It appears that Trump has finally let Barr go.  Too bad he ever hired him in the first place.  I said back when Barr was hired that he was deep state and couldn’t be trusted except to do everything in his power to undermine the administration.

Barr will (rightly) always be remembered for his role in Ruby Ridge and the AWB.

Barr was in charge of the Justice Department during Ruby Ridge, and he knew what was going on.

Barr stated, under oath, that his chief gun priority would be the Ruby Ridge-like gun confiscation orders (sugar-coated as “red flag laws”).

You may remember that Barr’s federal agents descended on Randy Weaver’s Idaho compound in August, 1992, and (1) shot weaver in the back; (2) shot Weaver’s wife Vicki to death, while she was holding her infant son; (3) shot Weaver’s 14 year-old son to death; and (4) shot Weaver’s dog.

Courts subsequently largely exonerated Weaver, while excoriating the FBI and the Department of Justice. And, although then-Attorney General William Barr claimed to know nothing about the Ruby Ridge fiasco, a 1995 Washington Post article reported that there were 20 high-level DOJ calls about Weaver in the 24 hours preceding the murder of his wife — and two of them directly involved Barr.

After that, Barr spent huge amounts of pro bono time trying to get exoneration for the FBI sniper who shot Vicki Weaver to death. He pushed for immunity from prosecution, organized letters on his behalf, and framed arguments before the trial and appeals courts.

But long before Ruby Ridge, Barr’s hatred for the Second Amendment was clear.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, Barr pushed the gun control “grand bargain” which, two years later under Clinton, was to become the biggest blow to the Second Amendment since the passage of the 1968 Gun Control Act.

Said Barr: “On the assault weapon front, the proposal before us is the DeConcini amendment. And I think … I would support both the Brady Bill waiting period and the DeConcini [semi-auto ban] amendment, provided that they were parts of a broader and more comprehensive crime bill that included … very tough provisions on the use of firearms in crimes and illegal purchase and trading in firearms…”

In addition to endorsing the Brady Bill and the semi-auto ban, Barr went on to support the magazine ban by saying: “I would prefer a limitation on the clip [sic] size.”

[ … ]

Sadly, Barr, under oath, committed that his chief gun objective would be the most insidious aspect of the Bloomberg agenda: gun confiscation orders.

Said Barr: “I also think we need to push along the ERPO’s [Gun Confiscation Orders], so we have red flag laws to supplement the use of the background check…This is the single most important think I think we can do in the gun control area to stop these massacres from happening in the first place.”

If anyone doesn’t know what Bloomberg’s gun confiscation orders involve, police or an angry “ex” can go to a “secret court” [ex parte proceeding] to obtain an order to strip a gun owner of his Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

There is more.

In the early 1990s, federal agencies targeted Randy Weaver, an outspoken white separatist living on a mountaintop in northern Idaho.  After Weaver was entrapped by an undercover Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, U.S. marshals trespassed on Weaver’s land and killed his 14-year-old son, Sammy. The following day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed his wife as she was standing in the cabin doorway holding her 10-month-old baby. Horiuchi had previously shot Randy Weaver in the back after he stepped out of the cabin.  The suspects were never given a warning or a chance to surrender and had taken no action against FBI agents.

FBI officials recognized that Mrs. Weaver had been killed but, during the subsequent siege, assured the media that they were “proceeding with extreme care, mindful that Weaver’s wife, Vicki, and three remaining children were also in the cabin,” Reuters reported. An internal FBI report completed shortly after the confrontation justified the killing of Mrs. Weaver by asserting that she had put herself in harm’s way, the New York Times reported in 1993. Yet Bo Gritz, the former Vietnam War hero who helped the feds negotiate Randy Weaver’s surrender after the death of his wife, declared that the government’s profile of the Weaver family recommended killing Weaver’s wife: “I believe Vicki was shot purposely by the sniper as a priority target…. The profile said, if you get a chance, take Vicki Weaver out.” As Mrs. Weaver’s corpse remained in the besieged cabin, “The FBI used microphones to taunt the family. ‘Good morning, Mrs. Weaver. We had pancakes for breakfast. What did you have?’ asked the agents in at least one exchange,” the Washington Times reported.

The names of William Barr and Lon Horiuchi should always be spoken together.  But even that’s not all.  George Webb notes his time studying these things, and if you’ll advance to the 12:45 mark of this video, you hear that Barr recommended that Clinton run for president, and managed to cover up the Clinton drug dealing from Arkansas, as well as Enron and many other scandals.  He was (and is) a cover-up artist.

