In September of 2010, I had some stark remarks about the American electrical grid.  Pay close attention, and learn just how stupid and stolid is your political leadership.

The most vulnerable structure, system or component for large scale coal plants is the main step up transformer – that component that handles electricity at 230 or 500 kV.  They are one of a kind components, and no two are exactly alike.  They are so huge and so heavy that they must be transported to the site via special designed rail cars intended only for them, and only about three of these exist in the U.S.

They are no longer fabricated in the U.S., much the same as other large scale steel fabrication.  It’s manufacture has primarily gone overseas.  These step up transformers must be ordered years in advance of their installation.  Some utilities are part of a consortium to keep one of these transformers available for multiple coal units, hoping that more will not be needed at any one time.  In industrial engineering terms, the warehouse min-max for these components is a fine line.

On any given day with the right timing, several well trained, dedicated, well armed fighters would be able to force their way on to utility property, fire missiles or lay explosives at the transformer, destroy it, and perhaps even go to the next given the security for coal plants.  Next in line along the transmission system are other important transformers, not as important as the main step up transformers, but still important, that would also be vulnerable to attack.  With the transmission system in chaos and completely isolated due to protective relaying, and with the coal units that supply the majority of the electricity to the nation incapable of providing that power for years due to the wait for step up transformers, whole cites, heavy industry, and homes and businesses would be left in the dark for a protracted period of time, all over the nation.

In March of 2013, in Surviving The Apocalypse: Thinking Strategically Rather Than Tactically, I remarked that “The first bloody corpse dragged from a home invasion by government forces hunting for firearms will be the occasion for some deep soul searching by millions of firearms owners across the country,” directly within the context of the electrical grid vulnerabilities.

I also cited Bob Owens’ piece in which he examined the vulnerabilities farther down the grid, and Bob remarked later that:

Some people seem appalled at the fact that the sort of attacks that American forces have used so successfully overseas (Iraq’s electrical grid is still in the process of recovering from two wars) might be used against American cities… and that is the exact point both Smith and I were trying to make. Neither of us are advocates of such attacks, as both of us probably have a better idea than the layman of the effect such attacks would have. I’d likely lose several people I love very much who have medical conditions were such an attack to affect this region. these aren’t things we want. these are things we fear.

Smith and I are pointing out the fact that if states or the federal government is willing to push citizens into a Second Revolutionary War over the natural right to self defense, they will feel the wrath of the right of revolution that is the birthright of ever American.

Well after my 2010 article, The New York Times stated (concerning the vulnerabilities):

By blowing up substations or transmission lines with explosives or by firing projectiles at them from a distance, the report said, terrorists could cause cascading failures and damage parts that would take months to repair or replace. In the meantime, it warned, people could die from the cold or the excessive heat, and the economy could suffer hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

While the report is the most authoritative yet on the subject, the grid’s vulnerability has long been obvious to independent engineers and to the electric industry itself, which has intermittently tried, in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security, to rehearse responses.

Of particular concern are giant custom-built transformers that increase the voltage of electricity to levels suited for bulk transmission and then reduce voltage for distribution to customers. Very few of those transformers are manufactured in the United States, and replacing them can take many months.

Do tell.  Some two years after I pointed this out.  Now three years later, the federal government is figuring out that there may be a problem.

Power grid vulnerabilities are finally garnering some attention by government officials.

An electrical grid joint drill simulation is being planned in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Thousands of utility workers, FBI agents, anti-terrorism experts, governmental agencies, and more than 150 private businesses are involved in the November power grid drill.

The downed power grid simulation will reportedly focus on both physical and cyber attacks. The antiquated electrical system in the United States has been one of the most neglected pieces of integral infrastructure.

The EMP Commission, created by Congress, released a report in 2008 calling for increased planning and testing, and a stockpiling of needed repair items.

[ … ]

If the power grid fails, a lack of electricity and food delivery are only the first wave of troubles facing the American people. Police could face major problems with civil unrest. Of course, there also would not be any electric heating or cooling, which easily could lead to many deaths depending on the season.

