Daily Beast:

Three weeks after the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, efforts to pass even scaled-down gun-control legislation have effectively stalled on Capitol Hill.

Congressional aides and issue advocates say they see no viable path for passing even the most promising bill: an effort to ban the manufacturing and sale of bump stocks, which were used by the Las Vegas shooter to essentially turn his semi-automatic weapons into fully automatics ones.

“Depressing but not surprising,” is how one senior House Democratic aide put it.

“It’s pathetic,” said another.

The failure of lawmakers to move bump stock legislation comes despite the willingness of several House Republicans to sign on to the measure. A bill introduced by Reps. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and Seth Moulton (D-MA) has 20 co-sponsors in total—ten Democratic and ten Republican. But aides say that there is no indication that the House Judiciary Committee is going to consider that bill, or a similar one signed by 173 Democrats. Democrats are expected to ask the Committee’s chairman, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), to address the matter in the week ahead.

Prospects look bleak in the Senate too. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) bill banning bump stocks has 39 Democratic co-sponsors but not one Republican, though an aide said that she is still hopeful that she can convince one to sign on to the measure. Even were she to find a GOP co-sponsor there is no guarantee that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley (R-IA), would bring the bill up for consideration.

Good.  I’m glad it’s depressing for them.  Nothing makes me happier than to see control freaks depressed.  But we’ll see if this lasts.  There is still the cowardice of the Senate who wants the ATF to do what it hasn’t the courage to do, i.e., ban the stocks by rulemaking and regulation rather than law-making.

If such an abomination passes into law or such a regulation hits the books, it’ll be the NRA’s fault.  If it doesn’t, it won’t be because the NRA didn’t try to undermine its own constituency.

UTT:

In Muhammad’s time the mosque played an important role in encouraging muslims to wage jihad.”
Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi  (Islamic scholar, Senior Jurist for the International Muslim Brotherhood)

“The mosque is the bastion of the great jihad”
Ayatollah Khomeini

“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.”
Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan

A mosque is not an “Islamic church.”  A mosque is not a “place of worship”

A mosque is the seat of Islamic government.

A mosque is more aptly likened to an embassy or military outpost.

When you see a Mosque go up, it means that Muslims have chosen that particular location to build a combat outpost to expand the forcible implementation of Sharia.

Michael Brown at WND:

Good Lord.  There are so many confused thoughts, sentiments and alleged doctrines strung together in haphazard fashion that it’s hard to know where to begin.

First of all, let’s stipulate that Islam is a political religion whose main tenet is the implementation of Sharia, by force if necessary.  Warfare is the way of things, and it’s easy to become a Muslim since it involves the mere citation of a few doctrines out loud regardless of belief.  Islam is a religion only for simpletons, amenable to barbaric and bloody conflict.  It was never designed to be anything else.  It was fabricated to keep Muhammad’s band of fighters from splintering and wandering off.

On the other hand, Christianity, true doctrine, includes the robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit who persuades, convinces, and changes the heart of man, regenerating his mind, volition and desires.  We need no such thing as forcible implementation of Christianity, for that would be to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit, who, as the wind, blows wherever He wants as His sovereign will dictates.  It would be obscene to attempt to force conversion since no one but the Holy Spirit can do that.

That must not be confused, as this writer does, with the fact that Christianity doesn’t have to be the pacifist, beatnik, long haired hippie flower child faith that people in America seem to think.  They’ve believe that because they have been taught it by ne’er-do-wells and idiots who don’t know anything about Christian doctrine.  True enough, Christians have been persecuted around the world, from Mesopotamia to the Coptic Christians in Egypt, in Armenia with the genocide at the hands of the Muslim Turks, and on and on the sad, sorry list goes.

But there is a different example for us, namely, the Crusades, where we saw Christian warriors who fought to save the Christian world from extinction.  God preserved the true faith, as He always will, but He used the hands of warriors as secondary causes.  It is this example we should follow, not that of passive Christianity who willingly allows women to be raped, children to be killed or converted, and men to be beheaded, all in the name of love for Christ.  Love for Christ doesn’t mean hatred for fellow men such that we are willing to see them perish at the hands of barbaric mobs.

The author, Michael Brown, doesn’t give much attention to the very important notion that defense of self and others is not only a right, but a duty if one is going to be faithful to the Decalogue.  Furthermore, he isn’t studied in the concept of Good Wars, which is a logical and Biblical extension of the Decalogue.  Christ was crucified for the sins of His people (Matthew 1:21).  Christ also had to take the cup that was before Him because of the will of His father.

