“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.” ― George Washington

 

 

Government Control in the Digital Age
John Stossel

Politicians push government IDs.
In a TSA announcement, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sternly warns, “You will need a REAL ID to travel by air or visit federal buildings.”

European politicians go much further, reports Stossel TV producer Kristin Tokarev. They’re pushing government-mandated digital IDs that tie your identity to nearly everything you do.

Spain’s prime minister promises “an end to anonymity” online!

Britain’s prime minister warns, “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID.”

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands enthusiastically told the World Economic Forum that digital IDs are good for knowing “who actually got a vaccination or not.”

Many American tech leaders also like digital IDs. The second richest man in the world, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, says, “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything.”

That’s a good thing?

“That is a recipe for disaster and totalitarianism!” says privacy specialist Naomi Brockwell. “Privacy is not about hiding. It’s about an individual’s right to decide for themselves who gets access to their data. A digital ID will strip individuals of that choice.”

“I already have a government-issued ID,” says Tokarev. “Why is a digital one worse?”

“It connects everything,” says Brockwell. “Your financial decisions, social media posts, your likes, things that you’re watching, places you’re going. You won’t be able to voice things anonymously online anymore. Everything you say will be tied back to who you are.”

Digital ID backers say the new ID will make life easier. “You can access your own money, make payments so much more easily,” says the U.K.’s prime minister.

Yes, says Brockwell, “until those services start saying, ‘No, you can’t use our system.'”

Even without a digital ID, Canada froze the bank accounts of truckers who protested COVID vaccine mandates. With a digital ID, politicians could do that much more easily.

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Arkansas Attorney General Clarifies State’s Concealed Carry Law

On November 14, 2025, the Arkansas Attorney General (AG), Tim Griffin, clarified Arkansas law about the legal carry of firearms. The three questions to be answered included: publicly owned buildings or facilities, the legal definition of an “athletic event” in Arkansas law, and what type of carry is prohibited in statutorily prohibited spaces. The questions were asked by the Honorable Sonia Eubanks Barker, a Republican state representative with a pro-Second Amendment reputation.

AG opinions are not binding on judges. They are statements of what the Attorney General believes the law to be. They are often taken into account by prosecutors when determining whether to prosecute in a given circumstance.

AG Griffin’s response was detailed and encyclopedic. It is well-crafted and an excellent read. The response explains Arkansas’s statutory law about the carry of firearms in considerable detail. The response also explains some of the intricacies of law and statutory interpretation. In addition to the lengthy response, the AG  provides brief summaries of his findings. AG Griffin found:

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Let me reiterate:

Bondi Beach Shows Why Self-Defense Is a Vital Right
Individuals and communities must take responsibility for their own safety.

At Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a father-son team of ISIS-inspired terrorists murdered attendees at a celebration of the first day of Hanukkah. One of the attackers was disarmed by a heroic civilian who was shot in the process, while others lost their lives trying to help.

Contrasting Responses to Threats

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to the shooting with promises to further tighten gun laws in the already restrictive country—a measure more likely to disarm potential victims than to inconvenience those planning a homicidal attack. In the U.S., by contrast, Jews stepped up security by themselves and alongside police. At the request of my wife’s rabbi, I recruited a friend who served as a Force Recon Marine. We strapped on armor and pistols to patrol the crowd at the menorah lighting in Sedona, Arizona. Members of the congregation carried concealed weapons of their own.

Nothing happened, but we were there to deter problems and respond if necessary. There’s a big difference between doubling down on failed state policies and taking responsibility for your own safety.

According to Prime Minister Albanese’s office, after the attack, “leaders agreed that strong, decisive and focused action was needed on gun law reform as an immediate action” and promised “to strengthen gun laws” with further restrictions. Of course, that’s what Australia did in 1996 after the Port Arthur mass shooting. The government banned a variety of firearms, with compensation for their surrender. Compliance was limited and the effort spawned a significant black market for guns.

But Australia’s millions of guns didn’t kill 15 people at Bondi Beach. Two men with known Islamist ties who traveled last month to the Philippines for training at terrorist summer camp committed the murders. They chose guns as their tools, but they could just as easily have used explosives, vehicles, incendiaries, or something else to cause mayhem.

“The issue is not gun laws. It’s hatred of Jews,” Rabbi Daniel Greyber of Durham, North Carolina commented after the Bondi Beach attack.

A Government That Can’t Be Trusted

And there’s little reason Australian Jews should trust the Australian government.

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BLUF
No, permitless carry has increased.

Has Concealed Carry Fallen?

In its annual report on concealed carry, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) determined that 20.88 million Americans now have concealed-carry permits—this is a 2.7% drop from 2024.

The number of citizens with concealed-carry permits in the U.S. peaked in 2022 and has now declined for the third year in a row. Today, roughly 8% of U.S. adults hold permits. But has the number of people who choose to legally carry concealed really dropped?

The straightforward answer is no. The number of people with permits actually rose in the 21 non-constitutional carry states, but they fell by a slightly larger percentage in the 29 constitutional carry states.

“Even so, our data show that the total number of people legally carrying firearms has increased, driven by the expansion of constitutional carry,” says John Lott, president and founder of the CPRC.

The central reason for this decrease is the widespread adoption of constitutional carry laws. As this was being written, citizens in a total of 29 states now enjoy some type of constitutional carry. Indeed, “46.8% of Americans (157.6 million) now live in constitutional carry states, with 67.7% of the land in the country (2.57 million square miles),” reports the CPRC.

Although no additional states enacted such laws in 2025, the impact of more state governments getting out of the way of citizens’ constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms has continued. Many people in constitutional carry states still go through the trouble to get permits, as this enables them to travel with their self-defense firearm to states that don’t have constitutional carry but do recognize their state’s permit.

