Category: Elections

VOTERS WEIGHED TWO VERY DIFFERENT GUN CONTROL BALLOT MEASURES

Two states this week posed gun law questions to their voters and received two quite different results at the polls– neither one very encouraging to the anti-gun crowd.

IOWA

Republicans carried the day by large margins almost exclusively– including Gov. Kim Reynolds besting her opponent by almost 20 points, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley picking up his eighth term, and all four Congressional seats going red including the one held by Democrat incumbent U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne’s. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that a pro-gun ballot initiative met with slam-dunk approval.

Iowa Constitutional Amendment 1 – Right to Keep and Bear Arms, with 95 percent of the votes tabulated by Wednesday night, earned 745,118 “yes” votes against just 398,881 “no” votes, a nearly 2:1 ratio.

As detailed by voter guides:

Shall the following amendment to the Constitution be adopted?

Summary: Provides that the right of the people of Iowa to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

Full Text: Article I of the Constitution of the State of Iowa is amended by adding the following new section: Right to keep and bear arms. Sec. 1A. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

 OREGON

In a state that houses such wildly progressive hubs as Portland and Eugene, any rational-thinking person would imagine that an anti-gun ballot initiative of almost any nature would gain an easy up-vote in the largely blue state. After all, Biden carried the state by 16 points just two years ago.

However, Measure 114, which crams 12 dense pages of gun control into a still ambiguous 68-word question, met with a very divided voter turnout.

The ballot question:

Requires permit to acquire firearms; police maintain permit/firearm database; criminally prohibits certain ammunition magazines

Result of ‘Yes’ Vote: ‘Yes’ vote requires background check, safety training, fee for permit to acquire firearms; state police maintain new permit/ firearm database; criminally prohibits certain magazines; exceptions.

Result of ‘No’ Vote: ‘No’ vote retains current law: seller/ transferor must request criminal background check; permit, safety course not required; no magazine capacity restrictions.

Despite the anti-gun group cheerleading for Measure 114 rushing to declare victory on the initiative, voters except for those in the Portland and Eugene metro clusters rejected the new host of restrictions. As of Wednesday night, the results showed Measure 114 winning the day in only four out of Oregon’s 36 counties with a total statewide tally breaking at 793,015 (50.8 percent) in favor vs. 767,077 (49.2 percent) against, with some 72 percent of votes counted. While the numbers are still tight as of the time of publication, a “yes” vote of such a slim margin is hardly a popular mandate for what may eventually be ruled an unconstitutional limit on Second Amendment rights.

Already, some Oregon sheriffs are vowing to refuse enforcement of the measure should it become law.

“Unfortunately, we are seeing the passage of Ballot Measure 114, which creates a required permitting system in order to purchase firearms AND bans gun magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds,” wrote Linn County Sheriff Michelle Duncan on Wednesday. “This is a terrible law for gunowners, crime victims, and public safety. I want to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits. This measure is poorly written and there is still a lot that needs to be sorted out regarding the permitting process, who has to do the training and what exactly does the training have to cover.”

Turn Off, Tune Out And Drop Out

The votes are in and they have been counted. The great red wave that everyone expected never materialized. The expectation going into the election was that the Republicans would score an easy victory, picking up about forty seats in the House and enough Senate seats to gain the majority. Because America is a haplessly corrupt society, we may never know the final results, but someone will assign final numbers and it will be a slim victory for the GOP.

Of course, the flash analysis will come pouring out of the media, most likely blaming the results on Trump and the insurrectionists. You see, just as the media warned, democracy was on the ballot and this time democracy own. The Republican side of the uniparty will happily go along with it. They will expedite their plans to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 for the good of our democracy. The whole thing is ridiculous but we are ruled by ridiculous people so this is to be expected.

The main question out of this election is about the legitimacy. Should we believe that the brain damaged hobo was the people’s choice in Pennsylvania? This is a good bellwether for this election, because John Fetterman is as close as we have come to putting a horse in a Senate. His opponent is ridiculous by normal standards, but in comparison to Fetterman he is Cicero. We are now required to pretend that a brain damaged hobo won the Pennsylvania Senate race.

The reason this particularly race is key to the legitimacy question is that there is no answer that supports the democratic system. If everything was above board and the people did vote for a brain damaged hobo, then this is proof that the public should never be trusted with such decisions. The openness to voting for a brain damaged hobo should be a disqualification to voting. On the other hand, if the vote is rigged again, then there is no reason for people to bother voting.

Of course, you can shift the question further up stream. What kind of political system produces a brain damaged hobo and a Turkish carny as the two options? Before you even get to the question of election integrity, you have to see that the system has problems far deeper than vote rigging. This turns up all over the ballot. In Georgia, the choice for Senate was between a brain damaged former football player and guy who used to hustle old black ladies for donations.

In Massachusetts, they are celebrating the first openly lesbian governor. Before Maura Healy was famously gay, she was famously stupid. Given the centrality of Massachusetts in the American empire, it is a good representation for how our democracy actually works. Politics in that state have been dominated by drunkards, perverts and degenerates for generations. The system they have imposed on the country selects for increasingly ridiculous candidates.

If we accept wholesale vote rigging is now a feature in many states, there is a limit to how much can be done. Historically, the Democratic machines used to be worth about five percent in the areas they controlled. That is enough in reasonably close elections, but not enough to overcome a wave election. All of the polling and history said this should have been a historic blowout of the Democrats, even when adjusting for the shenanigans that are now a feature of our democracy.

