Politico.

For decades, criminal justice experts have debated the wisdom of “broken windows” policing — but no one ever proposed bringing in the FBI to do it.

Until now.

As part of a Justice Department-led drive to crack down on violence growing out of protests spurred by George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police, the federal government is prosecuting more than 70 people for alleged behavior that runs the gamut from mere vandalism, to inciting looting through Facebook Live posts, to arson, and, in one case, murder.

How cute.

Critics say that, do they?  When have critics on the left ever advocated for smaller federal government?  When Obama abused his authority for the Chrysler bailout?  Or maybe for Obamacare implementation?  Or perhaps all of that political profiling by the IRS?  If not, maybe DACA, which is an unconstitutional sham?

Or maybe it was that thing called Fast & Furious, where the administration forced FFLs to sell across the border into Mexico in order to make more U.S. weapons end up in gang violence, with the desire that a chorus of demands for increased gun control would ensue?

Now that Politico has “seen the light,” should we expect them to come to our aid and start publishing editorials demanding the repeal of the National Firearms Act?

Via David Codrea, this pitiful understanding of theology and life.

Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy says it’s time to find strangers and “shine their shoes” to combat racism in the U.S.

The Christian businessman, long reviled by LGBT activists for his support of the traditional definition of marriage, suggested the idea while weighing in on Black Lives Matter protests across the nation.

He made the remarks during a June 14 panel at Passion City Church in Atlanta.

“I invite folks just to put some words to action here and if we need to find somebody that needs to have their shoes shined, we need to just go right on over and shine their shoes,” Mr. Cathy told Christian rapper Lecrae and Passion City Founder Louie Giglio.

“Whether they got tennis shoes on or not — maybe they got sandals on — it really doesn’t matter,” he continued. “But there’s a time in which we need to have some personal action here. Maybe we need to give them a huge too. … I bought about 1,500 of these [shoeshine brushes] and I gave them to all our Chick-Fil-A operators and staff a number of years ago. So any expressions of a contrite heart, of a sense of humility, a sense of shame, a sense of embarrassment begat with an apologetic heart — I think that’s what our world needs to hear today.”

The 70-minute discussion also featured Mr. Cathy urging Americans not to “let this moment pass” or to “point fingers” at looters.

“[We had] about a dozen Chick-fil-A restaurants vandalized in the last week, but my plea would be for the white people, rather than point fingers at that kind of criminal effort, would be to see the level of frustration and exasperation and almost the sense of hopelessness that exists on some of those activists within the African-American community,” he said.

First of all, I would like to take this chance, unequivocally, to point my finger at looters.  That’s called stealing, and it violates the eighth commandment.  The Biblical punishment for that is to become an indentured servant to the offended victim until the debt is paid in multiples.

Now that’s done, let’s reiterate what we’ve discussed before concerning this mistaken notion of collective sin.

” … the Biblical doctrine is, as Deuteronomy 24:16 makes clear, one of individual responsibility … guilt cannot be shifted to others or passed on to the people around a man.  Guilt is non-transferable; a disposition or nature can be inherited, but not guilt.”

Finally, my grandfather barely had an elementary school education.  He fought in WWI, and upon discharge went to work for the railroad.  He broke his back while working, and didn’t miss a day of work because he had a family to support.

His only son and my father, worked hard all of his life to provide for me and my siblings.  The hard work over two generations enabled me to go to school, where I had to work hard to become an engineer.  To be sure, my life is one that exemplifies grace, without which I’m sure I would live in a ditch somewhere.  So I don’t need a sermon from anyone on the effects of grace in my life.

But God uses secondary causes too, and lack of work, slothfulness, is also a sin.  I am not the recipient of any sort of privilege, and I won’t be treated that way by the morally preening but ignorant Dan Cathy, any politician, or any wealth redistributionist.

Those vacuous, second grader level sermonetes by rich people bore me.

Dean Weingarten.

