Category Archives: gun grabbers

Your bigotry sucks. Mine, on the other hand …

Quite a few TZP posts since the first of the year have looked at bigotry against Jews. It’s dangerous. It’s growing. And unfortunately it’s no surprise.

But there’s one good thing about hatred of Jews: decent, educated human beings in the Western world know how wrong and deadly it is.

There are other kinds of bigotry, on the other hand, that are becoming acceptable. Worse, they’re becoming especially acceptable to the very people who ought to know better: young, well-educated Americans.

Take, for example, Ms Andrea Grimes. Earlier this month this lefty ‘zine editor and prolific social media user advocated taking firearms away from all white men.

Her long-term goal is to take away everybody’s guns (I invite you, Ms Grimes, to come to my house and try it). But for now, just white males.

She envisions all the white guys weeping as they line up to turn in their weapons. (Apparently a desire to make men cry is somewhat of a meme among feminists. And apparently Ms Grimes has no freakin’ clue as to who’d end up crying — and bleeding — in the future she envisions.)

Unfortunately, she’s not just part of some uninfluential fringe. Everywhere on the left, bigotry against some group or another is being not only excused but justified. The respected “progressive” journal, The Daily Kos is one of many that has twisted reality to “prove” that only whites can be racist. A prominent Georgetown University professor teaches the same bilge

In this thinking (if I may call it thinking at all), if a black or Hispanic or Asian person hates whites, it’s somehow okay. Or at least not as bad. (Never mind that every form of racial hatred can be deadly.) The idea is that only powerful people can be racist, and somehow all whites (even blue-collar bottom-of-the-heapers) are powerful, while all chosen minorities (even professors, lawyers, lobbyists, and journalists) are powerless. Basically, the whole notion boils down to “if any designated minority has hateful thoughts, white people, especially white males, caused it.”

Of course, this very broad brush of bigotry against white people or white males also encompasses most Jewish people and most Jewish males. But the real problem isn’t which group it’s “okay” to hate and who is included in the target group.

The problem is the mainstreaming of bigotry — and more scarily, the mainstreaming of bigotry in influential media and in the academic world.

People are so willfully short-sighted! When they want to smear a particular group — whether it be blacks or males or Jews or women or redheads or whatever — they choose not to see that the very act of hating people just because they belong to some group by birth or culture is wrong. It’s wrong no matter what group you choose to revile.

Justifying your own bigotry on the grounds that someone else was bigoted first just perpetuates the vicious cycle. And educated people should know this.

Once you’ve said “group hatred is okay” you’ve declared on principle that bigotry is acceptable. That discrimination is okay.* That depriving entire classes of people of their rights is just fine. You have, in short, opened the gates of hell — and you’d better not be surprised at what comes pouring through.

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* This was really a terrible word choice on my part and has led some readers to believe that I’m against freedom of association. For the record, it’s obvious to me that in a free society individuals and individual businesses have every right to discriminate in any way they wish and others have a right to respond. I’m upset that this one ill-written, ill-thought sentence appears to have demolished the real points I was attempting to make in this post.

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David Hardy on “compromise”

Gun Owners, Gun Legislation and Compromise (pdf). Why we’re right to distrust and reject “reasonable” compromise.

Abstract:

An important human aspect of firearms ownership and regulation includes the reluctance of gun owners to consent to measures that, viewed in historical isolation, appear quite limited. But this opposition is understandable if placed in historical context. During the rise of the modern gun-control movement in the early 1970s, gun-control proponents publicly proclaimed their objective was a complete or nearly complete ban on private handgun ownership. And they made it clear that lesser measures were but a means to that end. While they subsequently focused on those lesser measures, they returned to the objective of a complete handgun ban whenever that target of opportunity presented itself. When, in the 1990s, a focus on handguns became politically inexpedient, they switched the focus to semiautomatic rifles—notwithstanding their earlier avowals that rifles were not their concern.

Gun owners thus learned by experience that their opponents were not interested in genuine compromise, where each party gives up something to the other. Their opponents had no stopping point, no exit strategy, no “enough is enough.” Under these conditions, real
compromise is impossible. Any concession given would not be a stopping point, but rather a stepping stone to further restrictions.

