There Is Every Reason to Prevent the Government from Assuming Powers the Constitution Does Not Grant

 Mike McDaniel at the American Thinker once again brings gun issues into clear light through his experience as a law enforcement officer. The issue is so-called "ghost guns." McDaniel is reporting in The Supreme Court and Ghost Guns that the Supreme Court should rule that the government has no right to extend the serial number requirement to firearm components, thus making home made firearms at the very least more expensive, if not illegal.

The Biden’s Handler’s DOJ has done it again. Actually, they did it in 2022, but the Supreme Court has granted cert. The issue is so-called “ghost guns,” guns without a unique serial number.

This stems from the Gun Control Act of 1968, which required a serial number for every firearm manufactured in America. Not every manufacturer before then used serial numbers. The system established by the GCA works like this: serial numbers are recorded on each ATF Form 4473, which must be filled out at the retail point of sale for each gun. Those forms are kept by every Federal Firearm Licensee (FFL).

...snip...

That provision of GCA has always been interpreted as referring to finished firearms. However, in 2022 Garland promulgated a rule extending that requirement to firearm components. This would significantly increase the regulatory reach of the Biden administration over the firearms industry and increase the cost of making and selling firearms, rendering them less affordable and accessible to American citizens, and forcing many firearm makers and sellers out of business.

McDaniel points out that in his experience as a law enforcement officer, he never solved a crime using the serial number of a gun, and he didn't know anyone who did. Even if you can find the first buyer of the gun, you still must do the investigation to put the person at the scene with the weapon in question.  But let McDaniel tell it:

In recent years, many Americans have enjoyed building their own rifles and handguns from parts kits, which is entirely legal. Many of those kits do not have serial numbers, and a gun made from raw materials by someone with the necessary skills and machinery likewise has no serial number. These are the “ghost guns” so commonly demonized by contemporary D/s/cs.

Serial numbers are of little use. Criminals, by nature lazy sorts, rarely if ever obtain guns by building their own. Their guns come largely from thefts and the black market. “Ghost guns” are made and possessed almost exclusively by Americans who will never commit a crime, and certainly not with the guns they make.

During my police career, I never solved a crime by tracing a serial number, nor am I aware of anyone who did. Anti-gun/liberty cracktivists, and Hollywood would have us believe serial numbers are an essential crime fighting tool. Reality, as usual, is otherwise.

The police find a handgun left at a robbery scene and enter the serial number into their computer. The all-knowing government database tells them it was bought by Joe Normal of 1234 Average Street, Placid, Nebraska, at Placid Guns, on 11-02-2010. Ah-hah! They have their man, and the case is solved in less than an hour, minus commercials.

Not quite. There is no such government database, and even if there were, all it would tell the police is the identity of the original buyer 14 years earlier. They would still have to prove Joe Normal was present at the time and place of the crime, and used that handgun in violation of the law. What’s most likely is Joe traded that gun in for another one in another state sometime in the past, and the ownership trail moves on, indecipherably, from there.

If the robbery happened in Placid, NB, and if the police went to every FFL licensee in the area and checked their records, they might be able to find Joe’s 4473. If Placid Guns computerized all their 4473s before 2010, that is. If not, they’d have to go through every paper copy on file at Placid Guns to try to find that serial number. Imagine if the robbery happened in another town or state.

Now, having serial numbers on guns can be very useful to the manufacturer, when it comes to which weapon was sold to who and when if warranty work is needed. Beyond the manufacturer, old guns of historical nature such as the 1911 are of interest because of where they served and who might have carried or owned them. A gun worn by a well-known General at a certain battle for instance is more valuable that a nondescript 1911. But I see little reason why the government needs to get involved, unless it is to track who owns what guns in the event of a mass disarmament. But that goes against the Second Amendment.

A serial number, if the victim of a burglary kept a record of it, might help if the burglary was reported and the local police agency entered that serial number into the federal NCIC database. If the burglar was caught with the gun and an officer ran an NCIC check, the gun might show as stolen. That’s less common than one might imagine. But other than that, there is little reason to require serial numbers.

There is, however, every reason to prevent government from assuming powers the Constitution does not grant. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will agree.

Constitutional Carry in NC?

 I missed this Cam and Company episode when it came out on the 25th, but I am catching up.  Here is Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms reporting that NC Gun Owners Demand Constitutional Carry. Will Republicans Listen. One thing that has always bothered me is that criminals wander around every day carrying firearms in public without a permit. So, what is so difficult about letting honest law-abiding people do the same?

You can read Edwards' article and of course watch his interview with Grass Roots North Carolina founder and fearless leader Paul Valone. He makes a convincing case for doing it this year. But they should have done it years ago. After all, if the criminals can run around essentially Constitutionally carrying, why can't we?

Time To Prosecute the Anti-Gun Lobby?

At Ammoland today Dan Wos asks a serious, and interesting question: Should Anti-Gun Lobbyists Be Prosecuted for Restrictive Gun Laws? We sometimes talk about the fact that both lobbyists who advocate for, and politicians who pass rediculous gun control have blood on their hands, but that is usually rhetorically. But do they really? Wos presents a case for doing just that.

Now, it is one thing to advocate for an unpopular position. Sometimes such advocacy is the right thing to do. For instance, advocating for the unborn is the right thing, although the abortion lobby would have us believe that abortion is the popular thing. Should pro-life people be prosecuted? No, of course not. I feel that the unborn is a human life that should be protected the same as those born. But we can only change peoples' hearts by convincing them, not forcing them.

But of course, the gun banners do not want to wait to convince us, probably because they know we can not be convinced. There is too much experience of the average person to convince them they don't need guns. But there is also so much scholarship; writings of legal experts, of historians, of criminologists, even of statiticians and plain old observers of life in general to tell us that disarming is a bad idea. We know, for instance, that criminals will always be able to have guns when they need them.

It’s ironic how the anti-gun crowd tries to hold firearm manufacturers responsible for deaths that involve their guns but claim no responsibility for the deaths of innocent people who were rendered unarmed and helpless due to restrictive gun laws.

The political left is always using “mass shootings” as justification for more gun control laws. The propaganda and media hype behind so-called “gun violence” is nothing more than fake rhetoric created for the purpose of gaining support for more gun regulations. The idea that the gun-grabbers continue to push is that “if the killer didn’t have a gun, he wouldn’t kill.” This couldn’t be further from the truth and has been proven to be a false claim time and time again.

And there is the difference between honest debate between two sides who see the same issue differently, and the bad faith efforts of the anti-gun lobby and anti-gun politicians. They deliberately cherry pick data, highlight some and cover up others to present their view. But the truth is that guns are not the problem, nor knives, nor even rocks. The problem, as always has been since man first walked the earth is that people kill other people. You will not stop them by taking away tools. They will simply find another way.

What the media won’t tell you is that violence is never the result of a gun, but anytime a gun is used, they will position it as the cause. There is no such thing as “gun violence.”

For example, Australia had two major gun bans under the guise of preventing suicide, yet after the bans, the trajectory of the suicide rate didn’t change. Giffords is notorious for pushing a false narrative that guns shoot all by themselves.

...See the tweet from Giffords about guns shooting themselves in Wos's article...

In the face of such bad faith rhetoric, shouldn't Giffords, Moms Demand Action, Everytown and Brady be held just as responsible as they try to hold gun manufacturers? If a zone is deemed "gun free" then don't police or the entity controlling that "gun free zone" have a duty to protect those in that zone? Perhaps, when there is a mass shooting at a school, those who proposed to make the school "gun free" should be brought up on charges as accomplices before the fact?

I will let Wos have the last word:

If someone cuts the brake lines on your car, should they be held accountable for any death or injury that occurs? That death or injury was a direct and intended result of their actions. Their actions caused you to be unable to stop your car. The same is true for gun control laws. The actions of the anti-gun activists and lobbyists are intended to keep you unarmed and result in you not being able to protect yourself in public. Anti-gun activists keep Americans unarmed, and criminals take advantage of the situation.

Tennessee Passes Bill to Allow Teachers to Carry at School

 According to a post, by Madeline Leesman at Townhall.com, Tennessee has now past a law allowing staff at schools to carry guns. It remains to be signed into law by the Governor. The post can be found at Lawmakers in One State Pass Legislation to Allow Teachers to Carry Guns in Schools. The bill also calls for strict privacy of carriers from parents, other teachers and school staff, and students. Only the administrators would know.

If the Governor signs the bill, Tennessee will join Texas, Florida and a few other states in allowing this common sense way to protect students. Does that mean we will never have another school shooting? Of course not. But as with all deterrents, those who would target students will have to factor in the possibility of being stopped before they can get started by a teacher with a gun. These shooters hope to gain fame, though not fortune, by having the highest body count before they are killed. Sick, I know. But we are not dealing with rational actors here.

