with me,” one registrant told a local news station.

Readers of this website and other NRA publications knew better, however, as the Association has warned for years of the aforementioned absolutes: that gun control advances incrementally and that firearm registration leads to firearm confiscation.

Following a gubernatorial debate in November, Lamont told reporters: “I think those assault-style weapons that are grandfathered should not be grandfathered.” He continued, “They should not be allowed in the state of Connecticut. I think they’re killers.”

Pressed for specifics on how he would go about enforcing his proposal or recovering the 81,849 “assault weapons” registered with the state, Lamont did not provide details. “Start by making them illegal,” he said. “I think that would be a big difference. That is what you start with.”

In other words, without any explanation of how his plan would work or promote public safety, Lamont is proposing to make tens of thousands of state citizens who complied in good faith with the registration requirements into criminals, with their guns summarily declared contraband and subject to seizure. To make matters worse, the authorities would already know who and where those citizens are.

Lamont ludicrously claimed that the grandfathered guns themselves are “killers,” but he provided no evidence that their owners are. He did not cite statistics, or even examples, of lawfully registered “assault weapons” that were later used in crime. Meanwhile, registered or not, semiautomatic long guns of the types banned in Connecticut are rarely used in homicide, as we have noted time and again, including here, here, and here.

Despite these facts, Lamont seems intent on executing his plan to reclassify peaceable Connecticut residents lawfully exercising their constitutional rights as felons. His example illustrates very clearly what the reassurances of gun control advocates are worth and how anyone who thinks its safe to rely on such reassurances will be in for a rude awakening.

Indeed, the month after Lamont announced his intentions, an editorial in the Connecticut Mirror argued that constitutional assurances the right to keep and bear arms will be protected should themselves be repealed. “It is time to talk about repealing the Second Amendment,” the author insisted. But he made it clear that his plan wasn’t necessarily an alternative to incrementalism but a potential aid to it. “[T]he very existence of a loud argument about the larger issue of repeal will make those incremental proposals seem more moderate, and therefore ultimately more achievable,” the editorialist wrote.

Second Amendment advocates are often faulted for opposing supposedly moderate, “common sense gun safety laws” that fall well short of a comprehensive ban on all types of firearms. But the savvy ones know that punishing law-abiding people for exercising their constitutional rights does not stop criminals, and today’s accommodation for the good guys with guns is tomorrow’s “loophole” that will eventually close around their necks. This is even more so when the authorities already know who owns guns and where those guns are kept.

It’s simple: The object of gun control is the outlawing and seizure of firearms from law-abiding citizens.

But don’t just take our word for it.

Ask Gov. Ned Lamont.

Remember This Whenever Moslems Demand More ‘Rights’ in the West.

Egypt’s Ministry of Endowments recently announced a new record: 1,200 new mosques were opened in the year 2022.

Moreover, in the two years between September 2020 and September 2022, a total of 3,116 mosques were opened (2,712 new; 404 renovated).

Since Abdel Fateh al-Sisi became president in 2014, the total number of mosques to be opened, repaired, or replaced — costing Egypt more than ten billion pounds [~$400 million]— is 9,600.

(One can almost hear the “Allahu akbars!”)

What about the religious places of worship that, for centuries before Egypt’s conquest by Muslim Arabs, dotted that nation’s landscape — namely, Christian churches? How fare they?

As is well known, when it comes to any question concerning the indigenous Christians of Egypt, the Copts, and their churches, accurate information — especially by way of numbers — is difficult to ascertain from the official channels.

As such, I contacted and spoke with one of the most astute analysts on the so-called Coptic question, the Egyptian-born Magdi Khalil, an author and public debater (appearing in approximately 1,500 televised debates, including on Al Jazeera) who specializes in citizenship rights, civil society, and the situation of minorities in the Middle East.

During our phone conversation, Khalil offered up the best-known figures he has been able to ascertain, after making clear that, “as you know, there are no absolutely accurate numbers from Egypt that aren’t politicized.”

He said there are a total of approximately 5,200 Christian institutions in Egypt, including all churches and monasteries from every denomination. As for Islamic institutions, there are 120,000 mosques and over one million prayer halls in the country.

