Constitutional Rights vs. Ideological Rights

On 31 July 1982 I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign, and domestic. Today I am the Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU).

As a career military serviceman and combat veteran, I believe the oath that I took then has no statute of limitations.  As a Member of Congress, that oath was my guiding principle and light, as the Constitution is our rule of law.

The U.S. Constitution was established to restrain the powers of the federal government.  As a matter of fact, when you read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution you will find the (18) enumerated duties of the legislative branch, the most powerful of our three branches of government.  Article II and Article III lay out the duties, qualifications, duties, responsibilities and scope of the executive and judicial branches.  Our founders intentionally described and limited the federal government.

Unfortunately, the left does not subscribe to these limitations.  Today there exists competing philosophies of governance — constitutional conservatism and progressive socialism. Leftists do not believe in the absolutism of the Constitution, our rule of law, and certainly not the ideal of constitutional rights. Leftists believe in the dangerous concept of ideological rights.

The left in America embraces an ideal that is the antithesis of our constitutional rights. They believe their ideology defines our rights.  They believe they can grant and take our rights away.

I find very disconcerting the repeated assertion by the current occupant of the oval office, Joe Biden, that no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.  His current focus is the Second Amendment, whose language is quite simple and forthright.  His line has been parroted by many progressive socialists, elected officials and media pundits.

The Second Amendment is part of our individual Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It is established in our founding documents, along the principle of natural rights theory, that our unalienable rights and all individual rights come to us from our Creator God, the Judeo-Christian God. They do not emanate from the government, and that is codified in our Declaration of Independence which Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “laws of nature and nature’s God”.

Here we have the President of these United States of America who took an oath to uphold the Constitution declaring our constitutional rights are not absolute.

The left tells us that we have a right to healthcare. We have a right to free college education. We have a right to change our gender.  None of these are enumerated rights, but they are ideological rights of the Left.

Once upon a time, during the Carter administration, the Left told us that every American had a right to own a home. They passed legislation called the Community Reinvestment Act which led to the subprime mortgage crisis and financial meltdown some 30 years later.  Just last week a Democrat Congressman from Rhode Island publicly stated that he deemed constitutional rights as bovine excrement. Yes, a US Congressman who is supposed to have taken an oath to the Constitution says constitutional rights are BS!

Now you can see why we need an organization called the American Constitutional Rights Union?

If no amendment to the Constitution is absolute, then I guess the left wants to make me a slave again? Recall, Democrats did not support the 13th and 14th Amendments. Today, this same group, who now embraces socialism and Marxism, is promoting economic enslavement.

If the left in America is able to define our rights based upon their ideological agenda and have it enforced by the rule of the mob…America faces dark days ahead. And if the Left is successful in disarming the American populace, their sponsored mob, Antifa, will leverage coercion, threats, intimidation, fear, and violence against anyone not in compliance.

If the progressive socialist left does not like our Constitution, they can go through the amendment process. Passing ideologically based laws, or issuing edicts, orders, mandates, and decrees, does not override our constitutional rights.

Recall, our respective States would not ratify our constitution until it had an individual Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment clearly states, “All the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the States and to the People.” If the 10th Amendment is not absolute, then the leftists in America become the repository of all power in America.

America is the longest running Constitutional Republic because of individual constitutional rights…not rights based upon progressive, socialist, statist, Marxist ideology.

Steadfast and Loyal.

President McConaughey makes the case for gun control compromise at the White House

The average joe doesn’t pay attention to daily political claptrap, especially when it’s coming from a figure as underwhelming and predictable as the president. But have an A-list actor revisiting the most gruesome and heartbreaking details of a mass shooting and some will perk up.

I wonder if the true target of having McConaughey speak today isn’t Congress but Greg Abbott. In an alternate universe, McConaughey is running for governor against him right now. He’s sufficiently well-liked at home that having him champion a cause like this in an emotional way after a catastrophe might affect some Texans. If McConaughey ends up as an advocate for red-flag laws at the state level, that’ll put pressure on Abbott.