Note too that this is an entirely voluntary program. People who want to carry at school will go through extensive training. They will have to be very responsible with their weapon. Carrying every day is both physically and mentally draining.  It requires a person to be on alert at all times.  No one who doesn't feel like carrying a gun will be required to do so, and no one will be made to feel less than if they don't.

Further, all of the angst about students feeling "threatened and unsafe" with guns around is pure hogwash, a talking point. I suspect that not one in a hundred students will care on whit. They are too wrapped up in themselves, their relative status, what the kool kids are doing, what's in and what's out, to worry about their teachers. They are kids after all, not little adults.

I applaud Tennessee legislators for their guts and forsight. Would that all states had similar laws.

If Teachers Can Not Be Trusted With Guns, Maybe We Shouldn't Trust Them With Our Children?

 Over at Bearing Arms Tom Knighton has a piece entitled Tennessee Teacher Says Her Profession Can't Be Trusted With Guns. Wow! I wonder if this (student) teacher, who appears to be rather new to the profession has done some sort polling of professional teachers to find out? One would think that taking a representative sample of teachers and polling them would be the least one could do if one claims to speak for others. But, well, just read the article.

On Wednesday, I addressed a teacher in Tennessee who said that she didn't want to carry a firearm while performing her job. My take was that if she didn't want to, she shouldn't. It's a pretty simple concept. It's something each person should decide for themselves and they should be able to decide for themselves.

That is my take too. Teachers that want to carry, and are qualified to do so, should be allowed to. But nobody should be forced to. It is a big responsibility. You must keep it concealed at all times, train with your weapon regularly, and have thought ahead where you might store it if it is not on your person 100% of the time. Your primary duty is always to teach the children, and only secondarily to protect them with deadly force if necessary.

But an op-ed out of Tennessee written by a student teacher appears to argue that her profession just can't be trusted with guns. Let's start with the headline that reads: "Teachers like me are trained to educate kids. Arming us will make everyone less safe."

You can read Knighton's total article. Needless to say, she offers no unbiased research, and her sources are things like Students Demand Action, a subsidiary of Moms Demand Action, funded by Bloomberg. But you can decide for yourselves. Knighton also makes the point, and I agree, if teachers can not be trusted with guns, why should we trust them with our children? Maybe we shouldn't?

Are You Listening Mr. Biden?

 Today, at the American Thinker Andrea Widburg tells Biden, and other tyrants around the world that The World's Leaders, Including Biden, Must Learn the Lesson of Passover. Actually, the story told in Exodus has many many lessons for us. God's mercy is but one. That Yahweh is the supreme God of all the other elohim, including Pharoah is another. In leading the Israelites out of bondage to Egypt, it tells the story of God leading each of us out of bondage to sin and the devil, which prefigures the coming of Christ to reconcile us to God. Widburg adds yet another lesson for Biden and other world leaders who want to lord it over men.

Tonight, at sunset, Jews across the world will celebrate Passover, something they’ve been doing annually for around 3,500 years. The holiday commemorates the miracle (and gift) of God leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. This was the world’s first slave revolt and led to God’s handing down the moral laws that are the backbone of the Judeo-Christian faiths. But the Passover story also tells us something important about the nature of tyranny, and the world’s governments, from Biden on down, would do well to heed that lesson.

...snip...

Then came that fateful day when Moses, while tending his flocks, encountered a burning bush from which came the voice of God. God set Moses a task for which Moses felt painfully unqualified: Return to Egypt, free the Israelites from their bondage, and lead them to Canaan, the land promised to them in Genesis.

Despite his fears, Moses took up the task and went back to the court in which he’d been raised. He told Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery. Pharaoh, naturally, refused.

This refusal began the cycle of the famous ten plagues that Jews have recited at every seder since the Exodus itself:

Widburg thereupon recites the 10 plagues of Egypt. It is here where God shows his mercy. At any point, Pharoah could have cried "uncle" and let the people of Israel go. That he didn't showed him to be unconcerned about the suffering of his people as long as he was safe, and in power. Notice that the plagues become more and more serious, but Pharoah doesn't care. Finally

10. The death of the firstborn. (That Pharaoh didn’t die, incidentally, means that he was not his father’s firstborn.)

Because the Angel of Death passed over the homes of those Israelites who painted their door lintels with the blood of s specially prepared lamb, we get the holiday’s name.

Left unsaid is that Pharaoh's first born son also died. Pharaoh finally felt the consequences of his actions.

Aside from ignoring the fact that Exodus marks the first recognition in human history that slaves are people and deserve liberty, this viewpoint completely misses the profound message attached to the myriad plagues that Pharaoh willingly visited on his people: All tyrants have an almost endless capacity for tolerating others’ suffering, as long as their power remains in place.

What Pharaoh discovered with the first nine plagues is that life can go on, at least for the ruler, no matter the burdens he places on his people. Pharaoh had wine to drink when the Nile turned to blood; physicians when the plagues and boils arrived; baths, unguents, and incense when the irritating bugs settled in; stores of food when the cattle sickened and starved; and a secure palace when the skies poured down hail and fire. As long as Pharaoh’s hold on power was undiminished, he could always reconcile himself to his people’s pain.

The lesson Widburg hopes the various tyrants learn for the Passover is that ultimately God is in control. That governments are established to serve people, not to control them. Whenever a government attempts to control the people, and isn't concerned about the suffering of the people, that government has gone to the dark side, to tyranny and destruction. Christ, on that Passover some 2000 years ago showed us the way by taking on our sins, and dying for us, then rising again as the prophets had said. He set the example of the suffering servant, not of the tyrannical dictator. Are you listening Mr. Biden?

Green Nazis Pushing Society Back to the Stone Age

 At 72, I grew up in a suburban neighborhood, but my parents grew up on farms, not unlike Viv Forbes who grew up in Australia on a farm.  Young people do not realize how fragile the technological society actually is, or how close they are to living as people have lived for centuries.  Forbes, though, can tell us from first hand experience of the coming of electricity to their farm in the 1940s.  Her story can be found at the American Thinker entitled A diesel in the shed. I urge you to read the whole thing.

When I was a kid living on a small dairy farm in Queensland, we relied on green energy -- horses and human muscles provided most motive power; firewood and beeswax candles supplied heat and light; a windmill pumped water and the sun provided solar energy for drying clothes and growing crops, vegies, and pastures. The only “non-green” energy used was a bit of kerosene for the kitchen lamp and the dairy lantern, and petrol for a small Ford utility for a trip to town every fortnight.

Our life changed dramatically when we put a diesel in the dairy. This single-cylinder engine drove the milking machines, the cream separator, and a small electricity generator, which charged 16 lead-acid two-volt batteries sitting on the veranda. This is the exact same diesel engine (built in Toowoomba) we had in our dairy in the late 1940s.

Our 32-volt DC system powered our “modern” marvel -- bright light at any time, in every room, at the touch of a switch.

You can see and hear that diesel engine at the highlighted link. It is noisy, but I am sure it was magnitudes better than they had before. It meant milking machines, which could service more cows and provide more milk. It meant electric light, which reduced the risk of fires. It meant electric pumps for water, thus reducing dependence on the wind. As I said, magnitudes of improvement in living standards.

But now, the green nazis have caused a backward push towards the stone ages:

There were no electric self-starters for diesels in those days -- just a heavy crank handle and a big flywheel. But all that effort, noise, and fumes were superseded when the house and the dairy got connected to clean silent “coal power by wire.” Suddenly the trusty “Southern Cross” diesel engines disappeared from Australian sheds and dairies.

In less than one lifetime, firewood, candles, horses, and kerosene were replaced by diesel and petrol engines plus clean, silent coal-powered electricity.

Today, after Aussies have enjoyed decades of abundant reliable cheap electricity from coal, green energy gambling has taken Australia back to that era which kept a diesel in the shed.

Green energy has a union that works to rules. If winds are too strong or too weak, they down tools and the turbines go silent. And their mates running the solar panels won’t work at night and also produce nothing on cloudy days. If we try to fill the gaps with battery power, where do we get the electricity to recharge the batteries and pump the hydro water back up the hill to keep the lights on?

The point of Forbes' piece is that the entire green energy scam is just that, a scam; a hoax. If wind could power everything, we would have already been doing it. It can't. And the fact is that the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth is (fortunately for us, as it turns out) woefully inadequate. If it were strong enough to power things like steel manufacturing, it would be too hot for us to live. There is no magic, no technological breakthroughs. Of course, if the green nazis don't like coal, gas, and petroleum, there is nuclear. Nuclear breakdown happens whether you put it to use or not. Putting it to good use provides energy without the carbon dioxide emissions. But again, that is really just a giant scam

Forbes closes with this:

Finally, our green media likes to feature some green energy enthusiast who is “off the grid.” But it usually emerges later in the show that there is a diesel in their shed too.

