Kurt Hofmann:

In other words, her use of the term “automatic,” rather than “semi-automatic” was intentional, and intentionally misleading.

That’s exactly what I thought when I heard her words.  Don’t think for a minute what one author wrote, that this was a “gaffe.”  If you do you’re not giving Hillary enough credit for obfuscation of the ignorant masses.

David Codrea:

Wait a minute: The AG making it known not to shoot innocent citizens for exercising their lawful rights requires a vote by politicians? What if they vote that it’s OK? And Ohio cops need “special training” beyond telling them not to?

There are some idiotic, violent cops in North Carolina too.  I’ve known some folks who had LEOs draw their weapons on them because of open carry, when North Carolina is a traditional open carry state.  Losing the mandate of heaven, I think it’s called.  They become nothing more than gang members with badges.  They certainly aren’t heroes, and their actions don’t constitute examples for young children as they might have 50 years ago.

In other news, we learn that criminals aren’t afraid of our guns, and so we shouldn’t have them, I guess.  That’s fine with me.  I don’t have guns to make people afraid.  I have them to shoot people who assault me.

Here is one for Mike Vanderboegh, who loves the M1A and M14 platform.  Exploring the humble beginnings of the M1 rifle.

Finally, some strange things with guns.  And more strange things.  I don’t want to do either of these strange things.

General Petraeus:

General David Petraeus, the former CIA director and head of the international forces in Afghanistan (ISAF), has today said that the United States is suffering deeply because of partisanship, and said that the country needs immigration reform.

Gen. Petraeus was speaking on the “After America, What?” panel at the Centre for Policy Studies’ Margaret Thatcher Liberty Conference at the Guildhall in the City of London.

“After America comes North America,” he said, discussing how Canada, the United States and Mexico are set to be a formidable force together, “notwithstanding Mexico’s rule of law issues”.

We’ve discussed it many times before.  The alleged need for immigrants pertains to the desires of corporations to have low paid workers.  It doesn’t enrich you or me, it enriches the rich (heads of corporations, boards of directors, and so on).

Here’s how it works.  It helps the corporate bottom line by forcing the middle class to pick up the tab for medical care, which burden happens largely on the backs of nurses in emergency rooms (my daughter is a nurse in an ER), with medical insurance premiums escalating in order to pay for the service.  Food stamps (so called SNAP) also factor into the calculus, as well as driver’s insurance (for uninsured motorists coverage).

It isn’t that there is no cost for low paid workers.  It’s that the cost is borne by the middle class as welfare to corporations and the wealthy.  The GOP is connected at the hip to such interests in terms of money, while the Democrats are connected in terms of future voters.  With such powerful interests at stake, it should be obvious why the Southern border is a sieve and illegals are left in the country unmolested.

But Petraeus is at least honest, admitting what many of the politicians don’t want to confess.  They see America more as an idea, or an endless checkbook, rather than a place with people and borders.  The idea they cherish is one of wealth propagation among the elite (for the GOP), or power in perpetuity (for the Democrats).  The idea of the constitution has long ago lost its appeal.

Petraeus advocates “immigration reform,” but he refers to North America as America’s replacement, almost as if it’s a foregone conclusion rather something he needs to advocate.  But such a thing will bring about the end of the middle class as we know it.

With trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, a behemoth socialized medical system (with millions of new immigrants added to the rolls), and a fiat money system which existence relies on the printing presses, the system cannot go on for much longer.

North America.  Increasingly it will take on the face of gang members.  Welcome your newest neighbor – affiliates of MS13.  They think you owe them a living.  Said one of them.

‘You’re going to let me go, just like you let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You’re going to let me go as well, and the government’s going to take care of us

Prepare.

CBS Miami:

A police officer mistakenly fired his rifle Wednesday morning while in court in front of the judge.

A Miami-Dade Police Officer, according to police, was demonstrating a scenario to a judge on the 30^th floor of the Lawson E. Thomas Court House around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.

After demonstrating, police say the officer mistakenly fired one shot from his police issued rifle, an AR-15.

