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?

Pray for Those Duped by Islam - But Don't Condone What They Do

 If you, gentle readers, have been around for a while, you know my feelings on Islam.  You know that I have said on multiple occasions that whoever Muhammad was supposedly listening to in that cave, it was not an angel from God.  I have even put it more forcefully, that Allah is the devil himself.  But it seems I did not know the half of it.  But Sha'i ben-Takoa tells us the rest of the story in an essay at the American Thinker entitled Exploding the Myth that Islam Is an Abrahamic Religion.

The author states the purpose of his essay right from the start:

The Gods of Political Correctness dictate that all religions are of equal worth; that there are “…three great Abrahamic religions,” and “The Arabs are Semites too, so they can’t be anti-Semites.” All three of these sacred cow clichés need to be slaughtered on the altar of truth.

I won't go into the idea that all religions are of equal worth. A look at say, Buddhism, where the notion is that the individual goes through many lives eventually achieving nirvana, or god like being, clearly contradicts with Judaism and Christianity. Both can not be correct. Clearly, one is correct and the others are all false. Chose wisely. Now as to the other two...

While Christianity and Islam are both offshoots of the Jews and took from them the concept of having one’s own holy writ, their self-definitions as new faith communities were radically different. The Koine Greek language narratives that Christians append to their version of the Hebrew Bible purport to be a continuation of Jewish history. The Catholic Church even defines itself in Latin as Verus Israel, the True Israel.

But Muslims do not claim this. On the contrary, the Koran plagiarized many of the stories in the Hebrew Bible but always with changes, and when a Muslim is asked to explain the different versions of the same stories, he will say the Jews stole them from Islam.

When asked to explain how this theft happened since the former text came into the world in the year 1313 BCE at Mt. Sinai and the latter over 2,000 years later, in the late 7th and early 8th centuries, the Muslims say that Musa (the Arabic mispronunciation of the Hebrew name Mosheh) brought the Koran down from Mt. Sinai—not the Torah as the Jews believe. And then, down below, the evil Jews snatched it away from Musa and re-wrote it and called it their Torah. When Muhammad came along, he restored the original text, today’s Koran.

No wonder no one is not allowed to question any part of Islam or put it to critical scrutiny. In contrast, Paul tells us to test everything and hold onto what is good.  Only a wide-eyed moron could believe such a tale as Muslims tell.

As for the cliché that Islam is an Abrahamic religion, this is a head-on collision with the Biblical text. The greatest authority on what is Abrahamic was Abraham himself, who accepted that he had to expel his first-born son Ishmael from his family, community, and country because he was not at all “Abrahamic,” like his father.

To Jews, Abraham was the kindest man in the world, which is probably why God chose him. For the religious revolution that Abraham ignited (ethical monotheism) was not only the concept of one God but a kind God—versus the capricious, cruel, and often immoral gods in pagan pantheons.

Islam is not Abrahamic because Ishmael was, as the Bible prophesies, a “wild ass of a man,” a normal physical male but with the spirit of an undomesticated jackass. And indeed, the behavior of Muslims throughout history and certainly in our time reveals them not to be the progeny of a kind man, for they are masters of cruelty, being head-choppers, mutilators, and skyjackers, with a particular appetite for raping and the satanic torture of women.

Their Allah smiles on mass murder and no less the glorious sacrifice of oneself, viz. suicide. Islamists are totalitarians who license themselves to murder anyone who ridicules their idea of a prophet, with the very idea of a prophet also pilfered by them from the Jews.

As for the cliche that Arabs are Semites, no, they are Hamites. Yes, Muhammad was an Arab descended from Ishmael, one of Abraham’s eight biological sons, but Judaism also makes clear that Ishmael was not his father’s spiritual heir. Ishmael is expelled (Genesis 21:9) from his father’s Promised Land for his antediluvian propensity for violence. His expulsion at age sixteen came about when he jealously mocked his little half-brother Isaac at the latter’s weaning party. Then, Isaac’s onlooking wise and perceptive mother, the Matriarch Sarah, who had watched Ishmael grow up, realized he was capable of murdering her son after her aged husband’s passing. For that, he had to go.

Gentle readers should read the whole article as it has many bones to pick with Islam, by one who is necessarily close to Islam and understands it well. In his last paragraph ben-Takoa says that Islam should be outlawed in America. I agree in principle, but feel that doing so would overturn First Amendment jurisprudence, leaving Christians equally vulnerable. Besides, you can outlaw something, but you can not change a man's heart. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Therefore, pray for the poor souls duped into Islam by the devil, but don't condone what they do.

Maintaining Christian Standards

 At the American Thinker today D. C. Larson has a post entitled Christianity's unchanging standards which points out that...surprise...God still hates sinful behavior. When Jesus tells the scribes and pharisees in Luke that he came to call sinners, the question is: call them to what? Call them to repent, to change their minds and their ways.  But you can not very well get them to change their ways by telling them they are doing things all wrong.  On the other hand, you cannot condone sinful behavior.

A brief philippic by writer Chris Kratzer is presently making social media rounds. "Evangelical Christian: What the hell did you expect me to do?" is premised on a foolish and blasphemous fancy.

I'm not an evangelical, but a lifelong traditional Catholic. Still, the obvious flaw in Kratzer's message compelled me to comment.

Reduced to vital essence, it asserts that believers in a loving Christ are hypocrites if they don't also embrace sinful behaviors.

That notion enjoys favor from those who would remake God to reflect current secular peculiarities. (Of course, we are called to change the world, not indulge its negatives.) Loving people who sin, while despising actions that violate His Will, is very much in accord with Jesus's example.

John 8 recounts that while Christ refused to condemn a woman accused of adultery, He counseled her to "sin no more."

Mr. Kratzer apparently misses this point. One must repent and ask for forgiveness. The out and proud queer, for example, clearly have no intention, at least for now, of repenting (but as long as they are alive, there is hope!) Therefore, while we should treat these people with compassion, we cannot forgive them, and God enjoins us to hate what he hates.

I would also note that Jesus had the power to declare all the people of Israel forgiven for all their sins, but he did not do so. He had the power to heal everyone in Israel of all their diseases and infirmities. But he did not do so. One has to look not only at what he did and said, but what he did not do or say.

Jesus advocated turning away from deviant actions, not embracing them as one's legitimate 'identity.' Christ's admonition is the polar opposite of the 'anything goes' philosophy espoused by Kratzer and his weak-willed adherents.

