Source.

Visa and Mastercard paused their decision to start categorizing purchases at gun shops, a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt that tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearms purchases.

The decision is, at the same time, also a defeat for gun control groups. There had been hope that categorizing credit and debit card purchases would allow authorities to potentially see red flags — like significant ammunition purchases — before a mass shooting could happen.

After Visa and Mastercard announced their plans to implement a separate merchant category code for gun shop purchases, the payment networks got significant pushback from the gun lobby as well as conservative politicians. A group of 24 GOP state attorneys general wrote a letter to the payment networks threatening legal action against Visa and Mastercard if they moved forward with their plan.

There are also bills pending in several state legislatures that would ban the tracking of purchases at gun shops, which would have made it even more difficult for Visa and Mastercard to implement the categorization.

Washington Examiner (via MSN) is also reporting on this story, along with Bloomberg.

Oh, I suppose this isn’t a win for us and loss for the controllers.  I suspect it’s a strategic retreat.  They are retreating for some period of time.  The controllers never sleep and won’t let up their efforts.

Given the Fascist nature of the coupling of large corporations with the FedGov, I suspect we’ll see attempted action at the federal level to push this forward.  They’re just handing the football off to a different runner.

We’ve panned this gun as the wrong choice for all the wrong reasons, and I still believe that.  However, Tim Harmsen apparently likes the gun a lot.

West Virginia State Police are in full coverup mode and simultaneously melting down. Laugh? Cry? Perhaps both. Watch the video; it’s one folly on top of another.

Source:

The biggest police scandal in the country right now is going down in West Virginia – and almost nobody even knows about it. It hasn’t made national news yet. One reporter in West Virginia exposed it and things have escalated. This is another one of those cases where this Youtube channel has inadvertently helped to expose government misconduct. This goes to show what an absolute necessity free speech is to our freedom.

Latest video:

A couple weeks ago I released an anonymous whistleblower letter from a state trooper, making specific allegations against the top leadership. I had no idea this would happen, but apparently that kicked off what is essentially a civil war inside the West Virginia State Police that seems to have been brewing. Since my first video on this with the whistleblower’s allegations, that whistleblower has been arrested. His lawyer is alleging a coverup conspiracy going all the way to the top of the state police.

Prior post and video at TCJ. Correction, the Head of the State Police was not fired.

Breaking News!!! District Judge Ezra declares Cargill the winner in the Cargill v Garland bump stock case, tosses a judicial middle finger at the 5th circuit, takes his toys home and closes the case. We requested bump stocks to be legal in all 50 states. So are they @ATFHQ ? #2A pic.twitter.com/P7xvkfj6rw

— Michael Cargill (@michaeldcargill) March 8, 2023

We’ve covered this before.  Softer metals can wear down harder metals if they make contact long and vigorously enough.  And he tells you so again in the video.

This is an interesting list of mindset rules to live by. Much of it applies across any discipline or situation in life. I was taught, “one in the hand is worth two in the bush.” And I learned the hard way, don’t go where you aren’t wanted. Also, be nice; it’s shocking how well this works in conflict avoidance of all types. The clear command to obey Christ is an ongoing lesson with which I admittedly have had varying degrees of success. Avoiding the police is another, and there are others.

Making the right decisions and taking the correct actions can save your life. After a career in law enforcement and a lifetime devoted to the study of armed conflict and training others in the art of pistolcraft, Dave Spaulding has developed some rules to live by.

Following proven operational rules and guidelines is a sound practice and, over the years, I have developed some of my own. I should note, while title has a “tactical” ring to it, these rules can be applied to many situations in life — not just fighting. I can’t claim to be the originator for many of these, simply the author and steward of this distilled list which draws from many sources but has been refined through my experience. I have used these rules regularly with great success, as have my family and students.

Although street experience helps hone the danger sense, I believe everyone has a “sixth sense” that tells them when something isn’t right. If you get an “I-should-leave” feeling, I would suggest you leave.  Too many people tell themselves they’re imagining a threat, it’s called “normalcy bias” and it’s deadly! If you get the urge, what’s the harm in leaving? Never doubt yourself! Of all the people in the world to trust, you should be first on your list.

This next section reminded me of a book, The Gift of Fear, by De Becker. Get the book and read it with the intent to admit and respond to your sense of danger.

