NC Legislators Blow Chance to Pass Constitutional Carry

 Of concern to those of us living in North Carolina, Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms reports that NC Lawmakers Adjourned Without Taking Action on Constitutional Carry. While simply permitting the concealed carry of firearms by all qualified citizens was a necessary step, the ultimate goal has always been Constitutional carry.

You can never trust a government that does not trust you to have a gun. Keep in mind that criminals carry guns concealed wherever they go, despite being prohibited from even possessing a gun. Keep in mind that the gun-grabbers have always had the goal of confiscating all the guns from legal owners, and a permit system merely gives them a convenient database to start going after them. Oh, have I said the quiet part out loud. Sorry, but that is the way it is. So, yes, Constitutional carry was on the to-do list of Grass Roots North Carolina. We don't know that the Republicans will retain a veto proof majority and certainly Republican Mark Robinson's governorship is in doubt. So it would have been nice for the Republican majority to have taken this up and passed it.

SCOTUS Striking Down Chevron Makes the Marxist Government Harder To Achieve

At Bearing Arms today, Cam Edwards has the good news that ATF Rules in Trouble After SCOTUS Strikes Down Chevron Doctrine. The Chevron Doctrine was the court invented notion that the three letter agencies should be given deference in their interpretation of the law when challenged by citizens and corporations. There is no Constitution basis, of course, for either the three letter agencies or for giving them any special deference, or indeed for the whole administrative state.

The Supreme Court may not have delivered the opinion that gun owners were hoping for in the Rahimi case, but on Friday the justices gave Second Amendment advocates new ammunition to use in their fights against the ATF's rulemaking abuses by overturning the Chevron Doctrine.

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, et al, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority that the doctrine, which requires courts to defer to federal agencies so long as they offered “a permissible construction" of a challenged statute even if it was not “the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding,” is no longer operative.

Instead, the majority held that "The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous."

I will leave it to the lawyers among us to determine the intricacies of the ruling. Perhaps David Hardy of the blog Of Arms and the Law will have more on this ruling after he has a chance to chew on it.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, in its amicus brief noted:

"ATF often expects Chevron deference in litigation,which is extraordinary given that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental constitutional right. Such enumerated rights are “[p]remised on mistrust of governmental power.” Given that Second Amendment rights can be exercised only if individuals can lawfully obtain a firearm, it is astounding that the government would request or receive deference on laws regulating the exercise of such rights. But that is precisely what happens frequently with Chevron regarding federal firearms laws, often at the request of ATF."

"... Chevron’s outsized influence is witnessed when ATF interprets other federal gun-control provisions. Even when adjudicating immigration cases, some courts afford deference to ATF’s interpretation of who qualifies as an illegal alien under 18 U.S.C.§ 922(g)(5)(A), even though ATF has no expertise in immigration matters. On occasion, other federal agencies will receive the same deference under Chevron that ATF typically enjoys, such as the Board of Immigration Appeals regarding whether an alien here on a student visa falsified information when filling out a Form 4473to purchase a firearm."

We can hope that this ruling will tamp down, at least, the constant threat of the Biden administration to ban this or that formerly legal gun or weapon devise. I have seen threats to ban so-called "assault weapons," magazines with various cartridge capacities, even all semiautomatic guns of whatever variety. One of the latest is a ban on Glock firearms because someone has devised the "Glock switch" that makes them fully automatic, but, of course, also makes them less accurate.

If we had a Constitutionally based government, the sort of regulation the government would be doing would be specifying how many 5.56 NATO rounds each citizen militiaman should have on hand for his M4 or M16 rifle and how many 9mm he would keep for his Baretta 92 FS pistol. Not trying to ban such things. Furthermore, banning guns for the purpose of reducing crimes is like banning forks to reduce obesity. If a man is willing to prey on his fellow citizens, he will find a way, as he always has since man first walked the earth. No, the reason they are so desparate to ban guns is so they can ram down our throats the Marxist government they desire. We can not let them.

Telling the Truth Without Saying a Word

 I've got to get ready for work very soon, so let me leave gentle readers with this piece from the American Thinker by Lewis M. Andrews entitled How to Help Recovering Progressives. I have noted many times here that one should not repeat a lie that one knows to be a lie. It demoralizes you if you do, and that is the strategy of the Left. For if they can get you to tell the lie, they have you.  But if you have been telling lies, you can stop, repent, and begin to tell the truth. It is never too late. But you don't always have to call out the person lying to you, as Andrews makes clear:

It was Winston Churchill who once said, “You can always count on America to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other options.” I don’t know about all the other options, but when it comes to progressive ideology and its various manifestations -- net zero environmentalism, Critical Race Theory, anticolonialism, DEI hiring programs -- the country does seem to be gradually coming to its senses.

...snip...

More recently, it has become clear that a large number of voters have reevaluated just how much they want to sacrifice to end the use of fossil fuels. Not only has President Biden’s misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022 to provide hundreds of billions in electric car subsidies, failed to produce a demand for such vehicles, but is widely viewed as responsible for both the recent bout of inflation and the Federal Reserve’s unwillingness to lower interest rates. Tellingly few constituents complained in early June when Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin determined not to abide by California’s Clean Cars II standards, which require 35 percent of new passenger automobiles sold in 2026 to be either electric or hydrogen fueled.

Even some liberal journalists have begun turning against their own colleagues for excessively hyping a woke agenda. On April 9, National Public Radio’s senior business editor Uri Berliner wrote "I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust," in which he described NPR’s evolution from an institution founded to provide listeners with multiple viewpoints to an instrument of left-wing propaganda. And in May, former New York Times correspondent Nellie Bowles published Morning After the Revolution, which, among other things, details how young journalists are constantly pressured by their editors to attack conservatives and to treat any criticism of progressivism as “right-wing fascism.”

...snip...

Not that one had to be belligerent or confrontational to have a liberating impact. (Indeed, being too outspoken in the old Soviet Union could lead to arrest, a career demotion, or even a death sentence.) All that was necessary, Solzhenitsyn and his fellow writers believed, was to subtly acknowledge the other person’s own half-conscious doubts with a bemused smile, a blank stare, a cocked eyebrow, or some other gesture of disapproval. In effect, to magnify the authority of the unspoken against what was being said.

As Solzhenitsyn himself put it in “The Smatterers,” defeating a flawed ideology “doesn’t mean going around preaching the truth at the top of your voice.” It “doesn’t even mean muttering what you think in an undertone.” It simply means not allowing one’s passivity to imply consent. In other words, “don’t say or let stand what you don’t really think.”

So, there you have it. You don't always have to shout at the other person. Indeed, destroying him on the spot may just harden his heart toward your way of thinking. Don't ask how I discovered this.  A gesture of disapproval may be enough to set him thinking, and repenting. Try it today.

The Great Awakening Continues

 Kurt Schlichter has an article at Townhall.com today entitled Fake Conservatives and Status Quo Parties Are Falling In Britain and Around the Globe that acknowledges the fact that people around the world are waking up to the danger of the fascist far Left. The media use a term that needs explaining though, and Schlichter is on to this. The terms "conservative" and "right" are different here and in Europe. "Conservatism" here means conserving the values embodied in the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence. A conservative in England would be for maintaining the monarchy. Clearly that is not what we generally thing of as "conservative." Where both types of conservatives may have similar goals is in terms of Christianity. On both sides of the pond, conservative Christians believe we should walk by faith and follow the commands of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

The British Conservative Party, and I use the term “conservative” very, very loosely and solely because that is the actual name of the allegedly right-wing British party, is about to get destroyed in an election. And it should. It’s terrible. It’s conservative the way Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin are, which is not conservative at all, and its target voters are tired of it. The Tories had a huge victory just a few years ago, a shattering triumph that turned previously Labour seats into Conservative ones. And, of course, the wets – that’s Brit for “RINO” - squandered the chance to re-Thatcherize Old Blighty. Now, the Reform Party, Nigel Farage’s populist crew, stands a chance of winning seats and could conceivably become the opposition party. This is important to Americans not because Britain is a particularly important power anymore – under the Conservatives, their military has shrunk to the point where the British army could fit comfortably within the Pasadena Rose Bowl – but because what happens over there shows what might have happened here but for Donald Trump and the populist movement taking over our Republican Party.

