The Second Amendment Itself is Common Sense Gun Reform

From youtuber Styxhexenhammer666, a parallel universe version of Razorfist/the Rageaholic.  From a couple months back, but hits the nail on the head.

Trump Just Said What? – and Ramifications

Lots to catch up on since last post.  Ben Shapiro covers a handful of things rather well, hitting on Trump being squishy at best on the Second Amendment and plenty willing to bargain away citizens’ rights as part of a deal with gleeful tyrant Feinstein, as well as failures on economics by pushing for tariffs.

Specifically what Shapiro said about Trump’s ignorant comments about the Second Amendment and due process have come to bear fruit in Florida in the time since Shapiro posted that video.  Florida, a state with a GOP supermajority in the state house & senate, passed a gun control bill that takes away rights of those from 18-20 years old, as well as passing a nebulous ban on “bump stocks” that can very easily be broadly interpreted.

I expected gun policy to be the kind of thing that Don Jr. would keep in check, seeing as how by his familiarity with firearms and firearms laws he’s the most knowledgeable and connected in the White House, but that looks like it tragically may not be the case.

ATF Gunwalker – Fast & Furious 6 (or 8) Years Later

The ATF started smuggling guns into Mexico in 2009, then got found out in 2011.  This goes back a long, long ways, and was one of the reasons this blog was started – initially we wanted to cover all kinds of political stuff, but the ATF’s Fast & Furious and sister smuggling operations dominated things for a long time.  Under Obama, nothing was done.  He exerted executive privelege and made all the relevant documents that he and Eric Holder knew about disappear from the public eye, all while claiming nothing happened, all while blood continued (and still continues) to flow in Mexico and in the US.  Holder was held in contempt by Congress for stonewalling their investigation into Fast & Furious, and it showed us how transparently biased much of the media was, especially on Fast & Furious.  Sharyl Atkisson, the CBS reporter who brought the story to the mainstream, was later personally targeted by the Obama administration and eventually left CBS.  David Codrea, one of the bloggers who first broke the story when it was still just “gunwalker”, is still around; sadly the other who helped break it, Mike Vanderbough of Sipsey Street Irregulars, is no longer with us – he was one of those guys with a very long memory and the kind of person who because they were tuned in for decades provided valuable perspective on the players involved at higher levels.  Katie Pavlich, who wrote a book on Fast & Furious, was on the story for years and years, and has moved up a bit in the blogging/reporting world, and still brings some light to the issue when there’s a chance, especially as Fast & Furious within the various gunwalking operations took place in her backyard of Arizona.

So now, years later, with a new president, new administration, new attorney general, it’s being revisited.  We’ll just have to see if anyone’s willing to actually prosecute the ATF and their DOJ counterparts.  Sadly the rule of the swamp is “only banana republics go after the previous administrations, so no current administration will ever go after a prior one for criminal actions”.

Another hearing was held on 6/7/17, which covers mostly old ground.

And the full hearing:

It starts at around 15 minutes or so.

I haven’t watched the whole thing yet, but I’m sure there are things that are forgotten.  In particular one thing that isn’t heard as much anymore is how this was a push by the ATF/DOJ/Obama admin for more gun control, as evidenced by the multiple-gun reporting for southwestern border states being mandated by the ATF, as well as political cries for further restrictions.

A few highlights from the last 6 years or so::

Obama Blames US For Gun Violence In Mexico

Gunwalker Update: Gun Control Celebration at ATF

Gunwalker Update: Feinstein Uses Fast and Furious to Push Gun Control, Gunwalker Being Used to Push Gun Control, Issa Introduces Whistleblower Protection Law, Issa & Grassley Digging Into F&F Investigation Leaks

Gunwalker Update: Public Relations Operation?

Something else to give this further perspective over time is that the last link there includes Stratfor’s debunking of the “90% of guns in Mexico come from the US” lie, which they pointed out is deliberately lying about the facts.  The numbers at the time were something closer to 12-17%, but the 90% number that’s run with by anti-gun politicians and actors comes from the percentage of guns from the US that Mexico sends to the US for tracing.  IIRC the numbers were something like 22,000 guns seized by Mexican authorities back in 2010, with 18,000 being from Mexico or other nations; with some 2-3000 being sent to the US because maybe they’re from the US, and then 90% of that smaller portion being traced to the US.  I go over this here, because as another note to how time has passed, Stratfor was hacked back in 2012 and parts of their website now only exist on the webarchive/wayback machine.

