Obama’s Rewriting of Reality on Jihad

From the Washington Times:

Before the Boston Marathon bombings, the Obama administration argued for years that there is a big difference between terrorists and the tenets of Islam.

A senior White House aide in 2009 publicly urged Washington to cease using the term “jihadist” — asserting that terrorists are simply extremists. Two years later, the White House ordered a cleansing of training materials that Islamic groups deemed offensive.

Now, some analysts are asking whether the 2009 edict and others that followed have dampened law enforcement’s appetite to thoroughly investigate terrorism suspects for fear of offending higher-ups or the American Muslim lobby.

It’s not just suspected.  The most recent fedgov-sponsored anti-terrorism course I took spent the first few hours going over the SPLC’s laundry list of evil white terrorist organizations that to any sane person, aren’t more than a footnote.

In October 2011, 57 Islamic groups wrote a letter to John O. Brennan, now CIA director, but then President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser.

Citing news reports, the groups complained of “biased, false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam” inside the federal government’s instructional halls.

“While recent news reports have highlighted the FBI’s use of biased experts and training materials, we have learned that this problem extends far beyond the FBI and has infected other government agencies, including the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Councils, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Army,” the letter read.

Muslims objected to several training guides, such as a 2009 report produced at the Army Command and General Staff at the Fort Leavenworth School of Advanced Military Studies.

“Moderate Muslims are not exercising moderation; they are simply applying other means to accomplish the same goal of establishing global Islamic dominance,” it quoted the report as saying.

At least two of the 57 groups were listed by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators and as being connected to the Muslim Brotherhood in the prosecution of a Texas charity for funding Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The groups are the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America.

The organizations’ letter demanded that biased trainers be disciplined, that all instructors undergo retraining and that materials deemed offensive by Muslim activists be purged.

Want to know why we can’t effectively fight jihadi terrorists?  Why we keep having Fort Hoods and Bostons?

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

- Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu’s reflections on the Obama administration would probably be something like: “If you deny yourself knowledge of the enemy and even deny the enemy’s existence because you don’t want to offend the enemy, you have already been defeated.“

John Guandolo, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, has spent years studying the global Muslim Brotherhood movement and its links to American Islamic groups. The FBI relies on some of them to guide its training. The political left has branded Mr. Guandolo an “Islamophobe.”

“There is no strategy in the FBI,” he told The Times. “At FBI headquarters, it is a daily fire drill. The threats come in, and they run around to deal with them and run them down. But because none of it can have anything to do with the Muslim Brotherhood’s movement in the U.S. or Islam, they never address the root cause and common investigative realities.”

Mr. Emerson, who maintains back-channel ties to law enforcement, said any slide presentation on Islamic extremism now has to be submitted to a special Justice Department panel.

He said one slide that was required to be omitted showed the famous photo of captured Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The photo of a disheveled and unshaven Mohammed was deemed “offensive to Islam,” Mr. Emerson said.

There is a strategy in the FBI.  It’s a strategy of concession and defeat.

… the president does not “see this challenge as a fight against ‘jihadists.’ Describing terrorists in this way — using a legitimate term, jihad, meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal — risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

Some analysts disagree with that interpretation, saying the Koran clearly states that jihad is a “holy war.”

Jihad is war.

Denying it and pretending that it’s simply “internal jihad” denies reality.  The struggle in Islam is further submission to the will of Allah – Islam means submission.  Salaam and the peace of Allah is all about submission to Allah’s will.  People with an internal “my struggle” tend to be types who are worth keeping an eye on anyway.

Beyond that point, it doesn’t actually matter what the US says.  Contrary to American popular belief, the world does not actually revolve around us.  The right knows we’re big and important and we have an important role to play, but we’re ultimately not everything; the left mocks our actual importance, but then thinks every evil in the world is caused by our interference and instead blames America for everything as though we are the cause of all evil in the world – a far more powerful egocentric belief.

Jihadis who are willing to kill themselves to strike a blow against the West in a desire to further the plans for the caliphate do not care what you or I think of them.  The US saying “Islamic jihadi terrorists are Islamic jihadi terrorists” doesn’t change much.

They don’t need our opinion to make themselves legitimate.  They are, by their own actions, legitimating themselves.  They strike terror against the west and they prove they are jihadis.  The US understanding and saying “they’re jihadis” does not magically make them jihadis.  That they are blowing themselves up for jihad makes them jihadis.  This is a question of acknowledging reality.  They aren’t seeking our approval to make them jihadis.

For your nation to protect itself does demand that it acknowledge what it is fighting.

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”

- Osama bin Laden

Frankly, when we’re acting befuddled because we can’t understand jihad, it doesn’t make us the strong horse.  When our government, filled with mush-brained liberals at best; and jihad-allies leftists as well, tells you with their rose-colored glasses and romantic worldview (or straight up leftist redistributive propaganda) that these are a peaceful, peaceable, highly spiritual wise people with a history that goes back thousands of years, wise exotic mystics who travel the deserts and kept alive the knowledge that racist bigoted white European Christians threw away, and then were attacked by ruthless murderous Christian fundamentalist Crusaders who sought to kill them for some reason… it sets up a ridiculous worldview.

The leftist worldview doesn’t allow for acknowledging who the enemy is.

“They say our enemy is violent extremism,” Mr. Lieberman said. “It’s not. It’s not animal rights extremists or white supremacy extremists. It’s Islamic extremism.”

Lieberman’s one redeeming virtue is that he somewhat understands this.  At the same time, it’s not extremism.

This is extremism:

Rubio also has part of the problem recognized, but this is still a problem:

Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, told Fox News this week that the administration will not recognize the terrorists for what they are — radicalized Islamists.

These are radical muslims:

Notably, those muslim snowboarders aren’t jihadis.  Or at least, probably not (Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a Golden Gloves boxer, after all).

“My problem with this administration is they refuse to acknowledge the existence of this kind of terrorism,” Mr. Rubio said.

He noted that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic complex in Benghazi, Libya, the White House refused to call it terrorism and blamed it on everyday demonstrators.

To really explain that further, the White House’s so-called “demonstrators” brought mortars.  The White House story is that they brought fire support to yell about a video that no one had ever seen.

You don’t bring indirect fire area-effect weapons to a protest.

I voice my continued objection to the new zoning regulations! No new strip centers!

This is a Second Amendment protest – a protest about guns and the right of the people too keep and bear arms in order to throw off oppression – up to and including possibly overthrowing a corrupt government:

And they didn’t bring any artillery.  They also aren’t jihadis.

