Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

More from the communist in chief:

Even as news reports have been highlighting the gun control provisions of the Administration’s “Unified Agenda” of regulatory objectives (see accompanying story), the Obama State Department has been quietly moving ahead with a proposal that could censor online speech related to firearms. This latest regulatory assault, published in the June 3 issue of the Federal Register, is as much an affront to the First Amendment as it is to the Second. Your action is urgently needed to ensure that online blogs, videos, and web forums devoted to the technical aspects of firearms and ammunition do not become subject to prior review by State Department bureaucrats before they can be published.

[ … ]

With the new proposal published on June 3, the State Department claims to be “clarifying” the rules concerning “technical data” posted online or otherwise “released” into the “public domain.” To the contrary, however, the proposal would institute a massive new prior restraint on free speech. This is because all such releases would require the “authorization” of the government before they occurred. The cumbersome and time-consuming process of obtaining such authorizations, moreover, would make online communication about certain technical aspects of firearms and ammunition essentially impossible.

[ … ]

Gunsmiths, manufacturers, reloaders, and do-it-yourselfers could all find themselves muzzled under the rule and unable to distribute or obtain the information they rely on to conduct these activities. Prior restraints of the sort contemplated by this regulation are among the most disfavored regulations of speech under First Amendment case law.

Let’s cover the list.  No more American Rifleman Magazine (since it has technical data in it), no more descriptions over forums for how to reload or what recipe is best for certain situations, no more tactical training videos over YouTube, no more posting of results of ballistic gelatin, no more gun reviews, no more descriptions of how to field strip and clean firearms, and on and on the list goes.

It won’t work.  Obama will be defeated, now and in eternity.  Just like gun control doesn’t stop the availability of guns, Obama can’t stop the sharing of information.  And for his totalitarianism, Mr. Obama has earned a place in hell on judgment day.  In the mean time, the administration has declared war on you and your freedoms.  This is the next battlefield.

KFSM/KXNW:

Benton County Sheriff Kelley Cradduck says his deputies will not arrest anyone who openly carries a handgun.

“As long as the law is written as it is then we will not arrest any citizen for simply exercising their right to open carry,” the sheriff wrote on his Facebook page on Monday (June 1).

Cradduck said he posted his views on the issue because an overwhelming number of people have asked for his thoughts about open carry.

People committing crimes while openly carrying a handgun will still find themselves on the wrong side of the law, he noted.

“If there are other exigent circumstances involved, such as they are committing a crime while openly carrying, then they stand a good chance of being charged for whatever crime they committed, along with the charge of carrying a firearm without a concealed handgun license,” he wrote.

The controversy whether open carry is legal in Arkansas began after a bill was passed in the 2013 legislative session containing language some believe allows for open carry of handguns.  Dustin McDaniel, who was the attorney general at the time, said open carry of handguns is illegal in the state.

However, the current attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, said she believes the law, known as Act 746, allows for open carry.

“I interpret it to mean an individual may carry so long as he or she does so without the intent to unlawfully employ it against another person,” she told 5NEWS in a prepared statement on Monday. “But anytime law enforcement and citizens disagree on a law we need to ensure there is clarity to protect our citizens. I am committed to working with the General Assembly to clarify any confusion surrounding Act 746 and its intent.”

Cradduck said in his Facebook post that he will stand by his position until state legislators approve a measure clarifying the law.

“Until the legislative bodies come together and write the law very clearly stating if and where you may or may not openly carry without a license, then I will not permit my deputies to arrest individuals who are carrying their firearms in an open fashion,” he wrote.

In 2013, Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder said he agreed with then-Prosecuting Attorney John Threet that open carry is permitted. Threet, who later won election as a Circuit Court judge, said he didn’t plan on prosecuting gun owners who openly carry firearms in Washington County. Helder said he would use Threet’s opinion in instructing his deputies on the legality of firearm open carry.

In the comments to Communist Art Acevedo Kills Constitutional Carry In Texas we discussed the various exigencies and vicissitudes of what LEOs think, how judges are likely to decide cases before them and other issues surrounding open carry when the law isn’t clear.

In Texas the lack of a provision prohibiting LEOs from stopping open carriers to demand evidence of permit will be a problem, I predict.  In Arkansas we see now the problems associated with muddled laws.  A note to legislators is in order.  You aren’t doing anyone any favors by muddling the laws.  Not LEOs, not judges, not the people.  No one benefits because of your vacillation.

