You Tube, that is.
Two entertaining new videos from our “Partners in Peace” (piece?):
And on the Ten-Year Anniversary of the kidnapping of, TWENTY FOUR DAY torture of, and savage murder of, Ilan Halimi.
Nice.
Hey… Whut’s on the tube?
Category Archives: You can’t fix stupid
Unintended Consequences
The title has been used, but victim disarming wanna-be tyrants seem deadset on providing an endless stream of appropriate legislation. One of the most recent is this:
The alarming phenomena of homemade firearms and their ease of access without any scrutiny, has led me to introduce two pieces of legislation in the House – the Homemade Firearms Accountability Act and Home-Assembled Firearms Restriction Act. These two bills would mandate anyone who intends on legally manufacturing their own firearm to obtain a registered serial number to be affixed on the firearm and would block the sale of any form of do-it-yourself firearms parts or kits – especially those currently being sold over the internet. It is my hope to draw attention to the too often overlooked issue of homemade firearms and include these firearms in the national discussion on gun control. For once we may be able to have a proactive approach in protecting the American people from an emerging threat rather than retroactively lashing out after great damage and loss has already been done.
– Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.)
Starting with HR 376: Home-Assembled Firearms Restriction Act, the PRK’s ill-informed, ethically-challenged congresscreep wants to ban gun kits for home use. But kit being tough to define when one is that box-of-rocks dumb, he bans basically anything that could possibly be used to contruct a semiautomatic firearm.
Like… steel pipe, sheet metal, blocks of metal, nails, springs, rivets, iron oxide and aluminum,and even plastic bags.
Looks like Home Depot is going out of business. And I guess we will see the return of paper grocery bags. Finally. (Luckily, Honda only obsessed over semiautos, or paper would be gone, too, as I’ve seen single use paper shotguns which were confiscated from prison inmates.)
As an aside, 376 also prohibits marketing or advertising castings and blanks. Gotcha covered, dimwit. (Amazon has pulled that listing, but expect more elsewhere.)
Next up is Honda’s HR 377: Homemade Firearms Accountability Act, stripped to basics, requires all ‘homemade’ firearms be registered and serial numbered. It’s a repeat of ‘Ghost Gun’ Honda’s HR 5606 from the last session.
On the one hand, it assumes that gangbangers and thugs, who have been assembling gadgets like these…
On the other hand – and here’s where consequences raise their little heads – up to now, a home-built firearm, like an AR built from an 80% lower blank, could not be sold. No record, no serial number, no sale. Under GG’s bill, your handicraft project can be sold down the line, if you need the cash to build a better gun. You can’t go into the manufacturing business, sans FFL, but this moves your little science project into the ‘occasional personal sale from collection category. If anything, this will get more 3D printed and CNC milled goodies out into the wild.
On the amusing side, Honda is mandating the individual FFLs issue their own ‘unique’ serial numbers,without specifying a format that identifies a serial number set by FFL. Assuming this managed to get passed, some 50,000 FFLs could all uniquely (in their shop, anyway) SN 1, SN 2… SN 51998.
You could see a lot of homebrewed ARs with the identical serial number 666.
Perhaps Honda should have thought of opening up the ATF’smanufacturers’ registry to personal builders, so those numbers would be unique.
Not satisfied with banning virtually all metallic and plastic materials in the world, our deeply paranoid compulsive bill sponsor wants to ban body armor. HR 378: Responsible Body Armor Possession Act bans ‘enhanced body armor.’
WTF is ‘enhanced body armor,’ you ask? It is any “body armor, including a helmet or shield, the ballistic resistance of which meets or exceeds the ballistic performance of Type III armor”. Plain English: anything rated for rifle rounds. Since the vast majority of freelance criminals don’t bother with rifles (less than 2.5% of all firearm deaths, 2013 last year available), who is it that he wants to be sure can kill you?
Consequence of this one? A whole lot more citizen research into homemade ballistic plates. No doubt, the quivering mass of fear will sponsor yet another bill to ban that. (I should send him an email claiming that someone is 3D-printing armor.)
Honda is bound and determined to render you helpless, depriving you of active and passive defense. The real unintended consequence of these bills is that more and more people understand precisely that.
