Category: Cowardice

2024 Republican Platform Drops Gun-Rights Promises

In its first official platform since 2016, the Grand Old Party (GOP) slashed all mention of its gun policy positions.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) Platform Committee voted 84-to-18 on Monday to adopt the new 2024 platform language after skipping the process entirely in 2020. The finalized document leans into former President Donald Trump’s “America First” outlook and parrots many of his stances on issues ranging from immigration to trade. However, it also minimized the party’s emphasis on gun policy compared to its previous platform.

The entire platform discusses gun rights just once, in a preamble statement about the party’s dedication to defending “our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.” The final product omits any discussion of tangible gun policy ideas.

The Republican Party platform’s downplaying of Second Amendment issues comes as the gun-rights movement finds itself in a precarious position politically. As guns have become increasingly polarized along party lines, gun-rights supporters have found themselves reliant on Republicans for political support. President Joe Biden has made gun control a fixture of his tenure in office and is already campaigning on even more sweeping proposals, including a ban on sales of the popular AR-15, in a potential second term. At the same time, while the GOP’s current standard-bearer has continued to seek the support of the National Rifle Association and make promises in speeches to the group, he has been fickle on gun policy at times. His felony convictions also mean he can no longer legally own or possess firearms.

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Supreme Court Sidesteps Pending Gun Cases

The Supreme Court has decided against providing further guidance on the Second Amendment—at least for now.

The High Court released its final orders list for the term on Tuesday. It featured the Justices’ decision to grant, vacate, and remand (GVR) seven cases dealing with laws prohibiting specific people from having guns back to the lower courts for new decisions. They also vacated and remanded a case dealing with New York’s concealed carry restrictions and denied a request to review a collection of cases on Illinois’ ban on the sale of AR-15s and other popular firearms.

The orders list is the earliest indication of how active the Court plans to be on the Second Amendment moving forward. After a session that featured three gun-related cases—but just one Second Amendment case—the Court’s decision to kick the can on addressing a series of outstanding questions suggests a limited appetite among the Justices for further refinement of its Bruen test at this time.

The Court left little concrete evidence of its thinking in deciding against taking up the pending gun cases. Only the petition denial for the six separate lawsuits challenging the state and municipal “assault weapon” and magazine bans in Illinois featured comments. Justice Samuel Alito noted that he would have voted to review the cases immediately. Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a statement urging the Court to take up the issue once it receives a case that has advanced through the entire appellate process.

“This Court is rightly wary of taking cases in an interlocutory posture,” he wrote. “But, I hope we will consider the important issues presented by these petitions after the cases reach final judgment. We have never squarely addressed what types of weapons are ‘Arms’ protected by the Second Amendment.”

The decision to hold off on reviewing the constitutionality of Illinois’ hardware bans is likely to disappoint gun-rights advocates, who have long sought the High Court’s opinion on bans on popular firearms like the AR-15. However, the Court’s decision to sidestep the question of gun rights for felons and other prohibiting categories is also likely to frustrate the Biden administration.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) had previously asked the Court to address whether the federal gun bans for drug users and felons were constitutional after two separate federal appeals courts struck them down as applied to particular defendants. In United States v. Daniels, the Fifth Circuit held the federal drug user gun ban unconstitutional as applied to a specific non-violent marijuana user. In Garland v. Range, an en banc panel for the Third Circuit struck down the felon-in-possession ban as applied to a man with a 30-year-old conviction for lying to get food stamps.

After the Supreme Court upheld the federal gun ban for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders in last month’s U.S. v. Rahimi decision, the DOJ was unsatisfied with the guidance they offered. It again urged the Court to issue a decision on whether it can legally disarm felons under the Second Amendment.

“Although this Court’s decision in Rahimi corrects some of the methodological errors made by courts that have held Section 922(g)(1) invalid, it is unlikely to fully resolve the existing conflict,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote.

“The substantial costs of prolonging uncertainty about the statute’s constitutionality outweigh any benefits of further percolation,” she added. “Under these circumstances, the better course would be to grant plenary review now.”