The News & Observer:

… the most contentious part of the bill would phase out the system requiring handgun buyers to get permits from their local sheriff.

Now handgun buyers must get a permit from the sheriff, who does a background check. The bill would end that program by 2021 and grant exceptions in the meantime.

Supporters say most handgun buyers would be subject to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. They say the federal system would offer a more standardized, less arbitrary system.

The bill “in no way attempts to remove background checks,” Schaffer told the committee. “On the contrary, it’s designed to strengthen background checks.”

Paul Valone, director of Grass Roots North Carolina, a pro-gun group, told lawmakers it was time to end what he called “the Jim Crow-era pistol permitting system (that’s) archaic and arbitrary.”

Jeff Brown, the group’s legislative director, also criticized the current system. “Who would put up with arbitrary and capricious decisions about whether you get driver’s licenses?” he said.

But critics urged lawmakers to keep the current system in place.

“If we do away with the pistol permit process, domestic violence abusers, the dangerously mentally ill, convicted felons and minors would all be able to buy guns from unlicensed dealers,” said Becky Ceartas, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence.

In an interview, Eddie Caldwell, executive vice president and general counsel of the sheriffs association, said the current system has several advantages.

He said sheriffs have access to more criminal history than does the national system. The only crimes reported to NICS are those for which someone was finger-printed. That doesn’t include misdemeanors such as simple assault, stalking, and many offenses involving domestic violence.

“The pistol permitting law provides much greater safety to the public than a NICS check,” Caldwell said.

He said it also protects gun sellers from unknowingly selling to a convicted felon. And even unlicensed dealers who aren’t required to use the national background check must get a sheriff’s permit.

That’s one reason the North Carolina Coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, whose 10 mayors include Democrat Dan Clodfelter of Charlotte, urged lawmakers to reject the bill.

“To protect the lives of our constituents, we must be empowered to enforce our gun laws, and our background check system is a vital law enforcement tool,” they wrote.

McCrory spokesman Ryan Minto told the committee the governor opposes the repeal of the current pistol permitting system and could not support the bill “in its current form.” The governor vetoed two unrelated bills last week.

Thus does Pat McCrory side with racist laws designed to keep blacks from getting guns.  And thus does he side with Sheriffs who want to keep the power to grant or deny God-given rights and at the same time raise revenue for their SWAT teams, new vehicles (I wish I had a brand new Dodge Charger), tactical equipment, increased salaries, and other things they should do without.

Pat shouldn’t ever ask for anything from me again, including a vote.  I’ll oppose him at every juncture.  He has now declared himself the enemy of liberty.  It didn’t take long to show himself to be a collectivist.

Texas Tribune:

Texas police chiefs are urging Gov. Greg Abbott to veto legislation repealing certain handgun restrictions in Texas if lawmakers do not remove a controversial provision the chiefs fear would allow criminals to carry firearms without repercussions.

If the provision stays on the bill, the only responsible thing for Abbott to do would be to veto it, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said at an impromptu news conference organized as the legislation faces what could be a final vote in the House on Wednesday. “You can’t be the party of law and order and not listen to your police chiefs,” he said.

[ … ]

Flanked by about a dozen law enforcement leaders from around the state, Acevedo said Wednesday that the legislation would “handcuff” police officers, endangering both them and the communities they protect.

“The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!”  Art Acevedo is a communist and liar.  He knows that other traditional open carry states like North Carolina (where simply openly carrying a gun does not constitute legitimate reason for a stop) don’t have the problems he says will come from constitutional carry in Texas.

But a little background is in order.  The House and Senate both managed to tack on a provision that LEOs couldn’t stop open carriers and ask for proof of concealed carry permits.  Communist Art Acevedo was successful and this provision was killed.

After a week of hand-wringing over a controversial amendment — and what proved to be empty threats of a Democratic filibuster — the measure sailed through both chambers of the Legislature on Friday afternoon. The vote in the House was 102 to 43; in the Senate, 20 to 11.

[ … ]

Last week, the bill’s passage was temporarily delayed when the Senate unexpectedly revived a provision that would limit the power of police officers to ask those carrying handguns visibly for a permit.