Another point is; Why does anyone give these people ‘authority’? I could not care less what a movie actor believes I should or shouldn’t do, own, believe, or think.

 

Take out “The” and  “of ‘assault weapons’” and it would still be right.

The Reality of ‘Assault Weapons’ is Far Too Boring and Inconvenient for the Media.

We’re hearing a lot of claims and counter-claims about modern sporting rifles right now. While these “modern” guns are more than half a century old, honest gun owners still buy and use them every day. Occasionally, criminals use them as well, but that’s rare. About one-out-of-eight gun owners have a modern sporting rifle today. And as we’d expect, rifles are used in armed defense situations about an eighth of the time.

Semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles were introduced to the civilian market here in the US in 1905. The US military adopted them about three decades later for use in World War II.

The civilian version of the modern sporting rifle, the AR-15, was introduced in 1956 so it has been with us for over six decades. In addition to its low recoil and plastic stock, the AR platform’s real innovation is its modularity. The AR can be adjusted to fit people of almost any stature in seconds, which is why it’s so popular. It’s the gateway rifle, the volksgun. I think that is why the democrats want it banned.

Here are two recent news stories that involve the use of a modern sporting rifle . . .

Homeowner with an AR stops two home invaders
It was mid-morning when a homeowner in Brownsboro, Texas heard the sounds of breaking glass coming from inside his home. The homeowner grabbed his AR rifle and went to see what was happening. The homeowner saw two strangers in his house. The defender told the intruders not to move. The second intruder, a female accomplice, ran away. The defender let her go and called 911.

Police arrested the male intruder. The homeowner pointed out the broken glass near his front door. Police arrested and searched the neighborhood for the second robber.

The defender was not charged with a crime.

The homeowner never pulled the trigger as he defended himself. That’s the usual outcome and happens in over 80 percent of defensive gun uses. There are exceptions, of course.

Woman with concealed carry license stops felon with an AR
A woman with a concealed carry permit was attending a graduation/birthday party at an apartment complex in Charleston, West Virginia. The party had spilled out into the parking lot with about 40 people at the celebration. At about 10 at night, a man drove through the parking lot and people shouted for him to slow down.

The driver took offense and came back a half hour later. He climbed into the back seat of his car and started shooting at the crowd with an AR rifle. The woman shot back several times, stopping the attacker in what would have been a mass shooting. No one else was injured.

She called 911 and remained at the scene. Emergency medical services declared the shooter dead from multiple gunshot wounds. The attacker was a convicted felon with a long criminal record. Police are investigating how he got his firearm.

Gun control laws don’t stop criminals from acquiring and using guns. They never have. But there is more we can learn from these two news accounts. AR rifles don’t turn honest homeowners into enraged murderers and they don’t make criminals into unstoppable killers. Modern sporting rifles are actually mundane. And as we’d expect, our neighbors only use lethal force as a last resort.

The reality is, however, that honest reporting about ordinary citizens defending themselves doesn’t make much money for the mainstream news media. They find it more clickworthy to say that a particular piece of steel, plastic and aluminum is horribly frightening and unusually deadly. Apparently that’s the only thing that keeps us watching through the commercials.

BLUF
But the big takeaway I think here is — they want to push Congress and social media to control us more because they know we are winning.

Former Obama Adviser Lets Cat out of the Bag on What Dems Want to Do to Control Us

Former White House Communications Director for the Obama administration Dan Pfeiffer appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday and what he said was revealing, threatening, and great–all at the same time.

Pfeiffer claimed that the people who listen to “right-wing media” were “more likely to believe conspiracy theories about vaccines, conspiracy theories about elections.

“That is the problem in this country is that we have a very well funded, very aggressive operation that is spreading these lies for profits and political gain, and it is incredibly dangerous.”

He put out what was the constant theme of the segment — attacking Facebook for purveying “news,” which Mika laughingly said was “not where you get news.” Because how dare you not listen to mainstream outlets like hers?

