California’s Emergency Motion to 9th Circuit in Benitez Magazine Case Looks Like a LOSER
BY Herschel Smith
As usual, Mark does a great job.
As usual, Mark does a great job.
This is an interesting deconstruction of the violent extremism that pervades transgender depravity, and it also attacks Red Flag laws soundly. It is well-researched with some data and footnoted, but it’s not too long.
Genital mutilation is labeled “gender-affirming care,” while the mainstream media constantly reminds attempts to frame anti-trans legislation as a matter of “survival.” From self-harm to self-deception, the transgender community is plagued by depravity and violence. Yet every step of the way, the Biden administration has sought to hamper any laws that would curb this violence.1 For the federal government, downplaying the violence of transgenderism is just as crucial as skewing statistics on firearm deaths. Creating the illusion that transgenderism and violence are separate issues is a task that never ends, resulting in confusion and false impressions. After all, without mountains of rhetoric and manufactured evidence, the average person would be inclined to assume transgenderism is a “red flag” for gun ownership.
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Even though the studies are scarce, the association between transgenderism and violent offenses is inescapable. To those who have already made this connection, the shooting at Covenant School was a tragedy, not a surprise.
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For the average Christian, attending these churches in good conscience is impossible. How can you sit in a pew and listen to a pastor who would immediately use your death for their own liberal activism? For the majority of Christians, their own death would be used to support the policies they opposed while alive.
The author and I have a shared interest in Christ and firearms. He’s kind enough to speak with me on social media, though his intellect is well above mine. He’s a good man; read the rest it’s worth your time.
Trump took a tour of Palmetto State Armory – yes, the company that wants to arm AS MANY AMERICANS AS POSSIBLE WITH AS MANY ARs and AKs AS POSSIBLE.
And apparently, Trump found himself a new Glock.
Some people are reporting that he bought the hand cannon (not sure if it was a G19 or what – someone said it was a .45, which is boss – but I love that custom threaded barrel and finish).
More important than the photo op was this clip where Trump promised to overturn the ATF pistol brace rule that has made tens of millions of Americans felons …
Did he really do all of that? Must be some sort of superman or something. Honestly, the sycophants and worshipers drive me crazy.
No, he didn’t purchase a gun that day.
Suppose he did talk about the pistol brace rule. So what? He set the whole thing up with his precedent of the bump stock ban. Did he talk about canceling that project? Apparently not. No more than he talked about how he was wrong to shut the country down and march Fauci in front of the public for a year over the flu.
“I never got the credit I deserve on Covid,” said Trump, patting himself on the back for his “tremendous response” that saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The commenters over Reddit/Firearms are brutal. He lost many gun owners over the bump stock ban. I predict this isn’t a hurdle he can overcome.
Color me unimpressed with all of this. Silly season has begun in earnest.
Everybody is pro-gun until the monied interests influence them. I don’t believe a lick of what people say, especially politicians. The single common denominator in school shootings is…school. It’s the one thing they won’t acknowledge proving they are Statists. Never will they talk about surrendering central power and control to the states and to the people. Get your children and grandchildren out of the government indoctrination centers; do whatever it takes! Read the candidate’s statements for yourself. I won’t bother inserting any because all politicians are professional liars.
The supreme court reversed the vacatur order by Reed O’Connor. Some lawyer is doing some clever thinking. This time they went for an injunction against enforcement of the unconstitutional and immoral ATF frame and receiver rule. They got it. This will eventually be heard by the supreme court. I stand by my original prediction. The women on the court, including Roberts, will side with the FedGov.
By now you’ve seen the tyrannical declarations of the New Mexico governor. Here they are in all of their sordid detail. She doesn’t think oaths mean anything at all.
The Governor of New Mexico has just declared the 1st & 2nd Amendment “does not exist” due to an “emergency.”
Under this legal theory *all* of our “rights” are essentially eliminated.
Watch the most evil & tyrannical 60 seconds you’ve ever heard from a politician: pic.twitter.com/xLpMSTbyi2
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 9, 2023
I wonder if her husband, Manuel Cordova, thinks the same way about oaths? Anyway, this declaration has drawn a firestorm of reaction. I told my family that it wouldn’t last through the week. In fact, it didn’t last that long. There are already protests, and promises to disobey the unconstitutional edict, and even more importantly, her own enforcers aren’t on her side.
Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, who once served as a Democratic party leader and was appointed by Lujan Grisham, on Saturday joined Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Police Chief Harold Medina saying they wouldn’t enforce the order.
“As an officer of the court, I cannot and will not enforce something that is clearly unconstitutional,” said Bregman, the top prosecutor in the Albuquerque area. “This office will continue to focus on criminals of any age that use guns in the commission of a crime.”
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he was uneasy about how gun owners might respond.
Yeah, he should be. Next up, on Monday morning the federal courts will face at least two emergency cases from briefs filed over the weekend. One is friend of this blog Stephen Stamboulieh working for GOA. Here is the brief. The second has been filed by the National Association of Gun Rights.
Perhaps the district attorney knows about this and doesn’t want to be responsible for bankrupting New Mexico. The governor has given every gun owner in Albuquerque a way to make quick money if this is true.
Finally, Fenix ammunition posted a warning to the Governor. There are consequences to her actions.
The beacons have been lit.@GovMLG – we are going to flood your state with ordnance.
We’re offering free shipping on ammunition to your entire state until you resign, or until you’re impeached.
The choice is yours. pic.twitter.com/UE2wW8oJFN
— Feni Ammunition (@FenixAmmunition) September 9, 2023
For those who don’t grok the big picture, this has all been done under a “health” order. The controllers got a taste of unlimited power under the Covid regime, and they liked it. They are addicted to the power and want more. This is a trial balloon, and the Governor must be disobeyed, stopped, and held accountable.
Other than actual firearms confiscations, this is a recapitulation of what happened in New Orleans during Katrina. In this case, the stakes aren’t quite as high – there is no going about armed. But if she could effect confiscation, she would.
On that subject, I sent out an email thread earlier today where I said this.
This is a very big deal. She isn’t some loose cannon. They’re probing for weaknesses.
This is similar to the firearms confiscations in New Orleans during Katrina. I never got full resolution on exactly what happened with Katrina and there are open issues for me on that.
I exchanged email with Gen. Honore and he pointed the finger of blame at the Mayor of NO rather than himself or the NG (who accompanied the thugs who went door-to-door). He tried to distance himself from it all and said he wasn’t involved.
I met two guys at a gun show in Charlotte who I think were involved as contractors going door-to-door. They were jerks. The general’s finger pointing makes a bit of sense to me given Posse Comitatus.
I submitted a FOIA on whether the NG troops were armed and under arming orders, and if so, who issued the orders. Whenever troops are armed, (1) range time and qualifications must be conducted, (2) arming orders must be issues, and finally, (3) the lawyers (JAGS) have to write and train the troops on RUF/ROE (rules for the use of force, rules of engagement – in this case, I suspect RUF rather than ROE).
I never got an answer to the FOIA. I exchanged email with the state two more times. The first time someone seemed to take it seriously and told me he would follow up. The second time, he ignored me. It was never completed. A number of years old now, it hangs out there as an incomplete FOIA.
Did Gov. Bobby Jendel have his AG issue arming orders? Did the troops have ammo in their mags? Did the JAGS write RUF? Who conducted the confiscations? Was it all at the hands of a rogue city major of NO? Was General Honore involved? After all, he is a known gun controller.
Inquiring minds want to know.
This is just a recapitulation of firearm confiscations in NO, but under a different pretext. In this case, no one can go about armed.
The bottom line is that there will be massive disobedience, her enforcers won’t enforce her edict, if they do she be responsible for giving gun owners a get-rich-quick scheme on behalf of the government of New Mexico, she will be in court on Monday, and her state is going to be flooded with ordnance. She is in way, way, way over her head. She shouldn’t have listened to the current administration when they decided to launch the trial balloon in her state.
I wonder if she thought about “unintended consequences?”
UPDATE #1:
From Legal Insurrection, four lawsuits filed so far.
Hey Ted, conceal and open carry are state laws that I have jurisdiction over. If you’re really interested in helping curb gun violence, I’d welcome you to join our next police academy class. https://t.co/Odf9fNbO2W https://t.co/17ca1dYpLc
— Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) September 10, 2023
Imagine someone thinking that because she’s the governor, she can suspend state laws regardless of the House and Senate. That’s the “republic” we live in.