Listen to me carefully.  A cyber attack or an EMP attack aren’t the real worries, nor is the fact that the systems are “antiquated” (I don’t even know what that means anyway).  If by antiquated they mean that utilities don’t repair transmission lines or replace transformers by clicking on buttons on a computer screen or using an iPhone app, I guess so.

The real vulnerability remains, and the drill simulation isn’t going to do anything about the fact that transformers are ensconced at a location, aren’t numerous, are difficult and time-consuming to transport, and aren’t made in the U.S..  General Patton is reported to have said fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.  A power plant is a fixed fortification, except that it isn’t fortified.  Understand?

It could happen by hurricane as with Sandy, where electrical coverage wasn’t complete even three months after the event.  I lived through hurricane Hugo, where we were without power for two weeks (and I studied for my professional engineering examination for two weeks by candle light).

It might take the form of foreign terrorists attacking our electrical grid, or it might take the form of men who, after watching innocent people shot in SWAT raids, their animals slaughtered in front of them, their wealth stolen from them to feed the lazy masses, and their future sold to bread, circuses and illegal immigrants, can take no more.

Whatever the form, the vulnerability remains, and while the Johnny-come-lately federal government finally understands the threat, it can do nothing to ameliorate it.  It can only conduct feel-good simulations to pretend that we’re prepared for the worst.  This drill isn’t testing us for the worst.  We won’t lose any power, we won’t see riots in the streets, people won’t be starving, there won’t be any run on the banks, and the stock market won’t crash.

The only question is this: are you prepared for the worst?  The government is feigning preparations.  Yours needs to be real.

Joanne Eldridge at PoliceOne.com waxes on about how the militarization of police tactics in America is okay because the courts provide a balance.

The American legal system is capable of providing independent evaluations of — and crafting remedies for — police excesses and overreaching when those occur. The criminal justice system provides for probable cause review by independent judges or magistrates prior to the issuance of warrants. If such warrants result in charges, the system provides for speedy judicial review of police actions. For those cases lacking in probable cause or that represent egregious abuses of authority, civil rights statutes provide for injunctive remedies and monetary damages against offending police departments and individual officers.

Joanne is living in a pipe dream.  She supplies a few examples of monetary settlements for violence perpetrated during SWAT tactics, but even those are few and far between.  As I’ve said before, you could get most judges to sign warrants declaring the moon to be made of green cheese.

The courts have thus far failed to stop the outright homocide of Mr. Eurie Stamps (and the officer who perpetrated this homicide was exonerated), the routine killing of family pets, routine SWAT raids on wrong homes, the hurling of insults and profanities at children and the elderly during SWAT raids all across the nation, and many other atrocities in the name of law enforcement.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the article is the comments by police or former police.  One commenter remarks that “The only point this article serves is to highlight the author’s obvious infatuation with civilian review boards. Civilian review boards have no place in law enforcement.”

Joe319 questions, “I wonder if Balko is willing to put up and be the front through the door during the serving of a warrant for these “non-violent” offenses?”

Well, here is your answer, albeit from me instead of Balko.  You have constructed a straw man argument.  You assume that those tactics obtain, and thus the danger they represent is to everyone – or so your argument goes.  A critic should be willing to sustain the danger before he is free to criticize.

But if that were true, I would have to be a murderer or thief in order to comment on the crimes of murder or stealing.  Value judgments inform our understanding, not being at the front of a stack entering another man’s castle.

Now to the main point.  The tactics don’t have to obtain.  You don’t have to use them.  You can use your brain instead (do they teach that at police academy any more?).  You can do detective work, find out when he is going to leave his home and the domicile empty, and arrest him as he opens the door to his car or walks down the street.  His home will be unoccupied then and not a danger to anyone, you or his family.

There now.  See, I reached a different conclusion because I started with a different presupposition.  You do understand the word presupposition, don’t you?  Dumb ass.  Oh.  And if you ever bust down my door in some wrong address raid you’re liable to get riddled with green tip 5.56 mm rounds, right after my dog sinks her teeth into your jugular vein and you begin to bleed out.  And I won’t shed a tear for you and don’t care how many drug arrests you’ve made.  I don’t see you as some kind of hero.

Prior: Counterinsurgency Cops

Fox News:

A pair of Democratic lawmakers are proposing steep new taxes on handguns and ammunition, and tying the revenues to programs aimed at preventing gun violence.