Years ago, I was teaching a female-only self-defense class when one of the students cornered me at a break. She told me a story of working late in a high-rise office building and waiting on an elevator. She waited awhile and when the doors opened, a man was on the elevator. She said, “He looked like a biker with long greasy hair and a beard. He was smelly and unkempt. Everything in my being told me not to get on the elevator, but I just thought I was being paranoid. I got on and, right after it started to move, he attacked. I had no idea what to do so I just went to another place in my brain. The only thing that stopped the attack was that the elevator stopped on another floor for another rider and he fled.”

Read the article at the link and make personal, family, or church group applications to improve your skills and mindset where necessary. Things don’t seem to be getting better right now; take the time to prepare, above all, spiritually, but also mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Source.

A Missouri law banning local police from enforcing federal gun laws is unconstitutional and void, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes ruled the 2021 law is preempted by the federal government under the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause.

“At best, this statute causes confusion among state law enforcement officials who are deputized for federal task force operations, and at worst, is unconstitutional on its face,” Wimes wrote.

Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey in a statement said he will appeal the ruling.

“As Attorney General, I will protect the Constitution, which includes defending Missourians’ fundamental right to bear arms,” Bailey said. “We are prepared to defend this statute to the highest court, and we anticipate a better result at the Eighth Circuit.”

The Missouri law had subjected law enforcement agencies with officers who knowingly enforced federal gun laws without equivalent state laws to a fine of $50,000 per violating officer.

Federal laws without similar Missouri laws include statutes covering weapons registration and tracking, and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.

Well then.  I expect we’ll see all city, county and state LEOs enforcing immigration laws and arresting illegals now, right?

Oh, wait.

Consider the irony.  States like NY, NJ, California and Illinois get to infringe upon rights outlined in the 2A despite what the Bruen decision said, but when states don’t have these corresponding laws to the FedGov, they have to enforce them anyway.

It’s almost like the scales are always tilted toward infringement, yes?

Commentary at Army Times:

On all key technical measures, the Next Generation Squad Weapons program is imploding before Army’s very eyes. The program is on mechanical life support, with its progenitors at the Joint Chiefs obstinately now ramming the program through despite spectacularly failing multiple civilian-sector peer reviews almost immediately upon commercial release.

Indeed the rifle seems cursed from birth. Even the naming has failed. Army recently allowed a third-party company to scare it off the military designation M5. The re-naming will certainly also help scupper bad public relations growing around ‘XM-5′ search results.

Civilian testing problems have, or should have, sunk the program already. The XM-5/7 as it turns out fails a single round into a mud test. Given the platform is a piston-driven rifle it now lacks gas, as the M-16 was originally designed, to blow away debris from the eject port. Possibly aiming to avoid long-term health and safety issues associated with rifle gas, Army has selected an operating system less hardy in battlefield environments. A choice understandable in certain respects, however, in the larger scheme the decision presents potentially war-losing cost/benefit analysis.

Watch the mud test video above. It’s possible to tailor demonstrations and testing to sell any product, and that’s what many manufacturers do in Military arms contracts award trials. And there’s almost always a high-level ringer in uniform to urge his peers into acceptance.

Civilian testing, testing Army either never did or is hiding, also only recently demonstrated that the rifle seemingly fails, at point-blank ranges, to meet its base criteria of penetrating Level 4 body armor (unassisted). True, the Army never explicitly set this goal, but it has nonetheless insinuated at every level, from media to Congress, that the rifle will penetrate said armor unassisted. Indeed, that was the entire point of the program. Of course, the rounds can penetrate body armor with Armor Piercing rounds, but so can 7.62x51mm NATO, even 5.56x45mm NATO.

Everybody knew outsourcing manufacturing would have dire national consequences over time. All strategic negligence will result in tactical failures; it’s the nature of planning and execution. There’s really no way around it other than clever soldiers who are able to overcome bad decision-making. Having to overcome your own National Strategic Commander’s acquisition errors is no way for a soldier to be thrust into battle. But by now, we all know Washington doesn’t have the individual Soldier or Marine at heart. I sighed out loud, reading this next paragraph.

The fundamental problem with the program is there remains not enough tungsten available from China, as Army knows, to make the goal of making every round armor piercing even remotely feasible. The plan also assumes that the world’s by far largest supplier will have zero problems selling tungsten to America only for it to be shot back at its troops during World War III. Even making steel core penetrators would be exceedingly difficult when the time came, adding layers of complexity and time to the most time-contingent of human endeavors. In any case, most large bullet manufacturers and even Army pre-program have moved to tungsten penetrators for a reason, despite the fact it increases the cost by an order of magnitude and supply seems troubled. Perhaps Army has a solution, perhaps.