Also in that same last link there is reference to Bob Owens of PJ Media, who went on to start Bearing Arms, and who tragically committed suicide a few months ago.

He also wrote one of the best articles that delineates the clear differences between Bush’s Wide Receiver and Obama’s Fast & Furious/Castaway/unnamed TX operation Gunwalking programs.  Wide Receiver was a Bush ATF program from 2007 that sent tried to track guns south and have the Mexican authorities and ATF in Mexico catch the bad guys; versus Fast and Furious and the various parallel gunwalking programs like Operation Castaway in Florida – all of Obama’s DOJ’s programs that sent guns south and had no notification to any authorities in Mexico, not =Mexican nor US ATF in Mexico; nor other nations guns were sent to by the ATF.  During testimony in 2011, ATF Mexico attache Darren Gil explained how he was utterly blindsided by Fast & Furious and didn’t hear of it until through some backchannels someone asked him “how’s that gunwalking program going?” which neither he nor any other ATF in Mexico nor Mexican authorities had ever heard of.

Wide Receiver was what leftist useful idiots would refer to and try to use to obfuscate Fast & Furious and make it seem like it was a “botched sting”.  Fast & Furious was not a “botched sting”.

It deliberately sent guns to Mexico to recover them at crime scenes after people had been murdered.  That was what was intended.  Once people accept those facts – as laid about by the ATF agents either whistleblowing or being grilled in front of Oversight & Reform in 2011 and ever since, it leads to the question of “why?” of which there are only two answers – either deliberately undermining the US constitution through a manufactured murder crisis in Mexico and/or influencing Mexico cartel politics by arming cartels.  The question then simply becomes “who is responsible for this and will they be held accountable?”  Six years in and we know the ATF bottom to top was responsible, the DOJ from Lanny Breuer to Eric Holder was responsible, and we know the executive branch to Obama knew about it (he talked about it in an interview even before Eric Holder finally fessed up to knowing about it).

So far, no one’s been held accountable.  The ATF has retaliated against their whistleblowers and rewarded their gunsmuggling criminal agents, but little else.

The Democrat Anti-Rights Sit-In

In the 1960s sit-ins, the purpose of the sit-in was as a demand for equal rights.

The reason was to sit down and show that you’re as good as anyone else and deserving of the same treatment.

While there’s an argument for property owner rights that a business should be able to reject service to anyone, this was also a cultural argument as well as a legal rights one, such that the property owner would get the idea that he was wrong and that those doing the sit-in were deserving of respect and that their patronage should be appreciated rather than rejected.  Both ways, it was a movement to demand rights.

What the Democrat crybullies are engaging in today is not a movement to demand rights, but to remove rights:

This is a demand by authorities for more authority.

This is a demand by those in power for more power.

This is a demand by those who control the country that the rights of the citizen be overruled.

They want due process suspended, they want gun rights suspended, they want your rights suspended.  They’ve already managed it in a handful of states – despite the Constitution as written forbidding it – and now they want the rest of the nation to kneel.  And their current method is by throwing a tantrum, mocking the actual sit-ins of the 1960s, and demanding that Congress vote to ignore the Fifth Amendment right to due process of law so they can suspend your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Those guys at the lunch counter weren’t recognized as having a right to eat at the same counter that other folks did.  Those rights weren’t recognized by the Democrats in power in the South.  If they went to buy a gun in the South to protect themselves from the racist Democrat KKK night riders, when they went for a permit the racist Democrat sheriff would deny it and leave them defenseless.

Today, elected Democrat representatives who already have power are now squatting in the halls of power and demanding more powers and authorities to go after the citizenry – all to strip rights from those who now have them.

The guys at the lunch counter were fighting against Jim Crow laws.  They were fighting for rights.

The Democrat representatives are fighting for more Jim Crow laws.  They’re fighting against rights.

Bill Whittle’s Firewall: Guns, Islam, and Orlando

Spot on as always.