Added: Lest you think that the idea of common items getting caught up by Honda’s vague language, take a look across the pond in the UK.
Breaking: Policing and Crime Bill will criminalise possession of common tools
(a) the person has in his or her possession or under his or her control an article that is capable of being used (whether by itself or with other articles) to convert an imitation firearm into a firearm, and
(b) the person intends to use the article (whether by itself or with other articles) to convert an imitation firearm into a firearm.
Dremel, drill press, file…
Anyone believe the gun grabbers in DC are any smarter?
Ed. note: This commentary appeared first on TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
Thinking Outside the Box
A girlfriend of mine thoughtfully sent me an article today. She thought I might find it of passable interest, and so I did. A tip of my Stetson to Christie. The Silverbelly one, not the black one of course!
You have to admire some out of the box solutions to situations. Some others however, not so much. For example some people use landscaping timbers in their yards, they frame flowerbeds and the like. Now landscaping timbers of course, are intended to be used in round corrals to teach horses trail course, or a nice stride length at trot or canter, or perhaps to prepare to jump. But if people want to use them in their yards, good for them I say. For my negative examples I use unemployment statistics. What the MSM (mainstream media) will tout as the unemployment statistics are the U-3 numbers. In December 2015 that was at 5.0%. HOWEVER, what they or the White House will not tell you, is that the U-3 number does not include people that are not looking for work. Nor does it include the under-employed, those that want to work full time and can’t find a job, or people that are laid off and waiting to be called back. There are marginally attached workers, discouraged workers, under-employed, none of which count. The only unemployed people are those that have looked for a job in the last four weeks. If you add all those up, the real unemployment rate, the U-6 number is around 9.9%. So just as many people are out of work, but by changing the rules, labels, pigeon holes and shuffling the shells, you get better numbers. So that’s their out of the box solution to high unemployment numbers.
Well, a clever man has come up with a way to lower crime statistics! Although I’m quite sure that wasn’t his purpose, but suspect the DOJ would be fine with it.
2015 Rape statistics, figures from March 30, 2015
| Average number of rape cases reported in the US annually | 89,000 |
| Percent of women who experienced an attempted or completed rape | 16 % |
| Percent of men who experienced an attempted or completed rape | 3 % |
| Decline in rape rate since 1993 | 60 % |
| Percent of rapes that are never reported to authorities | 60 % |
| Percent of college rapes that are never reported to authorities | 95 % |
| Percent of rapes where both victim and perpetrator had been drinking | 47 % |
What Daryush Valizadeh “Roosh” has proposed is to change the rules about rape. The name may be ringing a bell with you already. Perhaps you have seen his 2007 book “Bang” on the penny rack at Barnes and Nobel? It’s his helpful guide to seducing and raping women, and includes such helpful guidance as
“No means no..until it means yes,” Roosh instructed in his book. “In America, having sex with her would have been rape, since she legally couldn’t give her consent.”
“I know that when it comes to sex, one ounce of hesitation or morality will get me nowhere.”
Well, alrighty then. A penny is too high a price.
This author started out with a Blog called “Return of Kings” where he could brag about his rape conquests, and then went on to publish his book.
Now we are not talking some yokel from a third world Islamic country where they still think women are property. No, no, we are talking about an American born muslim with a degree in Microbiology from University of Maryland.
Why is that important? Well, perhaps because the huge rise in sexual assault and rape in Europe is being attributed to the new immigrants not realizing it is considered impolite to rape and kill women in Europe. And some in the German media have attempted to tell how much worse it really is and are being silenced. There is an encouraging thing to look forward to, no doubt.
Finland has put out a helpful video for their women showing them how to utilize the powerful word “NO”, if that didn’t work, putting up one hand, palm to the attacker, if one hand didn’t work, use the even more deadly TWO palms towards them. If they can resist that? Hit them with your purse. Seriously. So their arsenal of tactics to deal with assault has now been broadened by FOUR, count ’em folks, FOUR tactics.
https://www.facebook.com/IrelandFirst2015/videos/673183526154809/
Germany has chosen to address their efforts towards the new refugees, by issuing them cartoon books basically saying the same, groping, raping and killing women is considered rude in Germany.
