Archive for the 'Politics' Category

James Wesley Rawles at Survival Blog has done a simply magnificent job of upbraiding the ATF.  It’s an absolute throw-down of blood and gore and broken bones when Rawles gets through with the ATF.  If you like seeing the FedGov slapped around, visit Survival Blog.  Here is a taste.

My specific objections are as follows. Note: I reserve the right to litigate on any or all of these. Furthermore EACH of the following numbered items are distinct separate objections and must be addressed individually with logical and complete specificity by the BATFE before the proposed rule is put into force:

1.) To declare existing privately owned devices contraband machineguns with no available method of registering them as machineguns constitutes an uncompensated taking.

2.) To declare existing privately owned devices contraband machineguns with no Grandfather Clause flies in the face of many decades of Federal case law, under Federal Jurisprudence. This also constitutes an uncompensated taking.

3.) The proposed redefinition of “machinegun” (per 26 U.S.C. 5845(b)) is vaguely worded. For example: What is meant by “function of the trigger”? Does that mean a trigger pull (only)? Does that mean a trigger release? Does that mean a pull OR release of a trigger? Or does that mean a pull AND release of a trigger? Does a partial pull of a trigger still constitute a function? Or must a pull of a trigger be through its entire arc to a stopping point to constitute a function?   Or must a pull of a trigger be through its entire arc to a stopping point and then a release to a reset point to constitute a function?   Or does a release of a trigger from a stopping point to a reset point to constitute a function? Or does a release of a trigger from a partially-pulled position to a reset point to constitute a function?

4.) More than a mere interpretation, it REDEFINES, AMPLIFIES and EXPANDS the wording of the NFA-’34 (26 U.S.C. 5845(b)). This is clearly bureaucratic overreach by the Executive Branch. Per the Constitution, only congress can MAKE laws. The executive branch and agencies can only ENFORCE already legislated and duly enacted laws.

5.) How can the BATFE redefine the meaning of the phrase “single function of the trigger” (per 26 U.S.C. 5845(b)) without the consent of congress?

6.) How can the BATFE further restrict the possession of Militia Weapons without a modification or repeal of the 2nd Amendment?

7.) By declaring a previously legal and constitutionally-protected “arm” suddenly “illegal” and “contraband” is a violation of the 2nd Amendment

8.) By declaring a previously legal and constitutionally-protected “arm” suddenly “illegal” and “contraband” and mandating its surrender to authorities would IDENTIFY the owner is thus a violation of the 5th Amendment protection from self-incrimination. It would also violate the 5th Amendment’s “taking” clause.

9.) By declaring a previously legal and constitutionally-protected “arm” suddenly “illegal” and “contraband” and mandating its surrender to authorities would violate the 4th Amendment protection from seizure without due process.

10.) I take exception to this wording: “Because such devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle”. That is vague.

11.) I take exception to this wording: “…initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.” That is grossly vague and violates the plain simple, Black Letter Law and the manifold intent of congress when it enacted NFA-’34 See: 26 U.S.C. 5845(b))

12.) I take exception to this wording: “…these devices convert…” It is not a conversion to the operating mechanism. Rather, it is either an adjunct or a firing technique, or both.

13.) I take exception to this wording: “…these devices convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun.”   By your new definition, then so does holding your your thumb in your belt-loop when firing from the hip!

14.) I take exception to this wording: “…these devices convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun.”   By your new definition, then so does holding the buttstock of a rifle a short distance from your shoulder when firing!

15.) I take exception to this wording: “…these devices convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun.”   By your new definition, then so does holding a rifle loosely at either shoulder level or hip level when firing! See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RdAhTxyP64

16.) I take exception to this wording: “harnesses the recoil energy of the semiautomatic firearm in a manner that allows the trigger to reset and continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.” The reset IS indeed physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter because BOTH the shooter’s body (including the trigger finger) and the gun itself (including the trigger itself) are in motion, when under the force of recoil.

17.) I take exception to this wording: “Hence, a semiautomatic firearm to which a bump-stock-type device is attached is able to produce automatic fire with a single pull of the trigger.” It is NOT automatic fire, as defined by congress in NFA-’34.

18.) I take exception to this wording: “Hence, a semiautomatic firearm to which a bump-stock-type device is attached is able to produce automatic fire with a single pull of the trigger.” It is not producing automatic fire. The shooter’s trigger finger is still producing the fire, one shot at a time.

19.) I take exception to this wording: “With limited exceptions, primarily as to government agencies, the GCA makes it unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun unless it was lawfully possessed prior to the effective date of the statute.” The Hughes Amendment to FOPA restricts only machineguns, not semi-automatics. Only congress can redefine the word “machinegun”.