There are unchanging Holy standards. Man lacks authority to alter them. They should not be thought vulnerable to popular preference for convenience and comfort. Perverting Christ's message so that deviancy is allowed to thrive without being rightly criticized is contemptible.

...snip...

Placing human logic above God's Word is of course folly. But more importantly, it is dangerous. Romans 12:2 can guide us: "And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God."

A later verse speaks of "Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good."

There are many on the internet preaching things that are not the gospel. Often, what they preach is subtly different from what the Bible teaches. Many speak of loving the sinner but hating the sin. This is nowhere in the Bible, and death was often meted out for many sins in ancient Israel. Jesus' example is more compassionate, but we must always understand that God's moral laws are unchanging, as He is unchanging. We must seek to conform ourselves to Him, not the other way around, and seek forgiveness for our weaknesses. Martin Luther said that the life of a true Christian is one of constant repentance. Amen.

More Guns, Less Crime

At Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards has a piece noting that Everytown's Concealed Carry Claims Debunked By Reality. The dogma, that more guns equals more crime, is very strong with this bunch. In fact, as has been proven time and again, never more positively that with John Lott's study More Guns, Less Crime, the opposite is true. And New Jersey becomes the latest state to prove it after the Bruen decision.

The Bruen decision is the worst thing that's happened to the gun control lobby in years. Yes, it overturned the "may issue" carry laws that were still in place in a handful of anti-gun states, which is bad enough from the perspective of the anti-gun crowd, but it also put to test the fundamental premise of the gun control movement; more guns means more crime.

According to an Everytown post on X, referring to an article in News From The States:

Applications for concealed carry permits in New Jersey skyrocketed by nearly 3000% after the Supreme Court’s reckless Bruen decision made it easier to secure permits by upending the state’s existing strong gun safety laws.

More guns do not make us safer.

As Edwards notes, there really has been a 3,000% increase in applications for concealed carry permits. But rather than seeing a similar spike in gun crimes, the opposite has happened. According to an article by the AP, not a gun friendly organization:

New Jersey recorded the lowest number of shootings in 2023 since record keeping began in 2009, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday.

Murphy, a Democrat, and other officials announced the milestone, calling it a “great achievement for public safety.”

“We must also hold in our thoughts the victims of gun violence and their loved ones and must recommit ourselves to the fight to fully eliminate gun violence from our state,” Murphy said.

In 2023, 924 people were shot in the state, down 13% over the previous year and the first time fewer than 1,000 were shot in a year, officials said. Of the more than 900 shot, 191 were killed, officials added, down 8% over the previous year.

There is a common notion that when thieves threaten with a you with a gun, and take something of value from you, that they are just taking "stuff." But in reality, that "stuff" was something you had to work to acquire. If it is worth $100, and you make $10/hour, that represents 10 hours of your life. You cannot be made whole. So that is one thing, and I don't think it should be treated so lightly: 10 hours of your life that you will never get back. But then David Codrea asks a very good question: what if the thief wants to take (the rest) your life? Bad enough they want to steal part of your life, but wanting to steal the rest of it too?

I think the people running Everytown, Moms Demand Action, Brady, and other groups trying to ban guns understand this calculus. They also understand the fact that having guns and training makes us a potential threat to their agenda. But the Second Amendment wasn't just to defend against tyranny.  So, they cannot under any circumstances admit the truth: more guns, less crime.

An Unusual Pro-gun Ruling From An Unusual Source

Here are two posts on the legality of illegal aliens owning guns here in the United States. In the first post, Olivia Murray, at the American Thinker is outraged. I can't say I blame her, for the government seems to be doing everything in its power to make it more difficult for citizens to own guns. But here they are practically giving illegal...note ILLEGAL...aliens gun rights. Murray's post can be found at Obama-appointed judge rules that the 2A applies to an illegal, and he has a right to keep his illegally-possessed firearm.

The lawless free-for-all created by the political establishment and an apathetic voting class has me seriously considering renouncing my American citizenship—just think about all the possibilities!

You don’t pay income tax. The government hands you prepaid debit cards loaded with thousands of dollars. You get “free” trips to swanky enclaves like Martha’s Vineyard, only to be treated like guests of honor. You’re provided with “free” room and board at high-end hotels, or you’re given the leeway to squat in an American’s home. And now, leftist judges tell you that you have Second Amendment rights which cannot be infringed upon, and you can keep your guns no problem, even if you were breaking the law with them—I mean, these are perks and privileges we second-class real citizens aren’t afforded.

...snip...

But for some reason, Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, an Obama-appointed judge of the Northern Illinois District Court, decided that the text of the Second Amendment applied to Carbajal-Flores, ruling in favor of the illegal being able to retain his personal firearm(s).

...snip...

I think she got it a little backwards—this amendment was written so that citizens could arm themselves to repel an invasion… it was never meant for arming the invaders! Furthermore, how did an illegal even get a gun, since he’s not allowed to buy one, especially in Illinois? I thought the state had strict gun control measures in place to ensure that criminals (every illegal is automtically a felon) didn’t get their hands on firearms?

Perhaps I am reading Murray wrong here, if so I apologize. But I detect an undercurrent of belief that this Obama-appointed judge is simply trying to create ever more chaos in order to "tranform the United States" into a facsist system, with those who are superior to us rubes clinging to our guns and religion. What if it is true? Or, the judge may be applying Bruen hyper-exactly thinking to show up the Supreme Court.

The second post is at Bearing Arms by Tom Knighton entitled Gun Ban for Illegal Immigrants Ruled Unconstitutional takes a more face value approach to the ruling. Knighton notes that the founding documents were based on a theory of God given natural rights, possessed by every human being no matter where they were.

But that brings about the question of illegal immigrants. Do they forfeit their rights when they enter the United States illegally, or do they maintain their rights as they've not actually been convicted of a felony or anything else?

For a long time, the official line is that they don't get to have guns. Period.

Yet a federal court has decided something quite differently.

The Second Amendment protects people’s ability to own a gun even if they’ve entered the country illegally.

That’s the ruling handed down by US District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman on Friday. She found the federal prohibition on illegal immigrants owning guns is unconstitutional, at least as applied to Heriberto Carbajal-Flores. She ruled the ban did not fit with America’s historical tradition of gun regulation as required under the Supreme Court’s landmark New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling.

“The noncitizen possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” Judge Colman wrote in US v. Carbajal-Flores. “Thus, the Court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.”

