The Biden Admin Said Gas Would Be $2.88 This Year.
At the end of 2021, the Biden administration released its energy outlook forecast for 2022, and their predictions show just how little they understand about American energy and how utterly unprepared they were for the energy crisis Biden was creating.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration — under the Department of Energy led by Secretary Jennifer Granholm — releases “short-term energy outlook” reports each month to provide information on liquid fuels and forecast their future trends. Their report issued December 7, 2021 — archived here — notes that the forecast “remains subject to heightened levels of uncertainty related to the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic” but proceeded to estimate that “U.S. GDP will grow by 5.5% in 2021 and by 4.4% in 2022.”
And here’s what the Biden administration predicted for gasoline in 2022, just six months ago:
U.S. regular gasoline retail prices averaged $3.39 per gallon (gal) in November, a 10 cents/gal increase from October and $1.29/gal higher than in November 2020. The November monthly average was the highest since September 2014. We forecast that retail gasoline prices will average $3.13/gal in December before falling to $3.01/gal in January and $2.88/gal on average in 2022.
By January 1, gas prices were already $3.286 per gallon — breaking the Energy Department estimate from the start — and they increased to $3.386 per gallon by January 31. Prices have only continued to rise since then, more than doubling from their level when Biden took office and surpassing the $5 mark to reach $5.014 as of Monday. But the Biden administration thought and released its absurd projection that gas prices this year would average just $2.88.
In subsequent short-term energy outlooks, even as gas prices continued so soar, the Energy Department continued to keep its head buried in the sand and pretend prices would go and stay low.
In January, they said “gasoline prices will average $3.06/gal in 2022 and $2.81/gal in 2023.”
In April, they predicted “U.S. prices for retail gasoline will average $3.84 per gallon (gal) this summer (April–September).
>Whether they really thought in December that gas prices would drop in 2022 and remain below $3 on average or not, the official position and repeated low estimates from the Biden administration shows how and why they have been unable and/or unwilling to address the issue. It’s a crisis they — apparently officially — didn’t see coming. They’ve been, per their own estimates, behind the ball every step of the way as Biden’s inflation and energy crises spiraled out of control. And what has the Biden administration done? Secretary Granholm’s reaction here says it all:
Ladies and gentlemen — your US Energy Secretary 😱 pic.twitter.com/B14lqMgoPH
— Hedgeye (@Hedgeye) March 8, 2022
The original training requirement – just 37 hours less than the Basic Police Officer course in an Ohio police academy – was a ‘poison pill’ the gun grabbers had stuck in, hoping the bill would never get passed.
Well, live by the politics, die by the politics
Ohio governor signs bill making it easier for teachers to have guns in schools
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that he has signed a bill into law that makes it much easier for teachers to legally carry guns in schools.
The measure drastically reduces the amount of training teachers and other staff are required to undergo before they can possess a firearm on school grounds. Instead of 700 hours of training, teachers will be able to finish in less than 24 hours.
“Our goal is to continue to help our public and private schools get the tools they need to protect our children,” DeWine said. “We have an obligation to do everything we can every single day to try and protect our kids.”
DeWine, a Republican, said in a statement on June 1 that the bill would allow “local school districts, if they so chose, to designate armed staff for school security and safety,” adding that it was more practical than the state’s previous standard.
Sure as the gods made little green apples, Red Flag laws are back in the headlines.
For the people who think these are a great idea, I have one simple question:
How many people have been convicted of misusing a Red Flag law?
Whatever you want to call it — “Misusing”, “False filing”, “Obtaining under perjury”, whatever — a fraudulently-obtained Red Flag law denies the person it was obtained against a civil right. Civil rights that the Government should be bending over backwards to protect.
The first Red Flag law was passed in 1999. 23 years ago. People are people, and someone has blatantly lied to obtain a Red Flag order against someone.
Someone in the last 23 years has misused a Red Flag law to harass someone else. So. Show me their conviction for doing so.
I know about the time someone tried to get a Red Flag order against the cops, and that doesn’t count — some animals being more equal to other animals, and all that.
I’m talking about Joe Average having his civil rights taken away for a year with a misused Red Flag order. It has happened — we all know that it has happened — and I want to see the criminal record of the person who fraudulently deprived someone else of their Second Amendment right for a year.
Any claim of “Well, they’re so well checked that it’s never been abused” it complete and utter horse-puckey — I was in law enforcement for 26 years, that isn’t going to fly.