Steven Baca, a former political candidate, was videoed scuffling with leftists who were working to destroy the statue. He appears to have taken the bait of one or two leftist women, shoving them out of the way, or pulling/pushing one to the ground. The local militia have said Baca is not associated with them.

Baca decided to retreat from the event, perhaps after being threatened by masked leftists. He is struck with a green skateboard, wielded by a masked man in black clothes, but remains upright and continues to retreat. A group of leftists pursue him, strike him again, and knock him to the ground. As he is on the ground, being attacked, he fires a pistol four times, striking one of the attackers. One of his attackers has a skateboard. It may be the person who struck him earlier, but it is not clear.

[ … ]

The organized militia had nothing to do with the shooting, which seems to be justified self-defense.

Under American law, you are not allowed to start an altercation, then escalate it, then use deadly force and be justified in doing so.

If you are involved in an altercation, then retreat, attempting to end the altercation, you regain your ability to use force, even deadly force, in self-defense.

[ … ]

Steven Baca (Steven is correct, Stephan is an error) was arrested and charged.  When the video showing the confrontation surfaced, the charges were, at least temporarily, dropped.  None of Baca’s attackers have been arrested or charged.

Mayor Keller went further. He stated he wishes to amend the New Mexico Constitution to give cities the ability to decide who may be armed, and when they would be allowed to do so.  It seems Mayor Keller is allied with the group who attacked Baca. This is how political terror works. Remove legal protections from the population; use political power to immunize the unaccountable enforcers, often designated as “community” groups.

[ … ]

Why haven’t any of the people who attacked Baca been arrested? Until they are, the working assumption is because they are political allies of Mayor Keller.

It’s like I have observed so many times before.  These riots are happening because the pols want them to.  They are the enemy, and what we’re witnessing is what Dean is calling political terrorism.

The entire system is shot through with Bolsheviks – corporate HR departments, local pols, state pols, national pols, attorneys and lawyers everywhere.  You didn’t think we could teach a generation or two of lawyers the doctrines of Stanley Fish without them pissing on the constitution when they graduated, did you?

David Codrea.

… here are questions gun owner rights advocates should expect the representatives they enable and support to ask that any qualified candidate shouldn’t have any trouble answering:

• What did the Founders mean by “A well regulated militia”?
• What did the Founder mean by “being necessary to the security of a free State”?
• What did the Founders mean by “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”?
• What did the Founders mean by “shall not be infringed”?
• How can past Supreme Court opinion specifying protected arms as those being “in common use at the time” not apply to the types of firearms needed for militia service?

Hell, correctly answering these should be required to graduate high school. But it won’t happen even with Republicans nominally in control of things, let alone if there’s a blue wave in November. So what “legal” recourse is available?

You can’t hoist them on their own petard. Judicial immunity means you can’t take them to court for the subversion of Founding intent. And good luck getting the current crop of interested/compromised/beholden Deep State Swamp denizens to even suggest impeachment, although allow a Democrat supermajority and don’t be surprised to see Clarence Thomas targeted anew.

There is one other legal alternative. Per the Hoover Institute:

“Congress should exercise its power to limit the jurisdiction of the courts. The Constitution provides that Congress is authorized to establish those federal courts subordinate to the Supreme Court and set forth their jurisdiction. Congress also has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and regulate its activities. Accordingly, Congress should exercise this authority to restrain an activist judiciary.”

I’ve known about this power for a long time.  So have the senators.  They will never use it, especially because they see the black robed tyrants as high priests.

From a reader, it’s always interesting to see the enemy identify the why’s and wherefore’s of what they have done, and the lessons they hope they learned.  This is like publishing a FOUO sitrep.  There’s an awful lot there, only some of which is interesting.  It sounds at times like a cheerleader chant, but other times it supplies meaningful intelligence for the future.  I’ll only lift portions out.