In other words, the results speak to something more than shenanigans. Either people skipped the election, seeing no point in it, or we are now locked into a partisan divide that makes elections pointless. Going back to Pennsylvania, either Oz lost because people thought he was just as ridiculous as Fetterman or partisanship has made elections in the state meaningless. After all, elections pivot on the ability of people to change their minds from election to election.

The current vote totals in Pennsylvania say that about five million ballots were counted in the Senate race. The governors race, which got far less attention, garnered the same number of votes. In 2020, 6.9 million votes were counted. What this says is that close to 30% of the entities that filled out ballots in the 2020 election decided that they had no reason to fill out a ballot this time. This strongly points to the conclusion that voters were given no reason to vote for either party.

Put another way, the polling shows that people are angry about the economy and the culture, but they did not see hope in either party. They were not even moved to strike out at the ruling party. Harry Truman famously said “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.” In this age, given the choice between a uniparty zombie and uniparty opportunist, people will choose the zombie.

The people endlessly yapping about democracy will no doubt claim that democracy won this time, but the turnout numbers suggest otherwise. The uniparty offered up a series of ridiculous choices and 30% of the voters stayed home. They refuse to follow the script because the directors showed no interest in the drama. Neither party offered a compelling reason for anyone to vote, so they were left with the partisan zombies and civic nationalist dead enders.

For the people hoping democracy lost the election, this is a good result. The exit polls show that over 75% of the vote was white. Outside of the freaks and crazies, that cohort currently has little or no representation in our democracy. The best thing they can do is boycott the process until they have a party that will represent their interests. Perhaps the midterms were the start of quiet quitting leaking into politics. Turn off, tune out and drop out of a system that has nothing to offer.

While Iowans go for RKBA, the left coast of Oregon pulls the rest of the state the other way.  I see federal lawsuits galore, due to Bruen.

Oregon passes Measure 114, one of strictest gun control measures in U.S.

Three changes would occur under Measure 114: Oregonians would be required to get a permit to buy a gun. A background check would have to be completed before a sale or transfer of a gun occurred. It would ban the sale or transfer of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.AP

Oregon voters passed one of the country’s strictest gun control measures, a long-sought goal of a grassroots faith-based campaign.

Partial returns tallied as of 11:15 p.m. showed Measure 114 leading 51% to 49%.

Most of the votes left to be tallied were in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, all favoring or heavily favoring the measure.

The measure will require Oregonians to obtain a permit to buy a gun after completing a firearms safety course and would ban the sale or transfer of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

It also will close the so-called Charleston loophole by requiring state police to complete full background checks on buyers with permits before any gun sale or transfer. Under federal law now, firearms dealers can sell guns without a completed background check if the check takes longer than three business days.

“We began this historic campaign to save lives with faith, and we remain hopeful as we wait for all of the votes to be counted,” said the Rev. Mark Knutson, one of the chief petitioners, speaking earlier in the night to supporters gathered at Portland’s Augustana Lutheran Church.

“We thank everyone that helped put Measure 114 on the ballot and supported us every step of the way, gathering signatures, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and turning those precious ballots in,” he said. “We are eternally grateful for your strength and dedication.”

The highest support for the measure was in Multnomah County, with 75% to 25% in favor. The measure led in Washington County 62% to 38% and Clackamas County at 52% to 48%. The measure led in Lane County at 54% to 46% and in Deschutes County at 51% to 50%.

The measure was losing in Marion, Jackson, Linn and Douglas counties.

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Iowans approve right ‘to keep and bear arms’ in state’s constitution

Iowa voters have adopted a proposed amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would add the right “to keep and bear arms,” adding language that goes beyond the protections contained in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, according to unofficial results.

Iowa will become the fourth state with “strict scrutiny” language to protect gun rights in its state constitution, achieving a longtime goal of Republicans in the Iowa Legislature.

The majority votes in the “yes” column Tuesday made up about 66% of the votes. The “no” votes to reject the amendment accounted for 34%.

The language of the amendment states: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

The amendment described the right to keep and bear arms as “a fundamental individual right,” requiring any restrictions on gun rights to survive “strict scrutiny.”

Strict scrutiny is the highest legal hurdle for legislation to clear. It requires any restrictions on gun rights to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest.

Supporter: A ‘historic day for freedom, civil rights and the Hawkeye state’

Supporters said the amendment was necessary to protect Iowans’ rights from infringement. Some advocates for the amendment said courts reviewing Second Amendment cases have not been protective enough of the right to keep and bear arms over the years, which is why they supported adding the language in the Iowa Constitution.

The Iowa Firearms Coalition President Dave Funk praised the approval of the ballot measure Tuesday evening, calling it a “historic day for freedom, civil rights and the Hawkeye state.”

At the Republican Party’s election night event in Des Moines, the crowd cheered as at television screen flashed news that voters approved the constitutionally amendment Tuesday night.

Adam Bentz, 44, of Ankeny, supported the measure. He said he is not a “gun nut.” He started hunting about a decade ago and owns “very few” guns. He also supports background checks for prospective owners.

“The constitution’s pretty clear,” he said, nursing a Busch Light as the crowd thinned out inside the Hilton Des Moines Downtown. “We have it spelled out. We have the right to bear arms. It just makes sense at the state level that we would have the right to bear arms as well.”