Update: It also looks like the Tsarnaevs’ bombs required some additional training and expertise to make, as though they might not be a “lone wolf” operation as the administration claims, as though there might actually be some kind of global movement that’s doing this bombing extremist stuff (for no discernable reason)… like there’s maybe a group of people who believe in the same thing (extremism and radicalness, sayeth the administration) and are out to spread terrorism for the sake of terrorism.  Whoa.  (How you can have two people working together and still call them a “lone” wolf ignores what the word “lone” means, but I digress.)

Harry Reid, History and Tyranny

Via Drudge, from Real Clear Politics:

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) mocked Second Amendment rights activists while announcing his support for a ban on assault weapons and limits to high-capacity magazine clips on the Senate floor today.

REID: In the 1920s, organized crime was committing murders with machine guns. So Congress dramatically limited the sale and transfer of machine guns. As a result, machine guns all but disappeared from the streets. We can and should take the same common-sense approach to safeguard Americans from modern weapons of war.

Starting from the end of this statement and working back, modern weapons of war aren’t legal (without a lot of licensing) precisely because of the National Firearms Act of 1934 that Reid is alluding to.  But wait, you say – the National Firearms Act came out in 1934?  Yes, yes it did.

Organized crime became an issue in the 1920s because of a great early Progressive idea to make people better: Prohibition.  Prohibition was so important to those who “know what’s best” that the government went out and poisoned US citizens intentionally:

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist’s war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was “our national experiment in extermination.”

Early progressives had decided that intemperance needed to be squashed, even if it meant murdering some 10,000 citizens who drink by having government poison them.

The 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, and just like that, the revenue stream for bootleggers and organized crime evaporated overnight.  Coupled with the beginning of the Great Depression exacerbated by FDR’s policies impacting the entire economy, organized crime wasn’t making the same kind of money and thus it wasn’t the same threat it was in the 1920s.

Reid continued saying he’d vote for Feinstein’s “Assault” Weapons Ban:

That is why I will vote for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban – because we must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence. I will vote for the ban because maintaining law and order is more important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black helicopters and false flags. I will vote for the ban because saving the lives of young police officers and innocent civilians is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.

There is no “balance” as you move towards tyranny, even if you mock those who warn of tyranny.  There can be no right to grow up safe.  These are wonderful abstract concepts that are high-minded, but impossible.  You cannot “grow up safe”.  The world cannot be made into a safe place.

“Maintaining law and order” would mean enforcing laws first.  Obama doesn’t even enforce gun laws.  Mocking people who oppose the bill as conspiracy theorists just means you don’t have an argument.

The Obama administration has actively engaged in a conspiracy against the Second Amendment by shipping guns to narcoterrorist cartels in Mexico.  You can read all about it.

Lastly, Reid claiming to want to save the lives of young police officers by destroying the Second Amendment they swear an oath to – as part of the Constitution, just means that he cares about protecting organs of the state but not about the rights of the people – the same rights that cop swears to uphold.

As to “saving the lives of innocent civilians” being more important that “preventing imagined tyranny”, scroll back up and read about the Chemist’s War.  The US government actively poisoned people in order to push its Progressive “good idea” of Prohibition, whether people wanted it or not.  The same time that the Senate was looking at banning machineguns, the same government was poisoning people.  Also in the early 1930s, not only was the government banning the right to own machineguns “for the greater good”, they were also infecting black people with syphilis as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee experiment.  There were also forced sterilizations and such going on in the name of eugenic racial improvement, another Progressive idea, all “for the greater good”.

Reid, just like politicians at that time would’ve, is arguing that people should surrender their rights for their own good because government really wants to help them… It wants to help them so much it murders them for their own good – from poisoning people to support Prohibition to sending guns to narcoterrorist cartels to kill people to support gun control.

There is no “imagined tyranny”, there are just increasing levels of tyranny.  With history as our guide, we know we need to stay well-armed to stay safe, and we know that a government that mocks us ultimately means us harm.  They aren’t by, for, and of the people.

Harry Reid is also indulging in the Broken Window Fallacy.  The complaints he makes today about protecting children and cops are ones that are visible.  The tyranny that others warn against isn’t here yet, and takes time to materialize.  But this isn’t some Manbearpig fantasy, we have all of human history to see the repetition of tyranny as Innocents Betrayed illustrates above.  We know what happens when governments get powerful.  We have seen the US government in the last four years send guns to narcoterrorist cartels and hush it up afterwards.  We have seen the US government poison over 10,000 people just to push Prohibition.

There is no imagined tyranny.  It exists, creeping, always encroaching, and always there.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

A Million Individual Tragedies

A few days ago, I wrote about how a few of the Newtown families have taken on a lifelong mission, and then yesterday about how reports came out that some of those families have actively decided to shack up with leftist political advisors who are using that personal tragedy as a political prop to bring down the Bill of Rights.  They’re pushing against citizens’ rights with the White House propaganda slogan “now is the time”.  In even greater response:

I’m a veteran.  When I write things like “for those who’ve fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know”, I mean it.  It’s not a cliche, it’s a reality.  There are a lot of people, myself included, who fought for our rights and our Constitution.  Our nation is unique in that we don’t swear an allegiance to a president or a king or an autocrat.  We swear our oath to a piece of paper.  We swear it to a contract made by free people to create a government that serves us.  We swear our oaths to that Constitution and the protection of those natural rights it guarantees.

The natural right to self defense against oppression, against tyranny large and small, whether it be a dictatorial government or a lone criminal, is something that many men and women have fought and died for.  The forces against the natural right to self defense are those who would be our masters, who demand autocracy and think they know best and should tell us how to live – tyrants.

The demand that we surrender rights that our forefathers and sometimes our friends fought and died for is unacceptable.

Those rights were fought for, and men and women died for those rights, so that people back home could be safe with the protections those natural rights provide.  They the honored dead and we the veterans did not fight for those rights so that those rights could be hastily abandoned to a political cry of “now is the time”.

No.  Never is the time.

–

The Newtown families, if truly driven by grief, will still have my sympathy, but what they demand in the name of children and family who would not even be protected by the unconstitutional laws they demand is both anathema and wholly unacceptable to those who have served and those who remember our honored dead who fought for those rights.  The contract that our honored dead and we the veterans signed was to protect those rights.  Against more than two hundred years of adversaries within and without we’ve fought to preserve those rights with millions of men and women who’ve served and hundreds of thousands who’ve died in service – all to protect those rights.

The emotional demand that one tragedy, manipulated by fiendish politicians for their own power and demand to control the American people, mean that we the citizens give up the rights bought and paid for in blood by our honored dead and our veterans and often ourselves as veterans is one that can only be answered with a resounding no.

Today those demanding the surrender of our rights and our arms do so with words, because we have arms.  With history as our guide, when we have no arms, they won’t use words to take our rights.  This is again why we have fought for those rights.