That was quietly hilarious, when you think about all the conspiracy theories that Democrats and MSNBC have pushed over the last few years, with Russia collusion, paid for and spread by the DNC, with the Clinton campaign top of the list. People on the left believe all kinds of crazy things about pee tapes and Ginni Thomas (Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife) trying to “overthrow” the government (big scoop: she did no such thing) because of the crazy pushed by liberal mainstream media. Meanwhile, while there’s a lot from the mainstream against conspiracy theories on the right, there’s not so much targeted at deflating the conspiracy theories that flourish on the left.

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Here’s another take on the moronic crap-for-brains CBS article about Japanese gun control laws. And an interesting statistic

Why comparing gun violence here to Japan is stupid

Japan and the United States don’t have a lot in common. Culturally, we’re quite different, though not necessarily incompatible. After all, while legions of Americans consume bits of Japanese culture as if it were the greatest thing ever, other legions in Japan do the same thing with American culture.

But there are profound differences between the United States and Japan.

You wouldn’t really know that if you saw this story going on about their low rates of gun homicides.

As the U.S. gun control debate intensifies, some Americans are looking overseas for ideas on how to prevent mass shootings. Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world. There were more than four firearm homicides in the U.S. per 100,000 people during 2019, compared to almost zero in Japan.

As CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, Japan’s strict laws on private gun ownership have surprising origins in the United States. She met Raphael, a well-known Japanese YouTuber who decided to take skeet shooting lessons. Despite being ex-military, he had to jump through all the same hoops that any Japanese civilian must clear to get a gun license.

There’s mandatory training. You have to pass a written exam, plus a physical and mental health evaluation. Even then, the police will go and ask your family and friends whether you have any violent tendencies.

The point, of course, is very clear. Japan good, America bad. (The article later goes on to point out the irony in the fact that their gun laws are the result of American occupation following World War II.)

However, for all of Palmer’s questions, she never bothered to dig beyond the surface level.

Japan’s total homicide rate is 0.3 per 100,000 people. That’s for all weapons, and yes, that is incredibly low by anyone’s standard. It’s easy to see why some would look to Japan and try to see what they’re doing in hopes of replicating it here.

If our gun homicide rate were only 0.3 per 100,000, that would probably be a rate we could live with, right?

Except, our non-gun homicide rate is 1.6 per 100,000. That’s more than [5] times greater than Japan’s total rate.

In other words, whatever is making Japan so relatively safe has little or nothing to do with their gun laws. After all, the Japanese government can’t ban knives, hammers, sticks, or body parts–all of which are used to kill plenty of people here in the United States.

Instead, whatever has created such a low homicide rate is likely something that has nothing to do with weapon restrictions and more to do with culture or, at least, some other regulation.

Unfortunately, that’s beyond the modern media to delve into. That’s a question they never bother to think to ask because they’re apparently conditioned to not think of homicide as anything other than a gun issue.

The thing is, though, if you managed to make all guns go away overnight from every hand in the country, we’d still have a higher homicide rather than Japan–at least five times higher, though I suspect it would increase since you have to assume a large percentage of those who kill with guns would simply shift to another weapon.

So yeah, Palmer skimmed the surface and never dug any deeper, which is par for the course in this day and age.

Feminist Naomi Wolf takes the red pill and takes the first tentative steps on the path to see reality

BLUF
Without the brilliantly-conceived and clearly-worded Second Amendment, without the deterrent to state and transnational violence of responsible, lawful, careful and defensive firearms ownership in the United States of America, it is clear that nothing at all will save our citizens from the current fates of the people of China, Australia and Canada; including the children; who are facing — unarmed, defenseless as their parents sadly are — even worse fates, perhaps, still ahead.

Rethinking the Second Amendment

I wrote this essay some weeks ago, but I kept waiting to publish it til tragic mass shootings were no longer in the news. But that day looks as if it will never come, so I am publishing it anyway, with grief and mourning for those lost to gun violence, as we must nonetheless have this difficult conversation.