This conclusion has been underscored by the experience of gun owners in states with restrictive gun legislation, where waiting
periods for purchase started at one day but were later increased to three, five, and then ten days. And initially limited restrictions have expanded to fill over a thousand pages of annotated text. Many of these measures serve no discernible purpose except to make legal firearm ownership as difficult, expensive, and legally risky as possible.

Intelligent actions are usually founded upon experience. Gun owners’ experiences have taught them one lesson: there is no true compromise to be had.

Et tu, background checks?

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Background checks: inside the mind of Alan Gottlieb

Washington state gun owners are being smashed between a rock and a hard place. The disaster — which is bound to be bloody — will likely shape the gun-rights fight in states across the nation.

And the outcome for people far beyond Washington state may depend on Alan Gottlieb. Which terrifies me. And should terrify you.

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I was talking the other day with another gun blogger who hoped that after last year’s JPFO debacle I would have insight into Gottlieb’s mind. I have none. I’ve had the same thought; I wish I knew what Gottlieb could possibly be thinking. I’ve said I wished I could be a fly on the wall of that man’s brain. OTOH, I fear that experiencing Gottlieb’s thinking from within would make me puke.

But there are so many mysteries about what that man is up to! Why would a gun-rights advocate — any gun-rights advocate, anywhere — want background checks? Why would he want the federal control, the de facto gun registration, and the risk of confiscation that inevitably follow? How could he be so clueless about rights? So clueless about the threat to gun ownership? So clueless about how gun owners think?

And beyond that … how could a man who wants background checks continue to present himself — and be widely accepted! — as a gun-rights leader?

Of course he continues to be widely accepted partially because of SAF’s several successful lawsuits and partially because too many people don’t look at what he’s really doing. Most followers are also unaware of his sordid history. But more recently (and I expect ultimately more tragically) Gottlieb’s leadership is being accepted by some primarily because he has forced Washington state gun owners to choose between that rock and that hard place — between him and activist rivals who are overtly, unabashedly radical.

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Gottlieb has long ruled gun-rights activism in Washington state. He not only owns several major groups himself, but he’s on the board of others and serves as virtual puppet-master of yet more. Here’s just one example of how Gottlieb’s system works.

Many years ago, in the 1990s when it looked as if the antis were going to trample us all into the mud, I sat in on a legislative coordinating meeting of supposedly independent gun-rights groups in Washington state. The meeting was (no surprise) at Gottlieb’s headquarters and it was my first glimpse of what was going on.

There was no independence. There was one overriding mindset — don’t rock the boat. The one activist (a newcomer) who offered ideas that actually could have advanced gun rights (rather than merely holding the line) was repeatedly shot down. Not only shot down, but shot down with words I found mind-boggling and unforgettable: “Oh, we can’t ask the legislature for that. They’d never give us that.”

What kind of bargaining position can that be? Where would negotiators ever get if they started out only by asking for what their opponents are already known to be willing to give? That’s surrendering before the first battle!

But that was the state of Washington gun rights groups 20 years ago, designed and dominated by Alan Gottlieb. Matters appear to be worse now. After that, I always marveled that the state managed to have fairly decent gun laws, despite such wimpy “leadership.”

Well, I marvel no more. Since November — and thanks in large part to Gottlieb’s inexplicable “divide to lose” strategy — Washington has one of the most terrible state anti-gun laws. And the Billionaire Brigade is using I-594 as a battle plan to rampage through other states.

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I-594 might have passed anyway since it was the product of an enormous, multi-billionaire propaganda campaign. But Gottlieb initially made matters worse by throwing all his efforts not against I-594, but into a competing initiative, I-591. That went down in flames (and $1 million+ that could have been used against I-594 went down with it). But now Gottlieb, via his many puppet organizations, is trying to set himself up as the leader of the anti-I-594 forces.

He has filed a lawsuit against the new law while explicitly stating that he’s not trying to stop background checks. Even as state Rep. Matthew Shea prepared a bill to completely repeal 594, Gottlieb ally/partner/front group WAFLAG was focusing on getting gun owners merely to ask for fixes. As activist Kit Lange observed, “[Shea’s repeal] bill has not even been submitted yet, and they have already given up.”