20.) I take exception to this wording: “Consequently, current possessors of these devices would be required to surrender them, destroy them, or otherwise render them permanently inoperable upon the effective date of the final rule.” To “surrender them, destroy them, or otherwise render them permanently inoperable” would constitute an uncompensated “taking” which is not allowable under Federal jurisprudence.

21.) I take exception to this wording: “The bump-stock-type devices covered by this proposed rule were not in existence prior to the GCA’s effective date, and therefore would fall within the prohibition on machineguns if this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is implemented.” That is fallacious. Stocks that were spring-loaded or hydraulically buffered (to absorb recoil–but that unintendedly can create a bumpfire condition) did indeed exist and were on the open market before FOPA 1986. For example, Winchester’s Hydra-Coil stock was invented and produced starting in the early 1960s. It was made for variety of guns, including some semi-autos including the Remington Model 58 semiautomatic shotgun and the Remington Model 742 semiautomatic rifle (with a detachable magazine). See: https://www.si.com/vault/1963/09/09/596517/an-inventor-takes-the-kick-out-of-shooting

James goes on through number 42.  It’s just a bloodbath, frankly.  He’s not a lawyer and clearly much smarter than anyone who works with the DoJ or ATF.

Closer to home, our own Fred Tippens writes the ATF with the following.

“Turning law abiding patriotic Americans, veterans, suburban moms, and men just trying to raise their families into criminals? Really? Why would I give a flying rat’s backside about a country that does this? Why? Why would I have any loyalty to this country if its government simply takes whatever it wants? I’m sure the irony is completely lost on you but are you going to send men with guns to take them? If you’re going to just up and ban things don’t you make the case for us to stockpile weapons and ammo? Do you know the definition of irony? The courts won’t help. The congress won’t help. The executive won’t help. What redress do we have? Why not just redefine and then ban all of the component parts and accessories of the common rifle? Are you going to ban them one at a time and hope that nobody will notice? Is this not tyranny? Do you want war with your own neighbors? Seriously? I’m only writing this so that I know I’ve done my part to avoid civil war. Now do your part, be for liberty…. I don’t want war so it’s your war to start or avoid. Please choose wisely.”

I have yet to come to terms with writing again.  They clearly didn’t engage what I wrote earlier and have no intention of engaging my points in the future.

I will point out one more thing about this ban.  The GOP establishment is clearly very good at playing the long game.  Trump won, but the GOP establishment is burning the place down, not Trump.

There was no logical or necessary reason to pack the Omnibus bill with spending for Planned Parenthood or for the CDC to issue gun control studies.  They have cut his support from two main constituencies: [1] right to life, and [2] gun rights.

Trump cannot win again without those two constituencies.  I’ve already heard folks in both camps tell me that they won’t vote for Trump again if hell freezes over.  Among pro-life workers (I know some) there was great sadness over the monies given to PP.

Thus the GOP has done two things it wanted to do.  They’ve got their gun control to run on in the next election without having to vote on it themselves (they are cowards).  They got the ATF to do the dishonest work for them.  Second, they have ensured that Trump is a one-term president.

As I said, it is the GOP establishment and not Trump who is burning the place down.

David Codrea:

OK, so a picture of an AR-15 with the words “MOLON LABE!” is probably out. And even with Supreme Court decisions in Heller and McDonald, chances are anything specifially Second Amendment-related would get the boot. Even though you and I might not find it “controversial,” the court was divided five to four in each case. Hell, let’s just stipulate all the lies and manipulation have succeeded in creating an unbridgeable gulf between those demanding citizen disarmament and those who believe the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

OK, so how close to the edge can a kid get?

That’s a good question, and that line changes with each passing day, getting closer and closer so that there is no more liberty.

I think it’s a fair statement that “all the lies and manipulation have succeeded in creating an unbridgeable gulf between those demanding citizen disarmament and those who believe the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  In fact, I don’t think it takes lies and manipulation to do that.  I think it just takes a belief in the right things.

Belief isn’t something the public school system can abide.  What we have in place now was essentially created by John Dewey, and children are treated as a tabula rasa, with the values of the state poured into their soul day after day, year after year.  That blank tablet doesn’t stay blank for long.  It’s not by accident – it’s by design, or another way of saying it is that Dewey didn’t see children as a blank tablet being a detriment, but as the entry point of how the state can socialize them.  It’s a good thing to Dewey, this nexus of state values and children in school.

Given that, why would you want to educate your children in the public school system?