Instead, the Justices sent Range, Daniels, and five other related cases back down to their respective circuit courts “for further consideration in light of United States v. Rahimi.”

So 3, 4 or 5 years down the road, after the cases are appealed at the 7th circuit – again – SCOTUS might take an appeal. The ultimate purpose of the Supreme Court was to decide ‘cases and controversies’, and yet, they kick the can down the road, to what end, who knows.

U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenges to Illinois Assault Weapons Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a series of challenges to Illinois’ ban on assault weapons, leaving the controversial law in place for now but indicating potential future involvement, WTTW and The Center Square are reporting. The decision comes after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban last November, stating that “even the most important personal freedoms have their limits.”

In a Tuesday order, the high court denied petitions for writs of certiorari in six cases challenging the ban. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, expressing a willingness to take up the issue once the cases reach final judgment. Justice Thomas wrote, “if the Seventh Circuit ultimately allows Illinois to ban America’s most common civilian rifle, we can — and should — review that decision once the cases reach a final judgment.”

The Illinois ban, part of the Protect Illinois Communities Act, was enacted in response to the tragic mass shooting at a Highland Park July 4 parade in 2022, where a gunman using an AR-15-style rifle killed seven people. The law prohibits the purchase and sale of firearms and accessories classified as assault weapons and imposes limits on magazine capacities for both handguns and long guns. Existing owners of these firearms were required to register them with the Illinois State Police by the end of 2023.

Justice Thomas criticized the Seventh Circuit’s decision, calling it “nonsensical” and arguing that common semiautomatic firearms like the AR-15 are protected under the Second Amendment. He cited his dissent in a similar 2015 case, Friedman v. City of Highland Park, to support his position.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear these cases leaves unresolved a significant legal question about the extent of Second Amendment protections. The Seventh Circuit’s ruling found that the guns and high-capacity magazines regulated under the Protecting Illinois Communities Act “lie on the military side of that line and thus are not within the class of Arms protected by the Second Amendment.”

Justice Thomas responded, “In my view, Illinois’ ban is ‘highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes,’” adding that it is difficult to see how the Seventh Circuit could have concluded that the most widely owned semiautomatic rifles are not “Arms” protected by the Second Amendment.

While this decision denies immediate relief to the challengers, it sets the stage for a potential future Supreme Court review. The focus now shifts to the Southern District of Illinois federal court, where four consolidated gun ban challenges are expected to move forward with a bench trial scheduled for September 16 in East St. Louis.

Supreme Court Silent on Illinois Gun Ban Lawsuits

Now that the Supreme Court has released its opinions in Garland v. Cargill and U.S. v. Rahimi, the expectations about today’s Orders from Conference were pretty high. The Court has been hanging on to a half-dozen prohibited person cases as well as six combined challenges to the gun and magazine bans that are a part of the Protect Illinois Communities Act, and with Cargill and Rahimi now a part of the record, the assumption was that the justices would have decided to do something with these cases in last week’s conference.

Well, you know what they say about assuming things.

In today’s orders from last week’s conference the Court did grant, vacate, and remand one case that’s been on hold; Guedes v. ATF, an FPC Action Foundation lawsuit dealing with the ATF’s bump stock ban. The Court remanded Guedes back to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had previously upheld the ATF rule, for further reconsideration in light of its ruling in Cargill.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has basically been put on notice that it got it wrong in Guedes, and is now being given the chance to rectify its error.

But what about Range, which deals with whether someone convicted of a non-violent misdemeanor punishable by more than a year in prison can be prohibited forevermore from purchasing or possessing a firearm? Or Daniels, which challenges the federal statute barring “unlawful” users of drugs from legally possessing a gun? I expected those cases to be GVR’ed as well today, and it doesn’t make much sense to hold on to them for another week or more. Maybe there are one or more justices writing a dissent?

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Vermont’s Republican governor allows ghost gun bill to become law without his signature

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has allowed a bill to become law that requires serial numbers on firearms that are privately made with individual parts, kits or 3D printers.