You can’t “fix” a law that’s evil from its inception. And you can’t win if you already side with Michael Bloomberg on the most important points.

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Gun owners who are really aware of the issues and who understand that you can’t have freedom without standing firm on principles want nothing to do with Gottlieb or any of his front organizations. This means that some of the most angry, adamant, in-your-face activists have stepped forward. Gavin Seim’s armed, non-permitted “I Will Not Comply” rally in December outdrew Gottlieb’s January “legislative rally” by as much as 10-to-1. But when quite a few people with the “I will not comply” mindset also showed up at Gottlieb’s event, long-guns in hand, and carried their firearms into the House visitors’ chamber, it gave Gottlieb’s allies — and many inherently moderate gun-rights people — the excuse to call them all crazies and crowd closer to the false “safety” represented by Gottlieb.

Gottlieb has set things up so it’s either “side with me or side with the crazies” when it really just ought to be about getting I-594 declared dead. And getting the horrid monster buried at the crossroads with a stake through its heart so it can never rise again.

My heart and mind are with the “crazies.” But at the same time, I see how their tactics scare some activists away — and drive some activists right into the arms of Alan Gottlieb, despite his obvious, well-publicized sellout.

But as one activist from Graham, Washington, observes, the “crazies” are using those tactics as much to defy Gottlieb as to defy I-594. They are saying, “We will never allow you to ‘lead’ this battle. We won’t be polite and deferential as you sell us out. To hell with you.”

If Gottlieb had a clue about the rights of gun owners or the mindset of gun-rights activists, he would step out of the spotlight (and not just via the pretense that one of his puppets is really in charge). Being completely discredited on anything to do with background checks, he would recognize that he has no ability to lead (even from behind) on this issue. He would let somebody more principled unite the state’s gun owners. Instead, there he is, dividing — once again — so that our enemies can conquer.

Because Gottlieb stands in the way of any calm, strong, and principled leadership on gun rights in Washington state, he is helping Bloomberg win (just as he hoped to help Manchin, Toomey, and Schumer win at the federal level a year ago). Heartened by their victory in this first state, and strengthened by the lack of effective pro-gun leadership, the Bloombergians will rampage onward to the next state, which appears to be Nevada.

Good luck, Nevada. Good luck to us all. Except Mr. Gottlieb. May he choke on his own duplicity. May the power he so craves, the power he’ll stop at nothing to get, destroy him — before it destroys the rest of us.

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When Seconds Count…..

The Police are just minutes away, just minutes away. How long have we been told by people control via gun control politicians and advocates that firearms owned by private citizen/subjects make U.S. “less civilized” less “safe” as a country? It seems to me that such statements usually come from people with a plethora of body guards. Either paid for with our tax dollars or their own fine salaries often earned by the movies they make. Paid for by us, the great unwashed masses.

 

Let’s start with England. In an effort to prove that sometimes the slowest zebra does in fact survive and multiply rather than being eaten by the lion, they are in a worse self-defense condition than they were in WWII.

 

After WWI England enacted the Firearms Act of 1920. Its restrictions on the private ownership of firearms was partly accomplished by screeching about a surge in crime that might occur because of the large number of firearms available following the war, well and due to fears of working class unrest. And then there was the previous version of the modern U.N. Gun Control treaty, the 1919 Paris Arms Convention, they needed to be able to control the overseas arms trade and they had to comply with that, right?

 

So when WWII rolled around, and after the Battle of Dunkirk when the British retreated and left behind a large amount of very useful hardware, which we would call weapons, they were in a very vulnerable state to fend off the killing machine known as nazis headed their way. What to do? Well, they appealed to their American (and well armed) brethren for help. A program called “American Committee for Defense of British Homes” established in 1940 by a group of Americans (well armed people) and headed by C. Suydam Cutting. They appealed for shotguns, rifles, ammo, steel helmets, binoculars from American Citizens (a well armed people) Since  the people protecting the home front had pitchforks. Kid you not. Makes me think of the line in the movie “The Patriot” where Cornwallis called the militia “farmers with pitchforks”. And yet, fast forward a few hundred years and it’s the Americans (well armed people) helping out their English brethren (home front with pitchforks) in defense of their country. Here’s a really good column about this. The Hession Rifle. Admittedly we could have just sent Chuck Norris, but he was born in 1940. Well, then again, he IS Chuck Norris.