Our deaths will provide vicarious atonement for no one, including ourselves.  Christ’s instructions in the sermon on the mount involved personal relationships, not state interactions, covenants, or tyranny.  More to the point, tyranny is an abomination to God’s authority over mankind in all of its aspects.  It violates the warp and woof of the entirety of the Holy Scriptures.

Weapons were sanctioned by God as a consequence of evil in the world, and so it will be until the end.  Simpleton commentaries that assume that Jesus was a Bohemian hippie flower child do nothing to further men’s understanding of true doctrine, or how they should then live.

Shooting Illustrated:

Wilson Combat improved the design of its high-capacity 1911 magazines, bringing new technology and innovation into the company’s extended design that enhances the capabilities of any standard 1911 pistol.

The magazine redesign includes a new high-strength magazine spring that’s made entirely from stainless steel, which enhances the corrosion resistance and performance of the magazine, extending its service life and enhancing the reliability of the already-dependable design. The heavy-duty magazine spring also brings with it the added benefit of ensuring positive engagement of the slide stop, as well as retaining spring tension under load for extended periods of time, allowing owners to keep their pistol magazines loaded without fear of weakening the magazine spring.

The Wilson Combat 10-round 1911 magazines also include an ETM-style nylon follower that self-lubricates for enhanced operation, as well as a totally new wraparound base pad that is made from polymer and allows for a secure, extended grip as well as quick and easy reloading. The base pad also includes dimpled areas that allow for easy marking, ensuring that shooters can keep track of their magazines with simple numbered markings. The baseplate is also easily removed for maintenance and is designed to withstand repeated impacts often sustained by dropped magazines.

I agree with one of the commenters on this piece.  This is an advertisement for Wilson Combat.  I’d much prefer that they do some testing and report the results to us.  On the other hand, I’ve heard very good things about Wilson Combat 1911 magazines, and their work to bring us a higher capacity magazine is smart.

I would also like to know how this stacks up against Chip McCormick magazines, especially with their newer feed rail technology.

Any comments from folks who have used both (or either) is appreciated.  I’d like to benefit from your insights before I spend my money.  Or … Wilson Combat and Chip McCormick could just send me some to review over the web site.

KUOW.org:

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have tried banning certain guns before. Nearly two decades ago, they barred the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons, only to let that law lapse 10 years later. But one gun ban has stayed on the books: a measure Congress passed a quarter-century ago making it illegal for civilians to buy or sell any machine gun made from that date forward. That legislation passed with the blessing of the National Rifle Association, which now opposes gun control measures.

In April 1986, after months of efforts, the NRA had finally rallied enough support in the Democratic-controlled House to force a bill onto the floor. The so-called Firearms Owners’ Protection Act would undo many of the provisions in the 1968 Gun Control Act, passed shortly after Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were shot dead.

But just as the bill was about to come to a final vote in that tumultuous House session, New Jersey Democrat William Hughes introduced an amendment. It would forbid the sale to civilians of all machine guns made after the law took effect.

There were enough Democrats to pass the amendment, so nobody objected when the presiding officer, New York Democrat Charles Rangel, called for a voice vote rather than a roll call vote on the machine gun ban.

Former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman, who has since parted ways with the organization, tells NPR that Wayne LaPierre, currently NRA’s executive vice president, was willing to let the machine gun ban go forward if it meant the larger bill it was attached to would pass.

“I remember very well having dinner … with Wayne LaPierre on the big victory after it passed the House,” he says. “And we weren’t too concerned about the machine gun issue, but it came back to haunt Warren Cassidy.”

At the time, Cassidy headed the NRA’s lobby, the Institute for Legislative Action. He confirms now that LaPierre, who did not respond to a request for comment, pushed hard to let the machine gun ban stand.

“He said, ‘I want to do it. I think we have to do it.’ So I said yes, and that was the end of the story. It passed, and as we learned immediately, an element of NRA, a very vociferous element of NRA … determined that it just couldn’t be that way,” Cassidy says. “We couldn’t give an inch. I don’t think they ever forgave me for it.”

Gun laws expert Robert Spitzer of the State University of New York at Cortland says the bill President Reagan signed into law was more significant than it was perceived at the time.

“One can view the Congress’ action in 1986 to ban civilian possession of fully automatic weapons as something of a kind of a precedent that would open the door for restricting civilian access to semiautomatic, assault-style weapons,” Spitzer says.