The ruling is the latest fallout from the new standard for Second Amendment cases set in Bruen. Since the landmark case was decided in 2022, a wide swath of state and federal gun restrictions have come under increased scrutiny in the courts. Among the most commonly recurring questions raised by the new standard is who can be barred from owning guns, and the Carbajal-Flores case is among the first to examine whether people who entered the country illegally are among them.

Judge Coleman, a Barack Obama appointee, initially found the gun ban for illegal immigrants was constitutional back in April 2022. However, she agreed to reconsider the case in light of rulings from the federal appeals courts in the Third and Seventh Circuit that questioned whether those convicted of non-violent crimes could be permanently disarmed after the High Court handed down Bruen in June 2022. She concluded breaking misdemeanor immigration laws alone is not enough justification to strip somebody of their gun rights under the new test.

“[C]arbajal-Flores has never been convicted of a felony, a violent crime, or a crime involving the use of a weapon. Even in the present case, Carbajal-Flores contends that he received and used the handgun solely for self-protection and protection of property during a time of documented civil unrest in the Spring of 2020,” Judge Coleman wrote. “Additionally, Pretrial Service has confirmed that Carbajal-Flores has consistently adhered to and fulfilled all the stipulated conditions of his release, is gainfully employed, and has no new arrests or outstanding warrants.”

Knighton comes down after some discussion to the notion that by coming across the border illegally, illegal immigrants have put themselves outside the political community, for whom the 2nd Amendment was written. I suspect that this ruling will eventually be overturned.

True Masculinity

 I don't usually just have a video to watch, but this video at Townhall.com by Larry O'Connor is must see. The video can be found at Chief's Kicker Harrison Butker Drops Some Truth Bombs About Masculinity.

We hear so much about supposed "toxic masculinity." It does exist, particluarly in gang culture. But there is also true masculinity that provides leadershipby example, that sacrifices self for others. That sort of masculinity is what Christ showed the world. Gentle people, please go watch it.

Disrupting Terrorist Plans

At Bearing Arms today, Tom Knighton has piece entitled Terrorism Is A Threat. Constitutional Carry Is The Solution. He notes that much of the protection of society at large depends on police, fire departments, and the military. Each of these units can be factored into terrorist plans. They can get inside the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop and overwhelm them. What they cannot factor in is the random armed citizen. They don't know where he or she may turn up.  They don't know what he or she will do. He is not a professional, so is unpredictable in every way.

If you want to combat terrorism, there are a lot of things you shouldn't do and trust that it'll keep the bad guys off balance.

For example, gun control.

Terrorist networks can get around any anti-gun restriction you care to throw at people. They can move personnel and munitions across the globe with relative ease, so they'll bypass all the restrictions you want.

Knighton goes on to cite Lee Williams at the Gun Writer blog, who noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned of the terrorist threat:

Wray’s warning, however, was dire. He told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that known or suspected terrorists were infiltrating the country across the wide-open southern border using counterfeit documents. One of the smuggling networks, he said, has ties to ISIS. Add to this the thousands of unknown border crossers from countries that hate us, and the more than 80,000 military-age males from China, and you have a terrorist hellbroth just waiting to bubble over.

...snip...

We should thank Director Wray for his timely information and for his candor. This is precisely why we have fought so long and so hard to restore our Second Amendment rights, so that law-abiding Americans no longer have to bend a knee and beg the Crown to sell them back their constitutional rights in the form of a permit to carry defensive arms. Constitutional carry levels the playing field, making it easier for the good guys and gals to lawfully carry arms.

In the 29 states that now offer some form of constitutional carry, when a terrorist rears their ugly head — be they a card-carrying ISIS member or a lone-wolf jihadist — Americans can take immediate action without waiting for First Responders to arrive, assess the situation, plan and then respond.

Let us call the hordes of illegal migrants coming across our Southern and now Northern border exactly what it is: an invasion. As such, this is exactly what our Second Amendment was designed for. Our governments, at all levels have studiously ignored the militia, in hopes, one supposes, that we would just forget about it. But here we are, and in at least 29 states, armed citizens of the unorganizeed militia could be anywhere at any time. They can therefore disrupt any plans the terrorists make.

Pray, Vote, Prepare

 I have run this story before, but new data has come to light, and it bears repeating in any case.  The government, never your friend, is spying on you, and particularly on people considered in opposition to the regime.  Of course, the Constitution prevents them from spying directly, but, if they can get the banks and other corporations to do it, or get a sister agency in another country's government (Five Eyes) to do it, and just hand it to them, well then...  It is still illegal.  They can not get another party to do something they have no legal right to do.  But they are doing it anyway.

Larry Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has the story at Ammoland entitled House Committee Tackles Federal Government Weaponization. Keane has helpfully included video of the hearings conducted by U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government delved into questions of why the federal government spied, and lied, about the lawful purchases by Americans by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The U.S. Treasury admitted that it collected information on Americans’ purchases of firearms and ammunition, shopping at several sporting retailers, including Cabelas, and even tracked people using search terms that include “Bible.”

The admission came by letter to U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) just one day after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen refused to answer questions from Congress if the surveillance occurred.

The letter would appear to implicate the federal government with violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights protecting against illegal search and seizure, as the activity was conducted without a warrant.

Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) laid out in his opening statement the grave concerns Congress has with this intrusive and potentially illegal search and seizure of Americans’ private financial data.

I will admit that every time I read about this I get in a state of cold fury. I am well beyond white hot, to cold. That this goes against the very document all these administration people took and oath to defend and protect should be obvious. Between censorship, and combing our bank records looking for gun purchases and and things like Bibles...Bibles?...violate the first, second, fourth and fifth, and probably the ninth amendments. This si just so outrageous. Since the process is done secretly, nobody knows if he is being targeted, so no standing to sue. And Congress holds hearings, but does little else, while the courts often display a cowardice that is appalling.

I pray that we can stop the Democrat-fascists before it is too late, but the hour is late. The Democrat-fascists will do anything to gain total control. Of course, vote, prepare, and pray.

Another Gadsden Flag

Intreped investigative journalist James O'Keefe is at it again. This time O'Keefe Catches DoD Official Stating Support for Mass Gun Confiscation according to Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms.