Medical Support

This included street medics and medics performing triage and urgent care at a converted community center two blocks away from the precinct. Under different circumstances, this could be performed at any nearby sympathetic commercial, religious, or not-for profit establishment. Alternatively, a crowd or a medic group could occupy such a space for the duration of a protest. Those who were organized as street medics did not interfere with the tactical choices of the crowd. Instead, they consistently treated anyone who needed their help.

Scanner Monitors and Telegram App Channel Operators

This is common practice in many US cities by now, but police scanner monitors with an ear for strategically important information played a critical role in setting up information flows from the police to the crowd. It is almost certain that on the whole, much of the crowd was not practicing the greatest security to access the Telegram channel. We advise rebels to set up the Telegram app on burner phones in order to stay informed while preventing police stingrays (false cell phone towers) from gleaning their personal information.

Peaceful Protestors

The non-violent tactics of peaceful protesters served two familiar aims and one unusual one:

• They created a spectacle of legitimacy, which was intensified as police violence escalated.
• They created a front line that blocked police attempts to advance when they deployed outside of the Precinct.
• In addition, in an unexpected turn of affairs, the peaceful protestors shielded those who employed projectiles.

Whenever the police threatened tear gas or rubber bullets, non-violent protesters lined up at the front with their hands up in the air, chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” Sometimes they kneeled, but typically only during relative lulls in the action. When the cops deployed outside the Precincts, their police lines frequently found themselves facing a line of “non-violent” protestors. This had the effect of temporarily stabilizing the space of conflict and gave other crowd members a stationary target. While some peaceful protestors angrily commanded people to stop throwing things, they were few and grew quiet as the day wore on. This was most likely because the police were targeting people who threw things with rubber bullets early on in the conflict, which enraged the crowd. It’s worth noting that the reverse has often been the case—we are used to seeing more confrontational tactics used to shield those practicing non-violence (e.g., at Standing Rock and Charlottesville). The reversal of this relationship in Minneapolis afforded greater autonomy to those employing confrontational tactics.

Ballistics Squads

Ballistics squads threw water bottles, rocks, and a few Molotov cocktails at police, and shot fireworks. Those using ballistics didn’t always work in groups, but doing so protected them from being targeted by non-violent protestors who wanted to dictate the tactics of the crowd. The ballistics squads served three aims:

• They drew police violence away from the peaceful elements of the crowd during moments of escalation.
• They patiently depleted the police crowd control munitions.
• They threatened the physical safety of the police, making it more costly for them to advance.

The first day of the uprising, there were attacks on multiple parked police SUVs at the Third Precinct. This sensibility resumed quickly on Day Two, beginning with the throwing of water bottles at police officers positioned on the roof of the Third Precinct and alongside the building. After the police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, the ballistics squads also began to employ rocks. Elements within the crowd dismantled bus bench embankments made of stone and smashed them up to supply additional projectiles. Nightfall saw the use of fireworks by a few people, which quickly generalized in Days Three and Four. “Boogaloos” (Second Amendment accelerationists) had already briefly employed fireworks on Day One, but from what we saw they mostly sat it out on the sidelines thereafter. Finally, it is worth noting that the Minneapolis police used “green tips,” rubber bullets with exploding green ink tips to mark lawbreakers for later arrest. Once it became clear that the police department had limited capacity to make good on its threat and, moreover, that the crowd could win, those who had been marked had every incentive to fight like hell to defy the police.

Laser Pointers

In the grammar of the Hong Kong movement, those who operate laser pointers are referred to as “light mages.” As was the case in Hong Kong, Chile, and elsewhere in 2019, some people came prepared with laser pointers to attack the optical capacity of the police. Laser pointers involve a special risk/reward ratio, as it is very easy to track people using laser pointers, even when they are operating within a dense and active crowd at night. Laser pointer users are particularly vulnerable if they attempt to target individual police officers or (especially) police helicopters while operating in small crowds; this is still the case even if the entire neighborhood is undergoing mass looting (the daytime use of high-powered lasers with scopes remains untested, to our knowledge). The upside of laser pointers is immense: they momentarily compromise the eyesight of the police on the ground and they can disable police surveillance drones by interfering with their infrared sensors and obstacle-detection cameras. In the latter case, a persistently lasered drone may descend to the earth where the crowd can destroy it. This occurred repeatedly on Days Two and Three. If a crowd is particularly dense and visually difficult to discern, lasers can be used to chase away police helicopters. This was successfully demonstrated on Day Three following the retreat of the police from the Third Precinct, as well as on Day Four in the vicinity of the Fifth Precinct battle.