-

There may be solutions to limit the horrors in the world, but abrogating the right of self defense that is intrinsic to the contract of our safe and secure society is not an option.  We may still have individual madmen and criminals – and we have fewer of them when we can fight back; but we have no tyrants here – our tragedies are counted in ones and tens but never in millions.

Stalin famously said that a single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.  To a dictator’s perspective, he’s right.

To a free man’s perspective and to a patriot perspective, that’s not the case.  A single death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a million individual tragedies.  The twenty-six individual tragedies at Sandy Hook do not outweigh the incomprehensible human suffering and death endured by millions of individual citizens who fought and so often died so that we could live free covered by the protections of the natural rights our Constitution provides.  The willing and also unwilling sacrafices of those millions of individual tragedies and sufferings thus prevented millions more individual tragedies.  Those who fought and died knew that they fought for that piece of paper and the rights it guaranteed.

The actions of one madman and the desire to correct those twenty-six tragedies can be understood.  They are fathomable.  The rows upon rows of graves of those who fought to prevent greater tragedies are often beyond comprehension and thus some folks can miss the far bigger picture.  They aren’t seen as a million individual tragedies and lives of suffering undertaken for a larger cause to ensure greater rights that ultimately protect us all – those lost lives are right in front of us and yet some forget both those lost lives and the payments in blood they made on liberties.

Each one is an individual tragedy.

Each individual tragedy was undertaken as an oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

And yet there are those who would still trade away that liberty bought at so dear a price for temporary security… and they would soon find themselves with neither.

Melissa Harris-Perry: To Each According to Your Ability, To Each According to Your Need

First she said that children are property of the community.

Now she says you have the right to have all your needs fulfilled at all times.

You can feel like you earn more, to pretend to have meritocracy, but really, everyone needs all of their needs cared for at all times.  The doctor has no right to his labor – he has to labor for the community good.  The farmer has no right to his crops – he is there to provide for the eaters.  The builder has no right to the house he builds – he is there to provide for those who want houses.  The woman has no right to herself – she is there to provide for men who need her body.  The healthy man has no right to his parts – he is there to be disassembled and harvested by those who need his organs.

To each according to your ability, to each according to your need!  Eat the rich!

Via the People’s Cube:

Colorado Democrat Representative Doesn’t Understand How Magazines Or Clips Work, But You’d Be Dead Anyway, So She Doesn’t Care

From the DenverPost:

WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette has been the lead sponsor on a federal ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines in two Congresses, saying it’s one of her top priorities.  …

But she doesn’t understand how magazines work.

Asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, DeGette said:

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those know they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

Magazines don’t work like that.  They’re like a gas tank.  Just because you use the gas in the tank, doesn’t mean the tank is useless.  You just put gas back in the tank.

As usual, legislators are going after things they don’t understand – they just know all guns need to be banned, and this is a step towards that.  Like Carolyn McCarthy and the “shoulder thing that goes up”, they don’t need to know what it is to ban it, they just know it has to do with guns, and guns must be banned.  For those who missed “the shoulder thing that goes up”…

But of course, DeGette isn’t an idiot, she merely “misspoke”:

DeGette’s spokeswoman Juliet Johnson issued a statement Wednesday, saying the congresswoman mispoke.

“The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,” Johnson said. “Quite frankly, this is just another example of opponents of common-sense gun violence prevention trying to manipulate the facts to distract from the critical issue of keeping our children safe and keeping killing machines out of the hands of disturbed individuals. It’s more political gamesmanship that stands in the way of responsible solutions.”

It is kinda neat to see how many yapping leftist nonsense talking points can be cranked out in those few sentences: “common-sense” by someone who doesn’t understand what they’re trying to ban, and can’t understand that criminals don’t follow the law; “gun violence prevention” that only effects people who don’t commit violent acts to begin with; “manipulate the facts” being someone calling DeGette on her complete nonsense statements; “distract from the critical issue” being presenting opposing points and data that show her to be a clueless idiot; and “keeping our children safe” by, as Bill Whittle puts it “protecting the gazelle from the lion by taking the horns from the gazelle”; and “keeping killing machines out of the hands of disturbed individuals” which means banning everything from citizen use while guaranteeing that criminals will continue to enjoy greater power over their victims; “political gamesmanship” as a finger-pointing game against people who call her on her BS (again); and “responsible solutions” by which she means empowering the state and ignoring the Constitution and destroying citizens rights.

No, she isn’t just an idiot, she’s an ideologue anti-gun super-idiot, with ideologue anti-gun super-idiots on her staff.  Clips are also totally and completely reusable:

From M1 Garands to Lee Enfields to SKSes to revolver moon-clips, pretty much every clip I can think of is reusable.  I’m sure there are some obscure ones that can’t be, and clips like those that M16/M4 M855 ammo comes on are somewhat silly to reuse, but they can be reused.

But all of that doesn’t matter anyway, because if you need a gun and call for the police, you’ll probably be dead anyway.

“My question is: What about me?” the Denver citizen asked Rep. DeGette, arguing against limiting magazine capacity. “There may not be one bad guy that comes into my house… I have to change magazines? I am a serious disadvantage.”

“What about me?” he repeated.

After arrogantly smirking at his question, DeGette replied: “The good news for you, you live in Denver. The [Denver Police Department] would be there within minutes.”

“You’d probably be dead anyway if they had that kind of firepower.”

When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away, so that’s probably the case.  At least she’s honest about how much she cares about her constituency.  Disarmament equals death at the hands of an apathetic state.  Just another reminder.

Gun Grabber Tyrant Roundup 4/2/13

• From CBS:

HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) — Connecticut state lawmakers came to an agreement Monday on what they said will become some of the nation’s toughest gun control laws.

Connecticut state lawmakers came to an agreement Monday on what they said will become some of the nations toughest laws that infringe on the right of the citizen, bragging that they’ve done more to squash the puny serfs than anyone this week, all through “agreement” between one ruling group and another ruling group on what they should do to the peon citizen.

As CBS 2′s Lou Young reported, the deal included a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, such as the one that was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre in Newtown. The deal also calls for a new registry for existing high-capacity magazines, and background checks that would apply to private gun sales.

One small step for a tyrant, one giant leap for tyranny!

Another registry would be set up for dangerous weapons offenders.

Y’know, we used to not put dangerous people on a list.  We used to put them in prison until they either learned and stopped being dangerous, or until they just stopped being.

Connecticut House Speaker Brendan Sharkey (D-Hamden) said he hopes the agreement sends a message to Washington, and the rest of the country.

“This is the way to get this job done; to do it in an effective, meaningful, thoughtful way, and to do it on a bipartisan basis, because our children deserve no less,” Sharkey said.

