The Totalitarian Impulse Buckley Knew

I’ve just finished reading Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, a forthcoming biography of National Review founder William F. Buckley by Sam Tanenhaus. It is a magnificent, absorbing work about a man known as the father of postwar American conservatism, and one that will lead to a lot of debate when it is published early next month.

That debate will be good, as there is much to consider when thinking about a figure like Buckley today. The book itself is over 1,000 pages, and it’s best to break it down into parts. Naturally, Buckley was disliked by the left, and he was right about the nature of communism. Yet Buckley also has critics on the right. Many consider that over time Buckley kicked out too many real conservatives from of the movement he helped to found—conservatives like Pat Buchanan, who turned out to be right about many issues, such as immigration. Many of today’s conservative’s also suggest that Buckley’s errors led to the sad state of affairs at today’s National Review, a magazine that has become practically irrelevant.

For the purposes of this first part of the review, however, I’d like to focus on the things Buckley got right. Namely, communism and the totalitarian nature of the American left. The most important paragraph in Buckley appears in a section that takes place in the early 1960s. Buckley was debating Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an advisor to President Kennedy. Schlesinger thought that whenever dictatorships arose in the modern era it was “because democratic government is too weak, not because it is too strong.” The best way to prevent totalitarianism was for the government to create economic prosperity and social equality, providing “a minimum national standard to save individuals from intolerable handicaps.” Tanenhaus explains Buckley’s reaction:

This might sound good, Buckley countered, but in reality, Schlesinger and others were concealing their true intentions, their “intellectual desire to redirect society. Even if every citizen had a million dollars, John Kenneth Galbraith would still find a need for government action….There are in motion today forces that want to drain our power into a reservoir. I hope someday Mr. Schlesinger will turn in horror on the system he has abetted.”

Here Buckley gets to the heart of the matter. The left wants revolution and totalitarian control. Period. If every house had a full refrigerator and every American had a job, they would still be calling for revolution. To think otherwise is naïve.

Continue reading “”

While it is better than nothing, I don’t really know just how “good” this actually is compared to what we could get by pushing these goofball politicians a little harder.
As it is my Rep -Burlison- is hardcore pro-RKBA already.

Sometimes We Have to Take the Good When the Perfect Isn’t an Option

When Donald Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term in November, along with GOP control of Congress, all of us who care about gun rights once again got stars in our eyes. Visions of 50-state carry reciprocity and silencers being sold at Harbor Freight and Home Depot danced in our heads.

That was fun and all and the requisite bills were written and introduced in Congress. Some of it was done in earnest and some of it was nothing more than performative fan service by politicians who knew good and well that the legislation was as doomed as the Cretaceous dinos who saw that big flaming rock hurtling toward them 65 million years ago.

In other words, we’d all like to have national reciprocity. And we’d all like to see suppressors delisted from the NFA. But given the realities of razor thin majorities in both the House and the Senate, along with pathetically few politicians with spines of sufficient stiffness to make any of that happen, it’s just not happening. We’d love to tell you there’s a realistic chance that either will come to pass, but we don’t make it a practice to lie to our readers. Still, isn’t it pretty to think so?

Over the weekend, our friends at Ammoland published a story about what’s happening with the Hearing Protection Act in the House Ways and Means Committee. As John Crump writes . . .

The Hearing Protection Act (HPA) might be in trouble in the House Ways and Means Committee, and anti-gun lobbyists are NOT the ones holding it up.

David Kustoff (R-TN) has been actively pushing to lower the tax stamp to $5 from $200, which would be a welcome change, but the better alternative is to remove suppressors completely from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). That would eliminate the tax stamp fee and remove all other NFA requirements.

Yes, delisting cans would certainly be better. If that’s doable.

Heavy lobbying is being done by the former head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), Chris Cox, a paid lobbyist. Cox is working to lower the tax stamp fee to $5 and keep suppressors on the NFA!

The current NRA-ILA has pushed for the removal of suppressors from the NFA, and Cox’s actions are contrary to that stance. Mr. Cox no longer has any connections to the NRA. Mr. Cox has also lobbied for a gun company that produces suppressors, which has strongly advocated removing silencers from the NFA, and could make millions of dollars if the hearing protection item is delisted from the NFA.

Yes, this sucks. There’s no reason why metal tubes that save shooters’ hearing should be regulated like machineguns (not that machineguns should be regulated more than semi-autos either). But while I’ve had no contact with anyone involved in the HPA process at all, none of this sounds nefarious.