Apparently, the target of the raid is a pastor who had an FFL. The BATFE coerced him into surrendering his license. All licenses are just borrowed liberties that the issuer has no right to sell, but that’s another story. Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-Lane) is about to learn what many Americans fear but won’t come to grips with. The oligarchy runs the permanent bureaucracy; state and federal legislatures have no real power anymore.
Since he surrendered his license, the ATF now has access to his 4473s. Expect more raids both of buyers and sellers.
According to a press release, Humphrey said he was contacted by Fincher after a dozen ATF SWAT team members bearing “automatic weapons” raided Fincher’s home, handcuffed him on his porch in front of his 13-year-old son and coerced him into relinquishing his Federal Firearm License.
“If this report is true, and I have every reason to believe it is, then it would appear the ATF’s actions constitute a gross misuse and abuse of their federal police powers,” Humphrey said in the press release.
Fincher’s ordeal was chronicled in a story published in July. The 52-year-old is a high school teacher, a Baptist pastor and a parttime gun dealer.
“Mr. Fincher is a distinguished figure in our community, serving both as pastor and schoolteacher in the small community of Clayton, Oklahoma. He is known as a respected member of the community, and I have every reason to believe his account. If proven true, the actions of the ATF agents could be seen as a severe misuse and abuse of their federal law enforcement authority,” Humphrey wrote in the letter to the AG, Governor and Sheriff. “Mr. Fincher claimed that the intent of the raid was evidently to coerce him into terminating his license. He said agents pressured him to declare that he was willingly signing the three prepared termination papers. He explained that he felt coerced due to the armed agents and the threatening environment. He likened the agents’ actions to extortion rather than a proper law enforcement search. One agent reportedly warned, ‘Tell your firearms buddies we are coming after them.’ If true, this statement appears to be an unlawful threat by the agent.”
Humphrey, who chairs Oklahoma’s Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee, believes the ATF violated Fincher’s Second and Fourth Amendment rights.
This is classic tyranny; find the most upstanding man you can and humiliate him to intimidate the populous. BATFE agents swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. Figure that out.
Lee Williams writing at Ammoland.
The story was written by one of the Trace’s senior fabulists, Jennifer Mascia, who is “currently the lead writer of the Ask The Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.” Mascia has also led the Trace’s hilarious we’re journalists, not activists, propaganda campaign on social media.
Mascia claims her story was a response to a reader’s question: “Many gun owners claim to buy assault-style rifles for defense. So how many documented cases are out there where someone actually defended themselves with an assault-style rifle?”
You can read the rest at Ammoland. Jennifer is trying to assist the controllers in changing the subject from “in common use for legal purposes” to actually having used a weapon for self defense. First of all, she doesn’t know anything about that regardless of what she claims. No one can go to news reports and find every instance they need for a comprehensive study. For example, use of the weapon might have been to flash the rifle muzzle at home invaders only for the invaders to run. With that said, I think I could come up with quite a few instances myself, but that’s not really the point of this, and we’ll get to more later on this subject when you listen to Professor Mark Smith below.
Let’s turn our attention to Jennifer for a moment. I’ve had an exchange with Jennifer before. Let’s review, shall we?
I had a rather protracted conversation with someone who writes under the nom de guerre Tommy Gnosis. Not that I care that deeply, but something sounded strange about the comments, like they had no particular bearing, were inconsistent, or feinted support for individual rights but didn’t do a good job of hiding the fact that it was all just a distraction.
So I did a little bit of research. Tommy Gnosis is someone named Jennifer Mascia, who has her own web site. In fact, she was one of the authors of the now defunct “The Gun Report” for the New York Times. Recall that report? That awful, hideous, dreary rundown of shootings every day? As if all we have to do is remove those awful guns from society and sin goes away because evil is located in things rather than the heart of man (a noted neo-Platonic and stoic view).
Anyway, I did an IP trace and found that the address was owned by Bloomberg. It makes sense, since I also found out that she works for Bloomberg via Everytown For Gun Safety. Her Disqus account is active, and features snark, misdirects, sarcasm, insults, and most of all, prose designed to demoralize and demonstrate the complete impotence of whatever group she is berating at the moment. The prose is designed to cause depression and dejection.
