Category: Bureaucraps

Biden Admin’s Proposed Gun Rule Would Turn Millions Into Felons

A legal cloud descended over many American gun owners on Monday.

A new rule proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) at the request of President Joe Biden would make most firearms with stabilizing pistol braces illegal. Owners would have to register, turn in, or disassemble the guns to avoid federal felony charges. One government estimate found as many as 40 million guns could be affected.

“It will be the largest gun registration, destruction, and confiscation scheme in American history,” Alex Bosco, who invented the stabilizing brace and founded the biggest manufacturer of them, told The Reload.

The rule outlines a complex point system the agency wants to create to judge when a gun with a stabilizing brace should be classified as a pistol and when it should be classified as a short-barrel rifle requiring registration under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). The proposal aims to reconcile the ATF’s decade-long track record of approving the braces on a case-by-case basis. That process was often criticized by members of the gun industry and gun-rights movement as arbitrary and contradictory.

But gun advocates said the new system is worse than the old. While the system gives objective measures for the weight or length of the guns affected, opponents pointed to the seemingly random criteria used to determine which braces are legal and which aren’t. They said factors like whether the gun can be easily fired with one hand or whether an attached brace is adjustable in length have no basis in the statute, which sets the line between pistols and short-barreled rifles at whether the gun is “designed and intended” to be pressed against the shooter’s shoulder.

“Today’s proposed rulemaking on pistol-braced firearms represents a gross abuse of executive authority,” said Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, in a statement.

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The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak:

The Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.

The possibility that the pandemic began with an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is attracting fresh attention. President Biden has asked the national intelligence community to redouble efforts to investigate.

Much of the public discussion has focused on circumstantial evidence: mysterious illnesses in late 2019; the lab’s work intentionally supercharging viruses to increase lethality (known as “gain of function” research). The Chinese Communist Party has been reluctant to release relevant information. Reports based on U.S. intelligence have suggested the lab collaborated on projects with the Chinese military.

But the most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science. In particular, consider the genetic fingerprint of CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for the disease Covid-19.

In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location. Doing this leaves no trace of manipulation. But it alters the virus spike protein, rendering it easier for the virus to inject genetic material into the victim cell. Since 1992 there have been at least 11 separate experiments adding a special sequence to the same location. The end result has always been supercharged viruses. . . .

In the case of the gain-of-function supercharge, other sequences could have been spliced into this same site. Instead of a CGG-CGG (known as “double CGG”) that tells the protein factory to make two arginine amino acids in a row, you’ll obtain equal lethality by splicing any one of 35 of the other two-word combinations for double arginine. If the insertion takes place naturally, say through recombination, then one of those 35 other sequences is far more likely to appear; CGG is rarely used in the class of coronaviruses that can recombine with CoV-2.

In fact, in the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.

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DOJ Issues Proposed Rule On Pistol Braces, Model “Red Flag” Legislation

Two months ago, President Joe Biden announced his first executive actions on gun control, promising that the Department of Justice and the ATF would issue proposed rules aimed at cracking down on the proliferation of home-built firearms and AR-style pistols that use stabilizing braces, which Biden and other anti-gun advocates want to declare as items subject to the National Firearms Act. The DOJ’s proposed rule on so-called “ghost guns” was unveiled a few weeks ago, and today the DOJ released the agency’s proposed rule dealing with pistol braces, along with model “red flag” legislation that the administration is hoping states will adopt in the coming months.

You can read the full proposed rule regarding pistol braces here, but in essence the DOJ and ATF are proposing the adoption of a new “worksheet” that the firearms industry and individual gun owners can use to determine if an AR-style pistol equipped with a stabilizing brace will likely be considered by the ATF to be a pistol or a short-barreled rifle subject to registration under the National Firearms Act. I say likely because the agency still hasn’t issued a clear directive one way or the other. If the firearm in question has certain characteristics that the ATF says make it more likely to be shoulder-fired, then the ATF will likely determine that the gun is in fact a short-barreled rifle.

In order to make their new proposal comply with existing law, the ATF is proposing to redefine what a rifle is under both the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms act by adding an additional sentence to the current definition.

The new sentence would clarify that the term “rifle” includes any weapon with a rifled barrel and equipped with an attached “stabilizing brace” that has objective design features and characteristics that indicate that the firearm is designed to be fired from the shoulder, as indicated on ATF Worksheet 4999.