Opponents said the amendment would make it easier to strike down existing gun laws and make it harder to pass new regulations. The Iowans for Responsible Gun Laws called the amendment “reckless,” saying it would “only serve to put Iowans in harms’ way.”

“The potential consequences of this amendment’s passage, from expensive lawsuits in the Iowa courts to impacting current law and the safety of Iowans, will be far reaching and dire for our state,” the coalition wrote in a statement Tuesday evening.

Tuesday’s vote was the final step in Republican lawmakers’ effort to amend the state’s constitution to create higher standards for future gun control proposals. Republican lawmakers passed the language again in 2019 and 2021, allowing it to appear on the ballot this year.

Guam Elects First Republican House Delegate Since 1993.

Guam has elected a Republican as its non-voting delegate to Congress for the first time since 1993, an encouraging development for the GOP in the first 2022 midterm race called.

Republican James Moylan, a senator in the Guam legislature, has defeated Judith Won Pat, former speaker of the Guam Legislature, according to the Pacific Daily News.

Partial, unofficial results from the Guam Election Commission showed Moylan leading with 17,075 votes to Won Pat’s 15,427.

Moylan is only the second Republican to be elected to the delegate seat since its creation in 1972, according to the report.

Democrats will maintain control of the Guam legislature, however, with nine seats to the GOP’s six seats.

Guam’s incumbent Democratic Governor Lou Leon Guerrero and Lieutenant Governor Joshua Tenorio also defeated former Republican Governor Felix Camacho and Guamanian senator Tony Ada by 11 percentage points.

BLUF
A political party that has convinced itself the country faces an existential crisis if its opponents win at the ballot box, and that doesn’t even pretend to serve anyone other than its base of college-educated leftists, is a toxic combination. Such a party is of course incapable of winning a majority, but it’s also incapable of relinquishing power, which makes it by far the greatest threat to democracy our country now faces.

Democrats Are Not Going To Relinquish Power Peacefully

The 2022 election results aren’t that hard to predict. Republicans will win and they’ll win big. The only questions on that front are how large will GOP majorities be in the House and Senate, and how many governor’s mansions will the GOP control? Will the red wave be a tsunami or just a massive breaker?

Beyond the numbers game, the larger question looming over this midterm cycle is why, at a time when inflation and the economy are top concerns for the vast majority of Americans, did Democrats choose to run mostly on abortion extremism and hysterical fearmongering about “threats to democracy” — issues that appeal to a rather narrow, left-wing slice of the American electorate that already reliably votes Democratic?

Why didn’t Democrats at least pretend to care about ordinary things like the rising cost of groceries and gas, worsening crime in major cities, and a looming economic recession? It’s one thing for President Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Congress to refuse to address these things as a matter of policy. But it’s quite another thing to refuse even to acknowledge that these are real concerns for most Americans right now.

One would think that simply on the basis of crude self-interest — say, clinging to their razor-thin majority — they would muster the will to pretend to care and at least pledge to tackle these issues, even if they’re lying. But they could not even do that. Why?

The answer doesn’t bode well for the country. Yes, Republicans will carry the day, retire Nancy Pelosi, and shatter the career aspirations of an entire cohort of middle-aged Democrat politicians like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams. But that’s only half the story, and maybe not the most important half.

Democrats’ inability to moderate even a little bit, their unwillingness to snap awake to reality and respond to voters with some measure of empathy, however small, is of course a consequence of the party’s capture by its radical left-wing base. (Henry Olsen had a good line related to this in The Washington Post recently: “[T]oday’s Democratic Party increasingly looks like the Depression-era Republican Party, which consisted of powerful elites who lost touch with the working-class majority.”)

The danger comes when Democrats refuse to accept that they have no mandate from the people to remain in power, and inevitably seek some other justification for clinging to it. For all their talk of “threats to democracy” from Republican “election deniers” — one of the most asinine political epithets of our era, by the way — it’s Democrats who pose the real threat. This cycle has made it clear that they are not trying to forge a majority coalition. Their appeal is exclusive to left-leaning, college-educated voters and the woke institutions and corporations these people now control. That might be a minority coalition, but it’s such a powerful one that it opens new possibilities to scheming Democrats: that there are other ways than winning elections to gain and retain power.

The mumblings of President Biden about “ending coal” and fossil fuels, saving democracy from insurrectionist election deniers, affirming the radical agenda of the transgender lobby, and championing abortion extremism are no accident, however confused the president might otherwise be about where he is and what’s going on. They are, in effect, signals to the elite power base in American society, and they are meant to convey reassurance: we’ve got your back, ordinary Americans be damned.

In the face of a massive electoral loss, then, do you really think a political party that has aligned itself with elite interests and woke morality, that controls the White House and the administrative bureaucracy, that is supported by corporate media and Big Tech (with the recent exception of Elon Musk’s Twitter) is going to simply relinquish that power? Hand it over to the very people it has been decrying as the destroyers of our democracy? Allow someone like Donald Trump ever to get near the White House again?

No, of course not. What Democrats did in the six months leading up to the 2020 election — not just the rioting and looting, but the rigging or “fortifying” of the election through lawsuits and coordinated online censorship — should be understood as a dry run. The Democrats will use every executive branch agency, every tool of law enforcement, every malign demonstration of force at their disposal to remain in power, or at least to deprive real power from Republicans.