It sends a message that the Second Amendment shall be infringed, and sends a message that, on a bipartisan basis, between different stripes of tyrant, our children deserve to grow up in a society in which the state will dictate to them what they may do, and how they may do it, because the state knows best for the little people, who all need to be controlled, lorded over, supervised, and taken care of.

• Same story, different take from the BBC:

Criminal background checks would now be required of all prospective gun purchasers. Currently, federal law exempts so-called private transactions, which can include online sales and sales at gun shows.

So-called “private transactions” between so-called “private citizens” who think they’re so-called “free men” whose lives shouldn’t be subject to “so-called” tyranny and control by government.

Where do you buy guns online?  Every online gun shop I see requires a transfer via FFL holder, as does every private seller on Gunbroker or Auction Arms.  The only exceptions are antiques.  Is there really a problem with blackpowder pistols being sold online?

In a compromise, legislators did not ban existing ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds. Instead, already purchased high-capacity magazines will have to be registered.

In a compromise, citizens’ rights were only partially stripped, and rights that citizens thought they had will now have to be registered, though the state may be unsure of when they acquired these “rights”, so they may have to surrender them anyway, and they may not be able to pass these rights on to their children.  It’s a compromise in which you compromise your rights, and the state increases its power.  What a wonderful compromise!  Just the tip, baby.

• California considers taxing ammo, because they still think Chris Rock is funny:

Gun control advocates in Sacramento are putting a new twist on an old NRA slogan: “Guns don’t kill people — bullets kill people.”

Democratic lawmakers are pushing like never before to regulate or tax ammunition sales. They say the logic is simple: A firearm is nothing but an expensive paperweight without ammunition.

And a printing press is nothing without ink, and a computer is nothing without electricity.  Goodbye, Bill of Rights, hello tyranny!

“It’s a way to red-tape the right to bear arms to death,” said Chuck Michel, the California Rifle and Pistol Association’s attorney, promising to sue if any such bills pass. “It’s all part of a campaign of shame, the fight to make it as difficult as possible for law-abiding citizens to make the choice to have a firearm for self-defense.”

As lawmakers mull how to curb gun violence in the wake of December’s massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn., some note that California and federal laws also forbid those who aren’t allowed to own firearms from owning ammunition — but there’s no way to tell who’s buying it.

Skinner’s bill would require all ammo dealers to be licensed and all ammo buyers to provide identification information that would go to a state registry. The registry could then be compared with a state database of people prohibited from owning guns and ammo because of crimes, mental health issues or other reasons. It also would tip police to massive purchases.

Because a RIGHT means begging the state for a license.

Another bill, SB53 by state Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, would require a background check and an estimated $50 fee for a one-year permit to buy ammunition.

Because a RIGHT means begging the state for a license.

10 percent tax on ammunition to fund crime prevention — might merge with another lawmaker’s proposed nickel-per-round tax to fund mental-health screening for children. Bonta, D-Oakland, said his tax is mostly about generating money to “combat the gun violence in our communities,” but could have the “secondary benefit” of stemming “rampant sales.”

These are a couple boxes of .22s, with Indiana Jones and a horse for scale:

That’s 1100 rounds.  In the beforetimes, back before the panic, that would run you about $20/box, so $40 total (a few years prior, before QE and metals prices spikes and Obama, they’d be $10/box).  With a nickel tax per round, you’d be looking at a $27.50 tax per box.  So even at recent prices, the price would go from $20/box to $47.50/box.

That $40 couple of boxes there would be $95.  And that’s before local sales taxes.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

- Chief Justice John Marshall

Shall not be infringed means shall not be infringed.  Except to the ruling class, to whom it means, “license, regulate, tax, eliminate, shut up, destroy, destroy, EXTERMINATE!”:

AB 48 by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley — Would require ammunition sellers to be licensed; ammunition purchasers to show identification; ammunition sellers to report all sales to the state Justice Department, which would create a registry of ammunition purchases. First hearing: April 2.
AB 187 by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland — Would impose a 10 percent tax on all ammunition sold in the state, with the revenue directed to a fund for crime-prevention efforts in the state’s high-crime areas. No hearing date set.
AB 760 by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento — Would impose a 5-cent tax on each bullet sold in California, dedicating the revenue to an existing program to screen young children for mild to moderate mental illness — and intervene with strategies to address their problems. First hearing: April 15.
SB 53 by state Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles — Would require anyone buying ammunition to first pass a background check and receive a one-year permit, for an estimated $50 fee, from the state Justice Department. First hearing: April 16.

And in Congress, because the Second Amendment can’t be infringed enough at the state level:

S.35, the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act of 2013, by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. — Would require face-to-face purchases of ammunition, require licensing of ammunition dealers and reporting of bulk purchases of ammunition. A companion bill in the House, HR142, is sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y.
S.174, the Ammunition Background Check Act of 2013, by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. — Would require an instant background check for the purchase of ammunition and would restore pre-1986 requirements that sellers track their inventory and keep records of their customers. Purchases of 1,000 rounds or more, or thefts of large amounts of ammunition, would have to be reported to law enforcement.

They really hate online ammo sales, but let’s revisit that, shall we?

In regular old economics, we’re talking about the government establishing a barrier to entry for you as a citizen in order to stop you from exercising your rights.

• Via HotAir, another financial barrier to entry to exercise your 2A rights:

Last month, New York Democrat Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced the “Firearm Risk Protection Act” that would impose a $10,000 penalty on any gun owner who fails to purchase mandatory liability insurance.

And Erika Johnson gets it:

The bill would require gun buyers to provide proof of insurance from a company approved by a state insurance regulatory authority for “losses resulting from use of the firearm while it is owned by the purchaser.” In a nutshell, you need to take out a preemptive policy for any violence you might inflict with your firearm — which doesn’t really make sense, because the people inflicting non-defensive gun violence are criminals anyway. This is just another poorly disguised legislative attempt to deter gun ownership, and man, talk about regressive! Looks like self-defense is only for people who can afford to take out an extra insurance policy.

• From HotAir, the Obama administration is supporting that collection of dictators at the UN in their quest to ban ownership of small arms (which might overthrow their dictatorial reigns):

The oh-so-esteemed bureaucrats at the United Nations have been looking to slap some regulations on the small arms trade via an international treaty for quite some time, but the United States has never really cottoned on to that idea. The Senate has to ratify all treaties by a two-thirds majority, and in one of the amendment votes to their budget just last month, the Senate voted 53-46 to specifically prevent the U.S. from signing on to the U.N.’s proposed Arms Trade Treaty.

The Obama administration don’t care. The president expressed a willingness to get behind such a thing near the start of his tenure, conspicuously backing off as last November’s election approached but then jumping right back on the progressive globalist bandwagon.