Via WRSA, this post continues on a theme I’ve worked before here at this web site, to wit, that unfunded liabilities will affect the smallest governments first and worst because small government cannot print fiat money to keep itself afloat.

I’m not sure we learn anything new from the article except for the shear magnitude of the problem, but there is this link in the comments on such a thing happening to a small town in Alabama in 2010.  I’ve also pointed out before that unfunded pensions has led to the inability to keep the police departments in Memphis and Miami-Dade afloat without massive changes.

It’s happening not just with small municipalities and towns, but with medium size and larger cities as well.  That which cannot continue, won’t.

Via Codrea, this perspective from Sweden.

Of course, there are various types of feminism. Sweden’s preferred type is not about universal sisterhood and the spreading of sexual equality around the globe. No, it is “intersectional” feminism. What is “intersectional” feminism? It is a species of feminism that, in accordance with the relatively new academic concept of “intersectionality,” accepts a hierarchy whereby other “victim groups” — such as “people of color” and Muslims — are higher up on the grievance ladder than women, and whereby women who belong to those other groups enjoy an even more exalted status as victims than white female Christians or Jews.

This means that “intersectional” feminists must be culturally sensitive and culturally relative, recognizing and privileging culturally predicated values other than sexual equality. They must be feminists who understand that while no expression of contempt for the purported tyranny of Western males can be too loud, overstated or vulgar, they must, in their encounters with less feminist-minded cultures, temper their devotion to female equality out of respect for those cultures’ different priorities. In practice, this compulsion to respect the different priorities of other cultures is most urgent, and the respect itself most cringing when the culture in question is the one in which female inequality is most thoroughly enshrined and enforced.

This brand of feminism, needless to say, is not confined to Sweden …

I would say that it’s actually simpler than that.  The patriarchy isn’t what feminists hate.  It’s the weakened Western values that now believes in nothing at all, thus willing to believe in anything at all.  This brand of feminism actually believes that they can change Islam to make it more progressive, ignoring the very history of this cult of death and its manifestations through a millennium of history.

This brand of feminism will always be searching and never finding, unwilling to embrace God’s perfect design for the family and society.

David Codrea:

“Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA-15), a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, on Monday introduced the Journalist Protection Act to make a federal crime of certain attacks on those reporting the news,” the Congressman’s media flack team announced. “The Journalist Protection Act makes it a federal crime to intentionally cause bodily injury to a journalist affecting interstate or foreign commerce in the course of reporting or in a manner designed to intimidate him or her from newsgathering for a media organization.”

In other words, he wants to make something that’s already a crime, a crime.  Got it.

He sounds like a screeching little girl.

PJM:

“I am operating on the assumption that this country prescribes too many opioids,” Sessions said. “People need to take some aspirin sometimes.”

So we have a renewed war on drugs, empowering the police state even more.  Sessions had an opportunity to take a whack at the deep state, firing virtually every appointee from the Obama administration in the DoJ, ATF and FBI.  Instead he has left much of it intact, with Rosenstein still working his nefarious plans.

He could have targeted the pedophile and child trafficking rings in and around D.C. and in other cities, but he has instead chosen to cuddle with his pet project of moral superiority over others.  For the children, he could have done better.  He chose poorly.  He will answer for how he chose.

Jeff Sessions is a loser.

Twitchy:

The more texts we see from Strzok & Page, the more we see how they loathe fellow Americans w/ whom they disagree. Trump is an idiot, Clinton should win, ppl who voted against McCabe’s wife are hillbillies, and, re: the March for Life, “hate those people.”

As for those March for life folks, I thought I would share a heartwarming story about a Down Syndrome baby that has been chosen as the newest Gerber baby.

The 2018 Gerber baby is Lucas Warren, a 1-year-old from Dalton, Georgia who is the first child with Down syndrome to be named a Gerber baby since the contest’s start in 2010.

“He’s very outgoing and never meets a stranger,” Lucas’s mom, Cortney, told TODAY Parents. “He loves to play, loves to laugh and loves to make other people laugh.”

Foxnews is also covering this.  As they should.  Hey Peter, you think babies like this should be murdered, don’t you, you evil bastard?

As for those ignorant hillbillies, Terry McAuliffe did what he said he would do, and took a series of actions to allow felons to vote.  Virginia went for Hillary, so your blame goes not to hillbillies, but to felons and people like yourself, Peter – but maybe I’m being redundant.

So, to wrap up this sincere little note because time is short, and I say this in the most Christian manner I can muster and I’m a right-to-lifer too, blow it out your ass Peter.  Send me a note and let me know how it works out in the federal penitentiary for you.  Or perhaps a short drop to the end of a rope would be more appropriate.