Even before Trump won the 2016 election, we know the FBI began crafting an “insurance policy,” the Russia collusion hoax, in case he won. Recall, too, how every major Democrat denounced Trump as “illegitimate” after he won, how left-wing street thugs rioted in major cities, how elected Democrats managed to hobble Trump’s presidency through endless investigations and a frivolous impeachment. And above all, we saw how they were determined not to let the same thing happen in 2020. And it didn’t.

Keep that in mind as the midterm results roll in this week (and next). There’s a reason Democrats and the corporate media have been pushing hard the message that we won’t know the results of key races for days, maybe weeks. It’s not just about counting absentee ballots, it’s about getting the rigging in place, either to claim victory or deny the legitimacy of the vote. Whatever Democrats say they fear Republican “election deniers” might do, they themselves are preparing to do the same or worse.

A political party that has convinced itself the country faces an existential crisis if its opponents win at the ballot box, and that doesn’t even pretend to serve anyone other than its base of college-educated leftists, is a toxic combination. Such a party is of course incapable of winning a majority, but it’s also incapable of relinquishing power, which makes it by far the greatest threat to democracy our country now faces.

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft Responds to Joe Biden’s DOJ’s Attempt to Harass Cole County Clerk

Over the weekend, TGP reported that the Biden regime was harassing a local county clerk in Missouri in an effort to plant federal DOJ employees onsite during today’s election process.  

Assistant US Attorney Charles Thomas wrote Cole County Missouri Clerk Steve Korsmeyer this week and notified him that the Biden DOJ will be in Jefferson City, Missouri on Monday and Tuesday to inspect and harass election officials during the midterm elections in Missouri.


As most of you are aware, this is the most radical far-left office in the US government.

Why are they making a visit to the middle of Missouri on election day? Why did they spring this on the Cole County Clerk now?

And does the DOJ have jurisdiction over Missouri elections?

And should they not have gone through the Secretary of State’s office?

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft is very capable, and honest, and has an open door. Why did they bypass the Missouri Secretary of State?

On Sunday Secretary of State Ashcroft responded on Twitter to the actions by the corrupt Biden DOJ.

Secretary of State Ashcroft announced he was supporting Steve Korsmeyer, who rightfully declined the DOJ’s offer to harass voters in Cole County.

Secretary of State Ashcroft goes further and offer the DOJ to discuss their request further at his office.  SOS Ashcroft backs the local county clerk.

Roll, Tumbrels, Roll.

Ten years ago, back in the halcyon days when we simpletons believed the Republicans were at least some of the time an opposition party, and that Willard Mitt Romney was a man of probity and character, I wrote the following in the pages of National Review Online about the election that was about to take place. The piece was entitled “Crush Them.”

Conservatives have a rare opportunity tomorrow to do something they signally failed to do in the landslide elections of 1972 and 1984: finish the job. Nixon’s victory was vitiated by Watergate and quickly revenged by Woodward and Bernstein, leading to his replacement in 1974 by Jerry Ford, a man who exactly nobody thought was qualified to be president of the United States, probably including Ford himself. Ford led to Jimmy Carter, whose ineptitude and weakness in turn lead to Ronald Reagan, who swept Carter away in 1980 and then smashed Walter Mondale and the Democrats to powder in 1984.

And then, having won a famous victory, conservatives went home and left it to the establishment GOP in the form of another man who never should have been president, George H. W. Bush, to fritter away the fruits of ideological victory and be supplanted by Bill Clinton.

In retrospect, of course, William Jefferson Blythe III was Pericles of Athens compared to Barack Obama Joe Biden, who far more than Clinton has revealed the true face of contemporary American left-liberalism in all its coercive ugliness: a blizzard of executive orders; the deployment of the regulatory agencies that have (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) “sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance”; and the naked Marxist appeals to race and class envy. The most anti-American of American presidents has run the most un-American of campaigns.

Change only a couple of words and it’s déjà vu all over again: shuffling, senile Joe Biden really is the zombified embodiment of Hussein’s third term, staggering, one hopes, toward utter electoral disaster later today as long-suffering Americans finally awake and rise up against the tyranny of les aristocrates who have been torturing us these past two years and more. A la lanterne!

As my regular readers know, I have long described the Democrat Party—not just its lawless and fascistic modern incarnation, but going all the way back to its inception when Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, notorious traitor, and the founder of Tammany Hall, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804—as “a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.” Indeed, I even wrote a small monograph concerning its violent, seditious history, still available on Kindle.

Now, after two years of Biden, everyone can see just how awful the Democrats really are. Not simply the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition, but (as they were during the Civil War, which they started) a movement actively hostile to the founding principles of the country that continues to give them shelter and legitimacy. Indeed, they have become the Anti-American Party, advocating unfettered abortion, public criminality, political violence, economic destruction, radical egalitarianism, an obsessive racialism that would make a Nazi blush, open and undefended borders, and the abrogation of the Constitution: a document they’ve long despised and which they are now actively trying to repeal.

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DeSantis Pushes Back Against Biden DOJ Monitors Interfering in Florida’s Election

The DeSantis administration is pushing back against President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice’s apparent effort to send in election  “monitors” inside state-run polling locations within several Florida counties.

In a letter to  John “Bert” Russ, Deputy Chief & Elections Coordinator for the Department of Justice by Florida Department of State General Counsel Brad McVay, the DeSantis administration warns that under Florida statute,  DOJ monitors “are not permitted” inside Florida polling locations.

But Department of Justice monitors are not permitted under Florida law. Section 102.031(3)(a) of the Florida Statutes lists the people who “may enter any polling room or polling place.”