Absent a conviction, I will accept the name of a judge who rubber-stamped every Red Flag request to cross his desk, never turned one down, and was removed from office because of it.
If you don’t have that information, then your opinion on Red Flag laws means nothing; and you should be ignored.
LawDog
Washington, D.C. – So-called “fact checkers” and Big Tech inadvertently validated Gun Owners of America’s concerns while targeting a tweet as disinformation for censorship.
Immediately following passage of the “Untraceable Firearms” section of H.R. 7910, Gun Owners of America tweeted that the bill would “criminalize disassembling, cleaning, and re-assembling your gun without a firearm manufacturer’s license.”
Despite labeling the tweet “false,” the Associated Press’ source presumes Gun Owners of America’s interpretation might be valid, acknowledges that the bill’s language is “confusing and ambiguous,” and instead claims that no one is likely to “ever be charged under this statute.”
The Supreme Court usually declares such laws “void for vagueness” under the 5th Amendment, but that hardly makes policy analyses of unconstitutionally vague legislation untrue!
In fact, GOA was merely pointing out that the definition of a “ghost gun” was so vague that it included many unserialized parts on guns in circulation today, like a slide on a handgun or an upper receiver on a rifle or shotgun.
With “assembling” a “ghost gun” criminalized by H.R. 7910, gun owners would no longer be able to disassemble their firearms, clean them, and “assembl[e]” them back into “a functional firearm” if even one unserialized part meets the new definition of a “ghost gun.” The fact-checkers claim that this only applies to manufacturers, but the bill states “it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture…a ghost gun.”
That is why all of the Associated Press’ sources lean heavily on the qualifier “serialized.”
For example, the “AP’S ASSESSMENT” emphasized that the ban didn’t apply to “firearms [with] serial numbers” and a Giffords gun control activist emphasized that the law wouldn’t affect “a firearm that is serialized.” Again, they must have intentionally skipped over the other portion of the same bill that changes the current definition of parts that would be subject to serialization or otherwise be classified as “ghost guns.” Our research indicates that several parts of most modern firearms would meet this new definition (see examples mentioned above).
Therefore, if most guns today are made up of multiple unserialized “ghost gun” parts, as the bill proposes, then you won’t be able to clean your gun without violating the law unless you have a firearm manufacturer’s license.
Big picture: these anti-gun Democrats didn’t even do their own research, because when ATF tried the same definition change last year, GOA and our activists fought back, and ATF later acknowledged and backtracked [Page 24727] this change.
-GOA-
Them: ‘You Must Care!’ Us: ‘No.’
We refuse to care about stupid Democrat obsessions.
We don’t care about climate change. It’s a hoax designed to fill the hole in lib souls that used to be filled with faith, and for the ruling caste, it’s a tool to steal our money and freedom.
We don’t care about some alleged moral necessity to disarm normal Americans. When they whine, “The purpose of guns is to hurt people,” we nod. Yes, they are. Our guns never have and never will hurt anyone who is not a criminal or an aspiring tyrant. But when those categories of bad people get uppity, yeah, we reserve our right to hurt them within the bounds of proper laws and morality.
We don’t care about claims that America was stolen from other people. Like every other patch of inhabitable dirt on the planet, America was conquered from people who conquered it from someone else first. When we make a “land acknowledgment,” it goes as follows: “Yeah, we took it, and now it’s ours.”
We don’t care about their froth-mouthed accusation that America is some sort of racist cauldron of hatred. Many of us served in real racist cauldrons of hatred and have no time for the silly posturing of frivolous ninnies pretending to be white saviors by nattering on about non-existent “white supremacy” – which is a remarkably colorblind concept since anyone who rejects the ideology of the faculty lounge can practice it regardless of race or ethnicity, including people who are black and Latinx – hey, it’s our word now, commies, and we’re never letting you live it down.
And we don’t care about a minor tussle – punctuated by an unpunished government murder of an unarmed trespasser – from over a year and a half ago, except to the extent that the political persecutions that followed must be remedied and avenged. Every non-narc victim of this Stasi witch hunt should be pardoned and the next GOP administration should settle their civil rights suits for the outrageous violation inflicted upon them by a politicized DOJ for huge sums. The guy who shot Ashli Babbitt should be prosecuted – there’s no statute of limitations on murder – and the GOP, once it takes Congress back in November, should investigate the federal agents on the scene, the systemic denial of rights, and the selective prosecutions that followed. That would make for an interesting set of primetime hearings, as opposed to the tedious political onanism of the current kangaroo kommittee.