Scott allowed the bill, part of an effort to crack down on hard-to-trace ghost guns that are increasingly showing up in crimes, to become law without his signature. He said in a letter to lawmakers Tuesday that while he agrees that firearms should be serialized as a public safety measure, he has concerns about the law’s “practicality and impact.”

“Over the last decade, as anti-policing policies increased and criminal accountability has steadily decreased, violent crime has grown in Vermont,” Scott wrote. “This is why I believe we should instead focus on measures that will reverse these trends over those, like S.209, that are unlikely to have any measurable impact on violent crime.”

Supporters of the measure in the Democratic-controlled Legislature have said it’s critical for Vermont to keep the weapons out of the hands of people who aren’t allowed to have firearms. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to take up a Biden administration appeal over the regulation of the difficult-to-trace ghost guns.

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The 2A Case That SCOTUS Might Not be Able to Resist

Since Bruen was decided almost two years ago, the Supreme Court has turned away every gun control challenge presented by Second Amendment advocates. Sure, most of those cases were submitted before final judgment, and SCOTUS has accepted several cases brought by the DOJ, but there are a lot of gun owners who are understandably frustrated that the Court has been unwilling to step in and smack down post-Bruen carry restrictions, bans on commonly owned firearms, and other infringements that are having a daily impact on millions of Americans.

A cert petition just filed with the Supreme Court may prove to be irresistible to at least four of the justices, however. The case is known as Wilson v. Hawaii, but you might remember it as the case where the Hawaii Supreme Court invoked the “law of the paddle” to declare that Hawaii’s state constitution doesn’t protect an individual right to keep and bear arms despite the fact that its language contains the almost the exact same wording as the Second Amendment.

Christopher Wilson was convicted of the “crime” of carrying a firearm without a license back in 2017, when Hawaiian licensing authorities were routinely denying any and all concealed carry applications under the state’s “may issue” law. Wilson’s public defenders acknowledge he was bearing arms, but argue there was no chance at all for Wilson to receive a license, which is why he never applied for one.

Mr. Wilson did not have a license to carry his pistol. That year county police chiefs throughout Hawai’i issued licenses to carry to 225 employees at private security firms. Fourteen “private citizens” applied for a concealed carry license and the police chiefs in every county denied them all.

The fact that only fourteen residents in the entire state applied for a carry license that year is telling, especially given the surge in applications once the state’s “may issue’ regime was deemed unconstitutional. It was seen as a waste of time and money to apply for a concealed carry permit back then, but an untold number of residents may still have been carrying in the belief that their right of armed self-defense was worth the legal risk they were incurring.

A trial court actually sided with Wilson and dismissed the charges, but prosecutors appealed to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court opinion and reinstated the charges against him. That was the decision crafted by Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins, who claimed that there is no individual right to keep and bear arms under Hawaii’s constitution. Instead, Eddins and the rest of the court maintained that any right that exists is one that can only be exercised collectively by a state militia.

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John Kirby Says Israel Can’t Eliminate An Ideology With Force. History Disagrees.

In the 12th century, the Christian dualist movement Catharism began spreading across northern Italy and southern France. It was neither the first nor the last heretical challenge to orthodox Christianity in medieval Europe — as Catholics can surely attest.

In any event, the Cathars essentially believed, among many other heresies, in two gods: one of eternal heaven and another of worldly evil. The belief became so popular that Pope Innocent III, apparently not a fan of religious liberty, was compelled to launch the Albigensian Crusade to stamp out this theological perversion. Hundreds of thousands likely perished. In one French Cathar city, 20,000 people were reported slaughtered under papal legate.

I thought of the Cathars, as one does, when Kirby responded to a question about the United States’ support for Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas with his popular trope — “You’re not going to eliminate an ideology through military operations.” Unlike the Albigensian Crusaders, of course, Israel is taking unprecedented precautions to protect the civilian life of their enemies — even though Hamas, unlike medieval Christians, hides behind them.