Investigative journalist James O'Keefe released his latest undercover video on Wednesday, in which a Defense Department official named Jason Beck detailed (among other things) his distaste for gun ownership and his belief that the Second Amendment should be repealed. Beck, who works as an Associate Director, Total Force Requirements & Sourcing Policy in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's office, went so far as to tell O'Keefe that the National Guard could be tasked with rounding up the 400 million or so firearms in the hands of American citizens.

"I wonder if you would see a similar solution to like, school integration," Beck mused. "You know, where they did have to mobilize the National Guard."

"How many people in the National Guard, you know, maybe were personally opposed to integration, but still followed orders and made it happen," he continued.

...snip...

What Beck wants to see is far more akin to what Faubus did than Eisenhower's decision; using the military to block the exercise of a fundamental right instead of ensuring that right can be exercised. Of course, that's right in line with the Massive Resistance to the Bruen decision we've seen from blue state governors like Gavin Newsom, Kathy Hochul, and Phil Murphy; who have defied the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen just like their fellow Democrats did in the deep South with Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s and 60s.

It doesn't surprise me that a D.C. bureaucrat, even one who works in the Department of Defense, has such contempt for his fellow Americans that he thinks it would be a good idea to call up citizen soldiers and demand they carry out a mass confiscation of firearms. According to an October 2023 Gallup Poll, almost half of all Democrats nationwide support a ban on handguns, and I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Democrats in the D.C. area would be in favor of repealing the Second Amendment.

O'Keefe's latest undercover investigation may not be all that shocking but it's still a timely reminder of the disdain that's endemic on the left when it comes to our right to keep and bear arms, not to mention the dystopian fantasies they have of disarming tens of millions of American citizens. Not by themselves, of course. They'd task others with doing their dirty work for them. Beck might have revealed himself to be an idiot when it comes to mass gun confiscation, but based on the video he's smart enough not to want to be the one knocking on the door of a home and demanding the residents inside hand over their firearms.

The Left is as old as humanity itself, and these people have always believed that they are special. In ancient times they claimed to be the sons of gods. They believe that they are wiser and more knowledgable, and better able to direct the lives of the rest of society better than anyone has done it before. Nevermind that they haven't really studied actual history, the Bible, the canon of Western civilization, or human nature. That last can be deduced from the fact that they uniformly believe that man can be perfected and they can bring about heaven on earth. Either that or they are cynical liars trying to convince us to willingly give up power.

Just as in the previous post, this report by O'Keefe should be understood by the Left as another Gadsden Flag

MTG Warns Dems "Don't Push To Far"

 Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms asks Did Marjorie Taylor Greene cross line with Second Amendment comment? Lt's have a look, shall we?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. In her brief time in Congress, she’s managed to ruffle a lot of feathers, and not just among Democrats.

However, she’s always been a vocal supporter of the Second Amendment.

A couple of days ago, she laid out why the Founders made sure to preserve the right to keep and bear arms when she addressed some of Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and her espoused positions on various issues.

Greene noted:

While not in agreement with Abrams’ stance on vaccinations, Greene then transitioned and moved onto the gubernatorial candidate’s stance on guns and the Second Amendment saying, “The next thing she talked about was grabbing people’s guns. She hates Georgia’s Second Amendment rights. She wants to stop constitutional carry,” Greene said.

Greene continued, offering advice to Georgia’s current governor and state lawmakers, urging them to pass and sign legislation to combat Abrams’ call for “grabbing people’s guns.”

She went on to say, “Ultimately, the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and gives us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government,” she said. “And I hate to use this language, but Democrats, they’re exactly … they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.”

Now, to most of us, this looks like Greene warning us that Democrats are acting tyrannical and reminding Democrats not to push things too far.

Sounds like it to me as well. But some Democrats took umbrage at her remarks. As Knighton says, it sounds like an "if the shoe fits" situation. Just like the colonials who flew the Gadsden flag, Greene was saying to the Left "Don't Tread On Me." Gentle readers can read the entire post. More people need to speak out. And Greene, as a member of Congress has a special platform. Good for her.

F-15s and Nukes, Oh My

 Mike McDaniel has a post at the American Thinker entitled How to provoke a real insurrection.

What’s the best way to provoke an insurrection, a second civil war? Try to disarm Americans.

Lawmakers should pass gun restrictions in order to prevent an “insurrection,” an academic paper argues.

This sort of totalitarian, anti-constitutional thinking has long been part of Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) Party doctrine. They’re hot for preventing “gun violence” and “insurrection,” unless it’s against their political enemies: Normal Americans. Then, they’re ready to use F-15s and nuclear weapons, as Fang Fang bang bang Congressman Eric Swalwell said in 2018

Swalwell isn't the only one who is talking about strafing and bombing fellow citizens on American soil. Biden has said it several times. If anything, it shows how out of touch these people are. The idea that anyone in authority could ever authorize the use of such weapons on our fellow American citizens seems unbelievable. Sure we may have differences, but do these differences mean that the Government can declare war on half the population?

The truth of the matter is that it is the Democrats/socialists/communists who are doing everything in their power to provoke an insurrection. It isn't normal Americans, who want the Constitution to again be the law of the land, to live under the rule of laws that are applied equally to everybody, to defend our border and (again) follow the law. Also, I think we all want them to stop talking about "Our Democracy" because it was never a democracy.  As John Lott has noted:

Concealed handgun permit holders are “extremely law-abiding” and make up an insignificant portion of violations, John Lott told The Fix via email.

The Crime Prevention Research Center president said permit holders are convicted of firearms violations at thousandths or tens of thousands of one percentage point,” across the country. He pointed to a study he conducted that was published several month ago.

In particular, Lott took issue with the violence on January 6, 2021 being the basis for any gun regulation. “January 6th was not something anyone supports,” Lott told The Fix. However the evidence would seem to indicate political violence as stemming mainly from progressives he said, pointing to the 2021 Lafayette Square riot and the 2017 riots during President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

He also criticized the recommendation that people not be allowed to carry guns in polling places or government buildings. He shared a study, last updated in 2021 that found “23 states officially allowed people to carry guns in state capitols, and there were no problems reported,” Lott said.

He shared other research he conducted that questioned the value of “red flag laws.”

“If a person is a danger to themselves or others civil commitment laws are much better ways of dealing with these problems,” he told The Fix.

What I believe, but can not prove, is that the Democrats, most of them, have been bought off by the globalist international communists. Not a few Repbulicans have also succumbed. Our "representatives" no longer represent us. They instead represent their masters who have bought them. So it is no surprise they see us as "the other" and would use F-15s and nukes on us.