We don’t care about any of it. And that is important. The left can only impose its will when it convinces us to choose to let them do so. They have to make us care. Look at them. They are a gaggle of mutated misfits, neurotic chicks, academic parasites, grievance hustlers, and femmy doofuses who can’t do a push-up. They can force nothing on us. That’s why they attempt to enlist the power of the state to do it for them, but their real power comes from us going along. When you watch some stupid Star Wars spin-off on Disney, you empower them. When you refuse to vote because you are convinced your vote will never be counted – despite huge election reforms in places like Georgia – you help them. When you let yourself think, “Gosh, maybe this androgenous fatty screaming that I am a privileged tool of the patriarchy has a point because s/he/it would never lie to my face,” you let them win.
No.
Instead, fight for what you care about.
We care that America neither be humiliated by seventh century savages nor abandon our allies to them. We’re going to reform our military into what it was meant to be – an awesome and awesomely unwoke killing machine that strikes terror in the hearts of communists and other terrorists around the globe.
We care that American warriors are no longer sacrificed in stupid wars by people who never pick up a weapon except to shoot their hunting buddies in the face by accident. We’re going to oust the Beltway Cowgirl and her ilk. But not Adam Kinzinger – his new Democrat friends already ousted him through gerrymandering, and it must sure be humiliating to have been so publicly treated like a cellblock punk. No, we’re electing based Republicans who know what time it is. It’s time to fight.
We care that our schools are hardened to protect themselves from the little psychos this sick culture breeds. And we care that they not teach woke nonsense. We’re going to clean them up one school board insurrection at a time, and if the FBI thinks that makes us terrorists, then that’s just another reason to close it down.
We care about the culture enough to make it clear to woke companies that if they side with our enemies, they are our enemies, and there is a price for choosing to be our enemies.
We care about it taking $140 to fill up the tanks of our SUVs when oil is sitting there untouched under the surface of our great land because to get it would offend Gaia and all her followers in Manhattan and Santa Monica. We’re going to elect a new president from the “Drill, baby, drill” caucus.
We care about our kids not becoming the psycho-sexual playthings of skeevy perverts, whether hired by some idiot principal or elsewhere in the culture. We’re going to punch back so hard on these mutants that they’ll understand that der kinder are off-limits or else.
We care about America. We’re well aware that this is the greatest country on earth, the greatest country in human history, and we are not about to give it up to mollify a bunch of tantrum-throwing weenies trying to draw us into the psycho-drama created by their daddy issues.
And we care enough about America to tell these freaks demanding that we care about their Toobin Zoom call litany of gripes, “No.”
Anti-gun activists react to Senate gun control deal
For the first time since 1994, it looks like we’re going to get gun control. In the wake of Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, and Smithsburg, it was probably too much to hope that there wouldn’t be anything at all.
On Sunday, as Cam noted, a bipartisan committee announced they had reached a deal.
Of course, some folks have feelings about it.
US campaigners have welcomed a potential cross-party deal on gun safety reforms but stressed the proposals do not go far enough.
“This is progress even if small,” said David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting in Florida.
Ex-lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords, injured in a 2011 shooting in Arizona, said it was an “important step forward”.
The plans include tougher checks for buyers under the age of 21 and cracking down on illegal gun purchases.
They were announced by a cross-party group of US senators on Sunday. Crucially, the proposals are supported by 10 Republicans, meaning they have the numbers to be voted into law.
President Joe Biden also said the plans were “steps in the right direction” but they fell far short of what he and many Democrats have been calling for.…
“It’s a great first step but that’s just what it is,” Mr Hogg told the BBC. “No single policy is going to stop every shooting but this policy could stop the next Parkland and that’s a good step.”
Except, the measures reported that are most likely to prevent the next Parkland have absolutely nothing to do with gun control.
Increased effort to address mental health and school security will do far, far more than including more information in the background check process would.
Now, to be fair, this could be a whole lot worse.
For most of us, this isn’t likely to create any kind of an issue and we’ll keep going about our lives like we always have. Part of the deal apparently calls for encouraging states to pass red flag laws, but since they can’t actually make them, I think it’s unlikely we’ll see too many take advantage of such “encouragement.”