Here is the lesson. Bloomberg is paying her to visit web sites – particularly gun rights web sites – and spread discontent and dejection.
The exchange continues.
Hi Herschel,
I am not paid to comment here, or anywhere, nor have I ever been. There is no “tactic.” I have never worked for a political organization or a nonprofit, only media companies, and before that, restaurants. No one at Everytown knows I comment here. I actually don’t work with the advocacy arm of Everytown. The news site will be staffed with journalists, not lobbyists. We have zero to do with elections or phone banks. We won’t be working with Everytown staffers.
Her Disqus account was by “Tommy Gnosis.” I outed her and she posted as “Guest.” She responded that she isn’t paid to comment anywhere. There is no “tactic.” She claimed no relationship at all to Bloomberg. Now we find out that her use of an IP address that pointed back to Bloomberg was no coincidence. She is indeed trafficking in propaganda, and she is in the employ of Bloomberg. Let’s continue with Codrea’s second article on Bloomberg’s next move.
“Tommy Gnosis is someone named Jennifer Mascia,” Herschel Smith at The Captain’s Journal posted in March. He was describing someone who, under cover of anonymity, “visits web sites — particularly gun rights web sites — and spreads discontent and dejection.”
That’s consistent with the “elaborate subterfuge” technique for “infiltrating and disrupting alternative media online” used by those with an agenda. Per Canadian research, such “Internet trolls aren’t just mean — they’re sadists and psychopaths.”
That would also seem consistent with the control-all megalomaniac who hired her, in a company-he-keeps kind of way. Mascia is one of two paid flacks “attached prominently to the Everytown news project,” an experiment in virtual Astroturf that billionaire Michael Bloomberg will be rolling out this summer.
David then goes on to explore her past as daughter of a mob hit man.
What drives Mascia is anybody’s guess, but chances are her father having been an underworld killer with multiple hits under his belt had an influence. That probably comes as a surprise to many gun rights advocates, unaware that Al Jazeera told its readers “America’s best hope for tracking gun deaths is a mob enforcer’s daughter,” and Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action gushed on social media that her story was “Amazing.”
[ … ]
As for pushing Jennifer around, I’ve made clear that if you want to come in this back yard and run with the big dogs, you’d better be prepared for some rough business. And as for Jennifer herself, you weren’t entirely honest with us, were you?
Well there you have it. She’s bought and paid for by Michael Bloomberg. She came in under a nom de guerre to spread hate and discontent. I outed her. Even then she denied it because she’s a liar.
So why is she trying to assist the controllers in this one specific issue? Listen carefully to Mark Smith below. They want the supreme court to change the test in Bruen and Heller from “in common use for lawful purposes” to something else, and they have chosen the Rahimi case for all of their hate towards gun owners. They see this as their golden opportunity.
I’ve told you what I think. I think the women on the court, including Barrett and Roberts, side with the controllers and end of changing the rules back to something the DOJ and ATF likes much better. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. There was no particularly compelling reason for them to have taken this case to begin with.
One commenter to the video below remarks, “As I recall, when the DOJ bought AR-15s a few years back, the Request for Purchase form listed them as “personal defense weapons.” Can’t have it both ways.” I’ll add to this. If the AR-15 is so bad for use in defense situations, tell me why the U.S. government agencies have so many rifles – some noted as “assault rifles” – in their inventory as personal defense weapons?
Tennessee Republicans ended the legislature’s special session for gun control today. No Red Flag law was passed. Of course, a communist from Memphis assaulted Speaker Sexton, which is plainly on film. The media refuses to say who “started it” because they are also communists. The assault took place after the gavel. The Republicans will probably end up apologizing for the communists’ assault; that’s what they do: capitulate and whimper.
The result of the session is they reallocated one-time money to the state’s “mental health” bureaucracy. And they made gun safes tax-free. We’ll see how Governor Lee fares going forward. This certainly weakens his political power considerably. All of this is pulled from news sources and probably half wrong. No news sources were linked here; it’s all so very tiresome what they do. I doubt we’ll follow up at TCJ.
Hats off to the Republicans for standing their ground. The communists will be back; they never rest.