The last thing keeping us free in America, as the lights go off all over Europe- and Australia, and Canada – is, yes, we must face this fact, the Second Amendment.

I can’t believe I am writing those words. But here we are and I stand by them.

I am a child of the peace movement. A daughter of the Left, of a dashingly-bearded proto-Beatnik poet, my late dad, and of a Summer of Love activist/cultural anthropologist, my lovely mom. We are a lineage of anti-war, longhaired folks who believe in talking things out.

By the time I was growing up in California in the 1960s and 1970s, weapons were supposed to have become passe. When I played at friends’ houses in our neighborhood in San Francisco, there were posters on the walls: “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” Protesters had iconically placed daisies in the rifle barrels of unhip-looking National Guardsmen.

We were obviously supposed to side with the daisies.

Weapons were archaic, benighted — tacky. A general peace was surely to prevail, in the dawning Age of Aquarius.

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Gun Control Misfire: Trudeau Pistol Ban Sees Stores Sell Out of Handguns

Gun stores in Canada have seen handguns fly off the shelves, with many selling out altogether after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced gun control legislation freezing all pistol purchases.

In what appears to be a seismic political misfire, Canadian gun stores have been reporting a massive surge in handgun sales after the country’s leftist prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced that he would be implementing gun control laws totally freezing the import and sale of this class of firearm.

Many shops in the country have now reportedly sold out of pistols entirely, despite extremely restrictive laws already in place in the country which can make the purchase of a handgun onerously difficult.

According to a report by the AFP, every gun store owner who spoke to the agency openly derided Trudeau’s declaration that he would ban the sale of handguns, while also saying that they had all seen a massive surge in pistol sales since he made the announcement last week.

Jen Lavigne, co-owner of That Hunting Store, speaks with customers on June 3, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada. - Canadians rushed to buy handguns this week, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on May 30, 2022, a proposed freeze on sales in the wake of recent mass shootings in the US. "Sales have been brisk," said Lavigne. "We sold 100 handguns or almost our entire stock in the last three days since the prime minister announced the freeze," she said. (Photo by Dave Chan / AFP) (Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Jen Lavigne, co-owner of That Hunting Store, speaks with customers on June 3, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada. – Canadians rushed to buy handguns this week, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on May 30, 2022, a proposed freeze on sales in the wake of recent mass shootings in the US. “Sales have been brisk,” said Lavigne. “We sold 100 handguns or almost our entire stock in the last three days since the prime minister announced the freeze,” she said. (Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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Observation O’ The Day
“Our ‘elites’ are now promoting the kind of history one would impose on a conquered nation, to break its people’s spirit.”

Common Sense? CBS Urges U.S. Adopt Japan’s Occupation-Era Gun Control

On Monday’s CBS Mornings, the network continued their series globetrotting for gun control laws. This time they left Europe and jetted over to Japan where senior foreign correspondent (and friend to the Iranian regime) Elizabeth Palmer touted their oppressive system where a citizen could wait a year or longer to get a gun license as authorities prod their lives and a gun shop owners need to get permission to buy ammo. All imposed on them during the post-WWII occupation.

So much for “common sense” gun laws.

“As the U.S. gun-control debate intensifies, some Americans are looking overseas for ideas on how to prevent mass shootings. Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world,” co-host Nate Burleson announced at the top of the segment. “Seems like it’s about time we adopt some of those laws,” he pushed at the end.

Hanging out with Japanese YouTuber Raphael at a skeet shooting range, Palmer praised the “mandatory training” citizen had to go through, in addition to a “written exam, a physical and a mental health evaluation, and even then the police can go and ask your family and friends whether you’ve got any violent tendencies.”

“It took me a year,” Raphael told her. She also noted, “the police had even interviewed his wife.”

She also touted how Japanese citizens were only allowed to buy firearms from three categories and the ridiculous fact that gun store owners needed permission to restock ammunition:

He’s proud of the buck he shot in northern Japan with a rifle, one of only three types of guns a civilian can own. Air guns are also allowed, he said, as shotguns, but that’s it.

