Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

24 years after 9/11 and Noo Yawk goes for this….

Zohran Mamdani: “VioIence is an Artificial Construction”

New York City’s Democratic voters chose Zohran Mamdani as their nominee. It says a lot about how bad Mamdani is, though, that a lot of people thought the allegedly handsy former governor of New York, who left office in disgrace, was a better option, but the voters have spoken.

While it’s entirely possible someone else will prevail in the general election, the odds are good that Mamdani will win based on current polling.

There’s a lot for me to dislike about Mamdani, including his previous call to ban all guns, but a lot of New Yorkers aren’t going to disagree with that on any level, unfortunately, and since I can’t vote against him, my own feelings are irrelevant.

But there’s a reason everyone in the Big Apple should be concerned, and that’s just how soft on crime he’s shaping up to be.

For example, he says that violence is an artificial construct.

Now, I get that he’s claiming that non-violent crimes are being prosecuted as acts of violence, even when they’re not, but I’m rather skeptical of that claim without some hard evidence backing it up. [Editor’s Note: New York actually prosecutes gun possession without a permit as a violent crime, so there is some evidence that’s the case – Cam]

Breaking into a business that has an attached but separate dwelling isn’t likely to be viewed as the same as breaking into a home in court. I seriously doubt a prosecutor would even try it.

Of course, sometimes horrible things happen. Vile people do vile things, even if they work in a prosecutor’s office or with law enforcement. I get that.

But the language here matters.

Mamdani could have just started off by arguing that people are overprosecuted and left it there. That’s something people will likely rally behind and something that his opponents will have a hard time attacking him for.

Instead, though, he says “violence is an artificial construction,” which is the kind of language we hear in a lot of other debates. Gender is an artificial construct. Gender roles are an artificial construct. Even rights have been termed as artificial constructs.

In short, the term “artificial construct” or “artificial construction” is a common buzzword used for undermining the mere existence of a thing.

Violence, on the other hand, isn’t. How we define “good” and “bad” forms of violence might be, but the act of being violent is no such thing. It’s an objective fact that violence happens, that people do it to others, and victims get hurt as a result.

This isn’t artificial, nor is it constructed.

What Mamdani is doing, even if unintentionally, is laying the groundwork to excuse violent crime entirely because if it’s an artificial construction, then there’s no reason to punish it beyond our need to uphold this artificial construction. Since it’s clear he’s hostile toward such artificial constructions, it seems that he favors violence not being punished.

It’s a reasonable extrapolation, after all.

Overprosecution, which may or may not be happening, isn’t a case of violence being an artificial construction. It’s a case of prosecutors crossing the line from what is acceptable and just to injustice and unacceptability.

Mamdani’s entire argument, however, hinges on this idea, which means that it’s a good thing the Bruen decision put an end to shall-issue permitting in New York City, because New Yorkers are probably going to need those guns pretty soon if he’s elected.

Well, that’s definitely not ‘good behavior’……

Impeach: A Judge Decides to Ignore the Supreme Court on Deportation Ruling

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s deportations to third-world countries can continue without limited notice, blocking an injunction by a little judge who sought to wrest immigration policy away from the executive. The high court slapped down Judge Brian Murphy’s order, but like James Boasberg, another disgrace to the bench, he’s ignoring the ruling.

This isn’t normal. While the president can remove people under the Alien Enemies Act, these judicial insurrectionists tried to claim that due process had to be applied. That’s ludicrous; none of the illegals Obama deported had court dates. It’s another episode of the judicial coup against the Trump administration. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said to be prepared for fireworks over what they will do to hold this little judge accountable.

Obama pines for a social media Ministry of Truth:

“We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts…it will require some government regulatory constraints.”
“There is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard, versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices, or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous in the sense of inciting violence.”
“And I that I think is going to be a big challenge for all of us that we’re going to have to undertake.”

Obama-approved narratives must go unchallenged, according to Obama.

“Watermelon”  = ‘Green’ on the outside, Red on the inside.

Green group with ties to Chinese Communist Party part of network influencing U.S. policy.

A national-security watchdog group is asking members of Congress to take a closer look at an energy transition advocacy nonprofit that has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to State Armor, the watchdog group, nonprofits are coordinating with U.S. climate groups to influence climate policy, advance the interests of the CCP and undermine U.S. national security.