Some commentary describes this reversal of fortune for the conservatives as bucking the trend. After all, we see leftist parties failing all over the globe. The German leftists are about to lose the next round of elections while their allegedly hard-right party grows in popularity. The upcoming elections stand a significant chance of putting an allegedly hard-right government in power in France. Italy elected a right-wing government – their popular president was the one who had to wrangle Biden in when he wandered away at the G7. Trudeau’s communists in Canada are about as popular as a chancre sore at an orgy. And in America, it looks like our leftist party is about to lose to Donald Trump and his populist movement.

But it’s not correct to look situation at this in old-school liberal vs. conservative terms. What’s happening is not a move towards classic conservatism but a rejection of the status quo regardless of the label of the temporarily ruling party. The old parties on both sides become unresponsive to the needs of the people, instead taking diktats from Davos. In each of these countries, including our own, it’s an ossified, unresponsive, and exhausted ideology that’s being rejected in favor of a more energetic populist movement that is providing answers to the problems that the establishment parties refused to touch for fear of being called racist and not being invited to cocktail parties.

Frankly, I suspect that as the Davos bunch has taken off the mask and let the world see what they really want to do, that people discovered they don't like any of it one bit. The WEF claims that they need to get rid of 8.5 billion "useless eaters." So, they are encouraging children to geld themselves by "gender affirming care." They are encouraging people to abort their children. Was COVID part of this push to eliminate us too? Sure looks like it.  They also want to restrict the food supply presumably to starve us to death. Even people who are not attuned to such things can see that this is pure evil. Indeed, Klaus Schwab could have been the inspiration for Michael Myer's portrayal of Dr. Evil though Myers claims he was not.

The claim by the WEF that "You will own nothing and be happy" rings to the average person as completely hollow. For if a person literally owns nothing, he is at the mercy of the good graces of others. He becomes like a street side beggar, with no place to lay his head down at night, no place to raise a family. One thus lives day to day, depending on the help of others, who may not be so disposed.

All this is why they are so desperate to take guns out of the hands of the average person. If Biden believed that you would need F-15s to defend yourself from a tyrannous government, he wouldn't care that you had guns. But he knows what 300 million guns in the hands of Americans may mean, and he doesn't like those odds.

Let us hope that the governments of the West are turned upside down this year, including in the United States, and we begin to reverse the damage the fascist far Left has done to us.

These are dangerous times

Over at Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards has a post entitled Doctors For Responisble Gun Ownership Slams Surgeon General's Anti-Gun Activism. Biden's Surgeon General on Tuesday declared that "gun violence" is a public health emergency. First of all, I would question what difference is there between so-called 'gun-violence' and any other form of violence? After all, knife, sword and axe violence are just as deadly, or why did armies carry these implements into battle right up to the revolutionary war? The problem of violence is not treatable by doctors with their pills and surgery. And what is termed "gun control" which usually means banning certain target weapons is not the answer either.  The problem is both a criminal justice matter and a matter of the human heart, which is corrupt from birth.

Dr. Robert Young, director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, says Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's call to treat "gun violence" as a public health crisis is pure politics, but it's also part of a decades-long effort on the part of gun control activists to use the healthcare industry to push their agenda.

...snip...

That was Young's first reaction to Murthy's announcement on Tuesday. The head of DRGO says Murthy's been on his radar for well over a decade, back to the days when Murthy was heading up Doctors for America/Doctors for Obama.

"Doctors for Obama was vehemently anti-gun," Young reminded Bearing Arms, noting that even back then the group was calling gun violence a "public health epidemic". So why did Murthy wait until his second go-round as Surgeon General to use his bully pulpit and call on lawmakers to adopt gun bans, "universal" background checks, "red flag" laws, and more?

"He's been Surgeon General now for three years and not a peep out of him about this. Suddenly when, I suspect, the Biden campaign is starting to realize it has to pull out of all of their stops to get their recliner-bound candidate re-elected, it's time to make an issue of this and see if you can stir up the base this way."

It may be that this is Murthy's attempt to help Biden's campaign by stirring up Democrat voters to come out for Biden. Certainly nothing is going to originate in the House of Representatives to support his call to arms. But do not discount that Biden may put out an executive order, which he knows will be struck down by the courts. But he can still do a lot of damage with it while it is making its way through the courts. And they, and we for that matter, have discovered that a lot of Americans will obey even if they don't agree. These are dangerous times.

Another Liberal Mugged By Reality

 I've got to run some errands, but let me alert gentle readers to a post by Olivia Murray at the American Thinker today entitled 'Card' carrying liberal professor undergoes radical transformation and becomes a gun enthusiast. As I have been saying all along, the Second Amendment is not just for some, but for all of us. Democrats need it as much as Republicans. Liberals need it as much as conservatives. Which makes the Democrat push for the banning of all guns (yes, that is what they ultimately intend) so very dangerous.

David Yamane’s new book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture, hit shelves on June 1, and Robert VerBruggen writing a review for The Washington Free Beacon had a great lede:

"David Yamane is, by his own description, a ‘‘card-carrying liberal’ Asian American sociology professor from the San Francisco Bay Area who, for the first forty-two years of my life, never saw, touched, or fired a real gun.’ The first time he saw a deer stand, he remarked to his companion that it seemed like a ‘weird spot for kids to build a fort."

Now, I’d like to quickly point out that Yamane was seemingly voting (Democrat) this whole time—talk about an offense to the rest of us—despite not being able to distinguish a deer stand from a tree fort and having never even seen a firearm in person. Supreme ignorance, baseless confidence, and a zeal for using government to force agenda capitulation upon others into their agenda? A hubris known only by a modern leftist!

So, what changed this liberal anti-gun individual into a liberal pro-gun person? He had a run in with a potentially violent man with a knife. In a moment of clarity, he apparently realized that if the man with the knife wanted to hurt of kill him or his loved ones, he was totally helpless to stop him.

There’s a chasm of difference between how anti-gun “liberals” and leftists view firearms, and how those who exercise their right to keep and bear arms as a means of self-defense and security do—and I just partly gave it away. Historically, given their actions, the left views firearms as offensive tools of aggression and mayhem, or, to oppress and force compliance with a political agenda; conservatives on the other hand view firearms as defensive tools of protection. One group consistently misuses guns, while the other group consistently uses them appropriately.

Guns are the great equalizer, giving a smaller, weaker individual a level-playing field against someone bigger and stronger who wants to infringe on the former’s unalienable rights...

Gentle readers are encouraged to read the rest of Murray's short post. It is enlightening. My personal reading list is getting very long, but I will consider getting David Yamane’s new book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture. If I do get it, I will share my further thoughts.

Are the Voters Fed Up Enough?

 Today at the American Thinker J. B. Shurk has an article taking a broad look at the question: Will Voters Turn the World Upside Down?. He is not only looking at American voters, but voters in France, Germany, and Great Britain. Interestingly, the "deep state" in each of these countries is poised to blunt the effect of these voters, who are fed up with what their self-appointed "elites" have been up to.

So the Great Awakening continues apace. All over the West, men and women who simply want to be left alone are concluding that their governments will not let them live in peace. Woe to any Establishment hobgoblins who believe they can sabotage their home nations without paying a price.

After having failed to implement Brexit or curtail mass illegal immigration during their last decade and a half in power, Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives appear destined for extinction-level losses in the U.K.’s July 4 general election. This regrettably means that Labor’s champagne socialists will seize Parliament’s suicidal reins and drive that once great nation deeper into the ground. But in the background of Great Britain’s self-immolation is the resurgence of Brexit champion Nigel Farage, who enjoys unprecedented support for his Reform Party. Because the U.K.’s Deep State has refused to honor the terms of Brexit, the British people are ready to overturn the whole system. July 4 — what a lovely day for a revolution!

Emmanuel Macron, the Rothschild banker and diminutive king who married his grandmotherly schoolteacher, will likely suffer electoral humiliation of his own in France’s legislative elections over the next two weeks. The Napoleon wannabe — who speaks snobbishly of European empire and prefers to be photographed while kitted out in the latest boxing fashion — called for snap elections in a stompy-foot hissy fit after the French people handed him heavy losses in the European Parliament vote earlier this month. Just as Le Petit Fromage seems to believe that he can convey strength by staring menacingly at stationary punching bags, Macron thinks his political hubris can transform almost certain defeat into chance victory. The French people, on the other hand, are fed up with mass illegal immigration, rising crime, and deteriorating standards of living (common complaints throughout the West) and are not particularly enthused about the growing prospect of a hot war with Russia. It is difficult to persuade French citizens that they should rally around their tricolor flag and defend Ukraine’s borders when French aristocrats continue to lecture the peasants that national borders are so passé (another common complaint throughout the West).