Called the “Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities Act,” the bill sponsored by William Pascrell, D-N.J., and Danny Davis, D-Ill., would nearly double the current 11 percent tax on handguns, while raising the levy on bullets and cartridges from 11 percent to 50 percent.

“This bill represents a major investment in the protection of our children and our communities, and reflects the long-term societal costs of gun and ammunition purchases in our country,” Pascrell said.

The lawmakers say the bill would generate $600 million per year, which would be used to fund law-enforcement and gun violence prevention.

Critics predicted defeat for the measure.

“What the anti-gun interests can’t ban, they want to tax it out of existence,” Alan Gottlieb, chairman for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, told FoxNews.com. “It’s nothing more than confiscatory taxation.

“I doubt this bill will pass, but we will lobby against it if need be,” he added. “This is simply another shot against gun owners in this country.”

The bill would exempt all federal, state and local agencies, including police departments, from paying the tax.

The bill would also increase the transfer tax on all weapons (except antique guns) covered under the National Firearms Act (which excludes most common guns) from $200 to $500 and index to inflation and  increase the transfer tax for any other weapon from $5 to $100.

I don’t care much about the increase in fee for the tax stamp, since I will never, ever register a firearm with the ATF or pay a tax stamp.  But the philosophy is that if we cannot beat them at an outright ban, then we can tax them to the point that they cannot afford to own weapons or ammunition.

This approach is both irrational and unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.  But something must source the massive expansion of the federal Leviathan, and the Congress has figured out that we will not give up our guns or our shooting.  Feed the beast, even if it makes use of what they loath so much – our freedoms.  It sure must seem a Faustian bargain to them.

The Washington Post waxes poetic concerning the confiscation of guns in Australia … er … When Australians Gave Back Their Guns.

When shootings occur in the United States, we Australians shake our heads. We do not have a Bill of Rights or a constitutional right to bear arms; here, the idea of ordinary citizens demanding to own guns without cause seems odd. So when one of our own is senselessly taken by boys who police said just wanted to be “Billy Bob Badasses,” it is aspecial affront.

It’s not necessarily a logical one: Lane was shot with a small-caliber handgun. Plenty of handguns are still legally held in Australia. About a million guns have been imported since the buyback, bringing private gun ownership here back to roughly 1996 levels.

But the real issue is availability.

Here, those who are licensed to own pistols are not allowed to carry their guns. There are strict, police-supervised checks of storage and security of the firearms, and buyers must prove a “genuine reason” to own a gun.

It has been estimated that if the United States had a buyback of similar proportions, about 90 million fewer guns would be circulating.

Philip Alpers, an adjunct associate professor at the Sydney School of Public Health and a specialist in firearm injury prevention, has documented that after the laws were changed, the risk of an Australian being killed by a gun fell by more than 50 percent. Australia’s gun homicide rate, 0.13 per 100,000 people, according to GunPolicy.org, is a tiny fraction of that of the United States (3.6 per 100,000 people). It should be noted that our gun homicide rates were already in decline, but the gun laws accelerated that slide.

In a 2010 paper, economists Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill found that the law change had led to a 65 percent decline in the rate of firearm suicides. Firearm homicides fell by 59 percent.

Causality is, again, hotly contested. But what cannot be denied is that 17 years ago, after a brutal killing spree, Australia had a rare moment of national unity, with overwhelming public support and bipartisan agreement on a public health policy that has saved lives.

A nation founded by convicts gave back their guns.

Speaking for Bill Bob Badasses everywhere, I’d like to say it’s nice to know that Australia has become a veritable Shangri La.  In more contemporary news, Sydney was the scene of a recent home invasion.

Police are searching for up to 10 men who were armed with knives and guns when they broke into a home and assaulted a man in Sydney’s south.

The victim, aged in his late 30s, suffered cuts to his head and was bleeding severely when emergency services arrived at his home on Minnesota Avenue in Riverwood on Tuesday night.

A five-year-old boy and a woman who also were inside the home at the time were not injured, but are believed to have witnessed the assault.

Police and paramedics were called to the home at 9.25pm after reports that up to 10 armed men had forced their way into the home and threatened the man with a gun.