A new report by State Armor argues that the CCP is co-opting the American progressive climate change lobby to advance a transition away from fossil fuels. The alternative technologies being pushed by this lobby, according to the report, create significant economic and geopolitical advantages by undermining U.S. energy dominance and leaving it dependent on Chinese supply chains for its energy production.

“It creates a dependence on our side and deprives us of a natural strength, which is our energy independence that comes from other resources,” Michael Lucci, CEO of State Armor, told Just the News. State Armor is a non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for state solutions to global security threats.

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The Truth Is, They Do Want a King

I just returned from a wonderful week away enjoying time with my family and dear friends to find a lot of chatter about “No Kings” from the predictable group of left-wing Marxists, and their good friend Bill Kristol. It would seem laughable if this rebrand of revolutionary angst were not proven deadly already. Rather than burning urban areas under BLM flags, the revolutionaries are now shooting elected officials at home under the banner of contempt that pretends to dislike monarchies. As I noted recently, these dark and satanic ideologies imported openly into the American polis through the writings of Marx are deadly and should be removed from society as poison is drawn from a wound.

Those who wish death to America are not limited to the ayatollahs of Tehran. The tragic reality is that those inside the United States who hate this nation likely outnumber those who feel the same way from the Middle East. This is the product of generations of successful indoctrination imparted by the government schooling system. Education is not just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It has always been about transmitting values. Those who hate the American way know it and act accordingly. This must be dealt with if ordered liberty is to stand a chance beyond our lifetimes.

The “No Kings” protest movement is organized and aimed at resurrecting the terror that gripped this nation during the 2020 summer of rage. The majority of Americans finally tired of the fictional, manipulative narratives of the Black Lives Matter and allied transgender movement over the last couple of years and voted accordingly in 2024. As Dr. Ben Carson shared with me recently, the results of the last election lulled too many conservatives into believing that political evil is defeated in our time—when the reality is that those who wish death to our way of life have been regrouping and plotting a counterassault. That counter assault was attempted in several U.S. cities recently through allegedly anti-immigration law enforcement, most notably in Los Angeles. Even in that city defined in our time as a protest center, the deep blue governing officials couldn’t get away with aiding and abetting lawlessness as usual. So they quickly rebranded the movement to “No Kings.” In doing so, they signal the brainless and fictional narrative that Donald is ruling as a dictatorial king, who curiously allows protests against him. The hypocrisy of that argument requires an entire volume to dissect.

As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The protestors hope to tap into a patriotic root with this iteration of rhetorical schema, rallying a wider coalition based on the nation’s rejection of monarchial rule in the 18th century. They will fail because the branding can’t get even skin deep.

Look around at who is showing up to these supposed “No Kings” events. It’s the same Randi Weingarten-esque group bussed in to every other anti-American protest. The iconography of their signs remains intact from the previous protests, sporting the usual color patterns associated with Ukraine and the sexual liberation movement. What you won’t find is a Betsy Ross flag, which served as the nation’s colors at the time of our ancestors’ rebellion against an *actual* king. America’s left wing decided it, and the nation’s founding, is racist. Given such logic, honest activists would demand to become subjects of King Charles III.

But let’s lay all that aside for a moment and talk about how to respond to one of these “No Kings” protestors from a position that grants a basis of dignity in approach. I offer this: the left wing is desperate for a king. Everything about progressivism yearns for someone who will make all things safe, who will guarantee the right to all self-centered behavior, who will provide all things needed for one to live in equity rather than through what one earns. Progressivism demands a king who will uphold its cause zealously, and punish people who dare to assert that the law should provide rights and reasonable limitations equally to all citizens for the purpose of a virtuous society.

Their king will tell you what you can drive, what you can say, what you can eat, and how you may use your land. They want a king who will literally cover your face and inject your body, a king who will take your children if you deny transgender ideology, a ruler who will terminate your bank accounts and your job if you stray from depraved thinking. The progressive left wing wants what it has always wanted: power. It needs—no, demands—a dark lord who will, as the great novelist J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, rule them, find them, and bind them in darkness.

No, the protestors we see now do not reject a king. They demand one.

Scripture assures that those who want to live under dark rule will eventually get their wish. But we dare not hasten those days. So long as God gives us the strength, we must be sure to prevent that coronation from happening.

Israel Tricked Iran’s Top Dogs Into Gathering, Then Took Them Out

Israel managed to trigger an emergency where most of Iran‘s military top brass gathered in one place. Then Israel took them all out.