The worst part of Kirby’s platitudinous nonsense, however, is that it creates the impression Israel is trying to eliminate an entire “ideology” rather than trying to eradicate an organized military and cultural force that uses theology for violent political aims. Of course Israel can’t bore into the souls of Gazans and transform them into right-thinking people. It can destroy Hamas’ hold on territory and render its ideology largely useless. It can bring the purveyors of Hamas ideology to justice and eradicate their military capabilities. For now, that’s good enough.

Moreover, if fighting wars to defend enlightened ideas against nefarious ones is really such a waste of time, why are we sending hundreds of billions to Ukraine to fight Putinst aggression? We are incessantly assured that the European war is a battle between “autocracy” and “democracy.” These are ideological camps. If Volodymyr Zelensky could strike a debilitating blow to Putin’s political power, would Kirby contend it was a waste of time?

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A separate eyewitness video, verified by Reuters and taken in the aftermath of the incident, shows the man being pinned to the ground by several others, his face obscured. A voice speaks in Arabic and says: “If they didn’t insult my prophet, I wouldn’t have come here. If he didn’t involve himself in my religion, I would not have come here.”
Authorities disclosed no motive for the attack and have not identified the suspect.

Australia church stabbing: bishop wounded, 15-year-old arrested

SYDNEY, April 15 (Reuters) – At least four people were wounded, including a bishop with a global online following, in a knife attack during a service at a church in a suburb of Sydney on Monday, police and witnesses said, triggering clashes between angry residents and police.
Police said they arrested a 15-year-old male at the scene and were forced to hold him at the church in Wakeley, a suburb about 30 km (18 miles) west of downtown Sydney, for his own safety after a crowd gathered outside and demanded the attacker be brought out.

It was the second major stabbing attack in just three days after six people were killed in a knife attack at a beachside mall in the Bondi area.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of the Assyrian Christ The Good Shepherd Church was speaking during an evening service on Monday when a man walked towards him and lunged with a knife, according to video of the event captured from a livestream on the church’s social media page.

Horrified members of the congregation scream as the man stabs the priest several times in the head and chest, the videos show. A separate eyewitness video, verified by Reuters and taken in the aftermath of the incident, shows the man being pinned to the ground by several others, his face obscured. A voice speaks in Arabic and says: “If they didn’t insult my prophet, I wouldn’t have come here. If he didn’t involve himself in my religion, I would not have come here.”

Authorities disclosed no motive for the attack and have not identified the suspect.

Two witnesses told Reuters the crowd threw rocks at police. More than 100 police officers were ultimately called in to deal with the unrest, and two were taken to hospital with injuries, police said. Reuters saw two men pepper sprayed.

 

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Joe Biden Is a Sniveling, Unabashed Coward

Joe Biden is a coward in every sense of the word. Cowardice emanates from him like rotting garbage. Cowardice overflows his speeches like a drain backing up from a clogged sewer line. Cowardice infects everything he touches. The well from which he extracts his cowardice is truly bottomless. To witness it, in its shameless, reeking putrescence, is utterly cringeworthy.

There is nothing beneath the man. There is nothing he won’t say or do to retain power. This is true of many politicians, but most understand in some Machiavellian sense that at least some show of strength, however artificial, is required from time to time. Even Barack Obama had a moral compass that, on rare occasions, would spring to life just long enough to effect confident, decisive decisions like killing Osama bin Laden (you should recall that everyone in the room except Biden supported the move, a point of shame about which he brags).

Over the years, Biden’s media quislings have laughably associated many virtuous adjectives with him in efforts to fortify his reputation. Decent. Moderate. Accomplished. Steady. Lucid. It is telling that nobody, not even the most ludicrous of leftist outlets, has ever called him brave.

That’s with good reason. And anybody still quietly harboring that delusion before this past weekend just got the red pill they needed. His betrayal of Israel should cement for any fence-sitters what the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians already knew full well: that Biden has all the spine of a common garden worm.