However, it’s also clear that Democrats won’t be satisfied by this, either.
Sure, they reached a deal here, but it’s far from what they want and they don’t know how to accept that. When these measures fail to stop the next shooting, the 10 Republicans who backed this can expect to hear all about how they didn’t go far enough and it’s still all their fault.
I say this because much of this fails to actually address the root of mass shootings. In fact, it fails to even look for the root of mass shootings. It’s not guns, for crying out loud.
Yet something to think about is that now the pressure to accept more gun control will be greatest since these Republicans have signaled they’re willing to budge. They’re the ones who are going to be targeted to budge yet again.
This is far from over.
Democrats won’t be satisfied with what they’ve gotten and they will begin pressing for all these new regulations they want in the very near future. What just happened won’t even be acknowledged or, if it is, it’ll be labeled too little to make a difference.
Just like every other bit of gun control ever passed.
Is THAT an FBI bullhorn a cop took from that ‘Patriot Front’ dude because gosh, golly and gee, it sure LOOKS like an FBI bullhorn!
It was staged. They have all been released. Here’s a few of them walking out. See this TikTok link:https://t.co/4i8hicevms
— Reason (@IntegrityTruth3) June 13, 2022
Some Republicans still have a spine
"Governor Tom Wolf today condemned Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee for refusing to move forward a package of commonsense bills that would help address the gun violence crisis facing Pennsylvania." https://t.co/elhtIcdFj8
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) June 13, 2022
Ohio’s new permitless carry law goes into effect Monday
With a new state gun law going into effect Monday, allowing people to carry concealed firearms without a license, some might think people are out buying guns.
Not so, says Daryl Upole, owner of Ohio Guns in Ashtabula, a federally licensed firearms dealer.
“Mostly people are concerned about gun control after the Texas shootings,” he said. “As far as the concealed handgun license (CHL), I’ve had no one buy a firearm because of that.”
Ohio joined its neighbors as a “permitless carry” state on March 14 when Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law Senate Bill 215. Under the new law, set to take effect Monday, adults who can lawfully own a firearm will be able to conceal carry a handgun without a permit or background checks.
“It’s important to note that under the new law, you can carry a concealed handgun, but you can’t buy a gun [at a federally licensed dealer] without a background check,” Upole said.
The ATF Asks Gun-Control Researchers How to Regulate You
A recent report from the NRA Institute of Legislative Action (ILA) chronicles how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is working hand-in-hand with anti-gun researchers to form recommendations that could have dire consequences for America’s law-abiding gun owners.
On May 17, the ATF released the initial “National Firearms Commerce and Traffic Assessment” (NFCTA) as a response to one of six actions President Joe Biden (D) called for last year in his so-called “Initial Actions to Address the Gun Violence Public Health Epidemic.”
“The heart of this project is a unique partnership between ATF and members of academic institutions,” the document explains in the acknowledgements section.
Unfortunately, to produce the report, the ATF partnered with well-known anti-gun advocates, such as University of Pennsylvania professor and criminologist Anthony Braga, Sanford professor emeritus Philip J. Cook, Garen J. Wintemute of the University of California-Davis and Alaina De Biasi of the California Firearm Violence Research Center. That’s a “unique partnership,” indeed, since all are advocates for more-restrictive gun-control laws.
The main focus of the recommendations is expanding the power and scope of the ATF—a self-serving goal in a document produced by the agency. Recommendations include increasing agency funding to develop a data system to identify Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs, or gun dealers) who failed to file an Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report (AFMER) form, increasing funding to boost staffing to allow for enhanced outreach and education to licensed importers on the requirement to file ATF Form 6A within 15 days of clearing the US Customs and Border Protection agency and providing funding for the ATF to study Curio & Relic (C&R) firearms—in spite of the fact that the ATF doesn’t allege that the current C&R scheme has had a detrimental effect on public safety. The agency also wants to create a permanent Analytics Division at taxpayer expense, which would undoubtedly be used to produce material designed to advocate for more gun regulation and increasing the ATF’s power. As the NRA-ILA noted, the NFCTA also “spends significant space defending ATF Final Rule 2021R-05F concerning the “Definition of ‘Frame or Receiver’ and Identification of Firearms,” which seeks to make it more difficult for Americans to exercise their longstanding right to make their own firearms for personal use. NRA-ILA filed extensive comments opposing ATF’s perversion of federal law, which readers can examine here. ATF is also hoping to more than double the number of Industry Operations Investigators (IOI)—those ATF agents tasked with performing compliance investigations of FFLs.