No shots were fired during the incident, but the man was severely beaten. The offenders, who were all wearing dark clothing, then left the home.

Perhaps that was a part of Australia exempt from the gun control laws.

Business Insider:

A recent poll suggests Americans will consider the gun debate a pivotal point in the 2014 elections. So we wanted to explore how Americans kept the right to bear arms in the first place. As it turns out, grammar is the culprit.

Take a look at the Second Amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

That little, red comma caused the Supreme Court to strike down D.C.’s ban on handguns, the country’s strictest gun control law to date.

Before the Supreme Court heard the case, the D.C. circuit court of appeals nixed the ban, too. “According to the court, the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one ‘prefatory’ and the other ‘operative.’ On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing; the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about ‘the right of the people … shall not be infringed,'” The New York Times reported.

Gun control proponents argue the founders used commas more frequently than common English today, Ross Guberman wrote in his legal writing blog. Some historians even claim that many states ratified a version of the Second Amendment with only two commas, not three. The extra commas don’t mean much in that context, the argument goes.

Straining at a literary gnat to swallow a camel.  This is what happens with you superimpose literary criticism over the inherent rights of mankind.  The title of the commentary is telling: “How a comma gave gave Americans the right to own guns.”

The author, poor Christina, believes that rights are granted by the state, as she was no doubt taught by her college professors.  Nay, Christina.  God gives us rights and you cannot take them away.  Neither can any state – all a state can do is formally recognize what God has granted.

As for the silly argument over commas, let’s hurry the death of this debate by a simple observation.  Rather than turn to grammar to understand how the colonialists thought, recall how they saw weapons in their day.

In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.

Whatever else you might find significant in one comma, two commas or three commas, and whatever else you think the second amendment means, it cannot possibly mean something contrary to the way the colonialists believed and behaved.  And thus it cannot possibly mean that they intended to garrison all weapons in an armory controlled by the state.

Christina needs to do some historical reading, as do most Americans.  A comma cannot take away your God-given rights any more than it can grant them to you.

Missoulian:

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against state laws designed to buck federal gun rules — but advocates welcomed the court’s decision for leaving open the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday agreed with a lower court’s decision against the 2009 Montana Firearms Freedom Act, which also has been adopted in other pro-gun states. The laws attempt to declare that federal firearms regulations don’t apply to guns made and kept in that state.

The Justice Department successfully argued that the courts have already decided Congress can use its power to regulate interstate commerce to set standards on such items as guns. Some gun control advocates sided with the federal argument, saying that “firearm freedom acts” would allow felons to obtain guns without background checks and make it harder to trace guns used in crimes.

The Montana Shooting Sports Association said it had expected the appeals court would rule against the law.

The group’s president, Gary Marbut, argued in the case that he wanted to manufacture a small, bolt-action youth-model rifle called the “Montana Buckaroo” for sale in Montana. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms pre-emptively told Marbut such a gun would be illegal under Montana law.

“This was about as good of a ruling as we could have expected from the 9th Circuit. We must get to the U.S. Supreme Court to accomplish our goal of overturning 70 years of flawed Supreme Court rulings on the interstate commerce clause,” Marbut said in a release. “Only the Supreme Court can overturn Supreme Court precedent.”

The state of Montana has intervened in support of its law. The case also attracted the support of Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Marbut said the federal government has become a “monster,” that abuses the interstate commerce clause to intrude on states.

Yes.  The federal government has become a monster.  Justice Clarence Thomas is said to be the modern day jurist of the tenth amendment.  But he may be alone, and turning to the monster to slay the monster is bad form and unwise.  It is more likely that they will simply bow to stare decisis and make matters even worse by giving the commerce clause more modern legs, or refuse to hear the case, letting the Ninth Circuit’s decision stand.

And this notion that the Ninth Circuit only did what they could do is ridiculous.  The Ninth Circuit has come down with many a decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court.  For once, when it actually had to do with liberty and freedom the Ninth Circuit had the chance to do something right – and failed again because they’re all losers.

As I’ve said, nullification laws have the legs under them that the states put there.  Montana could have incorporated the company (perhaps they already have) and then arrested federal employees who attempt to enforce federal laws (and thrown them in with the general prison population).