This disparity alone underscores the extreme discrimination Christians face in Egypt. Considering that Copts of all denominations make up, at the very least, 10% of Egypt’s population of 104 million, there is one mosque or prayer hall for every 83 Muslims, but only one church for every 2,000 Christians.*

In 2016, a new Egyptian law was touted as “easing” restrictions on and helping many more churches to open.  Since its implementation, however, human rights groups have noted that it has only marginally helped. Khalil agreed, and said that at best, the 2016 law has made a “5-10 percent improvement.” But, by applying only to churches, as opposed to being a universal law for all religious places of worship, the new law has also formalized the Egyptian government’s divisive — or in Khalil’s words, “racist” — approach to its citizens. He is not alone in making this charge; even Human Rights Watch says that the new law ultimately “discriminates against the Christian minority in Egypt.”

Along with the ease Egypt grants to the building of mosques, often overlooked is the fact that the government also completely subsidizes a great many, if not most, of Egypt’s mosques. (Over 4 billion Egyptian pounds are paid annually by the state to subsidize the Ministry of Islamic Endowments, which is charged with affairs related to mosques and Islamic da‘wa [propaganda]. Moreover, 22 billion Egyptian pounds are annually paid to Al Azhar, which has a parallel educational system, or madrasa, from KG to university, with 2.8 million pupils and students.)

Conversely, not only does Egypt make it immensely hard for Christians to open or maintain churches, but the government does not contribute a “single penny” to their survival, said Khalil. Churches are even required to pay their utility bills, which no mosque in Egypt does, as the government happily picks up their bill.

Aside from the obvious discrimination and legal obstacles the government of Egypt has set up against churches, Khalil and I also spoke a bit about the Muslim mob violence that sporadically rises up against Christian places of worship. According to Khalil, “close to one thousand churches have been attacked or torched by mobs in the last five decades [since the 1970s] in Egypt.” This is a much larger number than is commonly assumed.

Khalil closed by saying, “The persecution of Egypt’s Christian Copts is the longest ongoing persecution in the history of mankind, from 642, to today, 2022. Through all this time, maybe 70 years under British occupation were peaceful and good — the “golden era” for Copts in all this duration. Then [during the colonial era] there was much more diversity in the government, including some Coptic ministers, etc. But the overwhelming majority of the time witnessed the Copts’ persecution.”

“I know of no group,” concluded Khalil, “that has been persecuted for nearly 1400 years — with still no light at the end of the tunnel.”

SloJoe, his handlers and the rest of the demoncraps were never interested in stopping crime.

DEMOCRATS’ GUN CONTROL DUPLICITY LAID BARE

It is time for President Joe Biden to drop the gun control charade. He – and his Capitol Hill gun control supporters – were never interested in curbing criminal misuse of guns. They are only interested in controlling you.

President Biden’s prisoner swap with Russia of a convicted international arms trafficker for a WNBA star proved that his administration doesn’t care about keeping guns out of the hands of those who should never have them. His only interest when it comes to guns is keeping them out of the hands of those who obey the law. His podium admonitions are betrayed by his actions.

‘Merchant of Death’

President Biden announced last week the trade with Russia of Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner. Bout is a notorious international arms smuggler who earned the moniker “Merchant of Death.” He is a former Soviet-era military officer who was arrested in 2008 in Thailand by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a sting for proposing a sale of tens of millions of dollars to the Colombian narco-terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The illicit sale was for $20 million worth of “a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.”

Bout’s history runs much deeper. He was identified as an illicit arms dealer by the United Nations in 2000. He was moving arms to African warlords, Middle East dictators and Central American narco-terrorist groups. His attempt to arm the FARC was what ultimately put him in prison for charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, U.S. officers and employees, conspiracy to acquire missiles to destroy aircraft and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Bout was traded for Griner, a basketball player arrested by Russia in February on drug possession charges.

Security Threat

The swap has been lampooned by critics for how lopsided it is. Russia continues to hold former Marine Paul Whelan, arrested on dubious espionage charges. Former National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told CBS News, “This is not a deal. This is not a swap. This is a surrender.”

Fox News reported that former DEA Special Operation Director Derek Maltz, who was involved in Bout’s capture, slammed the White House for their “ironic” prisoner swap, arguing that it’s “disgusting” for the Biden administration to sell gun control while celebrating the release of an international arms trafficker.