The Orlando Attack and the Failure to Enforce Existing Laws – The Lautenberg Amendment and 8 USC 1481

As we’ve seen in the last week, with the Democrat’s 15-hour not-really-a-filibuster stump speech about how we need to ban the right to due process, there’s a press on for new gun laws and restrictions and regulations that aren’t infringements in much the same way that getting punched in the face isn’t the same as getting struck in the face with a fist because won’t someone think of the children.

Specifically, we’ve even heard the main proponent of these new infringements say they wouldn’t have worked to prevent the Orlando terrorist attack.

What would have worked, you ask?

Enforce existing laws.

Currently, if you want to buy/possess/own/purchase a firearm, there are some prohibitions.  Namely, you can’t be a felon, a drug addict, an illegal alien, and due to the Lautenberg Amendment, you can’t have been convicted of a crime of domestic violence or have a restraining order placed on you by a domestic partner.

This is from the 4473, the background check form that you do every time you buy a gun from a dealer or store and any time you transfer a handgun between states:

The so-called “gun show loophole”, which is not exclusive to gun shows, nor a loophole, is that in most states, if you want to sell a gun to a private citizen from your own state, you can.  You also have to be sure they’re not prohibited from owning a firearm, because otherwise you’re committing the crime of providing a prohibited person with a firearm.

The Orlando terrorist beat his ex-wife.  Had he been charged, he would have been convicted (or plead out, which is the same as a conviction for gun ownership purposes), and he’d have been prohibited.  It’s the same way US citizens every day are denied arms – because they’ve committed a crime in the past that bars them from firearms ownership (like the wife-beating alcoholic Chicago journalist denied a gun recently).

If for whatever reason the ex-wife didn’t go to the police, or no one enforced the law in that instance, there were other potential blocks already set up that no one bothered to utilize.

Namely, 8 USC 1481.

The FBI had investigated the Orlando terrorist numerous times for his suspected terrorism involvement.  He was on and off the terror watch list.  A friend of his went to the Middle East as an American suicide bomber.  The FBI interviewed him numerous times, but couldn’t figure out how to make anything stick.  Yet the Orlando terrorist went off and murdered 49 people and swore his allegiance to the Islamic State.

And that’s where 8 USC 1481 comes in:

8 U.S. Code § 1481 – Loss of nationality by native-born or naturalized citizen; voluntary action; burden of proof; presumptions

(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—
–
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(3) entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if (A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or (B) such persons serve as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer; or
–
(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

He joined a terrorist movement.  He said so at the end.  In all probability – especially as more of his past comes to light, he said the same thing beforehand, but no one would address it.

If 8 USC 1481 had been applied, he could’ve been stripped of his citizenship – with due process – as someone swearing allegiance to and/or conspiring to bear arms against the United States as a terrorist by committing terrorist acts.

Once his citizenship is stripped, he couldn’t legally buy a gun.  Once stripped of his citizenship, he could’ve been deported and sent off to the nation he wanted to be a part of.  The US would’ve gotten rid of a terrorist, he would’ve gotten to go join the nation he wants to join.

Problem solved.  Enforce existing laws.

Field Day 6/20/16 – Another Gun Grabber Roundup

May as well start with the dumbest first.  HuffPo is calling for complete disarmament of the US citizenry.

One may say that the Supreme Court, after 250 years in which the Second Amendment was read as allowing only a well-regulated militia to have guns, recently reinterpreted it to mean that there is an individualized right to own guns. This suggests that we may have to get to domestic disarmament through the back door.

Make the gun manufacturers liable for harm done with their products. Ban the sale of ammunition. And vote for a president that will add to the Supreme Court those who will read the Second Amendment as written.

Above all, domestic disarmament is a true, compelling vision which cannot be said about the small gun control measures that are currently promoted by some of the most enlightened people among us.

That’s a whole new level of smugness right there.  Also, the Second Amendment as written would guarantee access to arms by American citizens, especially weapons used in a military capacity.  It’s very clear what it says, as are the numerous state Constitutions that mirror it.

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And the next stupidest, via HotAir, from Democrat Senator Chris Murphy:

Today’s gun vote wouldn’t stop recent mass shootings, admits leading proponent

Asked by guest host Jonathan Karl whether the so-called “gun show loophole” would have done anything to stop Orlando, Murphy stammered and finally responded as though he was Miss Teen Connecticut answering a pretty tough question about what his favorite color is.