This is simply another part of the Biden administration’s attempt to weaponize the ATF against what the president calls “rogue gun dealers” he claims are the main cause of violent crime. His highly touted “zero-tolerance” policy has a clear aim to reduce the number of FFLs for reasons as small as simple clerical errors, which then would make it harder for law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mills
Here’s some updated material
Today’s Senate ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Proposal Is Just as Bad as You Feared It Would Be
Sunday, a bipartisan group of Senators agreed to an expanded package of ‘common sense’ gun control measures. The Vichy Republican contingent consisted of Pat Toomey (PA), Susan Collins (ME), Lindsey Graham (SC), Thom Tillis (NC) and Bill Cassidy (LA) under the leadership, if I may be so bold as to use such a word, of John Cornyn (TX). My colleague Bonchie covered the deal in Republicans Prepare to Play the Sucker After ‘Gun Safety’ Bill Is Revealed. This is how he sums it up:
Here’s the thing. There is going to be another mass shooting. No matter how many laws we pass, evil people will get their hands on the tools necessary to commit evil acts. When that mass shooting occurs, Democrats are going to scream about how the last “gun safety” bill wasn’t enough and how we must “do something.” That “do something” will include confiscation and outright bans on common weaponry. By compromising now without laying a marker down they are willing to stand by, they are simply handing Democrats the leverage to take the whole pie the next time around.
The left-wing push to ban semiautomatic weapons is not going to end here. Republicans that don’t recognize that are being suckers.
Now Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has released more detail on what is included in the deal, and “suckers” hardly does the Republican participants credit for their duplicity.
NEWS: We have a deal. Today a bipartisan group of 20 Senators (10 D and 10 R) is announcing a breakthrough agreement on gun violence – the first in 30 years – that will save lives.
2/ Major funding to help states pass and implement crisis intervention orders (red flag laws) that will allow law enforcement to temporarily take dangerous weapons away from people who pose a danger to others or themselves.
3/ Billions in new funding for mental health and school safety, including money for the national build out of community mental health clinics.
4/ Close the “boyfriend loophole”, so that no domestic abuser – a spouse OR a serious dating partner – can buy a gun if they are convicted of abuse against their partner.
5/ First ever federal law against gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This will be a difference making tool to stop the flow of illegal guns into cities.
6/ Enhanced background check for under 21 gun buyers and a short pause to conduct the check. Young buyers can get the gun only after the enhanced check is completed.
7/ Clarification of the laws regarding who needs to register as a licensed gun dealer, to make sure all truly commercial sellers are doing background checks.
8/ Will this bill do everything we need to end our nation’s gun violence epidemic? No. But it’s real, meaningful progress. And it breaks a 30 year log jam, demonstrating that Democrats and Republicans can work together in a way that truly saves lives.
9/ So grateful to @JohnCornyn @kyrstensinema @SenThomTillis @SenToomey @Sen_JoeManchin @SenBlumenthal @SenatorCollins @LindseyGrahamSC @ChrisCoons @TeamHeinrich @BillCassidy and others for their amazing work to get us this far.
10/ Drafting this law and passing it through both chambers will not be easy. We have a long way before this gets to the President’s desk. But with your help and activism, we can get this done. This time, failure cannot be an option.
I’ve already expressed my opinion about the cravenness of Republican officeholders who crawl over broken glass to appease Democrats; see Don’t Bother Me With Your ‘Common Sense’ Gun-Grabbing Ideas, I’m Not Playing the Game, and Matthew McConaughey Sold the White House’s Gun-Grabbing Agenda Today Just Like He Has for Years. In my opinion, the problem is less a case of needing more laws and more one of chickensh** prosecutors with a political agenda refusing to enforce the laws already on the books. If we passed a law making prosecutors criminally liable for future gun crimes of anyone not prosecuted for a gun offense, I’d go along with that plan.
Let’s look at the items on the list.
2/ Red Flag laws are a civil rights non-starter as far as I’m concerned. Giving a disgruntled neighbor, a deranged leftist relative, or a vindictive current or former “partner” the ability to have your weapons confiscated while you bear the burden of proving you are not dangerous is antithetical to our system of justice. Above and beyond the Kafkaesque process, the procedure is a sham. A judge will not deny a “Red Flag” order and risk that person killing someone with a firearm. They are never giving your firearms back for the same reason. This is simply a backdoor for anti-gun activists to harass and intimidate gun owners. Any Republican who votes for this is not worthy of our support.