The bullet hit the floor and there were no injuries.

Hey folks, forget what I’ve said about trigger discipline.  Remember that cops are highly trained, and are the only ones who can be trusted to own and use weapons.

The Supreme Court has decided the Abramski case with a 5-4 vote.  The reaction thus far has been fairly muted, but the implications of the decision are potentially far reaching.  Kagan, writing for the majority, spends a significant amount of painful time [painful for those of us who have filled it out many times] in the nuts and bolts of Form 4473 and what she believes must have been the intent of Congress when they crafted the Gun Control Act of 1968.  Scalia wrote a spirited dissent, and anticipating the objections, Kagan writes:

But Abramski and the dissent draw the wrong conclu­sion from their observations about resales and gifts. Yes, Congress decided to regulate dealers’ sales, while leaving the secondary market for guns largely untouched. As we noted in Huddleston, Congress chose to make the dealer the “principal agent of federal enforcement” in “restricting [criminals’] access to firearms.” 415 U. S., at 824. And yes, that choice (like pretty much everything Congress does) was surely a result of compromise. But no, straw arrangements are not a part of the secondary market, separate and apart from the dealer’s sale. In claiming as much, Abramski merely repeats his mistaken assumption that the “person” who acquires a gun from a dealer in a case like this one is the straw, rather than the individual who has made a prior arrangement to pay for, take pos­session of, own, and use that part of the dealer’s stock. For all the reasons we have already given, that is not a plausible construction of a statute mandating that the dealer identify and run a background check on the person to whom it is (really, not fictitiously) selling a gun. See supra, at 9–15. The individual who sends a straw to a gun store to buy a firearm is transacting with the dealer, in every way but the most formal; and that distinguishes such a person from one who buys a gun, or receives a gun as a gift, from a private party.⁹ The line Congress drew between those who acquire guns from dealers and those who get them as gifts or on the secondary market, we suspect, reflects a host of things, including administrative simplicity and a view about where the most problematic firearm transactions—like criminal organizations’ bulk gun purchases—typically occur. But whatever the reason, the scarcity of controls in the secondary market provides no reason to gut the robust measures Congress enacted at the point of sale.

If it seems that Kagan is making the judgment of a legislator here, you are not mistaken, and it isn’t a mistake that she spends so much time in her decision on the federal code.

Via David Codrea, attorney Joshua Prince says of the decision:

There is NO law enacted by the Congress regarding straw purchasers! This was made up in whole cloth by the ATF! This is a FAR worse decision than anyone is comprehending. NOW, administrative agencies can enact criminal laws, which have NOT been enacted by the Congress!

David Workman also weighs in at Examiner:

Nelson Lund, a constitutional scholar and Second Amendment expert at George Mason School of Law, had this to say: “Five members of the Supreme Court have decided to make it a federal crime for a lawful gun owner to buy a firearm for another lawful gun owner. No federal statute says any such thing. The Justices are once again legislating from the bench, which violates the Constitution, and enacting a retroactive criminal law, which is even worse.” His comment came via e-mail.

In his dissent, Scalia notes that there is evolving history in how the ATF has applied and enforced the Gun Control Act.

After Congress passed the Act in 1968, ATF’s initial position was that the Act did not prohibit the sale of a gun to an eligible buyer acting on behalf of a third party (even an ineligible one). See Hearings Before the Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, 118 (1975). A few years later, ATF modified its position and asserted that the Act did not “prohibit a dealer from making a sale to a person who is actually purchasing the firearm for another person” unless the other person was “prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm,” in which case the dealer could be guilty of “unlawfully aiding the prohibited person’s own violation.” ATF, Industry Circular 79–10 (1979), in (Your Guide To) Federal Firearms Regulation 1988–89 (1988), p. 78. The agency appears not to have adopted its current position until the early 1990’s.

Then Scalia offers up this zinger.

In the majority’s view, if the bureaucrats responsible for creating Form 4473 decided to ask about the buyer’s favorite color, a false response would be a federal crime.