I’ve heard that there’s very strict control on ammunition, as well. I see you have some rounds here in the cabinet.

“Yes,” he tells me. “When a gun owner runs out he needs police authorization to buy more.”

“Does he think the law goes too far? Not a bit. Like most Japanese, he supports it as the price for almost zero gun violence,” she boasted.

Palmer was absolutely giddy to note that the reason Japan had such strict gun control laws was because of the United States. “And how’s this for ironic? Japan owes its strict gun laws to America,” she mocked. “When the U.S. occupied Japan after World War II it disarmed the country.”

She even threw in a soundbite from an old documentary where the narrator proclaimed: “To the scrap heap went the guns.” Palmer conveniently omitted the part where the U.S. also banned Japan from having a military.

“Americans shaped the legislation that took firearms out of the hands of civilians, and to this day, that means getting hurt or killed by a gun in Japan is an extremely long shot,” she jabbed as she wrapped up the report.

Palmer is essentially praising the American confiscation of firearms for there to be a smoother occupation and pacification of a citizenry, the exact opposite of what the founders intended. And given the fact that the Democratic Roosevelt administration put Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, perhaps looking to that era for guidance is ill-advised.

Man Attacks Caretaker And Is Shot Dead In Stockton

STOCKTON [California] (CBS13) — Saturday evening, a fatal shooting occurred in a self-defense circumstance in Stockton, said the Stockton Police Department.

On Saturday, officers responded to a shooting around 6:30 p.m. near Allston Way.

When they arrived, they found a 38-year-old man who had been shot and was suffering from major injuries.

Medics transported the man to a local hospital, but unfortunately, the man succumbed to his injuries.

Due to the circumstances, detectives were called to investigate.

They found that the 38-year-old now-deceased man had tried to physically attack a caretaker in the backyard at a home.

The caretaker, a 43-year-old man, fearing for his life, shot the attacker.

After that, the caretaker dialed 911 for assistance. The shooting looked to be justified at the time, according to the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office.

Since all the previous laws didn’t work, let’s try it harder!

New York governor signs gun control package into law

The Supreme Court has yet to officially opine on the constitutionality of New York’s “may issue” permitting laws for concealed carry licenses, and now a host of other newer restrictions will likely be getting court attention in the days ahead. On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed several sweeping new restrictions into law, including a ban on sales of so-called assault weapons to adults under the age of 21, new registration requirements for all owners of modern sporting rifles, and an expansion of the state’s “red flag” law that could have some unintended consequences for those in need of mental health services or counseling.

The laws were rammed through the Democrat-controlled legislature last week as a response to the mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store in which ten people were murdered by an 18-year old suspect, and during today’s signing ceremony Hochul and other Democrats made it clear that even more restrictions are on the way.

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Food security is national security and a crisis is coming.

I first drove the semi on my family’s farm when I was around 12 years old. My dad and I were leaving the field with a full load of corn, when he told me to take the wheel, giving his only advice before climbing down: “Make your corners wide.”

From my family’s farm to the State Committee for the USDA Farm Service Agency to the House Agriculture Committee, I have worked in agriculture in some capacity since I could walk. Now as South Dakota’s governor, I serve alongside a third-generation cattle rancher, Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden. We are the only farmer-rancher pair to lead a state’s executive branch, and we are both deeply concerned: America’s food supply system is at risk.

To keep our food supply consistent and affordable for all families, it is essential that no one else controls it. When another nation controls your food, it controls you. Our leaders recognized this threat and put in place risk management tools and programs to ensure Americans would never go hungry because of a foreign entity’s influence.

But for years now, foreign countries have been investing in our food supply chain, buying up the chemical and fertilizer companies that make American agriculture possible. Purchasing processing facilities, they have introduced vulnerability into the food supply chains Americans rely on to eat. Today, China is buying up millions of acres of land across the United States, following the same blueprint they have used in other countries for years.

While Americans have awakened to China’s military expansion and its grab for critical minerals worldwide, we have not yet realized our strategic vulnerability when it comes to our nation’s food supply.