The so-called “cop stop” amendment had support from some Democrats who said it would help prevent racial profiling, as well as conservatives who said it was necessary to protect the public against unreasonable searches and seizures. But it stirred vocal criticism from the state’s police chiefs, some of whom held an impromptu news conference at the Capitol to urge Abbott to veto the bill if the language stayed in.

And so they listened to the LEOs and the provision was killed.  As a side note, LEOs have no business whatsoever engaging in advocating laws or policy.  LEOs are tasked with certain things, and making law isn’t one of those things.  There should be contractual obligations prohibiting this kind of advocacy.

As for the law makers who listened to communist Art Acevedo, you are communist scumbags along with Art Acevedo.  Every politician who allowed or in any way encouraged or advocated such a sellout of liberty is not only a racist, bowing their knee to Jim Crow laws, but a waste of the very space your bodies occupy.  You are worthless as men and leaders of men, preferring to relinquish your God-given duties to protect the rights of all men in favor of acceptance by other men.  You have exchanged good for evil, and continue to support a totalitarian government in both idea and statute, and God will have His day for you in the final white throne court.  You who worship men rather than God – that will be a terrible day.

It would have been better for the law to have failed, and for the good people of Texas to wait for true liberty rather than scramble after the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.  Color me unimpressed with any of the politicians in Texas, and I still wait for a leader to emerge who will respect God-given rights.  At the moment, I don’t see one.

NYT:

Cerberus Capital Management dodged a bullet with its recent decision to let investors sell out of one of the world’s biggest gunmakers, Remington Outdoor. It’s the company that made the assault rifle used to kill 20 children and six of their teachers in a Connecticut elementary school in December 2012.

Cerberus’s chief executive, Stephen A. Feinberg, has a clear motivation to offer the likes of gigantic pension funds like the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, the choice to dump their Remington shares. He hopes it will allow his private equity firm to put this bloody chapter behind it and get to work raising a new $3.5 billion buyout fund.

There’s no question this was a victory for the social activists who led a push for public pension funds to shed their holdings in the arms business after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre two and a half years ago in Newtown — my hometown. Even the rapper and former gun-toter Snoop Dogg made pleas for divestment.

But what if there was a better way to effect change by persuading investors to behave more like shareholder activists than social ones?

Calstrs and the other limited partners in the Cerberus funds that own Remington, formerly known as Freedom Group, have a month to decide whether to sell their shares to Remington or remain as investors. Most of them will probably just unload. The better, albeit more difficult, route would be to hang on and make some noise at Remington.

[ … ]

They could, for instance, insist that Remington ensure all its guns are sold through distributors who conduct more rigorous background checks, or that the company ramps up investments in developing weapons that won’t go off when a child finds them in a negligent parent’s night stand. They might even demand Remington stop supporting the National Rifle Association.

Oh this is just rich.  Mr. social action is recommending that investors crash Remington.  He knows it.  We all know it.  We all know that the job Remington started with commitment to labor unions, staying ensconced in New York, focusing on military contracts, and ignoring the Remington 700 trigger issues, the job of almost destroying Remington, would be finished with social action agitation by investors.

So let’s queue it up.  I dare you.  Hold on to your shares, agitate social action, and watch the value of your stocks evaporate before your eyes.  I don’t believe the gun grabbers have the balls to do something like this.  But if there is any putting your money where your big mouth is, this is the chance.

Do it.  I dare you.  Any takers?

David Codrea:

It’s difficult to imagine a more torturous and horrifying realization than to know those you love more than life itself are in agony and terror, and are being slain, and there is nothing you can do to prevent their deaths or your own. If there is an approximation of hell on earth, that must be as close as one can get. And that is something those who support politicians who enact citizen disarmament edicts enable.

Only very evil men, or very self righteous pricks, advocate such arrangements in interactions between men.

Kurt Hofmann:

The thing is, President Obama’s executive order is not a “ban” of police possession and use of such weapons and other gear–at least not in any usual sense of the word. Under the new policy, police departments are completely free to buy the gear in question. What has changed is that they will no longer get the equipment for free, or at rock-bottom prices, courtesy of the U.S. military and other federal government agencies.

Right.  And I’ll tell you something else about this ban.  It doesn’t speak to federal police agencies.  I would just as soon start with the ATF, go to the Federal Protection Police (you didn’t even know they existed, did you?), move to the DHS, and keep going.  Then we can focus on local cops.

From Mike Vanderboegh, anecdotes of societal collapse.

So is there any reason to be part of the Boy Scouts any more?