The monster will never admit that he is a monster.  He wants you to fear him and bow to his monstrous intentions and behavior.

No, that’s not my preferred title, but the one used by Adam Winkler:

Adam continues, “The idea that the Second Amendment gives people the right to revolt against government is broadly shared among gun rights extremists” (Adam is referring to people like me – Adam would have been a loyalist during the revolutionary war, I would have charged up King’s Mountain against the loyalist troops) … “The insurrectionist understanding of the Second Amendment fails to account for two other features of the Constitution. First, the Second Amendment itself includes a preamble referring to the necessity of a “well regulated militia.”

Here Adam continues with the well-worn and tired claptrap about well-regulated meaning controlled by the state.  Bob Owens has the must-read defeater argument on this, but since Adam won’t care about this I won’t spend time recapitulating what Bob says.  Adam can continue to wring his hands and worry over things, and we can move on to one salient observation about Scalia.

I have long lamented what I perceive to be the weakness of Heller versus D.C.  But perhaps Scalia really does understand that the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with hunting or self defense, and has everything to do with ameliorating tyranny.  And perhaps Scalia knows that the Supreme Court had to bite this off in chunks.  If so, this is a welcome evolution in Scalia’s thinking – at least as it pertains to what he feels free to say out loud.

And oh, by the way, the Hughes amendment was an unconstitutional obscenity.

UPDATE: Kurt Hofmann writes me, observing that: ” … Mr. Constitutional Law Professor is already lost, when he talks about any bill in the Bill of Rights giving rights.  Besides, my position has always been that the Second Amendment does not protect “the right to revolt,” but protects the right to the means of effective revolt.  When revolt becomes necessary, a Constitutionally protected “right to revolt” wouldn’t matter, even if there were one, because by then, the Constitution will no longer be relevant.”  Good points.

Thanks to David and Mike for the attention.

West Virginia:

A patient at Boone Memorial Hospital is living to tell a story even she says she thought she’d never tell.

“At times I thought I was going to die,” Charlene Hankins said.

Hankins had been missing for 12 days when she was discovered Monday.

Hankins said she was driving to her mother’s house in Oceana when her car ran out of gas deep down an isolated road in the Twilight area of Boone County.

She had no food, no water and tried to get help, but instead she got lost.

[ … ]

She said she ran out of gas and spent the first night in her car.

Crews found her car on Sunday. The gas tank was empty and the keys were still inside.

She told crews she tried to walk to find help, but ended up lost in the woods.

Hankins told crews she lived off berries and mushrooms and tore off the sleeves of her shirt to start a fire.

I’m glad that she was found and is recovering.  The berries, mushrooms and shirt sleeves to start a fire were a nice touch (although the caloric value of mushrooms makes them essentially worthless as a survival food).

But take this as yet another object lesson.  First, I don’t walk from room to room of my home without carrying one of my guns with me, much less take long road trips.  She could have faced black bear, snakes and coyote (panther have been sighted as far north as South Carolina).  Feral hogs would have been a good source of food.

Carrying a parka and 550 cord as part of a survival bracelet would have given her instant shelter in the case of rain (from which she could have died due to exposure).  I also don’t go on road trips without carrying a tactical light, which would have given her ability to see her surroundings at night and a stand-off weapon to blind animals of the two- or four-legged kind.

Finally, I don’t go on road trips (and certainly not backpacking or hiking trips) without a good knife, usually a large folder rather than fixed blade knife, and I always have some sort of liquid container with me.  She apparently carried an ignition source for a fire.

A gun, a parka, a knife, 550 cord, a tactical light, a container and a fire ignition source.  A few light, simple tools can go a long way towards ensuring survival in the case of becoming stranded or lost.  Others may not have fared so well.

The Tennessean:

One of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers, Remington Arms, has looked at sites around Nashville for a potential corporate relocation or expansion that would likely include hundreds of manufacturing jobs.

The Madison, N.C.-based company, which is part of the nation’s largest firearms company and has its largest plant in Ilion, N.Y., has scouted sites near Nashville’s airport, Lebanon and in Clarksville, Tenn.