To recap, Iran fired roughly three hundred weapons at Israel, the first time that Iran has attacked Israel directly rather than through its regional proxies. At this, I must make two observations before moving on. First, the “drone” attack on Israel included 100 ballistic missiles. Second, the Iranian strikes against Israel weren’t “retaliatory.” They were part of a half-century Iranian policy of exterminating the Jewish nation of Israel. The Hamas attack of October 7 was this policy in action. By definition, any strike by Israel against Iran is retaliatory, not vice versa.

Back to the point. Less than a day after the unprecedented attack, Biden allegedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “that we have to think carefully and strategically” about the risks of escalation. An Islamic terrorist regime just fired 300 drones and missiles at an allied democracy to achieve its stated goal of finishing the job that Hitler started. But we wouldn’t want to risk escalation, would we?

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any excuse….

Proposed legislation on two gun law changes scrapped in Missouri after parade shooting

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Legislation that would allow firearms in churches and other places of worship with a concealed carry permit will be scrapped in this year’s Missouri legislative session.

In addition, proposed legislation that would provide a sales tax exemption for firearms and ammunition sales also will not get a vote during the session.

Sales tax opponents claim “that this bill is intended to preserve our second amendment rights. Taxation on firearms and ammunition is an infringement on our right to bear arms. Therefore, it is unconstitutional to tax firearms and ammunition. This bill specifies that firearms and ammunition sold in this state are exempt from state and local sales tax.”

Opponents of the sales tax exemption claim “sales tax on firearms and ammunition is very important for funding necessities like public infrastructure and city services. Opponents further stated that this is not an infringement on a constitutional right, but is merely a tax on a product. Opponents stated that they would be opposed to any sales tax reduction.”

Rep. Jonathan Patterson, Republican Majority Floor Leader. said in a statement that “while I do think both proposals are worthy of debate, they have no path to becoming law at this point. “Now is not the appropriate time to be taking up those bills and therefore they will not be brought up this session.”

This comes after the mass shooting at Wednesday’s after the Chiefs Champions Victory Parade and rally at Union Station.

The gunfire killed well-known DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan and wounded more than 20 others.

Two juveniles have been charged in connection with the shootings.

“The juveniles are currently detained in secure detention at the Juvenile Detention Center on gun related and resisting arrest charges,” according to a statement from the 16th Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri – Jackson County Family Court Division. “It is anticipated that additional charges are expected in the future as the investigation by the Kansas City Police Department continues.”

In addition, Jose Castillo, was charged in Jackson County Court with unlawful possession of a firearm.

Castillo is set for a bond hearing on Feb. 26.

 

A Lack of Deterrence Leads to More American Deaths.

President Biden, and his Secretary of Defense have announced a major change in US policy: As a result of the Iranian attack on Tower 22 that killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded scores more, they are going to begin protecting US troops! Don’t believe me? Here it is from the horse’s mouth at Secretary Austin’s February 1 press conference: “The President will not tolerate attacks on American troops, and neither will I.”

Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? After tolerating attacks on American troops since . . . oh, about January 20, 2021, we now have a dramatic change in policy. We have gone from “Don’t, don’t, don’t!” to “We are not going to tolerate this anymore, but we don’t want a wider war.”        

But, do they mean it, or is it more pablum to placate the masses? Read on and judge for yourself.

BIDEN’S PRIOR POLICY OF TOLERATION, WEAKNESS AND APPEASEMENT

Biden true believers may claim that this is not a change in policy, that his administration really has not been tolerating attacks on our troops. To test that, we should do as Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, advised: Look at what they have done, not what they say. What they have done is tolerate the more than 200 attacks on our troops that have occurred on Biden watch without any kind of meaningful response. And don’t fall into the trap of accepting just the lowball statistics by counting only the 160+ attacks since October 7, 2023, as the press has been doing.