But these actions will not bring down the crime statistics. Valikazoontike’s solution will.
His solution? Make rape legal on private property.
Yes, you read me correctly. Actually ValenKernalKlink believes rape should be legal all over the world. He believes that women are just pieces of meat and he can have any of them within 3 dates anyway.
Any women that attempt to speak against him and his little band of merry men are targeted with instructions to gather data on them, and rape them.
But all this crap is going on in Europe, and he’s bragging about sneaking in Australia and speaking there. What more has this to do with us?
He and his jolly boys were set to have a meeting, Saturday February 6th. In America. In Oklahoma. In Oklahoma City. It was to have been 1 of 165 meetings in 43 countries. Yep, countries, not counties.
Women and gays were not to be allowed to attend and VakaSargentSchultz warned that he would “exact furious retribution” on anyone who challenges the groups. He says that their numbers have grown and they wouldn’t have to continue to hide in the shadows.
Oklahoma City, the Cowboy Hall of Fame, and you think it’s a good idea to have a meeting to get more members to vote and lobby to make rape legal. Awesome.
Well, that is one way to lower the rape statistics.
Another is to shoot the bastard. Dead rapists seldom repeat offend. Very seldom. They may vote Democrat, but they won’t rape again.
I talked to Christie about going to the meeting. But I was concerned my dyslexia could create problems reading the signs directing one to the room for the “Return of Kings” and confusing it for the room for “Oklahoma for open carry”, where we of course would have been headed. Sometimes words like that look a lot a like to me. I’m thinking they may meet some of those Oklahoma and Texas women that will make them reconsider the error of their ways.
But at least they are making progress on breaking down the causes of rape.
Speaking Ill of the Dead
Linda Stasi, writing for the New York Enquirer Daily ‘News’, is a sad, sick, hateful b***h.
(Edit: The live link below is via donotlink.com, to avoid supporting the birdcage liner with traffic. H/T to Claire in comments.)
San Bernardino killers were radical, ISIS-loving monsters — but one of their victims was just as bigoted
They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department. Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage.One man spent his free time writing frightening, NRA-loving, hate-filled screeds on Facebook about the other’s religion.
The other man quietly stewed and brewed his bigotry, collecting the kind of arsenal that the Facebook poster would have envied.
What they didn’t realize is that except for their different religions they were in many ways similar men who even had the same job.
Nicholas Thalasinos was a Messianic Jew who apparently committed the great evil of exercising his First Amendment-protected right to object to abortion, the AGW scam, and scumbag politicians. His F***b**k page is still active,so you can see his rants. Oddly, they mostly look like calm, rational statements and news links. He believed Islam is a violent religion. He was murdered — purely coincidentally, no doubt — by a violent Islamic couple, who killed another thirteen people and wound seventeen more.
The terrorists — who do not deserve to be remembered by name — bought guns, two apparently illegally, since there’s no record of the transfer, illegally modified one and attempted to turn the other into a machine gun. They built pipe bombs to kill more. They dressed up in tactical gear, gathered their lethal tools, swore loyalty to ISIS, and drove to a party to murder innocent, unarmed people.
But the terrorists were nice folks who kept their thoughts to themselves. Unless you count the bullets they dispensed, while Thalasinos… talked. And followed news. How dare he, wonders that Stasi jerk (who believes the 1A is only for her).
It’s not like the NYEDN was ever anything but a leftist, yellow rag. It’s clickbait. I’m sure they’re loving the traffic that Stasi’s smear piece is generating.
If you subscribe to the NYDN, cancel. Don’t visit the web site. But do tell them what you think of that column and Stasi: voicers@nydailynews.com.
Address: 4 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004
Main phone number: (212) 210-2100
Home delivery phone number: (800) 692-6397
If you advertise with NYDN, drop them: RZaccagno@nydailynews.com.
Sure, it’s their right to speak horribly of the dead. But we need neither listen nor support them.
Ed. note: This commentary appeared first on TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would lik>e to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
NYT uses front page to spout inanities
Okay, it’s not exactly news that the New York Times spouts nonsense, especially when it comes to guns and gun rights. But when the senile old hag venerable Gray Lady prints an editorial on its front page for the first time in 95 years — and that editorial (obviously sparked by this week’s jihadi-team murders in California) is 100% dedicated to spewing obvious silliness on guns — it’s worthy of note.