Politics has accurately been called the art of the possible. Believing the bill could pass on its own and get 60 votes in the Senate (let alone wrangling all of the House Republicans) to get it though to the President’s desk is a fantasy. Could the bill be tacked on to some other “must pass” item like budget reconciliation (no filibuster, simple majority to pass)? Maybe…again if and only if Republican have the cojones to do that.

In other word, don’t bet your mortgage on it. So what’s happening to the bill in the Ways and Means committee? We’d guess it’s realpolitik. It sounds like Cox and Rep. Kustoff have recognized that they have a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing the bill delisting suppressors and rather than throwing their hands up and saying, ‘Oh well, we gave it the old college try,’ they’ve decided to take a big step in the right direction.

Think about it for a minute. A tax stamp has cost $200 since it was enacted as part of the NFA in 1934. While inflation has whittled the real value of that away over the decades, it’s still not nothing. Add that amount to the price of a good suppressor — which will run you anywhere from $300 to $1300 depending on caliber, materials, features, etc., that’s still enough to discourage a lot of people from buying one. Beside the fact that it’s just plain insulting to pay Uncle Sam $200 for no good reason at all, most people would rather put those two Benjamins toward more ammo.

But what if a tax stamp costs only $5? That would be much more than just “a welcome change.” Lots of us pay that much for coffee every day. A $5 tax stamp would effectively be de minimis. Combine that with the fact that average eForm 4 wait times these days can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the hurdle to suppressor ownership would be almost nonexistent.

Yes, you’d still have to fill out the Form 4. Yes, you’d still have to submit fingerprints. Yes, that’s all blatantly unconstitutional (or should be adjudicated as such in a Supreme Court ruling).

But once again, we live in the real world. A world inhabited by sniveling, linguini-spined politicians on the “good” side and venal gun-hating hacks on the “bad” side. A world with billionaire-backed civilian disarmament operations run by hoplophobic gun-grabbers who operate by sowing fear and work on a daily basis to limit Americans’ gun rights. A world where anti-gun stenographers in the media are only too happy to further the messaging of the gun control industry.

In short, delisting silencers from the NFA simply isn’t in the cards. We’d love to be proven wrong, but it’s just not a realistic possibility now (or likely any time soon). And that probably accounts for what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington.

So…what if the average gun owner could sidle up to a SilencerCo kiosk at their local gun store, fill out the Form 4, submit their fingerprints right there, and pay only $5 on top of the cost of the can? And what if they could then pick up their can the same week? That would open up suppressor ownership to tens of thousands (if not more) people than today. And that’s something that should be done if it can be.

While it’s not ideal, it’s unquestionably a big step in the right direction. And if that’s what can be achieved right now, we’d call that a win.

VPC Releases Report Alleging Suppressors Are ‘Threat to Public Safety’

Only days after TheGunMag.com carried a report about how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is issuing expensive firearm suppressors to its agents, the Violence Policy Center has released a study calling the devices a “public safety threat.”

In a statement announcing its report, titled Silencers: A Threat to Public Safety, the VPC says its “study” is a reaction to efforts by the firearms industry and “gun lobby” to have suppressors deregulated. The release acknowledges that the National Firearms Act (NFA) is a “restrictive federal law that also covers machine guns and short-barreled rifles,” to which it adds, “The NFA is overseen by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).”

In the release, VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann asserts, “Silencer de-regulation efforts are the latest salvo in the gun industry’s increasing militarization of the civilian marketplace in search of increased profits. Allowing these military-bred accessories to be generally available will make it easier for criminals to take innocent lives, threaten police, and hamper the ability of law enforcement to respond to mass shootings or sniper attacks.”

But in 2021, the U.S. Concealed Carry Association published an essay on silencers which included this: “Indeed, silencers are so rarely used in violent crimes that it is hard to find meaningful statistics on them. The ATF has internally used numbers suggesting that, despite the fact that there are more than 1 million silencers registered under the National Firearms Act, less than 0.003 percent of silencers are used in violent crimes. And only about 44 defendants per year are prosecuted for criminal use of silencers.”

The VPC news release declared, “The ‘benefits’ most commonly cited by silencer manufacturers, however, remain sound reduction and increased accuracy and rate of fire as the result of reduced recoil and improved stability of the weapon when firing.