Remington is among a growing number of gun manufacturers nationwide that have been courted by states pitching themselves as more gun-friendly. The wooing came after a handful of states, including New York, passed tougher gun control laws in the aftermath of last December’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators.

Remington’s roughly 1,200-employee plant in Ilion makes rifles such as the Bushmaster semiautomatic weapon, which is now banned under New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, the first law passed by any state post-Newtown.

In addition to the much stricter definition of assault weapons, which now includes semiautomatic pistols and rifles with detachable magazines and one military-style feature, the New York SAFE Act banned magazines that contain more than seven rounds, required instant background checks on all ammunition purchases at the time of the sale and required mental health professionals to report concerns about a gun-owning patient who posed a risk of harming himself or others.

Quick passage of that law upset not only the gunmakers, but also residents of that state who own certain guns, said Erin Crowe, office coordinator for the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce in Utica, N.Y. “Ilion, New York, is Remington — if it wasn’t for Remington, Ilion wouldn’t exist,” she said. “There’s not a lot of new industries coming to central New York, so if you take a huge company like that and they leave, our unemployment rate is going to skyrocket.”

People familiar with Remington’s exploration of sites said the company looked around the Nashville area as recently as within the past month …

In Middle Tennessee, firearms maker Barrett already has 100 employees at its headquarters and manufacturing plant in Murfreesboro. And the National Rifle Association booked Nashville’s Music City Center convention hall for its 2015 annual convention with about 5,000 delegates.

Analysis & Commentary

This would be a welcome change.  Cerebus / Freedom group, as we’ve seen, purchased numerous smaller gun manufacturers and closed out business while moving said manufacturing to Ilion.  They conglomerated and centralized, and that is good neither for small businesses nor the communities they serve.  There is a difference between buying to make businesses more efficient from business model changes, and buying in order to close down the competition.

Furthermore, in spite of the silly, fawning article National Review did on the plant in Ilion, gun owners never forgive and never forget.  As we’ve discussed, see the Smith & Wesson boycott for a lesson in payback.  Doubtless, Remington Arms didn’t support the recent New York gun laws.  Nevertheless, at least a fraction of money going to purchase Remington products made in Ilion goes towards taxation for a totalitarian state to continue to do their thing.

In the end, I would have preferred that Remington relocate based on principle.  But as I have previously remarked, I am in the market for a good bolt action rifle and was looking at the Remington 700 series.  I am no longer considering Remington at all (for a 1911 either) because of the fact that Remington is primarily located in New York.  Some of my readers weighed in similarly.  With this change, if Remington indeed relocates its plant in Ilion, perhaps I’ll reconsider.  If principle cannot force Remington to move, then perhaps market pressure can.  Ruger is already ahead of the game.

Finally, I would prefer that Remington consider South Carolina.  Remember, anywhere in S.C. is no more than several hours from one of the best beaches on earth and some of the most beautiful mountains on earth.  Then again, Middle Tennessee ain’t bad.  Remington should be encouraged to move.  Their employees can enjoy the vista at Mount Le Conte and Clingman’s Dome within a few hours drive from where they will live.  They will find good churches, and the people are warm and friendly.

Make it happen without delay.

Kurt Hofmann:

If true–if Christie really believes that this will be enough to appease gun rights advocates–he is adding insult to the injury of the extremely draconian anti-gun bills he has signed, like the one that enables the federal government to disarm anyone it chooses, simply by designating political enemies as “suspected terrorists.” One would certainly hope that gun rights advocates are both far too intelligent and far too proud to be bought off that easily.

Yes.  Read all of Kurt’s assessment of Christie’s recent pandering in his rejection of the ban on .50 rifles.  I am equally unimpressed.  Recall that we’ve discussed Chris Christie before.  Chris Christie is a gun grabber from way back who made his fame in New Jersey by supporting the assault weapons ban.

David Codrea notes another source that points out that Christie opposed concealed carry in New Jersey and is admitted to support strict gun control.

Chris Christie is of the get the hell off the beach crowd of obnoxious, loud mouth, blow hard, windbags who like to run the lives of other people.  However, that’s not what’s really wrong with him.  I may be a loud mouth too, but at least I’m not a totalitarian.  But it would be just like the dead elephant party to nominate this man for national office.