He has put his finger on a core problem with this decision [and other such rule-making inside the beltway].  As I’ve noted before:

Laws are passed by the Senate and Congress.  But after laws pass, thousands of lawyers inside the beltway go to work writing regulations based on those laws, or not, using the law as a pretext for further regulation that Congress didn’t specifically intend.  At times, Congress has even had to pass laws undoing regulations because the regulations don’t meet the intent of the law, and yet the executive branch won’t stop enforcing that regulation (or class of regulations).

Regulation is passed merely by entering them into the federal register, allowing a waiting time for public comments (which are nothing but a chance afforded to the authors of the regulations to ignore them or write sarcastic rebuttals), and then after the waiting period, it takes on the force of law including prosecution, fines and imprisonment for failure to follow them.

This happens every day, all over the nation, and in the DOT, NRC, EPA, DOJ, ATF, DHS, and other departments and agencies that the reader cannot even name and didn’t know existed.  Any law giving the executive branch the authority to further regulate firearms will be an opportunity for abuse, overreach and exploitation.

I’ve seen it in my own line of work.  Regulations take on the force of law after comments responding to entries in the Federal Register are summarily ignored by the agency doing the regulating.  It makes little sense to respond with comments when the regulator’s mind is made up.  These regulations frequently far surpass the law in breadth, scope, depth and magnitude.

One such example on Form 4473 might be the following.  My own son was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, but knew of one poor soul who became inebriated the eve of his discharge and was caught for DUI on base.  This Marine was dishonorably discharged.  According to the wording on Form 4473, he will never be able to legally purchase a gun even if a judge agrees with him because the USMC won’t revisit its discharge and thus he won’t be able to answer – truthfully – on Form 4473 about discharge from a branch of the service.

[I don’t mean here to exonerate the ridiculous GCA for its requirement that gun transfers across state lines go through an FFL.  I have gifted a firearm to one of my sons this way, and in order to fulfill this part of the law (he couldn’t legally carry it with him on the airline even by following TSA regulations since he didn’t own it), we had to pay the exorbitant cost of shipping the gun air express to an FFL and then a transfer fee in his home state.  It had the effect of escalating the cost of the whole affair, and I’m convinced that this was part of the intended effect by Congress.]

To me, this kind of regulation seems onerous compared to what Congress wrote, but it is latitude given (and taken) by the federal regulators.  If there is a problem with legislating from the bench, there is even a worse problem with regulating by the executive branch from inside the beltway.  The problem will continue (and grow) as long as the public abides the abuse.

Kurt Hofmann:

That means, of course, that there is no vitriol too foul, to his way of thinking, to fling at groups like Open Carry Texas, for their campaign of openly carrying rifles and shotguns into places like restaurants and retail stores (although he may not have made the comparison between such activists and child rapist/murderers–yet). Of rather greater concern than the vitriol, though, is Malloy’s stated intention to try to get open carry activists shot and killed. Ah–another “non-violence” advocate.

It’s yet another installment on the logical inconsistency of the gun control movement, like claims that guns don’t save lives or that they create more danger than they abate – which they cannot truly believe because they never advocate taking guns away from the police.

David Codrea:

It’s part of a long-standing and not particularly successful attempt by the “progressives” to chill dissent by making gun owners fear to speak out lest they be tarred with the brush of extremist. Perversely, those who want them to feel that way have been known to come up with extremist advocacy positions like ‘Isn’t it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill?”

David and Mike have already been painted with that brush.  So have I.  Care to join the club?  And speaking of extremist, Mike explains just what he really believes.

It is for this reason that the collectivists — the domestic enemies of the Founders’ Republic — are made somewhat angered, if not deranged, by the Gadsden flag. Its sentiment is plain — it cannot be polluted or corrupted or co-opted. They must therefore do their best to demonize it, to discredit it, to profane it, and to lie about those who fly it. We have seen that very clearly in their reaction to the Miller meth-head murderers’ misuse of the Gadsden flag in their Nevada rampage. The flag is itself “anti-government” they proclaim and proof that the Millers represent the rest of us “anti-government types.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not “anti-government,” although the Southern Poverty Law Center has been calling me that for two decades now. I am in fact pro-government of the kind the Founders would recognize. I am pro small government, safe government — a government of limited powers — a government that supports the rule of law AND OPERATES WITHIN IT.