“Earlier today, the Florida Department of State received copies of your letters to Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in which you seem to indicate that the Department of Justice will send monitors inside polling places in these counties,” reads the letter.

“We also understand you sent a similar letter to Palm Beach County. But Department of Justice monitors are not permitted under Florida law. Section 102.031(3)(a) of the Florida Statutes lists the people who “may enter any polling room or polling place.” Department of Justice personnel are not included on the list. Even if they could qualify as “law enforcement” under section 102.031(3)(a)6. of the Florida Statutes, absent some evidence concerning the need for federal intrusion, or some federal statute that preempts Florida law, the presence of federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence.”

The DeSantis administration will in turn dispatch its own election integrity monitors to ensure that the federal government does not interfere in Florida’s election process. The decree from the Florida Department of State comes a day or so after Broward County activist Chris Nelson first posted an email to “field clerks” he received from a source.

The author of the of email in question urges Supervisor of Elections workers to “grant them access to see the process.”

“These are the DOJ agents that will be roaming the County on Election Day. We must grant them access to see the process. Mostly they will be checking to see if we have the ADA machines out, properly set up with adequate space, available, people trained to use them, etc. They will have DOJ credentials.”

The apparent elections overstep by the Biden administration could be perceived as a form of election day intimidation.

This story is developing

Gun Control vs. Gun Rights: The State of Play

Two trends that are reflected in recent state and federal gun legislation. One trend stems from the New York State Rifle and Pistol Ass’n Inc. v Bruen ruling in June, the other from the New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act passed in response to Bruen.

Bruen’s Domino Effect

In Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court found that New York State’s concealed carry law was unconstitutional because it required “proper cause” for an individual to obtain a concealed carry permit. As a result, a new precedent was set for Second Amendment legislation, with many states’ gun control laws now challenged. The National Association for Gun Rights has sued several states and cities to end their assault weapons bans, including the Illinois cities of Highland Park and Naperville along with the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Hawaii. The Connecticut Citizens Defense League, along with two former Connecticut corrections officers and a firearms instructor, have also filed a lawsuit against the Connecticut assault weapons ban. In Colorado, a judge recently blocked an assault weapons ban following a lawsuit filed by the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. Bruen was also cited by a judge in West Virginia who abolished a federal law requiring firearms to have serial numbers, and by a judge in Texas who ruled that citizens under criminal indictment retain the right to bear arms.

New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act’s Domino Effect

However, Bruen’s no-tolerance stance did not deter Governor Kathy Hochul in her push for more gun control legislation. In July, Hochul signed the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA). This legislation makes it illegal to carry a gun in public places such as churches, schools, subways, and Times Square. It also makes issuing concealed carry permits dependent on completion of hours of training, along with the review of every applicant’s social media activity from the past three years. Gun rights advocates immediately won a temporary restraining order against New York’s new law, but a federal appeals court lifted the restraining order a few weeks ago.

California bill similar to New York’s CCIA failed to pass the legislature by one vote. In early October, New Jersey unveiled its version, which includes stipulations such as disqualifying conceal carry applicants who have past restraining orders or other “character of temperament concerns,” (similar to the CCIA’s “good moral character” requirement which has been accused of having racist roots) and requirements for permit holders to carry insurance to protect against accidental discharge.

As we approach the 2022 midterm elections, Biden once again amped up calls to Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, Stacey Abrams vowed to roll back Georgia’s permitless firearms carry law, and candidates like Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth and Connecticut governor Ned Lamont support assault weapons bans. Politicians such as Governor Lamont have also recently referred to the overwhelming public support of gun control.

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This is how you know the gun control crowd is in trouble

When the campaign season fired up, Democrats were convinced that gun control was not only going to be a huge issue but a winning one for them. Candidates laid out their anti-Second Amendment credentials and they started pushing for things like universal background checks and assault weapon bans.

Uvalde, in theory, should have sealed the deal.

However, what happened in Texas turned out to have just as much, if not more to do with school security than firearm laws, and the public has, for the most part, moved onto more pressing issues.

This is especially true after Bruen. That decision pretty much laid the groundwork for dismantling gun control and everyone knows it, so running on new rules isn’t likely to be a winning strategy. Even if you pass them, what are the odds they’ll hold up?

And if you had any doubt that’s true, then maybe the fact that gun rights are looking to gain ground in Illinois should remove those doubts.

With some on the campaign trail saying there needs to be more gun control, a gun rights group sees legal victories in the future.

Candidates like incumbent Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker have been on the campaign trail saying the state must pass stricter gun control following several mass shooting events.

“In the aftermath of Highland Park, I grieved with the families and called for an assault weapons ban and a ban on high capacity magazines,” Pritzker said at a recent campaign stop with gun control advocates.…

[Guns Save Life Executive Director John] Boch expects a challenge against the state’s Firearm Owner’s Identification Card to succeed, something he says will do away with the state-issued ID for gun owners.

“Gun control does not impact the ability of criminals to carry guns, it only impacts the ability for law abiding citizens to have guns and use guns to protect their families from violent crime,” Boch said.

Now, this isn’t quite as good as Illinois voters turning against gun control. That would be far preferable, to be honest.

But any repeal of the unconstitutional FOID requirement is huge, and it’s likely to create ramifications across the nation since Illinois isn’t the only state with a permit-to-purchase requirement. That gets especially interesting if Oregon passes Measure 114, which would require a permit to purchase a firearm for that state’s residents as well.