There’s this conclusion:

The slight increase in ballistic coefficiency between the 6.8x51mm and 7.62x51mm cartridges neither justified the money pumped into the program nor does the slight increase in kinetic energy dumped on target. Itself a simple function of case pressurization within the bastardized 7.62mm case. Thus the net mechanical results of the program design-wise is a rifle still chambered in a 7.62×51 mm NATO base case (as the M-14), enjoying now two ways to charge the weapon and a folding stock. This is the limit of the touted generational design ‘leap’ under the program.

And more at the source.

H/T Bill Buppert g/@zerogov

Gun Owners of America has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the ATF concerning the pistol brace rule.  The motion can be found in its entirety here.  The motion concludes as follows.

The fact that the Final Rule technically presents a (forced) choice does not absolve it of its unconstitutional sins. As the Fifth Circuit observed in BST Holdings v. OSHA, “the loss of constitutional freedoms ‘for even minimal periods of time … unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.’” 17 F.4th 604, 618 (5th Cir. 2021) (burden on liberty interests posed by vaccination mandate was irreparable harm) (quoting Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 373 (1976)). The vaccination mandate in BST Holdings “threaten[ed] to substantially burden the liberty interests of reluctant individual recipients put to a choice between their job(s) and their jab(s).” Id. Here, the Final Rule imposes a similar choice, forcing individuals to choose between destroying their property or prosecution.

When the government is a party, the balance-of-equities and public-interest factors merge. See Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 435 (2009); Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134, 187 (5th Cir. 2016) (same). A court therefore must weigh whether “the threatened injury outweighs any harm that may result from the injunction to the non-movant” and whether “the injunction will not undermine the public interest.” Valley v. Rapides Parish Sch. Bd., 118 F.3d 1047, 1051, 1056 (5th Cir. 1997). There is no harm to ATF from pausing enforcement of the Final Rule and maintaining the status quo. The Final Rule claims to “enhance[] public safety,” 88 Fed. Reg. at 6481, yet ATF is able to point to only two handgun braces (out of millions) that have been criminally misused, see 88 Fed. Reg. at 6495. Even then, there is no evidence that those crimes could not have been committed using a different firearm. Weighing against this are the very real and ongoing irreparable harms to Plaintiffs discussed above. Indeed, the public is served when the law is followed, and “there is generally no public interest in the perpetuation of unlawful agency action.” Wages & White Lion Invs., LLC, v. U.S. Food & Drug Admin., 16 F.4th 528, 560 (5th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted). The balance of equities and public interest weigh heavily in favor of an injunction.

GOA and GOF have members and supporters nationwide. Exhibit 13 at ¶ 6. The geographic scope of interests presented, as well as the complications inherent to a piecemeal implementation or injunction of the Final Rule, which impacts criminal prosecutions and fundamental rights, support this Court granting nationwide relief.

For the foregoing reasons, this Court should preliminarily enjoin Defendants from enforcing the Final Rule.

Our friend Stephen Stamboulieh is one of the attorneys in this case.

Here we discussed Dan Becker’s experience trying to do a rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon in bad conditions (use of snow shoes) while climbing the North Rim.  I was fairly hard on his team mates – they let him down by not stopping him and doing the things they needed to do (hydrate him, get food energy into him, get him rest, and most of all, stopping the physical exertion).

I feel that I was justified to be so hard on his team mates.  Here is another video of the same trip told by Dan himself.  Pay close attention to the 10:57 and 11:46 marks.  He says, “I was having severe chest pains,” and when asked if he was okay, he said an unequivocal “no.”  The rest of the team should have been with him the whole way.  The first sign of a little bit of chest pain should have stopped the entire group.

That’s it for me.  You don’t split up on the trail.  You just don’t.  Medical conditions of team members remain unknown to the rest of the team, you have less protection against predators, and so many other reasons.  Don’t … split … up.  If you’re going slower than you wanted to, tough.  That’s all part of the being on a team.  Deal with it.

Rather than picking up Dan’s backpack, the team should have stopped right then and there to assist Dan and get him healthy again.  I’m willing to bet there would have been no need for rescue if they had done that.