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Poor Baybee. Maybe if he stampy foots, it’ll get better

Awww: Joe Biden Is Angry That He’s Now More Unpopular Than Donald Trump.

Joe Biden has been underwater in the polls for nearly a year now. His polls were driven down sharply by his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and only worsened due to his incompetence in dealing with the nation’s most significant issues, including the border crisis, COVID-19, the supply chain crisis, gas prices, and inflation.

But as bad as Joe Biden’s poll numbers became, they were still better than Trump’s, who came into office with low approval numbers. So whether or not you trusted Trump’s poll numbers, they were never good.

And now Joe Biden’s are worse… and he’s not happy about that.

“In crisis after crisis, the White House has found itself either limited or helpless in its efforts to combat the forces pummeling them. Morale inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is plummeting amid growing fears that the parallels to Jimmy Carter, another first-term Democrat plagued by soaring prices and a foreign policy morass, will stick,” reports Politico. “The president has expressed exasperation that his poll numbers have sunk below those of Donald Trump, whom Biden routinely refers to in private as ‘the worst president’ in history and an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.”

Politico did its best to provide some cover for Biden, arguing that the White House is powerless to address the nation’s problems as if Biden is a mere observer with no influence over the country whatsoever. But, sure enough, Biden has spent his entire presidency blaming anyone and everyone else but himself for the nation’s problems.

However, the American people aren’t buying the finger-pointing, and Biden’s approval ratings have hit new lows despite various efforts by the White House to “reset” Biden’s presidency.

And he’s angry about it. Really, really, angry.

Far more prone to salty language behind the scenes than popularly known, Biden also recently erupted over being kept out of the loop about the direness of the baby formula shortage that has gripped parts of the country, according to a White House staffer and a Democrat with knowledge of the conversation. He voiced his frustration in a series of phone calls to allies, his complaints triggered by heart-wrenching cable news coverage of young mothers crying in fear that they could not feed their children.

From where I stand, it seems Joe Biden should care less about how these crises make him look and more about fixing them. Biden claimed to be the adult in the room who knew how to solve problems. Yet, he’s only shown himself to be the petulant child who doesn’t know what he’s doing and takes responsibility for nothing.

Like actors have any claim to authority.
How does; No, work for you Matthew?

McConaughey calls for background checks, waiting periods, & more.. but don’t call it “gun control”

No, the actor and native of Uvalde, Texas wants you to think of his laundry list of proposed new laws as “gun responsibility” instead.

To his credit, Matthew McConaughey doesn’t call for an outright ban on any firearm in his USA Today op-ed, but there’s still plenty of talk of “reasonable compromises” and “commonsense solutions” in demands for a host of new gun laws that he claims will “immediately reduce the gun violence tragedies that have become too common in our country.”

McConaughey lays out four new measures he wants to see in place: universal background checks, a ban on sales of modern sporting rifles to adults under the age of 21, the establishment of “red flag” laws in all 50 states, and an undefined waiting period on all sales of semi-automatic rifles.

Integrating gun safety training, safe storage proposals, and bolstering school safety are also beneficial, but are not government-only solutions. Companies, private organizations, and responsible gun owners have a big role to play.

I want to be clear. I am not under the illusion that these policies will solve all of our problems, but if responsible solutions can stop some of these tragedies from striking another community without destroying the Second Amendment, they’re worth it.

This is not a choice between guns or no guns. It’s the responsible choice. It’s the reasonable choice. It’s a quintessentially American choice: Where I have the right to be me, you have the freedom to be you, and we have the responsibility to be US.

To find common ground on this issue, both sides are going to have to answer the call and reach for the higher ground of our collective responsibility.

Business as usual isn’t working. “That’s just how it is” cannot be an excuse. The heinous bloodshed of innocent people cannot become bearable. If we continue to just stand by, we’re living a lie. With every right there comes a duty.