At least, it will eventually.

Right now, it kind of feels like we’re in this weird place. Politicians are pushing for gun control left and right, eager to strip us of our rights and our ability to defend ourselves, all in the name of doing it “for your own good,” but the court decisions are dropping in our favor, also left and right.

If Illinois residents see profound gun rights gains, as Boch believes, then it will be a clear sign that no matter what the politicians say, our rights will be preserved, at least for now.

It also becomes clear that every election going forward matters because that majority on the Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become endangered.

Do Democrat Gun Owners Believe Democrat Politicians?

Most democrat gun owners support the right to keep and bear arms. There was a time when the Democrat party did too. Unfortunately, that changed decades ago. Today, gun-control and civilian disarmament is all but the official Democrat party position. Do gun-owning democrats believe their own politicians? Even if their particular candidate hasn’t asked to confiscate guns today, he will vote with a party that champions “compensated confiscation” and adding more gun-control to the tens-of-thousands of firearms regulations we already have.

Arizona- Democrat Senator Mark Kelly said “It is fu##ing nuts” not to pass more gun-control laws after the murders at a grocery store in New York and at a school in Texas. Kelly didn’t comment on the fact that the sites of those attacks were “gun free” zones where ordinary citizens were disarmed by law. Kelly says that the police should be armed and we should not. Senator Kelly ignored that hundreds of police officers stood outside an unlocked classroom door while children were being murdered in Uvalde, Texas. Senator Kelly didn’t comment on the hundred-thousand times a year that honest citizens use a long gun to defend themselves.

Georgia- Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock voted to ban modern rifles. Fortunately, that provision did not have enough support to pass the US Senate. The bill he supported would fund cameras in schools, but money could not be spent to put more armed police officers or armed school staff on campus. Senator Warnock wants armed security for himself and for his family, but denies it for our children. Warnock received a “strong endorsement” by the Giffords gun-control organization.

Nevada- Democrat Senator Catherine Masto was a co-sponsor of the bill that encouraged states to enact “red-flag” laws. The idea behind these “red flag” laws is that concerned family members can ask the police to take a relative’s firearms. Most red-flag laws remove a person’s firearms before the individual is represented by legal counsel in court proceedings. Sadly, these laws will allow confiscation without providing mental health treatment. For the last two decades, some states have had mandatory background checks and mental health laws that allowed involuntary confinement and firearms confiscation.  Senator Masto didn’t mention that those states did not reduce their rate of suicide.

Pennsylvania- Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman has said a lot about gun-control. He wants to ban modern rifles. As a US Senator, Fetterman would outlaw both the sale of modern rifles and the possession of existing guns. He doesn’t say how he would remove the 25-million modern rifles that are owned by the public today. He also doesn’t say how disarming honest citizens will stop criminals and the few people who commit mass murder in order to receive worldwide publicity. He wants to make the rest of the US have the gun-control laws found in California, the state which recently had the most mass-murders.

Wisconsin- Senate candidate Mandela Barnes pushed for background checks and red-flag laws. After the attack by ISIS terrorists at a concert in France, Barnes said that people who believe in “God, country, and guns is as dangerous of a rhetoric here as it is over there.” Lieutenant Governor Barnes supported a ban on homemade firearms, bans on modern rifles, and making firearms manufacturers and distributors financially responsible for the actions of criminals who use a gun. Barnes also proposed to ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 20 rounds, though President Biden proposed to lower that limit to 8 rounds. Barned does not say how this would affect the millions of people who legally use a firearm in self-defense each year. Mandela Barnes is endorsed by the Giffords gun-control group .

Utah- Evan McMullin is an independent candidate for the US Senate. His campaign brochure proposed more “sensible gun-safety legislation.” It is hard to tell what that means beyond the fact that McMullin encouraged Utah Senator Mike Lee to follow the example of Senator Mitt Romney and vote with Democrats to move more gun-control legislation through the Senate. McMullin was a CIA operations officer until 2010. McMullin’s previous political experience consists of running against President Donald Trump as an independent in 2016.

Michigan- Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer said we need more gun-control. She did not explain which of the existing 23-thousand gun-control regulations failed when a teenager stole his fathers gun and murdered his classmates in a Michigan Highschool. Some county clerks and police departments in Michigan stopped processing firearms applications after 2019. Some counties imposed over a years delay in processing the state required paperwork. Whitmer vetoed legislation that would require government officials to process firearms related permits during “emergencies”. Whitmer called “gun violence” a public health emergency. She did not explain how most counties will not have a murder of any kind, yet more than half of our murders occur in just 2-percent of our counties, mostly in our failing cities.

New York- Governor Kathy Hochul has little use for armed citizens, other than as her security guards. Hochul said, “This whole concept that a good guy with a gun will stop the bad guys with a gun, it doesn’t hold up. And the data bears this out, so that theory is over.” She ignores the 1.7-2.5 million times an armed citizen uses a firearm for legally justified self-defense. She called for and signed the sweeping new gun-control bills that made most of New York state into a “gun-free” zone. Somehow, Governor Hochul ignored the fact that mass murderers perfer “gun-free” zones.

Massive amounts of gun-control have been tried for decades. We are told that that mountain of laws didn’t stop violent crime, but the next gun-control law is sure to work. After missing the target 23-thousand times, I’m skeptical that the next gun-control law will work any better than the rest. Do Democrat gun owners believe that?