One of the marvels of yesterday was the Israeli military’s incredible precision and effectiveness. It can blast a terrorist leader to his eternal reward without destroying the whole building. It could have a secret drone base in Iran. And it could apparently induce most of Iran’s military — especially air force — leaders to group together in one place for their own annihilation.

It is too bad that Israel didn’t take out Iran’s political leaders, including the ever-insidious Ayatollah Khamenei, but Israel definitely had its hands full, and it did incredibly well. After all, with reportedly every one of the top air force and several of the other top military leadership gone, presumably it will be much more difficult for Iran to plan its retaliation against Israel, especially since Israel also took out a lot of its military targets and thus its weapons. There might not be — hopefully — an awful lot left ready to fire at Israel.

Fox News talked to an Israeli security officer who claimed that it was no coincidence that so many Iranian military leaders, all of whom have been complicit in terrorist activities, had conveniently gathered together for an Israeli strike. “We carried out specific activities to help us learn more about them, and then used that information to influence their behavior,” the source told Fox. “We knew this would lead them to meet — but more importantly, we knew how to keep them there.”

The official added that the strikes were more successful than Israel had anticipated. According to the source, air defense systems and ballistic missiles that were intended for use against Israel were preemptively targeted.

So was a nuclear facility. Among the Iranian casualties were most of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Air Force leadership, according to Fox, including commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, along with Revolutionary Guard leader Gen. Hossein Salami and armed forces chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri. They have gone to join their master below.

We’ve been told for so many years that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon that we have become bored with it, but let’s be honest — isn’t it entirely possible Iran has a nuclear weapon, which no one wanted to admit? Or maybe they did have one before last night.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations told Fox that Iran has been planning to attack the United States and Israel. In fact, Iran was already attacking Israel through its terror proxies, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah. And the Iranian regime certainly prioritizes hatred for America and Israel. Whatever was going on behind the scenes in Iran, it is true however that the Israeli attack yesterday seriously crippled the genocidal regime.

Iran’s Quds Force Commander Esmail Qaani killed in Israeli strike, reports say. Who was he?

Esmail Qaani took command of Iran’s Quds Force after the assassination of his predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, in a US drone strike in 2020

The Quds Force is an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for extraterritorial military operations and supporting proxy groups across the Middle East.

Qaani began his military career during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, leading several brigades before becoming deputy commander of the Quds Force in 1997, serving under Soleimani. Unlike Soleimani, who was often seen on the frontlines with Tehran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, Qaani has maintained a lower profile, conducting meetings privately and away from public view. His leadership has coincided with increased Israeli airstrikes against Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and other paramilitary groups.

In October 2024, Qaani was reported missing after Israeli airstrikes targeted the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh. He had travelled to Lebanon following the death of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike in late September. The attack also targeted Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s presumed successor, who has also been unreachable since.

BLUF
Either Kinzinger knows all this and is willfully trying to deceive his audience, or he’s an ignorant buffoon who thinks he’s much smarter than he really is. I won’t hazard a guess about what’s more likely, but either way folks are better off tuning out what he has to say.

I don’t have to ‘guess’. From all his prior anti-civil rights rants, Kinzinger-precisely-fits a description of a domestic enemy.

Kinzinger Delivers What Might Be the Dumbest Take on the Second Amendment Ever

I lost whatever respect I might have had for former Congressman Adam Kinzinger when he said he was open a ban on so-called assault weapons in 2022. Since his departure from Congress, Kinzinger has embraced a number of anti-gun proposals, even telling a gathering in Chicago in 2023 that ““Second Amendment people should be on the front line of gun control.” Kinzinger didn’t mean on the front lines defending against gun control. No, he means we should be advocating for “reasonable solutions to gun violence” like banning young adults from keeping and bearing arms.

As dumb as those comments were, they pale in comparison to Kinzinger’s latest invocation of the Second Amendment, which he now insists is about “guaranteeing a state a right to a militia.”