Here are a few selected gems from the editorial:
It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection.
Yes, confusing plain old semi-auto with full-auto again just based on the scary appearance of the rifles shown in media photos.
No mention of the emerging information that the murdering jihadis in San Bernardino may have broken the law both attempting to modify their weapons and, of course, in going out and slaughtering people. As if they’d ever care what “civilians” are legally allowed or not allowed to do.
So what do you want, NYT? Another ugly-gun ban like the one we already had for 10 years, which didn’t accomplish one thing except to create new criminals out of the formerly law abiding?
Well, yes, that appears to be precisely what the NYT wants, because they then go on to say (emphasis mine):
Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.
But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not.
“At least those countries are trying.” So let me get this straight. As long as you make a really sincere try at things that deprive people of freedom while doing absolutely zero, nothing, nada, zip, bupkis to protect lives … it’s okeydokey. It’s good.
Take even more freedom. Leave people vulnerable to even more death. It’s all to the good as long as you do something.
The shrieking old bat Gray Lady continues:
It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.
As usual no plan is outlined for drastically reducing numbers and eliminating large categories.
That this is a) impossible and b) would require stormtroopers bearing large numbers of those very categories of scary weapons (even for a vain attempt) is a fact too untidy for the front page of the New York Times. So no, let us delicately sidestep any actual thinking about any actual plan for “reducing” and “eliminating.” We don’t want to consider what would actually end up being reduced and eliminated, now do we?
But not to worry! Because you see, no untidiness would be required:
It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.
Yes, despite the fact that the censorious, dried-up old biddy Gray Lady opens and closes her editorial by implying that Americans who support gun rights and own ugly guns are “indecent,” we nasty folk would simply turn over our weapons for the good of humanity.
I can envision us now, patiently lined up outside our local police stations or firearm melting centers by the thousands, little American flags waving from the barrels of our Evil Black Rifles, patriotic gleams in our eyes as we wait to surrender these indecent, macho, insurrectionist arms for destruction.
Yes, there we are, converted into Times believers simply by passage of yet another law. Because of course this law, unlike all other laws the world has ever known, has shown us in a “clear and effective” way the evil that we have been harboring in our gun cabinets and in our hearts. So we have repented and with the fervor of new converts are delighting in “giving up” all that the Times dictates we should give.
And a new day dawns in which nobody — nobody! — ever again commits mass violence because the tools to do so have been made clearly and effectively illegal!
Hooray and hallelujah for our glowing future! The sun will shine upon us forever, its pure radiance never again dimmed by the blood of innocents. Our Glorious Leaders will protect us with their Great Wisdom. And we are proud — proud! — to surrender our evil, knowing we will forever be protected and kindly led by those Above Us.
—–
It must be so, right? Because the NYT thought their words were brilliant enough, original enough, revelatory enough, and necessary enough to write a front-page editorial for the first time since 1920. Surely they wouldn’t have resorted to such drama merely to spout cliched and bloody nonsense.
(H/T Jim Bovard for the inspiration)
No sense of history? Or just no sense?
It’s funny. If he lived in the U.S., Rabbi Menachem Margolin would be considered more or less a wimp on gun rights. In Europe, he’s a most radical voice.
Since the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher massacres at least, he’s been calling for Jews to take up arms. That is, to be “allowed” to take up arms. And only “selected” Jews. Jews chosen, trained, and constantly overseen by the state (the very state that’s content to leave the Jews and everyone else disarmed in the face of both terrorism an regular, independent crime).
You see what I mean about wimpy. Still, in disarmed Europe, he’s the loudest voice calling for Jewish self defense.
Margolin is based in Belgium. So naturally, the country’s chief rabbi Abraham Guigui (I didn’t know countries had chief rabbis, but so this article says) and other prominent Jewish leaders simply must denounce him and his mad, wild, crazy, wild-west plan. According to the Jerusalem Post:
Over the weekend, Guigui issued a statement blasting what he called marginal elements and stating that calls for the arming of Jews were “a real danger and unacceptable.”