[ … ]

Looters

Looting served three critical aims.

First, it liberated supplies to heal and nourish the crowd. On the first day, rebels attempted to seize the liquor store directly across from the Third Precinct. Their success was brief, as the cops managed to re-secure it. Early in the standoff on Day Two, a handful of people signaled their determination by climbing on top of the store to mock the police from the roof. The crowd cheered at this humiliation, which implicitly set the objective for the rest of the day: to demonstrate the powerlessness of the police, demoralize them, and exhaust their capacities.

An hour or so later, looting began at the liquor store and at an Aldi a block away. While a majority of those present participated in the looting, it was clear that some took it upon themselves to be strategic about it. Looters at the Aldi liberated immense quantities of bottled water, sports drinks, milk, protein bars, and other snacks and assembled huge quantities of these items on street corners throughout the vicinity. In addition to the liquor store and the Aldi, the Third Precinct was conveniently situated adjacent to a Target, a Cub Foods, a shoe store, a dollar store, an Autozone, a Wendy’s, and various other businesses. Once the looting began, it immediately became a part of the logistics of the crowd’s siege on the Precinct.

Second, looting boosted the crowd’s morale by creating solidarity and joy through a shared act of collective transgression. The act of gift giving and the spirit of generosity was made accessible to all, providing a positive counterpoint to the head-to-head conflicts with the police.

Third, and most importantly, looting contributed to keeping the situation ungovernable. As looting spread throughout the city, police forces everywhere were spread thin. Their attempts to secure key targets only gave looters free rein over other areas in the city. Like a fist squeezing water, the police found themselves frustrated by an opponent that expanded exponentially.

Fires

The decision to burn looted businesses can be seen as tactically intelligent. It contributed to depleting police resources, since the firefighters forced to continually extinguish structure fires all over town required heavy police escorts. This severely impacted their ability to intervene in situations of ongoing looting, the vast majority of which they never responded to (the malls and the Super Target store on University Ave being exceptions). This has played out differently in other cities, where police opted not to escort firefighters. Perhaps this explains why demonstrators fired in the air around firefighting vehicles during the Watts rebellion.

In the case of the Third Precinct, the burning of the Autozone had two immediate consequences: first, it forced the police to move out into the street and establish a perimeter around the building for firefighters. While this diminished the clash at the site of the precinct, it also pushed the crowd down Lake Street, which subsequently induced widespread looting and contributed to the diffusion of the riot across the whole neighborhood. By interrupting the magnetic force of the Precinct, the police response to the fire indirectly contributed to expanding the riot across the city.

He goes on, but this information will suffice for now.

You see a number of important things in this sitrep, including: [a] the willingness to use human shields (what he calls peaceful protesters) in order gain a tactical advantage, [b] total disregard for property belonging to other people, and the willingness to steal it for tactical advantage (since it’s obvious that there was no logistical planning involved, logistics had to be acquired on the spot), [c] the ease with which police were completely outnumbered (here the police didn’t rely on what the tool the constitution and state laws gives states, i.e., the militia), [d] the total disregard for collateral damage (fires could easily have expanded to other areas, and in fact did so), and [e] the intent to foment this kind of violence in order to produce anarchy.

The significant takeaways from this are that they have learned the necessity of good comms, medical support, and logistics (even if they didn’t plan for supplying their people).