Those who remember the days of relying on a noisy, smelly diesel in the shed have no wish to be dragged back there by green zealots.

I say "Amen."

Bill Maher Hits an Improbable Home Run

 Andrea Widburg has an excellent post today entitled Video: Bill Maher's excellent monologue attacking the left's gender war on children. As Widburg points out, Maher is an amoral, atheistic leftist but sometimes he hits on the truth:

Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher always reminds me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous short poem: “There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.” Maher’s most notable riffs can be truly horrid, as was the case when he conceded that abortion was murder but added that he doesn’t care, or very good indeed, as happened with his most recent monologue addressing pedophiles in Hollywood and the scourge of wokies forcing transgenderism on children.

Widburg notes that Maher knows that abortion is murder, but he doesn't care because of overpopulation (a "problem that doesn't exist.) But as she notes, just because leftists are now killing the unborn doesn't mean they won't start killing other people they don't lik enmass. Widburg suggests they might decide to kill Trump supporters.

But, on the issue of Hollywood pedophilia and child abuse he is spot on. Go ahead and watch the video of Maher's monologue.

Larger Families Yield Better Leaders?

 It happens often, that on reading one article, you find another that hammers the same theme.  Today it is at Townhall.com by Michael Barone entitled Maybe Larger Families Will Produce Better Leaders. He points to a number of our greatest leaders who would not have been born had their parents at the time stopped at two, or one child. As such it is based on anecdote. But it is a compelling theory nontheless.

Why was America in the Revolutionary War era, with 3 million people, able to generate leaders of the quality of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, while today's America, with 333 million people, generates the likes of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump?

That's a question I keep asking as I alternate between writing about current affairs in this space and reading about the Revolution and the early republic for my book "Mental Maps of the Founders."

I think I've found clues to answers in a seemingly unrelated quarter, in my Washington Examiner colleague Tim Carney's book "Family Unfriendly." Carney argues that more people should have more children, that governments and employers should make that easier, and that parents should, as the title of his first chapter reads, "have lower ambitions for your kids."

I think there are many reasons for having more children in the colonial era. First, most people lived on farms, and needed the manpower to produce food. But I also think people's outlook was more optimistic. They tended to see their lives as God intended them to be.

My research on the Founders produced several surprises, including the fact that most of them did not come from cultures of rigid primogeniture -- in which not only inheritances but families' hopes were concentrated on oldest sons.

On the contrary, among large families -- seven children seems to have been the median family size -- parents and even the children themselves were on the lookout for brothers with exceptionally high talents and concentrated on developing them. Many outstanding leaders had such backgrounds.

The author cites several such cases including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Notice that it is not just the parents, but the siblings as well who spot special talents and help develop them. But if the family has only one child, and both father and mother are working, who notices the child's special abilities? The so-called "experts" have proven to be woefully inadequate. Thus we end up with "leaders" like Biden.

None of these leaders would ever have been born if their parents, like typical people today, had no more than two children. Today's aspirational upscale parents, Carney writes, "worry that they are failing if their kids are not prodigies by age 8, or aren't on the path to dominance in violin, tennis, or math." But the odds that any one child will -- like Washington and Franklin, Jackson and Adams, Calhoun and Garfield -- have exceptional talents are less than if their parents had had a houseful of children.

Demographers worry that adults aren't producing enough taxpayers to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Reading Carney and about the Founders has me worried that people, unlike their forebears, aren't producing enough exceptional leaders.

Trust in God and Have More Children

 Please also go an watch Marissa Streit of Prager University interview Marian Tupy about his new book Superabundance which claims the earth needs more people, not fewer. I have noted before that the fact that some products even exist is a testament to a wide market for them and that they would be prohibitive to make were it not that so many people needed them. But Tupy goes even farther. He points out that because we are a reasoning and inventive species, we have in the past, and will continue to make, in his terminology, the pizza bigger and bigger.

I am naturally inclined toward Tupy's ideas because they are hopeful. More to the point, I believe God's first command was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. I also believe that Malthusianism is wrong headed and has been proven wrong many times in the past. Which is why I believe that the belief in the population bomb, and climate change and all of it is a substitute for true religion, which is loving God and one's neighbor. Therefore, trust in God, and have more children.

More on the Betrayal of the American People

 At the American Thinker today, David Prentice has an article entitled Betrayal and the Democrats. Now if you vote Democrat, don't get hot and bothered, because he is talking about our Democrat leaders (and some of them are Democrats running as Republicans. But that is part of the betrayal.) So please read on. It is an eye-opening experience to read the laundry list of the things the garbage "elites" have done to subvert the Constitution and reduce all of us to serfdom.

The story of Judas Iscariot is the archetypal story of betrayal, fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

It's fascinating, because Judas Iscariot was the Apostle who betrayed Jesus to the Pharisees for 30 pieces of silver. He felt so guilty afterwards that he tried to give the silver back.

It's a terrifying story because Jesus was tortured and put to death and then Judas hanged himself. The field where Judas died became known as the field of blood at the time of the New Testament writings. It was a terrifying end to a horrific story.

Judas was picked by Jesus himself. He was one of the original twelve Apostles. He had walked with Jesus for three years, seen miracles, heard the finest teaching ever given, and because of this action, his name has become synonymous with the worst of betrayals, the most graphic of betrayals: Judas telling the guards he would kiss Jesus on the cheek to show them who to arrest.

Judas became incensed because a woman used very expensive oil to anoint Jesus, when it could have been sold and used to feed the poor. I know people today who say the same things. But in truth all that we have and all that we are belonged to God from the beginning. He created us and everything around us. Therefore, it is not entirely wrong to spend some of our money and wealth honoring Him. But I digress. Prentices offers also the case of Benedict Arnold, whose name became a byword for betrayal in the United States as another example.

Prentice then offers a long laundry list of actions the Democrats have taken, most of them since Obama was in office, but the betrayal starts with the founding of the Democrat party. These people do not care about the causes, or the people they are championing. All they care about is power and privilege.

Let me be blunt. The worst of our betrayers are found in the Democrat party. They are betraying America right now and have been for years. Their contempt for America as founded is for a combination of all the above reasons, in spades.

A leftist might say that a difference of opinion does not mean you are a traitor. But that’s not what this is. This is a group of leaders committed to upending all of our institutions. This is a group of leaders who have agreed to seek power above all, while reaping corrupt, unearned, ill-gotten gains. While foisting huge debt on the American public, they preen in the public eye, proud of their fame, proud of their deceit; in their small-souled thinking, they are doing it for the revolution. All while, they are not comprehending the destruction they are foisting on the world of others.

...snip...

They have contempt for the Constitution any time it constrains them. They willfully change the meaning of clear pronouncements, proclaiming elasticity when it’s needed to forward their ideas.

They censor, and no longer champion free speech. They hide their evil deeds.

They want to disarm law-abiding Americans, while allowing violent criminals to go free to wreak havoc again. They want a defenseless population to rule.

They criminalize people for not agreeing with them. They go after anyone who effectively counters them and are doing so regularly using the Justice Department and the FBI (the new Stasi).

They have, and are, spying on their political opponents with the technology available through the Patriot Act. They do this on a massive scale, to anyone in power who is against their ideas. Even against ordinary citizens who align with the center-right.

They intimidate individuals and groups simply because they outwardly disagree with their policies.

They have instituted Soviet-style show trials to imprison their political opponents and have unleashed the horrid practice of lawfare on the country.

The policies enacted to forward the green new deal are psychotic. The poor have a harder time working out of poverty. The middle class can no longer thrive as easily, while the new class of leftist multi-millionaires and billionaires easily glean even more wealth. The green new deal is designed to neuter and ruin us economically, preventing human achievement they don’t like. It’s all about control.

They have weaponized the bureaucracies, the judicial system, the DOJ, and the FBI against its political enemies. These collude with the big tech companies to slander, defame, and destroy while shielding evil from criticism, turning good into evil, and evil into good.

These add up to one truth: Betrayal. Purposeful betrayal of the ideals of our founding. Purposeful betrayal of the American public. All in the name of social justice and compassion.

I alluded to the fact that the leadership of the Democrat party is doing these things in spite of the Constitution that prevents them. As a famous founder of the Democrats, Andrew Jackson said "John Marshall (Supreme Court Chief Justice) has made his decision; now let him enforce it." It has been this way with these people ever since. They don't care, the just want power. So, if you vote Democrat, why?

First they came for...

 Today, at The Federalist Kyle Seraphin has a must read article entitled Why The FBIs Assault on Catholics Threatens All Christians.

