The questions you dare not ask out loud today

I have pondered in my mind most of these 20 questions you're not supposed to ask in 2018, by John Hawkins and some of them I have addressed in this blog. For example:

5) If the government gives money to Planned Parenthood and PBS, why would it be wrong for the government to give money to the NRA or Heritage Foundation?

The direct answer is that it wouldn't be wrong. But Hawkins is here asking the wrong question to make a point. NRA and the Heritage Foundation should not get money from the Government for the same reason that Planned Parenthood or any other private organization or individual should not get money. The Government should not be in the business of taking money, in the form of taxes, from one group of Americans and giving it to another group. Even if the giving is for an ostensible "good cause" such giving should be up to the citizens themselves and they should organize such relief through organizations of their choosing. Most people who advocate for such welfare spending seem to base it on Christ's encounter with the rich young man in Luke. Christ tells the rich young man to sell everything he has, give it to the poor, and follow Christ. But for welfare advocates use of this teaching to be correct, Jesus would have had to say something like "Have Caesar seize everything you own, redistribute it to those who voted for Caesar, and you in your newly destitute state come and follow Me."

7) If you’re gay and a Christian doesn’t want to bake you a cake for your wedding, why can’t you just go to another shop? We wouldn’t demand that a black baker make a cake for the KKK, that a Jewish baker make a cake for a Nazi or even that a liberal baker make an “I love Trump” cake. So, why should Christians, whose religious beliefs are protected by the First Amendment, be punished because some gay couple thinks they can turn their persecution of Christians into a payday?

I have spoken about this issue before as well. To me this shows the Left being at war with Christianity itself, but couching their war on Christians as somehow not allowing discrimination. For no one would even think of going into a Muslim bakery and asking them to make a cake celebrating a gay wedding. And while I vehemently disagree with Islam, the Muslim bakers would be right to throw the gay couple out of the shop. Nobody should have to do anything against his conscience unless it falls within the powers listed in the Constitution. So for example, one would not be excused from paying his rightful taxes because of conscience, or evade military service if one did not believe in killing people, for there are many jobs required by the military that do not require killing.

This brings up another point though, and it is one I had not thought until now.  The notion of a so called "Christian Left " is an oxymoron.  For if one is a true Christian, has read the Bible, and has a traditional understanding of the Truth that book proclaims, then it is only by stretching and misinterpreting the words God Himself inspired that the "Christian Left" can come up with their positions.  Indeed the purpose of the "Christian Left" is precisely to destroy Christianity from inside by sowing doubt and discord in the faithful.

1) Are we really doing transsexuals a favor by pretending they can change into another gender and allowing them to mutilate themselves via surgery or are we actually setting them up for failure when we pretend that they’re not mentally ill?

Most of us know the reality of the situation. These so called "transgendered" people can not actually change themselves from male to female or vice versa. All that one accomplishes by cutting off one's genitals and taking hormones is that one becomes a gelding. Transgendered men can not bear children, which is the defining characteristic of the female, and a transgendered female can not father children, which is the defining characteristic of the male.While Christianity demands our compassion for such confused people, we do them no favors by pretending that their delusions are in fact true.  Such pretense is juvenile, and allows the confused to remain confused rather than face up to realities.

You should read the list that Hawkins has produced, and ponder in your own mind the answers to the questions posed.  The fact that we can not ask them, though, is more troubling than the questions themselves or the what answers you may find.  

The Disgusting "March for Our Lives" Movement

I have two post today on the "March for Our Lives" that I want to highlight.  But I don't have a lot of time, so I am going to depend on readers to read both of them.  The first is from Daniel Greenfield over at Sultan Knish entitled Who Runs March for Our Lives? His first words were "Follow the money." Greenfield then takes us on a journey through shadowy 501(c)4 organizations, various professional groups who provide talent, public relations, and legal services, as well as Hollywood celebrities and of course Michael Bloomberg. This is not an organic march like the Tea Party groups, or, more pointedly an organic organization who derives its funding and its mission from member donations and dues like the NRA. This is a false front group posing as member driven organization in order to try to overturn the existing order.

It’s a strange political fact, but nearly every major anti-gun group has been a front group. The NRA is maligned 24/7 and yet it’s completely obvious whom it represents. Despite the efforts to tie it to everyone from firearms manufacturers to the Russians (if you can’t tie any random Republican thing to the Russians these days, you won’t be working at the Washington Post or CNN for very long), it represents its five million members. Anti-gun groups tend to represent shadowy networks.

Take Everytown, the noisiest and most dishonest anti-gun group on the scene. The one consistent thing about anti-gun groups is that that they are usually the opposite of what their name says they are.

Everytown for Gun Safety was formed out of two other groups: Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Both are actually front groups for Michael Bloomberg, the lefty billionaire and former boss of the Big Apple, who used New York City resources to host at least one of its websites.

So Everytown is really New York City.

...snip...

We know who supports the NRA. You can see NRA stickers on car windows even in the bluest cities in the country. But who really supports the anti-gun political network? You’ll need to spend hours sorting through paperwork, following the trail, comparing addresses and researching names, to even get a hint.

That’s what an illegitimate lobby thwarting the will of the people really looks like.

Instead of March for Our Lives, maybe it’s time to March for the Truth?

With that as a background we no go to Kevin McCullough over at Townhall.com where he disgustedly posts The Stupidity of 'March for Our Lives'.

The virtue signaling over one’s disagreement with “A March For Our Lives” reached fever pitch with the culmination of Saturday’s event.

...snip...

Even though they have little more than a junior high level of education under their belt. The political left, driven by a leftist media, and financed by uber-rich and hard-left celebrities are willing to use them, and to continue to use them to advance their socialist utopia ideals. (One of the primary ideas of which has always included disarming the masses.)