This will only be a brief analysis, but I wanted to lay the groundwork for what I believe we learn from the recent Nunes memorandum.

Largely nothing.  We knew most if not all of that already.  Those who have been following the machinations of the deep state have know all of this for a very long time now.  We know that certain high ranking officials inside the government – the government that is mostly not appointed, but rather, in for life, and a few who are appointed – have colluded and conspired to design a police state, couple federal, state and local law enforcement agencies into one by use of the JTTF and Fusion centers, weaken American foreign policy, empower the Muslim lobby, encroach upon and even destroy liberties in America, and started and prosecuted foreign wars in order to enrich themselves and their co-conspirators.

The wars in Northern Africa are an example of one such campaign, where nations were toppled in order to create “rat lines” of weapons, money, gems, oil and children, these “rat lines” only being the initial stages of more formal lines of logistics on a more industrial scale.  Haiti was another such example, and the full story of TCF and CGI corruption in Haiti has yet to be told.  Many of the people who have tried to tell the story have ended up dead.  At the head of this conspiratorial network of taitors sits not just men like Comey and McCabe, but men and women at the State Department, DoJ, inside the U.S. military and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Again, we’ve known this for a very long time.  For example, the YouTuber George (Webb) Sweigart called the involvement of the Awan brothers a full half year before anyone else did, and also provided excruciating and even painful detail on all of the military and political actions affecting the campaign to topple Northern Africa.  We also knew that John McCain was involved in the campaign in Northern Africa.  Thus, he said of the memorandum, “The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.”  Quite obviously, this is a misdirect and he doesn’t really believe this all has anything at all to do with Russia.

We also learned more about the involvement of DoJ personnel with the Nunes committee.  Rod Rosenstein outed himself because he was apparently less disciplined than he needed to be.  According to Greg Jarrett, he threatened the committee.

Much more troubling, however, is the degree to which the balance of Washington is in the pocket of the deep state.  Is there any other reason for this?

Calling on Trump not to interfere in Mueller’s investigation, four Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee dismissed on Sunday the idea that the memo’s criticism of how the FBI handled certain surveillance applications undermines the special counsel’s work. Reps. Trey Gowdy (S.C.), Chris Stewart (Utah), Will Hurd (Tex.) and Brad Wenstrup (Ohio) represented the committee on the morning political talk shows.

Gowdy, who helped draft the memo, said Trump should not fire Rosenstein, and he rejected the idea that the document has a bearing on the investigation.

It appears that the deep state controls quite literally all of Washington, D.C., and all appurtenant departments, agencies, and personnel.  It runs deep, far and wide, and its powers are immense.  And that’s what we learn from the memorandum.  We get no farther down the road to knowing what has happened.  This is all the tip of the iceberg.  But what we do learn if that when a little light is shined, the gargoyles, demons, monsters and pit vipers come out fighting.  I think it’s a good thing for them to self-identify.

David Codrea:

But wasn’t that one of Tancredo’s strengths? Hasn’t he been a champion of “America first” and “conservative” values?

Yes and no.

He’s been pretty good on “immigration,” to the point where domestic Marxist media tars him as a “xenophobe.”

But he’s got some unreconciled past sins on guns to atone for that he never genuinely has.

Gun owners have a very long memory.  We never forget, and we seldom forgive.  Here’s a note to politicians.  Be careful what you do and say about guns, how you vote, and what you preach about.  It would actually be easiest for you if you believed in a God-given right to the ownership and bearing of arms, and didn’t have to lie about it (Rep. Thomas Massie is a good example for you to follow).

The Conservative Treehouse:

Against a newly discovered likelihood the Robert Mueller investigation began under false pretenses; and against the backdrop that FBI surveillance and wiretaps were obtained through materially (intentionally) false representations to the FISA court; and against the backdrop the original Flynn plea judge (Contrereas) was also the approving FISA judge; and that judge ‘was summarily recused’ from the case; and against increasing evidence that Mike Flynn was set up by a terminal animus, and politically-motivated investigative rogue unit, operating within the FBI; and against surfacing IG Horowitz evidence that FBI investigators manipulated (lied on) their FD-302 interrogation documents; and understanding those falsified 302’s were used in the Mueller/Flynn charging document…

…Special Counsel Robert Mueller now asks for postponement of sentencing.

Hmm … is it all beginning to unravel for you, deep stater?  Hey, my wish for you is the same as I said for Andrew McCabe.  I hope your arms and legs rot and fall off.  Absent that, we should take you out and hang you from the nearest lamp post or oak tree.