I maintain, as I always will, that none of this would have been possible, and that almost every bit of it could have been suppressed, except for the willingness of politicians to allow, and even foster this.  One needs to go no further than the admission of the Keith Ellison’s son (currently on the Minneapolis City Council), concerning Antifa.  Says Jeremiah Ellison,

“I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA. Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THAT ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!”

It’s not necessary to discuss the ties between CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Keith Ellison and his son.  It’s tight, and CAIR printed many of the signs carried by protesters around the country.  We could cover more later.

But in the mean time, we’ve learned a lot from this and other such incidents across the country.  Militia shows up at a statue in New Mexico to protect it from being demolished by Antifa, and the militia ends up on the ground face down and arrested.  This is just one example – in many of these cases, the police were there to protect the protesters, with willing acquiescence by the pols.

Permits for marches were not acquired, roads were littered, windows were smashed, buildings were burned, traffic was brought to a halt, and people were injured.  Let a conservative group try that and see how long until the police shut it down.

Against such odds, it’s good to know how the enemy sees things.  This is a good sitrep.  I’m glad he provided it.  You can think of it as an Antifa after-action report.

I’ve said this before, and it’s a shame that I have to recapitulate this ground again.

I will delete all comments trying to foment violence against anyone. It’s illegal, and risky for me to host those comments, even if I don’t know those comments are there. If you want to do that, get your own blog and be man enough to use your real name rather than a nom de guerre over someone else’s blog.

I make no claim to read every comment, or even most comments. But when I do, if I find such comments I will delete or spam them. The alternative is to go back to moderating all comments (ugh!) or simply close down comments.

Please act like you have some sense when you make comments.

Rep. Matt Gaetz.

The @ATFHQ is crafting secret rules restricting the possession of certain pistol braces by American citizens, which would turn millions of law-abiding gun owners into felons overnight. I sent a letter today demanding they stop.

Here is selected quotes from the letter.

ATF initially welcomed the advent of pistol arm braces. In 2012, ATF correctly determined that the attachment of arm braces to large pistol platforms does not constitute the manufacture of a short barreled rifle. This determination, consistent with law, clarified that attachment of a pistol-affixed arm brace did not constitute the making of a Short Barreled Rifle (SBR) subject to registration requirements under the National Firearms Act (“NFA”), 26 U.S.C. §§ 5801–5872, and made these important safety tools more readily available to those who need them. Central to ATF’s determination was its finding that arm braces are not synonymous with shoulder stocks and thus not designed or intended to be fired from the shoulder. Since ATF’s initial determination, over two million arm braces have been sold to gun owners. Additionally, hundreds of firearm manufacturers have sold over one million firearms pre-configured with arm braces.

Despite initially welcoming the introduction of pistol arm braces, it has come to our attention that ATF is now attempting to restrict some of the most popular arm brace configurations by creating non-public standards that are not based in statute or regulation. For example, in determining whether an item is an arm brace or stock, ATF has, through private letters, created an inexhaustive list of what it considers “objective design features.” With no basis in law, one of the “indicators” chosen to make these determinations is “length of pull,” which is the distance from the rear of the stabilizing brace to the trigger. Unbeknownst to the general public, ATF has ordained in private determination letters that it considers “any firearm with a ‘length of pull’ over 13-1/2 inches to be designed to be fired from the shoulder,” thereby making it a short-barreled rifle. However, ATF has also privately proclaimed that even firearms under this length of pull can be classified as a short-barreled rifle, if ATF identifies other (and often unspecified) applicable “indicators.” It is not clear what authority ATF has to establish these hidden standards.

We understand that ATF is currently considering restricting one arm brace model owned by over 700,000 Americans, despite it being functionally no different from the more than ten arm brace designs already approved by ATF. Were ATF allowed to proceed with issuing this determination letter or others, close to one million law abiding Americans could be made felons overnight.

What is left unsaid is exactly what brace design is being reconsidered for this classification.  Stay tuned.  It would be just like the ATF folks to state, restate, bait and switch, and then restate again in order to entrap innocent people.

It’s their bread and butter.