Even though first year grad school students have literally multiple times the actual knowledge on the issues pertaining to the social science of guns, their effects, and the good and bad attributed to their owners, the lazy media continue to treat these five kids as though they have PHD’s.

If anyone questions it, the virtue signaling begins.

And you can bet that virtue signalling has been coordinated by these same organizations, no doubt with bots that allow a few trolls to appear as an army. Disgusting.

Yesterday, at my grand daughters archery tournament, the mother of the girl who was scoring with my grand daughter in the same lane had a long red tee shirt with "Everytown for Gun Sense emblazoned on it.  Little did she know that I had a concealed gun on my belt.  We of course spoke pleasantries, and were civil, as one should be in these circumstances.  But I thought of how many people around her and her precious daughter might be carrying at any given time, and she would be oblivious to it all.

Here's the thing, though, those of us who choose to carry do not do so out of a desire to be aggressive or offensive.  We do it because reality demands it.  If we could magically get rid of guns, knives, swords, and really anything that can be used to murder another, we would do it in a heart beat.  But since Cain killed Able with a rock, and we can not eliminate the rocks of the earth, Some men choose to become killers of their own kind.  It is what it is, and one either faces reality to deal with it or one tilts and windmills. 

Why vote Republican?

Over at the American Thinker, Brian C. Joondeph is asking the same question many of us are asking: Once again, I ask: Why vote Republican? It seems that there is no difference between Republicans and Democraps in practice. We get the same crap either way. Uncontrolled immigration continues, Obamacare continues to rob people of the medical care they deserve, and our elected officials continue to spend like drunken sailors on leave at a beer and wine festival.

Most of us figured our Congresscritters would cave, folding like a bunch of cheap suits.  The anti-gun fix NICS would find its way into the Omnibus bill, and Obamacare would mysteriously still be funded despite the fact that one of the reasons we elected them was to defund Obamacare.  The wall of course was nowhere in the bill (surprise!).  Things like National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood were naturally in the Omnibus.  Why is Planned Parenthood, a private concern funded by taxpayer dollars, but the NRA is not?  (No, I don't want it to be funded by taxpayer dollars, but I'm asking about the logic of such.)

At this point, I don't see any reason to vote for anyone for Congress.  The Republicans have clearly failed us.  We would have had the same bill had Congress been under Democrap control.

But the real disappointment is that Trump signed the bill into law.  What happened?  Why did he cave?  This is almost as disappointing as when Justice John Roberts wrote an opinion essentially green lighting Obamacare.  That bill was unconstitutional, but Roberts gave it his blessing.  We have been unable to get rid of it since.

Everything else Trump does from now on will not matter.  His Presidency is essentially over.  The swamp has won. So when 2020 comes, I won't be voting for him either.  I will henceforth confine myself to State and local elections.

Too bad.

Never give up your guns

Stanislov Mishin is a Russian who guessed posts at Stolinsky.com provides a bit of history to remind us Never give up your guns. A hat tip to David Codrea of the War on Guns website.  I go back to the Communist revolution in Russia, not because it was the first.  No, man has always had a propensity for bloody and savage cruelty.  Especially when they combine their savagery with a belief that they are doing good are they the most cruel, for then their god gives them sanction to do these things.  So it was in Russia.

 Mishin relates some of the history of the Russian revolution, recounting how in Tsarist times the country was well armed:

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of traditional attire, and those little tubes criss-crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

...snip...

This well-armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918, and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Go read the whole post, as it is instructive. Note that the emphasis above is mine, but also note well the sequence of events. Now, maybe you won't be shot, but you will no longer be free. They can call you "comrade" or "citizen," but you will actually be a subject, a glorified surf. Do not, under any circumstances, give up your guns. As for Ben Dickman, "May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

*  Note that things were not so great under the Tsars either.  The Tsars were tyrants, to be sure, and had secret police to go out and terrorize their political enemies.

  If Mr. Mishin looks with favor on the Tsars, it is only because he Russians went from the frying pan into the fire with the Bolshevics and later the Soviets.  But while the people held weapons and ammunition in their own hands, there was a limit to how far the Tsars would go.  Also do not be fooled into thinking that those in our society would be more "civilized" than the Russians were.  If you don't believe me, take it from someone who infiltrated the Weather Underground terrorist group, Larry Grathwohl here.

David Hardy Has a Point

David Hardy, the man behind the blog Of Arms and the Law and an attorney who has been involved in the gun rights debate since...well...forever, noted that Multiple officials, and his mother, wanted Florida shooter mentally committed:

Turns out that, years before he committed the school shooting, two school counselors and the school security guard (yes, that one) recommended that the shooter be committed, based on his cutting himself, telling another classmate to get a gun and use it on people, drinking gasoline, etc.. But no one acted on it.

What is telling to me is that they all "recommended" this. Nobody did anything, all passed the buck (I suspect to the principal, who probably had nowhere to pass the buck and so they settled for ignoring it). If a kid had nibbled a cookie into the shape of a gun, they probably would have imposed discipline, because the kid was harmless and so it was safe to beat up on them. But with a person who was really a problem, it was best to ignore it or pass the buck. Which in a way is a metaphor for modern gun (and crime) control.

It is hard not to credit Mr. Hardy's theory that the murderer got off so frequently because taking action might be risky, while in contrast the students who were suspended because they posted pictures on snapchat of themselves during a family outing to the range was not.

Amanda Buron, a Lacey resident and family friend of one of the suspended students said one of the photos shared on SnapChat featured four rifles, magazines, and a gun duffel with the caption "fun day at the range," NJ.com reported. Buron said the two students received a five-day in-school suspension after the picture drew the attention of Lacey Township High School officials, who argued that it violated the school’s policy on weapons possession.