Betrayal. If I could sum it all up in one word, it would have to be “betrayal.”

“This is what being stabbed in the back feels like,” I thought to myself on that winter day when I first laid eyes on the FBI’s anti-Catholic “Richmond memo.”My reaction was predictable. I am Catholic, and I thought it was appalling, plain and simple.

Of all the groups our top federal law enforcement agency would write an 11-page document targeting, they picked us. With all of the crime going on in the country, especially in the last few years, the FBI decided we Catholics were the problem.

“Radical-traditionalist,” I thought, trying to make sense of the term the FBI used more than 40 times throughout the memo. It was certainly not a term I had ever heard before in the counterterrorism space.

Who is a “radical-traditionalist Catholic?” (Let’s call them “RTC” for short.)

In a nutshell, RTCs are specifically identified by their desire to worship in the old Latin Mass. But in reality, anyone who believes abortion is murder, who believes homosexuality is an abomination, that children shouldn't be exposed to drag queens and on and on is a target.

The FBI is establishing a gateway in what they think is “fringe Catholicism,” as a means to go after Christians in general and declare them to be the real “threats” and “potential terrorists” in the country.

Slowly but surely, the FBI is probing its way into all religious communities. All Christians are in the crosshairs. They may be gung-ho on RTCs now, but the idea of them targeting a so-called “radical Baptist” or “radical Lutheran” in the near future is certainly on the table.

These days are looking more and more like the times described by Paul in his various epistles. In those days, Christians stood out from their pagan surroundings by not giving in to the devil, whether he called himself by Baal, or Astarte, or Molock, or a host of other names. We all must remain strong and refuse to be herded into the pens the so-called "elites" have waiting for us. They do not care about babies, either born or unborn. They do not care about the gays and lesbians, or the drag queens. What they care about is power, and they are trying to distract us with the equivalent of bread and circuses. In the process they are doing the devils bidding.

I implore you to read the entire article highlighted and remember Pastor Niemöller's poem "First they came for the..."

Congress Lays Down a Marker

At Ammoland the National Shooting Sports Foundation has an opinion piece entitled Gun Lobby Welcomes Sen. Hagarty's Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act Introduction. Needless to say, by sorting through the private sales records of individuals to find out who bought guns and ammo, the government has committed a gross violation of the 4th Amendment that everyone involved should have recognized. And I believe they did. They just ignored it for ideological reasons.

The Firearm Industry Trade Association, hails the introduction of S. 4075, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, by U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), which would ban the use of a firearm retailer-specific Merchant Category Code (MCC). The legislation would protect the Second Amendment privacy of firearm and ammunition purchasers from financial service and payment card providers compiling purchase history that has already proven to be exploited by the federal government for political purposes.

...snip...

“The Biden administration has already admitted that it unlawfully used the private firearm purchase data of law-abiding citizens to label them as potential domestic terrorists in a politically-driven gun control scheme,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President & General Counsel.

I certainly applaud the Senator as well as the companion bill in the House. But I have to wonder, it the Biden administration is willing to knowingly violate the 4th Amendment, why are they going to pay attention to a mere statute? After all, since the DOJ is part of the Biden administration, so the law will not likely be enforced. But, Perhaps it is good that Congress lays down a marker.

Do you need an AR-15?

 Mike McDaniel asks the question Should I buy an AR-15? He then answers with an absolute "Yes." You can read his reasons, many of which are the same as why everyone in the old days needed to have a 22LR. But, McDaniel's first, and major reason is:

But why? There are many good reasons, including the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration doesn’t want you to have one and they’re willing to lie about it and threaten to bomb, even nuke, you to get them. Also, it has been scientifically proved there is no such thing as too many guns or too much ammunition. Trust the science.

So, sure, if the so-called "elites" don't want the unwashed masses to have them, it seems to me very important to have one. On the other hand, most of us live in urban and suburban settings where finding a range to practice is difficult. My own range doesn''t allow anything other than pistol caliber weapons. So, if I had a rifle chambered in...say...357 Magnum, that would be acceptable. But that means it would probably be a lever action, not an AR-15.

You can probably think of other reasons why you might want something other than an AR-15. But please read McDaniel's post and think about it for yourself.

Never Give Up Your Guns. Never!

 Andrea Widburg has a post today at the American Thinker that is simply precious. In it, Lily Tang Williams, an immigrant from China and a survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution takes down David Hogg. You can find Widburg's post at Video: She escaped Communist China and destroys David Hogg on gun control. Please also check out the two pieces form the Bookworm Room. She makes excellent cases for the Second Amendment in both.

Lily asks if Hogg can promise her that the United States government will never turn totalitarian. Hogg answers, surprisingly honestly, that no, no one can promise such a thing. Of course, that is exactly why the Founders put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. They all knew that the Constitution is just a piece of paper; that what gives the Constitution power is the people's belief in its principles. And when the Constitution is ignored, as is now happening with alarming regularity, when the President defies the Supreme Court regularly, when all this fails, We the People have the right, and duty to change our government. This is exactly what the Second Amendment was written for. And no, I am no advocating for staring a revolution, but at the same time, if our so-called "elites" do not back down, there remains that one last resort.

So, the lesson here is never give up your guns, your ammunition, or your rights. Never. Stand with Lily.

Don't Be Like the Movie Guys Who Rack the Slide Before Engaging the Bad Guy

Mike McDaniel has a post telling us that Yes, chambered semi autos are safe. Col. Jeff Cooper advocated the "cocked and locked" carry method for the 1911 pistol. I have carried in that manner for close to 20 years. I do dry fire practice often to keep the need to draw and push down the thumb safety in muscle memory. But I don't put my finger in the trigger guard until I make a decision to shoot.

But most new gun buyers don't buy 1911s, do they? It is an old style weapon, an elegant weapon for another age, as they say in the Star Wars movies. Most buyers buy the plastic fantastic pistols, which are usually striker fired and have no safety. Are these also safe to carry with a live round in the chamber?

Full disclosure: I learned to shoot handguns with revolvers, attaining expert status, but as semiautos evolved, becoming not only as reliable as revolvers, and with the advent of Glocks, which took over the police and civilian markets, became expert with those as well. I’ve fired and owned every trigger mechanism, single action as in the 1911 and P-35 Hi-Power, double action, double action only and striker fired as in Glocks.

Other than the 1911 and Hi-Power, I’ve never used the safety on any other semiautomatic I’ve owned, and have been entirely safe in so doing. Why not the 1911 and Hi-Power? They’re early 1900s single action designs with cocked hammers and light triggers with short travel. I had the grip safeties on my 1911s pinned in the “off” position. John Moses Browning, America’s greatest firearm inventor, did not include a grip safety on the Hi-Power, which he invented after the 1911.

Here's the ultimate consideration: any gun is safe if the trigger finger is kept in register—straight and in contact with the frame, outside the trigger guard—until fractions of a second before it’s necessary to pull the trigger. After the trigger is pulled, so long as immediate follow-up shots aren’t required, the trigger finger immediately returns to register.

A secondary concern is always using holsters that completely cover the trigger guard and trigger so it’s difficult to accidently pull the trigger when drawing. It’s equally important to always keep the trigger finger in register when reholstering, and to look to ensure neither clothing nor anything else can get in the way and pull the trigger.

McDaniel makes a good point that if you are afraid to carry a live round in the chamber, you need to get more training. You should respect your weapon, but not be afraid of it. I once dropped a Kahr PM9 on the floor due to fumble fingers. It did not go off even though it had 7 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. It is a small, plastic fantastic gun, and I let my brother try shooting it. He also dropped it, and again, nothing. If a modern gun is functioning properly, they are safe to carry a round in the chamber. Don't be like the movie guys who rack the slide before engaging the bad guy. You want to draw and be immediately ready to engage. Half seconds count.

Nazis Strike Again

 D. Parker, at the American Thinker has an excellent series of articles showing how the Democrat party is aping the Nazi party of the 1930s and 40s. Now Monica Showalter gets into the act with Yellow star? Biden plans to lable goods produced by Jewish settlements in the West Bank. First of all, the "West Bank" is historically part of Israel. Jesus walked these roads from Galillee to Jerusalem. But second, this shows, once again, that the Democrats are on the side of Hamas, of Iran, in general of the Muslims. If you want to know how evil this implies, just not that Islam is the direct opposite of Christianity in everything.

Republicans and all people of goodwill need to shut this creeping Naziism down now.

I don't know that there is much I need that Israel supplies, but if I do, I will make it a priority to buy it. Meanwhile, go read Showalter's post.

