In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.
– Ai Weiwei

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?

Another moron brought an axe to a gunfight. This time he survived though

Monroe County homeowner shoots home invader armed with an axe

UPDATE: Monroe County Sheriff Tom Boatwright said Justin Ray, the man who was allegedly shot by a homeowner as he attempted to break into a home armed with an axe, has been booked into the Monroe County Jail.

MONROE COUNTY, Ala. (WALA) – In the Eureka Landing community early this morning [May 3], a homeowner discharged a firearm in an act of self-defense against a home invader who was armed with an axe, according to the Monroe County sheriff.

Deputies responded to the home shortly after 2:30 a.m., Sheriff Tom Boatwright said. They found the wounded suspect behind the residence.

According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, a resident contacted law enforcement to report that an individual had broken into the home armed with an axe. The homeowner shot the invader, striking the suspect once in the torso, officials said.

The MCSO said emergency medical personnel provided immediate care to the suspect at the scene before transporting him to a nearby hospital. The suspect’s condition was not available.

According to the sheriff, the homeowner is not expected to face charges related to this incident.

“We commend the quick response of our deputies and the homeowner’s decision to defend themselves and their loved ones,” Boatwright stated. “Our investigation is ongoing, and we will release additional information as it becomes available.”

ATF Seeks to Criminalize ‘Pinned and Welded’ Muzzle Devices
Are we honestly dealing with rogue agents or a duplicitous administration?

ATF Seeks to Criminalize ‘Pinned and Welded' Muzzle Devices
Pinned and welded muzzle device. (Photo Provided by Firearms News)

If you’ve been keeping score on gun rights for as long as I have, chances are you were thrilled to show Kamala the door last November, but your expectations for a pro-Second Amendment Trump administration were tempered at best, and increasingly dismal the deeper you looked into it. If that’s how you felt, I’d say you have a realistic perspective. Believe me, I wish I could survive on words and promises, but years spent on this earth have taught me that the most reliable model for predicting future behavior is past behavior.

Another relevant life lesson is to avoid getting sidetracked by distractions, positive or negative, while maintaining focus on the bigger picture. That’s why it comes as no surprise that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is once again targeting gun owners with its “now it’s legal, now it’s not” routine, an all too familiar infringement dance for the firearms community.

We’ve been through this together with bump stocks, pistol braces, FRT triggers, and countless others, but it’s once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, this time concerning the long-since approved practice of pining and welding a muzzle device to a barrel to achieve a “permanent” legal length of at least sixteen inches. (Muzzle devices used in pin-and-weld custom gunsmithing include flash hiders, muzzle brakes, barrel extensions, fake suppressors, etc.) Plans for this new wave of attacks on our Constitutionally protected liberties were uncovered recently due to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Second Amendment advocacy group, Gun Owners of America (GOA).

What GOA has uncovered may seem like yet another rogue agent working against the promises of United States Attorney General Pam Bondi and her big, beautiful boss, the President, but as a subordinate who can easily be fired, something the Trump administration is known for being quite good at, can we really call these actions rogue if the agent still has a job? Ahhh, therein lies the conflict. Suppose our anti-American, anti-Constitution agent still wears an ATF badge. In that case, this person is acting at the behest of superiors, who start to seem either apathetic or straight-up two-faced at some point.

Well, surprise, surprise, she does continue to report for duty at the ATF, and the treasonous little snake is no stranger when it comes to attacking gun rights or being a complete imbecile. So, don’t bother getting up, and please, give a not-so-warm welcome to Eve E. Eisenbice, the subversive reptile behind such hits as claiming a water bottle could be considered a firearm, classifying a cheek rest as a stock in order to charge a gun owner under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), and testifying in court that possession of pillows and potatoes can potentially count as suppressors. I know my sarcasm and abrasive disposition towards these traitors might make you wonder if I’m simply attributing ridiculous hyperbole to Eisenbice’s “career,” but I’m not. She did those things, and really is that stupid and dishonest.

So, how did her latest mastery of the perfidious arts come about? Great question! The ATF’s Firearms Technology Industry Services Branch (FTISB) was involved in a case concerning a Beretta pistol imported by Amchar Wholesale. The firearm in question used the standard blind pin method to pin and weld the muzzle device to the barrel. This involves installing the device, drilling a small hole in it that penetrates slightly into the barrel’s threads, inserting a steel pin to prevent the device from being unscrewed, and then welding over the pin to secure it in place.

What the ATF did in this case was place the pistol in a bench vise, attach a breaker bar, and apply an obscene amount of torque. What this accomplishes causes permanent damage that will require the firearm to be rebarreled to function once again as it was meant to. That is precisely what the agency did. They broke the gun in order to say that the muzzle device did not meet the permanent requirement.

Unfortunately, this is the best and safest method to permanently affix a muzzle device, as welding its circumference directly to the barrel can damage the heat treatment, raising safety concerns due to the likelihood of a catastrophic failure. And let’s be clear, any monkey with a breaker bar can destroy a firearm the way the ATF did. It’s simple physics. But the fact remains that a pinned and welded muzzle device cannot be removed without modification or destruction of the barrel’s integrity.

You may be reading this, wondering if we haven’t yet found the right loophole to avoid having a barrel slightly shorter than sixteen inches not count as a short-barreled rifle (SBR) under the NFA, requiring an onerous paperwork and approval process along with an illegal tax stamp on a Constitutional right to the tune of $200. The problem is that this pin-and-weld method isn’t a loophole. It is a lawfully approved and widely used practice, as confirmed by a 2006 letter from the ATF.

If the ATF continues to be allowed to run roughshod over law-abiding gun owners like they have ad nauseam, the results could be quite terrifying. Legally compliant rifles could become illegally possessed NFA items overnight, a charge that carries a hefty prison sentence. This is a horrifying manner of destroying the lives of Americans and their families at the treacherous impulse of dishonest government employees and agencies, and it’s all happening under the noses of senior officials like Pam Bondi, Daniel P. Driscoll, acting director of the ATF, and President Trump himself.

What’s worse is that the solution is so simple. It involves little more than a flick of the pen and less than a minute of conversation. What is that solution? Fire this loser. And I mean 100% out on her ass. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. A fortuitous tax stamp reference, perhaps? No benefits, no pension, just a straight march to the unemployment line and a good riddance salute. So why the crickets from our supposed Second Amendment crusading leaders? That can only be answered one way if they don’t take swift action. They are complicit, by order or by turning a blind eye. It doesn’t matter which one, because either scenario is a death knell for any more fake talk from the administration and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

My final thoughts on the subject concern the fact that this conversation should never have reached the ears of any American. First of all, the Second Amendment is neither long, convoluted, nor complex. It requires no interpretation from the literate. Second, for a barrel to meet the arbitrary sixteen-inch legal rifle length with a pinned and welded muzzle device, it typically needs to be between 13.9 inches and 14.5 inches. Is 2.1 inches or any such measurement really what we’re spending millions to litigate and destroying lives over? The NFA itself is a significant stain on the integrity of the American government and the oaths taken by politicians and judges to preserve and defend the Constitution. As long as it exists, alongside all other gun laws on the books, including the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) and the Hughes Amendment in 1986, these charlatans will continue to soil the sacrifices of so many brave Americans who paid the ultimate price for our freedom and liberty.