It’s important to distinguish between advocates of constitutional government and anarchy, the brush our opponents would choose for us.

And finally, Mike asks the question, has the Department of Homeland Security become America’s standing army?  Yes.  Next question.

ABC News:

The video, set to sweetly lilting religious hymns, is chilling. Islamic militants are shown knocking on the door of a Sunni police major in the dead of night in an Iraqi city. When he answers, they blindfold and cuff him. Then they carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.

The 61-minute video was recently posted online by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida splinter group of Sunni extremists. The intent was to terrorize Sunnis in Iraq’s army and police forces and deepen their already low morale.

CNS News:

While hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are affected by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s takeover of key cities including the Ninawa (Nineveh) provincial capital, Mosul, minority Christians – some of whom trace their origins to the earliest years of Christianity – are among those with the most to lose.

In previous years, Christians fleeting violence in Baghdad or elsewhere in the south often headed for the Mosul area. The Nineveh Plain formed the historic homeland of Assyrians, an ancient non-Arab ethnic group in Iraq. Main Christian denominations include Chaldean Catholic, Assyrian, Syrian Orthodox, Armenian and evangelicals.

Syria was another key destination for Christians who were able to leave Iraq, but the civil war there made life even riskier across the border than at home, prompting some to return.

For many Christians in the Mosul area now, the autonomous Kurdish region to the north-east may offer the best short-term hope – if they are able to cross over. Chaldean archbishop Amel Nona told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) he believed all Mosul’s Christians had left the city, and spoke of efforts to find emergency accommodation in ancient Christian villages in the Nineveh Plain.

As the jihadists swept into Mosul this week, they reportedly looted and torched churches, raised their black “there is no god but Allah” flags and started demanding that women wear the Islamic veil.

The Assyrian International News Agency identified two of the targeted churches as the Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit, and an Armenian church under construction, which it said was bombed.

Barnabas Fund, an aid agency that supports minority Christians in Islamic countries, said the attacks on churches were “a clear statement from ISIS that they are no longer welcome in Mosul.”

“It is feared that this latest exodus could be the final death knell for the Christians of Iraq,” said Barnabas international director Patrick Sookdheo.

World Net Daily:

About 200 Americans under contract with the Department of Defense at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq are trapped by the al-Qaida-inspired jihadists who have seized control of two cities and are now threatening Baghdad, according to WND sources.

The sources, private contractors who have recently returned to the U.S. from Iraq, said Friday their former colleagues effectively have been abandoned by the U.S. military and are fighting for their lives against an army of jihadists surrounding the base who belong to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

The U.S. contractors are at Balad to help the Pentagon prepare the facilities for the delivery of the F-16 aircraft the Obama administration has agreed to provide the Iraqi government.

The surrounded Americans said they currently are under ISIS fire from small arms, AK47s, and rocket propelled grenades, or RPGs.

The contractors so far have been able to hold the base, but those on the scene reported it was only a matter of time before the ISIS terrorists succeeded in breaking through the perimeter. The sources confirmed the contractors were still under siege, despite an Associated Press report Thursday, citing U.S. officials, that three planeloads of Americans were being evacuated from Balad.

WRSA has a link on a recent North Carolina National Guard rapid reaction force training exercise.  This is par for the course concerning the use of military to police American citizens, and the theoretical underpinnings were started a while back.  It isn’t to be taken lightly.

But I think there is a little more than meets the eye here.  Let me remind you of what we discussed concerning N.G. troops on the Southern border.  From one in-line commander, there was this.

Unfortunately, I must report that “Armed does not always mean “armed” as most Americans would understand. There are various states of being “armed.” These are called “Arming Orders (AO)” which define where the weapon “is,” where the magazine “is,” where the bullets “are” and where the bayonet “is.” They start at Arming Order One which could best be described as a “show of force” or “window dressing” in the worse case.