Elites Will Resort to Violence If You Don't Comply

 In the last week, John Daniel Davidson has opened my eyes to the fact that no matter what variety of Marxism globalist "elites" are intending to herd us into, they are all a return to paganism.  Whether communism, or fascism, or any other collectivist materialism, these globalists believe that there is no truth, and anything is permitted.  The laws protect only the rich and powerful.  Logic, of course is nonexistent because there is no truth, no correct answer.  And, as J. B. Shurk tells us Marxist Globalists Will Resort to Terror and Violence.

It is important to understand that censorship does not occur in a vacuum. It is a symptom of a worsening disease. It is an early indicator of the political repression to come. Like a canary in a coal mine, the criminalization of speech forewarns that State-sponsored terror and murder are not far away. First, certain words and thoughts are banned. Next, certain people are rounded up and imprisoned. Finally, certain “enemies of the State” are executed quite publicly. The imposition of fear supersedes the rule of law. Terrorism undergirds social order. Oppression replaces popular support.

What is happening in the West today is a concentrated push for global communism. We could bicker about precise definitions — whether we are under attack from Marxists, socialists, Leninists, Trotskyites, Maoists, or other “revolutionaries” — but the end goal is clear. A small group of global “elites” seek to use ideological and economic leverage to centralize political power and direct all human activity. They seek the abolition of private property. They seek absolute control over individual lives and local communities. They are rebuilding twentieth-century totalitarianism with the privacy-destroying surveillance technologies of the twenty-first century.

Most Western nations are working together to promote a public vision that achieves their private totalitarian goals. Governments do not care about “hate speech”; they are dedicated to seizing control of the press, punishing dissent, censoring political opposition, and regulating public debate. Governments do not care about “climate change”; they are dedicated to seizing control over all economic activity by first establishing a monopoly on available energy. Governments do not care about “systemic racism,” “social justice,” or “income inequality”; they are dedicated to maximizing social divisions and distorting the meaning of fundamental rights, so that they may undermine long-cherished personal liberties. Governments do not care about “gun violence”; they are dedicated to disarming their populations and making it impossible for them to fight back against tyranny. Governments do not care about minimizing vicious and costly wars; they are dedicated to distracting their citizens with false threats to their personal security. Governments do not care about maintaining the integrity and value of their monetary currencies; they are dedicated to printing and spending money that inflates household costs, taxes middle class savings, maximizes Wall Street profits, and increases welfare dependency. Governments do not need to create central bank digital currencies to stave off economic disaster; they are dedicated to creating economic disasters, so that they can justify a future communist system that runs on privacy-destroying CBDCs.

...snip...

What is important to understand is that the various Western projects active today all reflect this long conflict among Marxists about the best way to achieve their “revolution.” Sure, there still remain a few residual peaceniks in the faculty lounge who believe — as Kautsky did — that human societies will naturally evolve into Marxist Utopias and “equitable” communes from the sheer deterministic forces of historical materialism. There are far more, however, who believe political repression, terror, and violence are essential for success. Standing somewhere in the middle — for the time being, at least — are the great majority of governmental and non-governmental forces pushing demonstrable forms of Marxist socialism under the guise of public policies ostensibly meant to advance environmentalism, mass migration, pandemic preparedness, minority rights, or “sustainable” economic development in impoverished communities.

We are familiar with their many names: the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset,” the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda,” the “Green New Deal,” the “Build Back Better” initiatives, George Soros’s “Open Society Foundations,” and the World Health Organization’s “Pandemic Treaty.” There are many others, of course. Every perceived global problem provides Marxist socialists with an opportunity to “solve” that problem by constructing financial and governmental institutions that advance their “revolution.” They believe that they can “speed up” the “progression” of human history by creating painful conditions that justify communism’s architecture. The vast majority of globalists who run central banks, newsrooms, intelligence agencies, administrative departments, legislative assemblies, religious nonprofits, and too many corporate boardrooms are all “true believers.”

Make no mistake, when these Marxist globalists conclude that an increasingly popular resistance force within Western society threatens their “long march” toward domination, they will not throw up their hands in defeat, shrug, and concede, “Well, that’s democracy.” In their twisted totalitarian minds, only ideological allies merit “democratic” respect or civil rights protections; ideological foes deserve dictatorial force and bloody despotism.

Please read the whole article. If these guys get what they want, we are all serfs to these few so-called "elites." We have rights only because we are a Christian nation. For those who don't believe in God do not also believe in rights. They believe in power.

The New Paganism

 I just got to this book by John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist entitled Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Unfortunately, authors keep coming out with great books and I have something of a backlog of reading.  The book is makes clear that reason, fairness, rule of law and such concepts will in the future not hold sway.  Instead, it will be raw power.  I had thought to write a book report when, as chance would have it, Casey Chalk has already written a very good one. You can find his book report at As Christianity Declines, We Must Confront the Threat of Pagan America.

The historical narrative grade-school and collegiate students learn today portrays pre-modern societies across the world living in peaceful symbiosis with nature… until they were brutally defeated, if not destroyed by an intolerant Christian civilization. Davidson relates a number of historical anecdotes proving how blinkered this story is. Whether we are talking about the ancient societies of the Mediterranean, pagan northern Europe, or indigenous America, all demonstrated a profound disregard for (or exploitation of) the weak and vulnerable. Davidson cites the Vikings, Aztecs, and 19th-century kingdom of Benin as civilizations engaging in ritual human sacrifice to appease angry, bloodthirsty gods, but there are plenty of others.

Judaism and then Christianity repudiated such societies, built as they were on power, fear, and the fulfillment of base sensual desires. It was the church that rejected the common Roman practice of abandoning (if not murdering) unwanted children, stopped human sacrifice in northern Europe, and discouraged polygamy in the Americas and Africa.

Citing Tom Holland’s popular book Dominion, Davidson writes: “Human rights, equality, care for the poor, mercy for the condemned, refuge for the persecuted, charity for the marginalized and downtrodden: these were never self-evident truths.” Rather, “they are unmistakably Christian ideas that rely on specifically Christian doctrines, without which they are unintelligible.” Obviously, Christian societies were by no means perfect and were often hypocritical, but it’s undeniable that they ushered in a paradigmatic shift via their understanding of the dignity of the human person.

Davidson notes, and I agree with this, that this paradigmatic shift profoundly influenced the Founders such that the founding documents of our Constitutional republic create a very Christian identity for our nation. The secular nature of our government was meant not to discriminate against any of the many denominations of Christianity to avoid the bloodshed that had plagued Europe. At the same time, this neutrality was not meant to count Islam, or wiccan, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses or any other pagan religion as "religion."  Indeed, some of these did not exist at the time.  I doubt the founders even considered cults outside of Christianity.

Davidson's thesis is that:

...an increasingly secular America is not ushering in a rational, neutral, and indifferent regime, but rather a revitalized form of paganism. Indeed, that irrationalism is on full display in the growing popularity of superstitious beliefs such as horoscopes, crystals, tarot, occultism, wiccanism, and an unwavering faith in “the science” even when what “the science” declares is reversed only a short time after it was considered dogma. But Davidson is just getting started here.

He argues that neo-paganism is visible across our polis. Abortion and euthanasia, for example, are new forms of human sacrifice; transhumanism and transgenderism reflect man’s attempt to usurp God’s authority over nature. Moreover, warns Davidson, if minors have the autonomy to decide their own “gender,” what’s stopping our paganizing establishment from also claiming that minors have the autonomy to pursue sexual relations with whomever they choose? Artificial intelligence, in turn, serves as a “godlike” artifice, a “Promethean power” to be worshiped.

I would argue that the Climate Change scam is also a pagan religion. The notion that we puny humans have the power and ability to control the weather is the height of hubris, and again seeks to grant to humans "godlike" powers. But we can't even predict with accuracy two days out, let alone 100 years.

I am only a little way into Davidson's book, but Chalk's report pretty well hits on the high points of his work. It will be again, as it was in the Roman era when God entered the world and died on a cross for our sins, because we couldn't do it ourselves. Gird your loins, Christian warriors. Prepare to do battle not with earthly authorities by with principalities and powers in the spiritual realm. Oh, and go read Chalk's report.

A Murderer and a Liar

 Sarah Arnold at townhall.com notes that a High-Ranking Cardinal Calls for Americans to Reject Biden's Pro-Abortion 'Murderous Ideology'

President Joe Biden— a “devout” Catholic— is under fire for repeatedly going against what the church believes in due to his pro-abortion stance.

This week, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Vatican’s highest doctrine office, called for Biden’s ex-communication as the president vowed to reinstate Roe v. Wade in his State of the Union Address.

Müller described Biden’s efforts to keep abortion legal for American women as “infanticide.”

He said that it is unacceptable to declare yourself a Catholic but to promote the killing of another human being.

As quoted by from the American Life League:

"The outrage that Biden would proclaim this on the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ is NOT an accident."