Spitzer says a major reason the machine gun ban met so little resistance was a 1934 law passed a month after outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in a hail of machine gun bullets. It required machine gun owners to pay a hefty tax, be fingerprinted and be listed on a national registry.

As a result, he says, sales of machine guns plummeted.

“It is a good example of something that is little known, which is a gun control law that was pretty effective in keeping such weapons out of civilian hands,” he says. “So by 1986, when the provision was added to the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act to bar any newly produced fully automatic weapon from possession by civilians, it was really a fairly small step to make, because so few of them were in circulation to begin with.”

This piece is dated, but it makes sense to rehearse the facts every once in a while.  We have the Hughes amendment because the NRA wanted it.  And one particular foci was “sporting purposes.”

As I’ve said before, with friends like that, who needs enemies?

David Codrea at Ammoland.

“Substantial numbers of constitutional scholars … believe that the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision was wrong … and I am among the dissenters as well,” he discloses to no one’s surprise. “Even so, the Constitution has never been interpreted in a way that would give people the right to have firearms in their possession anywhere they want and for whatever reason they want.”

Here’s a news flash for you, genius.  You don’t get to dissent.  You’re not a justice on the Supreme Court.  You’re an ass-clown.

“Although the Supreme Court has never credited the ‘citizen uprising; theory of the Second Amendment, there are plenty of people who think that their arsenals are a bulwark against a tyrannical government,” Buchanan continues. “How they think they would win against the weaponry of the modern military is anyone’s guess, of course, but that is beside the point here.”

Well, it isn’t beside the point if you brought it up, and you did bring it up.  Since you brought it up, I get to call you an idiot.

There.  Enough of that and on to something I wanted to address as part of this piece.  One of the commenters writes this.

In a way Buchanan is right. The constitution is irrelevant as one’s right to self defense need not be codified by The State to be law. The problem again with people like Codrea is that they are binary Statists: Democrat/Republican, Legislation/No Legislation. Although you may think that Codrea gets it, he doesn’t. He mistakes legislation for law and can’t see freedom existing without the central state…which BTW “The State” and “Freedom” are mutually exclusive entities.

“We will not disarm.” is a strong statement from a fellow who sees the State as the final arbiter of whether you can make a gun quiet. My inkling is that Codrea would be the first turn turn in his arms if the State mandated it.

Now David is a big boy and doesn’t need me to defend him, but I will anyway.  This commenter must not know David very well, or the concept of covenant.  We’ve discussed it many times before.  The Constitution (and BoR) is a covenant, bringing blessings and curses as corollaries to obedience and disobedience.

If we or the government fail to live by the covenant, the guilty party both (a) suffers in the here and now for it, partly in that the curses are invoked (in this case meaning that tyranny is held accountable, or at least it should be), and (b) God holds us all accountable for obedience to our covenantal obligations.  The WCF is very solemn on entry into oath and vows.  God knows everything we do and will hold us accountable.

It makes good sense for peaceable men to try to persuade others to live by their covenantal obligations.  That is certainly not the same thing as recognizing that our rights and obligations are ultimately rooted in God and His law-word, and the fact that we are made in His image.  Turning this truth into a simpleton’s statement on “binary statists” is stolid and unthoughtful.  I can’t stand unthoughtful men.

For heaven’s sake, turn on at least part of your brain before commenting.  Or have your first cup of coffee before typing.  Or something.

Remember I recommended hunting hogs to save the environment?  In Texas, a man is not only helping the environment, he’s making things safer for himself.  From the Longview News-Journal.

A Union Grove man says he bagged the “big daddy” feral hog that was wreaking havoc on his property — all 416 pounds of him.

The Gregg County Game Warden’s office posted photos on Facebook this week showing Joe Clowers’ kill.

“This pig had been terrorizing his property for years — five or six,” said Game Warden Todd Long. “So every time he went hunting, he took a little extra firepower in case it showed up. Well, this time, it showed up.”

Clowers used a .223-caliber AR rifle to kill the pig.

The hog had preyed on the fawns in the area, and Clowers said he always stayed armed when visiting his deer feeders in case the hog in question charged him.

“My property lays between some populated areas, and I try to maintain an environment like a sanctuary or nursery for the deer to raise fawns,” Clowers said.

“He was the big daddy. I called him the ‘bush beast.’ “

This is a big hog to take down with an AR-15.  I had wondered first of all where he shot him (was it a head shot?), and second, what ammunition he used?