If that sounds like a really vague definition of “rifle” to you, you’re not alone. You shouldn’t have to fill out a worksheet to figure out if a gun is a rifle or not, but that’s exactly what the ATF would require as opposed to establishing (or keeping) the clear definition that’s been in place in the National Firearms Act since the 1930s.

The worksheet itself lacks objective criteria in many regards. For instance, if the “rear surface” of the stabilizing brace is “useful for shouldering the firearm,” then that makes it more likely that the firearm the stabilizing brace is attached to will be considered a short-barreled rifle, but the agency doesn’t explain what would make that surface “useful” or not. A telescoping or adjustable brace also makes it more likely that the gun in question would be considered an NFA item, though an adjustable brace is useful for AR-style pistols, since not everyone’s arm is the same length and an adjustable brace makes it easier for a user to correctly use the brace as it’s intended.

In short, this looks like an attempt by the DOJ, the ATF, and the Biden administration to declare that millions of legally-owned AR-style pistols are actually subject to the provisions of the National Firearms Act without directly saying so.

As for the model “red flag” legislation, the DOJ has come up with an incredibly broad proposal that would allow almost anyone to petition the courts to seize someone’s firearms using a very low legal standard, but would make it incredibly difficult for those subject to an Extreme Risk Protection Order to get their guns returned to them. At the same time, the model legislation is incredibly vague on many of the specific details, leaving it up to the states to determine many of the particulars in terms of implementation.

Under the model legislation, law enforcement, family members, household members, dating or “intimate partners”, health care providers, school officials, and “any other appropriate persons” included by the state could start the “red flag” process, and the first court hearing could take place before the person who’s the subject of the petition is even aware that it’s been filed. After that ex parte hearing has taken place, a second hearing would be held where the subject can try to rebut the allegations of the petitioner, but it’s important to note that nothing in the DOJ proposal provides for any sort of public defender in cases where the petitioner cannot afford an attorney.

The Biden administration recommends that any red flag order lasts for a year, but again leaves it up to the states to decide how long the firearms seizure should last. Under the model legislation, any “red flag” order could also be renewed an unlimited amount of times, turning what’s supposed to be a temporary measure aimed at a person in crisis into a potential lifetime ban on owning guns, even if the petitioner has never been accused of any criminal activity whatsoever.

The model legislation is a suggestion to the states, unlike the proposed rule on stabilizing braces, which have the potential to turn millions of legal gun owners into felons for simply maintaining possession of their brace-equipped AR-style pistol if the ATF were to decide that their firearm is actually a short-barreled rifle. The public comment period hasn’t yet opened, but when it does gun owners and Second Amendment supporters should speak out and reject another attempt by the Biden administration to rewrite the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act through regulations instead of using Congress to make those changes via legislation. The votes may not be there for Congress to enact these changes, but that doesn’t give the administration the authority to do so unilaterally.

Gun sales: Best May ever, 2021 set to crush record, public ‘afraid of violence, tyranny’

As Democrats and President Joe Biden continue to promote gun control instead of targeting those who commit violent acts, people in May continued to flood gun stores, giving the month the record for FBI background checks.

The latest FBI data suggest that 2021 will be another record year for background checks and sales, topping the nearly 40 million checks in 2020.

One eye-popping statistic: 2021 looks to double the number of background checks and sales of 2015, when 23 million checks were conducted. While not a one-to-one match, background checks track gun sales. Background checks are also conducted in some instances for security clearances and concealed carry permits.

Still, the record pace shows the growing popularity of weapons. Gun stores and industry officials said the surge is being driven by minorities and women concerned about their safety as they see violence, especially in urban areas, increase.

The popularity of firearms is evident in gun stores across the nation where inventory is low and the availability of ammunition is scarce.

Politically, Democrats and the media have seized on the murder rate to blame guns, rarely the victimizers. But sales show that the public is not moved by that argument. Polls show also that the public stands against the anti-gun efforts of Biden.

“There has never, not once, been an accepted study that correlated increased violent crime with increased gun sales. In fact, it’s been proven over and over again that an armed populace is a polite populace. Criminals, for the most part, do not acquire their guns legally,” said Justin Anderson, the marketing director for Hyatt Guns of Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the nation’s biggest gun stores and a regular gun analyst for Secrets.