"This is proof positive that Biden has no respect for the teachings of the Catholic Church, and does not understand the basic truth that God created man in His image, male and female, and that anyone or any statement that violates that basic teaching is an abomination. It is the work of the devil who is operating through the actions and words of Biden himself."

While masquerading as a "faithful" Roman Catholic, Biden in fact is advocating the human sacrifice that was common among pagan cultures throughout history. Often enough, this human sacrifice took the form of child sacrifice such as parents throwing their infants into the fiery belly of Molock.  This is the work of the devil, who was always a murderer and a liar.

Speak Now

 Kurt Schlichter has an article today at Townhall.com entitled Use Their Calculated Insults Against Them.

Of course the proclamation that Christianity’s most holy day had been replaced by National Day of Visibility for the Mentally Ill and/or Perverted was intended to offend. Understand that communism is really a manifestation of hatred for others – the others being us – and that part of the fun is exercising power over the normals. They intend to insult us, then they gaslight that it was just a coincidence. But everyone – us and them – know that it is, in fact, a disgusting and disgraceful blasphemy designed to disrespect us.

The real problem is that we notice. Why are you Jesus people so triggered? This comes from people who scream like little girls when you point out that they are not actually little girls.

But do not get wrapped up in the right or wrong of it, at least when dealing with the communists. There is no right or wrong for them; there is only what is required right now, this minute, to solidify or increase their power. You cannot reason with them and you will not talk them out of anything. Their rejection of reason and facts and objective truth is really their greatest advantage. It puts normal people on the defensive because normal people’s tools are utterly ineffective since those tools include debate and argument and analysis.

Understand that it is about power. But it’s not the optimal type of power, not usually and not yet. The optimal power is a gun, and while they do have federal law enforcement, there are still barriers to their full exercise of the kind of power to imprison and murder their opponents, like their heroes in Stalin’s Russia or China or the fake nation of Palestine or Cuba or wherever. They can’t just kill you, not en masse, not yet, though make no mistake – that is where they want to end up. And this is why you need to buy guns and ammunition to have in reserve to lawfully defend your freedom against open tyranny.

So, in the first four paragraphs Schlichter lays out exactly what is happening here. These insults are about power. They don't really care about the causes and people they are screaming about.  They just use them as tools to gain power.

The first step is to understand the enemy. Understand the nature of their power. The fat mutant womyn shrieking on the streets, the chestless femboys throwing paint on paintings, the credentialed cretins in the regime media – they cannot make you do anything. They can only convince you to do their will. They are nothing unless you give in, unless you buy into their premises and accept their paradigm.

Don’t.

Let’s look at the Easter blasphemy. They get an erotic thrill from insulting you, sure. Remember, communism is largely driven by the stunted, immature emotional chaos of its practitioners. It’s a daddy issue writ large as an ideology. That’s communism’s weakness – it overreaches because its adherents do not have the mental strength or discipline to forgo the giddy thrill of showing their contempt for you before they have fully locked-in their power. We can still resist, and their short-term jollies will inspire normals to do so. Biden and the rest just could not pass up a chance to get in your face and compare their weirdos buddies with our Savior. As a bonus, if we do nothing and accept it, we are trained in submission. Their next atrocity will be even worse. Eventually, we will be serfs.

So don’t give in.

Our reaction determines how this goes. Do we freak out? No, we point out the insult not to reaffirm to each other the badness of our enemies – we are based and already know how bad our enemies are – but to awaken those who are not yet based. Remember, there is a default to normality on the part of normal people. They assume the system is working, that people are operating in good faith, and that everyone functions on the basis of objective truth. The communists exploit this default assumption of normality, knowing that normals will assume that the communists’ actions cannot be as crazy or evil as they seem. But they are as crazy or evil as they seem.

That’s why incidents like the Trans Day of Nonsense are useful to us to help us break through the normals’ benefit of the doubt for the communists. There are red lines that normals will not cross, and when the communists do push over them – because they cannot help themselves – there is pushback. Look at the military – normals won’t join. Look at the school boards – normal people are firing them. The country is falling apart, and Donald Trump is ahead despite being framed and outspent. That’s pushback. The potential to fight back exists. And cultural abominations like this proclamation are powerful tools for us to radicalize the normals and let them see the truth they would prefer to ignore.

Go read Schlichter's entire article. He makes a good point that right now they still can not do anything to you. You need to speak up. The one thing that you need is courage. But once you see that what Schichter suggests works, the need for courage disappears. Speak now, while you still can, because they intend to take away all your rights and imprison you or kill you for speaking up. Don't let them go there.

Tears and Hope

 Here's a real life story that should bring both tears and hope to many.  The story can be found at Bearing Arms entitled How a Gun Saved My Life When It Almost Took It by Eddie Davenport.

First the tears:

I stand there perfectly calm, relaxed even, loading shells into my Remington 1100. After the third shell, I pull back the charging handle, putting the gun into battery. Like any good hunter, I top it up with an additional shell. Except, I'm not hunting today. I'm preparing to end it all. Years of stress as a first responder have led me to this moment, but just as I’m about to pull the trigger, the phone rings.

On the line is my friend from my rescue years, going through similar struggles. I share my dark intentions, and he yells, "IF YOU HANG UP, I’LL BEAT THE S*** OUT OF YOUR CORPSE!"

Davenport explains that his years as an EMT had so traumatized him, that he felt ending his life was the only way. Apparently, the fact that he did not do anything to cause these traumas, but he was one of those to respond anyway never crossed his mind. But, we don't want to leave gentle readers hanging on the phone. What happened?

As a first responder, we are taught that we are heroes; we don’t need help; we can do it on our own. We also knew that if you actually spoke up and sought help, your career was over. You wouldn't be trusted anymore by your superiors. Now, I’m about to be another EMT’s reason for going home and crying. Who knows, maybe I’d be the reason they go home and kill themselves as well. None of these thoughts crossed my mind as I stood there; what did cross my mind was why was I loading more than one round. The majority of suicides I responded to, the firearm was loaded with multiple rounds as well. I still don’t know why.

Fast forward to our opening lines, and my friend arrived; he took my shotgun, made me pour out the whiskey, and come with him. I slept for about a day, and then we went shooting.

...snip...

My friend knew what he was doing. He knew the only way forward for me was to face my fears and stop distracting myself with alcohol. We shot guns and we talked; I cried a lot. In the end, I became a better man.

It wasn't an overnight change. There were years of hardship; I took my anger out on my new girlfriend (now wife), and I took my anger out on my wonderful dog who to this day loves me unconditionally; I do not deserve that forgiveness, but both of them gave it to me.

That moment we opened up happened over a decade ago, but I can still remember every move I made.

Today I work with an organization called Walk the Talk America; we are the intersection of guns and mental health. We train therapists in what gun culture is and work with firearm owners to seek care without fear of rights restrictions. When I was loading my gun, I needed something to grab ahold of my consciousness and cause me to pause and think. Luckily, I had a phone call. But not everyone is that lucky.

Gentle readers are urged to read the entire article. It really is not about guns in the usual sense, but in a periferal sense it may be. Most of us never have to use our guns in self defense. But, we practice all the time in various gun sports that prepare us. And shooting helped Eddie Davenport at a critical time in his life.

Judge Sharon Coleman Johnson's Rule Distracts form the Real Issue

David Codrea, of the War on Guns website has a very well thought out article today at Firearms News entitled Right to Arms for Illegal Aliens a Red Herring to Distract from Real Issue. Codrea is writing about the recent ruling by Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, an Obama appointee to dismiss the gun possession charge under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5) against illegal alien Carbjal-Flores. Codrea rightly notes that the ruling has thrown the 2nd Amendment community into turmoil, with some saying he should not be allowed to have a gun, and others noting that if the right of arms is in fact granted by our creator, then Carbjal-Flores cannot be held under this law. As I noted before, Johnson is not being serious here, but attempting to show up the hypocrisy of the other side. But the 2A community is not the one being hypocritical, now, is it?

The “enforce exiting gun laws” faction of gun owners are the loudest objectors, evidently unaware that their position is ideologically no different than a Revolutionary era colonial demanding to enforce exiting Intolerable Acts. The hard truths no one wants to admit are that “gun control” laws don’t work – whether they’re favored by Everytown or by NRA, and that anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian.

It’s not a matter of “Should felons have guns?” That’s the wrong question. Try “Should those proven violent and predatory have access to the rest of us?”

Ditto with “Should illegal aliens have guns?”

Of course, all human beings are entitled to unalienable rights. And the Supreme Court has acknowledged, in the Heller case, and earlier, in Cruikshank, “The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank… ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.’”

But again, it’s the wrong question. What should be asked is “Why is a known illegal alien allowed to remain in the United States instead of being deported?”