The Senate, however, has vowed to block ratification, which requires a two-thirds majority and is needed for the treaty to be legally binding on the U.S.

Good.  TX Senator Ted Cruz tweeted this:

UN Arms Treaty should be rejected outright by US Senate. It is international gun regulation, plain and simple & it must never be ratified

• And one more from Connecticut:

Allowing magazines that carry 10 or more bullets to remain in the hands of gun owners would leave a gaping loophole in the law, said Mark Barden, whose 7-year-old son, Daniel, was killed in the shooting.

“It doesn’t prevent someone from going out of the state to purchase them and then bring them back. There’s no way to track when they were purchased, so they can say, ‘I had this before,’” Barden said. “So it’s a big loophole.”

This is where things get unpleasant.  It’s very difficult to explain to someone who’s still in the throes of grief that the rights that we as American citizens have recognized by our Constitution are in fact natural rights, and also rights that are inherently necessary to protect ourselves as individuals and as a group from tyranny small and large.  It’s very difficult to explain to someone that their son shouldn’t have been murdered because the mental health system, which has stigmatized mental health so severely, has made it so people who need help or who should simply be locked away can get help or can be secured far from normal society.

It’s very difficult to break past that wall and explain to people that the very real fears of government tyranny are very real fears – because governments invariably end up becoming tyrannical unless they’re kept in check.  It’s very difficult to penetrate that wall of grief and explain that restricting the rights of American citizens, infringing on their natural rights of self-defense, giving the state more power over their lives, and ultimately putting flawed men who are in government charge of those of us citizens will never bring his son back.

It will never bring his son back, and it will never prevent the Bath School Disaster, or the World Trade Center bombing in 93, the Oklahoma City bombing in 95 – but it will cause the Amanda Collins of the world to be raped again.  It will enable government use of force against a disarmed citizenry.  It will enable police brutality and governmental corruption.  It will lead to a nation where there are the Rulers and the Ruled.

It may not do it tomorrow, and it may not do it in idyllic Connecticut, but it will.  History is very harsh, and history is right.  History shows us what will happen, and history shows that the only place where governmental tyranny has been stymied is in nations where the people retain the individual power to resist oppression.

Sadly, it’s a very big picture and someone grieving for a lost child is unlikely to look at the big picture and wonder if they are not asking for something that not only would have not, could have not, and cannot save their lost child, but that will ultimately make the world a more dangerous, repressive, destructive place where hundreds, thousands, or millions of children might die because of his requests.

Then again, Darrell Scott, father of Columbine victim Rachel Scott, knew that there is an even bigger picture than the worldly knowledge of history, and looked to address it in a different way:

Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, soul, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and reek havoc.

“Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.

“What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence.

“And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties.

“We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.

“We do not need more religion. We do not need more gaudy television evangelists spewing out verbal religious garbage. We do not need more million dollar church buildings built while people with basic needs are being ignored.

“We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgement that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God!

“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes–He did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right!

“I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999 , at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain.

WP: “White Man Did It!”

Your daily does of leftist stupidity, courtesy of the Washington Post opinions page:

Imagine if African American men and boys were committing mass shootings month after month, year after year. Articles and interviews would flood the media, and we’d have political debates demanding that African Americans be “held accountable.” Then, if an atrocity such as the Newtown, Conn., shootings took place and African American male leaders held a news conference to offer solutions, their credibility would be questionable. The public would tell these leaders that they need to focus on problems in their own culture and communities.

Um, for starters, that is going on.  It’s just in ones and twos.  Even Juan Williams was talking about this a couple days ago (his solution was half-addressing the societal problems, but he still took the leftist idea of banning tools, too).  People who discuss crime rates in the black community (as well as other ethnic communities – including poor whites) look at demographics of violence and do try to address them.

Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago is rife with violence (despite banning guns for good citizens).  Every week is another series of murders. There is no “imagine if” – it really is the case.

But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room.

Not really.  Maybe to a racist.

Here’s the pitch for stupid…

Nearly all of the mass shootings in this country in recent years — not just Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Tucson and Columbine — have been committed by white men and boys. Yet when the National Rifle Association (NRA), led by white men, held a news conference after the Newtown massacre to advise Americans on how to reduce gun violence, its leaders’ opinions were widely discussed.

…and it’s a high fly ball out to deep left field!

Let’s look at those mentioned.  Newtown, Aurora, Tuscon and Columbine were done by white kids and guys with varying mental problems.  “Not just Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Tucson and Columbine have been committed by white men and boys”…

…and it’s in the stands!

The Fort Hood shooter, was a psychiatrist named Nidal Malik Hasan, fully cognizant of what he was doing – committing jihad, yelling “Allahu Akbar!” as he gunned down the soldiers that he, as a “Soldier of Allah” wished dead.  And he wasn’t a white guy.  (Unless the authors are truly archaic racists/racialists who divide people only by caucasoid, negroid & mongoloid… which actually wouldn’t surprise me from the left.)

Meanwhile, the murders at Virginia Tech, the most prolific mass shooting murder in US history, were committed by an Asian kid of Korean descent.

And maniac cop Chris Dorner, who wrote a manifesto and started his killing spree by killing an Asian gal and her black fiance and was the subject of news coverage for days until he burned to death in a cabin in Big Bear, CA, was also a black man mass shooter murderer.

Unlike other groups, white men are not used to being singled out. So we expect that many of them will protest it is unfair if we talk about them. But our nation must correctly define their contribution to our problem of gun violence if it is to be solved.

No, actually white guys are used to being singled out by the left.  The last several decades of leftist rewriting of history have been an attempt not to recognize accomplishments of all ethnicities, but to drag down the accomplishments of the white man in an effort to make the world “fair” at best, and at worst as an attempt at subversion of the good done in large part by white men in America’s past.  It insults the achievements of men and women of all races.  It makes both the heroes and villains of history less colorful in all ways when not seen through an objective lens, but through one that demands “social justice” against the white man.  Diminishing one man diminishes them all – especially by contrast.  Of course, the left’s hate for “dead white men” has become parody by now, so I’m not going to belabor the point.

When white men try to divert attention from gun control by talking about mental health issues, many people buy into the idea that the United States has a national mental health problem, or flawed systems with which to address those problems, and they think that is what produces mass shootings.

Just to prove a point, I’m going to go to rifle manufacturer John Noveske’s last facebook post before he died (under odd circumstances) – you’ll probably get the point pretty quick and scroll on down, though:

Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)

Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,
(Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)

Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.

Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”

Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.
Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his
New York high school.

Missing from list… 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds….

What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21…… killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az

What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24….. killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado

What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or

What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct
Roberts is the only one that I haven’t heard about being on drugs of some kind.