“The reason gun sales are going through the roof is simple: Law-abiding citizens are afraid. They are afraid of violent crime. They are afraid of the lawlessness that has been spread by riotous criminals. They are afraid of an inept and tyrannous government. In essence, people are starting to realize what most gun owners have known for years: You are your own first responder and that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away,” he added.

Mark Oliva, spokesman for the industry group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, also cited politics for the sales jump.

“These figures are hardly surprising to the firearm industry which is battling against the Biden administration’s attacks on gun rights of law-abiding citizens,” Oliva said. “Anyone looking for the root causes of why this continues can easily see the reasons. These include the nomination of David Chipman, a paid gun control lobbyist and gun control zealot, who admitted before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he wants to ban the most popular selling rifle in America, along with the administration’s proposed rule to redefine unfinished firearm parts as completed firearms and the pending proposal to reclassify pistol fitted with a brace as items strictly controlled by the National Firearms Act.”

“These actions show the contempt this administration holds for gun owners. The reaction is predictable. Americans are exercising their right to keep and bear arms before this administration oversteps their Constitutional authority to deny that right,” he said.

Six Bombshell Revelations from Fauci’s Emails

Townhall read through the thousands of pages of emails Dr. Fauci sent and received about the Wuhan coronavirus that Buzzfeed and the Washington Post obtained via FOIA requests so you don’t have to, and here’s our roundup of the best of the worst takes the left’s scientific savior offered as COVID spread around the world.

1. Scientists told Fauci that COVID-19 might be engineered but he ignored them

As Katie reported, Fauci “was told by NIH scientist Kristian Andersen on January 31, 2020, that Wuhan coronavirus looked ‘potentially engineered.’ In other words, it was manipulated in a lab through gain of function research.”

“And yet, that’s not what he said publicly as he rejected the possibility of a lab leak in interviews, during testimony to Congress and during official White House Task Force briefings. On April 18, 2020, three months after being told the virus looked engineered, Fauci told reporters at the White House, unequivocally, it didn’t come from a lab. Most of the media then reported his remarks as ‘debunking’ a conspiracy theory.”

2. Fauci was circulating articles on “gain of function” research on February 1, 2020

At the time talking about the possibility that the Wuhan coronavirus came from a lab-engineered concoction could get you banned from social media, Dr. Fauci was sending attachments titled “SARS Gain of Function.pdf” to colleagues. One recipient would email back saying “the paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH,” adding another colleague “will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.”

Fauci replied “Ok. Stay tuned.”

3. Fauci tattled on Ron DeSantis but stayed silent on Cuomo

An email dated March 19, 2020, revealed more about how the media darling viewed his commentator duties as well as his tattletale style of dealing with state leaders who didn’t go along with his “scientific” guidance, providing fodder for Democrats and their media allies to drag DeSantis while turning a blind eye to New York. It’s worth noting that Fauci’s emails do not contain similar disdain for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo whose mishandling of COVID led to the deaths of nursing home residents.

“Regarding the bars and beaches, I have been screaming on TV 2 to 5 times per night to tell the younger generation to start taking this seriously. I am very surprised that Gov. DeSantis has not completely closed the bars, even if they serve food… I will bring this up at the Task Force meeting tomorrow.”

4. Fauci knew masks didn’t work and told people not to wear them

Townhall also reported on the communications with individuals and media outlets in which Fauci advised against mask wearing for travel, told a medical school dean not to mandate masks, and stated the flimsy masks most Americans were forced to wear were ineffective at stopping the spread of Wuhan coronavirus.

“‘Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection,’ he said. ‘The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.’ Fauci concluded, saying ‘I do not recommend that you wear a mask’ to travel by air.”

5. The Chinese penpals

In emails to George Gao, the director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention from March 2020, the two struck an unnervingly collegial tone despite China’s role in unleashing COVID. “Hope the US situation is getting better eventually… Lets work together to get the virus out of the earth,” emailed Gao. “We will get through this together,” responded Fauci.

In another exchange in April 2020, the Chinese official wrote to say “I saw some news (hope it is fake) that [you] are being attacked by some people. Hope you are well under such an irrational situation.” Fauci replied “All is week despite some crazy people in this world.”

6. In March 2020, Fauci thought COVID would stop on its own without a vaccine

“Social distancing is not really geared to wait for a vaccine… Close proximity of people will keep the R0 higher than 1 and even as high as 2 to 3. If we can get the R0 to less than 1, the epidemic will gradually decline and stop on its own without a vaccine.”