Police cash confiscations still on the rise.  Because they apparently don’t care that they are stealing, contrary to God’s commandment.

After ISIS’ slaughter of Christians everywhere they go, the sufferings of the Coptic Christians in Egypt under the Muslim brotherhood, and the kidnapping of young Christian girls by Boko Haram for the purposes of sexual slavery, it may be tempting to ask yourselves, “What kind of an idiot would continue to press the notion that Christ demanded that we disarm in the face of danger?”

The answer is that those idiots are everywhere.  I confess that I have not read Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology.  I have tended to stick more with Charles Hodge, R. L. Dabney, W.G.T. Shedd and the classics.  But my son Joseph has read Grudem, and highly recommends his book to me.  It really isn’t necessary to study Grudem’s details in order to do a takedown of the critique of Grudem (who is pro-self defense and in favor of gun rights) offered by Krish Kandiah at Christianity Today, entitled Should Christians Own Guns: A British Theologian’s Views.

Krish says:

Grudem argues that the reason the Second Amendment was added to the constitution was “to provide another protection against tyranny – to make it harder for any potential dictator or would-be king to take control of the entire nation against the will of the people.” This concern is probably not at the heart of the individual gun control debate at the moment as the right to bear arms against a tyrannical dictatorship is a different question as to whether Christians need to own guns now in a stable democratic environment.

He isn’t very well connected to the current American political scene, is he?  And if a stable environment is all he’s after, Adolf Hitler provided that while be deported the Jews for execution.  As writer Kurt Hofmann and I have both noted, the notion of self defense should include both individual self defense and defense against tyranny.  Only when understood in that light can the current debate in American be enveloped.  It may seem petty to focus on his misunderstanding of the American scene, but when writers show a fundamental misunderstanding of their subject it casts doubt on the value of the work.

Krish continues:

Even if we accept the premise that the there is a right to self-defence this does not necessarily mean the right to own a gun. There will always be limit to the expression of this right that would include a whole range of military hardware; even Grudem recognises that the private ownership of a “machine gun or anti-tank rocket launcher or an anti-aircraft missile launcher” are unnecessary. But still he argues that private hand gun ownership reduces crime as an attacker cannot be sure that their potential victim is unarmed. The counter argument of course is that it could make gun violence more likely as attackers could increasingly assume their victims are armed …

This is as amazing a quote as you will ever see in the gun control debate.  Seriously, read it again and let the bad logic of it wash over you.  He is proffering the argument that ownership of guns makes more likely that attackers will become violent because they will assume their victims are armed.  Thus, according to him, the best way to turn back the “gain” setting on violence is to allow attackers to attack you unmolested so that perhaps things won’t go as badly as they could if you were armed!  You simply can’t make this stuff up, you would have to read it from collectivists in order to believe that someone could actually say or think something like that.

Finally, note that Krish says:

Grudem argues that carrying weapons would help prevent “tragic mass murders in which a lone gunman can hold at bay an entire restaurant or church full of people… are much less likely to happen in states where a large number of people carry concealed weapons.”

But the counter arguments are, firstly, that if guns were more highly regulated then it would be a lot harder for potential mass murderers to get hold of guns in the first place. Secondly, Ellen Painter Dollar argues: “Police officers go through hours of specialized training to help them discern when the use of deadly force is justified. As we know from not a few front-page tragedies involving police shootings, despite such rigorous training, even the best-trained officers don’t always get it right.

Right.  The “best trained” officers.  Like the NYC LEOs who shoot blindly into the darkness, or the South Carolina cop who shot a man in the back, or the police in Buffalo who currently rule the world in dog shootings, or the wild gun play of the Cleveland Police.  The “best trained” officers, he opines.  And here you see irrational faith in LEOs and irrational fear of personal use of weapons.  Always look for the most irrational among us to claim that we are the irrational ones, projecting their fears on the rest of us.

But there is one theme that keeps coming up, and this theme recurs in another critique of Grudem’s work by someone from the Church in Toronto, Nigel Tomes.

David eluded King Saul’s spear; Paul evaded his pursuers by escaping Damascus in a basket; Jesus escaped hostile crowds (Luke 4:29-30; John 8:59). But these are examples of self-preservation, not of self-defense.