Of course, the granddaddy of imminent political earthquakes is the (cross your fingers, throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder, turn around three times, and whisper, “MAGA-MAGA-MAGA”) likely return of President Trump to the White House. Oh, I know the Democrat Deep State will continue to do everything it can to rig the election in November (even if it has to throw the MAGA Man in prison and wake up half the dead people in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Phoenix to “vote”), but political polling in the United States continues to show Iron Trump with substantial leads over Horse-Glue Biden. If the United States didn’t have a third-world election system devoid of voter identification and rife with mail-in-ballot fraud, the propaganda press would already be grudgingly admitting that Biden’s re-election hopes are as dead as a doornail. Since Dementia Joe is the president for dead voters, though, and because he managed to “win” fifteen million more votes than the progressive demigod Barack Obama did during his re-election campaign, the Fascist Bureau of Intimidation and the Department of (in)Justice are still telling everyone, “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.” As Hans Gruber would say, “You ask for a miracle? I give you the FBI.”

Shurk points out that the COVID pandemic (which was real, but not as bad as the government made it out to be, and which the evidence indicates came out of the Wuhan lab) was a dry run to determine how much the totalitarians can get away with before people begin to balk. Americans failed that test.  They should have revolted right away.

The chief purpose of the West’s COVID police state, after all, was to give the Establishment’s technocratic totalitarians several years to hunt around for things in society that looked free-ish, so that any residual safeguards against their authoritarianism could be promptly euthanized. In Marxist globalism’s build back better dystopia, it’s kill or be killed. And if the West’s obsession with war, economic devastation, unreliable electric grids, unrestricted immigration, assisted suicide, vulnerable food supplies, abortion, and experimental “vaccines” has proved anything, it is this: the Establishment Blob really enjoys killing things.

Right now Deep State assassins throughout the West have set their sights on free speech. As the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab would readily tell you, it is incredibly difficult to be a successful Bond villain when ordinary Westerners are allowed to say mean things. Americans, Brits, and Germans cannot be permitted to express outrage when politicians allow dangerous illegal aliens to rape and murder their children. Farmers cannot be permitted to protect their nations’ food supplies from rabid “green”-energy fanatics intent on delivering global famine. Voters cannot be permitted to vote out all the Marxist globalists dedicated to foisting biometric surveillance and central bank digital funny money upon the masses. Don’t the little people understand that the important people must protect “democracy” by censoring dissent, abrogating property rights, rigging elections, and subverting popular sovereignty?

Gentle readers are urged to read the whole article. As usual, Shurk packs a lot of information in a small package. I could quote the whole thing, but of course you could also just go read it for yourselves.

As Long As Our Elected Leadership Identifies the Wrong Targets, Our Military Leadership Is Lost

 First up today is Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com with Do You Feel the Draft? Schlichter notes that a number of our self-appointed betters and "elites" are talking about reinstating the draft to fill the ranks of our military.

We keep hearing rumblings from our garbage ruling class about how not enough of our citizens are signing up for their progressive army to fight climate change, transphobia, and, occasionally, in defense of the United States. But defending America’s borders is apparently racist, so we’re not going to do that. The problem is that the normal Americans who make up our military, or used to make up our military, are no longer making up our military. Veterans are nearly unanimous – vets are telling young people to stay the hell out of our broken military. It’s a disaster. It can’t win a war. It’s become an engine of supercharged social pathologies. And, according to Joe Biden, he will use it against you and your families if you get uppity.

Sign me up!

My granddaughter got a letter from the Naval Academy offering a free ride if she would pole vault for them. Once upon a time, not so long ago, that would have been an opportunity not to be missed. Today, not so much. She decided to take a scholarship from Davidson College instead.

There’s talk about automatically registering people for the draft since 18-year-olds are no longer registering. There’s also talk about registering women. What there’s no talk about is whether it’s a good idea to register women. Apparently, the idea of drafting women is self-evidently good, even after we watched a whole bunch of Israeli females kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and raped for the last eight months. No, we’re not supposed to talk about that. We’re just supposed to sign on the line, raise our hands, and go die where we are told to for reasons that are never explained.

...snip...

Yeah, there’s a whole lot of trouble out there in the world, and suddenly, the Pentagon has figured out that it doesn’t have enough bodies available to meddle in all these potential quagmires. It’s not going to be too long before we see the garbage ruling class solemnly determining that we’ve got to shanghai American citizens into the Armed Forces and impress them into service of their globalist agenda. The volunteers just aren’t volunteering. Hard to believe woke ads about feelz and hugging are not stirring the souls of tomorrow’s Rambos.

Their bogus appeals to our patriotism ring hollow. Is that the patriotism where our government targets veterans as extremist threats? The government that ignores duly passed laws to reimagine America’s demography by refusing to enforce our immigration laws, or where the alleged president illegally decrees that our troops will get to pick up the tab for the slackers’ gender studies degrees? The government that conspires to silence free speech and persecute patriotic protesters while letting communist rioters go free? The same government that is trying to frame and imprison the presidential candidate who patriots support?

Normal patriotic citizens would be eager to sign up to defend the United States of America, but not so much the skin suit USA we have now.

I remember when the volunteer military was instituted on July 1, 1973. The problem with an all volunteer force was that many people did not grow up knowing anyone who had been in the military. Moreover, if we had needed a large army, we would have been under considerable stress training that many people. But after the Vietnam fiasco, many people welcomed the change. Schlichter certainly thinks the all volunteer force worked pretty well and I can't dispute him on this. The problem is that people are not volunteering anymore.

You must force them into service if you can’t talk them into joining. The military is now so poorly led, untrustworthy, and weak that no one wants to be a part of it. Why would they? Our military leadership has fully embraced the shibboleths and obsessions of the ruling class. DEI, the climate hoax, and all that crap are the priority. Killing the enemy isn’t. There are still many good people in the military, but they won’t be there for long. They’ll leave. And their sons and daughters will not join.

I’m a vet. I know a lot of vets. And I don’t know any of them – I mean not one – who is encouraging a son or daughter to join our military under the present leadership.

The Pentagon leadership is strategically inept. It can’t win major wars. It is totally in thrall to the social pathologies of the left. Who wants to take commands from a man in a dress? The senior officer corps is an absolute disgrace. Senior commanders are being relieved left and right for toxic leadership – try googling “toxic leadership military commanders” and look how many links come up. The command has zero credibility after the COVID disaster in which the military leadership utterly betrayed the troops. You can argue with it, and you can say that people should follow orders to take experimental drugs to prevent a glorified cold, but what you can’t do is expect the people you are forced to do that or forced out of the military entirely to ever trust you again.

Our military leadership has lost our trust and respect. They refuse to learn because they have no incentive to learn. There’s no accountability. After the disaster of Afghanistan – with everything from our troops being blown up to people falling off airplanes to military dogs being left to die in cages on the airfield – not a single general officer was relieved. Instead, the Pentagon was high-fiving itself over what a great operation it was and what a huge success Kabul Airport turned out to be. No wonder no one trusts our military enough to put their lives in the generals’ and admirals’ hands.

So, the answer from the ruling class will be to force normal people to join it, and it will only be normal people who get drafted. It’ll be your kids and mine. It’s not going to be their kids. Kaden and Ashleigh will get a deferment to go to the University of College and study the Decolonialization of Gender while your kid is getting waxed in a war in a place you can’t even pronounce. Oh, maybe there will be some goofy national service scam where the fortunate sons, daughters, and non-binaries can read bedtime stories to kindergartners, but that’s for them. The war and the blood and the death are for your kids. That’s what a draft means. It will not be any more fair or equal than anything else in modern America.

Schlichter tells us the absolute truth here. It reminds me of 1 Samuel when Samuel tells the Israelites what a King will be like:

“This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.”

The fact of the matter is that if our military leadership concentrated on defeating our enemies and potential enemies instead of tilting at windmills, they would have all the numbers they wanted, the best and the brightest. But we cannot have a military leadership that is worth anything unless our elected leadership identifies the correct targets. As long as they cling to "climate change" and "white supremacy" as our he military is lost.

The Microstamping Scam

Mike McDaniel today at the American Thinker has an article entitled The microstamping scam. If you have been keeping up with the gun news, you have periodically heard of microstamping. The idea of microstamping is that each gun used at a crime scene leaves a tiny identifying mark on the casing of every bullet fired. On paper it probably sounds like a good idea to an anti-gunner. But there are practical problems as well as legal ones.