So the school presumes to tell students what they can and can not do even then they are not on school property and not during school hours? I see a lawsuit for these kids, and I hope they find a good attorney and take them to court. The school has way over reached their authority.

Update:  Apparently the school district has revised their policy after being threatened with a lawsuit by the Association of Rife and Pistol Clubs.

The Left lies, but that is not news

I have read several accounts of the First Amendment being treated like we treat the Second Amendment.  These accounts usually involve sending articles to the government for bureaucrat to pass judgement on before you are allowed to publish.  They have journalists and authors being required to be licensed, or you needing a licence to buy books, with the dealer in books having to send your name into a government data base to discover if you have certain disqualifying characteristics before selling you the book.

Its all done in jest to make a point, and its very amusing, unless you, like me, have lived for a while in a country that restricts what you can see, read, and hear. Mrs. PolyKahr and I were stationed in Panama during the Noriega years, and had it not been for the fact that we were U. S. citizens with a Status of Forces agreement. we would not have had access to many books, newspapers, and other media.  But that's a different story for another day, and I digress.

The point, while it is obvious to those of us who routinely deal with guns, it is lost on many, because they don't see the power of words.  But tell that to the 6 million Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany.  The Anti-Semitic ideas of Hitler were spread by words, by speeches, by discussions with his inner circle, by sales of his book Mein Kamp. They were also justified by words, and the final solution was developed by words.  It remained only to put those words into practice that made it real.  The resultant tragedy you know, or should know.

Bad ideas, unless spoken against, become bad acts. The only thing that can counter bad and false ideas is the truth. And the truth is that your Second Amendment rights should be treated exactly as your First Amendment rights. You have them until you abuse them.  The Second Amendment was not put into the Constitution as an after thought, but was very intentionally put there to provide a balance of power against the Federal government.  While weapons have grown more and more lethal, our hunting rifles, sporting rifles, and handguns do still provide that balance because of the overwhelming number of them.

So, I was reading today another set of analogies, this time between the treatment by the Left, through its propaganda arm, of Islam and the NRA. The article, at the American Thinker, is entitled The Media, the NRA, and Isam by Chuck Hustmyer. Hustmyer:

It's too bad the American left doesn't treat the NRA even half as fairly as it treats Islam.

• NRA members haven't committed any mass shootings.

• NRA members haven't hijacked airplanes and flown them into buildings.

• Thirteen percent of NRA members don't support mass murder as a legitimate way to defend the NRA or advance its ideological agenda.

That would refer to American Muslims, 13 percent of whom, according to the Pew Research Center, say they support suicide bombings and other violence against civilians in defense of Islam. (According to Pew, the percentage is considerably higher among foreign Muslims.)

Yet every time a jihadist goes on a killing spree, the American left, through its propaganda arm – otherwise known as the mainstream media – is quick to remind us that Islamic terrorism is an aberration and in no way reflective of the "religion of peace."

The latest rounds of walk outs and protests have featured numerous calls to end the NRA, as if it was the NRA that was endorsing, organizing, and supporting the murders that happen all too routinely at schools and other gun free target rich environments. Nothing could be further from the truth.  The murderer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was not an NRA member, and indeed, I do not think any of the mass murderers that have taken place on American soil for the last 30 years has been an NRA member.  Neither the NRA nor any of its 5 million members had even a whiff of responsibility for this, or any other mass murder that has happened.

On the other hand, Islam is responsible for the murders perpetrated by the members of that religion, because it teaches that violent jihad is the duty of every Muslim.  Every Islamic terrorist who starts shooting up as many victims as he can in as short a time as he can, first yells out Allahyu Akbar. but somehow the Left can never connect the dots back to Islam. Why is that?

But just imagine if a group of conservatives – the Tea Party, for instance – took to the streets in cities all over the country after the next jihadist terror attack and waved around the exact same signs as the anti-gun left but replaced the initials "NRA" with the word "Islam," so that the signs read "Abolish Islam," "Islam = Terrorists," and "Islam blood on your hands."

Can you hear the left's screams of rage and its hysterical accusations of.. (take your pick, but "racism" is their favorite, despite the fact that Islam comprises members of all races and nationalities)?

If the left was even close to treating the NRA the way it treats Islam, millions of honest, law-abiding Americans, many of whom are military and law enforcement veterans, who are members of the NRA wouldn't be condemned as domestic terrorists and child-murderers. But then again, that's exactly what the left wants.

Need I also note that the Left will also suppress the truth, as they did in Panama during Noriega's time.

Re-emergent Paganism On te Rise

Fay Voshell has a very powerful article today in the American Thinker entitled State Enforced Paganism in America. Go read the whole thing, because as usual with Ms. Voshell, it is very good, but also because while I may be referring to it, you can not get the ideas presented in the piece from my meager ramblings alone. You must go to the source and drink it all in. But don't stop there. No, you ultimately must go to the real source of Ms. Voshell's faith, the Bible.

I don't know precisely when it started.  My Pastor thinks it has always been with us, but we find ourselves living in a cultural milieu not unlike that described by the Apostle Paul in Corinth.  Christians turn out to be a small minority, surrounded by pagans of various stripes.  Some were more tolerant, others wanted to persecute the Christians because these people showed them up for the self worshiping human debris they were.  But I date the beginnings of the modern era of paganism to the Supreme Court rulings in 1962 and 63 in Engle v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp. The later of which featured the infamous Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

O'Hair was a tortured soul, as many people are who try to live life on their own own terms rather than following God's terms.  God doesn't make up rules arbitrarily.  God's laws are designed so we can life abundant lives, though we will inevitably hard times and tragedy because man is a sinful creature.