Keep A Gun or Two At The Ready

 Kurt Schlichter recently wrote a book with the title The Attack attempting to warn people that Muslim sleeper cells are likely (that's 99.9% probable) already in the United States. These sleeper cells are already programed to carry out their mission with no command and control necessary. Through the device of first person accounts he illustrates just what damage such cells can do including killing thousands of us, damaging our supply chains and infrastructure. I have so far read about 70% of the book, and it is terrifying.

Now, FrontPage Magazine adds a layer of authenticity to Schlicter's book, in a piece by Clare Lopez entitled Are Ramadan Jihad Cells Already In the U.S.? Gentle readers can read the entire article, which features both Eric Prince of Blackwater and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas. But the central idea of the article comes here:

Epoch Times show host and reporter Roman Balmakov interviewed Erik Prince at the March 2024 CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference. During the interview, entitled “Terrorist Sleeper Cells Are Already in the U.S.,” Prince told Balmakov that one reason he believes the Biden administration is so reluctant to strike back in any meaningful way against Iranian terror proxies — much less any Iranian target itself — is that the Iranian regime has already surged unknown numbers of military fighters across our wide-open southern border.

Prince suggested that such fighters — whether Iran’s own IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), Quds Force, or proxy jihadis from HAMAS, Hizballah, or Houthis — could be flown on Iran’s Mahan Air from Iran to Venezuela.

Then from there, they could head north through the Darien Gap that lies between Colombia and Panama, and then on up to and across the U.S. southern border.

Combined with other hostile military forces already certainly here, to include Chinese Jungle Tigers and Hezbollah cadres, these forces are likely forming cells, conducting pre-attack casing, surveillance, and training, and getting ready to launch combined attacks inside the homeland later in 2024, or should the U.S. do anything to upset Iran’s mullahs.

Meanwhile, over at the American Thinker, Raymond Ibrahim has an insightful essay entitled How Carnage and Atrocities Heal Muslim Hearts that tells us from yet another perspective that we can expect another jihadi attack, probably of fairly large proportions sometime in 2024.

In a recent communiqué, the Islamic State called on its followers to slaughter and terrorize every single Western person they could reach. A snippet follows (emphases added):

Lions of Islam: Chase your preys whether Jewish, Christian or their allies, on the streets and roads of America, Europe, and the world. Break into their homes, kill them and steal their peace of mind by any means you can lay hands on. ... Solidify your plans and diversify the attacks: detonate explosives, burn them with grenades and fiery agents, shoot them with bullets, cut their throats with sharp knives, and run them over with vehicles. A sincere person will not lack the means to draw blood from the hearts of the Jews, the Christians, and their allies, and thus ease the suffering in the hearts of the believers. Come at them from every door, kill them by the worst of means, turn their gatherings and celebrations into bloody massacres, do not distinguish between a civilian kaffir [infidel], and a military one, for they are all kuffar [infidels] and the ruling against them is one. ... Intentionally seek easy targets before hard ones, civilian targets before military one, religious targets like synagogues and churches before others, for this will satisfy the soul.

Of curious interest here is not so much the sadistic though ultimately hackneyed calls for carnage, but rather the claim that torturing, terrorizing, and tearing infidels apart somehow “eases the sufferings in the hearts of the believers” and “satisfies the soul.”

Such claims are actually derived from Islam’s most sacred text. The Koran exhorts believers to “fight them [those who oppose Islam], Allah will torment them with your hands, humiliate them, empower you over them, and heal the hearts of the believers, removing the rage from their hearts” (Koran 9:14-15).

Again, I urge gentle readers to read Ibrahim's full essay. The point, however, is not to panic. Never panic. Rather, it is to be as prepared as you can be for what will likely happen. Have food and water on hand. I suggest canned meats such as tuna, corned beef and Spam. Find a local source of eggs. Keep a supply of canned vegetables. Have plenty of bottled water, blankets, and other stuff you know you will need. But don't invest too much in those freeze dried products. Keep a gun or two ready, with plenty of ammunition. Have any medicines you need around in sufficient supply for at least a month. You know what you need. Then, pray to our LORD God that he protects you and yours, but just as importantly, pray for the jihadis too. They have been duped by the devil into believing that Satan is god. He wants to sit on God's throne. It is a story as old as the snake in the Garden of Eden.

Government Must Prove Arms are NOT in Common Use

 Mark W. Smith, the host of the Four Boxes Diner Channel, writes today to tell us that the government bears the burden to show that an arm is NOT in common use in Spoiler Alert: 'Assault Weapon' Ban ~ Government Must Prove That Weapons Are NOT In Common Use.

Bianchi challenges the constitutionality of Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban, which seeks to outlaw the AR-15, among other semiautomatic firearms.

Tellingly, the original Fourth Circuit panel in Bianchi seemed poised to issue a pro-Second Amendment ruling, but before that occurred, the Fourth Circuit took the case en banc likely to avoid the possibility of such an outcome.

Bruen instructs that the constitutional inquiry starts with the text of the Second Amendment. This means that, at the outset, a lower court must determine whether the object of a firearm’s regulation is an “arm.”

At this first step, Bruen instructs that the burden is on the party challenging the firearms regulation to show that the item being banned is an “arm.” Heller defined “arms” as “weapons of offense or armor of defense.” There is no doubt that AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles subject to the Maryland ban are “arms,” which means that the burden shifts to the government to show that the arms it seeks to ban are not “in common use” by Americans for lawful purposes (or are dangerous and unusual).

Bianchi is an “arms ban” case in the same way that Heller was an “arms ban” case, which struck down D.C.’s ban on owning a handgun, was an arms ban case. Heller provides the constitutional test to be applied by the lower courts in arms ban cases, and that is the “in common use” test.

There is a reason that the Fourth Circuit in Bianchi asked the parties to address when the “in common use” test comes into play.

If the “in common use” analysis occurs at the plain text level (text-first), the burden would be on the pro-Second Amendment plaintiffs to demonstrate that an arm is in common use. If, however, the inquiry occurs at the historical level (history-second), the burden rests on the government to prove that an arm is dangerous and unusual.

The anti-gun movement desperately wants the “in common use” analysis to occur at the plain text level where the party challenging the firearm regulation has the burden, but that is entirely contrary to the Supreme Court’s holding in Heller. How do we know? It’s plainly obvious from the decision itself.