For ourselves, our children, and our fellow Americans—we have a duty to be responsible gun owners. Please do yours and protect the Second Amendment through gun responsibility. It’s time for real leaders to step up and do what’s right, so we can each and all just keep livin’.

The simplest argument against McConaughey’s recommendations are that each and every one of his proposals are already law in the state of California, which, according to the FBI, had the highest number of active shooter incidents in the country last year. If he truly believes that his “reasonable” and “responsible” measures will have an immediate impact, he should at least be able to explain why they’ve failed to do so in the Golden State.

Then there’s the fact that many people don’t actually view this measures as “reasonable” at all, especially once they start to look at the fine print. Universal background checks typically poll well, as McConaughey himself noted, but when voters actually have a chance to approve them, the results aren’t anywhere close to the 80-90% support shown in public opinion polls. Maine’s voter referendum in 2016 failed to get 50% of the vote, for instance, while Nevada’s referendum that same year squeaked by with 51% of the vote. Since then Maine’s violent crime and homicide rates have continued be among the lowest in the nation, while shooting and homicides have continued to increase in Nevada, particularly around Las Vegas.

Southern Nevada’s largest law enforcement agency, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, handled 185 of last year’s killings, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer, in a recent interview, attributed the busiest year since he began heading the unit in 2018 to easy access to guns. He cited loaded firearms found in nightstands and cars.

“The access juveniles and criminals are able to get to firearms is concerning,” he said. “That’s probably the biggest reason on what’s driving our homicide numbers is that guns are so easily stolen and accessible.”

Criminals will find a way to illegally get ahold of guns even in states with “universal background checks” on the books, and because there’s no way to proactively enforce the law requiring private person-to-person sales to go through a federally licensed firearms dealer, these laws have little-to-no deterrent effect on preventing or reducing violent crime.

In his op-ed, McConaughey acknowledged that “the need for mental health care, school safety, the prevalence of sensationalized media coverage, and the decaying state of American values are all long-term societal factors that must be addressed,” but claimed that we “don’t have the luxury of time” to deal with those underlying issues. Why not, if they’re actually going to be more effective at preventing these types of attacks than the gun control solutions he’s offering? I’d argue it’s much more reasonable to address our mental health crisis and school security than passing gun control laws that are all too often ineffective, unconstitutional, or both.

I don’t fault McConaughey for reaching for what he believes are “reasonable” responses to the horrific murders in Uvalde, but a gun control solution to this issue only takes us further away from but both realistic and reasonable strategies to stop these kinds of killings; better enforcement of the laws on the books (including violent crimes), improving access to mental health treatment (both in-patient and out-patient options), and ensuring that our most vulnerable are protected from attack on school grounds while recognizing the right of the people to bear arms in self-defense.

This crap-for-brains is what passes for ‘journalism’ today
And again, it is nice they provide means for positive ID

5 “Crazy” Gun Reform Ideas That Just Might Work

JEF ROUNER is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.

In the wake of the Robb Elementary shooting, the question of gun control has come up again. Unsurprisingly, Republicans uniformly resist any possible new regulations on guns. Governor Greg Abbott has even barred any talk of gun control from special committees in school shootings. All efforts at reform are portrayed as precursors to universal bans on firearms.

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Because they know they’d lose

Murphy rules out assault weapons ban, new background checks in Senate plan
Among the proposals on the table are investments in mental health care and school safety and “modest but impactful” changes in gun laws, said Sen. Chris Murphy.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Chris Murphy, who is helping lead Senate talks on gun control, said lawmakers don’t plan to bring any bill to the floor that would ban assault weapons or include comprehensive background checks but are actively working on legislation that would include a range of other measures.

“We’re not going to put a piece of legislation on the table that’s going to ban assault weapons, or we’re not going to pass comprehensive background checks,” Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But right now, people in this country want us to make progress. They just don’t want the status quo to continue for another 30 years.”

He’s right about the ‘status quo’ Gun control laws must be repealed.

Among the items currently on the table are investments in mental health care and school safety, red flag laws and changes to strengthen the background check system, said Murphy.