 

So, after having found out that a disarmed nation is a vulnerable nation, the British vowed never to let that happen again! Just kidding. Nope, they are in a far worse state now. Even the British Olympic pistol shooters can’t train in England, Scotland or Wales. England is a country covered with cameras, they carefully record every crime and give a good idea of what and who the perpetrators are. Very useful for prosecuting crime! Stopping crime? Huh? SQUIRREL! Never mind England is thinking “knife ban” now. I mean what with crime being down and al, uh, oh, never mind! SQUIRREL!

I’m pretty sure they were thinking about it before 25 year old Fusilier Lee Rigby was murdered on 22 May 2013.

Rigby was off duty and walking along Wellington Street when he was attacked. Two men ran him down with a car, then used knives and a cleaver to stab and hack him to death. The men dragged Rigby’s body into the road and remained at the scene until police arrived. They told passers-by that they had killed a soldier to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British armed forces. Unarmed police arrived at the scene nine minutes after an emergency call was received and set up a cordon. Armed police officers arrived five minutes later. The assailants, armed with a gun and cleaver, charged at the police, who fired shots that wounded them both. They were apprehended and taken to separate hospitals. Both are British of Nigerian descent, raised as Christians, who converted to Islam.Immediately after the attack, several passers-by stood over Rigby’s body to protect him from further injury.

On lookers were powerless to stop the attack, though one helpfully filmed it. You’re talking about almost a quarter of an hour response time.

 

Fast forward to France, 7 January 2015. Masked muslims showed up at Charlie Hebdo, a magazine that was apparently in business to see how many people and religions they could offend. They went after Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and muslims equally. It’s called “Free Speech”. The magazine office were firebombed in 2011 after publishing a satirical cartoon about Islam. They didn’t let up. And on 7 January, 2 masked muslims showed up with AK-47s and a rocket launcher. Seriously? How the heck did they get a permit in France for that? France has very strict gun control! Oh look! A SQUIRREL!

 

Naturally, the Police were called. But we’re talking France. So two officers showed up on bicycles…unarmed. And found it necessary to flee. Then, as in Britain, a “special” Police unit that is responsible enough to be armed showed up. Of course, by then, 10 people wounded and 12 people were reported dead. Including another police officer, there’s video of him wounded and pleading for his life before he is shot in the head, by a representative of the “Religion of Peace”. Not sure if that was the representative that yelled “the Prophet has been avenged” and “Allahu akbar” as he walked the halls of Charlie Hebdo. Little side note here, “Allahu akbar” does not mean “G-d is Great”. It means “Allah is Greater”. Meaning greater than the whimpy loving G-d of the Jews and Christians, which are “People of the Book”. Oh look, a SQUIRREL!

 

So, back to the unarmed officers that arrived first. The murderers completed their job and left. And proceeded to go on to a printing house in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele. Where they took people hostage. They told police they wanted to die as martyrs, so they rushed out at the police who obliged them. My thought would be “Ok, bury their bodies at a pig farm” But maybe that’s just me?

 

In a similar incident another representative of the “Religion of Peace” and his girl friend killed a police woman, who was probably unarmed and then holed up at a Kosher Grocery Store. The representative told a French TV station he had “coordinated” with the suspected Charlie Hebdo attackers and he belonged to the Islamic State group. He killed four of the hostages and threatened more unless the police let the Hebdo killers go.

 

What does it say about a country when the frequent refrain of “You don’t need a gun, just call the Police” is pointless. They are as helpless as the unarmed victims are. They die just as quick. SQUIRREL!

 

But the ever astute MSLSD had a Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on who explained how much worse this would have been had it occurred in the United States.

“Just to keep it in perspective,” Robinson told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, “I don’t think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the United States as they are in France. They are different.”“In fact, one thing that’s different here is that weapons are universally available and so it is actually a very good thing that the tensions are not exactly the same because we would expect to have a lot more of that sort of carnage.”