Well, I have already given the probable outcome with the "spoiler alert." If this goes to the Supreme Court, as seems likely, the Court will very likely instruct the Fourth Circuit that the government that wants to ban arms must prove that the arm in question is NOT in common use. Of course, the gun grabbers want to make the argument about just how common is "common use" because such wrangling distracts from the real issue.

Courts seem reluctant to allow citizens to exercise the rights granted to them by God, and acknowledged by the Constitution. What these courts betray is a lack of belief in citizen's rights. These tyrants apparently believe that rights are granted by government, and therefore government can take them away. Such judges, at the very least should be impeached.

The Fascist Far Left Finds a "Workaround"

Some may have seen infamous Face the Nation interview with ATF Director Steve Dettlebach in which one of the ATF's "top experts" couldn't disassemble a Glock pistol (snicker, snicker.) Or you may have seen a later recording of it on one of the gun blogs. For anyone who is familiar with guns, and the ATF should be, don't you think, it is all very funny. But D. Parker at the American Thinker noticed something more sinister in a post entitled When leftists love profiling.

New FBI special agents have an important moral and ethical component to their training, culminating in a tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. to see what happens when law enforcement loses sight of what is right. It was started more than two decades ago by then–FBI director Louis Freeh, and in 2005, Director Robert S. Mueller said the training has never been more relevant.

“At a time when law enforcement must be aggressive in stopping terror, these classes provide powerful lessons on why we must always protect civil rights and uphold the rule of law,” he said.

The same article had a relevant quote from a new FBI agent participant:

“They did an excellent job of showing how the law enforcement in Nazi society was complicit,” said Lucas, a new special agent, after the program’s conclusion. “It’s important to try to be aware of all the circumstances around you and make sure nothing’s crossing the lines, and remember why we’re really here.”

All of this has fallen on deaf ears. What we all suspected, but didn’t want to believe, has been confirmed in congressional testimony on a new violation of our constitutional civil rights, with the FBI following in the footsteps of the Gestapo. What’s even worse is that the far-left predilection for deception is causing some on the pro-freedom right to miss the point.

All joking aside, the point is right here:

Unfortunately, far too many in the firearm freedom community were distracted by the rookie mistakes made by people who purport to know about firearms technology. They missed a dangerous and authoritarian admonition from the director, where he said that firearms dealers shouldn’t sell a gun to someone paying cash.

Now why would the Director of the ATF do that? If you look on the front of a typical Federal Reserve Note you will see in small print "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE." So if a gun dealer refused to sell a gun to someone paying cash, he is recommending something illegal. But of course, there is more to it than that:

FBI whistleblower George Hill prompted the yearlong investigation by testifying that Bank of America, unprompted, gave the feds the names of customers who used their cards in the D.C. area Jan. 5–7, 2021, “overlaid with any firearm purchase at any time,” said Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

The feds told financial institutions to search transactions using Merchant Category Codes (MCCs), such as gun-related keywords and firearms retailers Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shop, and the interbank Zelle network for alleged Jan. 6-related keywords such as “MAGA” and purchases like “religious texts” to identify potential “homegrown violent extremism,” the report says.

...snip...

If you’re keeping score at home, note that the fascists of the fringe far left are first and foremost gun-grabbers — they love guns, but only in their hands — but aside from that, the Second Amendment is always in their sights. Beyond that, they are just trying to shred the Bill of Rights by the numbers, censoring free speech, arresting journalists, and attacking freedom of religion.

Their weaponization of government is just their workaround for the Fourth Amendment. Unconstitutional “red flag” laws are a combined attack vector for them against the Second and Fifth Amendments, with some others thrown in for good measure.

One way or another, they are going to find out who has the guns. If it is illegal, and it is, to build a database, they will access bank credit card records to surveille you. Never mind that that they are breaking the fourth and fifth amendments. That is just a bonus. But I would remind the deep state that if something is illegal for the government to do directly, it is illegal for them to coerce someone else to do it for them.

Why You Need an AR-15

 Over at PJ Media, which you can access from Townhall.com Kevin Downey, Jr. has a piece entitled 57,000 Reasons -And Counting Every Day - Why You Need an AR-15. So many reasons! If Downey listed all 57,000, the article would be a book length tome. But Downey doesn't have to list them one by one. He just points out that so far 57,000 and counting is the number of military aged Chinese men who have crossed our Southern border. And for anyone who has been living under a rock for the past decade, the Chinese Communists have made us the enemy, and are determined to defeat us. Even now they can not overcome our military, as weak as it has become, but the Chinese are masters of unconventional and asymmetrical warfare. Why do you think they are coming here?

I don't want to sound like an alarmist but that part of the oath our military, police, and politicians take that mentions "enemies foreign and domestic" might be more than just a phrase.

When Gropey Joe Biden isn't fighting to keep the borders open or flying 320,000 illegal immigrants to our airports at all hours of the night, he is doing his dementia-best to disarm We the People, especially of those big, scary AR-15 rifles.

FACT-O-RAMA! Your pink-haired pinko-in-law likely thinks the AR in AR-15 stands for "assault rifle." It stands for "Armalite rifle." Armalite is the company that originally designed the weapon.

No one knows how many illegal immigrants from China have tangoed over the border and disappeared into our society. The numbers I heard last were roughly 37,000 in fiscal year 2023 and 20,000 more since then, for a total of roughly 57,000, but that was three weeks ago.

Roughly 150 Chinese immigrants illegally sneak into the United States every day. Most are men of military age. What's even more concerning is that the far-left apparatchik "fact-checkers" are defending the tsunami of military-aged Chinese pouring over the border. When the dubiously named "Politifact" tells us we don't need to worry about the Chinese invaders, it's time to wake up.

When those multi-tasking "Marxist-Americans" are allowing record numbers of Republic-crushing illegal immigrants into America while simultaneously trying to Hoover up our AR-15s, I start to smell a stink badger in the perfume aisle.

After writing that he doesn't want to be an alarmist, he presents us with a big alarm warning. You can imagine what 57,000 and counting men can do in terms of documenting soft and hard targets to damage our ability to defend ourselves. And while we are trying to fix our infrastructure, they come in and impose the CCP on the American People. And that is why you need to prepare things like food, water, energy, and of course have an AR-15 or two and plenty of ammo for each. And if your AR-15 is 5.56 Nato instead of .223 Remington, you can use ammunition supplied by the military if need be.