3/ I’m not convinced “community mental health clinics” do very much other than provide a sinecure purple-haired transgenders with an MSW degree. Be that as it may, linking these clinics to a bill ostensibly designed to prevent school shootings means that schools will be pressured to refer students to the clinics for evaluation and treatment. If they don’t, their reason for existence will be revealed as a fraud (SPOILER ALERT: it is). Those mental health referrals will be made by the same people who teach Critical Race Theory, make your elementary school student experiment with “pronouns,” and groom them towards transgenderism and the remainder of the alphabet soup of perversions. If we want more “community mental health clinics,” then authorize them independent of any gun control law. By the way, mental health people are pretty adamant that mental health is not a factor in the overwhelming majority of shootings. The problem is Evil, not crazy.
4/ If you want to understand what “closing the boyfriend loophole” opens the door to, check out what goes on in Title IX sexual harassment/assault hearings in colleges. Without a cohabitation requirement, you are fair game for any woman you went out with one time who wants revenge. If you feel in danger, get a restraining order and stay the hell away from the person. If you can’t qualify for a restraining order, then maybe vindictiveness, not personal safety, is your goal.
5/ Straw purchases are already illegal. Gun trafficking, unless you have a Federal Firearms License, is illegal. Without seeing an actual proposal, my best guess is that this will end the private sale of weapons, the so-called “gun show loophole” that the anti-gunners have been after for years.
6/ Other than the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), I don’t know of any other systems available for background checks that do not involve field investigators. I suspect there is no such system, and this law will try to create any additional level of surveillance of American citizens. The problem with NICS continues to be incomplete and inaccurate information entered into the system. I am at a loss of what an “enhanced” background check would include that isn’t a restraining order, a felony conviction, or a civil commitment order. Just joking, those “community mental health centers” will feature prominently here. I also don’t know how you make a juvenile record available for “young” buyers without making it available to nearly everyone and why only “young” buyers would be subject to such an “enhanced” background check
7/ What constitutes a “licensed gun dealer” is damned clear. This is aimed at shutting down the private sale or gifting of firearms.
10/ Dude, you are in Congress. Failure is always an option.
This is all eyewash. Besides funds for hardening schools, the whole plan is an exercise in “doing something.” Literally, nothing in this proposed bill would have done any good in any major shooting. It wouldn’t even have an impact on Saturday night in Chicago or LA, which is where the focus should be for anyone serious about ending firearms deaths. I’d done playing this game. As Bonchie and I have pointed out, this is not an end state but a waypoint. This is just the anti-gun left getting Republicans to buy into the concept of silly measures that can’t work so that at some point in the future, the left can say we’ve tried everything, and they know there will be quisling Republicans to help them ban firearms.
Looks like standard operational unspecific jabberjawing to me
Here’s What Senators Came Up With for a Deal on New Gun Laws
After days of negotiations that worried Second Amendment advocates and law-abiding firearm owners due to talk of sweeping new restrictions, it seems like — for now at least — the Republican members of the bipartisan working group held the line on the strictest proposals, though they didn’t stop Democrats on all fronts in the talks that made many conservatives scratch their heads.
The bipartisan group of Senators — led by Chris Murphy (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) — announced their proposal for legislation they seem to think has a chance of making it through their evenly-divided chamber.
In a joint statement, the senators said their plan will “protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country” while citing a duty they feel to “come together and get something done.” Never mind, apparently, that all the restrictive gun laws in Chicago and elsewhere haven’t protected residents.
The statement continued saying the agreement “increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can’t purchase weapons,” again, as if previous laws to keep guns out of criminals’ hands had worked. “We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense proposal into law,” the statement concludes. We’ll see.
The proposal includes providing “resources” — likely grant incentives — to states if they implement so-called “red flag laws.” It also includes investing taxpayer dollars in mental health services for families and in schools along with school safety resources to “to help institute safety measures in and around primary and secondary schools, support school violence prevention efforts and provide training to school personnel and students.” The proposal announcement also says legislators will seek to include an “enhanced review period” for firearm purchasers under 21 years old.