Among the never-ending attempts of anti-liberty/gun cracktivists to deprive Americans of their unalienable Second Amendment rights are various microstamping schemes. Microstamping requires leaving a unique imprint on the primer of a cartridge case. The only potentially workable means of doing this is laser engraving the tip of a firing pin with very small letters/numbers. Some microstamping schemes demand a second unique imprint, but on the expended case as well as the primer.

What, you might ask, is the point? Is microstamping a valid crime fighting tool? No. The point is making firearms more expensive, and harassing law-abiding gun owners in any way possible. In my law enforcement career, I never solved a case through fingerprints, nor was I aware of anyone that did. Trying to solve a crime with a microstamped primer would be even less productive.

The practical problems:

The second imprint method has never been proved even remotely viable, so we’ll stick to the firing pin method. Primers are not uniformly hard, even those from a single manufacturer, so imprints are iffy. A dirty gun might make no imprint. It would take only a few minutes with an abrasive to remove the laser engraving, and microstamping schemes apply only to semiautomatic handguns, which eject expended cases as part of the firing cycle. Revolvers do not.

The legal and Constitutional issue:

Any microstamping scheme is of necessity a gun registration scheme, because without a massive national database containing an image of a microstamped case from every gun in America, there’s no way to identify from which gun that case came. For now, it’s against federal law for government to maintain a gun registry, which doesn’t mean government isn’t trying to do it under the radar. Even so, the only case images they’d have on file are from semiautomatic handguns manufactured after a federal microstamping law went into effect. Hundreds of millions of handguns would be unaffected and essentially untraceable.

Even if a criminal doesn’t file the engraving off a firing pin, all they have to do is replace the firing pin, use a revolver, or stop a few seconds to collect their expended cases. Even better, they can visit a range, collect a variety of cases, and spread them around their crime scenes, sending hapless police on wild goose chases.

I have never thought that microstamping schemes could work. Given millions of guns are bought every year, each with its own unique number scheme. Stamping that on a small pistol primer that is one fifth of an inch in diameter. Of course, dirt could foul the microstamping. Excessive wear of the firing pin leave incomplete markings. The firing pin could be filed down, or it could be replaced. I suspect that many anti-gunners actually believe that microstamping is a viable way to catch criminals. But the people making such laws know better. They just want to make guns more expensive, harass gun owners, and possibly create a backdoor registration scheme.

Louisiana May Have Found the Way to Put the 10 Commandments Back in Schools

 Louisiana could have found the way to get the 10 Commandments back in schools according to Scott Hogenson at Townhall.com entitled Unpacking the 10 Commandments. Hogenson points out that the 10 Commandments are the moral code for the three Abrahamic religions. But more than that, other religions like Hinduism have similar precepts. Even more, no tax money will be used in making posters for schools and other government buildings.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is spoiling for a fight. Landry on Wednesday signed into law a bill that requires the posting of the 10 Commandments in the state’s K-12 classrooms and colleges receiving state funding. Landry, the state’s former attorney general, said when signing the bill, that he “can’t wait to be sued,” by the usual suspects, which have already launched an all-out legal assault on the new law.

Their claims are familiar to many of us. One coalition of organizations quickly announced their plans to sue the state, saying in a statement, “Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools.” Meanwhile, Azhar Majeeda, the government affairs director for a group called The Center for Inquiry, argued that the law, “is meant to impose Christianity on all students in Louisiana’s public schools, even if they belong to a minority religion or no religion at all.”

Who knows what the "intentions" of the legislation really are, but would it be so bad if basic morals were taught to all students? Wouldn't it be refreshing if students as a rule addressed their elders as "sir" and "ma'am"? Wouldn't it be nice if more people thought that stealing things was wrong, murder unthinkable? Sure, the 10 Commandments are taught to all Christians, but also to Jews. And while some Muslims don't seem to have read them, they are part of Islam.

Historically, the First Amendment was never intended to create a "wall of separation" between government and the church. It was intended, as stated quite clearly in the Amendment itself to prevent the Federal government from establishing a state church and to prevent that same government from prohibiting the free exercise of that religion. If anything, the founders had in mind Biblically based religion. We know these things because that was what they said, and because the first U. S. House of Representatives was opened with a prayer to God.

Louisiana is promoting a millennia-old collection of law recognized by the 4.2 billion-plus people who practice Christianity, Islam or Judaism. That’s more than half of Earth’s population, so it’s difficult to support claims of one religion being preferred over another. But are the 10 Commandments an affront to people of other faiths? Perhaps, but probably not. Buddhism has its 10 Precepts of morality. Hinduism believes in a number of similar rules, most paralleling those revealed to Moses. Sikhs follow their own code of 10 Principle Beliefs. All told, these beliefs apply to about 78% of all the people in the world.

...snip...

While the Louisiana law requires the posting of the Commandments, it doesn’t compel taxpayers to underwrite the cost of doing so. The legislation requires that posters be paid for with private donations. Pacifists can complain about their tax dollars paying for wars but atheists can’t make the same argument about the 10 Commandments in government schools.

Gentle readers are asked to read the whole article. There is a lot unpacked they in a short article

Archbishop Viganò Confronts the Pope

 I do not know how many of you have followed what is happening to Archbishop Viganò, but he is the former Nuncio (meaning ambassador) of the Vatican to the United States.  He has been outspoken in his criticism of Pope Francis, whom he calls by his given name of Bergoglio.  Part of his criticism has been the Pope's handling of the sexual assaults and encouragement of the gay mafia by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.  Victoria White Berger at the American Thinker brings us the story at Archbishop Vigano` faces off with the Pope.

As some Catholics know, Archbishop Viganò is a hero in the eyes of many who do not enjoy the spectacle of Pope Francis’ continual and seemingly ongoing reversal of Catholic teaching and law. The hyperpolitical, leftist Pope has been, by his own words, engaged in irreversibly (he hopes) and increasingly modifying (according to his own predilections) the Catholic Church since he took papal office. Sound like anybody you know?

Viganò has been called back to the Vatican to face trial and excommunication. He has done nothing but cling to classic Church teaching. What he is really being tried for is for his vocal criticism of the Pope, who deserves all that Viganò has said and written about him. In truth, it used to be a joke asking if the Pope is Catholic. Today it is a serious question. And judging by Martin Luther's trial on similar grounds, I would say that justice here will not be served. Pray for Archbishop Viganò

On the Threat from China

Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker in an article entitled Is the Chinese Military a Potemkin Village? points in turn to a Red State article by Joe Cunningham entitled Is The Chinese Military Crumbling Under Xi? Seems Like It... Gentle readers are encouraged to read both articles. But keep in mind that the Chinese military is still a major force. Quantity has a quality all its own, and the Chinese have quantity. According to Cunningham:

The Chinese President is calling for “deep reflection” among his military forces as he renews his focus on corruption, which has plagued China in recent months. His call comes after what the Wall Street Journal describes as a "purge that has brought down more than a dozen senior generals and defense-industry executives."

This sounds an awful lot like the saying that "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Apparently when the Chinese tried to test fire a missile, they discovered that the missile was filled with water rather than fuel, and the money for the fuel had been pocketed by officials.

This is a bad look for China. Back to Widburg:

I agree with Cunningham that Xi’s concerns reflect a real issue rather than being a communist chief’s periodic reminder to the military about who’s in charge and the fate that can befall those who run afoul of him. No doubt they all know that, in 2016, Kim Jong-un executed two of his senior officials using anti-aircraft guns. Despots don’t like being made to look bad.

Here are my three reasons for believing Xi isn’t just posturing but is actually worried:

1. China’s former one-child policy, which resulted in a huge surplus of males, also resulted in a surplus of weak men coddled by their families. These children, who came to be known as “little emperors,” are risk-averse and non-competitive, and the young men are neurotic.

In other words, even though China still recognizes the sex binary, it has its own version of the soy-boy personality in its society, and that’s going to affect its military.

2. Communism breeds corruption. As we see in America’s institutions—everything from the government to our own military to academia—merit is no longer a factor in advancement. Instead, ideological correctness is the primary consideration in leftist systems. However, a system dominated by the ideologically pure rather than the competent inevitably collapses under its own weight. The mission gives way to in-fighting and profiteering.

What’s happening to the Chinese military now is a foretaste of the imminent collapse of our own institutions unless they’re put back on a merit track.

3. Communism breeds substandard quality. When merit has no reward, people do substandard work. We see that in every product that comes out of China. The artisans, craftsmen, and small farmers who once labored to produce the best for their own pleasure and economic benefit have been wiped out in a country that’s one giant factory assembly line. You do enough to get by and not one iota more. Chinese equipment looks great, but it’s still built in Chinese factories.