MURPHY: So, it may have in the sense that if you partner together with the bill that stops terrorists from getting guns…

KARL: But wait a minute. He didn’t buy those guns at a gun show. And he would have passed the background—he did pass a background check.

MURPHY: He did pass a background check, but if the Feinstein bill was in effect, the FBI could have put him on the list of those who are prohibited from getting guns. And what if he went into the gun store and was denied? He could have just gone online or to a gun show and bought another one. *

KARL:  OK. But what I’m trying to get at is that every time there’s one of these terrible tragedies, there’s these proposals. Your proposal would have done nothing in the case of Orlando. It would have done nothing to stop the killing in San Bernardino, and in fact, was unrelated to the killing in Newtown. So why are we focusing on things that have nothing to do with the massacres that we are responding?

MURPHY: First of all, we can’t get into that trap.  I disagree. I think if this proposal had been into effect, it may have stopped this shooting. But we can’t get into the trap in which we are forced to defend the proposals simply because it didn’t stop the last tragedy. We should be making our gun laws less full of Swiss cheese holes so that future killings don’t happen.**

Couple important takeaways here.

1st, let your lefty, gun-grabbing brother-in-law see this so he can stop telling you that you are an accomplice in the murder of innocent people just because you exercise the right to self protection. And repeat it on your social media as many times as it takes: These laws will not stop bad people from doing bad things with guns. Full stop.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

We already know that the Orlando terrorist beat his ex-wife.  He could’ve been denied based on that, but apparently his ex-wife never bothered to call the police.  He wouldn’t have had a security job, nor been able to buy a gun legally.  Wouldn’t have happened.

Speaking of wife-beaters not allowed to own guns, from ThisAin’tHell.  Short version is a reporter went into a gun store to try to buy an evil toddler-killing black rifle and was denied.  He claimed it was because he was a reporter.  Really, it was because he slapped around his wife.

The folks at Maxon Shooter Supplies and Indoor Range, who claim to be TAH fans, send us a link to the story about them in the Chicago Sun Times, wherein the Times sent Neil Steinberg, one of their reporters, to write about his experience buying and firing an evil black, scary gun (known in journalistic circles as an assault rifle). Steinberg does the handwringing thing about guns and journalistic integrity thing during his drive to Des Plaines, Illinois to the Maxon “lemonade stand” as the owner described it to me.

Driving to Maxon Shooter’s Supplies in Des Plaines on Wednesday to purchase my first assault rifle, I admit, I was nervous. I’d never owned a gun before. And with the horror of Sunday’s Orlando massacre still echoing, even the pleasant summer day — the lush green trees, fluffy white clouds, blue sky — took on a grim aspect, the sweetness of fragile life flashing by as I headed into the Valley of Death.

Earlier, in my editor’s office, I had ticked off the reasons for me not to buy a gun: this was a journalistic stunt; done repeatedly; supporting an industry I despise. But as I tell people, I just work here, I don’t own the place. And my qualms melted as I dug into the issue.

At 5:13 Sarah from Maxon called. They were canceling my sale and refunding my money. No gun for you. I called back. Why? “I don’t have to tell you,” she said. …

A few hours later, Maxon sent the newspaper a lengthy statement, the key part being: “it was uncovered that Mr. Steinberg has an admitted history of alcohol abuse, and a charge for domestic battery involving his wife.”

Well, didn’t see that coming.

This would be on the 4473:

From the Maxon Facebook page;

Mr. Steinberg was very aggressive on the phone with Sarah, insisting he was going to write that we denied him because he is a journalist. “Journalist” is not a protected class, BTW. We contacted his editor and said that, while we don’t normally provide a reason for a denial, in this case to correct the record before you publish, here’s why; we pasted a couple links of press accounts of his past behavior and his admission of same. He’s free to believe or disbelieve that’s why he was denied, but that *is* why he was denied. There was no “We’ll see you in court!!!!” type of language from us – we simply want to set the record straight. That it undermined his thesis and rendered the column incoherent isn’t really our problem, is it? Thanks for your support.