In any case, many main line church bodies have come to incorporate some of the new paganism into their liturgies and social statements.  These include for example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America now ordains homosexual pastors.  Now, I recognize that all have sinned and fallen short, pastors included.  But Luther said that the life of a Christian was one of constant repentance.  However, if someone is a  homosexual living in a committed relationship, he can not be repentant, can he?  For if he believes that he was "born that way" then there is no need to repent.  And if he knows it is wrong, but he does it anyway, then he is defying God, and thus is not attempting to repent.

The Christian Church must respond vigorously or sink into paganism itself, as is already happening in some Main Line churches that are creating liturgies to bless bodily mutilation as spiritually transformative and as a way of attaining self-salvation. The Church must reject the new barbarism and its tyrannous assault on Christianity or find itself overwhelmed by the avid worshippers of the new gods. For when the God of Christianity is rejected, new and far, far worse gods arise to demand worship.

Ms. Voshell cites the so called "transgender" movement, the coming pedophilia, and bestiality movements, as well as abortion and euthanasia, which are well established as yet other instances of paganism. Indeed, all of these were common in the ancient world before the birth of Christ. After Jesus death and resurrection, everything began to change. Homosexuality, Pedophilia, and bestiality, abortion and euthanasia were outlawed. Hospitals were established, universities were established, and education for a greater number of people became common.  If you study history, you will begin to realize that while man generally gets in his own way, just enough of us have done just enough, that the world is actually a better place than it was 100, 200, 1000, of 5000 years ago.  We owe this to our God, and his Son who died for our sins and rose again to proclaim a new covenant with man.

Ms. Voshell is right in this too: that to be a true Christian, one must believe that Christ has done it all.  There is no need for us to DO anything.  There is nothing you can do to merit salvation.  Even the act of "Taking Jesus into your heart" is too much.  All that is required is that you do not actively reject the salvation so mercifully given to we undeserving sinners.  In other words, there is no such thing as "self salvation."  To add anything to that is not Christian.

The time is coming when we will have to declare on whose side we stand, whether we stand with the Creator of the universe, or whether we will follow our own path to destruction.  God will force this by letting evil re-emerge, until those who follow him, who are willing to take the abuse and persecution for following him, are all that is left from among the many pretenders who just go along to get along.

Republicans pass school safety. Gun control to come later

So the House of Representatives has passed a School Safety Bill apparently without the Fix NICS portion. But also without Concealed Carry Reciprocity. So the Democrats have won since I don't think they really wanted to pass gun control so much as prevent the passage of Concealed Carry Reciprocity.

But don't start celebrating just yet.  According to National Review's Mairead McArdle:

Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) has proposed a similar bill pending in the upper chamber. Republicans are waiting on an actual gun-control bill until they are sure the Senate can pass it, however.

You can depend on the Republicans (read Stupid Party) to sell out the base every time. And retiring Republicans are the worst kind, because they no longer have to pretend to push for their constituents, they can no become full on elitists. After all, who else are we gonna vote for?

They don't seem to take into account that we don't have to vote for the Democrap...er...I mean Democrat, that we can withhold our vote and ensure they don't get re-elected.  There are other measures we can take such as running another candidate against the Republican sellouts.

Here's the truth:  If reducing crimes, including school shootings, is the purpose, then gun control is emphatically NOT the solution.  NICS doesn't stop people from getting guns, and closing the supposed loopholes in NICS will not do anymore.  Oh, of course it will keep many people from obtaining guns LEGALLY, but nothing that stop them from obtaining them ILLEGALLY.  After all, people obtain illegal drugs all the time.  Banning certain guns, or even banning them all will also not stop crime.  Nor will making the manufacture of guns illegal help.  Why?  Because just as drugs can be smuggled into the country, so can guns, and since we are talking about illegal, why not grenade launchers, rocket launchers and other heavy duty weapons that figure so prominently in Hollywood movies, but never in real life.  Indeed, I can not think of a single gun control proposal that has been advanced over the last 45 years that would have solved, or even helped reduce the gun crime problem.

So, if gun control doesn't reduce crimes, what can be the purpose of it?  There is a sizable population of people in this country who believe that Marxism in some form is a better way of life than the form embedded in our Constitution.  Living a life of freedom and individual responsibility is more demanding that life where everything is decided for you.  In our Constitutional system, you can not blame anybody for your failures but yourself.  Too many want instead to find scapegoats in amorphous society. These are the people that totalitarian wannabes like Chuck Shumer manipulate with the help of billionaires like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.  The totalitarian Left wants to take away your guns so they can impose even more drastic controls than they already do.  Their target is not the criminals but the law abiding.  For it is only those who try obeying the law that will be impacted by gun control.

And the Republicans?  I suspect they just want to keep their places at the table.  They don't care about yoou and me, They don't care about our ability to defend ourselves from the thugs they keep sending out to commit more crimes.  And they certainly don't care about the Constitution.  That is the unfortunate thing. 

Adventures in Reloading the .38 Super Auto

I am discovering that my particular .38 Super Auto pistol is a bit fussy about the ammunition I feed it.  I had heard that 1911 style pistols could be fussy, but my previous experience, which is limited to one pistol, was that it ate everything I fed it.  I made up 100 rounds of .38 Super Auto loaded with Berry's 124 grain Target Hollow Points (THP).  My weapon did not seem to like these bullets, and choked.

Interestingly, while I was researching various bullet and powder combinations, I came across the Hodgdon Reloading Data for .38 Super 124 grain bullets, that indicated that one could achieve a velocity of 1315 feet per second while keeping pressures lower than other powders with a 13.0 grain load of powder. At 12.5 to 13.0 grains it is impossible to double charge and at the same time, because it fills the case, it is pretty obvious if you have a squib load. It all seemed too good to be true, so I sent a note to Hodgdon Powder Company and got the word that the data was correct.

Today I was pulling the THP bullets out of the casing, and reloading with Berry's 124 grain Round Nose (RN), which bullets I am sure will feed just fine.  I also loaded with 12.5 grains Lil'Gun.  I will see how it feeds at the range.