Again, we’re seeing this across America. There is no room for an individual’s pride in his work when he is a widget in a state-focused rather than an individual-focused system.

While I agree with Widburg that Communist dictatorships encourage a number of negative character traits including fear, coercion, corruption and so forth, Capitalism untied to morals breeds greed, and the Chinese have taken full advantage of our CEOs' greed and that of our politicians. We would have to beg China for the parts to maintain our military. This is not sustainable. Years ago when the Army switched from the Dress Cap to black berets as covers, the Army ordered the new berets from China. China may not be in good shape, but then neither are we.

The Limits Of NC Gun Storage Mandates

First up today is a story out of my state of residence, North Carolina.  We have, in NC a gun storage mandate.  Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms has the story at NC Appeals Court Rules Gun Storage Law Doesn't Apply to Unloaded Firearms.

A North Carolina appellate court has thrown out a woman's conviction on manslaughter and other charges, ruling that she didn't violate the state's gun storage law because the firearm accessed by her teenage son and a friend was unloaded when it was left unsecured.

According to the Tulsa World:

"On July 2018, Cable's son had another boy — both of them 16 years old — over at his house for the night, according to case documents. At 2 a.m., her son went in the bedroom of Cable and her husband as they were sleeping and retrieved an unloaded .44-caliber Magnum revolver that authorities say Cable possessed and a box of ammunition, both laying on top of an open gun safe."

"The son showed his friend the revolver and placed it and the ammo on the top of a gun safe in his bedroom. The friend then asked the son if he wanted to play Russian roulette. The friend quickly put a bullet in the revolver, pointed it at himself and fired, dying instantly, the documents said."

Edwards continues

What a nightmare for everyone involved. I'm sure that Cable and her husband trusted their teen to be responsible around firearms, given that her husband is a gunsmith. Unfortunately, it sounds like their kid succumbed to peer pressure, and a life was needlessly lost as a result.

While North Carolina law states, in part, that "any person who resides in the same premises as a minor, owns or possesses a firearm, and stores or leaves the firearm (i) in a condition that the firearm can be discharged and (ii) in a manner that the person knew or should have known that an unsupervised minor would be able to gain access to the firearm, is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor", the appellate court ruled that an unloaded firearm can't be discharged, and therefore doesn't fall under the storage mandate.

I agree that this is a great tragedy all around. And the friend's parents no doubt want someone to blame. But the Appeals Court here has found correctly. No doubt Grass Roots North Carolina is watching this case closely as this is likely to spark the legislature to tighten the language. But gun storage mandates should not be one size fits all propositions. For instance, what about people who have no children? Should they be subject to a law that is designed to protect children? After all, there are attractive nuisance laws already on the books that could also apply in this case.

They Don't Want You to Have a Place to Train

 Touching on yesterday's post, Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms has an article entitled What New Zealand's Anti-Gun Crowd Can Teach Us About Ours. To catch up those who have not been paying attention - and why would you with the wheels coming off here at home - a little history is in order. New Zealand had a gun culture, with modest gun control requirements up until the Christchurch massacre in 2019. The gun-grabbers used that event to convince the legislature to impose horrendous gun control on the whole country. People were required to turn in their guns. Many did. One of the features of New Zealand gun control featured massive regulation of gun clubs. This is where the story now picks up.

New Zealand used to have somewhat OK gun control laws, at least compared to other nations outside of the US. You could have about the same kinds of guns we could and if you had to jump through a few more hoops, it was still possible to get them and use them.

Then the Christchurch massacre happened and all that went out the window.

That left a lot of casualties in its wake. Not Christchurch, mind you, though that did as well. No, the reaction to Christchurch.

One of those was gun clubs, which suddenly were vilified and found themselves under attack. Now, though, some are working to repeal at least some of those restrictive measures. In the process, anti-gunners there are really tipping their hands in ways they probably don't intend to.

In the article at Stuff, which seems to include all sides, gun clubs are complaining that the regulatory burden goes beyond what is needed for public safety and if relief is not given, they will have to close. After all, they point out, the problem was never the legal owners of guns, and especially their members. As here, the 99.9999% pay for the crimes of the 0.0001%. It is like being back in school, when someone throws a spitball at the teacher. The teacher turns around, and because she can't find the one who did it, punishes the entire class with detention. Only this time, they did capture and convict those who committed the crime. Nontheless, they are imposing the sentence on everyone anyway.

The government seems willing to at least consider loosening regulations on rifle clubs, while retaining tight regulation on pistol clubs. But it is the gun-grabbers who spout nonsense for why no gun club should receive any consideration:

Gun Control NZ co-founder Phillipa Yasbek said the problems they had heard about gun clubs, such as noise issues, environmental impacts, and lead pollution, were not addressed by regulation.

There was no obligation for gun clubs to look out for potential extremists or to report them, she said.

“So I don’t think the regulation was necessarily doing a huge amount, except for the ballistic safety stuff,” she said. “Some of [the clubs] have liquor licences.”

Yasbek acknowledged that ranges provided an important place for people to sight their firearms, where hunters could learn to aim their weapons accurately.

While it was better for those skills to be honed at a range, some ranges were little better than a riverbed because they concentrated lead in the area, and became contaminated, she said.

Knighton has some harsh words for Yasbeck though:

Noise issues? Folks are moving into homes next to gun ranges and are then shocked to find out they can hear gunshots? That's on them.

Lead pollution? It takes a whole lot of lead to go downrange before it becomes an actual issue. After all, lead is a naturally occurring substance and tends to occur at much higher levels than you'll find at a gun range.

I don't know what else they're calling environmental issues, but the truth of the matter is pretty damn clear. They just don't want you to have a place to shoot at all.

Therein lies the tie-in with yesterday's post. Kurt Schlichter isn't just telling us to buy guns and ammo. Without proper training on the use of the weapons and the laws concerning the us of those weapons, they are just talismans. The one who buys them and leaves them in the safe is hoping they are somehow magical. Training with the weapons is the point, indeed has always been the point of the Second Amendment.

Your Own First Responder

Today's post is from Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com entitled Joe Biden Reminds Us to Buy Guns and Ammunition. I actually like Schlichter's usual style, but I also like this more straight forward style of writing. By writing in this fashion, he conveys the seriousness of his charge, and it is serious. But I will let him speak:

That crusty old pervert and would-be dictator of ours, Joe Biden, told us the other day – as he does every chance he gets – that our firearms are useless to defend our freedom because he has F-15s. I think he misses the point that the Founders – oh, how our leadership has declined from greatness to the staggering, stumbling, incontinent clown show we have today – intended that we be able to protect ourselves from people like him, not to mention the criminals that he tolerates and encourages. Here’s the thing about senile people – they can’t hide what they really think. They blurt what they really think. And he really thinks that happily turning the military upon us if we defy him is a viable option.

Some weak people will deny this hard truth, but this is not coming from some crazy guy with a plot sandwich board on a street corner screaming about impending doom. This is the observation of somebody who’s listening. The alleged President of the United States is threatening to kill other Americans with modern combat weapon systems for refusing to obey him. Don’t let anyone tell you that you are crazy for noticing.

A lot of us have noticed. In a sense, Americans have already voted with their Visa cards. Americans are buying millions of guns every month. There may be more guns than there are Americans, including our invited and uninvited guests flooding in after Joe Biden threw open our borders to every Third World peasant and aspiring terrorist around the globe. There’s a term for when there’s at least one gun for every single citizen. That term is “a good start.”

But we own nowhere near enough guns. In fact, the bare minimum number of firearms for an individual is three: a solid handgun, a solid shotgun, and a modern combat rifle. We can debate all day about the right pistol or shotgun—in fact, people do debate all day about that—but just buy simple and effective weapons in both categories. I’m sure the comments will be full of your advice, and much of it will be good.

Schlichter again makes the point that everyone should have a rifle, preferably an AR-15 variant capable of shooting 5.56 NATO rounds. These guns can also shoot .223 Remington, but not vice versa. An AR-15 is the perfect weapon for the citizen-soldier. But most of us live in an urban or suburban environment where it is hard to train with such a weapon. In his People's Republic series of books, his main character, Kelly Turnbull carries a Wilson Combat CQB. The "CQB" stands for "close quarters battle." But you don't need such an extravagant weapon. My advice, if I were asked, would be to buy a reliable, concealable weapon like a Glock in 9 mm Parabellum as your first purchase, and get training with that weapon. Practice with it often, and pray you never have to use it. 9 mm is still relatively cheap.