#FauciEmails Reveal A Career Bureaucrat Who Followed Political, Not Medical, Science

This has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for the propagandists in the leftstream activist media and the truth-deniers in Big Tech.  First, we learn that, yes, the coronavirus did likely emerge, bio-engineered, from a Chinese lab. Now we are learning what Anthony Fauci knew and when he knew it.

The Washington Post and BuzzFeed obtained via FOIA thousands of emails to and from Fauci regarding the WuFlu pandemic.

While the propagandist media is busy fawning over Fauci as some sort of superhuman godlet who was single-handedly battling WuFlu in some kind of one-man cage match against President Trump and the Wuhan coronavirus, these emails reveal a startling truth. They tell the story not just of Fauci’s blatant, politically-motivated lies to the public but also the great lengths the legacy media and Big Tech went to shut down any discussion of the virus’s origins or mask use efficacy. It was not about stopping the spread of “misinformation” but was a calculated political ploy to shut down the truth.  But we knew that.  And now we have proof.

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And Just Like That, Dr. Fauci’s Book Has Been Pulled From Presales

The publishing industry can be a fickle enterprise, as the time to roll out a new edition can entail many changes, especially when the topic of note is so deeply rooted in current events. It was only yesterday when the announcement was made that a book was set to be released featuring the figurehead of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, entitled “Expect The Unexpected”– an unintentionally ironic description of the man infamous for contradicting himself repeatedly.

Since yesterday’s announcement, and the release of the cover art, the news cycle has exploded over the release of thousands of pages of emails from Fauci, and the news — as we have been covering here at RedState — has not been good. While the press has done a noble job in trying to burnish the doctor’s image with cherry-plucked instances from the thousands of pages of communications, there have been a number of realities coming to light since the release of those emails.

And it appears the publisher of his book is now scrambling to avoid trouble. Over at Amazon, where yesterday they had been enthusiastically pimping the release for this coming November, the title is nowhere to be found.

 

The page that had been active for the presale is now stripped, and clicking on it today will deliver any number of cute dog pics.

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Perhaps because TPTB knew he’d be as much a failure today as back then?

Why Was Dr. Fauci Put in Charge of the COVID-19 Pandemic After His Disastrous HIV Epidemic Performance?

Obviously, I am a Dr. Fauci skeptic. I often agree with his nemesis, Sen. Rand Paul. Fauci recently admitted that Paul was correct in saying that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I reported the study that Paul seemed to be referring to on May 13. It not only specifies funding from NIAID, but it also states explicitly in the acknowledgments:

Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF [Gain-of-function] research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

The NIH not only provided funding, but it also approved a continuation of the research during the pause in gain-of-function research during the Obama administration. It is not clear whether Fauci has ever been asked about the justification for that approval.

After 15 months of nearly daily research, listening to the doctors and researchers that the corporate media and health bureaucracy turned into heretics, and getting censored or forced to retract content based on politicized fact checks, I have hundreds of questions for Dr. Fauci. At this point, the one I am most curious about is how the man who botched the response to the HIV epidemic in colossal ways became the darling of the Left and then became part of leading the nation through a pandemic again.

There are at least three parallels between the HIV epidemic and COVID-19. First, when Dr. Fauci began talking about asymptomatic spread for COVID-19, he created a panic that shut down schools and businesses, put diapers on people’s faces for more than a year, and made many Americans view their fellow citizens as mortal threats. Yet, in January 2020, he told reporters that asymptomatic spread was not a driver of respiratory viruses.

Significant transmission of this kind would be unprecedented. It is not something that drives other respiratory viruses, even other coronaviruses. The assertion requires an extraordinary explanation, which has never been given. It would mean this was a virus where individuals could carry sufficient viral load to transmit without ever suffering symptoms. From the perspective of infectious disease science, this idea is absurd. Yet, Fauci and others still use this assertion to keep unvaccinated citizens in masks indoors and outdoors.

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ANTHONY FAUCI DISCUSSED DUAL-USE RESEARCH IN 2012 SENATE HEARING:

Dual-use research, of which gain-of-function research is a kind, can involve examining the ability to manipulate natural viruses to become more transmissible or possibly even a bioweapon. Gain-of-function research has found its way into the pandemic lexicon due to the resurgence of questions regarding the origins of COVID-19. Dr Fauci has continued to downplay both his personal involvement and the involvement of NIAID in grant money used to fund research of potential bat-borne viruses in China and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

* * * * * * * *

Today the Australian published a story resurfacing the fact that in 2012 Dr Fauci argued that the benefits of gain-of-function research outweighed any risk of a laboratory accident, or worse, that could spark an international pandemic. In a paper, Fauci wrote, ‘Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario — however remote — should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision? Scientists working in this field might say — as indeed I have said — that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.’