And there you have it.  A distinction without a difference – self preservation versus self defense.  Nigel wants men to be unarmed with the best of weapons, just as does Krish, so that they stand the maximum chance of being harmed or killed.  Nigel and Krish don’t care about the children.  They would rather see men, women and children suffer and perish at the hands of evil men, criminals after money, sex or something else, or criminals in the hire of the government, than to acquiesce to the notion that men are made in God’s image and thus life should be preserved.

But the willingness of professors and church leaders to beclown themselves in the name of pacifism goes on to ridiculous proportions with a professor of religion at the University of Texas, John Traphagan.

There are many law-abiding American gun owners who do not go out and kill people and who keep their guns stored safely. But as a whole, Americans do not seem to be able to handle gun ownership in a way that permits maintenance of a civil society. The reality is that the significant numbers of bad apples have spoiled it for those law-abiding gun owners, and it’s time that gun rights organizations such as the National Rifle Association recognize this and begin working with those who want realistic gun control laws, in part as a way of building trust with those who do not own gun.

As if we would pay heed to the NRA in any attempt to increase gun control laws!  No, here is what I think professor Traphagan is talking about.  Crime is highly concentrated among minorities.  Recent riots have been concentrated in minority communities and cities such as Ferguson or Baltimore.  Professor Traphagan knows this.  He is in effect saying that the black community cannot handle the responsibility of gun ownership.  I think professor Traphagan is a racist but doesn’t have the guts to admit his views.  Whites must be disarmed (as if that would be possible without a bloody civil war) in order to bring peace to the black communities.

These things are all pointers, milestones, and signals of a decaying and rotting church, both British and American (although the British church is all but dead, leading the American churches in total irrelevance to anything).  The Episcopal church that has been famously losing people for decades, decided to focus even more on progressive social programs and gun control, and is now losing even more people.  That has happened to the Presbyterian Church in the USA, and between the Presbyterian Church in America, the ARP and other smaller denominations, it cannot be said any more that the PSUSA is the “mainline” Presbyterian denomination.

Except for orthodox, conservative American churches, most American churches today are open sepulchers (and even some orthodox and conservative evangelical churches teach pacifism).

Jesus was a Bohemian, peacenik hippie to the modern American churches.  This is a testimony to how irrelevant, comfortable, self-absorbed and lard-ass the American church is, as also is the fact that hundreds of thousands of Christians can be slaughtered, sent into sexual slavery and driven out of Mesopotamia without so much as an imprecatory prayer by Christians in the West.  Shameful, disgusting, and sickening.  It causes me to turn away in revulsion from the organized American church in disrespect for most of what I see passing for orthodox Christianity today.

Christianity Today is as irrelevant as the American church, as irrelevant as a professor of religion at the University of Texas who wants to disarm law-abiding folks because of a few bad apples, and as irrelevant as the Church in Toronto.  Not a single one of them can manage to construct even a very basic analysis of Christians and self defense.  For the record, I don’t need Wayne Grudem to do that for me.  I have supplied adequate analysis of this issue.  As I’ve summarized before:

I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying.  As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue.  Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

This same sort of thinking can be applied on a larger scale to states and nations as so expertly done by professor Darrell Cole in Good Wars (First Things), relying on the theology of both Calvin and Aquinas.  But this is a bridge too far for some Christians who are just now dealing with the notion that they might be in danger.

Now a word of advice for pastor[s] and “theologians” who proffer these laughable interpretations.  It’s things like this that cause congregants to lose respect for the pulpit, and nothing screams the irrelevance of the sermon more than the Biblical impossibility of the pronouncements of the pastor (or in other words, the inconsistency of what he says with the balance of Scripture).  It’s just best to leave your own political aberrations out of the pulpit and teach the Bible.

Or as I’ve repeated elsewhere, John Calvin, commenting on commandment and prohibition, observes:

We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden.  There is no one who doesn’t concede this.  That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment.  Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned.  But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify.  For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice.  We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds.  Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so.  Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).

Consistency isn’t the Hobgoblin of small minds.  It’s the stuff of life, and even the most dense commentator knows that the Decalogue isn’t subject to the whims of dispensation.  It is a reflection of the very character of God, and thus universally and in all times and epochs, man is made in God’s image and life is to be protected rather than stoically given away to those who would usurp what must fall under the purview of the only potentate, God Himself.  He grants it, and only He can take it or tell others how and when to take it.  When stolid commentators and professors disconnect Christ from the very law He came to fulfill, it’s easy to ascertain that something is very wrong.