Even the Pentagon is wary. “I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he’s done in the past,” a senior defense official told reporters.

The exchange exposed how unserious this administration truly is when it comes to ending the criminal misuse of firearms. Less than one day before the swap was announced, President Biden renewed his pledge to ban Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) in America. That pronouncement came just days after he told media, “The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick. It has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

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Moderna should have told the FDA and CDC about the bone problems in rats, and then those bureaucraps should have told the public.
This is called allowing people to make informed decisions about their bodies,  which is a very important issue for many people.
Of course, when I heard that the mRNA vax was going to be allowed for ’emergency use’ before the long term study for bad effects was even started, I decided to pass taking something that had never been authorized for humans before. Of course everyone who did get the vaxx is part of that long term effect test.

FDA Records Show Significant Number of mRNA Test Rats Born with Skeletal Deformations

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received 699 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding data Moderna submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which indicate a “statistically significant” number of rats were born with skeletal deformations after their mothers were injected with the vaccine. The documents also reveal Moderna elected not to conduct a number of standard pharmacological studies on the laboratory test animals.

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a September 2021 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) failed to respond to a June 2021, FOIA request biodistribution studies and related data for the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson& Johnson COVID vaccines (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-02418)).

The records include a “Nonclinical Overview” prepared by Moderna and submitted to the FDA for approval of its vaccine revealing that a number of rats were born with skeletal deformations, known as “wavy ribs” and “rib nodules,” to mothers injected with the mRNA vaccine. The study dismissed the anomalies as “not considered adverse:”

mRNA-1273-related variations in skeletal examination included statistically significant increases in the number of F1 rats with 1 or more wavy ribs and 1 or more rib nodules. Wavy ribs appeared in 6 fetuses and 4 litters with a fetal prevalence of 4.03% and a litter prevalence of 18.2%. Rib nodules appeared in 5 of those 6 fetuses. Skeletal variations are structural changes that do not impact development or function of a developing embryo, are considered reversible, and often correlate with maternal toxicity and/or lack of other indicators of developmental toxicity (Carney and Kimmel 2007). Maternal toxicity in the form of clinical observations was observed for 5 days following the last dose (GD 13), correlating with the most sensitive period for rib development in rats (GDs 14 to 17). Furthermore, there were no other indicators of mRNA-1273-related developmental toxicity observed, including delayed ossification; therefore, these common skeletal variations were not considered adverse.

(Non-adverse deformations receive a different perspective in the July 2009 Environmental Researcharticle, “Dose–response relationships of rat fetal skeleton variations: Relevance for risk assessment:”

(Whether or not a substance-induced increase in the incidence of fetal skeleton variations should be taken into account for human risk assessment is a long-standing controversial issue. It has been argued that chemical-produced increases in variations are not to be considered for risk assessment because they are “unlikely to adversely affect survival or health.” The counter argument is that even not being overtly adverse and conveying no apparent selective disadvantage, a treatment-induced increase in the occurrence of variations means that the chemical agent has the potential to perturb skeleton development. According to this view, under a different condition of exposure, or in another species, this perturbation of normal bone formation may give rise to a different and more severe outcome.))

A “Pharmacokinetics Written Summary” marked “Confidential,” indicates that the information it contains is related to the mRNA-1273 (Moderna vaccine) strain, however, much of the data comes from work with mRNA-1647. The study states:

The results of a biodistribution study of mRNA-1647 support the development of mRNA-1273.

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Makes sense when “democracy”  means demoncraps are in charge

The Twitter files: leftism requires censorship.

One of the funny (although not ‘funny ha-ha’) things about all of this is that these same people bleat on about ‘democracy’ and its great value and worth. And yet they think of the public as unable to sort out the wheat from the chaff, as children in need of control from – yes – Big Brother Twitter. And they’re not the least bit ashamed about it. They had to do it to save democracy.

America’s Ruling Regime Doesn’t Fear Disinformation. It Fears Truth.

In Joe Biden’s America, attempting to cancel Joe Rogan is just counter-terror policy.

This is because our ruling class—in the name of “defending democracy”—classifies those who question the regime on any matter of consequence as a threat to the homeland, and pledges to pursue them accordingly.