Perhaps notably — and showing Democrats did not get all the things they’ve called for in the wake of the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas — is a lack of their buzzword assault weapons ban, high capacity magazine restrictions, a federal red flag system, or an increase in the minimum age to purchase certain rifles.
To be clear, the lack of those items in the framework proposal does not mean Democrats won’t try to sneak in some version of them as an eventual piece of legislation is developed.
As WaPo previewed before the official announcement of the proposal, the inclusion of billions of federal dollars for school security programs and mental health care is probably the only thing the proposal has going for it with most Republicans.
Townhall reported last week that an armed school resource officer and secured doors kept an aggressive man from entering an elementary school filled with children. The SRO took the individual down with assistance from local law enforcement while most children inside the building were unaware that anything had happened outside. The training and protocol that worked there should be used for a framework, not gun-grabbing Democrats’ CNN talking points.
Throughout the negotiations, Republicans involved had tried to assuage concerns from firearm owners and gun safety advocates. Sen. Cornyn said that the forthcoming deal was “not about creating new restrictions on law-abiding citizens” but “about ensuring that the system we already have in place works as intended.” Yet several of the pieces of the framework seem to include new restrictions, albeit lesser than a blanket ban on “assault weapons” or magazines.
And while the group may have reached a tentative agreement, they’re only a small group of the U.S. Senate — and several Republicans in the crew such as Susan Collins (ME) and Mitt Romney (UT) are not exactly known as standard bearers for the GOP. At least 60 senators in all would be needed to support any resulting legislation in order to overcome a potential legislative filibuster.
As we’ve learned before, a statement of agreement between a small group of senators is anything but a done deal. We’ve also learned that what might seem to be a workable legislative framework can turn into a Frankenstein’s monster of horrible policies as Democrats scheme to use the bipartisan cover of squishy Republicans to ultimately get their way.
The best thing for any Senate Republican to do at this point is walk away from the table and declare opposition over anything even remotely concerning in the tentative agreement — the incentive for red flag laws or the enhanced review for under-21 purchasers, for example — or legislation as it ends up being written.
There’s less than five months until the midterms, Democrats need at least ten Republicans to even move a bill to a vote, and there’s no reason for Republicans to cave on an issue as critical as Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms just to look like they’re playing nice. Democrats would never do the same if they were in the minority, and there are better, more effective, less freedom-depriving options available to respond to tragedies like the one in Uvalde. Harden schools, fund resource officers, train willing staff, and work to remedy the myriad failures of government that are discovered in the wake of such tragedies.
I’ll say it again. When the leadership becomes the ‘story’ instead of what the organization’s purpose is, that leadership needs to go. If WLP had resigned 3 or 4 years ago and the Board of Directors taken things in hand, I think the NRA wouldn’t be in the situation where some goobermint agents just may be appointed to stick their noses into the business.
NRA loses bid to end New York AG suit seeking LaPierre’s removal
New York Attorney General Letitia James definitely had it in for the National Rifle Association before she ever assumed office. As a candidate, she called the group a “terrorist organization” and vowed to launch an investigation into the New York-charted group if elected. That was one promise she was happy to fulfill, and her investigation and case against the NRA has gone on for three years now.
James vowed to dissolve the organization as well, but she was prevented from doing so by the judge overseeing the case against the NRA, who declared earlier this year that while the Attorney General has laid out plenty of details of “greed, self-dealing, and lax financial oversight”, she failed to prove that of that actually benefitted the group itself and not individual leaders and higher-ups in the group. It was inappropriate to shut down the group itself, ruled Justice Joel Cohen, but James could continue her case with an eye towards removing the NRA’s leadership.
The NRA objected to Cohen’s decision, arguing that James had launched her investigation solely because of her bias against the group and asking that the judge throw out the James’ modified complaint, but on Friday, Cohen issued a ruling that allows James to move forward in trying to ban CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and three others from ever holding a position within the NRA, as well as installing an independent monitor to oversee the group’s books.
The NRA has failed to prove that James pursued the NRA only because of her political views, the judge ruled.
Instead, James’ allegations of “fraud, waste, and looting” are enough to justify her lawsuit, regardless of her political beliefs, the judge wrote.
“There are no factual allegations suggesting that the stated concerns driving the investigation — reports of fraud, waste, and looting within the NRA — were imaginary or not believed by the Attorney General,” the judge wrote.