Calling for Jewish gun ownership would be tantamount to an admission that the Jews are outside of mainstream European society and that their governments are unable to provide for their security, he explained. [Pardon me for interrupting the article, but no sh*t Sherlock, it’s time to admit that “governments are unable to provide for their security.”]
Such a view is considered unacceptable to the vast majority of Belgian Jews, he said, calling on the government to defend every Belgian no matter his religious creed.
“If every one who is in danger requests a gun, today that’s the Jews, tomorrow it’s the imams… it will be a land of anarchy.”
The Coordination Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations also decried Margolin’s call to arms, issuing a statement calling it ridiculous and asserting that the EJA was “in no way representative of the Belgian Jewish Community.”
“He [Margolin] is not connected at all with the Belgian- Jewish [umbrella] organizations,” said Baron Julien Klener, the president of the Jewish Central Consistory of Belgium, joining his voice to other organizations alarmed at the idea of arming Jews.
Margolin, of course, being a true European, rushed to have an underling explain that he really, really, really didn’t mean what those other guys thought he meant.
All I can say, guys, is it’s your funeral. I hope not literally.
Down is Up
In the past month or so, we’ve seen world leaders admonishing Jews, especially in Israel, to stay calm and composed, and avoid responding to concerted efforts to run them over with cars, bash them to bits with large stones, burn them alive with gasoline, stab them with knives, or shoot them to death. The last thing the “Nations” want to see is Jews standing tall and vigorously defending themselves.
Even in Israel, the secular leaders bob back and forth between a slavish bureaucratic mindset inherited from socialist post-war Europe and British Mandatory Colonialism on the one hand, and the ethereal wails of their elders and deceased relatives, driven from homes a thousand or more years old or turned to “smoke” not so long ago.
So it is with not a little dark humor that we note a commemoration in Sweden planned for tonight, on the seventy-seventh anniversary of Krystallnacht. This historical event is considered the formal onset on the Nazi genocide of European Jews (along with Gypsys, Poles, and Social Democrats, etc.).
Why is this funny, you ask? Because, the Jewish community of Sweden has specifically NOT been invited. The organizers, seeing radical Islamic elements and Leftist Jew Haters protesting at prior years’ commemorations, decided that having Jews at a Krystallnacht commemoration is too provocative… a “security risk” (?!)
Gee, if the Nazi’s had been just a little more efficient (not for lack of trying) in their “solution”, just think how civil Europe’s commemoration of their slaughter could be. Nice… and… civil.
To paraphrase the French Foreign Minister recent musings; “We gave Europe’s Jews to the Nazi’s, and in exchange, we are getting Muslims. Millions of them.”
Who says G-d doesn’t have a sense of humor?
LA City Council Requires Tougher Storage Laws
So the Lost Angeles (spelling intentional) City Council has decided to mandate tougher storage laws to ensure that no children accidentally shoot themselves in their fair city.
“I am tired and I know you all are too of reading of grieving parents who have lost their children through unintentional and totally preventable shootings,” said Laurie Saffian with Women Against Gun Violence.
Yes, do it for the children! Because we haven’t heard that well-worn trope before!
A violation will be a misdemeanor. Officials say there won’t be patrols checking homes to make sure the law is being obeyed, and they admit it will be difficult to know until after an incident occurs.
“Sadly, it will also come into play after tragedies occur or after near tragedies occur,” Krekorian said.
So the idiots can’t enforce it without massive violations of the Fourth Amendment, and they’ve essentially passed a new law that has no hope of reducing accidents – all to remedy a problem that pretty small, according to that bastion of conservative reporting, the Washington Post.
We know how many gun deaths were declared accidental (591 in 2011, the CDC says). And we know that 102 people killed in these accidental gun deaths in 2011 were younger than 18, according to Vernick, with half of these children younger than age 13.
In 2013, the last year for which statistics are available, 59 children under the age of 13 died due to accidental gunfire. Compare this to the 577 in that same age bracket who drowned, and 51 and 55 who died of poisoning and falls respectively. Why is it that gun grabbers aren’t lobbying for swimming pool control?