I’m not sure why Gavin Newsome doesn’t activate the rest of his army guard to prevent the president from it or force him to overrule it…. Then fight on the second amendment guaranteeing a state a right to a militia. How can a state have a militia if the president can simply…

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) June 10, 2025
Since that post Kinzinger has doubled down on his hare-brained theory, both on X (where he was quickly rebuked by Charles C.W. Cooke):

This is astonishingly illiterate. See, inter alia, Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 and Article II, Section 2. Moreover, as Scalia noted, it’s precisely *because* the federal government has plenary power here that the individual rights reading of the Second Amendment (the Standard… https://t.co/dSv2vG8oPt

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 10, 2025
and in a post on his Substack, where he argues:

If we believe in the Second Amendment’s invocation of a state-based militia, we need to reconcile it with the uncomfortable truth that the National Guard, as currently structured, doesn’t really fit that mold. Either we redefine what we mean by “militia,” or we face the fact that state-controlled military forces don’t exist in a meaningful way when they can be federalized at will.

Kinzinger probably should have read through the Heller decision before declaring himself an expert on the intricacies of the Second Amendment. As the Supreme Court made clear, the amendment has nothing to do with guaranteeing a state a “right to a militia”. Nor does it require serving in a militia in order to keep and bear arms.

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Why Is Governor Newsom Going Full Jefferson Davis?

Victor Davis Hanson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cut that off?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Not Fascism When We Do It

Hakeem Jeffries is threatening ICE agents.

“Every single ICE agent who’s engaged in this aggressive overreach and are trying to hide their identities from the American people will be unsuccessful in doing that,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference Tuesday.

“This is America. This is not the Soviet Union. We’re not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s. And every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will, of course, be identified.”

 

And this would appear to be illegal.

18 U.S. Code § 119 – Protection of individuals performing certain official duties

In General.—Whoever knowingly makes restricted personal information about a covered person, or a member of the immediate family of that covered person, publicly available—

(1) with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence against that covered person, or a member of the immediate family of that covered person; or

(2) with the intent and knowledge that the restricted personal information will be used to threaten, intimidate, or facilitate the commission of a crime of violence against that covered person, or a member of the immediate family of that covered person,

(2) the term “covered person” means—

a State or local officer or employee whose restricted personal information is made publicly available because of the participation in, or assistance provided to, a Federal criminal investigation by that officer or employee;

ICE agents are covered against these threats that Jeffries made, and I hope Pam Bondi, the US Attorney General, is paying attention. There are those who have lost confidence in Bondi, but right now, she is the best hope conservatives have if we want to see justice applied evenly.

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Tiananmen Square Anniversary: Chinese-American Warns U.S. to Protect Gun Rights

Today is the anniversary of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) troops storming Tiananmen Square to massacre the freedom protesters who had gathered there. A survivor of the CCP’s tyranny who now lives in the U.S. has a message for Americans this anniversary: Don’t give up your guns.

Lily Tang Williams is an American citizen now, an entrepreneur who is running for Congress in New Hampshire. But the self-described “Survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution” remembers all too well the nightmare of Communist rule in China, and on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, she emphasized how vitally important the right to keep and bear arms is in preventing such massacres by dictatorial regimes.

Williams took to X to commemorate the anniversary and reaffirm the United States’ Second Amendment. She included a screenshot of her previous post, which warned that the “champion of all the mass killings in this world is always a tyrannical government.”

 

Her previous post referred to the slaughter by the CCP troops of thousands of students at Tiananmen Square, and expressed regret that the students in 1989 did not have guns like the ones she is able to own now in America. “I am a Chinese immigrant and an American citizen by choice. I once was a slave before and I will never be one again,” Williams wrote.

The U.S. State Department and Secretary Marco Rubio put out a statement, too, honoring the “bravery” of the Chinese freedom protesters and explaining:

In the spring of 1989, tens of thousands of students gathered in Beijing’s largest public square to mourn the passing of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader who tried to steer China toward a more open and democratic system. Their actions inspired a national movement.

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in the capital and throughout China took to the streets for weeks to exercise their freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly by advocating for democracy, human rights, and an end to rampant corruption.

The CCP responded with a brutal crackdown, sending the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to open fire in an attempt to extinguish the pro-democracy sentiments of unarmed civilians gathered on Beijing’s streets and in Tiananmen Square.

The fact that the civilians were unarmed is precisely what Williams was warning about in her statements.

On her website, Williams says, “I grew up under Mao’s cultural revolution in China and fled communism for the freedom of the United States. Now, I fear the country I love is becoming the country I left.” It is a fear that many of us have experienced in recent years as we witnessed the attacks on our rights by the Biden administration, and now the increasing dictatorial activism of the judiciary. But one way to deter government tyranny is to exercise our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, to be ready always to stand up for ourselves and our liberties, as the Founding Fathers were.