None of the AG’s claims are frivolous, Cohen added.
“In fact, the NRA itself recognized many of the same issues about corporate governance underlying the Attorney General’s investigation,” the judge wrote.
LaPierre’s control of the NRA has been challenged internally as well, but the 76-member Board of Directors has solidly stood behind him over the last few years. Allen West’s attempt to become Executive Vice President during the recent Annual Meetings resulted in him getting just one vote, with another seven board members abstaining, and more than 50 votes cast in favor of retaining LaPierre in his current position.
While Cohen was careful to note in his opinion that James has yet to prove all of her claims, he did call them “objectively well-founded”, and, as noted above, pointed out that even the NRA itself “recognized many of the same issues about corporate governance underlying the Attorney General’s investigation.”
Within the NRA, whistleblowers “push[ed] for additional documentation and transparency,” an effort which was “met with resistance from a handful of its executives and vendors”. One executive “was fired by the NRA for many of the same issues alleged in the Complaint,” while the group “became embroiled in litigation” against others who “abused its trust”. And in this action, current NRA members have sought leave to intervene to address “concerns . . . about the NRA’s management by the Individual Defendants and current Board”.
Further, when the NRA sought to evade the Attorney General’s actions in New York by filing for bankruptcy in Texas, the federal bankruptcy court there underscored concerns about the NRA’s corporate governance. For example, the bankruptcy court noted “the surreptitious manner in which [Wayne] LaPierre obtained and exercised authority to file bankruptcy for the NRA,” finding the decision to “[e]xclude[] so many people from the process of deciding to file for bankruptcy, including the vast majority of the board of directors, the chief financial officer, and the general counsel, . . . nothing less than shocking”. The court also alluded to “cringeworthy facts” about the NRA’s past misconduct. It found “[s]ome of the conduct that gives the Court concern is still ongoing,” including “very recent[ ] violat[ions]” of the NRA’s internal procedures and “lingering issues of secrecy and a lack of transparency”.
Cohen went on to say that “[i]n the end, an objectively reasonable investigation – here, one uncovering credible evidence of wrongdoing – is not rendered unconstitutional solely by the investigator’s subjective state of mind,” declaring that even if James had a personal animus against the NRA, the organization hasn’t demonstrated “a sufficient causal link between the animus and the adverse action”; in this case, the original lawsuit filed by James to dissolve the NRA and the revised complaint seeking his (and others) removal from the organization.
There’s still plenty of legal wrangling to be done (and millions of dollars in legal expenses for the organization to be billed) before this case goes to trial, likely some time next year, but I doubt that Cohen’s ruling is going to be overturned on appeal.
I do believe that James’ original motivation was more of a fishing expedition than anything else, but unfortunately for the NRA and its leadership, what she found can’t be as easily dismissed by Justice Cohen as her attempt to dissolve the organization was.
BLUF:
..for FY 2017 there were a grand total of 12 prosecutions out of 112,000 denials. When, all else being equal, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of being prosecuted for a crime in which the perpetrator necessarily offers himself up to the government, the goal isn’t public safety, it’s to control the law-abiding.
Gun Control is About Stripping Rights NOT Stopping Crime
Economics has a concept called “revealed preference.” The gist is that a person’s observed actions reveal more about their preferences than what a person might profess to prefer. As applied to anti-gun politicians, despite all the noise they might make about stopping the criminal misuse of guns, their actions reveal that their policies are designed to attack the rights of law-abiding Americans.
Consider, anti-gun politicians ceaselessly propose new gun control laws they claim will stop criminal actors from misusing firearms. However, many of these same policymakers are indifferent to the woeful federal prosecution rates of those who misuse or try to obtain a firearm illegally under current law. In certain jurisdictions, these politicians have actively worked to undermine law enforcement officers and prosecutors’ ability to bring those who commit violence with firearms to justice and sufficiently incapacitate dangerous individuals. Therefore, the rational observer comes to understand that, as those who break the law don’t stand to be punished, the real aim of gun control is to restrict the law-abiding.
The most prominent item on the gun control wish list in recent years is the criminalization of private firearm transfers, sometimes inaccurately referred to as “universal background checks.” The policy would force law-abiding gun owners to obtain government background checks before transferring firearms to their neighbors, friends, or even extended family. While seeking to foist this burden on the law-abiding, anti-gun politicians have shown little interest in punishing criminals who fail such background checks.