DHS = Department of HOMELAND SECURITY..
Good grief what an absolute scumbag he is.

Others have opined, that I agree with, is that since the demoncraps and elitists aren’t getting enough of the U.S. citizenry to do what they want, they’re simply importing a new populace. The children of these illegal aliens  (born in the U.S. and thus citizens) will be the cheaply paid, dutifully voting,  obedient serfs with the elite being the new nobility.

SloJoe is merely a mouthpiece, saying what he’s been told to say by the real powers hidden behind the curtains.

Joe Biden: DHS Is for Migration, Not Homeland Security

President Joe Biden’s budget request to Congress for 2022 portrays the nation’s homeland security agency as a welcome center for economic migrants who will compete for Americans’ jobs, wages, and homes.

The White House’s “Fact Sheet” simply ignores the migration wave deliberately triggered by President Joe Biden and his pro-migration deputies. Instead, it promises to “Reinvest in the Foundations of Our Nation’s Strength” with a “Fair, Orderly, and Humane Immigration System.”

The budget seeks no raise for the Department of Homeland Security, almost eliminates funding for border barriers, and flatlines spending on immigration enforcement officers.

But it seeks billions in extra spending to register, advise, and house migrants and refugees as they move into Americans’ labor markets and housing markets.

“They’re hiding the true intention of defunding,” said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. The goal is to convert border agents into “border welcomers, ” like Walmart greeters, he said, adding:

The [migrant] numbers will go up until there’s literally not enough people left in the Third World to come here ….They’re not going to decrease because there is no enforcement, they’re not going to decrease.

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Bombshell: Fauci Said Risk of Manipulating Bat Viruses Was Worth a Potential Pandemic

Things keep getting worse for NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who continues to say during testimony on Capitol Hill that he didn’t fund Frankenstein gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

According to The Weekend Australian, Fauci wrote in 2012 that continuing dangerous gain-of-function research was worth the risk of a pandemic.

In previously unreported remarks, Dr Fauci supported the contentious gain-of-­function experiments that some now fear might have led to an escape from a Wuhan laboratory causing the Covid-19 pandemic, calling them “important work”.

An investigation by The Weekend Australian has also confirmed Dr Fauci, the director of the Nat­ional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not alert senior White House officials before lifting the ban on gain-of-function research in 2017.

Writing in the American Society for Microbiology in October 2012, Dr Fauci acknowledged the controversial scientific research could spark a pandemic.

“In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” he wrote. “Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?

“Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.

After telling Republican Senator Rand Paul two weeks ago that he “never” approved grant funding through the NIH for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fauci changed his tune this week and said he simply told Chinese Communist Party controlled scientists not to conduct the research.

From Fauci’s exchange with Republican Senator John Kennedy:

Kennedy: “Here’s where I’m getting at: You gave them money, and you said, ‘Don’t do gain-of-function research.’”

Fauci: “Correct.”

Kennedy: “And they said, ‘We won’t.’”

Fauci: “Correct.”

Kennedy: “And you have no way of knowing whether they did or not, except you trust them. Is that right?”

Fauci: “Well, we generally always trust the grantee to do what they say, and you look at the results—”

Kennedy: “Have you ever had a grantee lie to you?”

Fauci: “I cannot guarantee that a grantee has not lied to us because you never know.”

Seems ‘strangely’ uninterested?
“Seems? Nay it is; I know not ‘seems’.”

Or, in other words, standard operational bureaucrap hypocrisy, better known as ‘Rules for Thee, but not for me!’.

ATF Nominee David Chipman Seems Strangely Uninterested in Hunter Biden’s Alleged Illegal Gun Purchase

“Can I get your commitment that if you’re confirmed, you will in fact look into this matter and refer it for prosecution if you find that Hunter Biden violated a law?” [Senator Tom] Cotton pressed [ATF Director nominee David] Chipman.