Trump has little to no discernment, and surrounded himself with awful people for the complete four years of his administration.  This is why he will no longer be president.  I repeat myself, but a mechanic working at the FN Herstal plant in Columbia, S.C., could have done a better job at fighting the deep state – but certainly not at ensuring its survival, like William Barr did.

CNSNEWS.com:

(CNSNews.com) – “In 1994, you said that gun control is a dead end,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told Attorney General-nominee William Barr at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

“Do you still believe that prudent controls on weapons won’t reduce violent crime?” Feinstein, a staunch gun control advocate, asked him.

“I think that the problem of our time is to get an effective system in place that can keep dangerous firearms out of the hands of mentally ill people,” Barr replied.

That is — should be priority number one. And it’s going to take some hard work. And we need to get on top of the problem. We need to come up with agreed-to standards that are prohibitors of people who are mentally ill. We have to put the resources in to get the system built up the way we did many years ago on the felon records and so forth.

We have to get the system working. And as I say, it’s sort of piecemeal a little bit right now. We need to really get some energy behind it and get it done.

And I also think we need to push along the ERPOs (Extreme Risk Protection Orders), so we have these red flag laws to supplement the use of the background check to find out if someone has some mental disturbance. This is the single most important thing I think we can do in the gun control area to stop these massacres from happening in the first place.

Later, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked Barr to update Congress on his view of the Second Amendment.

Barr said that even before the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision, which upheld the individual right to bear arms, he believed that was so.

“I personally concluded that the Second Amendment creates a personal right under the Constitution,” Barr said.

It’s based on the Lockean notion of the right of self-preservation. It’s tied to that. And I was glad that — to see Heller come out and vindicate that initial view that I had. And so there’s no question under Heller that the right to have weapons is — firearms, is protected under the Second Amendment and is a personal right. At the same time, there’s room for reasonable regulation.

And you know, from my standpoint, what I would look for is — in assessing a regulation is, what’s the burden on law-abiding people? And is it proportionate to whatever benefit in terms of safety and effectiveness will be conferred?

As I said just a moment ago, let’s get down to the real problem we’re confronting, which is keeping these weapons out of the hands of people who are mentally ill. And I think all the rest of this stuff is really essentially rhetoric until we really get that problem dealt with, in terms of regulatory approaches.

Readers are advised to study every word of his testimony.  And then do it again.  This is very important.

Sessions was probably owned by the deep state in some manner or other, but in any event he was just stolid and dense.  He focused his energies on making sure we had huge resources devoted to combatting marijuana.  Barr seems much more smarter, and therefore much more dangerous.

As to whether the founders believed they were following the enlightenment and John Locke as opposed to the Apostle Paul and John Calvin, I cannot say.  Men much smarter than me – R. J. Rushdoony, C. Gregg Singer and Douglas Kelly – have engaged in detailed debates about that, and I encourage you to read their analyses rather than listen to me.  It’s likely based on what I know that there was a sufficient mix of enlightenment thinkers and Calvinists that each side could claim credit for what’s in the constitution, and it was the best compromise they could come up with given the makeup of the group.

As to the actual right to self preservation, I claim, without apology, that neither you nor I have such a right outside of the decrees of God stipulated in the Holy Writ.  And it’s there in clear detail, so yes, we have that right.  The right of self defense and defense of home and hearth lies in the decrees and therefore in the nature of God.  It is ensconced firmly there, not in the second amendment.  The constitution is a covenant between men, not a source of anything, much less human rights.

But according to Barr, there’s “room reasonable regulation.”  Regulation decided by men, running counter to God’s holy decrees if necessary.  And according to Barr, it’s necessary if the benefit to public safety outweighs whatever right a judge or politician says you have.

Red flag laws.  Trump likely knew all about Barr’s views before nominating him.  Barr will also likely give high priority to finding passage of such laws as constitutional.  He’ll put his best lawyers on it.  He’ll also work hard to come up with lists of “prohibited persons,” and who knows at this time what a prohibited person will look like?

He defers to community witch doctors deciding the fate of God-given rights based on “mental illness,” when it’s been demonstrated over and over again that mental illness, whatever that is, has nothing whatsoever to do with propensity to violence.  So he believes in myths and is willing to use the force of the DoJ to back up his beliefs.

These are dangerous times, and I predict Trump’s nominee will end up being one of the biggest threats to 2A rights in American history if he stays in his position.  Obama managed to do virtually nothing to restrict gun rights compared to Trump and his cabinet.  All with the approval of the NRA folks in Fairfax, VA.