“In a civilian context,” the VPC continues, “these ‘benefits’ could help enable mass shooters and other murderers to kill a greater number of victims more efficiently. At the same time, they can limit the ability of law enforcement to respond effectively.”

The VPC seems distressed that, “Data on the dramatic increase in civilian silencer ownership. In 2010 the number of legally registered silencers in the U.S. was 285,087. By 2024 this number had grown to 4,857,897—an increase of more than 1,600 percent. The dramatic increase seen in recent years has been fueled by silencer marketers and manufacturers overseeing the application process with ATF for purchasers and a shift by the agency in 2021 to allow application forms to be accepted online.”
In a December 2024 report from Real Clear Policy, writer Owen Miller noted, “The National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA) wrote a letter in 2019 outlining their support for suppressors as a tool to help curb preventable hearing damage:

“Although firearm suppressors do not completely eliminate the risk of [noise-induced hearing loss] from firearm noise, the risk can be significantly reduced…Therefore, NHCA supports the use of firearm noise suppressors as a form of an engineering noise control to reduce hazardous firearm noise exposures.” 

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was commissioned in 2011 to assess the level of noise exposure for federal government agents at an outdoor shooting range,” Miller added. “The scientists assigned to the study concluded:

“…the only potentially effective noise control method to reduce students’ or instructors’ noise exposure from gunfire is through the use of noise suppressors that can be attached to the end of the gun barrel.”

Miller, vice president of the American Suppressor Association, finished off his remarks stating, “Suppressors are legally used by millions of hunters and shooting enthusiasts who rely on these safety devices for much needed hearing protection. Spreading misinformation or engaging in scare tactics in the wake of this high-profile crime will do nothing to address the issue of curbing violence in New York City or elsewhere else in America.”

Really?

DOJ to Illinois Gun Owners: Write Your Democrat Legislators to Repeal Infringements

“We recently received your March 27, 2025, message to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding firearm laws and Second Amendment rights,” a reply letter from Hadiza L. Buge, Acting Assistant Deputy Director, Public and Governmental Affairs, to an activist who had filed a civil rights complaint against the state of Illinois’ requirement to obtain a Firearm Owner’s Identification card (FOID) as a prior restraint and precondition to buying a gun. “DOJ forwarded your inquiry to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for response.”

 

In early April, this column reported on that complaint, filed by a citizen who is being left unnamed here because he is intentionally known on social media only by a screen name to protect his privacy and employability.

It was actually his second attempt to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi to her word (Justice punted on his first complaint, asking it to investigate an anti-gun judge’s political and financial conflicts of interest), given in a press release announcing a Second Amendment Pattern-or-Practice Investigation into Los Angeles County concealed handgun license application delays, that:

“This Department of Justice will not stand idly by while States and localities infringe on the Second Amendment rights of ordinary, law-abiding Americans. The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and under my watch, the Department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental constitutional rights.”

Points brought to the DOJ’s attention in the FOID complaint:

  • The reason for the law was to dissuade minorities (specifically African Americans during a time of racial riots/unrest and distrust amongst racial groups and law enforcement) from seeking police permission to legally own firearms.
  • Funding for FOID cards and carry licenses is used now as a “piggy bank” by the IL General Assembly to fund other projects, leading to delays in processing (with a documented case of a 20-month wait).
  • A woman with no criminal record was charged with a crime for possessing a single-shot rifle in her home without a FOID.

“ATF is a law enforcement agency within the DOJ dedicated to reducing violent crime and protecting the public. ATF’s mission focuses on administering Federal criminal laws and regulating the firearms and explosives industries,” Buge’s response continued. “In support of this mission, ATF implements policy and regulations to enforce laws created by Congress. As such, we encourage you to reach out to your State congressional delegation with your recommendations regarding firearm laws. We hope this information proves helpful to you.”

Right. In Illinois. How helpful.

Translation: ATF only deals with federal issues, and your state complaint is outside of its jurisdiction, so DOJ forwarding it to them can’t go anywhere. If you want relief, contact your state representatives, the Democrat ones who are passing citizen disarmament edicts, and ask them not to. We’re washing our hands of it.

Continue reading “”

So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create ‘social justice’ is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity.
– Thomas Sowell

Montana Gov. Gianforte Signs State-Wide Ban on Red Flag Laws
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) signed legislation Thursday banning red flag laws in cities and/or municipalities throughout the state.