“Senator, what I will assure you is that if ATF director, I will ensure that all violations of law are investigated and referred,” Chipman replied, again evading the Hunter Biden inquiry. “I’m not sure that it has not been investigated.” …

“If the facts are as clear-cut as they appear to be based on Mr. Biden’s own admission, I would expect to see criminal charges forthcoming,” Cotton said after questioning Chipman. “But I would say that when a case is as high-profile as this, if there is not an answer for the American people and public, it severely undermines the confidence in our gun laws, as well as the ATF and the Department of Justice, if there are not criminal consequences.”

Banning assault weapons will not work

On May 2, in New York City, a Black woman attacked two Asian women with a hammer. On May 14, three people were slashed with knives within a 12-minute period on a New York subway. On March 17, a young woman was attacked with acid, burned, and blinded in New York. On May 18 in Florida, May 13 in Hawaii, and on March 12 in New York, men were set on fire. On May 21, a Jewish man in New York was attacked with pepper spray.

Antifa and BLM rioters have routinely, and as recently as this week, used metal pipes, Molotov cocktails, laser pointers, frozen water bottles, canned vegetables, mortar-like fireworks, eggs, glass bottles, chunks of concrete, bricks, and fire in their continuing attacks on first responders and random Americans. Pro-regressive pro-stateless-Arab protestors have also resorted to violence beyond words to attack Jews since the recent cease-fire in Israel. Not to mention fists and feet.

Biden’s nominee to head the ATF, David Chipman, wants to ban assault weapons? His position and statements would be laughable if they weren’t so darn dangerous. Besides, they are disingenuous. He carried an AR-15, just like the millions in circulation, as an ATF agent? Come on, man, it was fully automatic; there’s no comparison.

Believing, and encouraging others to believe, that banning semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines, regardless of their capacity, will make America safer has no basis in fact. Paper targets will be safer. Varmints will be safer. Banning such weapons may harm some small business owners who own gun shops and shooting ranges, as well as some larger manufacturers of ammunition, reloading supplies, and firearms.

Why not simply believe the government’s own statistics on weapons of choice? The FBI murder stats for 2018 show there were 14,123 murder victims in the United States. Not too bad for a population of 330,000,000, though devastating for those closest to the crimes. Of those, 297 or 2% were killed by criminals using rifles. The category of rifles was not further broken down, so there are no easily available numbers on how many “assault weapon”-type rifles were used, but logic says fewer than 297.

Nearly 11% of those victims were killed by criminals wielding knives, and 3% by those employing blunt objects like hammers. The most favored tools of murder before knives, which were #2, were handguns. Their owners were responsible for 73% of all murders.

The Senate bill mentioned by Chipman during his testimony contains a pages-long list of all the weapons to be banned. As a former public servant, I hate to say it, but lessons are rarely learned. What happened when the DEA listed all the drugs? Creators of illicit drugs changed a molecule and went on about their business. Technology is a wonderful thing, and as easily abused as it is used.

Besides, all crime is defined as a matter of legislation at federal, state, local, and tribal levels. Criminals, by definition, by their very naming, defy such legislation. Who in their right minds could possibly think that even more legislation would take those weapons out of the hands of such people? Or prevent murder altogether?

A few years ago, a friend was heading off to a conference in Europe. I advised her to stay away from refrigerated trucks. Many more people were killed in Nice, France, by the single driver of that truck on July 14, 2016, than have ever been killed in the United States by a single person wielding a semi-automatic rifle. Some UC Berkley students were among the injured. The perpetrator of that crime just happened to be out on parole after having attacked someone with a wooden pallet. Assault weapons?

It’s been disheartening the past couple of years to watch the Soros-ecutors around the country behave as though they believe that redefining crime, or refusing to prosecute criminal activity, will reduce crime. Just the opposite. People and their communities are even less safe.

The murders and assaults are not committed by weapons, but by those employing them. The Pro-regressives live in a dream state where people, when their exterior environment is modified, are expected to magically become internally changed into good, kind, compassionate people who no longer harbor violent and murderous thoughts or intentions. That’s like believing if you take away all the syrup, pancakes will cease to exist.

Fauci and the Media Have Serious Blood on Their Hands Over COVID.

Donald Trump did many good things as president, but he didn’t always choose the best people to work with or for him. (Omarosa and “The Mooch”?)

If he wins a second term, he would be well-advised to bear in mind the old saw “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

But I don’t blame Trump for the man who was by far the worst government functionary during his administration and right up there among the worst in American history—Anthony Stephen Fauci.