Our ruling elites have engaged in an overt war on wrongthink masquerading as a domestic counter-terror mission since at least January 6, 2021.

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Twitter Files Expose Dangerous Deep State-Big Tech Revolving Door

It’s not just the Forrest Gump of Russiagate — ex-FBI General Counsel James Baker — who is core to the conspiracy to crush the First Amendment

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This weekend I was pleased to appear in print in the New York Post to discuss the cozy and corrupting ties between the U.S. government — particularly the security state — and Big Tech revealed in the Twitter Files.

I connect the dots in the Post — dots that I believe collectively depict a key piece of the overall War on Wrongthink picture: A Ruling Class conspiracy to crush the First Amendment in pursuit of total ideological and therefore cultural and political power.

Read the whole thing here.

The Twitter Files were also one subject of our latest “NatCon Squad,” which you can check out below or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is l-o-n-g, but you really need to read it.

Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • In his new book, “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” former BlackRock fund manager Edward Dowd details data showing the COVID shots are a crime against humanity
  • Insurance industry research in 2016 concluded that group life policyholders die at one-third the rate of the general U.S. population, so they’re the healthiest among us. Group life policyholders are those employed with Fortune 500 companies, who tend to be younger and well-educated
  • In 2020, the general U.S. population had higher excess mortality than group life holders, but in 2021, that flipped. Ages 25 through 64 of the group life policyholders suddenly experienced 40% excess mortality, compared to 32% in the general population. In short, a far healthier subset of the population suddenly died at a higher rate than the general population
  • American disability statistics are equally revealing. In the five years before COVID, the monthly disability rate was between 29 million and 30 million. After the COVID jabs, the disability trend changed dramatically. As of September 2022, there were 33.2 million disabled Americans — an extra 3.2 million to 4.2 million — a three standard deviation rate of change since May 2021
  • Since May 2021, the overall U.S. population has experienced an 11% increase in disabilities, while the employed — which is about 98 million out of a total population of about 320 million — experienced 26% increased rate of disability. So, something was introduced into the workforce that caused working age people to die

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original:

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Reworked to fit the narrative:

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Biden admin disbands ‘fake’ parents council after pushback from parental rights groups

WASHINGTON (CITC) — The Biden administration is disbanding its newly formed national parents council after several advocacy groups accused it of violating federal law.

The National Parents and Families Engagement Council was formed in June as a way to “facilitate strong and effective relationships between schools and parents, families and caregivers.” Representatives were handpicked by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to help the agency engage with communities at the local level.

Less than a month later, the Biden administration was hit with a lawsuit by parental rights groups claiming the council was ideologically divisive. Plaintiffs Parents Defending Education (PDE), America First Legal (AFL) and Fight for Schools and Families (FFS) noted that members of the council included those who stood by a National Schools Boards Association (NSBA) letter that likened concerned parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.”

The lawsuit also argued the council failed to meet other various federal requirements, including open and transparent public meetings and public oversight.

The DOE appeared to concede Monday, as it announced that while it “disagrees” with the notion that it violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), it will no longer move forward with the council.

“Parental rights and voices matter,” the announcement reads. “That’s a clear and consistent message we hear from education stakeholders throughout our nation, whether they’re parents themselves, students or educators, or partners in government or the private sector.”

The DOE added that it strives to hear from “as many parents as possible” and that it recognizes the concern shared by all for the future of American students, regardless of political, social and cultural backgrounds.

The three groups behind the lawsuit have quickly taken to social media to celebrate the victory.

“Parents should NEVER be used as political props to advance radical policies that harm students,” PDE founder and president Nicole Neily, who calls the outcome a “huge win,” reacted on Twitter.

We Now Have the Full Transcript of Fauci’s Deposition in Social-Media Collusion Case

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry deposed Anthony Fauci last month in the states’ case accusing the Biden administration of “colluding with social media companies to censor speech” related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, they released the full transcript of that interview (you can read the entire document below).“Today, Louisiana and Missouri are releasing the full transcript for the deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which was taken on November 23rd, 2022. The deposition was taken as part of Louisiana and Missouri’s landmark lawsuit against the federal government and the Biden Administration for colluding with social media companies to censor speech,” said Landry in a press release. “Fauci’s recent deposition only confirmed what we already knew: federal bureaucrats in collusion with social media companies want to control not only what you think, but especially what you say. During no time in human history was this more obvious than during the COVID-19 crisis where social engineering tactics were used against the American public, not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to limit your exposure to information that did not fit within a government sanctioned narrative.”“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech. In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors,” added Schmitt in his own press release. “I invite everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born.”