Yeah, howdy! Was I ever shocked! #1 That armed citizens and armed police would just stand there and let themselves be shot. #2 Someone reads the WaPo? I thought it was just used for parrot cages and house training puppies, who knew? Somebody read it, because they had the columnist on TV to follow up. #3 MSLSD is still on the air? WOW, that is a devoted 12 bunch of people that are keeping them on the air! Oh look! A SQUIRREL!

But, to end on a positive note, since I’m so frustrated with the stupidity of countries that not only accept this kind of carnage, but enable it, I will share this tidbit of good news. Not all New York millionaires are idiots. Donald Trump made a statements that the gun control policies of France were enabling these types of massacres. WHAT? Gun control enables massacres? Oh look a SQUIRREL!

 

Running With The Squirrels

 

 

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How Long Before The DSM Invents Diagnosis Of … Gun Incompatibility Disorder?

Gun-restriction advocates want nothing more than to restrain “predisposed” individuals before they transgress. The central authorities will decide who falls within this extremely plastic category. The same planners will act with the complicit assistance of the pseudo-scientific profession of psychiatry. Seriously: How long before the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM # infinity) invents a diagnosis of gun incompatibility disorder? Against this kind of prior-restraint argument even Ivy league statists have argued, albeit with respect to limitations on speech only.

We are witnessing today a tremendous and ominous expansion of preventive law in the area of civil liberties. More and more, our controls are being devised not as punishment for actual wrongful conduct, but with a view to preventing future evils by a series of restrictions and qualifications that seriously jeopardize freedom …

In the spirit of prior restraint is the case of a veteran who presented with symptoms of insomnia and had his guns confiscated. (With the active encouragement of the liberty loving police force. It figures. The local police monopoly certainly made snide comments of displeasure on handing me my firearm license.) Via American Thinker:

New York State Police ordered the permanent confiscation of Mr. Montgomery’s registered handguns after he sought treatment for insomnia. The confiscation was ordered under Cuomo’s “SAFE Act” gun-control law.

The allegations in the case are downright scary. The complaint contends that Montgomery, a Navy veteran and retired police officer who rose to the rank of detective sergeant during his 30-year career, voluntarily sought treatment for insomnia at a hospital on Long Island in May of 2014 after relocating to a new home several hundred miles from his previous residence.

According to the suit, the hospital diagnosed the plaintiff as “mildly depressed,” and his clinical evaluation stated, “Patient has no thoughts of hurting himself. Patient has no thoughts of hurting others. Patient is not having suicidal thoughts. Patient is not having homicidal thoughts…” and “there is no evidence of any psychotic processes, mania, or OCD symptoms. Insight, judgment, and impulse control are good.” The suit further alleges that a psychiatrist told the plaintiff, “I don’t know why you were referred here. You don’t belong here.”

Nonetheless, the suit contends that five days after being discharged from the hospital, the local sheriff’s department showed up at Montgomery’s door and seized his four registered handguns, including his former duty sidearm, after the sheriff had been subjected to “repeated pressure” by the New York State Police, who claimed that Montgomery had been declared mentally defective and had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution.

The gun confiscation aforementioned is a logical conclusion to prior restraint legal arguments.

Mentioned above is the Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). The Rosetta Stone of the profession has grown since its inception in the 1950s from 60 categories of abnormal behavior to over 410 diagnostic labels and counting. Many of the disorders described in it are more about trend and niche than science.

In the late 1990s, I told readers of my Calgary Herald column about one Dr. John Ratey, a Harvard associate professor and a  well-respected, prominent psychiatrist, who claimed, in his 1997 book Shadow Syndromes, that quirky behaviors were actually mild mental illnesses resulting from brain dysfunction.

The lout who is appropriately obsequious with the boss because he knows where his bread is buttered, but who is less dainty with the wife, even thumping her occasionally, would be a candidate for compassion. He is after all doing battle with what Dr. Ratey terms “Intermittent Rage Disorder”. And the dad who dotes on his children while they are with him, but fails to mail them child support money as soon as they are out of sight, is simply afflicted with “Environmental Dependency Disorder”: He remembers his kids only when they are around. Is there proof for these sub-rosa disease categories? None whatsoever, although this has not prevented Ratey and many like him from coating their pronouncements with a patina of scientific respectability—and then cashing in.