The trouble for researchers like Lott, however, is that unlike gun ownership surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really “hard data” on the number of people who carry we have available; in fact, this data becomes less accurate as more states become constitutional carry. But then, that is in step with the true nature of freedom—law-abiding citizens shouldn’t need to apply to the government for their rights.

So, though the number of permit holders from 2024 to 2025 fell by 0.59 million to 20.88 million, the number of people carrying is thought to be rising. Interestingly, outside of the restrictive states of California and New York, about 9.3% of adults have a permit; whereas the inclusion of these two states brings the number down to about 8%.

Well, all they really know is grandstanding Kabuki theater, so what should we expect?

Democrats’ performative anger on guns offers no real solutions

Even while law enforcement officers hunted for the gunman who murdered two students and wounded nine others at Brown University in Rhode Island last week, gun restrictionists unleashed their typical unhinged rhetoric. Take the reliably partisan Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT): He blamed President Donald Trump for engaging in a “dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country.”

The anger is performative and cynical.

After all, Rhode Island already features every gun regulation Democrats propose we pass nationally. Like everywhere else in the country, all gun purchases go through an FBI background check in Rhode Island. The state has closed the so-called “gun-show loophole.” There’s a waiting period to obtain a gun. Felons are banned from owning firearms. Rhode Islanders must take safety training to obtain “blue permits” to own handguns even in their own homes. “Assault weapons,” the concocted classification Democrats have given scary-looking semiautomatic rifles, are banned. There’s also a ban on magazine capacity above 10 rounds. Citizens have a duty to retreat for self-defense rather than a right to stand their ground. Rhode Island has one of the lowest percentages of gun owners in the country.

One of the popular rejoinders from restrictionists when you point out all these laws is to tell you that passing “safety” laws means little if neighboring states have permissive gun regulations. So, for instance, Chicago politicians are perpetually blaming Indiana for crime, even though Indiana has lower crime levels. Well, Rhode Island is surrounded by states with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, Connecticut and Massachusetts. All three states have passed restrictions that go well beyond any bill that could conceivably pass national or, likely, constitutional muster.

Besides all those constraints, guns are also effectively banned in all Rhode Island schools and universities. Brown University is a “gun-free zone.” Or, in other words, staff, professors, and students are expected to cower in fear and wait for police or security to arrive as the murderer walks around with impunity. Parents trust administrators and professors to house, feed, and educate their children, but not to have a concealed carry permit and possibly save students in case of tragedy.

In any event, the idea, often pushed by the Left, that people have unfettered access to guns is a myth. There are somewhere around 40,000 laws restricting guns on the books in the United States. No constitutional right is nearly as regulated. It’s exceptionally likely that the Brown shooter broke a slew of laws before he murdered anyone.

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Homeowner says intruder shot, killed after entering Las Vegas house

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A man is dead after a homeowner told police he intruded into his home before being shot, police said.

According to police, the shooting occurred just before 11 a.m. [Wednesday]in the 5200 block of Greene Lane in south Las Vegas.

Dispatchers received a 911 call from a homeowner who said he had shot an intruder. The homeowner, identified only as a man in his 30s, said the individual, identified as a man in his late 40s. came over uninvited and unannounced, investigators said.

Police said the individual entered the home and a fight ensued before the homeowner shot the alleged intruder. The individual was taken to an area hospital, where he died.

Investigators believe there may have been a prior relationship between the two, although they could not speak to the nature or closeness.

Authorities said the homeowner was claiming elements of self-defense. Police said there is no threat to the public, and the incident is believed to be isolated.

IN REPLY:

@ShamashAran

I’m a black woman who pretends to be a catgirl on the internet. I enjoy sci-fi novels and I fix cars for enjoyment. None of that tells you a damn thing about the usefulness of MY stance of gun control. Just like you being a gun owner, a veteran, or married to a crime victim tells nobody anything about whether a proposed law is constitutional, effective, or even coherent.

Personal biography is not policy analysis. It’s just vibes in a dress uniform. In your case, I’ll bet the medals are on backwards. Gun control is a nice idea. So is banning drugs. So is banning murder. The problem isn’t intention, it’s reality. Laws don’t operate in a vacuum where only good people follow them and bad people politely comply. They operate in the real world, where criminals route around restrictions the way water routes around rocks. Felons and domestic abusers are already prohibited from owning firearms.

The “Charleston loophole” rhetoric pretends this isn’t true, as if violent criminals are currently wandering into gun stores, twirling mustaches, and lawfully purchasing rifles because a stopwatch hit zero. That isn’t how crime works, and it isn’t how criminals acquire guns. (HINT: They steal them, generally)

What these laws ACTUALLY do is expand discretionary denial and delay for people who are already legal, already vetted, and already compliant. They turn a right into a permission slip that expires if the government is slow, incompetent, or simply hostile. If the state can block a right by failing to act, that right no longer exists. It’s a favor. You can believe gun control should work. (Many people do.) The thing is, belief isn’t evidence. Your credentials aren’t arguments. If the policy fails in practice, pointing at your life story doesn’t make it succeed.

SNAP recipient goes viral: “What’s the point of food stamps if it’s just for real food?”

If the Babylon Bee were to write a parody of a food stamp recipient and create this lady out of thin air it would be the most racist, sexist, and offensive thing imaginable.

But this is real life, so don’t be offended:

She said this, out loud, on the news.

This woman is under the impression that the point of food stamps is to buy processed junk food for overweight people, and not to buy real food for people who can’t afford to eat.

She even calls the food she’s allowed to buy now “real food”! She knows she was using it for ultraprocessed junk!

Really, you can’t make it up.