After considerable searching, I was able to find a complete copy of the Memorundum of Understanding/Rules of Engagement pertaining to the National Guard Deployment (“Operation Jump Start”), which I could then review.

After reviewing the MOU/ROE, I contacted several senior “in the loop” National Guard Officers that I have previously served with, to determine how many soldiers would be “armed” and their Arming Order number. After confirming The El Paso Times article that “very few soldiers there would carry weapons,” I was advised that during the next 90 days, amongst the few soldiers that have weapons, no soldier will have an Arming Order greater than AO-1, which means that an M-16 will be on the shoulder, there will be no magazine in the weapon (thats where the bullets come from), and the magazines stored inside the “ammunition pouch” will in most cases have no ammunition, they will be empty.

It was also conveyed to myself that in the unlikely event that a soldier is ever harmed on the border, the Arming Order will not be raised. Every individual I spoke to envisions no circumstance where there will ever be soldiers at AO-3/4, where a magazine with ammunition would be immediately available. Instead the soldiers will simply be kept farther away from the border if needed. They will be deliberately kept out of harms way.

So the question in a case of deployment like this would be, “Are they under arming orders?”  The most likely answer is no, although it would be interesting to see the actual arming orders for the N.G. during Katrina in New Orleans (not rumor, not innuendo, but a PDF of the actual arming orders).  In the mean time, there are more pressing matters.

… in recent years, military servicemen and women — many of whom are decorated — have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.

For example, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed in 2011 after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Apart from his military background, Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home. [Editorial Note: My link on Guerena is here].

John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”

Ramon Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”

Although no toy guns were involved in Brandon Raub’s case, his fact scenario is even more chilling, given that he was targeted for exercising his First Amendment rights on Facebook. The 26-year-old decorated Marine actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.

On August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents handcuffed and transported Raub to police headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were “terrorist in nature.” Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward. Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute came to Raub’s assistance and brought about his release. Even so, within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.

A federal judge actually dismissed Raub’s lawsuit challenging the government’s Operation Vigilant Eagle campaign and its increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists as “farfetched.” Yet what may sound farfetched to the courts is a grim reality to Americans who are daily being targeted for daring to exercise their constitutional rights to speak their minds, criticize the government and defend themselves and their families against overreaching government surveillance and heavy-handed police tactics.

This is even more dangerous partly because the judicial system sides comprehensively, completely, absolutely and without reserve with the police and all of their chosen tactics.  Before it’s time to worry over the N.G. or regular troops – many or most of whom likely won’t turn on American citizens anyway – let’s remember the daily and growing threat of the police.

Remember what Kurt Hofmann and I have been saying.  The easiest, fastest workaround to Posse Comitatus is the militarization of the police.

I won’t wade into the recent debate over rifle-toting folks going into stores and restaurants, except to say that I’ve never done it and don’t intend on doing it.  I don’t buy the explanation that there is no safe way to observe muzzle discipline with a rifle, but I also don’t buy the notion that a rifle is the preferred weapon (and I don’t buy other things, like the notion that I’m safe when I get on the road in an automobile).  If your state doesn’t allow open carry, then replace the legislators until they do.

But there was a moment of honesty about open carry (of any weapon) displayed in a recent dustup over the issue that deserves your ponderance.

“We’ve had a tough time over the years promoting Lake Ozark as a family area,” said Alderman Larry Buschjost, who voted for the ban. “We want you on the Strip with families, everywhere in Lake Ozark with families. We want you to bring your kids down here and let them loose. For the life of me, I don’t understand why I would have to carry any type of gun, concealed or otherwise. “

As with collectivist South Carolina Senator Larry Martin (who needs to be replaced and defanged as soon as possible), when a legislator objects to open carry, he or she is rarely objecting solely to open carry.  It’s the very idea that you would have a weapon at all that they don’t like.  The good part is that if you let them talk long enough, they’ll often tell you exactly that.