The relative burn rates of various powders is shown in at the link. It indicates that Lil'Gun has a slower burn rate than the usual powders used for pistol such as Winchester W231, Hodgdon Tite Group, or CFE Pistol.  Lil'Gun was designed to be used in .410 shot guns, and seems not to be used for any other weapon that the .410 bore shotgun and the .38 Super Auto and then only for the  .38 Super 124 grain bullet.  As I said, I'll see how it goes. 

The Necessity of Being Active in Our Defense of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

We have two articles today, the common theme of which is the absolute necessity of being active in our defense of the right to keep and bear arms.  For if we do not defend our rights now, while the cost is small, what will we do when the cost is our lives and our fortunes?

First, though, I wanted to write a bit about this week's Raleigh Gun Show.  Ever since Trump was elected, gun owners have seemingly breathed a sigh of relief.  And why not?   Many of them voted for President Trump, and he has been, generally, conservative and at least has usually given lip service to the Second Amendment.  However, we need to pay attention.  The people attending the Raleigh Gun Show this weekend seemed altogether less concerned about the loss of their gun rights.  This complacency could be our downfall however.  The Left clearly smells blood in the water, and is taking full advantage of it.  We all need to pound our Representatives and Senators with the message "No more gun control. Period."

First up is a piece by Scot Morefield over at Townhall.com entitled Think They'll Never Come and Take Your Guns Without an Armed Revolt? Think Again. I have contended that the Parkland murders provided an excuse to put up a bunch of gun control rhetoric in an effort to block National Concealed Carry Reciprocity, which stood a real chance this Congress. And I think this was largely true. However, Morefield points to an even deeper, and more sinister motive in getting a gun ban in place, by hook or by crook:

Don’t get me wrong, I think most true Leftists would LOVE to harness the power of the State to crush liberty-minded gun owners by every means necessary, and if a few of the right eggs are broken in the process, so much the better. But realists on both sides know such a scenario is highly unlikely to happen, at least to a result the Left would want. In all likelihood, open displays of tyrannical force such as openly rounding up certain people groups or door-to-door weapons confiscations are highly likely to result in open displays of resistance, and a civil war that is likely to be fought, and won, by the good guys.

...snip...

Here’s the answer, and it should scare every gun owner in the country:

They want to make de facto criminals out of the majority of the gun owning population.

That way, they can essentially pick us off, one by one.

Without necessarily meaning to, Mehta hits on this critical point in his piece: “A national gun buyback law would turn a significant portion of the American people into criminals,” he wrote. “Residents of New York and Connecticut snubbed their new laws … Compliance with the registration requirement has been modest at best, as hundreds of thousands of gun owners in both states refused to register their weapons. So far, then, the laws have been most successful in creating hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers who feel obligated to break the law.”

If liberals are able to pass any sort of “assault weapons” ban, buyback or no buyback, they know they will make criminals out of several million currently law-abiding gun owners. And even if the majority of those gun owners don’t follow the law now, that won’t make them any less a criminal. They just haven’t been caught yet.

But when the ‘right people’ control the levers of power and the ‘right laws’ are all in place, make no mistake - they will be caught.

Morefield is right, of course. The Left will never come door to door confiscating our guns, because they would face down too many trained gun owners, who would use guerilla tactics to take out the Leftist forces, and force them to spend more time, effort, and money protecting themselves rather than taking anyone's guns away. But most of the people actively resisting have families, wives and kids, and know the consequences for them if they are rotting in prison. So make a few examples, and the rest will fall in line.

Go read the whole thing, though, because Morefield provides more evidence than I have outlined here.  It is a well thought out piece, and fits in with the Leftists playbook, which is to make so many laws, rules and regulations, that everybody can be put in jail for anything they might do, if it suits the current powers.

Next up is a piece at the American Thinker by Jeffrey T. Brown entitled Gun Owners Are Being Blamed for the Failures of Liberalism. My only nit pick here is that the author politely calls Leftists, meaning some flavor of Communist, Socialist, Fascist, National Socialist, Progressive, or down right totalitarian scumbag, "liberals." The in truth are not liberals. This is just the sheep's clothing they wrapped themselves in for a while until we caught on and turned "liberal" into a dirty word.

...Take a breath...

Brown is correct that millions of gun owners, concealed carriers, NRA members, and gun rights activists who didn't kill anyone are being smeared in the press for somehow enabling the scumbag murder who shot up Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School.  Meanwhile, the scumbag murder, the Broward County Sheriff, and the FBI, who are responsible, are somehow left off the hook.

Liberalism is largely a process of adopting illogical and factually invalid positions and then artificially placing blame on its opponents when policies based on those positions inevitably fail. For the blame to bear fruit, it is necessary for people of good conscience to be fooled into believing that their actions and beliefs are bad for society and have brought about shameful consequences. At the same time, it is necessary for people whose consciences have already been deformed and co-opted by the faux morality of liberalism to be conditioned to think fellow citizens, who have caused no actual harm but hold contrary views, are evil.

...snip...

In order for leftists to succeed, lawful gun-owners must be tricked into going along with this illusion. Unfortunately for the left, people who are serious enough to decide to accept the responsibility of careful stewardship of firearms are not stupid enough to ignore that we are living in a cesspool entirely of the left's making. Not surprisingly, mature, responsible gun-owners have declined the left's invitation to be caricatured and smeared as the scapegoats for where liberalism has taken us as a culture. As serious people, they don't have much capacity for irrational, emotionally unhinged accusers pointing their fingers at those who not only did not cultivate the environment that has bred mass shooters, but also do not provide such people from their own ranks. The phenomena of unhinged "mass shooters" and the predictably vulnerable environments where they carry out their evil are unique byproducts of liberalism and its failures.