 

Democrat Joe Manchin – Let’s Get Rid Of Due Process Of Law

Via WeeklyStandard and HotAir:

The problem we have—and really, the firewall we have right now, is due process. It’s all due process. So we can all say, ‘yeah, we want the same thing,’ but how do we get there. If a person is on a terrorist watch list like the gentleman—the shooter—in Orlando, he was, twice by the FBI, we were briefed yesterday about what happened. But that man was brought in twice. They did everything they could. The FBI did everything they were supposed to do. But there was no way for them to keep him on the nix list or keep him off the gun buy list. There was no way to do that. So can’t we say that if a person is under suspicion, there should be a five year period of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits? Maybe we can come to that type of an agreement. But due process is what’s killing us right now.

Haven’t committed a crime but the government wants to restrict your rights because you’re on a secret list somewhere?  No problem!  Just do away with due process.

How to get rid of the 2nd Amendment?  Easy – just get rid of the 5th Amendment first!

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

5 years of rights restriction based on being put on a watch list?  A watch list that Ted Kennedy had to fight to get off of?

How about… no.

ISIS’s Orlando Attack

50 killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL, by an Islamic State terrorist.

That’s about what the headline should read everywhere.  And at least a few places, it does.

Still, spin is being applied.  From NBC:

His father told NBC News his son was enraged after recently seeing a same-sex couple kissing in front of his family, an event that could have set him off.

In 2013, Mateen was interviewed twice by federal agents after coworkers reported that he made “inflammatory” comments to them about radical Islamic propaganda. The following year, the FBI looked at him again because of ties with an American who traveled to the Middle East to become a suicide bomber.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News he swore allegiance to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a phone call to 911 moments before the rampage at Pulse.

There’s no indication that Mateen was in touch with terrorists overseas or that the attack was directed by someone else, a law enforcement officials told NBC News. Nor is there evidence that anyone helped or encouraged him, several officials said.

He had ties with a suicide bomber, but didn’t have ties overseas.  Possibly technically true, but it’s also a way to try and distance him from who and what he is.

ISIS doesn’t have to issue a membership card.

With that information, investigators are looking into whether religious extremism motivated the attack and are piecing together what triggered Mateen, who lived roughly two hours south of Orlando in Fort Pierce and worked as a security guard.

Mateen didn’t appear to have any direct ties with ISIS, sources said, although he was a follower of ISIS propaganda and referenced the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, at the scene of the shooting.

What motivated them again?  Oh, yeah, they were “lone wolves” or something, motivated by… uh… stuff.  Probably anti-marathon screeds put out by the rabid right-wing National Pressure Cooker Association.

But while law enforcement delves into what may have radicalized Mateen, who was born in New York and lived in Florida for at least the past decade, his family believes he was fueled by pure hate against the LGBT community.

He just hates them to hate.  Most people have a motivation to hate someone or something.  I wonder what that motivation was.

His father told NBC News that his son was affected by a recent incident involving two men showing each other affection.

“We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,” Mateen’s father, Seddique Mir Mateen, told NBC News on Sunday. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”

“This had nothing to do with religion.”

Well that’s cleared up, then.  Glad it has absolutely nothing to do with religion and that there’s nothing to see here, otherwise people might start wondering about the “Islamic” part of the Islamic State.  Or they might start asking about his father’s support of the Taliban (scroll waaay down at the link).

–

Now how did he get those evil guns that he used to kill those gay people out of clearly-unrelated-to-Islam hate?

His job in security, meanwhile, gave him access to his weapons; police say he used a handgun and AR-15-type rifle in the shooting spree.

ATF officials tweeted Sunday that he legally purchased the firearms within the last week.

Yeah, about that last part…

An ex-wife of Mateen told The Washington Post that he was prone to violent behavior and beat her. They had met online eight years ago and she moved to Florida to be with him.

“He was not a stable person,” the unidentified ex-wife said. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”

Well if that were true and she did anything about it, the Lautenberg Amendment would’ve kept him from buying guns legally.  For those who’ve never seen a form 4473 (the background check paperwork you fill out to buy a gun), this is the important part for this case:

So she didn’t bother to tell the police, and they didn’t bother to investigate, and no one bothered to arrest him for spousal abuse, and thus someone who was prohibited from legally buying a gun was able to buy a gun.