This new law can’t be enforced, and it will more likely than not be completely useless at deterring accidental deaths.
But you know what it will do?
It will ensure that any armed thug who breaks into your home will have complete access to your body, your loved ones, and your property with impunity.
Unless, of course, you think your encounter with an armed intruder will go something like this:
DOOR FLIES OPEN, ARMED INTRUDER ENTERS
You: Oh, my goodness! You have a gun! How did you possibly get one with all the strict gun laws we have in Lost Angeles?
Intruder: Shut up and lie down.
You: Oh, NOES! What are you planning to do to me?
Intruder: Well, first I’m going to tie you up and rape you. And then I thought I’d walk around and help myself to your stuff. That OK with you?
You: No! As a matter of fact, I bought a gun to protect myself against just such an eventuality!
Intruder: Well, where is this mythical gun?
You: It’s locked up right now. City Council says I must.
Would you mind waiting right there while I run and fetch it?
Intruder: Oh, sure! I’ll wait here. After all, I’d like to afford you a level playing field before I rape and rob you! Go for it. I’ve got all the time in the world!
In what lunatic world do these imbeciles live?
What good is a tool of self defense if you cannot immediately use it in times of need?
And what good is a right, if you are forced to submit to idiot regulations that have no hope of preventing violence and serve to put you at a disadvantage in the face of an armed enemy?
Good luck, LA. You’ll need it.
Am I a Calzone?
No, I don’t mean the food thingy, I mean the person, as in Ron Calzone.
Ron Calzone is a citizen, a mere mortal citizen. Well, a regular citizen with an incredible energy level. He raises horses and cattle and has a small manufacturing business. And then there is his side line. In his “spare” time Ron goes to Jefferson City to talk to legislators. Ron talks to them from a Constitutional viewpoint. He opposes things like eminent domain, and about anything that gives government more control over people lives or their property. He talks to legislators about having good firearms laws, that protect ownership and their owners. And he is very good at it. He is part of a group in Missouri called Missouri First. Ron is often in Jefferson City at the Capitol wearing down the leather on his shoes. Now not every citizen can get off work to go to Jefferson City to testify before a committee when the bills they are most interested in either seeing go through or stopped dead are to be heard. In those cases Missouri First has come up with something very ingenious, called Liberty Tools. People that are subscribed to their mailing list will be sent a notice when a bill of interest is about to be heard, and if you can’t go, you can fill out your witness statement online, MoFirst will print it off and take it to the hearing FOR YOU. Then your Representatives and Senators can get online and see which of their constituents weighed in on it. Either for or against, doesn’t matter, the choice you made, your comments will be there in the liberty tools section. Even if your vote and comment go the opposite of what Missouri First is recommending, it will be there. Pretty nifty huh? I heard from a very reliable source who was in a hearing for a Missouri Firearms Freedom act bill that Ron showed with a stack of witness forms about 18 inches or so high from people in Missouri who were in favor of it. That is a LOT of input.
So what’s the problem? Sounds like a stand up guy, right? I mean he takes time off from his own business, farm and family to go to Jefferson City and do what groups are always urging their members to do, get involved, go talk to legislators, send emails, write letters, make phone calls. He represents those that can’t be there but want their voice heard with piles of witness forms at hearings. Good stuff for citizens right? What could go wrong?
Well, he is good at being heard. And that has resulted in angering some politicians. Let’s look at a couple things.
When Sen. Kevin Engler thought he was a shoe in for position of the Senate’s President pro tem.
In 2010, along with multitude of Tea Party and Patriot group members, I also quite vocally opposed the election of Senator Engler, who was the majority floor leader, to the position of the Senate’s president pro tem. For the first time in decades, the Senate declined to make the majority floor leader their next president pro tem.
Right, Engler didn’t get it, and he was livid.