The next part is secret, so shhhhh:

Why are the lefties after those dreaded AR-15s? Perhaps because the commies at the top of the Xi-heap know what's coming and want those pesky weapons purloined. And what better way to do that than to whip up their Pravda dupes in the mainstream media and get them to induce a manic panic in their green-haired street urchins?

I've proven the AR-15 is the least-used weapon for murderers. The Ruger Mini 14 is comparable to the AR-15 (if you aren't into "bells and whistles"), and some people find it to be a superior firearm, yet the easily controlled Bolshies haven't even heard of it.

As I said, the Ruger Mini-14 is a secret. So mum's the word, right? Gentle readers should read the whole article, but don't panic. Instead, prepare. Because the current administration is determined to let these people in to destroy the country. Why? Again, I think it is because as long as the United States stands, it is a rebuke to Marxist dictators everywhere.

The Left Would Rather Demonize than Debate

Tom Knighton, at Bearing Arms has post entitled Feds Lump Gun Rights Supporters with 'Violent Extremists'. This is just another attempt to make the targeting of law-abiding gun owners seem legitimate to the those who are not themselves gun owners. They want to make being a gun owner seem icky, not something "nice" people do.

The term "violent extremists" isn't what it once was. It's hard to recognize such a term when it's used to describe people peacefully protesting while it's not used for people burning down neighborhoods and calling for law enforcement to be defunded or eradicated.

But a lot of people don't really follow that. They see the news and trust the journalists for some silly reason, or they trust the government when they tell them something, for some equally silly reason.

Those folks figure "violent extremists" are people who will use violent actions to potentially hurt or kill people in pursuit of a cause that simply can't win in the legislatures.

So if you find you're part of a group that's been lumped in with violent extremists, you might get a bit miffed.

Prepare for miffage, ladies and gentleman, as it seems we humble gun rights supporters are akin to actual violent extremists according to the federal government.

Federal law enforcement lumped together conservative positions on guns and immigration with violent extremism in guidance given to financial institutions to help them monitor people’s transactions, a congressional investigation found.

The House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization Subcommittee released a report Wednesday detailing the efforts by federal agencies and large financial institutions to surveil Americans’ private financial transactions in the wake of the January 6 protests.

...snip...

“This FBI intelligence product, along with other materials shared by federal law enforcement, detail the extent to which federal law enforcement derisively viewed American citizens,” the report states.

“Federal law enforcement used this report and materials like it to commandeer financial institutions’ databases and ask the financial institutions to conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes.”

The intelligence brief suggested that outside “pressures” prompting domestic violent extremists (DVEs) to engage in political violence including “firearm legislation, the easing of immigration restrictions, and new limits on the use of public land.”

Gentle readers can read the whole post. The point is that rather than admit that there are two sides to the gun debate, the Left would rather demonize gun owners, conservatives, Christians, and anyone else who disagrees with them.

The Climate Lies About Beef

 John Klar explains why The biggest climate lie is about cows. He explains it better that I can, but essentially cows are large ruminants, much as buffalo are. The fertile soil of the Great Plains was created by generations of buffalo pounding their hooves into the soil along with plant matter, urine and manure. When grazed instead of being being fed grain on a feed lot, cows do the same thing, building the soil and sequestering greenhouse gases.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced that people would have to stop eating hamburgers because cow flatulence was an existential threat to life on Earth, most people duly chuckled. Nevertheless, AOC’s call for cow-culling was taken up by the United Nations, European Union, World Economic Forum, and “Climate Envoy” John Kerry. Protests defending farming in Holland, Ireland, and Belgium opposed these bold attacks on gentle bovines. Contrary to slanderous arguments by globalist fearmongers, cows are the solution to many of humanity’s most significant environmental problems. Here’s why.

The fertile American heartland was created by buffalo. Hooves pounding the land pressed plants into the ground to mesh with manure and urine, feeding the soil microbiome and nurturing vital soils. The advent of human technology tore into the ground in reckless tilling, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the air and depleting soil health while proclaiming a “Green Revolution” that initiated the slow desertification of the land. Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, and GMO chemical adjuncts have compounded and aggravated the problem.

Note, the above speaks to cows grazing, as God intended, eating grass, processing the grass through four stomachs, where the cow's microbiome slowly digests it to turn it into proteins and fats. Yes, cows due burp carbon dioxide and methane, but these gases are just recycled gases that are again taken up by growing new grasses. On the other hand, cows kept in concentrated animal feed operation (CAFO) actually produce more methane and CO2, as well as other destructive products:

Cows fed grain produce less methane than cows on grass… unless one includes the pollution generated by planting, seeding, harvesting, and processing all that grain. Atrazine, glyphosate, neonicotinoids, and a bevy of other toxic chemicals and fuels are immediately eliminated from the cow-feed pipeline when cows are fed grass only. Grass blades are God’s solar panels — truly renewable, converting the sun’s energy into edible meats through the bodies of livestock, without building a concrete prison or tilling the ground.

The focus on cow methane is a deliberate ruse by “manure-deniers.” Cows produce methane through enteric fermentation, but they also generate manure and urine that nurture soils, which in turn absorb methane and carbon dioxide through microbial activity, prevent soil erosion and water loss, and improve the soil microbiome and thus crop productivity — all without the toxic intrusion of the U.S. chemical industry.

If cows are eliminated and replaced with synthetic meats, we are told the environment will benefit: yet the opposite is easily demonstrated. Synthetic meats are “cultured” in vats using plant matter as a growing medium, likely soy and/or corn. That soy and corn will be produced using the same destructive GMO practices that are destroying America’s farmland.

Manure can only be replaced with more synthetic fertilizers, particularly urea (nitrogen), which is made from natural gas (aka methane). Urea production gives off nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas identified by the EPA as having a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 273 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Please read the whole article. Klar knows whereof he speaks. Interestingly, most of the land in this area of North Carolina is better suited to grazing cattle than for growing crops. I would also note that humans have been eating large ruminant animals for 3 million or more years, while we have been eating vegetables for only the last 10,000 years. If you have ever been hiking in the woods, have you ever seen any vegetables commonly seen in the supermarket? No? That's because they don't exist in the wild, and what does exist is so limited, man can not live all year on vegetables. Besides, man can not derive nutrition from leaves and grass. We are not ruminants. Instead, we are predators, and need meat to survive. Further, we can derive every vitamin, mineral and the macronutrients in just the right rations to thrive.