Hobbs vetoes bill banning China from owning land in Arizona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Anti-Gun Playbook: How Propaganda Manipulates the Public

I’d like to recommend a little light reading for your weekend, and it won’t cost you a cent. It’s Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, a downloadable 84-page book containing almost all the strategies and tactics employed by the gun control gang.

One thing you will notice is that the Second Amendment gets very little mention, and what it does get is almost entirely about Antonin Scalia’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. McDonald v. City of Chicago gets a brief mention, too.

This isn’t surprising: Knowledgeable gun-control fans know there’s nothing they can do about the Second Amendment itself. The process described in Article V of the U.S. Constitution and the fact that the gun-grabbers would have to persuade 38 states to ratify a new amendment is a barrier to the hopes of all but the most optimistic gun control Pollyannas.

The book came out in 2012, so there’s no mention of Bruen or Rahimi. It was also when the National Rifle Association was riding high and membership was peaking. As you might expect, the NRA is the principal villain in this book, sort of like the Death Star in Star Wars or Godzilla.

The book’s emphasis on emotional appeals as propaganda displays a quite unflattering cynicism. They’re shedding crocodile tears while standing on the bodies of the slain, demanding laws that wouldn’t have saved them.

The books authors emphasize avoidance of “(t)he political food fight in Washington or wonky statistics.” That’s almost humorous, considering how “wonky” the statistics used by Everytown and Giffords really are.

Sources like the Gun Violence Archive inflate the number of mass shootings: So far in 2025, the GVA claims there have been 124 mass shootings in the U.S. while the Violence Prevention Project, which has a far more exhaustively researched database, reports no mass shootings since September last year.

But which number, 124 or zero, is more likely to be on the evening news?

It’s just like the exaggerations in the K-12 School Shooting Database I mentioned in a previous article.

In his classic 1984, George Orwell wrote: “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.”

It’s called the Big Lie. Adolf Hitler also wrote about it in Mein Kampf. The idea is if you’re going to lie, make it a big lie; repeat it frequently. Eventually, the public will come to accept the Big Lie.

How effective is this? In February 2019, Marist conducted a poll of 880 adults. The survey was commissioned by NPR and PBS and covered ‘popular’ gun control laws.

The results were as one would expect: Big numbers for the gun-grabbers’ agenda.

However, the last question on the survey unintentionally affirmed how well the Big Lie works.

The question was: “From what you have heard or read, do you think, compared to 25 years ago, the per capita gun murder rate in the U.S. is higher, lower, or about the same?”

59% of the survey group said the rate had gone up; 23% said it was about the same.

According to data from the FBI and the CDC, over the 25 years from 1994 to 2018, the murder rate plunged 37 percent.

82% of those responding believed something demonstrably untrue.

Was that ever mentioned in the media coverage of the study? No.

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The Good, Bad, and Ugly News on the Fight to De-Regulate Suppressors

The fight over removing suppressors from the National Firearms Act has primarily moved to the Senate for the moment, but there are legal and political battles still being fought over the devices in courthouses and committee chambers, and the Trump administration has given both sides some ammunition in its latest filing in a case called U.S. v. Peterson.

Louisiana resident George Peterson was charged with possession of an unregistered suppressor in 2022, and was found guilty in U.S. District Court. Earlier this year a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit upheld that conviction, ruling that suppressors aren’t protected by the Second Amendment because they’re not “arms”.

Peterson has hired a team of seasoned Second Amendment attorneys including David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and Cody J. Wisniewski to represent him as he seeks an en banc review of the panel’s decision, but in its latest filing the DOJ is still advocating against a broader review by the entire appellate court.

The good news is that the DOJ has, for the first time that I’m aware of, adopted the position that suppressors are, in fact, protected arms under the Second Amendment. In a filing last Friday, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Michael M. Simpson noted that the federal government as “re-evaluated” its previous position.

In the view ofthe United States, the Second Amendment protects firearm accessories and components such as suppressors. As a result, restrictions on the possession of suppressors burden the right to bear arms, and a ban on the possession of suppressors or other similar accessories would be unconstitutional. The government’s earlier argument to the contrary was incorrect.