Now let’s uncover just a couple more skeletons. This one named Ron Richards. Ron was Floor Majority leader in the house at one time. That time would be 2013 and what was at stake was a fabulous bill called the Second Amendment Protection act. Now Ronnie has proudly proclaimed his pro Second Amendment status. He demonstrated this by running away from this bill screaming like a little girl. Actually I’ve seen some girls with bigger, never mind. Anyway, apparently Ron was upset that the bill would prevent newspapers from being able to publish the names of gun owners, you know, like they have in other states. But he promised he would sponsor an even better bill and get it passed. What can you say, he’s a RINO in Missouri. It’s two years later, and still not done. Then there was that time back in 2010 when Ron fought a bill that then Speaker of the house Ron Richards wanted, later the Missouri Supreme court struck it down, so guess Mr. Calzone was correct after all.
Then just recently, Rep. John Diehl was up to be Speaker of the House. Missouri First took the position that he would not be a good speaker, and set his legislation contact list to calling their elected Representatives to ask that they pick someone else other than a “bad Diehl”. The people did the contacting but the House still elected him speaker. Though they did get rid of him after he was caught in a big sex scandal. Oh well.
So what does all this have to do with the price of Israeli coffee in America?
Well this is where it gets really interesting.
A little more background. The Governor of Missouri is Jay Nixon, anti-gun. He’s the one that did the best barry impersonation “The police acted stupidly” when the Police officer shot thug Michael Brown. Jay promised swift justice for Michael. Actually, I think justice had probably already been done, but that was Jay’s first response. His second was to prevent the National guard from stopping the rioting after he illegally called them in before the riot started. So that’s Jay.
Governor Jay is the one who appointed the six members of the Missouri ethics commission. I’m sure they are all up to Jay’s demanding “standards”. Chuckle.
From the MoFirst website:
MEC says about their mission: “The MEC serves the public interest by promoting and maintaining transparency, accountability, and compliance with campaign finance, lobbying, and conflict of interest laws.”The Ethics Commission claims they have no responsibility to consider constitutional arguments that might otherwise be presented in a defense against complaints.While it’s true that MEC has no authority to declare a statute unconstitutional like a real court of law would, they do have a responsibility to support the Constitution, so they should actually at least be considering the constitutional implications of various interpretations of statutes relating to a complaint. In other words, if there are two possible ways to interpret a statute – one is constitutional and the other is not – they should feel obligated to choose the constitutional approach. They do not feel thus constrained, however, and that does not bode well for our free speech rights.
Ready for the juicy stuff?
At the September 3, 2015, hearing before the Missouri Ethics Commission, a witness called by the Commission’s own attorney revealed during sworn testimony a very interesting and very telling fact. The testimony was that Representative Kevin Engler and Senator Ron Richard had talked to the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants (MSGC), asking them if they had any interest in my status as a lobbyist. After that, MSGC filed a complaint against me with the Ethics Commission.
Only natural persons are allowed to file with the Ethics (guffaw) commission. And within five days they were to have told Ron who his accusers were. So SEVENTY-FOUR DAYS later the Missouri Ethics (yes, I am having trouble typing that with a straight face) commission told Mr. Calzone who had filed the complaint against him. And it wasn’t a person. In fact the lawyer that drew up the complaint made it clear that the filing entity wasn’t a person.
What is the fallout? Ron has been accused of being a lobbyist. That he hasn’t registered and paid the $10 fee, and hasn’t filled out the necessary paperwork. So that results in a thousand dollar fine. If he persists, he could face jail time.
Ready for the punch line? Ron isn’t a lobbyist. He is a citizen, working with other citizens and with other freedom minded groups. He is paid NO money for going to Jefferson City, and he buys the legislators no gifts, no meals. If he’s a lobbyist? He stinks at it.
That’s what makes this so ugly to me. This is an attempt to keep mere citizens from suiting up and showing up to speak to legislators. At one time this was something I did, and not long ago, I was one of two people tapped to be the citizens showing up to talk to legislators on behalf of a group of combined Second Amendment groups. I could have been in Ron’s boots. This is an attempt to stifle free speech and shut out influence of mere citizens from bothering the elected officials. That and some ugly political payback.
At a time when more than ever citizens need to be involved in the political process in an effort to protect our rights this is a very bad thing. If other states should begin to consider such actions? Citizens need to have access to their elected officials, whether it’s showing up themselves, or if they can’t, filling out a online form to be presented at a hearing, they need to be involved. We all need to be suiting up and showing up in whatever capacity we can.
Am I a Calzone? I hope so.