Given the tenuous ties between psychiatry and science, how likely is it that “evidence” for new diagnoses will be marshaled in order to keep more people from being able to defend their lives and loved ones with guns?

Very likely.

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#ImBlockedByShannonWatts

I love social media. I really do. As misanthropic as I can be sometimes, it really can be an endless source of entertainment!

I have engaged numerous gun grabbers on Twitter and Facebook – both from the Zelman Partisans (@ZelmanPartisans) account and my own @nicki_f. Some have been relatively polite; others, not so much. Many will block you the moment you address them.

The blocking is particularly hilarious, given that the leader of Moms Demand Action Shannon Watts has recently been blocked by the NRA on Twitter.  I can’t pretend to know why they blocked her – likely because she’s an irritating shrew who does nothing but lie in an effort to advance her anti-freedom agenda.  Heck, if she was tweeting lies at me every five seconds, I’d probably get sick of her BS and block her too.

Shannon – whom Twitchy calls probably the “least self-aware person on this earth,” – claimed the NRA blocking her as a victory, and asserted this means the millions-strong organization was afraid of her!

watts

The irony is thick here, given that Shannon has a habit of blocking so many people who dare to challenge her, that a new hashtag was born: #ImBlockedByShannonWatts.

The list of people blocked by Shannon Watts and Moms Demand is long and distinguished.  Zelman Partisans is blocked, as is my personal account. Anyone who proclaims their support for the Second Amendment is blocked, as is Heather Marchese of 1 Million Moms Against Gun Control, showing Shannon Watts to be much more afraid of gun owners and Second Amendment supporters than they are of her!

But Shannon Watts – the alleged PR wizard who was installed by Michael Bloomberg as the head of an alleged “grassroots” movement of mothers – apparently doesn’t know PR as well as she should.

Her blocking action resulted in a wave of support for gun rights groups, and the #ImBlockedByShannonWatts list and Shannon Watts’ hypocrisy is getting more publicity and ridicule than she could ever hope for!

Heather Marchese posted a photo of the increase in donations to 1MMAGC this morning, and I’m betting she has Shannon to thank for the support.

PRfail

This is what’s commonly referred to as a PR FAIL.

But the irony doesn’t end there, because now that Shannon’s little stunt has backfired on her, she has reported the #ImBlockedByShannonWatts hashtag to Twitter as harassing, “vicious” attacks on her.

Ya gotta love the opportunistic swinery here. Apparently pointing out her hypocrisy makes Shannon a “victim.” Shannon doesn’t comprehend real threats or harassment. She apparently ignores the threats and harassment in which her froth-flecked followers engage…

…”I hope you kill yourself with your gun…” “…I hope your kids get shot…” “SWATting open carriers is a wonderful idea. They are scum, so it wouldn’t matter if they get killed anyway…”

life 1

grabber crazy

life 5

The litany of abuse goes on. But Shannon Watts simply ignores it, while claiming victim status, because gun owners call her on her lies and combat her anti-freedom spin with facts.

I don’t know about you guys, but I really hope Shannon continues her hypocrisy, because it’s not just entertaining and clueless, but also shores up support for gun rights groups such as the Zelman Partisans.

Please continue to support our organization, and Shannon – if you read this – please continue your hypocritical lunacy! There’s nothing like the PR you’ve given us so far!

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Refusal as a weapon

The most blunt, inspirational message you will read all year. From the great Mike Vanderboegh.

A brief sample:

Mike Bloomberg thought he was on a roll. In the wake of Sandy Hook, his money managed to buy unconstitutional legislation in Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland and New York. In the election just past, his money staved off defeat for two governors who did his bidding, although as Wellington said about Waterloo, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw.” Most importantly — and the latest jewel in his anti-firearm crown — his money and that of Bill Gates, Paul Allen and other like-minded elitists “bought the mob” (in the parlance of the Founders) with the success of I-594 in Washington state.