Schlichter makes the same point that I have made, namely that if we were actually following the Constitution and the Second Amendment as written and intended by the founders, civilians could be armed with actual, full auto capable "assault rifles." You know, those no sh** "weapons of war."

I want to make assault rifles – real assault rifles – mandatory for every citizen, but in the meantime, you need to go get one of the civilian versions the Democrats want to ban. The purpose is so that you are ready for combat if the time comes. You have the right to fight thugs trying to rape and/or murder your family and aspiring tyrants who want to turn you into happy campers at the rainbow gulag. That you are armed and capable of defending yourself is a key deterrent to crime and tyranny. It also ticks off the pinkos – gun ownership by free Americans scares the scowling wine women and shames their femmy male-identifying life partners – which is reason enough to buy guns and ammo.

Schlichter also makes the point that at any time, any place, trouble may find you. You don't go looking for it, but you may find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. If that happens, you are your own first responder. No one is coming to your rescue.

The fact is you are your own first responder. We are all our own first responders. You need to get guns. You need to get ammunition. You need to get trained. And you need to get your mind into the mental headspace where you are ready to take decisive action should the situation arise.

It goes without saying that part of your training is to understand the legal aspects of deadly force. This is vital for your protection and for the protection of others. Being armed is a huge responsibility. Having guns is essential. So is ensuring you use them only as a last resort where lethal force is appropriate and lawful. Learn the law in your venue before you arm yourself.

As always, gentle readers, be armed with the most effective tools available to you. A gentleman, or gentle lady, should always be kind, patient, ready to help out a neighbor, but also be dangerous if the need arises. Are you prepared to possible kill another if that person attacks you? Think about it because it may be necessary. Then pray it never will be.

Don't Let The Devil Have You

 We are constantly admonished to be tolerant of certain things that deeply offend God, and shock Christians.  Things like abortion, homosexuality, and other perversions.  Indeed, God is offended by our two tiered (in)justice system, for he says we should treat everyone the same.  But Alex McFarland at Townhall.com says that the term "tolerance" as commonly used is a lie. We should not be tolerant if we truly love our fellow man, but should admonish him in Christian love that he is going down a path that will lead away from God and toward hell. Gentle readers will find McFarland's article at The Tolerance Lie.

When I call out sin, point out errors in interpreting the Bible, or suggest that biology rather than emotions should dictate the discussion on human sexuality, I’m told that I need to be more tolerant. What exactly is tolerance in today’s society?

Tolerance is a manufactured, secular, socially manipulated and weakly constructed excuse for a sentiment. It is not a Christian virtue, a Fruit of the Spirit (Ephesians 6) or a command of Jesus. Only the “sparkle creed” suggests otherwise, and it is not a religious orthodoxy; it is a perversion of a traditional Christian statement of faith.

The "sparkle creed"? What the hell is that? I had to memorize the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and Lutherans say the Athanasian Creed once a year. I have never heard of a "sparkle creed" and it sounds like something out of a kid's cartoon. So, I looked it up. All I can say is that what is written by Mark Waite at Christian.net is a total fabrication and complete rubbish. It is ahistorical. If you want to find out what Lutherans believe, read Luther's Small Catechism. For even more insight, you can read the whole Book of Concord. You won't find the sparkle creed.

Enough of the "sparkle creed" nonsense. McFarland gives several examples of what a loving, Christian response is as opposed to the tolerance response.

Instead of, “Let me help lift you out of your mess,” tolerance says, “I support your right to live as a disaster.”

A life-changing encounter with the Son of God promises, “You don’t have to stay this way, there’s a better, higher Way to live.” Tolerance says, “I embrace the fact that you’re broken. I will agree to underwrite the lie you can't ever change.”

Instead of offering hope, rescue and peace, tolerance says, “I celebrate the falsehoods you've been told. I will also lie and tell you that the fatal, degrading, noxious hell you’re living in is a valid, ‘alternative lifestyle.’”

The recipe for tolerance could be, “two parts guilt, a dash of pity, one part spiritual blindness, with heavy doses of naivete. Mix in all oblivious ignorance available.” It is never the path to freedom; it is a guarantee of further torture, deeper debauchery and spiritual slavery.

Gentle readers are encouraged to read all of McFarland's article. One should never tolerate these things, especially in people close to you. I refuse to call a man a woman no matter that I might be accused of "misgendering." Let others play these games. Does it risk hurting someone's feelings? Of course it does. But isn't it better to risk hurt feelings to potentially help a friend live a better life?

The other side of this coin is that the people pushing these perversions are doing the will of the devil. They want you to accede to their demands because if they can get you to tell a lie that you know is a lie, they have you. Don't let them have you.

Pointing to What Is Wrong, Hopefully to Make Things Right

 I have to run pretty soon, but also at PJ Media C.A. Skeet has a piece entitled Behold the Monster You Created. It is a series of the most obnoxious of the leftist pathologies facing the nation today that were either supported by the liberals, or passively ignored by them because they were not immediately affected. These have now come home to roost at the gates of their communities. Skeet concludes with this:

You supported every act of violence, censorship, social coercion, government repression, and outright insurrection so long as it was seen as beneficial to advancing your agenda and, more importantly, as long as it never affected you personally. These shock troops are disciples of the secular religion that you — yes, you, traditional liberals — have propagated for decades. With your winks and nods, you have taught them that trampling other people's rights in pursuit of your cause du jour is both permissible and preferable.

And the entire time, you told us that "this is what democracy looks like."

You are who Lenin accurately referred to as "useful idiots." But I'm not so sure that you still support what democracy "looks like," now that it "looks like" it has reached your front yard. When they scream that they want to burn the entire country to the ground, they mean exactly that. The monster that you constructed, animated, fed, riled up, and let roam free to dispatch your political enemies is now peering through your bay window, staring at you with a ravenous look in its eyes that evinces neither "solidary" nor "inclusion" with you.

Frankenstein's monster always comes home to his castle.

Please read the whole thing. I cannot take any real money quotes from it because it is all one big money quote. Gentle readers will know this, but the one thing wrong with a democratic republic is that if the majority is wrong, as it has often been so, those who can see that it is wrong nonetheless have to go along with the wrong. We may be able to correct it in time, but so much damage can accumulate while we struggle to make things right.

Hartford Citizen Patrols Display American Tradition

 Here's a gun story, a story about armed citizens, and a Christian story all rolled into one.  It comes from Mike McDaniel at the American Thinker and is entitled Black self defense in Connecticut. Oh, did I mention that it's also a story about black citizens? Sorry, but of course it could be about any of us. The story that McDaniel reports on comes from PJ Media and is entitled Democrat Nightmare: Armed Black Hartford Citizen Patrols Take To the Streets

Archbishop Dexter Burke saw woke politicians gut his city with Marxist nonsense. He also saw two men get murdered near his church one night. He decided to do something.

Burke decided to help form a legally armed "self-defense brigade" to patrol the streets of Hartford's northern neighborhood. It consists of about 40 legally armed citizens who carry guns, wear body cameras, and have drone support in the air.

The self-defense brigade is a liberal Marxist's nightmare. Ordinary Americans -- in this case, black folks -- have had enough crime and violence and have decided they need to protect themselves. It is their American right to do so, but Democrats hate people who stand up for themselves.

“The Democratic machine in Hartford is either unwilling or unable, incapable of doing it, and people are paying their tax dollars, and they’re not really getting any kind of service,” Cornel Lewis, a founder of the self-defense brigade, related to Fox News. “So we want the people to understand, number one, self-defense is not a dirty word.”

As expected, the leftoids -- who pretend to care about black people -- lost their marbles.

The first thing I want to point out is that Archbishop Dexter Burke is a Roman Catholic archbishop. I have noted many times that being a Christian does not mean being a pacifist. Read the Old Testament, the books of Joshua, Judges, the Kings of Israel. Note carefully when these books mention "the angel of the LORD." That person is the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Son of God whom we worship. He fought for Israel in these books with the sword. He was not a pacifist, and neither should Christians be pacifists if we are following Him.

The next thing to note is the attitude of the Hartford mayor and the leftist elites

Why would black citizens willingly protecting themselves and their community at no public expense be “a liberal Marxist’s nightmare?” Aren’t they eternal, favored victims? Don’t they deserve protection?.

Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs) demand total control over everyone. They reserve to themselves a monopoly on the application of violence, which is why they constantly try to disarm everyone, except of course, the people they hire at public expense as bodyguards. They rely on keeping black people subservient, completely dependent on the Marxist state for every aspect of their existence. Black people taking it upon themselves to do what D/s/cs won’t allow the police to do is a direct threat to their rule. Why, those uppity black people are acting white! Don’t they know their place? Don’t they know everything we’ve done for—to—them?.