Dear Aharon
I suppose during this time of year I am more given to introspection. But I’m seeing all these things that just don’t add up and make any sense to me. ֪ Conundrums if you will.
For example, why does it seem like “J Street” doesn’t really like Jews, or at least those Jews in Israel very much?
Another one, I have been thinking about the column Nicki wrote on Soccer Mom’s and the view I often hear expressed “If it saves just ONE life” in regards to why law abiding gun owners who have done nothing wrong should give up their rights. But then I read a story like the fourteen year old who used his .22 rifle to protect himself and his six year old sibling from home invaders who came in broad daylight.
Then I read this story about children even younger! This time it was an eleven year old who shot and killed at sixteen year old home intruder, the other intruder escaped but was later captured. He was protecting himself and his four year old little sister. I don’t think an eleven year old could have prevailed against two older teenagers without an defensive tool.
There are children alive today because they had access and training to defensive tools to help them. I then compare it to a story out of California several years ago. It’s so sad, it has always stuck with me.
Just a little over fifteen years ago, in Merced California a madman broke into the Carpenter farm house. The father was at work, the mom had taken the car to have the brakes looked at. She left fourteen year old Jessica in charge.
I was babysitting at twelve, I do not find this shocking.
For some reason we will never know a insane man broke into the farm house after cutting the phone lines. When Jessica heard a noise she came out of her room and found a naked man standing in the living room wielding a pitchfork. She fled to her room and tried to do what liberals say, she called the police. With the phone not working (the older version of no signal available) she had no success. So she crawled out the window to go get help.
The madman began stabbing little thirteen year old Anna first. Her younger sister Ashley was apparently born a sheepdog. And as such, she died. She yelled at the man not to hurt her sister. He left off stabbing Anna and killed Ashley aged nine years old.
Jessica had ran next door to neighbor Juan Fuentes and begged him to get a gun and “take care of this guy”. Juan was not inclined to save the children being murdered, though he did graciously allow Jessica to use the phone. She called police.
When they arrived he rushed them with the pitchfork, whereupon they shot him. Since they had guns, they could do that.
Jessica, Vanessa and Anna survived. The valiant little sheepdog Ashley, did not. Nor did her younger brother John who was stabbed in his sleep.
If this was not heinous enough, I will make it more so. It was most likely, preventable. Jessica KNEW how to shoot, she had earned a safety certificate when she was twelve. There WERE guns available, her father had at least a .357 and Jessica not only knew where it was, she knew well how to shoot it. So why didn’t she? Because California has MANDATORY safe storage. The gun was locked up, high on a shelf where Jessica couldn’t reach it. Even if she could, she would have needed to retrieve ammo from another spot and load it. I can only pity the poor Father, who had done everything else right, but was more afraid of the state, than a pitchfork wielding maniac. So doesn’t it seem like the soccer mom crowd and people like that silly Watts woman are partly responsible for their death?
I also do not understand how women that claim to be feminists can say that women shouldn’t have guns because they are “too weak”. After all these years of telling me “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you’re a man”, you now tell me I’m too weak to handle a tool that could protect me, my family and my animals? Listen broad, what’s mine? I protect. As very best I can. I can get a 1,300 lb animal to go the direction I want him (most of the time) by pointing a finger, I can protect mine with a effective defensive tool. Sorry Aharon, I’ll stuff the cowgirl back down. But doesn’t this seem a bit hypocritical? Especially if it’s a politician that has taxpayer funded security? I can’t afford that!
So, I don’t know. I just don’t understand why some people say that citizens who have done nothing wrong will make us all safer if we give up rights and ability to protect ourselves. And why do the people that say that sometimes have the very tools they want to deny us? Although the NRA says he wasn’t that bad, I’m not sure what to think since they did endorse Harry Reid.
So, I’m just trying to make sense of some of this, and to reflect on my behavior and am I being consistent. Can you help with some advice?
Sincerely,
נצ
Dear נצ
Give it up, you are dealing with a mindset you should hope to NEVER understand. You’ll make yourself crazy with this stuff. Give it up and go have a nice cup of Israeli coffee. You’ll feel better.
Regards,
אַהֲרֹן