In fact, there have been far more attacks on our troops than the press is now reporting. Between the time of Biden’s inauguration and up to October 7, attacks on our troops in Iraq and Syria were commonplace. General Jack Keane pegs it at 80 from published reports.  But that figure is low because during this administration, attacks on our forces became so commonplace that all of them were not reported in the press. They have included attacks by fire using 107 mm and 122 mm rockets, as well as UAV (drone)-delivered munitions. And although it is not widely known or reported, our forces also have been targeted with cluster munitions. Disgracefully, our troops on the ground enduring these attacks have not been allowed to engage in any meaningful response.

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As Times Square Machete Attacker Pleads Guilty, Authorities Still Refuse to Face His Motive

When Trevor Bickford was 19 years old, on Dec. 31, 2022, he ventured to Times Square along with multitudes of New Year’s Eve revelers, but he was not interested in joining the festivities. Instead, he attacked three NYPD officers with a machete. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to three charges of attempted murder, and while his motive is abundantly clear, authorities appear to be completely indifferent about what its implications are for the future.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Bickford, who came down to Times Square from his home in Wells, Maine, said this as he entered his guilty plea: “On Dec. 31, 2022, I attempted to kill three NYPD officers with a knife while they were working in Manhattan. I know what I did was wrong and I’m sorry.” That’s swell, but it would have been more helpful if young Bickford had explained why exactly he was sorry now for an act that he carried out in accord with his newfound beliefs and ideology.

AP added that Bickford “shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ — the Arabic phrase for God is great — before striking the officers in the head with the machete and trying to grab an officer’s gun, authorities said. One officer suffered a fractured skull.”

AP’s explanation was inaccurate: While most media outlets routinely translate “Allahu akbar” as “God is great,” it actually means “Allah is greater.” That is, the god of Islam is superior to anything that non-Muslims worship or hold dear. This declaration of superiority frequently accompanies acts that are designed to enforce the subjugation and submission of the non-believer or “infidel,” amounting to a kind of explanation of why a particular act of violence is being perpetrated.

It was unusually forthright of this far-left news service to bother to mention the politically incorrect fact that Bickford shouted this at all. AP even went so far as to add that “authorities say he had studied radical Islamic ideology and decided to wage jihad against U.S. officials.”

Yet while AP was unusually forthright about Bickford’s motive, Bickford himself may have been trying to obscure it: “At the outset of the hearing,” AP tells us, “Bickford said he was taking three medications for treatment of schizoaffective disorder.” In Europe, it is extremely common for clear cases of jihad violence to be dismissed as mental illness, with the perpetrators hospitalized rather than imprisoned.

There was no doubt, however, when Bickford was arrested. He had a handwritten note in his backpack, asking his family to “please repent to Allah and accept Islam.” To his mother, Bickford wrote: “I fear greatly that you will not repent to Allah. And therefore I hold hope in my heart that a piece of you believes so that you may be taken out to [sic] the hellfire.” To his brother, he likewise wrote: “Please repent to Allah and accept Islam. I fear for you.” To another brother in the Marines, he added: “You have joined the ranks of my enemy. And for that I can give you no kind words – return to Allah.”

As Bickford pleaded guilty, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Kushner said that there was “‘no doubt’ that he attacked the officers because they were military-age men….She said Bickford had intended to kill ‘as many as possible’ of the men in uniform that he came across.” She added that he had “originally intended to go overseas and fight alongside terrorists there but eventually decided to carry out an attack in the United States instead. She said he told investigators that he had walked around Times Square before the attack, ‘trying to figure out the right time to kill.’”

The big question that remains is where Trevor Bickford, who converted to Islam not long before his machete attack, learned all this. Was it at a mosque? Was it from Muslims in his area? Authorities should study carefully what they are almost certainly ignoring, such as the questions of how and where this young man converted to Islam, and how he got the idea that his new religion, which non-Muslim authorities all over the Western world assure us is completely peaceful and tolerant, commanded him to consider non-Muslims enemies and violently attack them.

These questions are never asked, much less answered, despite the fact that converts to Islam turning to jihad violence is a distressingly common phenomenon. American intelligence and law enforcement officials don’t want to do anything to give the impression that they don’t accept the dogma that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The fact that converts to Islam such as Trevor Bickford have somehow gotten exactly the opposite idea doesn’t ever make authorities pause and reflect upon their core assumptions.