But of course, those "uppity" black people have every right to defend themselves, and thanks to the Second Amendment they have the means to do so. And criminals should beware, for the armed citizens are under attack, and no doubt feel a bit like the soldiers in a war on crime and criminals.

The third thing to note is the philosophy undergirding our society. We often forget this, to our shame:

It is from citizens--the public; so-called vigilantes--that all public servants, elected and appointed, get their authority. Every jot and tittle of the power they wield is on loan from the public on condition of competence and good behavior. The police are allowed to make arrests and use force because the public allows them those authorities. They rightly belong to the public, so how can it be illegitimate for citizens, particularly when their hired hands cannot or will not exercise police powers, to themselves exercise the police powers they’ve loaned their malfunctioning employees?

...snip...

Archbishop Burke is acting in the best traditions of America’s Founders. He’s almost certainly also a model for why more and more black Americans are coming to realize the D/s/c Party has taken them for granted and betrayed them. Is it any wonder Donald Trump may win a historic portion of black votes in November?

Is it any wonder an ever-increasing number of Americans, including black Americans, are fleeing the “civilization” of eastern blue states for the liberty and safety of red America?

The above may sound a bit like the "sovereign citizen" ideology, but it is not. While each citizen potentially holds his sovereignty, in a civilized society we each give up some of that to the "authorities" because to manage everything is too much for any of us. But since we have delegated it to the various "authorities," we can take it back when they prove to be incompetent or unwilling to do the job. Such is the case in Hartford, Conn.

It is not just Archbishop Burke. It is also the citizens' patrols that are displaying a uniquely American tradition. More power to them.

Of Course Hunter Biden Violated The Law With Impunity

Dan Ross, at the American Thinker points to The hidden issues in Hunter Biden's crime conviction. The first issue, of course, is not so hidden. It is the schadenfreude we all probably feel. But keep in mind that Biden's case is also a sad one. Yes, he is a spoiled, entitled brat. But it is probably not entirely his fault that he is that way. Still...

Hunter Biden was recently convicted of three felony gun charges. As conservatives, it’s hard not to enjoy this for a moment. The entitlement that he’s felt all his life, his reckless behavior in all areas of his life, his spoiled rich frat-boy attitude — it’s very easy to feel the schadenfreude. Honestly, it’s impossible not to feel it.

And the fact that he broke the law is so obvious that I’m surprised that it took the jury ten minutes, much less three hours, to convict. But his conviction obscures the deeper issues in this case.

Ross then brings up the issue of the Form 4473

First, let’s talk about Form 4473, the ATF form Hunter signed, that clearly spells out the illegality and penalties for knowingly submitting false information. Joe Biden is on record and on video claiming he was instrumental in creating that form, for which he has bragged about wanting more severe penalties for false answers. The MSM, including Fox, have ignored that aspect of this story, but the aspect is a key element of the important story.

...snip...

There is another important and interesting element to this story. Hunter’s legal team have already signaled that they intend to invoke the 2nd Amendment on appeal. That’s right: they’re going to argue the NRA position that Form 4473 violates the Constitution. I happen to agree with this argument. The one right recognized in the Bill of Rights contingent on anything at all is the 2nd Amendment. I believe this to be unconstitutional. You don’t lose your right to free speech if you’re a drug addict. You don’t lose your right to freedom from searches and seizures. Why should you lose the right to defend yourself?

If his legal team uses the argument that the Form 4473 is Unconstitutional, it will thus be doubly rich. We may find people like the NRA who are normally on the other side of the gun control debate submitting amicus briefs in Hunter Biden's favor. What would Joe say?

The last point is unbelievably disturbing. Joe Biden has made the threat a number of times that if we want to defend against a tyrannous government, we would need F-15 fighter aircraft. He is thus claiming that we have already lost, which I dispute.  Joe may find his military in a quagmire not unlike Afghanistan or Vietnam.  As Ross wrote:

Finally, the third and most important issue. Once again, Joe doubled down on his argument that having guns to protect yourself from a tyrannical government is silly because “you’d need an F-15.” Many have pointed out the obvious threat in this argument, and they are correct. It’s clearly a threat. But there’s something more subtle at play here. Without realizing the implications, he’s actually arguing that fully armed F-15s owned by private citizens are protected by the 2nd Amendment.

Think about it. If you agree that the 2nd Amendment is to protect you from a tyrannical government — and I’d argue that we’re watching that tyranny progress in real time — then logically, F-15s and tanks, and whatever else citizens need to defend themselves against that threat, are protected arms. I don’t want to live in a world like that, but then, I haven’t threatened the American people several times with the use of fighter-bomber aircraft. I’m not making that argument; I’m just pointing out that Joe Biden has been making it unintentionally.

It is an argument that the founders would have understood.

Here's Another Problem With Electric Vehicles

Olivia Murray has a post today at the American Thinker entitled After skid mark vandalism, electric scooter company implements 'no go zone' over 'Pride' street mural and remotely shuts off device if you cross area.

From Jackson Walker at The National Desk comes the news that Lime, a San Francisco-based transportation company that leases electric scooters, bikes, and mopeds in big cities, has just implemented a “no-go zone” over the “Pride” street mural in Spokane, Washington as a preemptive measure—there have been repeated instances of vandalism, and the mural has already has at least one new paint refresh this month after someone set it on fire...

Sure sounds like the residents of Spokane, Washinton don't like Astarte worshipped in their neighborhood and on their streets. Astarte, you will remember, was one of the ancient 'gods' that the Canaanites worshipped, she of the sacred prostitutes, the cross-dressing priests, and other perversions. Several teens left skid marks on the mural of the 'pride' flag painted on the street and are now facing felony charges. But meanwhile the electric scooter company Lime has created 'no go zones' over the flag mural by cutting power to any Lime scooter that crosses over the flag painting.

But Murray also points out:

As the video above notes, those arrested for the tire mark vandalism are being charged with felonies—you know what won’t get you charged with a felony though?

Defacing public property if there’s any link to American patriotism or “white man” history, or desecrating an Old Glory, like the social misfits routinely do.

Illegally taking and keeping classified documents, and storing them in parked convertibles in unsecured garages, like Stinky Joe.

Using a private server as the Secretary of State for official business to keep the contents of the business away from the scrutiny of other government officials, like Hillary Clinton.

Lying to FISA courts to obtain politically-motivated warrants, like FBI agents.

Recording yourself in possession of illicit and illegal drugs, like Hunter Biden.

Of course this list doesn’t even scratch the surface of the two-tiered “justice” system.

Now, if “them” remotely cutting off the power to our transportation over political statements doesn’t wake you up to what’s really going on here, and what the “electric vehicle” movement is really about, then I don’t know what will.

Please read the whole post. It is short, but a good reminder of exactly what we are facing.

The Cause of Our Decline

 Jeffery Ludwig at the American Thinker today describes America In Decline as a result of several actions taken by various Americans to defy God. He sees these as 1) power-seeking, 2) greed, 3) atheism and 4) family hatred. The outworking of these actions, done deliberately with full knowledge of what they portended, is turning our nation into a brutal hellscape of crime and destruction.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, looking at the disintegration of our society, finds considerable truth about the causes of this disintegration in the writings of Yuri Bezmenov (a KGB agent who defected from the Soviet Union in 1970). He described the subversion process as a complex model with four successive stages. These are: demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization. She then goes beyond these foundation categories and says that they have been applied by American Marxists, the Communist Chinese Party, and Radical Islamists which three-pronged attack has led to our cultural disintegration. While this writer was intrigued and informed by Ms. Ali’s commentary, a summary of our decline would, I think, be better if seen under the categories of power, greed, atheism, and family hatred.

Ludwig goes on to tell us the history of these four attributes, which shows the hubris, the arrogance, and the fundamental lack of faith in our Constitutional republic, inspired by God, of various elites. The so-called "elites" always gravitate towards a sense of enlightenment which looks on the middle class and poor as benighted and in need of saving through their beneficent grace. Thus, a Bernie Sanders can say “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.” Thus Senator Sanders, who styles himself as an elitist, would tell us what we need, and when. He would decide where our money should be spent, while leaving us to toil for the betterment of others. He would thus make us slaves and deny us our choices, including presumable our choice of leaders. But saving people is not their job, or indeed the job of any man. It is the job of the LORD through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, our so-called elites have taken to themselves the roll of God. Doing so is, of course, the original sin of not loving God and placing trust in Him.