John Noveske, at this point, has sadly become one of those “dead white men” of history, but I think that pretty well blows the “mental health isn’t an issue – it’s the white man!” argument all to hell.

But women and girls with mental health issues are not picking up semiautomatic weapons and shooting schoolchildren. Immigrants with mental health issues are not committing mass shootings in malls and movie theaters. Latinos with mental health issues are not continually killing groups of strangers.

Women and girls are just having sex with schoolchildren.

I’d guess the writers mean “non-American guy” by “immigrants” since they like breaking down other ethnic groups, but in fact they’re wrong again: Sulejman Talović murdered 5 people and wounded four at Trolley Square until he was shot by a white man with a gun.  Some people classify those who live in southern Europe as some kind of non-white ethnicity because they’re non-Anglo, but either way, it’s still meaningless.  Lee Boyd Malvo, is a black dude from Jamaica and was one of the two DC Snipers (the other a US-born black dude).

As for Latinos… Julio Gonzalez killed 87 people in 1990 in the Bronx, NY.  And there are plenty of “latinos” killing plenty of other people, but it’s mostly drug and gang related, so just like run-of-the-mill black killers listed at the beginning, they’re ignored because it’s usually in ones and twos… except when they kill dozens, but it’s okay because it’s a mile away from the US.  And sometimes it’s not, but those don’t make the news.

Each of us is programmed from childhood to believe that the top group of our hierarchies — and in the U.S. culture, that’s white men — represents everyone, so it can feel awkward, even ridiculous, when we try to call attention to those people as a distinct group and hold them accountable.

No, what feels awkward is that there are people who really think there’s a “hierarchy” based on race.

For example, our schools teach American history as the history of everyone in this nation. But the stories we learn are predominantly about white men. To study the history of other groups, people have to take separate classes, such as African American history, women’s history or Native American history. And if we take “Hispanic American History,” we don’t expect to learn “Asian American History,” because a class about anyone but white men is assumed not to be inclusive of anyone else.

To the first part, that’s because there were a lot of things done by white men.  And to study the history of other groups seperately is insulting to other Americans.  Ignoring Crispus Attucks because you’ve shoved him into February alone is stupid, seperatist, leftist racist nonsense.  To ignore Buffalo Soldiers when talking about the Old West (or that 1 in 3 cowboys were black), or ignoring Goyathlay or King Mike is absurd.  They are all Americans and part of the American story.  Cutting them out for a “special month” makes them seem to be aberrations, not an instrinsic part of the whole history of the nation.  It’s both separate and unequal.

That’s a failure of educators and a failure of the writers of the WP piece, who think in racist terms.

If life were equitable, white male gun-rights advocates would face some serious questions to assess their degree of credibility and objectivity. We would expect them to explain:

What facets of white male culture create so many mass shootings?

The same facets that create asian mass shooters and black mass shooters and every other sub-ethnicity’s mass killers.  It’s not based on relative melanin levels.

Why are so many white men and boys producing and entertaining themselves with violent video games and other media?

You realize black, red, yellow, brown, green and purple people all play video games, right?

Why do white men buy, sell and manufacture guns for profit; attend gun shows; and demonstrate for unrestricted gun access disproportionately more than people of other ethnicities or races?

Because black people were targeted for systematic disarmament by the racist Democrats of the South after the Civil War.  If more black people had been NRA members – like Robert Williams was in Monroe, NC – the civil rights movement would’ve looked different, too.  Oh, and because Amerind tribesmen were targeted for disarmament by racist expansionist progressives in the past.  If they hadn’t been disarmed and massacred at places like Wounded Knee, the American West might be composed of states that would be represented in large part by Amerind tribes who peacefully would’ve decided to join the US.  Because progressive leftist racist Democrats have managed to convince them that self-defense is racist and that they should roll over and die.

The Democrat leftist think they know what’s best, the media thinks they know what’s best, and they’re all groups that have subjugated groups “for their own good” beneath the heel of the state for decades.  Democrats are anti-gun and racist, that’s why – and they’ve beaten into the people they’ve shoved into their “great society” the idea that they should be disarmed and that the wonderful state will take care of them.  While limousine liberals are the ones who think they’ll be doing the “taking care” and thus they hate guns as well, as those are tools of free men, not slaves or subjugated, infantilized sheep.

Why are white male congressmen leading the fight against gun control?

White isn’t all they are, and they aren’t all white.  The congressmen leading the fight against gun control can go back to that previous paragraph and see that disarmament leads to oppression.  The hard-fought gains made by the Country Class – which is made up of people of all ethnicities – should not be tossed away and handed to dictatorial white male politicians like Shumer and Durbin and Lautenberg who are the same Ruling Class oppressors who targeted non-whites and whites who were of different sub-groups in the past.

The right to keep and bear arms is a color blind issue.  God made men, Sam Colt made them equal.

If Americans ask the right questions on gun issues, we will get the right answers. These answers will encourage white men to examine their role in their own culture and to help other white men and boys become healthier and less violent.

The answers the clueless writers intend to get are predicated on the idea that you believe their bias to begin with.  If you aren’t a racist who views society as having a race-hierarchy, you don’t see things their way – and that’s important, because America isn’t a race-based hierarchy.

Mike Bloomberg, Liberal Fascist

From Michael Walsh at PJ Media:

That’s New York City’s nasty little fascist mayor, the ersatz and erstwhile “Republican” who used the party to sneak into Gracie Mansion in the wake of the Giuliani administration’s successful war on street crime, and then double-crossed the GOP in his bald-faced but successful attempt to subvert term limits, lecturing David Gregory in his Boston honk that he knows what’s best for New Yorkers — and us.

Yes, it’s the Soda Jerk himself, tossing his pint-sized weight around as he attempts to remain politically viable after his reign as the successor to such corrupt and incompetent wretches as Jimmy Walker, William O’Dwyer, Abe Beame and David Dinkins mercifully comes to an end. Let’s unpack a little of what the Terror of Tinytown had to say.

We’re not banning anything.  All we’re saying is, we want to show you just how big the cup is. If you want 32 ounces, take two cups to your seat. If you want 64, carry four. But our hope is, if you only take one, you won’t go back.

If you believe that, Bloomberg has a bridge to Brooklyn to sell you. And to which the only proper response — the one that until New York turned into a city of Upper West Side conformist sheep he would have justly received — is (to quote Kurt Schlichter) “bite me.”

It’s a good post, worth reading, though he had to go back and update it to make note of Bloomberg’s new $12,000,000 anti-gun ad campaign, all for your own good.

It’s a campaign against individual autonomy and the freedom to live your life – all for your own good.