Generally speaking, law-abiding gun-owners are of a different time and culture. They are anachronistic. To lawfully own a firearm is a commitment to timeless principles of maturity, personal responsibility, individual freedom, and civic awareness. It is a trust, a right possessed by free people who exercise their freedom carefully and mindfully. It is not a masculine exercise, as men and women exemplify these qualities equally in their lawful ownership of firearms. It is rather a uniquely American exercise, which is why the left fully loathes it. When liberal commentators spontaneously declare themselves gun-owners for effect, it is unlikely that they are telling the truth, because the philosophical underpinnings of American gun ownership are anathema to them. In everything else they do, they shun and disclaim the America of individualism, honor and integrity. They show no other willingness in their words or actions to reject their liberal brethren so totally as to own what their paganism declares an object possessed of evil powers.

Indeed.

As gun owners, we need to fight this battle on two fronts.  The first is cultural.  We need to provide those coming after us with the same sense of maturity, responsibility, and civic awareness that we have acquired.  These qualities do not come by osmosis, but by a combination of teaching, and demonstrating these qualities.  Children need to see us carrying out these principles in our daily lives.  We have to show ourselves doing these things, as well as explaining why we do them.  In a fallen world, we may need a gun to defend ourselves, and protect those we love.

But we must be ever vigilant to stop attempts to infringe our right to arms whenever  and wherever they pop up.  The Parkland murders were just the opportunity the Leftists were looking for, and the number of bills before Congress and State legislatures, and the lengths these bills would go to, is incredible.  These need to be fought, and the best way to fight them is through an organization such as Gun Owners of America (GOA).  GOA in particular has a very sophisticated alert system combined with a way for you to send emails and call your Representatives and Senators.  Your State organization may have the same thing.  In our State it is the Grass Roots North Carolina. At the gun show, many say they don't want to become members because they "don't want to be on a list."  I can understand, but frankly, if you are a gun owner, somewhere along the way someone has put you on a list.  That ship has sailed.  You are protecting yourself and your family more by becoming a gun rights activist than by trying to keep your head down.

St. George Tucker, in his Blackstone's Commentaries states:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.

The Second Amendment is the only way we can hope to remain free, to be citizens rather than subjects.

Fast and Furious Documents to Be Released

The Justice Department announced yesterday that it would finally release documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal. You can find the article at Red State under the title Breaking. Department of Justice Decides to Obey U. S. Constitution and Release Fast and Furious Documents to Congress. For those who may have forgotten, and for those just waking up from a long nap:

It was a secret secret ATF program, overseen heavily at the highest levels at the Department of Justice, which took place between September 2009 and December 2010. ATF agents repeatedly and knowingly allowed individuals working for Mexican cartels to traffic thousands of pistol and semi-automatic rifles, including at least one .50-cal Barrett that ended up in the personal armory of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The operation ended when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered and the weapon was traced to this scheme. The purpose seems to have been to create a fact set–the extensive use of weapons bought in the United States by straw purchasers by Mexican cartels–as a way of stampeding Congress into enacting more restrictive gun laws.

It still remains to be seen how much of the documentation will be redacted, and whether any of it implicates the then Attorney General, Eric Holder, or President Obama himself. It also remains to be seen whether anyone will be held accountable, or because these were Democrats, they will be allowed to go without any consequences. Thanks to David Codrea at the /War on Guns website for pointing me to this story. The gun rights community owes David and the late Mike Vanderboegh a great debt for bringing the story of Fast and Furious to light. Thanks David.

Pass the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act

Matthew Larosiere has an excellent explanation of the proposed Concealed Carry Act at The Federalist. As Larosiere writes:

Calling The Concealed Carry and Reciprocity Act an affront to state sovereignty would be a great argument prior to the Civil War, but a little thing called the 14th Amendment renders the argument moot. The 14th Amendment forbids states from abrogating the people’s constitutional rights. All the Concealed Carry and Reciprocity act would do is serve to prevent a state from punishing people for constitutionally-protected activity, in a manner much less severe than the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If you believe preventing people from being punished for exercising a constitutionally-protected right is against a state’s right, you must, by extension, find the Civil Rights Act a violation of state’s rights. The Civil Rights Act was comparatively much more forceful with the states. It actually overrode discriminatory state laws, while the Concealed Carry and Reciprocity Act simply prevents states from punishing interstate travelers for doing something specifically protected by the Constitution.

The Concealed Carry Act would not affect any States's laws, except that it would treat concealed carry licenses like drivers licenses. How would New Yorkers feel if every time a New York license plate showed up in North Carolina, they were arrested for not having a North Carolina license? After all, don't we have as much interest in ensuring that New Yorkers follow our traffic laws as they have in ensuring we follow their gun laws?  That would be considered foolish, and that is what happens many times when a concealed carrier travels outside his or her own State.

Read the whole thing.  As you will see, it really doesn't do anything.  There won't be blood in the streets, because the people who have concealed carry aren't running around creating blood in the streets now.  You generally won't know they are there, because they keep their guns concealed.  It really won't affect your life any more than when a New Yorker drives though our State.

The Way to Deal with Murders Is To Deal Harshly with Murderers

Trevor Thomas today in the American Thinker points to the real way we should deal with murderers using guns, and it is not to pass more gun control.  As always with professional writers, as opposed to your humble servant, Thomas says it better than I have stated the case, but it is the same:

The only way to reduce murder is to recognize that it is an act of evil that must be dealt with from a proper political and spiritual perspective. Men murder because their hearts are dark. To stop them, we must meet force with force. To change men, we must get to their hearts. Sound legislation can work to protect us, but focusing on the weapon of murder and attempting to legislate away evil by targeting a tool is the height of folly.