Climate Alarmism Backfiring

 Gabriella Hoffman has an article at Townhall.com entitled Climate Catastrophizing Finally Backfiring on Radical Environmentalists. I say from Hoffmans voice to God's ear. I have been waiting for this for twenty-five years.

Bloomberg writes Americans appear to long for Trump administration-era energy policies and European right-wing parties skeptical of Green New Deal policies are gaining traction ahead of their June parliamentary elections.

"Part of the reason the political winds are shifting is that climate regulations, as they ramp up in stringency, are starting to impinge more on people’s daily lives — at a time when many feel squeezed by inflation and the cost of living,” the report observedd.

With respect to our country, Americans care deeply about the environment and want clean air and clean water. Who doesn’t? What turns people off from environmentalism, naturally, is putting nature above people and guilting us for traveling, driving cars, eating red meat, and simply breathing.

Normal Americans of course want a clean environment. They want a clean environment for the children and future generations as well. But everything in life requires a balance between competing goods. One must evaluate what one desires against what is possible, what is affordable as well as what one must give up to have the desirable thing. This is what normal people do when evaluating anything. In addition to that, one must consider other budgetary items like food, shelter, utilities, insurance, maintenance and other considerations. No one has time to elevate just one thing over everything else.

Gentle readers can read the whole article, and whatever you do, don't eat ze bugs.

The Left Tries to Frame Christians As the Mythical "Christian Nationalists"

 I have commented in this blog that one cannot be a Christian and at the same time be a Marxist, a Communist, Fascist, Socialist or any of the other branches from the tree of Marx.  Why is that?  Because at heart, Marxism requires allegiance to the State uber alles. But Christianity demands that you are loyal to, and love Christ above all. As He noted, one cannot serve God and mammon. Our Constitutional Republic was explicitly set up as being under God, not in place of God. Marxist systems of government attempt to replace God with the state. As Mussolini put it: "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Today, at the American Thinker Wolf Howling (a pseudonym, of course) has a tour de force essay taking us back to the French Revolution and the modern beginnings of Devil's re-emergence entitled Christian Nationalism: The American Revolution Versus The French Revolution. Both of these revolutions occurred within decades of each other at the end of the 18th century. Each though had fundamentally different philosophical underpinnings. The American revolution had the Bible, and writers such as John Locke. The French Revolution disdaining the Bible, held up human reason as the ultimate good. It was consciously atheistic.  In essence, the French Revolution committed the Original Sin of putting man on the throne of God.

Howling starts his article by pointing out what most Christians believe, that God granted man certain inalienable rights - rights that a legitimate government is duty bound to protect:

Christianity stands athwart neo-Marxists’ over-arching goal of creating an all-powerful government, free from any competing moral or ethical authority. Because America was founded on Biblical principles, neo-Marxists have to drive Christianity from the public square and uncouple America’s founding from its Judeo-Christian roots. The left’s latest effort has been to attack “Christian Nationalism.”

If you are a believing Christian or Jew, you are likely mystified about this newly made-up class of “Christian Nationalists.” According to Politico’s top reporter, Heidi Przybyla, it is a small subset of Christians—evil ones—who want to establish a theocracy. The defining characteristic of this subset of evil Christians is that they falsely believe that God Himself grants each person immutable rights to life, liberty, and property.

Furthermore, we believe that if the government orders us to do something against the Commands of our God, we should resist. I would note that this is the basis for the idea that soldiers should not follow orders blindly but should weigh the legal and moral ramifications of their orders. Just following orders did not absolve the Nazis of their crimes.

The concerted scaremongering against Christian Nationalism carefully avoids discussing the Bible and for good reason. The overarching messages of the Bible are morality, the sanctity of individual life, and the necessity of impartial justice. Indeed, one of the first commands God gave the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land was to create courts of law to administer “true Justice for the people.” He emphasized that the Israelite judges “must not distort justice; you shall not show partiality… Justice, and justice alone, shall you pursue…” (Deuteronomy 16:18-20).

Here I would disagree to some extent with Howling. The moral law presented in the Torah are certainly the Commandments of God, as exemplified in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). But as Paul wrote, the Law exists to convict every man as a hopeless sinner. No one can escape, and one cannot do enough good works to merit salvation. But God sent his very own Son into the world to live as one of us, but commit no sin, and to die a brutal and horrible death by execution on the cross for the sin of the world.  By faith in Christ and through the grace of God, we may hope to be saved.  This was God's plan from the very beginning, in Genesis. Even so, it is Christ's resurrection that gives us hope that we too may one day be with Him.

The Torah presents us with both the moral law and the ceremonial law. Christ, by his death and resurrection on Easter abrogated the ceremonial law, but the moral law remains. A rightly ordered Christian's first loyalty is to God. A rightly ordered government preserves its peoples' rights under God.

While Howling leads us through a brief history of the philosophical thoughts leading up to each revolution, he closes with these paragraphs:

The canard of “Christian nationalism” comes from the atheist path that brought the Enlightenment to a bloody end with the French Revolution. Virtually all modern society’s ills can be traced back to that Revolution, which birthed socialism and a modern police state with absolute power. Naturally, the first thing the French radicals had to do to remake society was rid the nation of a competing system of morality and authority—i.e., Christianity—and this they did with brutality and bloodshed. George Neumayr explained,

"The secularists of the French Revolution regarded the Roman Catholic Church as the last obstacle to atheism’s final triumph. Blurting this out, the French dilettante Denis Diderot proposed to his fellow revolutionaries that they strangle the last priest with the “guts of the last king.”

The French Revolution’s legacy has been a disaster for humanity. Over 100 million people died in the 20th century because of communist, socialist, and fascist police states unmoored from Judaism and Christianity. Moreover, the children of the French Revolution, people such as Michel Foucault, a gay pedophile, and Herbert Marcuse, have overtaken the West’s ivory towers and poisoned the West with postmodernism, critical theory, DEI, and atheism.

And now, the French Revolution’s legacy gives us the utter canard of Christian Nationalism. It is a charge that relies on historic illiteracy to redefine our nation. It must be fought tooth and nail, for the stakes could not be higher.

As I said at the beginning, Wolf Howling's essay is a tour de force and can not be digested fully without also looking into the many, many links. You will know some of them, but there are others that we new to me at least. Please read the whole post. Christ demands we fight, mostly with our spiritual weapons: our prayer, our confession, our liturgy and communion. But it may sometimes demand our physical weapons as well. Pray, and keep your powder dry.