It’s always “the end of democracy” when demoncraps are about to lose an election. That’s because “democracy” is just their term for “unchallenged demoncrap power.”

If there was ever a real ‘GOP dictatorship’, these yammerheads wouldn’t be yammering.

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Republicans need us more than we need them. That’s because, say the Democrats get their supermajorities and pass whatever citizen disarmament edicts they want, appoint judges to uphold them, and equip functionaries to enforce them. There’s one thing no one wants to talk about:

We will not disarm. Surrender our guns? No. Your move. Seriously.

If Republicans want to stay relevant, they’d best realize that, and strap ‘em on so it doesn’t come to that on a large scale. With a growing resigned TINVOWOOT sentiment among gun owners jaded by past betrayals, GOP leadership had best realize they need us fired up if they don’t want that to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Republican ‘Commitment to America’ Must Not Take Gun Voters for Granted

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Commitment to America represents a new direction and better approach that will get our nation back on track,” House Republicans declare in a plan “Preamble” on Kevin McCarthy’s “Republican Leader” website. “Starting Day One, we will work to deliver an economy that’s strong, a nation that’s safe, a future that’s built on freedom, and a government that’s accountable.”

You can read it in English or watch it in Spanish. The “commitment” itself is divided into four parts:

  • An Economy That’s Strong: (Make America Energy Independent and Reduce Gas Prices; Strengthen the Supply Chain and End Dependence on China)
  • A Nation That’s Safe: (Secure the Border and Combat Illegal Immigration; Reduce Crime and Protect Public Safety; Defend America’s National Security)
  • A Future That’s Built On Freedom: (Make Sure Every Student Can Succeed and Give Parents a Voice; Achieve Longer, Healthier Lives for Americans; Confront Big Tech and Demand Fairness)
  • A Government That’s Accountable: (Preserve Our Constitutional Freedoms; Hold Washington Accountable; Restore the People’s Voice)

Do you know what you have to look hard to find any mention of? The main reason gun owners have for voting Republican is that they will defend the Second Amendment and pledge to repeal infringements. You have to go to the reverse side and the bottom half of their “Commitment to America” pocket card to find a statement that couldn’t be more tepid and equivocal:

“Preserve our Constitutional Freedoms: Uphold free speech, protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers, guarantee religious freedom, and safeguard the Second Amendment.”

With even the most rabid gun-grabbers claiming “You can be in favor of the Second Amendment and also understand that there is no reason in a civil society that we have assault weapons around communities that can kill babies and police officers,” what does “safeguard the Second Amendment” —  with no specifics as to how — even mean?

With the GOP leadership unwilling to use its bully pulpit to defend and educate on the right to keep and bear arms (probably because most of them don’t know how, have a shallow surface understanding, and basically do what their staffers and focus groups tell them will play best to the masses and minimize attacks), it’s no wonder individual candidates are keeping their mouths shut and hoping nobody calls on them to take a position.

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Biden Midterms Closing Argument: Trump And “Extreme MAGA Republicans” Are “Un-American”.

Compared to Biden’s rage-filled Red Speech, which was infuriatingly insulting, Biden’s speech tonight at Union Station in D.C. was more sad and pathetic. Yes, Biden used a lot of the same rhetoric, but it was more hollow, more disassociated from reality, more bizarre.

An old man shouting at the clouds, while Democrats face a potential electoral catastrophe next week because inflation is out of control, and people are suffering. Instead of addressing what he will do about it, his speech was name calling. And Trump. Again.

“As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America — for governor, for Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state — who won’t commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re in,” he said.

Biden said election deniers have been inspired by Trump, who is pondering a run for president in 2024 just as Biden works to decide if he wants to seek another four-year term.

Biden said “American democracy is under attack” because Trump will not accept the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden.

“He refuses to accept the will of the people, he refuses to accept that he lost,” Biden said.

Trump is an obsession for whoever wrote the speech:

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was committed by a mob “whipped up into a frenzy by a president repeating over and over again the big lie that the election of 2020 had been stolen,” he said.

Now, “extreme MAGA Republicans” aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections, but elections being held now and into the future, Biden warned. They are “trying to succeed where they failed in 2020 to suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself,” Biden said.

Who is Biden trying to convince? The half of the electorate who voted against him, and the more than half who currently disapprove of his performance? Apparently not, it was a speech to a base that already is going to vote for Democrats.

The disconnect was creepy and in some ways chilling. What does Team Biden have up their sleeve? They can’t be THIS disconnected from reality.

I was going to say…’battle‘?

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As of August 2022, three independent election forecasters rated the general election as Solid Republican or Safe Republican, according to Ballotpedia.
If Missouri’s open senate seat is to flip to the Democratic party, it would take an upset by Trudy Busch Valentine on Election Day

The battle for Missouri’s vacant Senate seat
Polls and a look at prior elections would suggest this race is already settled before Election Day.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Barring an election night surprise, there appears to be a well-defined path from the Missouri Attorney General’s office to U.S. Senate.

The current Attorney General, Republican Eric Schmitt, is leading by double digits in most polls ahead of his Democratic opponent, Trudy Busch Valentine, a nurse and heiress to the Anheuser-Busch brewery fortune.

His commanding lead comes just four years after the former Attorney General, Republican Josh Hawley, beat the incumbent two-term Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, for a spot on Capitol Hill.