Thus, the USA’s decline is directly related to the categories of power-seeking, greed, atheism, and family hatred described above. However, you will not be surprised if I say that the one dimension missing from the piece is the spiritual, namely God’s judgment resulting from His removing His faithful hand of mercy and hope from a sinful people.

I pray that He will change his mind and again bless us. But we need to repent, and I don't see that happening yet.

Greenies Build A Tower of Babel

 Olivia Murray notes It's a greenie conundrum: Massive amounts of lithium discovered in "fracking water." I'll go make some popcorn.

Writing for Fox News, Charles Creitz recently reported on a very inconvenient truth, from a new study: fracking wastewater is full of lithium, making it a “promising domestic source” if tapped, and the process to extract it “reduces the cost” of traditional water decontamination efforts. Here are the details, from Creitz:

Major lithium discovery in fracking wastewater leaves the left facing EV ‘irony’

A University of Pittsburgh study suggested processing byproducts from natural gas production in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale basin could potentially meet nearly half of U.S. lithium needs.

…

In the study, published in Nature’s ‘Scientific Reports,’ estimates of annual lithium yields from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale totaled 1,278 tons. The Marcellus Shale range covers large swaths of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

One of the researchers, Justin Mackey, told KDKA that in addition to supplying substantial amounts of lithium, processing the wastewater in that way ‘reduce[s] the cost of remediating and handling’ it….

Not only is lithium a crucial component for everything the left likes to inaccurately file under “net zero” technologies (electric vehicles, solar panel energy storage systems, wind turbines), but it’s necessary for basically all electronics—the computer I’m using to write this blog, and the phone from which you may be reading it. In the U.S., we’re largely reliant on foreign lithium, as Australia, Chile, and China produce 90% of the lithium on the global market—which leaves us in a precarious position if there are any supply chain disruptions or price fluctuations—so sourcing it from dirty fracking water, in a process that reduces the cost companies already pay to clean the contaminated water, is quite a good deal for the American consumer, economy, and environment.

And, not only that, but considering how utterly filthy and destructive to the environment the traditional lithium mining process is—just think how much worse it is in unbound-by-climate-deals China—it’s an even better deal to use the market, or the law of supply-and-demand, to diminish our dependence on products that come with ecologically devastating consequences.

You can see the conundrum here. We could get half of our lithium supply needs for EVs from fracking, but then that implies as use for petroleum as well. Now, I would solve the problem by using the lithium for genuine electrical needs such as cell phones and other rechargeable battery devices. I would continue running transportation needs on petroleum products as the most practical and safest methods of fueling those needs, and I would continue using coal and nuclear for fixed location power plants. We have at least 200 years' worth of these items right here at home. Why not use them? Oh, that's right, "global warming."

But the idea that man contributes anything to "global warming" or for that matter to "global cooling" or indeed any other weather change has been thoroughly debunked. Man's contribution is like pissing in the ocean and hoping to make it rise. I am not saying that mankind has no effect. But to believe that man's effect on climate change measurable is the height of hubris. It is akin to building a tower to reach heaven (a reference to the tower of Babel in the Bible) and we all know how that turned out.

Man should be good stewards of the earth as God commanded in Genesis. But at the same time, while not wasting the earth's resources wantonly, we are also to use them for the benefit of all, which implies making the best use of ALL of the earth's resources.

Rejecting the Status Quo and Live As a Contrarian. It's The Only Way to Survive

 J. B. Shurk today has an article entitled Rejecting the Status Quo Is the Only Way to Survive. Shurk, in densely packed prose reminds us that everything the government says is a lie, meant to take money and power from you and give it to the wealthy and powerful. In a representative democracy (a republic in other words) our so-called representatives no longer represent us. Oh, and most of the media is there to support the government and hoodwink you, not to challenge the liars.

Can men give birth? Do cow farts cause tornadoes? Must “disinformation” tsars censor words to protect free speech? Should Democrats jail opponents in order to save “democracy”? If you listen to the propaganda press, these are some of the most important queries of our time. It feels as if we’ve fallen down Lewis Carroll’s rabbit hole or entered the absurdist plot of a Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut novel. How can we make sense of our increasingly senseless world?

America’s dean of word wizardry, Mark Twain, once quipped, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” Boy, was he right! For years we’ve been bouncing around in a pinball universe designed by Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury. When the government isn’t policing our language or arresting little old grandmothers for engaging in wrongthink, it’s busy helping Mexican drug-smugglers hook Americans on Chinese fentanyl and encouraging young boys to chop off their willies. The Gestapo FBI spends most of its time hunting patriots as “domestic terrorists” and orchestrating elaborate entrapment schemes to justify bloated budgets. The Josef Mengeles at the CDC work to create new diseases that will require experimental “cures.” The Department of (in)Justice can’t stop locking up Americans for their political beliefs while lecturing the country about the importance of thwarting tyranny. So much insanity now grips the United States that the great dystopian novels of the last century appear downright tame by comparison!

The easiest way to navigate this Kafkaesque environment is to follow a simple rule: whatever the government says, believe the opposite. Obama promised that socialized medicine would lower health care costs without benefiting illegal aliens; a decade and a half later, the only people who can afford Obamacare are the illegal aliens who get it for free! Homeland (in)Security doofus Mayorkas still claims the U.S. border is secure, even as foreign terrorists and Chinese nationals flash middle fingers at television cameras documenting America’s invasion. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer passed an “Inflation Reduction Act” that has done nothing but exacerbate inflation. Obama doesn’t care; the border has disappeared; and rampant inflation is the goal! When everything our political leaders say is a lie and every policy betrays its purpose, Americans live in a Bizarro World where words mean nothing.

Of course, we all recognize the destruction the Democrats...er...socialists...er...fascists have done to the Constitution and to making our lives a living hell. But what about the Republicans? Don't they at least represent We the People? Shurk has some harsh words for them too.

With RINO cowards such as Romney always looking to shiv them in the back, Republican voters have been forced to remake the party into something that vaguely represents their interests. “Shouldn’t the party have always represented their interests?” a reasonable person might ask. Not in Bizarro World! Here the Republican Party has long worked for a small number of financial heavyweights who believe that Republican voters exist to serve them. The more salt-of-the-earth Republicans advance their own political objectives, the faster Romney-like RINOs denounce them as a “threat to democracy.” In this dystopia, the best form of “democracy” is the one where an insular cabal of privileged and wealthy “elites” decide everything for everyone else. Real self-government is entirely too insurrection-y. News flash: Democrats and RINOs share the same beliefs!

How do we know? Because Republican voters have spent decades demanding smaller government, less illegal immigration, balanced budgets, and renewed deference to constitutional constraints and the Bill of Rights. Republican leaders have promised to get right on that — just as soon as they build the Department of Homeland Security, provide sixty million illegal aliens with amnesty, add trillions to the debt in war spending, and expand the PATRIOT Act so that the federal government can spy on every citizen of the United States! Don’t worry, though. Every Republican voter unhappy with the party will still receive a free t-shirt that says, “I’m with Karl Rove!” It will most likely come from a Chinese merchant using a Vietnamese manufacturer, but the tri-blend fabric will feel super-soft! Who needs to make things in America when we can all depend upon the benevolent generosity of Chinese communists?

...snip...

Americans want the government out of their lives. They want a stable monetary currency free from central bank manipulation. They want to speak freely without being censored online. They want to build local businesses without forking over profits to regulatory agencies that specialize in producing red tape. They want to parent their children without worrying that public schools are warping their young minds with indoctrination from the State. They want the FBI and NSA to stop spying on their communications and financial transactions without warrants or probable cause. They want Biden to stop issuing “green” executive orders that make everything more expensive. They want Disney and other child-grooming corporations to stop abusing young kids with their perverse sexual agendas. They want prosecutors to punish violent criminals and to stop targeting political rivals. They want the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum to shut up about most things. They want a free press committed to challenging government and corporate orthodoxies every day — not a bunch of pretend journalists and progressive poodles who do their masters’ bidding. They want elected officials to end their cancerous addiction to dividing Americans against each other by race.

Do you know what else Americans want? They want the Federal Government to do its job: defending the border, defending us from foreign invaders, and to stop doing things that are not in the black letter Constitution. There is no right to an abortion in the Constitution.  It should be solved at the state level.  In other words, interpreting stuff into it that isn't there. Shurk's article reminds me of H. L. Mencken's quote that "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." Thus,  Shurk's advice: Rejecting the status quo is the only way to survive.