The legislation is HB 809. The NRA-ILA noted HB 809 not only bans red flag laws but also prohibits cities and/or municipalities from “accepting any grants that would aid in the adoption or enforcement of [a red flag law].”

Gianforte posted to X after signing the bill:

Gianforte has been laser focused on protecting and enlarging Montana’s pro-2A climate.

On April 23, 2025, Breitbart News reported he responded to Colorado’s new semiautomatic ban by noting that it not only prevents the purchase of said firearms but the manufacture of them, too. He anticipated, as a result, that semiautomatic gun makers will flee Colorado and he urged them to make Montana their new home.

Gianforte said, “Colorado is ranked in the top 10 states with the biggest gun industries. So, to all gun manufacturers in Colorado, my question is simple: Do you want to move back to America? Montana is open for business.”

A press release issued with Gianforte’s statement point out Montana is a constitutional carry state which “[prohibits] the enforcement of any federal law, executive order, rule, or regulation that infringes upon ownership, possession, transfer, or use of any firearm, magazine, or firearm accessory.”

After bringing millions of unvetted migrants into the U.S., the hate-filled left screams about a few dozen white South African refugees

What’s with the left? After ushering in tens of millions of unvetted illegal migrants and defending their ‘right’ to stay with extraordinary tenacity, President Trump lets in about 50 South Africans Boers this week, victims of extreme violence, discrimination, and Hugo Chavez-style land expropriation, and already they’re having a cow.

The far-leftist South African government is hurling abuse at the refugees as they go, and unwittingly making the case that Trump was right all along to grant them that refugee status — nobody acts like they do without a guilty conscience:

If I were a South African and saw that kind of response, I’d get out as soon as I can, because they are likely to stop Boers from getting out at some point. Anything but give them equality and justice, which is the reason the people are leaving.

The New York Times was particularly appalling in its coverage:

The first plane carrying white South Africans who received refugee status from the Trump administration landed at Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday morning, according to a flight tracking website.

The arrival marks a drastic reversal in the United States’ refugee policies, which have long focused on helping people fleeing war, famine and genocide. President Trump essentially halted all refugee admissions programs on his first day in office before creating a pathway for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid in South Africa, to resettle in the United States.

The group that arrived Monday on a U.S.-funded Omni Air International charter flight say they have been discriminated against, denied job opportunities and have been subject to violence because of their race. Forty-nine Afrikaners boarded the flight on Sunday, according to a spokesman for South Africa’s airport authority, after more than 8,000 people expressed interest in the program. There are scant details available about the individuals who arrived in the United States.

The South Africans who reached the United States on Monday had received expedited processing by the Trump administration — waiting no more than three months.

What ‘reversal’? Getting macheted, necklaced, and robbed of all one’s possessions solely because of one’s race comes pretty close to genocide, and in any case, fits U.S. refugee criteria.

Continue reading “”

Carl

The argument that we must dismantle the Second Amendment in order to “save lives” is not only historically shallow, it is philosophically incoherent and legally reckless.

The right to bear arms was not written into our Constitution as a hobbyist clause. It was forged out of centuries of tyranny, colonial subjugation, and the painful lessons of disarmed populations across history. It exists not to promote violence, but to prevent the monopolization of it.

To suggest abolishing this right in the name of public safety is akin to drowning a person in hopes of sparing them from the threat of future harm. It sounds noble, until you realize it’s fatal.

True safety is not born from submission. It is born from the freedom to defend oneself, one’s family, and one’s community, especially when institutions fail, as history reminds us they often do. If we abandon that principle, we don’t move forward; we regress into the very dangers the Second Amendment was designed to guard against.

You don’t save lives by stripping away the tools that protect them. You don’t secure liberty by eroding the rights that uphold it.

See If You Can Spot the Biggest Difference Between Biden’s and Trump’s China Deals.

As Matt writes nearby, on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a complete economic and trade reset with China that is aimed at bridging a lopsided $1.2 trillion trade deficit with the U.S.

Details of the new agreement are promised on Monday, but let’s take a look at the abundant differences we can see between Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s approaches with China.

While people love to tout Trump’s “art of the deal” transactional dealmaking with super powers, it was actually Joe Biden who leveraged his job as vice president and then as president to personally enrich his son’s “business” and, by extension, his own personal bottom line.

Biden encouraged his son’s ferociously greedy dealings with the Chinese energy firms and even fronted a deal for China to get raw earth minerals to help with the communist state’s electric car battery production and to help its notorious “Belt and Road Initiative.”