In a Twitter thread, Schmitt noted that know-nothing Fauci blurted out, “I don’t recall,” 174 times during the deposition, “including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information.”

Fauci did, however, “vaguely recall” telling former HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in early 2020 not to wear a mask when traveling. “Just a couple months later, he was advocating for universal mask mandates,” Schmitt noted.

Also from Schmitt: “One of Fauci’s deputies joined a WHO delegation to China in February of 2020, and in talking to Fauci afterwards, was impressed with how the Chinese ‘were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people.’”

Indeed, Fauci admitted that this American official told him the U.S. “may have to go to as extreme a degree of social distancing to help bring our outbreak under control.” But then Fauci clammed up and said he “didn’t recall” the individual discussing this with him when he returned home.”

This is a breaking story. We’ll have more details to report in an upcoming article. 

Full Redacted Fauci Transcript by PJ Media on Scribd

New study by frustrated anti-gun researcher doesn’t tell the whole story

by Lee Williams

More than 1 million Americans were killed by firearms from 1990 to 2021, and firearm deaths increased markedly during the pandemic, according to a study published Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association network titled: “Trends and Disparities in Firearm Fatalities in the United States, 1990-2021.”

Firearm deaths reached their lowest point in 2004, and then increased more than 45% by 2021 — a 28-year high — the study claims. Black males were most at risk for homicide, and white males over 70 had the highest suicide rates.

The authors analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and used “key statistics” from the anti-gun group Brady United.

Despite its flaws, such as a reliance on biased statistics and a lack of causal factors, the report has been embraced by the legacy media and has proliferated across the internet.

The authors’ conclusion was rather simple: “This study found marked disparities in firearm fatality rates by demographic group, which increased over the past decade. These findings suggest that public health approaches to reduce firearm violence should consider underlying demographic and geographic trends and differences by intent.”

The study’s lead author, Dr. Eric W. Fleegler of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics, has written numerous anti-gun studies and editorials. Gun-rights experts were quick to point out there was a lot missing from his most recent work.

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WUHAN DID IT

America’s National Institutes of Health funded a group called EcoHealth Alliance, on multiple occasions, to collaborate on research done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At least one project consisted of gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. Because of concerns about the dangers of such research, NIH shut it off in 2014, but re-started funding gain of function in 2017, largely at the instance of Anthony Fauci.

From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Andrew Huff worked for EcoHeath Alliance, the latter two years as vice president. He has written a book, which comes out on Monday, titled The Truth about Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History. Dr. Huff is not given to understatement.

The Sun writes:

In his new book – The Truth About Wuhan – whistleblower Dr Huff claims the pandemic was the result of the US government’s funding of dangerous genetic engineering of coronaviruses in China.

The epidemiologist said China’s gain-of-function experiments – carried out with shoddy biosecurity – led to a lab leak at the US-funded Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said in his book, an exclusive pre-release copy of which was provided to The Sun Online.

EcoHealth Alliance had been studying different coronaviruses in bats for more than ten years with funding from the National Institutes of Health – and developed close working ties with the Wuhan lab.

Dr Huff, who worked at EcoHealth Alliance from 2014 to 2016 and served as vice president from 2015, worked on the classified side of the research programme as a US government scientist.

The army veteran, from Michigan, said the organisation taught the Wuhan lab the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

And he claimed “China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent”.

“The US government is to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese,” he said.

Speaking to The Sun Online, Dr Huff added: “I was terrified by what I saw. We were just handing them bioweapon technology.”

In his book, the emerging infectious diseases expert claims “greedy scientists killed millions of people globally” – and goes as far as to claim the US government covered it up.

Former intelligence chiefs and diplomats have already claimed Covid was leaked from a Wuhan lab in the “cover-up of the century”.

I don’t know how credible Dr. Huff is, but I think the evidence that Covid came from a Wuhan lab leak is strong. He is, at a minimum, a voice from inside EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the Covid story.