Man is made in God’s image.  Careless disregard for life means disregard for God’s law and hypocrisy towards the creator and His words.  Hand-wringing over guns versus knives or clubs or pepper spray or locked doors just means that you’re straining at a gnat in order to swallow a camel.  You (Krish, Nigel and John) don’t care about the women or children.  You’re a self-absorbed, self righteous, pampered product of the effete chattering class, unnecessary to and a bad fit for the very people to whom you are speaking.  No one is listening any more.

Prior:

The Second Amendment Creates A God-Given Right To Bear Arms?

No Guns In Church In Alabama?

Christian Leaders Say No To Christian Militia

Gentlemen, Prepare To Defend Yourselves!

A Desperate Cry From Iraq’s Christians

The PCUSA On Guns

Dear Christians With Guns

Concerning The Nigerian Christian Girls

Guns: Think Of The Children

Does Jesus Shoot An AR-15?

Baptist Forum Does Gun Control

Who Would Jesus Shoot?

The Golden Calf Of Gun Control

Faith And Firearms

Guns And Religion

When Christians Discuss Guns

Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

David Codrea first reported on Michael Bloomberg’s next move in cyberspace:

Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg will be expanding his influence over managed information about guns the public is exposed to when he launches a propaganda effort masked as news in June, a Friday Capital report notes. The announcement of two principals setting the tone and cranking out the propaganda is instructive on what we can expect.

James Burnett, formerly of The New Republic and New York Magazine will be bringing his established “progressive” flair to the helm as editorial director. Jennifer Mascia, who worked on the strictly one-sided Gun Report for The New York Times, is also “attached prominently to the Everytown news project.”

Ah.  The truth comes out about Jennifer.  Recall I had said the following about her credentials.

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.

Nope, said she in the comments.

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.”

Readers who have been with me a while may recall that commenters pushed Jennifer around a bit when she visited this web site.  In fact, my readers drove her completely off of Disqus, as my oldest son Josh remarked to me.  But don’t feel sorry for her.  David notes that:

At this point, though, good people would still feel a degree of sympathy. After all, Mascia had no control over who her parents were or what they did. Their defects and failings were not her fault.

The problem is, she’s chosen to become part of an effort to make the rest of us defenseless against sociopath predators like her father, and enablers who help them kill, like her mother. She knows full well no “law” proposed by her billionaire patron would have any effect on stopping diseased animals like John Mascia from working his sick will on more victims.

David is right on target.  I said to Josh that “You absolutely must remember that she is the kind of person who would send the SWAT team to forcibly take your guns.”  And that’s the point after all.  Despite any sympathetic feelings you might have for such people, it isn’t that they want peace for all men.  Jennifer knows that we will never voluntarily give up our guns.  She knows that it will take a bloody civil war to try to disarm us.  She doesn’t care.  She supports violence if it is perpetrated by the state.  Just like Bloomberg, if it’s her folks with the guns, she’s okay.  She is only in favor of disarming certain people, and readers should realize that you are among that group of “certain people.”

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?

David Codrea’s First Article

David Codrea’s Second Article

David Codrea:

“I’m a registered Republican and a gun owner,” Kemp told the media after his brother-in-law was killed with a stolen gun in a “gun-free” mall. “But I secure my weapons, and I’m not going to give them up.”

I don’t care what or who he is.  I’m unmoved by claims like this, and only a moron would care.  Actually, what I wonder is why folks are so willing to compromise when we are winning, and winning big, in states where we assert our rights?

Kurt Hofmann:

“To limit self-defense to only those methods acceptable to the government” creates an “enormous transfer of authority from the citizens of this country to the government — a result directly contrary to our constitution and to our political tradition,” Manion wrote.

I’m actually rather surprised to see this come out of a Northern court, even if it is only a dissent.  Read the rest of Kurt’s analysis.

Mike Vanderboegh essentially asks the same question I asked over this blog some months ago.  I don’t know what the Colonel’s answer means.  He should have been clearer.

WRSA warns us that the powers are pushing a cashless society.  Good grief.  They just seem to want civil war, no?

This is a government idea I can get behind.

ISIS is on the Southern border.  Doesn’t surprise me in the least.  Prepare.

Folks, don’t rely on rescue in the wilderness just because we have sophisticated equipment now.  Be prepared to survive on your own.