Gentle readers will want to read the whole article.

The Myth of Cassandra

 In case any gentle reader was not aware, this is Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday, when Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem, and Easter, the day He rose for the dead, thus triumphing over sin and the devil.  Unfortunately, I have had a cold, which will not go away.  Mrs. PolyKahr caught cold as well.  Besides that there are a number of things that need fixing around Stately PolyKahr Manor.  Bottom line, I have not had a lot of time to post.

But I got to thinking (never a safe thing to do) and it seemed to me that posting here has taken an outsized amount of my attention over the years.  I started this blog on the eve of Obama's first election, warning people that Obama was a Marxist and would usher in a socialist transformation of America.  At various times I have thought this transformation would go full communist, and other times I have thought it would be communism's kissing cousin, fascist.  I am now convinced that we are in the final push to turn our Constitutional Republic into a fascist state, with all the attendant crushing of any dissent that goes along with fascism.  Gentle readers will know those horrors if they have studied the Second World War.

Along the way, the so-called "elites" will not do away with our Constitutionally protected rights, they will just ignore them and dare the citizen to stop them.  Thus, the fascists are violating Bruen right and left, with so many infringements that the Supreme Court cannot keep up.  In this, they have the help of many federal judges, state legislatures and Congressmen.

But it is not just the Second Amendment.  They are neutralizing ALL the amendments.  Do you think housing unknown, unvetted illegal aliens in your home is not an attack on the Third Amendment?  They mean to leave us no room for dissent, not even the space between our ears.

In all this, I have come to feel like a modern day Cassandra, destined to prophesy the future, but never to be believed.

Therefore, I may not be posting as much in the future, hoping to spend what time I have left on more profitable things such as enjoying my family, work and church relationships. But I will leave the blog posts up for reference by gentle readers, and as a way to continue to get news from sources outside the lamestream media. And I will highlight special articles, though perhaps without comment. In fact, here are two from the American Thinker that are good reads:

The first is by D. Parker entitled Exposing the 'Nobody wants to take your guns' lie. I don't think my erudite readers would fall for such, but it's good to have confirmation that it is a lie. The second is by J. B. Shurk entitled Globalism Thrives on Crisis. Actually, all government does that. As H. L. Mencken observed "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." That and keeping you occupied with trivia like bread and circuses.

Gentle readers are urged to read both articles, and of course, to keep your powder dry. Meanwhile, I will be around.

The Last Election

Steve McCann is again warning us that The Democrats Have Crossed the Bridge into Unabashed Nazism.

Before getting into the article itself, the American Thinker has been doing some updating of its software in the background. According to editor Andrea Widburg, this has resulted in some odd behavior. I haven't noticed too much until now, when accessing archived articles by American Thinker authors. It seems the program returns 404 Error codes.

For gentle readers' convenience I have found other places where you can find the referenced articles. I have located McCann's original article at the California Political Review entitled Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party. McCann also refers to D. Parker's subsequent article which you will find at Substack: Eight Disturbing Similarities Between the Democrat and the Nazi Parties.

Many people have commented on the utter ugliness of what the October 7 atrocities have unleashed here in the United States. The loud, mindless efforts by people using the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" both shocked, and revolted those of us on the right. Not only that, but the stupidity of people coming to city councils screaming their demands that the city pass resolutions asking for cease-fires in the Israel-Hamas conflict. A city cannot affect foreign policy. Foreign policy is exclusively granted to the federal government. But I would point out that Hamas can have a cease fire any time it wants. All it has to do is surrender. Frankly, Israel should wipe Hamas from the face of the earth.

Following the lead of the Communists in the Soviet Union, the American Left for three-quarters of a century has been incessantly and mindlessly accusing Conservatives, and anyone opposed to their statist agenda, of being Nazis. Which, together with the accusation of racism, has become the ultimate invective.

As history is always written by the victors, the Soviet Union, an ally of the Nazi Germany from 1939-41, sought to obfuscate its role in initiating the Second World War. They, with the cooperation of United States and Great Britain, succeeded in recasting National Socialism, or Nazism, as being on the right-wing of the political spectrum. A recasting American and European academics eagerly adopted and embedded into the post-war political psyche.

In March of 2023, I wrote an article detailing eight inescapable and disturbing ways the Democrat Party emulates the Nazi Party of 1927-34 in their underlying ideology and, more importantly, tactics. Subsequently, Mr. D. Parker further detailed eight additional indisputable similarities. All but two of these sixteen commonalities (irrational obsession with race, and state/private ownership of all means of production) also apply to the proponents of Communism.

Nonetheless, there had been no basis to emulate the crudity of the American Left and label them Nazis as there was one bridge they had yet to cross: unabashed and overt antisemitism and acquiescence to repeating the Holocaust while mindlessly setting the table for an inevitable global conflict. That bridge now has been crossed and the time has come to call out these reprobates for what they are: Disciples of National Socialism or Nazis.

...snip...

By the overt constraining of Israel’s ability to unconditionally defeat Hamas, the plotting to overthrow the Israeli government, the blatant attempts to impose a two-state solution, and abetting Iran in its megalomaniacal ambitions, the American Left and the Democrat Party are in a tacit alliance and is effectively collaborating with Iran, Hamas, and the other Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups in their determination to recreate the Holocaust.

If Israel cannot eliminate Hamas and accepts a two-state solution, the stage will be set for an inevitable all-consuming war in the Middle East which will inexorably draw in the United States. A nuclear-armed Iran and its terror proxies are motivated by uncompromising hate and implacable religious fervor, two volatile ingredients that invariably foment conflict. If Israel, Iran, and perhaps Saudi Arabia face annihilation, the probability of a global nuclear conflict goes up exponentially.

Antisemitism has so captured the American left and the Democrat party that they are mindlessly willing to sow the seeds of another Holocaust as well as the next world war while feverishly transforming the United States into a one-party National Socialist “paradise.”

People in the United States have no idea how bad life under a fascist government actually is. The movie Enemy of the State tells the story of corrupt NSA agents going after a lone guy who unwittingly had evidence of their criminality. But under a fascist state, Will Smith is everyman, that is every single one of us. We are all viewed as potential enemies of the state and watched constantly for any sign we might be stepping out of line. As in George Orwell's 1984 your own children will be turned against you.

Gentle readers should read McCann's entire article, and heed his warnings. Today the fascists are somewhat more sophisticated, having Black Lives Matter and Antifa, or more recently Hamas supporters instead of Brown Shirts of Black Shirts, but they serve the same purpose: to cause chaos and force the population to elect a strong man to make it stop. Just. make. it. stop. It will be the last election.

AI...Leave the Thinking to Us

If you are someone of a certain age, you will remember the old Grayhound Bus commercials. If you do, you will also remember the motto: Go Grayhound and leave the driving to us.

I could not help but remember that old commercial as I read Cam Edwards over at Bearing Arms today. He has a post reporting that John Lott did some experiments with AI and discovered...surprise...AI Chatbots Have a Bias Towards Gun Control. I know, I was blown over. And why wouldn't they? After all, they are just sophisticated programs so it stands to reason that they would reflect their programmers biases. And let's face it, most of the people doing programming are Leftists or worse anarchists. You can find John Lott's full article at Real Clear Politics here.

Now, I am not what you would call the sharpest pencil in the box, nor am I the most talented writer.  But I would not trust anything I wrote to any AI. And if I found that a commentator I read was using AI to write his articles, I would quit reading that person's views. I am not a luddite, but I also want to always be in control of technology, not be controlled by it. As Edwards says:

I don't think we have any idea of what we're doing with AI, and I worry that we're all basically monkeys with machine guns when it comes to the tech. The anti-gun bias that's prevalent throughout these AI platforms is disturbing enough, but the real danger comes when humans start allowing AI to do our thinking for us.

The Life of a True Christian is Constant Repentance

I'm nursing a bad cold today, so I will not take a lot of time here. At the American Thinker today, Monroe Wesson has a piece entitled Escaping the State of Sin. From some of what he says, I suspect Wesson has had personal experience with one of the many 12 step programs. But he is correct that whatever your personal sin is, the solution is not to identify with it, but instead to rely on the power of Jesus Christ to forgive you sins, and to root them out of your life. He is right too that these proclivities we all have are put there to glorify God, to show His power to the world.

Sinning -- everyone does it. That is why God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins and provide a way that we can repent and become free of our sins. So why do some people find it so hard to accept their choices are sins? There are lies now accepted as truth, all designed to prevent people from repenting. While I knew this was the case, I didn’t realize how much it permeated the culture until I read an advice column about dealing with people who sin in a specific way. The first paragraph is as follows, (I’ve edited it, because when you fill in the type of sin, people suddenly lose all objectivity and treat the sins differently… as if one sin was preferable or better than another.)