At one point, Hunter Biden and family were paid in diamonds in an apparent obvious attempt to avoid paying taxes.

As we now know, Hunter’s businesses always had to kick back “10% to ‘The Big Guy.'”

His investment firm was involved in a deal where a Chinese state-backed company gained control of a cobalt mine. This deal involved a $3.8 billion transaction and transferred 80% ownership of the Tenke Fungurum mine from an American company to China Molybdenum.

When Joe Biden was vice president he took his granddaughter and his family bagman, Hunter Biden, on Air Force Two to China.

While Joe Biden was discussing world relations with Ji Xingping, Hunter was off sealing deals for the Biden family. The senior Biden always claimed he had no personal knowledge of his son’s business dealings, but on that trip then-Vice President Biden met with Xi Jingping for hours and thereafter introduced him to his son.

Just ten days later, Hunter’s company was given the proper licenses enabling him to do business in China.

Continue reading “”

Ohio Court says concealed carry is not a constitutional right.

Michael Bloomberg is a multibillionaire who hates the Second Amendment. He hates Open Carry most of all. And so it should come as no surprise that a writer for one of his companies (Bloomberg Law) opened his article by saying, “Ohio authorities can prohibit citizens from carrying concealed weapons if they’re able to openly carry guns, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.”

Of course, the judge said no such thing. I suspect that the Bloomberg writer did not read past the “Topics and Issues” description of the case.

The Ohio Court of Appeals held that there is no constitutionally protected right to concealed carry under the Second Amendment and that there is no constitutionally protected right to concealed carry under the State of Ohio Constitution.

The Court explained in paragraph 108 of the decision that the Ohio legislature had created a limited statutory right to concealed carry, and the creation of that state statutory right “to others cannot expand Hall’s constitutional right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, just as Ohio could not contract the scope of that [Open Carry] right by statute.”

The Ohio Court of Appeals addressed the Defendant’s three Constitutional challenges: the Fourth Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms under the United States and the State of Ohio Constitutions.

After the Defendant lost on his Fourth Amendment issue raised on appeal, the Second Amendment analysis began on page 10 and ended on page 45 of the 46-page opinion. The State of Ohio Supreme Court had already decided that, “[T]here is no constitutional right to bear concealed weapons” under the State Constitution, and so that issue raised by the Defendant was quickly disposed of.

What is impressive and unusual about this decision by the Ohio Court of Appeals decision in State of Ohio v. Desmond Hall is the depth and breadth of its analysis.

By contrast, the California Court of Appeals, in the case of People v. Miller (2023), likewise concluded that concealed carry is not protected by the Second Amendment, but did so in just eight paragraphs.

The moral of this story is that one should not rely on reporters, especially not when one can go directly to the source, which in this instance is the published opinion of the Ohio Court of Appeals, available for everyone to read for free.

Most people rely on others’ opinions when those opinions confirm their unfounded beliefs. They never make the effort to seek out the truth, even when the truth, as the judges see it, is one click away.

Don’t be like most people.

State of Ohio v. Desmond Hall 
People v. Miller, 94 Cal. App. 5th 935 (2023).

College Palestinian Group Admits Their Job is to ‘Destroy the United States.’

A Palestinian support group and domestic terror outfit that operates with impunity on many U.S. college campuses has now admitted openly that they see it as their job to destroy the United States of America by subvert our youth.

The group, Students for Justice in Palestine, is responsible for many of the racist, anti-Jewish protests at schools all across the country.

These Muslim terrorists pretend that they are supporting the human rights of so-called “Palestinians” and are protesting “genocide” being perpetrated against Gazans by Israel.

Now, before we go any farther, the singular truth is that there is no genocide taking place in Gaza against the mythic “Palestinians.” The proof of that statement lies in the population numbers in the region. For instance, in 1950, the population of Gaza was 63,444 citizens. And what is it today? 823,407… yeah… if the Jews are trying to conduct “genocide” in Gaza, they have really, REALLY failed at it!

Anyway, the leader of this terror group infesting Temple University recently let the cat out of the bag.

Temple University activist Rishi Arun openly admitted that “It is our job to destroy imperialism, destroy the United States, and destroy capitalism.”

“We will do it by organizing that actively undermines and destabilizes the legitimacy and the power of [the United States],” he adds, “and the power and legitimacy of capitalism,” this terrorist added.

WATCH:

 

This terrorists needs to be either jailed, or deported.