Nashville Mayor Furious Over Leak of Transgender Shooter’s Manifesto, Demands Investigation

After months of false promises regarding the release of transgender shooter Audrey Hale’s infamous manifesto, parts of the document finally leaked on Monday.

Hale committed mass murder in March, killing six people, including three children, at a Nashville Christian school. Further carnage was stopped by police officers who quickly arrived on the scene and stormed the building in order to eliminate the threat.

Steven Crowder obtained pictures of Hale’s manifesto, and they revealed disturbing new details about her motives. In one instance, she described those she was about to go kill as “little crackers.” In another, she ranted about the supposed “white privilege” (she misspelled the latter word) of the children who attended the Christian school.

In response, Nashville’s Democrat mayor appears to be furious. He immediately demanded an investigation into who leaked the manifesto, claiming that the release threatens the security of “Nashvillians who are grieving.”

Following the leak of the transgender Nashville shooter’s alleged manifesto on Monday morning, Mayor Freddie O’Connell said that the city has launched an investigation into how the images of the writings were released.

“I have directed Wally Dietz, Metro’s Law Director, to initiate an investigation into how these images could have been released. That investigation may involve local, state, and federal authorities. I am deeply concerned with the safety, security, and well-being of the Covenant families and all Nashvillians who are grieving,” O’Connell said in a statement, according to WSMV.

If there was any question about whether the photos released by Crowder were real, this answers them. You don’t start an investigation into the leak of something that doesn’t exist.

Still, it’s odd to see Mayor Freddie O’Connell so upset with the fact that this went public. How does knowing the killer’s state of mind and possible motive put anyone in Nashville at risk? Aubrey Hale is no longer among the living, having been dispatched the day of the shooting.

While the topic is obviously very sensitive, it is fair to ask why those in charge have taken such desperate measures to keep this information out of the public eye. Given that manifestos are very often released in other cases, specifically when the shooters fit a certain profile, why only in this case are things expected to be different? One would be forgiven for suspecting that politics is playing a role in this case.

I can’t think of any legitimate reason why the shooter’s anti-white racism should have been kept a secret for nearly the past year. Even if the authorities wanted to not release the actual wording out of concern for the families involved, the public should have been made aware of the situation with a basic description. Instead, false promises were made in what appears to be an attempt to completely memory-hole the entire ordeal.

Meanwhile, the mainstream press doesn’t seem interested in reporting on the matter at all. We know from past instances that they’ve jumped all over other shooter manifestos, but they aren’t interested in this one for some reason. Again, one would be forgiven for suspecting that politics is at the root of that decision.

Weird, but this still doesn’t stop people from making their own personal guns from scratch, if they want to.

Supreme Court allows Biden administration to continue fully enforcing ghost gun regulations

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Biden administration to continue regulating so-called ghost guns – untraceable homemade weapons – as firearms under federal law.

The court’s brief order grants the Justice Department’s request to wipe away a lower court order and allow the regulations to remain in effect while a legal challenge brought by firearm manufacturers continues to play out in the lower courts.

There were no noted dissents to the order.

Ghost guns are kits that a user can buy online to assemble a fully functional firearm. They have no serial numbers, do not require background checks and provide no transfer records for easy traceability. Critics say they are attractive to people who are legally prohibited from buying firearms.

In the Justice Department’s emergency application to the justices, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar pointed out that a district court judge had essentially ignored an order the Supreme Court issued just two months ago.

Back in August, a 5-4 court sided with the Biden administration in a challenge brought by a group of manufacturers and allowed the regulations to remain in effect while legal challenges play out. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberal justices in the government’s favor.

After the order was issued, however, a district court judge based in Texas stepped in to block the regulations as applied to two manufacturers. The injunction was then largely upheld by the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an unusually sharp filing, Prelogar told the justices in an emergency application that the district court and the 5th Circuit “have effectively countermanded this Court’s authoritative determination about the status quo that should prevail during appellate proceedings in this case.”