Gun Grabber Tyrant Roundup 3/22/13

First off, New York is offering $500 bounties on those who think they have rights:

ALBANY, N.Y. –  Nearly a year before signing the nation’s most stringent gun control measure into law, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched a hotline that allows state residents to report illegal gun owners in exchange for a $500 reward.

The measure is part of a four-pronged approach established by the governor’s office to reduce gun violence in urban communities, according to CBS6Albany.com.

Now that just about everything has been made illegal by the NY SAFE Act, the tyrants want you to turn in your neighbor – the only way they can get total control is through willing subjects who will help their masters eliminate all resistance.

The gun measure outlaws the purchase of any magazines that carry more than seven bullets, the nation’s most stringent limit. That would have put a severe limit on the sale of guns with industry-standard 10-bullet magazines when the provision of the law went into effect April 15.

10 rounds is not “industry standard”.  For modern rifles, 30 rounds is industry standard.  For modern pistols in .40 S&W, “standard” starts at 12 and goes up towards 17, for modern pistols in 9mm, “standard” starts around 13-15 rounds and goes up from there.  10 rounds is restricted.  7 rounds is further restricted.  All are infringements.

Next up, via HotAir, Bloomberg is back on the warpath and out for domination:

Democrats facing tough reelection races will either attract the ire of the National Rifle Association or prominent gun control activists such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I). A vote against the ban could spark primary challenges that could weaken Democrats in the general election…

“People are not going to say, ‘That’s a tough vote for them, let’s not do anything,’ ” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “There is a feeling that to win this thing we need all the Democrats. That means people who are in tough races in 2014 don’t get passes. I would expect issue ads and advocacy for all senators.”

For those who forgot, Josh Horwitz is the guy who says you’re a violent insurrectionist if you own an AR15.

And speaking of senators, Feinstein’s AWB was dumped by Reid, who won’t put it up for a vote.  I didn’t bother doing a story since it’s a non-story.  It’d be like a WWII news story saying “Japanese decide not to invade mainland US today”.  It’s meaningless, and ignores that Feinstein has already stated she will never give up in her quest to make sure that you, the citizen, is a disarmed subject with a boot stamping on your face forever, while she stays armed to the teeth to guard against you.  And she’s an idiot.

The “big surprise”, whch wasn’t, is that Harry Reid is “reversing course” and willing to introduce a bill that requires “universal background checks”, which means mandatory registration of all firearms.  Because, of course, that’s what “universal background checks” require in order to function.  Joe Manchin and Chuck Shumer agreed on that a couple weeks ago.

The Huffington Post reports, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will introduce gun control legislation Thursday night that includes a proposal for universal background checks, a high-ranking source told The Huffington Post.”

The liberal website adds:

“The news will cheer up gun control advocates who were left despondent days ago after Reid announced the baseline bill would not include a ban on assault weapons. That measure, which is sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), will be considered as an amendment, diminishing its chances of ending up in the final bill produced by the Senate. A provision that would ban the production and sale of high-capacity magazines will also be considered as an amendment, the source said.

I’ll reiterate this small point – they want to ban standard capacity magazines.  “High” is a relative term, and used only to indicate the next target.  In NY, “high” became 8 or more rounds in a magazine.

That’s the M1 Garand.  It has 8 round clips (not magazines).  It had fewer rounds than contemporary weapons like the M1 Carbine, the Enfield No1 Mk III, the 1941 Johnson, and numerous other rifles.  It was a tool of freedom used to liberate Europe and the Pacific from National Socialist and Imperial tyranny.  Now, the 8 rounds it holds are “high” capacity for imperial socialist tyrants in New York… and soon, in your neighborhood thanks to federal dictates.

And yes, they do want background checks as a way to register your guns as a prelude to confiscation:

Schumer has insisted on record-keeping for all private gun sales, saying the files are needed to keep the system effective. That led to stalemated talks with conservative leader Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who says the data would lead to federal records on gun owners.

If you want to arrest someone for a private sale you’ve outlawed, you have to keep track of all sales.  All guns must be known to the government.  And when they decide to drop down to 5 round magazines “FOR TEH CHILDRENZ!!!”, then they’ll know whose house to go to.

Outlining the first part of the plan, Cryan said the measure would limit the capacity of ammunition magazines from the current maximum of 15 to five.

They do want to ban everything.  They are out for domination.

Next up, the Hill says that some senators are feeling vulnerable because of all the talk of gun bans:

The Senate’s upcoming vote on the assault weapons ban is going to put vulnerable Democrats in a difficult spot.

Democrats facing tough reelection races will either attract the ire of the National Rifle Association or prominent gun control activists such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I). A vote against the ban could spark primary challenges that could weaken Democrats in the general election.

…

Reid said Tuesday the proposal would not muster 40 votes, and interviews with rank-and-file lawmakers show that seems accurate.

A wave of Democratic defections on the assault weapons ban would not sit well with gun-control and liberal advocacy groups. They warn Democratic senators who vote to kill one of President Obama’s biggest priorities will suffer political repercussions.

But Reid is going to “compromise” and only put the tip in with magazine bans.  Just the tip, baby.

And look who shows up in this story again:

“People are not going to say, ‘That’s a tough vote for them, let’s not do anything,’ ” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “There is a feeling that to win this thing we need all the Democrats. That means people who are in tough races in 2014 don’t get passes. I would expect issue ads and advocacy for all senators.”

These people are professional agents for the advancement of tyranny.  They work solely to strip you of your rights.  That’s what they do, that’s all they do.  Their entire lives are dedicated to disarming you “for your own good”.  They’re the enlightened, anointed, brilliant ruling class who think that the litany of historical disarmaments and genocide in the long run, and the demonstrable history of individual victimhood from smaller oppressors like criminals all somehow won’t apply this time, because shut up and “you must want to kill children”.

Next up, Joe Biden uses Rule for Radicals #5 – Ridicule is your most potent weapon:

When you go to [gun] registration, it raises all the black helicopter crowd notion that what this is all about is identifying who has a gun so that one day the government can get up and go the house and arrest everyone who has a gun, and they’ll cite Nazi Germany and all that.

Ha ha ha, they’re so stupid.  Godwin’s law, ha ha ha.

The administration Biden is part of ran guns to the narcoterrorist cartels in Mexico, resulting in the murders of hundreds of Mexican citizens and two US federal law enforcement agents.  The Obama administration has engaged in behavior that is wildly criminal.  Let’s just get that out there once again.

The thing is, that’s mockery.  And it’s also a lie.  It’s akin to the “so have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question.  It mocks and simultaneously derides anyone who brings up actual actions that are being taken by state governments right now.

SACRAMENTO — The California Senate approved a $24-million expenditure on Thursday to speed the confiscation of guns from people who have been disqualified from owning firearms because of criminal convictions or serious mental illness.