David Codrea:

I see some people don’t like it. Well gosh. Others don’t like my writing for Examiner because they refuse to learn how to navigate the internet with a reliable and easy to activate pop-up blocker. Still others don’t like my other outlet of gun magazines, because they’re perceived as beholden to their advertisers. I notice no one is providing alternative options. Most never even share my GRE links.

Well, I certainly do.  Many people hate me.  I have never let it bother me.  Go by and congratulate David on the new gig at CheaperThanDirt.  I criticize the NRA almost with out ceasing, but I’m still a member.  Listen, folks.  If you wait to find an organization that agrees fully with every one of your views, you’ve found yourself.  Not even your spouse agrees with you 100% of the time (perhaps not even 50%).  It’s similar to church attendance or membership.  You have to learn to get along and accept it when you disagree with folks, or you’ll be alone.  I have criticized Smith & Wesson repeatedly on their refusal to stop the supply of firearms to California LEOs in light of the most recent gun laws.  I am still unhappy with the response.  Yet my most recent gun purchase (no more than two weeks ago) was a S&W.  You know, because they make good stuff.  We all have to get along, I’ll just pull the plug if, say, S&W begins to flirt with gun control, for example, or compromises with the evil masters in the White House.

Mike Vanderboegh:

A new bartering economy has emerged with ammunition rather than dollar bills as the currency.

I’m buying as much as I can, as quickly as I can.  Time.  We need more time.

Kurt Hofmann:

But wait a second. Who would these people be? Technically, of course, that depends on what one judges to be “just unbelievable damage,” but if he is concerned about guns in the hands of people who can do such damage, rather than those who will do it, then he just announced that his “biggest frustration” is his inability to disarm just about everyone.

Never, ever get into a logical debate with Kurt.  And as for what Obama meant, he isn’t as good a lawyer as Kurt.  He wouldn’t for example, disarm SWAT teams (even those who shoot innocent people) because he is a collectivist.  Obama’s communication problem is that he says too little and says too much.  We all know what he really thinks.

USA Today:

President Obama said Tuesday the nation should do “some soul-searching”: over its epidemic of deadly gun violence and “should be ashamed” it has been unable to address it.

“We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens,” Obama said during a question-and-answer session on the social media website Tumblr.

“And it happens now once a week,” Obama added. “And it’s a one-day story. There’s no place else like this.”

[ … ]

His “biggest frustration” as president, Obama said, has been that “this society has not been willing to take some basic steps” to keep guns away from people who “can do just unbelievable damage.”

The president again criticized Congress for blocking a proposal to expand background checks for gun buyers and said too many lawmakers are “terrified” of the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups.

While “our levels of gun violence are off the charts,” Obama said, the American people themselves have to demand new laws: “If public opinion does not demand change in Congress, it will not change.”

Opponents of various gun control proposals said they would be ineffective, and some threaten Second Amendment ownership rights. They also said shootings are a mental health issue, an argument that Obama disputed.

“The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people,” Obama said.

We’ve discussed this before at length, how the mentally ill are no more prone to violence than those who are not mentally ill, and how crime is a moral choice.  Again, those killings where idiot commentators talk about how “crazy” or “mentally ill” a person is are pointers to evil, not sickness.

Obama either knows better or actually believes that there is no such thing as evil except as created by society.  He is a liar, but in purveying his lie, he managed to lump mentally ill people, most of whom are peaceable, loving folk, into the same category as mass killers.

As a reminder to all those who were in the sandbox doing the bidding of the country, do not ever allow yourself to be diagnosed as PTSD.  And this goes for any reader anywhere, not just Soldiers and Marines.  Do not be lumped into the category of mentally ill.  You’ll never get off the list.

But in spite of his stupid insult to the mentally ill, there is (in the words of C. S. Lewis), a deeper magic that we who are watchers and learners know.  The witch Obama couldn’t care less about mass shootings, or crime in Chicago, or anything of the sort.  He wants to confiscate guns because he is a totalitarian.  Totalitarians must destroy the will and ability to resist.

And God hates totalitarians.