Yes, Bloomberg was on a roll. The so-called “mainstream” gun rights organizations, from the NRA to Alan Gottlieb’s Second Amendment Foundation and all the smaller spin-offs in the affected states, had no answer to Bloomberg’s millions and refused to put their own rivalries and jealousies aside to find one. This is hardly a surprise, since almost all of these groups have always been more about raising money to “fight gun control” than actually FIGHTING gun control. Each has been more obsessed with their own reputation in the collectivist-dominated press and their obsession to “win friends and influence people” in the middle. So, following their long-established patterns and refusals to think and act outside the boxes they placed themselves in, they lost. They lost in Connecticut, they lost in Maryland, they lost in New York, they lost in Colorado and now they have lost in Washington state.

In each case, Bloomberg understood his enemies, their foibles and their failures far better than they understood him. So he won and they lost.

But then something happened that Bloomberg in his arrogance never expected, something that the “mainstream gun rights organizations” for their part never expected either — in every single state where Bloomberg had “won,” it turned out that the victims of his unconstitutional laws had other ideas. And they didn’t need “leaders” like Wayne LaPierre and Alan Gottlieb to lead them.

Read the rest, resist, and stand tall.

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Beware of legislators seeking anonymity

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reports that a band of cowardly legislators quietly got together to form an association dedicated to relieving you of your gun rights.

These pusillanimous twits announced the creation of American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention (ASLGVP), claiming it’s a “non-partisan” effort to reduce gun violence further infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens across America, given Congress’ fail to do anything about the issue.

The NSSF reports that the “ASLGVP boasts having 200 members from all 50 states but the group will not release a list of their membership, due to a fear of “political backlash.”  So, outside of the eight members that participated in the inaugural press conference, no one knows who is or is not a member of this group.

We do know that non-partisan seems to be the biggest load of BS since “the check is in the mail” and “I’ll still respect you in the morning” went out of style.

Founding members include Adam Ebbin (D-ullard, VA) and Brian Kavanagh (D-olt, NY).

Ebbin is known for his “undercover video” in which he purchases a 30-round “extended clip” (is that like an assault clip?) without a background check. *GASP!*

Kavanagh’s latest claim to gun-grabbing fame is the introduction of a bill that would allow anyone who is concerned paranoid and hoplophobic to report anyone else to a court in order to persuade the court to issue a temporary order preventing the person from acquiring or possessing guns. Without a trial. Without so much as a legal standard. Just, “Oh! I feel threatened by my ex husband, so take guns away from him!

If these two gun-grabbing monkeys are any indication, this group is hardly non-partisan and has nothing to do with safety or reducing violence.

But more disturbing than that is the insistence on secrecy. Won’t release its membership for fear of “political backlash”??? What does this tell you?

The legislators know what they’re doing faces stringent opposition, and they want to keep it secret from the very people who put them in power.

They’re cowards, plain and simple. They don’t want to be accountable to their constituents. They don’t want to be held responsible by the people whose rights they betray.

Here’s the deal, people. Any legisleech who feels him or herself entitled enough to participate in an effort or initiative that quite plainly and obviously aims to infringe on basic, natural, Constitutional rights needs to be exposed for the liar, petty statist that they are.

Cockroaches aren’t fond of sunlight, so shine that light on any politician who seeks to keep secrets from you – the people from whom their power stems – especially if that secret aims to impact, hinder, or otherwise infringe on your natural rights.

Start with this horde of leeches.

leeches

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Is Gottlieb’s “new” JPFO about to get in trouble with the IRS?

That’s interesting.

Yesterday Dave Workman, the Seattle Gun Rights Examiner and frequently a proxy for Alan Gottlieb, announced that Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) has been added as a sponsor of a planned January 15 rally in Olympia, Washington, to oppose Bloomberg’s tragically successful Initiative 594. This rally is already supported (and apparently largely spearheaded) by Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, JPFO’s new owner.

This is interesting on two counts.

Why try to undermine the December rally?

First, the Gottlieb-promoted rally is clearly intended to steal thunder (and attendance) from another rally planned for this Saturday, December 13. Saturday’s rally has had tons of support from the day it was announced and will feature Mike Vanderboegh, Sheriff Richard Mack, and Ammon Bundy as speakers.

Gottlieb’s complaint against the December rally seems to be only that the legislature won’t be in session then. (Although the idea that Saturday’s rally is expressly for disobeying the law also seems to set a certain “conservative” element to tsking — as if we should obey tyrants as long as tyranny is imposed by vote.) So, just in advance of the December rally, he sets out to undermine it.