The neat thing about this program is that you lose your property and rights even if you’ve done nothing.

They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.

“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.

In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while she’d been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition.

Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment.

Phillips said her husband used the guns for recreation. She didn’t blame the attorney general’s agents for taking the guns based on the information they had, she said.

“I do feel I have every right to purchase a gun,” Phillips said. “I’m not a threat. We’re law-abiding citizens.”

No one was arrested. Most seized weapons are destroyed, Gregory said.

Ignore her situation for the time being, even though it may be an injustice of sorts, and look at her husband’s.  He lost his rights and property and has done nothing.

With mandatory registration, when they decide to come for your guns for “your own good” like the willing subject Phillips was, who didn’t blame the AG for taking her rights and property, they can.  With mandatory registration, the next ban they pass will result in door-to-door confiscations.  Not all at once, but slowly, and rights will disappear.

Finally, from American Thinker:

Universal Background Checks: the Liberal Holy Grail

Feinstein’s assault rifle ban has been removed from the Senate gun-control bill. While that is good news, it was recognized from the beginning as a bridge too far. What has survived, and may well become law, all in the spirit of bipartisan compromise, will actually be far worse.

The goals of the left have always been shrouded in deception and misrepresentation. Hide your true agenda behind a deceitful argument and then, after grabbing power, do what you really meant to do all along.

Read the whole thing.  It’s a breakdown and explanation of why “universal background checks” become mandatory confiscation.

Colorado Has Fallen

Colorado’s Democrat Governor Hickenlooper on Wednesday signed into law several anti-gun bills.

The legislation thrust Colorado into the national spotlight as a potential test of how far the country might be willing to go with new gun restrictions after the horror of mass killings at an Aurora movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed bills that require background checks for private and online gun sales and ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

The debate in the Democratic-controlled Legislature was intense, and Republicans warned that voters would make Democrats pay. The bills failed to garner a single Republican vote.

The bills’ approval came exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot in Aurora, and a day after the executive director of the state Corrections Department, Tom Clements, was shot and killed at his home. Hickenlooper signed the legislation right after speaking with reporters about Clements’ slaying.

That last line as a push for gun control is exceedingly odd, since Clements may well have been killed not by an armed citizen, but by a government.  The purpose of the right to keep and bear arms is acting as a physical check on governments, which have oppressed more people, crushed more rights, and ended more lives than any individual madman.

It should also be noted that none of these bills would stop madmen.  What they do instead is create a legal culture in which every interaction with police results in confiscation and destruction of criminalized firearms, leading to slow disarmament.  There are no thugs going door-to-door, but every individual arrest is an opportunity to crush Second Amendment rights and erode them further – and that’s the purpose.  This is a long-march destruction of rights.

Each time he signed a bill, applause erupted from lawmakers and their guests…

“You’ve given us a real gift today,” she told the governor.

Later, Phillips added: “Thank you so much. You’re leading the entire country.”

Ultimately it leads here:

Despite 10-1 opposition cited by rights advocates, the Governor has gone ahead and led Colorado right down the route of citizen disarmament.  It’s a wonderful “gift” that people after July 1st can applaud and look fondly upon as individual tragedies like Briana Dennison are dropped into forgotten graves and future generations further down the road will be able to look fondly upon as dissidents are shoved into mass graves, as history has dictated again and again.

Remember, while things aren’t all bleak and wretched right now, this is a long march to destruction of rights.  Any loss of rights is ultimately a step forward for the would-be tyrants, and it’s important to keep that in context, even if scenes like the above are farther down the road, the loss of individual rights, prosperity, and individual lives as a consequence of these kinds of laws will end up ignored by the state and the fawning media.

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These are the three specifically passed bills:

House Bill 1224 – Bans magazines with a capacity greater than fifteen rounds and would make a magazine with a removable floor plate illegal.

House Bill 1228 – Imposes a “gun tax” for a background check when purchasing a firearm.

House Bill 1229 – Criminalizes the private transfer of a firearm.

HB 1224 criminalizes pretty much every magazine, as noted previously here.

HB 1228 imposes a requirement to pay for the state of Colorado’s background check.  I cite Clayton Cramer’s “The Racist Roots of Gun Control” a lot, but this law is almost like the anti-gun people went straight to the racist playbook.  1228 is a poll tax.  The whole idea of a poll tax was to charge people to vote – which was a specific way to disenfrancise poor blacks in the racist south.

HB 1229 makes it illegal to sell firearms to another citizen without begging the state’s permission.  There are several “exceptions”, many of which are not exceptions, and there are several of these non-exceptions which were discussed on the floor of the Colorado House, all of which were ignored by Colorado Democrats, who didn’t even bother to stay and defend their bill because they had the votes and because fuck you.  For those who watched the floor discussion, or rather the lack thereof, you know exactly how this played out and got to see tyranny in action.

The battle for Colorado is lost, and for the time being, Colorado is also lost.

There are already legal challenges in the works to avenge some rights.  As noted previously, Colorado sheriffs were ignored and threatened during the bill’s forcible creation, and now those sheriffs, who are representatives of the people, are pushing forward a few legal challenges.

The lead plaintiffs are sheriffs from around Colorado. They claim the laws violate not only the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. but the 14th Amendment which requires laws to be easy to understand.

HB 1228 is a poll tax, and blatantly unconstitutional.  HB 1224 and 1229 are both just as blatantly unconstitutional, as “shall not be infringed” is as easy to understand as it is for leftist tyrants to ignore.

Kopel said the Second Amendment prohibits the government from outlawing commonly-owned firearms and accessories like the magazines banned under the new law.

In this case, Kopel’s wrong, though he’s trying to win via SCOTUS precedent.  The Second Amendment says nothing about “commonly-owned”.  SCOTUS did.  And it’s unconstitutionally wrong.

Magpul is going to fight a rear-guard action as they fall back from Colorado, and is reminding Coloradans they’ll keep arming them until the day they leave.

With the signing of the HB 1224, we want to reassure Colorado residents, now officially in occupied territory, that the “Boulder Airlift” will continue until we can no longer legally ship to CO residents at the approach of the July 1 deadline, so long as demand continues.

We are looking at additional ways to give Coloradans the opportunity to buy the magazines they need prior to the enactment date, as although we’ve been swamped with tens of thousands of orders, our shipping department limitations have only allowed us to get a few hundred thousand magazines out to CO residents…a small portion of our monthly production. We’ll continue to support the Airlift as long as demand exists, and up to the active date of the legislation, and we’ve allocated a little over a million magazines for the effort up to that point, give or take.

Magpul previously noted that they’ll be leaving behind a small detachment of employees to continue the legal fight.  No word yet if they’ve decided to call this “Operation Wolverine.”