Thomas starts out by explaining that he and his siblings grew up around guns. Even when his brother as a young teen had a hunting accident with a faulty gun that eventually required removing his right arm, neither he nor his brother blamed guns, or because afraid of them. Indeed, his brother learned to shoot even rifles with one arm, and there is a picture of him shooting a compound bow!  All of that is to lead up to his discussion of statistical information about guns, population, and murder rate. He presents a great deal of data getting down to the county level, much as John Lott has done. At this level, one thing becomes clear:

At the state level – where data is more readily available – the numbers reveal the same: there's no correlation between the presence of guns and the rate of murder. The average murder rate for the first 25 states (lowest half of gun ownership rates) is 5.0. The average murder rate ranking for the last 25 states (upper half of gun ownership rates) is 4.9.

For the bottom ten and top ten, the average is 4.2 and 4.3, respectively. The average murder rate ranking for the first 25 states is 24.4. The average murder rate ranking for the last 25 states is 27.6. For the bottom ten and top ten, the average is 22.8 and 23.7, respectively. Put simply, more guns does not mean more murder. And inversely, fewer guns does not mean fewer murders. Put another way, more laws against gun ownership has done almost nothing to reduce the rate of murder in America.

The emphasis is mine. The fact that the existence or absence of guns seems not to affect the murder rate leads to his conclusion that we must instead deal harshly with the evil of a person that murders another. As we used to do, by the way.  The problem of murders can not be solved, it has been with us since Cain killed his brother Able.  But we can at least reduce the worst of it by using the remedies outline in the Old Testament:  blood must be paid with blood.

We often note that part of the problem that makes this issue so intractable is that the Left seems to substitute emotion for reasoned, thoughtful, consideration of the facts and statistics. We say things like this, I suspect out of disappointment that our thoughtful research seems to have been thrown out by the Left without even looking into what we have discovered, and then they propose a study that has so many holes in it, you might think we had used it for target practice.

But the Left is not stupid, nor irrational, it simply has different goals.  The Left firmly believes, against all evidence (which may be why they ignore our evidence) that they are smarter, and know better how we should lead our lives.  And that is putting the best spin on it.  Sometimes, they stray into the realm of thinking that some of us should not be allowed to live at all!  The Lefts goal then is totalitarianism, and the only way to achieve it is by irrational means.  We have seen this movie before, and it does not end well.

What Conservatives Mean by "Arming the Teachers"

When we discuss arming teachers and school staff in our schools, no doubt what most people envision, and certainly what most gun grabbers envision, is issuing a gun to each teacher.  Of course, they expect that the teachers will get no training and react to a shooter by shooting up the classroom killing as many students as they do murders.  Or, they  expect that the teachers will be given paramilitary training or SWAT training, again with similar results.  They envision teachers running around dressed in tactical gear with a big weapon on their hip and multiple magazines on their belt, possibly a radio, looking like someone from the set of SEAL Team.  And for the unthinking public, that is as far as their thinking goes.

However, the truth is quite different.  What we envision is that those already carrying concealed outside the school, with a permit, would be allowed to bring there concealed carry guns to  school.  Naturally, being concealed, I expect that nobody would be aware of who has such a permit, or which teachers carry every day.  Indeed, the school district should not advertise the names of teachers who carry to school, even to the other teachers.

The weapons carried by teachers and staff should be the ones they themselves chose and carry every day.  This is their personal property, like the clothes they wear.  Thus the school district does not need to expend money for weapons, or ammunition.  Similarly, holsters, magazine carriers, and so forth, should be whatever the person already carries, so again no need for the school district to spend extra money on these items.

The one place where the school district may need to spend funds would be in giving concealed carriers who do double duty providing security in the school some training.  Most concealed carriers get some sort of training in basic marksmanship.  I go to the range on average once every two weeks, for instance, and most carriers do something similar.  Some of us also participate in International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) meets, which presents various realistic scenarios and times participants response.  However, getting dynamic training with an emphasis on school shooting scenarios is expensive.  However, if teachers can participate with sheriff or police department, that might reduce the costs.

Every day, you encounter concealed carriers in places like restaurants, gas stations, the grocery store, and on the street.  Some of those people are teachers and school staff.  They don't look or act any different than anyone else.  They are among us every day, and you will never know it unless...

Not One More Inch

Derek Hunter at Townhall.com has an article today entitled Do Not Give an Inch on the Second Amendment that explains how "compromising" with the Left works. Of course, Mr. Hunter tactfully uses the word "liberal" for "Leftist" because, heaven knows, we don't want to call a communist a communist. They might get mad.  As Hunter explains, compromising with the Left essentially means we give up, and they take.  Then they move the goal posts and come back for more. 

Hunter uses the compromises that slowly happened in the campaign to end smoking.  We used to allow smoking in restaurants, and smokers lit up after dinner.  Nothing like a good pipe with your after dinner coffee.  Here's the thing, though: no body could defend smoking as somehow a good thing.  It does indeed destroy the body.  Smoking tobacco is also very addicting.  more so, I am told, than alcohol.  Now, I was a pipe smoker, and no adult likes being told what to do by other busy body adults.  You can understand if the person at the next table has a problem with you smoking, and out of politeness one is likely to put it out until later.  But the entire second hand smoke idea has never really been proven.

Hunter raises the NRA as a no compromise on gun rights organization.  I wish that were so.  In fact, many of the gun regulations on the books were written by the NRA in hopes of getting a better deal than the Leftists were offering.  The NRA has slowly ceded gun rights which started out as "shall not be infringed" very much like the slow loss of the rights of smokers.  But smoking is not a Constitutionally protected right, whereas the right to bear arms is.  Therefore, the NRA had no right to cede them for their members and anyone else who might want to exercise their rights.