You’d think he would learn. In this year’s state elections, instead of opposing Bloomberg’s ghastly plan with all his efforts, Gottlieb set up his own competing initiative, I-591, and put all his energies — and money — into that.

So a million dollars that could have gone to fighting I-594 went down the drain of I-591 instead. (I-591 lost.)

Yes, you’d think Gottlieb would learn that “divide to win” isn’t good electoral or legislative strategy. Yet Workman’s article drips with contempt for Saturday’s effort and goes out of its way to point out reasons why attendance might be low.

That’s the first count on which the Gottlieb-supported January rally is “interesting.”

Doesn’t Gottlieb understand what JPFO is?

The second count is JPFO’s involvement.

The stated purpose of the January rally is to be “the first 2015 Legislative Rally against I-594 and other bad gun laws.” Note well: it’s a legislative rally. Workman elaborates: “[T]he Jan. 15 rally – when the Legislature will be in town – will allow citizens a chance to personally lobby lawmakers.” Note well: it’s for lobbying. Following the public portion of the rally, citizens will even be escorted to legislators’ offices. Note well: That’s an integral part of the event.

And JPFO is supporting this?

But JPFO is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. It is absolutely forbidden to engage in lobbying or any other form of “political” activity. It cannot oppose or advocate for any specific laws. It can’t take any electoral stance. It’s forbidden by its very nature from even saying something like, “Write to your legislator to demand the repeal of …”

JPFO’s only legal role is educational. It can shout to the rooftops about why the state’s new law is stupid and dangerous and a violation of fundamental rights. But lobby legislators or even encourage others to do so??? Let alone sponsor a rally whose sole, stated purpose is to connect gun owners with legislators. This is totally outside of what the IRS allows JPFO to do. (That link also claims that JPFO has only recently “expanded their mission to include research and education.” Which is as silly as it is bogus. Research and education has been JPFO’s sole mission from the beginning.)

Don’t get me wrong. I think I-594 should be fought with everything Washington state gun owners have to give. I don’t oppose the January rally. Let there be rallies, letters, lobbying, protests, and defiance aplenty until I-594 is stomped into the Pacific Northwest mud. But organizers of the January rally shouldn’t be trying to undermine the December event with the timing of their announcements or their subtle sneers.

And after lying fallow for months following Gottlieb’s take-over (other than continuing daily email alerts, there’s been no sign of activity from JPFO), JPFO’s first public mission should not be to destroy itself by participating in lobbying.

This will only put JPFO in the IRS’s eye and risk destroying everything Aaron Zelman worked to build.

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Mike vs. Hoplophobe

What happens when a famous science fiction author, gun rights advocate and gun enthusiast takes on an angry, frothing, hysterical hoplophobe?

It’s a TKO. I know of no one who can dismantle an anti-gun zealot better than Michael Z. Williamson, so it’s worth your time to read the entire article. But here’s just a snippet below:

Gun freaks say if you take away their guns only outlaws will have guns. That’s a chance worth taking. Because if we ban guns, eventually the tide will turn. It might take 10 years or 20 years. Hell, it might take 50 years. But if we make it illegal to own a handgun, eventually there will be no handguns.

I have functional guns from 1872 in my collection.  In the UK, criminals convert dummy and airsoft guns to fire bullets.  Once again, the gun freak (you), opens his ignorant yap about a subject without doing the faintest modicum of research. That’s probably why you’re in “reporting,” the Special Olympics of writing. Real writers have to do research.

Let the hunters keep their rifles and shotguns; those weapons are ineffective tools in a mass shooting.

BWUAHAHAHAAHA!  You went full retard.  Never go full retard.   Your typical deer rifle has 3 times the muzzle energy of an “assault weapon” (please define what that is for me.  Go ahead) and about 10 times that of a handgun. But they’re “ineffective.”  Because nothing that can kill a bull elk could be useful for killing people.

Mike’s language and sarcasm can be strong, so be warned. That said, there’s nothing more fun than watching a professional author take down a sniveling, barely educated coward.

I give it a decided thumbs up.

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