He also wouldn’t have had the job he did, because to be armed security requires being able to pass the equivalent of a 4473.

Also from NBC, because it’s never too early for the left to beat those gun control drums, especially if it can be leveraged with special victim identity groups:

Mass shootings often reignite the policy debate over access to guns, and hate crimes present another fault line in that debate.

In most states, people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes may still legally purchase guns.

The majority of states “have not enacted laws to prevent convicted misdemeanant hate criminals from having easy access to guns,” according to a 2016 report, “Hate and Guns,” by the Center for American Progress.

As for Mateen, he was able to legally purchase firearms within the past week, according to the ATF. Federal authorities had twice investigated him for potential links to terrorism, the FBI said, but no ties were confirmed.

Under federal law, it takes far more than a terror review to bar someone from legally purchasing guns.

He beat his wife.  If anyone had bothered to prosecute, he’d have been convicted and couldn’t have bought guns legally or had access to them legally.  Making a thought police law that applies to one group over another not only makes an unequal justice system (which is the social justice point), but in this case it clearly would have made zero difference.

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I wonder how long until the American media starts lecturing the gay community on how it should avoid being Islamophobic.

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This reminds me of Mark Steyn’s many prescient comments as Islamic terrorists have attacked in Europe.

~What’s the next phase? Well, Brussels is currently about 25 per cent Muslim and they’re mostly young. Conversely (as I pointed out in America Alone), the Flemings and Walloons are getting a bit long in the tooth. In any society, who provides the policemen and soldiers and security guards? The fit and healthy – ie, the young, the ones who can pass the physical. So increasingly the chaps responsible for keeping an eye out for Muslim terrorists will themselves be Muslim.

SSDD.

After 9/11, it was the fashion among the western left to demand that we ask ourselves: “Why do they hate us?” As I wrote in America Alone all those years ago:

‘Why do they hate us?’ was never the right question. ‘Why do they despise us?’ is a better one.

Just in case our enemies needed another reason to despise us, today the inactivist group Somnolent Tilty-Headed Wankers for Peace launched an exciting new graphic: the same old clapped-out hippie peace symbol but incorporating the Eiffel Tower (right)! Isn’t that a cool, stylish way of showing how saddy-saddy-sadcakes you are about all those corpses in the streets of Paris? It’s already gone viral! And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

Our enemies use social media to distribute snuff videos as a means of recruitment. We use it to confirm to them how passive and enervated we are: What was it the last time blood ran in the streets of Paris? Oh, yeah, a pencil – for all those dead cartoonists. But, given that blood in the streets of Paris looks like becoming a regular event, it helps to have something of general application. What about, ooh, a tricolor with a blue tear at the end? No, better yet: a peace symbol with a croissant in the middle. No, wait…

What’s that? All you are saying is give peace a chance? But what, in fact, are the chances of peace for Paris and France? What are the odds?

Oh, sorry. All they were saying is give peace a chance. And, having said it, they’ve gone back to sleep until the next atrocity requires another stupid hashtag or useless avatar.

Really, SSDD.  Just stateside this time.

Want an avatar but you’re unsure about the tricolor of whichever European country’s been bombed today? Need a quickie illustration of Tintin, Manekin Pis, Asterix, Topo Gigio, the Little Mermaid, the blonde from Abba, etc, with their heads at an angle and a tear running down? Maybe a Belgian chocolate melting from a broken heart, or a frite in mayonnaise tinged with regret? How about the all-in-one hashtag that instantly updates to each new slaughter? #JeSuisParis, #JeSuisBruxelles, #JeSuisYourTownHere! Call Sad-Mart, the one-stop shop for all your useless solidarity gestures! #NousSommesEverywhere!

And a quote that he brings back quite often, because it encapsulates, broadly speaking, the loss of the West to fight for its own principles:

Mr van den Boogaard is a Dutch gay “humanist”, which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool. He was reflecting on the accelerating Islamization of the Continent and concluded that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

We’re going to go through the hashtags and the buttons and the flagwaving and there will be nothing done about it.  The enemy won’t be identified except as “hate”, which will make for an interesting time when we declare a “War on Hate” if one hasn’t been called already.   People who don’t know how to deal with enemies, who won’t even name them for fear of offending their own moral socjus rectitude, will point fingers at people who didn’t do anything, from the NRA to video games to Republicans to any of the usual cultural suspects.