All that being said, Hunter is fundamentally correct:

There is no compromise with someone who doesn’t want you to exist, there is only incrementally losing ground until you no longer exist. A right diminished will never return, government does not cede back power once seized.

The NRA is right to hold its ground, it’s why the organization exists in the first place. Liberals are not honest brokers when it comes to the issue of guns, and neither is the media. Trying to appease leftists never works because nothing short of everything they want is ever enough for them.

I have had my share of disagreements with the NRA over the years.  Particularly at the State level, it is doubtful we would have gotten concealed carry through had we been led by the NRA.  The NRA does a lot of good work, but it is still at heart an organization that sees hunting, collecting, and conservation as its main goals.  Most of the gun clubs in this area that are NRA associated or sanctioned are private affairs for the wealthier members of society, much as golf clubs are.  Still, the training they do is invaluable, and now that they have Carry Guard insurance, they are including more tactical training as well.

Right now, the NRA is under attack, and the Left wants to see it go away, believing that it is the ring leader of the resistance to its cherished goal of gun confiscation.  It is not going away, but in truth, the Lefts best friend is often the NRA.  Without it, the vacuum would be filled by an organization like the Gun Owners of America, which group is truly no compromise.  The Left should be careful for what it wishes.

Delta Airlines Discovers the Cost of Caving to the Leftists

A post by Thomas Lifson reveals what I thought might happen.  According to Lifson, Delta Discovers the Perils of PC. According to Lifson:

According to USA Today, only 13 passengers have ever used the NRA discount, which reveals how trivial it was. Airlines, car rental companies, and other firms in competitive industries hand out discount offers like Halloween candy to groups with large memberships. But the well organized gun-grabbers saw an opportunity to embarrass the NRA by pressuring companies to shun the discount arrangements they have made with it.

In other words, this is entirely a symbolic battle, but one with real-world consequences.

Those consequences are a Georgia bill that would strip Delta of $40 million a year in aviation jet fuel subsidies.  Oh, by the way, I can also avoid the other companies who do not support my rights, as easily as I can avoid going to Target stores.  There is nothing at these places that I can not get elsewhere. 

I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I am no an NRA member because they offer discounts, and I don't think I have ever used one.  I also am not a member because the offer "gifts" such as range bags as incentives for signing up. My NRA range bag is in a corner somewhere.  I use my own bag, thank you.  No, the reason I remain an NRA member, while I don't agree with some of their positions, and I certainly don't care for their compromising away the Second Amendment, they are the big dog in the gun rights fight.  I also am a member of Gun Owners of America and Grass Roots North Carolina.

Read the whole thing though, because there is an interesting story within the story, about Rush Limbaugh's fight against these Leftist.  It seems that the many threats to businesses who advertise with Rush that came from Twitter feeds, facebook and other social media were actually generated by at most 10 people, using bots and other illicit devices to magnify their efforts. The difference, of course is that Rush has millions of real, live listeners every day.  The NRA has 5 million dues paying members, and perhaps 50 million supporters.  That's a lot of people to piss off.

Not One More Inch, Mr Trump

I heard part of the gathering yesterday of Trump and Congressmen and women on both sides of the aisle, and was not pleased with an otherwise good so far President.  Ed Straker has a post over at the American Thinker today entitled Trump on Disarming Citizens: Take the Guns First, Then Go Through Due Process Second.

Trump is sounding here just like Obama and the other Democrats. This is why I felt he could not be trusted. As I have said before, I view a person's attitude on Second Amendment rights as determining their thoughts on other rights. For the most part, people who have an absolute view of the Second Amendment will generally view the rest of the Bill of Rights as inviolable. Here, we see that someone who is willing to take our gun rights doesn't care about due process, and presumably doesn't care about any other right we as citizens have.

 Ed Straker makes the point that one can not really define "mentally ill" satisfactorily. He is right, nonetheless, one can say that the shooter was certainly consumed with evil. He repeatedly made comments and threats which led various people to contact the Sheriff's office and the FBI, I am now hearing, 66 times! Threats are illegal, and can be acted upon.  This therefore represents a monumental failure of Government at all levels. He should have been stopped. He wasn't. So what makes Trump think that giving more power to this failed Government would do anything at all?

None of the proposed legislative "fixes" would to anything to have stopped this young man from obtaining what he needed to complete his evil plan. The fact that he obtained an AR-15 rifle hardly means that is the only thing he could have used. He could have used a stolen handgun. He could have acquired a Ruger Mine 14 through theft of the black market. He could have used a knife as was done in China. The point is that it is the human being, and his attitude that must be addressed, not the individual tools. As far as the "fix NICS" goes, only those adjudicated by a Court of law as a danger to themselves and others should be denied a right protected by the Constitution, and then the court should make a specific finding that the person should be denied Second Amendment rights and for how long, and or under what circumstances those rights are to be restored.

I truly believe that we have survived this long as a Republic because of the Second Amendment. Obama has already shown us what a President who believes he is "Dictator for Life" like Idi Amine might do. We do not need another one. As for Trump, I believe if he continues down this path that he will not be re-elected. Peoples' enthusiasm for Trump is not personal to him, but is contingent on his doing the right thing.  A lot of people voted for Trump for no other reason than that he doesn't take any guff from anyone.  They have remained loyal because he has continued to push a conservative agenda.  But a majority of his supporters will not support this.

Update:  William F. Marshall, and investigator for Judicial Watch, has an article at The American Thinker today entitled  The Cascading Failures of Government. Marshall's point is that every law necessary to have prevented the Parkland shooter from committing his crime was in place.  Multiple people "saw something and said something." yet were ignored because of a Leftist policy of letting minority criminals off the hook.  We don't need any other laws.  There is nothing for the legislatures at any level of government to do.  What needs to be done is to enforce the law evenly, and fairly across the board.  Try enforcing the laws we have before you make a bunch of new ones.