The court “should not tolerate that affront,” she wrote.

“Although there’s no explanation for today’s ruling, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a repudiation of the lower courts for not correctly reading the tea leaves of the court’s August ruling that froze a similar injunction,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “In that sense, it’s just the latest in an increasing line of rulings by the Supreme Court pushing back against district courts in Texas and the 5th Circuit.”

Prelogar called the lower court ruling “a grave threat to public safety because the lack of background checks makes ghost guns uniquely appealing to felons, minors, and other prohibited persons – and because when ghost guns are inevitably used in crime, they are essentially impossible to trace.”
In 2022, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives updated its regulations to define the kits as firearms under the law so that the government could more carefully track them.

The rule does not prohibit the sale or possession of any ghost gun kit, nor does it block an individual from purchasing such a kit. Instead, it requires compliance with federal laws that impose conditions on the commercial sale of firearms. Those conditions include requirements that commercial manufacturers and sellers mark products with serial numbers and keep records to allow law enforcement to trace firearms used in crimes.

demoncrap SOP for decades; Throw money at the problem.

Appeasement in Real Time
Biden and Blinken pay the Dane-Geld

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:–

For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

Rudyard Kipling, Dane-Geld (closing verses).

LESSONS OF MUNICH – WEAKNESS INVITES AGGRESSION.

Showing weakness has long been regarded as an invitation to aggression and war. Perhaps the most infamous example in modern history is Neville Chamberlain’s sit-down with Adolph Hitler in Munich in 1938, where he agreed to appease Hitler by agreeing to Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland, in exchange for “peace for our time.”

But history has taught us that, like paying the Dane-Geld, such appeasement is more likely to cause war and indescribable suffering than it is to prevent it.  Despite those blood-soaked lessons, the appeasement gene continues to proliferate among cowardly politicians. 

There are countless examples of this in modern history, but it is beyond the scope of this short article to attempt to catalogue them here.  Each reader will think of examples.

Often the end results of policy decisions and statements, and how they invite more aggression and war, are not fully apparent until sometime later when it is too late because the damage has already occurred.  Joe Biden’s statement that a limited Russian invasion of Ukraine might be somewhat tolerable or at least met with dissention among the Western allies, is a good example.  Predicting what Russia would do, he said, “it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.” Even though Biden and his handlers tried to “walk back” (the press’ euphemism of correcting a dumb statement) that invitation, the damage was already done – Biden had sent a signal to Putin of his thinking, and it was a signal of weakness.

To the extent that we can, it therefore is important to call out such projections of weakness and appeasement in real time, as they are occurring. Because of the homicidal intent of the Islamists in the Mideast – indeed, across the globe – it is of over-riding importance to shine a light – no, to focus, focus and focus – on the most recent examples of this appeasement that are certain to cause more bloodshed, not only in Israel and the Mideast, but in the United States, Europe, and other countries worldwide.

I am referring to the blatant lies and craven cowardice by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his ostensible boss, Joe Biden, which have further encouraged Iran in its support for its and its proxies’ murderous jihad against Israel (and potentially the U.S. and Europe) about the supposed non-involvement of Iran in the barbaric atrocities Hamas is perpetrating upon Israeli civilians. These are not civilian “collateral damage” caused by bombing, when Hamas attempts to hide among civilian shields or has situated its arms caches near hospitals and mosques.  And, contrary to some attempts by our media to equate the two, they most decidedly are not in any way comparable to the IDF’s targeting and killing of the barbaric Hamas fighters terrorists.

Blinken led off on Sunday, October 8, with his claim that our government has no evidence that Iran is behind Hamas’ bloody and barbaric attacks on women, girls, babies, and other civilians. And his weasel-worded statement encourages both Iran and Hamas with its blatant evasions and flat-out lies.

BLINKEN’S WEASEL-WORDED EVASIONS AND DENIALS

 Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union.  Blinken said, “In this moment, we don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out.” “In this specific instance, we have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack.”

What a weasel-worded evasion.

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