From that same post a three months ago from Steyn:

You can’t say our enemies don’t have our measure. A new ISIS poll:

What colour will the Eiffel Tower be next?

Whatever terrorists bet the long shot on “rainbow flag” probably won that.

Gunwalker Update: Released Docs Tell Us What We Already Knew, NY Post Rediscovers Fast & Furious

From NYPost:

The deadly-but-forgotten government gun-running scandal known as “Fast and Furious” has lain dormant for years, thanks to White House stonewalling and media compliance. But newly uncovered e-mails have reopened the case, exposing the anatomy of a coverup by an administration that promised to be the most transparent in history.

Not forgotten at all.  Just depends where you live and depends if you have to deal with the armed cartels.  Also, those “newly uncovered emails” basically tell us things we already know.

A federal judge has forced the release of more than 20,000 pages of emails and memos previously locked up under President Obama’s phony executive-privilege claim. A preliminary review shows top Obama officials deliberately obstructing congressional probes into the border gun-running operation.

…internal documents later revealed the real goal was to gin up a crisis requiring a crackdown on guns in America. Fast and Furious was merely a pretext for imposing stricter gun laws.

Yup.

Only, the scheme backfired when Justice agents lost track of the nearly 2,000 guns sold through the program and they started turning up at murder scenes on both sides of the border — including one that claimed the life of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The scheme didn’t backfire.  The operation failed, but the scheme still worked.  Southern border states now have mandatory reporting to the ATF on any purchases of more than one firearm.  Democrats got more gun control, and they got it even though Fast and Furious came to light.  They even got it by citing Fast and Furious as something that meant ATF needed more funding, more resources, and more gun laws – Democrats were saying these things during the hearings with whistleblowers.

Then Team Obama conspired to derail investigations into who was responsible by first withholding documents under subpoena — for which Holder earned a contempt-of-Congress citation — and later claiming executive privilege to keep evidence sealed.

Fascinating how that works.  Start a criminal conspiracy using government force against citizens of the US and citizens of Mexico, get caught, then claim that you’re doing an investigation and the investigation is ongoing so you can’t reveal anything about it, then claim executive privilege and you can magically never be held accountable for a conspiracy that has so far resulted in hundreds of murders.

Somewhere Warren G. Harding is upset he couldn’t think of this scam during Teapot Dome (which killed no one).

The degree of obstruction was “more than previously understood,” House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz said in a recent memo to other members of his panel.

“The documents reveal how senior Justice Department officials — including Attorney General Holder — intensely followed and managed an effort to carefully limit and obstruct the information produced to Congress,” he asserted.

They also indict Holder deputy Lanny Breuer, an old Clinton hand, who had to step down in 2013 after falsely denying authorizing Fast and Furious.

Their efforts to impede investigations included:

-Devising strategies to redact or otherwise withhold relevant information;
-Manipulating media coverage to control fallout;
-Scapegoating the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for the scandal.

The last one is a bit interesting.  The ATF definitely deserves plenty of blame as they conducted the operation, but ultimately the story from the White House was that it was “a rogue operation conducted by a handful of agents at a field office”.

We know that’s BS based off the level the White House went to protect itself, we also know it’s BS based on the resources used – namely the FBI passing felons on background checks (there are later stories about that as well – I may go back and add more links).

Talking points drafted for Holder and other brass for congressional hearings made clear that Justice intended to make ousted ATF officials the fall guys for the scandal.

“These (personnel) changes will help us move past the controversy that has surrounded Fast and Furious,” Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich wrote in August 2011.

In an October 2011 e-mail to his chief of staff, moreover, Holder stated that he agreed with a strategy to first release documents to friendly media “with an explanation that takes the air out” of them, instead “of just handing them over” to Congress.

Thomas Sowell refers to this as “telling the truth slowly“.

Obama insists Fast and Furious is just another “phony” scandal whipped up by Republicans to dog his presidency.

“Phony”.