Hawley was the first Missouri Attorney General to ascend directly to the U.S. Senate since then-AG John Danforth, also a Republican, was elected to the Senate in 1976. Other big names in Missouri politics have also used the AG’s office as a stepping stone to the U.S. Senate, like Republican John Ashcroft and Democrat Thomas Eagleton, but both held other offices before becoming a senator.

That path may be trodden again on Nov. 8, partly due to the retirement of two-term Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. His surprise announcement in March of last year that he wouldn’t seek re-election left a wide-open field of candidates vying for his job. A crowded and often-times nasty Republican primary brought Schmitt to the top of the field for his party.

Sen. Roy BluntU.S. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri will not run for reelection in 2022
Trudy Busch Valentine announced her candidacy less than five months before the August primary and beat out the populist candidate and prolific fundraiser Lucas Kunce for the nomination.

This race is one of many that will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, but a democrat win would certainly surprise many political observers. Missouri hasn’t sent a democrat to Senate in 10 years, when Sen. McCaskill won her re-election bid in 2012, easily beating Republican Todd Akin, who was ahead in the polls until his infamous “legitimate rape” comments.

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America’s parents are revolting: They are fed up with schools indoctrinating their children. And now they’re fighting back.

Education has rarely been a major electoral issue in the US. Yet as we approach November’s Midterms, the state of the nation’s schools now follows closely behind the economy and crime among voters’ key concerns. And parents are worried about far more than falling academic standards. They are angry that teachers are using the classroom to promote their own narrow political views.

Parents opposed to woke indoctrination in schools are organising. They may even prove to be a decisive force in the elections. Parents Unite, set up by New England mothers Ashley Jacobs and Jean Egan, is one of many groups to have emerged in the past couple of years. It brings together parents, teachers and academics concerned with what children are being taught in America’s independent schools.

Having grown quickly, the group held its second annual conference in Boston last week, which I was invited to attend. What became clear from listening to the stories of parents was a growing sense of anger that children are being corralled into uncritically accepting highly contested and political ideas. This is an experience common to every type of school, public and independent alike, across the US.

Many of the parents I spoke to talked about lockdown and ‘Zoom school’ as having been pivotal in making them more aware of what their children were being taught. They say they witnessed lessons that push children to see America as a uniquely sinful country, forged solely out of racial discrimination. Parents say that this stepped up a notch in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020, when suddenly a great deal of the school day was taken up by Black Lives Matter activism.

A similar story emerges in relation to teaching about sex and gender. Parents are unhappy at the prospect of sending their daughter to school, only for her to return home questioning whether she might actually be a boy. In addition, there is concern that sex education introduces children to provocative and hyper-sexualised content at far too young an age.

When the values promoted at school are fundamentally at odds with values espoused in the home, students need to be able to respond critically to what they are taught. They also need to be able to hear alternative perspectives. Yet parents who complain about the politicisation of their schools report being met with hostility. Some even suggest their children are targeted by teachers for raising ‘inappropriate’ questions.

Parents who ask about the role of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officers say they are treated as a threat to the safety of students. They even risk being publicly branded as troublesome within the broader school community. In response to this, Parents Unite aims to ‘ensure that all schools promote a culture that values and prioritises true diversity of thought, freedom of discourse and self-expression’.

Jean Egan and Ashley Jacobs – friends, neighbours and the founders of Parents Unite – tell me that ‘watching Zoom classrooms for about six months really highlighted that things needed to be addressed’. Ashley notes that ‘a very one-dimensional worldview was being highlighted’ by teachers. Getting together and sharing concerns with a handful of others led them to question what was going on in schools. Yet at first, according to Ashley, ‘these questions did not always lead to satisfactory answers’.

Jean tells me that it was only after a great deal of digging that they discovered that much of this teaching was driven by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), the accrediting body for America’s private schools. Although ‘individual teachers were doing their best’, the NAIS was ‘setting the agenda’, she says.

Ashley explains that ‘social justice’ has driven the NAIS for years, but there was an ‘extra sense of urgency after the death of George Floyd’. At the time, an apparently coordinated social-media campaign accused private schools of racism. Schools then ‘over-compensated’ in a way that left no room for ‘viewpoint diversity or for people to question what children were being told’, Ashley says. The message to schools, Jean tells me, was ‘you need more DEI officers, you need to change your curriculum’.

According to Jean, ‘this was not being driven by educational practice or the best way to teach, but by political motivations’. The NAIS provides books, speakers and teacher training, though these resources have an obvious ideological slant. For instance, schools are told they should invite speakers like Ibram X Kendi, a prominent woke academic.

Ashley explains that parents can be quite powerless in the face of private schools, which can remove their children from the school roll almost on a whim. Ashley and Jean spotted that ‘someone had to do something’. There was an urgent need to get to the bottom of what was going on and to challenge their schools in a more collective way. And so Parents Unite was launched. Its primary goal is to promote greater viewpoint diversity for both students and teachers and to offer schools alternative resources, which are grounded in scholarship and evidence rather than woke ideology.

The response to Parents Unite has been overwhelmingly positive, Ashley and Jean tell me. Teachers and administrators, as well as parents, have been in touch to say that they are unhappy with the indoctrination of America’s schoolchildren and that they want ‘balance restored’. Jean tells me she thinks education will be of crucial significance in shaping how people vote in the Midterms.

One thing seems undeniable: parents are extremely angry about what is happening in America’s schools. We should not be surprised if this anger spills over into the ballot box.