Treated by the media like some combination of Jesus, Moses, and Hippocrates, this overpaid, lifetime bureaucrat was elevated to the level of soothsayer, every word from his mouth treated as if it were “settled science,” even though that concept could be seen as an oxymoron by anyone with a seventh grade education, and even though he contradicted himself so many times it would take an abacus, appropriately, to keep count.

Meanwhile, the same media excoriated Donald Trump for even suggesting the cheap and readily-available hydroxychloroquine might be useful in curing the disease long ago dubbed here at The Epoch Times, with more corroboration daily, the “CCP virus.” (I can say congratulations to ET—you were one of the few places to come to for real information—because I had nothing to do with this.)

Indeed, what has been called Trump Derangement Syndrome now seems too weak a term, considering the degree it dominated even medical science itself during a pandemic. We need something stronger. “Paranoid Trumpophrenia” perhaps.

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Stiffen Up: Taking a Look at the FACTR Stiffy

The pistol stabilizing brace has become so ubiquitous in American homes that the idea of banning them might look good on paper, but would be demonstrably impossible in execution.

No plan survives first… you know the thing. And for what they are, braces also serve as a testament of use, for no regularly used one has stiff, straight flaps. All across the country and on instagram feeds world-wide, the hallmark of dedication often looks like a softened brace. To support all the hard work they go through, the FACTR Stiffy brings new blood into a well-used system.

Factr Stiffy

As of the time of writing, the FACTR stiffy comes in 3 different options: SBA3, SBA4, and SBPDW/Maxim Defense PDW/CQB. Each Stiffy is meant to sit in the brace when not being used, and is for storage purposes only. Brace specific, they do not fit in many other models, so double check before ordering.

FACTR Stiffy

Designed to add longevity to the Brace, the FACTR Stiffy gives it support during storage.

The FACTR Stiffy is compatible with the Wise Men Company Split Fix. For those using the OEM strap, it should be tightened to better flatten out what bends and ridges have been accrued from prior use. Priced at $25, the small investment goes a long way.

FACTR Stiffy

Tucking a sling under the strap helps both silence the QD swivel stud, and keep the sling contained.

BLUF:
In 2005, a U.S. Senator made a specific statement about what the U.S. policy should be with respect to the southern border: “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”

The senator was Barack Obama. He had a point that remains sharp. Tennessee elected officials are on solid ground with their questions.

Several years ago I was in a conversation about the border with a person who worked in government. This individual was critical of Trump policies to enforce U.S. border laws and tighten down the border, saying that people were trying to get to the U.S. to seek a better life.

Acknowledging that to be true, I then asked what local laws could be violated by someone seeking a better life?

The answer on that question? Silence. That’s likely to be some of the answers as well to questions down-on-Biden policy Tennessee elected officials are asking.

‘Every town is now a border town’ says Sen. Bill Hagerty.

The reaction of many Republican Tennessee officials to news that President Joe Biden’s administration is transporting unaccompanied migrant children into and out of Chattanooga is described by an old saying around Tennessee’s Capitol Hill: “If I ain’t up on it, I’m down on it.”

That can happen when elected officials find out that they’re not being kept up on a federal government policy that affects their constituents and communities. A Tennessee senator says current southern border policy means “every town is now a border town.”

A series of questions is being asked of the Biden administration by a trio of Tennessee elected officials following a WRCB-TV, Chattanooga, May 19 report that began, “Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center is receiving planes carrying migrant children who are being bused to multiple Southeastern cities during overnight hours.”\

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Not surprising. He’s a standard operational bureaucrap-for-brains. I’ve had to deal with lots of them. It’s almost like they were cut from the same pattern.

ATF Nominee Offers ‘Insanely Broad’ Definition of ‘Assault Weapon,’ Which He Wants Banned

Under questioning from Texas Senator Ted Cruz Wednesday during his confirmation in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms openly stated he believes the AR-15, the most popular rifle in the United States, should be banned. Further, he said he believes AR-15s that have already been purchased lawfully by millions of Americans should be registered and those who refuse to do so should face criminal charges.

When asked to define the term “assault weapon,” Chipman said he believes it means any rifle with a caliber above .22 that can take a detachable magazine. Through this definition, Chipman believes essentially all modern sporting rifles should be banned.

During the hearing Chipman repeatedly touted his experience as an ATF agent, but his most recent career has been as a lobbyist for rabidly anti-Second Amendment organizations.