“A person’s ___ isn’t a “lifestyle choice.” ____ people don’t choose to be ___; they are born that way. They can’t change being ____ any more than you can change being ____.”

You could fill in the blanks with all types of sins (gambling, alcoholism, drug addiction, theft, sexual deviancy, violence, etc…) and the basic premise remains the same. There is a lot to unpack, so I’m going to dissect this.

Wesson then proceeds to dissect and take apart the "advice" given to this individual by making clear that to continue is in fact his choice. Whatever we have, it is always our choice. What we need to to is turn to God to repent, and ask for help. Paul talks about this as the "thorn in his side." God doesn't relieve me of all my character defects because he knows I will get a swelled head if he did. Rather, he relieves me of some of them if he has a specific task for me, only to set them back. When one of these things comes up, I need to immediately repent and ask for forgiveness. I also use the method Jesus himself used: "Get behind me Satan." Then go about me life as if he did indeed do it and depend on Him to keep me on the straight and narrow.

One of the things I noticed in 12 step programs is that there is a tendency to remain trapped in that identity, as "I am an alcoholic." Yes, that will always be part of your identity, but you were born for so much more. You were born to be a child of God, one of Jesus brothers and sisters. Yes, 12 step programs get you going, but eventually, you must leave the nest, so to speak, and become what you were meant to be, and not your addiction.  The only reason to keep identifying with your addiction is because you love it more than God.  That way lies disaster.

“They can’t change being ____ any more than you can change being ____.” This is also true. Anyone that has been in a twelve-step program will learn this in step 1. “Admit you are powerless over your addiction and that your life has become unmanageable.” The most important part of overcoming sin is admitting that you can’t change on your own. It is incredibly important to accept this fact and to learn to stop judging yourself when you sin. But that isn’t the end of the journey to healing. Step 2 is “Come to believe that a power stronger than you can heal you.” You have probably gathered that the higher power that helped me was Jesus Christ. Whenever modern society talks about sins, they never talk about getting away from it, but simply your helplessness to get away from it. Yes, we can’t get away from sin on our own. That is why God sent Jesus Christ. Christ can change us. He can change our nature. He can make it so you don’t have to live in sin. He can fix the problem. You can’t.

Modern society tries to excuse sinful behavior by telling us that people can’t control themselves, because it is in their nature, and because it is in their nature, then they can’t be held accountable for their sins and therefore they do not need to repent.

This is a pernicious lie, created to drag men’s souls down to the same pit of misery and woe that our adversary inhabits. It uses truth to support a bad conclusion.

Wesson closes with a lesson in how to handle the sinners we know. But really, it follows from the Golden Rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Realizing that the individual is sick in spirit:

With all this in mind, how should we handle the sinners we know. #1) Don’t judge them. We all make mistakes, there is no use being self-righteous because your sins are different than theirs. Also, quit judging yourself. Accept that you are imperfect, and that God made you that way so that Christ can perfect you. If you must judge yourself, it should only be to the point of, “that was a sin, I need to repent.” Then go repent. #2) Treat them with kindness, yes, this includes yourself. #3) Don’t enable sinful behavior. Advocating to make sins socially acceptable or legal is going to ruin many, many lives. Don’t bail people out of the consequences of their bad decisions. #4) Protect the innocent. This means if you know someone’s sins are harming another person, especially a child, it needs to be reported to authorities. If you know the individual will cause harm to someone at a social gathering, do not invite them. If the person does not have a known history of harming others, then you have no reason not to invite them. #5) Invite them to repent, but don’t be overbearing about it. If they decline or reject your invitation, that is their choice, it shouldn’t change how you treat them.

Now, I will go back to nursing my cold.

Update:  Watch this video at Prager U.

Gun-Grabbers On A Fool's Errand

 Today, at Ammoland Dave Workman has an opinion piece entitled Opinion: Op-Ed in 'The Hill' Unintentionally Illustrates Logic Vacuum of Gun Control in which he notes that there is no gun control scheme that will stop school shootings, or indeed any criminal shootings.

Two sentences in the second paragraph of an Op-Ed in The Hill about gun control failures relating to the recent trials of James and Jennifer Crumbley—parents of Michigan school killer Ethan Crumbley—perhaps best illustrate the vacuum of logic within the gun control movement, guaranteeing that whatever restrictive laws anti-gunners adopt, they will always fall short.

Writing about the passage of the Public Act of 2023 in Michigan, Prof. Kimberly Wehle, University of Baltimore School of Law, asserts, “If that law had been in place in 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley might never have attempted the shootings because his parents — despite their shortcomings — may have complied with state law. Instead, they were found criminally liable for not imposing in their own home the very restrictions on gun access that Michigan lawmakers had neglected to enact.”

“If” is often called the “biggest word in the English language.” “Might” comes in a close second, probably in a tie with “may.” The sentence illustrates just how wrong—and perhaps wrong-headed—gun control proponents are about pushing restrictive laws and regulations, expecting people most likely to violate or merely ignore the law to suddenly comply. There is no reliable evidence of that ever happening in the history of mankind, dating from the slaying of Abel by his older brother, Cain, to the present.

Long story short, regardless of the number of times it is repeated, gun control proponents refuse to accept the reality that criminals and stubborn, stupid people do not obey every gun law. Indeed, they disobey most or all of them, figuring to not get caught. Based on what she wrote and how it is written, Wehle is an intelligent person with an interesting argument. She just happens to be mistaken.

Trained as they are in the use of language, words and grammar, lawyers tend to believe that words on paper can act in real life. What they forget is that words on paper only affect real life so long as people respect those words. But criminals do not respect words, including the criminals who intend to violate the Constitution by infringing our right to keep and bear arms. As Workman points out, felons still get guns, do not buy them from FFLs because they would get caught, do not observe waiting periods, or any other law including murder. Careless people also do not observe safe storage laws. The only people who are burdened by the thousands of gun laws in the various states and the Federal government are those not likely to violate them in any case.

Gentle readers will want to read the whole piece, though they should not expect to change any minds. Despite the many gun laws on the books, gun-grabbers are sure that just one more law will finally crack the code. It comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of laws. The real purpose is to state what is expected, and to outline society's punishments if those expectations are not met. For that, you don't need a kagillion laws detailing everything down to the gnat's nuts. The gun-grabbers are on a fool's errand if they think their ideas will prevent crime.

The Importance of Hand Writing

 At The Federalist a few days ago, Daniel Coupland made The Case for Cursive In a Digital World. He cited things like the fact that without learning cursive writing, one cannot read cursive writing, and thus historical documents such as the Constitution and Bill of Rights would be illegible to our children. But these documents are of immense importance to our history.  But even reading the letters of our grandparents can be enlightening.  They were real people, after all.  

Of more immediate concern, he noted that students that hand wrote notes in class learned better than those who typed. And with practice, one can become quite fast at writing very legible freehand documents. My father, always an average writer in cursive, once marveled at a city clerk back in the day who took notes for the village council meetings in cursive, very quickly. These notes were good enough that they could be kept as official records. But this city clerk was quite old and his career spanned back to the early 20th century.

Gentle readers should read all of Coupland's piece, and if your state does not include it in the curriculum, agitate for it. Personally, I get tired of carrying around a perfectly good pen, only to have to "sign" things with my finger. It seems so childish.

But what I wanted to write urge gentle readers to agitate for is a different kind, and even older style of cursive known as italic. I remember as a child learning cursive writing using a variation of the Palmer method. Once students picked up on it, usually around the 6th or 7th grade, they would begin to stylize their writing, sometimes to the point of illegibility. For instance, the letter "t" requires that you stroke up and then down along the same line. But when writing fast, the straight line becomes a loop. This causes the whole page to be filled with loopty-loops, which are illegible.

Palmer is very strict in that each letter starts from the base line. Thus, the student may not see the "s" or the "r" in the lower case "s" and "r" as written in Palmer. When writing fast, the tendency is to just round off the "s" and "r" into a little mounds. Along with other letters that are rightly round such as "a" and "o" what you often end up with is a series of mounds and loops with little to distinguish one letter from another.

The style I have in mind takes the child's knowledge of printing and begins to simply tie the letters together. The emphasis is always on legibility and as such, letters start where they naturally start. Many people believe that I use calligraphy, but I don't. I use italic style as taught by Getty and Dubay. The style of writing goes back to the Italian merchants of the renaissance, who had to record their trades, contracts, and other business documents very quickly.

All the reasons Coupland gives for teaching cursive, by which he no doubt means Palmer method cursive, apply to italic cursive as well. But the students learn italic faster, because it grows out of printing, yet it maintains legibility, which is why we write things down. Who would know the plays of Shakespeare if he could not write?