The bad news is that in that same filing the DOJ contends that the inclusion of suppressors in the National Firearms Act, and indeed the NFA itself, is not an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.

But the National Firearms Act’s registration and taxation requirement is constitutional because it imposes a modest burden on a firearm accessory that is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition because suppressors are specially adaptable to criminal misuse. For this reason, the panel correctly affirmed Peterson’s conviction.

Gun control groups are going to have a field day with the Trump administration’s position that suppressors are “specially adaptable to criminal misuse” at the same time Republicans are trying to de-regulate them. And Second Amendment advocates should be up in arms (so to speak) over Simpson’s contention that the registration and taxing of a constitutionally-protected item are just “modest” burdens on the right to keep and bear arms.

Simpson’s argument that the NFA’s registration requirement is no big deal is extraordinarily bad. Current federal statute bars the government from establishing or maintaining a list of gun owners, but now the DOJ (or at least one U.S. Attorney) is essentially arguing that requiring gun owners to register their arms with the federal government wouldn’t violate the Second Amendment. Simpson takes pains to stress that taxing suppressors is okay because they’re supposedly “pose a special danger of misuse”, but he never really explains why or if registration would apply only to those arms that are especially dangerous (at least in the eyes of the goverment).

Simpson’s take on NFA taxes is also wildly inaccurate. The NFA’s tax requirement was meant to pose a substantial burden on buyers of restricted items, and while a $200 transfer tax and $200 making tax isn’t as cost-prohibitive as it was back in 1934, tacking an additional $400 on the price of a suppressor does mean that some folks will be unable to afford one. But Simpson maintains that those taxes (again, at least when it comes to arms that pose a “special danger of misuse”) “are no more burdensome than a variety of other constitutional regulations, such as the requirements that a firearm purchaser obtain a background check or that a person licensed to carry a firearm undergo safety training and pay a reasonable fee.”

Simpson argues that the $200 transfer tax is “modest”, but he fails to set a threshold for an immodest or unreasonable tax, which gets us to the ugly news surrounding suppressors.

On May 22, during an early morning floor debate over the legislation, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) registered her opposition to the bill. In reference to the suppressor tax reduction, she stated, “then, of course, as we mentioned about the silencers, it’s just beyond comprehension.”

According to the former speaker of the House, it is incomprehensible that lawmakers want to eliminate a prohibitory tax scheme on harmless devices that help their constituents lawfully exercise their Second Amendment rights with reduced risk of hearing damage.

Yet the longtime representative from San Francisco still didn’t manage to provide the worst take of the week. That dubious distinction belongs to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) who argued the current tax on suppressors doesn’t go far enough, and law-abiding Americans already enjoy too much freedom.

In a meeting of the House Rules Committee, Dean claimed to be shocked by the level to which Americans are already exercising their right to keep and bear arms. The congresswoman stated,

You know what the dollars are? It’s $1.4 billion over 10 years. I did the math. That means something like 700,000 silencers are sold in this country a year. That baffles me. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but by the numbers and by the math, that’s what we’re talking about.

Dean took issue with the fact that the suppressor tax has not kept up with inflation and acknowledged its infringing nature: “the tax was used to try to discourage the purchasing of silencers.”

The congresswoman went on to elaborate her preferred scenarios. She said,

If we doubled it, if we just went to $400, you could sell only half as many and not lose a penny in revenue. If we tripled it, you might actually discourage some sales of silencers. Wouldn’t that be a good thing for us to be doing in this committee?

Dean seems to have a better grasp of history than Simpson does, unfortunately. The NFA taxes were absolutely meant to discourage the purchase and possession of restricted items, which is one of the reasons why 2A advocates argue that the National Firearms Act is unconstitutional.

Dean and her fellow Democrats will jack up the transfer and making taxes at the first given opportunity, so it’s critical that the Trump administration not only recognize that suppressors (and I would argue, other NFA items) are protected by the Second Amendment, but that the National Firearms Act cannot be reconciled with our Second Amendment rights.

The DOJ has taken some historic steps to protect and preserve the the right to keep and bear arms under President Trump’s watch, but this is a huge misstep, and one that needs to be rectified going forward. Removing suppressors from the NFA through Trump’s big, beautiful bill would be a big help, but ultimately the administration needs to revise its position on the NFA itself. If not, some of the arguments the DOJ makes over the next four years could prove to be a huge gift to the gun control lobby.