Did he use standard 55 or 62 grain FMJ rounds, did he use 55 grain soft point rounds, or did he use heavier rounds such as the Hornady 75 grain or Sierra Matchking 77 grain?  I suspect there are a lot of folks who would like to know.

I ended up talking to the Upshur County game warden via telephone, and he thought that the hog was taken with a standard round, at which I commented that it must have been with a head shot although I couldn’t tell anything from the pictures.  He agreed and said that he believed it was taken with a head shot.

Congratulations to Mr. Clowers.  Nice shot.  Nice hog.

PJM:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has broadened his investigation, originally focused on Donald Trump’s ties with Russia, to a major Hillary Clinton bundler who worked for Ukraine’s Party of Regions, a political group backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also worked for this party.

Recent reports have implicated Mueller in an alleged FBI cover-up. The FBI had been investigating the Russian firm Rosatom for years before the Obama administration approved its acquisition of 20 percent of U.S. uranium in the Uranium One deal. The FBI kept the investigation secret, even when it could have prevented such a monumental purchase.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton (who was on the very board which approved the Uranium One deal) stood to benefit from the deal, as a Russian bank promoting Uranium One stock had paid her husband half a million for a speech (and directed millions to Clinton Foundation-linked companies). At the same time, the FBI acted quickly to bust a Russian spy ring because it got too close to Clinton.

Mueller — who as head of the FBI seems likely to have known about the Rosatom investigation and covered it up, just as the FBI switched into overdrive to protect Hillary Clinton — has broadened his investigation of Trump-Russia into a line of questioning that might finally implicate the other side of the 2016 election, Clinton herself.

On Monday, NBC News reported that Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group are now the subjects of Mueller’s federal investigation. NBC News cited three unnamed sources, who may have leaked the information on Mueller’s orders — in order to suggest impartiality after these recent stories implicated Mueller.

The Podesta probe grew out of Mueller’s inquiry into Manafort’s finances, NBC News reported. Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for the non-profit European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). The Podesta Group also worked on that campaign.

Mueller’s investigation into Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group has been a long time coming, and it is heartening to see the special counsel turn his eye toward the Russian connections of some prominent Clinton backers for once.

None of this frees Mueller from the stain of the FBI keeping the Rosatom investigation secret during the Uranium One deal, however. It is not enough to merely expand the Russia investigation into actors on Clinton’s side — he needs to fully investigate Russia ties on both sides of the aisle.

No, he doesn’t need to expand anything.  The notion of special counsel and special prosecutor are unconstitutional.  He needs to be fired for corruption and malfeasance in office.

As to this idea that Tony Podesta is under investigation, what if his office finds nothing?  Then what will you say?  That Tony Podesta is clean, just like his brother?

This entire thing is a leak designed as misdirect and bait.  Mueller is attempting to deflect attention away from his own role in all of this, and one of the best ways to do it is to get some GOP senators and congressmen in his corner cheering for him.  Once his enemies have said publicly that his office and efforts are legitimate, they cannot later undo that statement.

I’m not cheering.  I haven’t changed my mind from what I said earlier.

Twice last week I got visits from FBI criminal justice to exactly the same page.

You see that, don’t you?  They are interested in you and what you’re doing.  What they should have been interested in is this.

My words for you, chattering class and politicians, is that you are all a bunch of bitchy, cowardly, whiny, scared little chicken shits who would sell their own mothers, wife and children into slavery if it meant being accepted by the elitists.  You disgust me, one and all.  Furthermore, you DoJ and FBI employees who knew all about this, I feel the same way about you.  You disgust me, one and all.

Not only will this effect this nation’s access to important nuclear material for weapons, it will also effect the supply of fuel for commercial nuclear reactors used for peaceful, clean, reliable energy for your children and children’s children.

The FBI has foolishly squandered its moral authority.  It has none left.  And yet like the pigs in Animal Farm, it wants information on you.  And more of it, and more of it, and all it can get.  They have no interest in rehearsing their own malfeasance, and no particular problem with their moral turpitude.

And if the information we discussed here isn’t enough for you, you can read all about Bill Clinton’s meetings with Vladimir Putin, how Robert Mueller tried to entrap an acquaintance, how a U.S. consulting firm tied to the Clintons lobbied on behalf of Russian companies, about the DoJ blocking an FBI informant from testifying about the Uranium One deal, and how they all conspired to cover it up.

The abscess festers, and the cancer runs deep.  But the DoJ and FBI have lost moral authority, and when they speak now, it is only as the mouthpiece of the evil one.