… like Mr. Codrea, am not ready to believe that Gottlieb is the second coming of Vidkun Quisling. I am still convinced that Gottlieb truly believes his course offers the best chance for a net gain for gun rights advocates Heck–seeing rabidly anti-gun Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in full spittle-flecked fury is always fun.
But however good Alan Gottlieb’s intentions are, and even if events end up showing him to be a tactical genius, securing major net gains for gun rights advocates, I argue that strategically, this is a serious mistake.
It’s always nice when someone understands the difference between policy, strategy and tactics, policy leading to strategy and strategy leading to tactics. Kurt makes an interesting point, and it is that the strategy of giving a little here to take a little there is all wrongheaded.
Furthermore, earlier in his essay Kurt makes the following point: “Taking a very quick and cursory look at some of the “tactical” objections, many point out that what is perhaps the “flagship” provision of S. Amd. 715, the 15-year prison sentence for officials who attempt to abuse S. 649’s record keeping requirements in order to build a national gun registry, depends on the Department of “Justice” prosecuting itself for wrongdoing.”
Rather like asking Napoleon the pig to watch over the other pigs and keep them accountable, no? Read it all at Examiner.
David Codrea weighs in with an analysis of Gottlieb’s support for Manchin-Toomey, along with a number of links to reactions. There is this:
But really, all this is just arguing over dancing angels and heads of pins — the only acceptable answer for hard core gun owners is going to be “No,” and arguments about “goodies” and “Christmas tree ornaments” are hardly going to be persuasive to men and women who take their Bill of Rights seriously, because they know it was secured with powder, lead, steel and blood.
Read it all at Examiner. This is the reaction of most serious firearms owners. Witness reddit/guns and one commenter:
… nothing except removing NFA regulation for SBRs, SBSs, and suppressors, repealing the post ’86 full auto ban, and full 50 state CCW reciprocity would make me even VERY BEGRUDGINGLY support this bill.
The bottom line for me is unless you’re a prophet or son of a prophet, you don’t know how all of this will be interpreted and applied by armies of lawyers, judges, law clerks and law enforcement across the states. The mere fact that so many good minds are coming up with so many different interpretations and potential problems doesn’t bode well for the law. I warned you about this.
Finally, here is the most serious warning. I work with the federal government on at least a semi-regular basis, and when not, I am doing things that follow federal regulation, even though highly technical (the specific nature of what I do is not the subject and won’t be discussed).
For most people who never work with federal agencies and departments, ignorance is bliss. But for those who do, they know that the nasty little secret about the federal government has to do with lawmaking by regulation.
Laws are passed by the Senate and Congress. But after laws pass, thousands of lawyers inside the beltway go to work writing regulations based on those laws, or not, using the law as a pretext for further regulation that Congress didn’t specifically intend. At times, Congress has even had to pass laws undoing regulations because the regulations don’t meet the intent of the law, and yet the executive branch won’t stop enforcing that regulation (or class of regulations).
Regulation is passed merely by entering them into the federal register, allowing a waiting time for public comments (which are nothing but a chance afforded to the authors of the regulations to ignore them or write sarcastic rebuttals), and then after the waiting period, it takes on the force of law including prosecution, fines and imprisonment for failure to follow them.
This happens every day, all over the nation, and in the DOT, NRC, EPA, DOJ, ATF, DHS, and other departments and agencies that the reader cannot even name and didn’t know existed. Any law giving the executive branch the authority to further regulate firearms will be an opportunity for abuse, overreach and exploitation.
Take it from someone who has seen it. Don’t trust the Leviathan. It is a monster and it has monstrous intentions.
This law doesn’t deserve the support of any serious gun owner. It empowers the Leviathan, and as I have warned you, don’t trust the Leviathan. If you do you’re a fool.
I’m still picking buckshot out of my hide from gun-rights advocates — I didn’t say “gun nuts” — who hated my March 31 column about how easy it is to buy an assault-style rifle with 30-round magazines.
Many readers even accused me, and The Blade, of breaking federal law by making a straw purchase of the AR-15 assault-style rifle I bought at a gun show last month. They also asked what the hell I planned to do with it.
To clear the air, it was my gun — not The Blade’s — though the company reimbursed the $1,200 I paid for it. Last week, I donated the weapon to the Toledo Police Department, handing it off to Sgt. Tom Kosmyna and Officer Roger White at the police range in the Scott Park District station.
It sounds to me like he is confessing to a straw purchase, but we’ll leave that issue behind for a moment. He ends his rambling rant with the the following demand.
… we have to agree to do something. Maybe if we stop screaming at each other, we can find some common ground on guns.
One of the senators behind the compromise proposal to expand background checks on gun purchases will mount a Senate floor sales pitch Monday, part of a lobbying effort to ensure passage for the key piece of a larger guns bill when it comes to a vote this week.
When the Senate convenes Monday afternoon, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) plans to take to the floor to go through his proposal piece-by-piece to dispel what he considers misrepresentations from critics of tighter gun laws. He’ll then challenge colleagues who have any questions to come to join him in the chamber for an open debate, and stay there for as long as it takes to satisfy concerns.
Manchin’s move to mount a kind of reverse filibuster in favor of his proposal aims to get ahead of critics as the Senate opens what could be a weeks-long process of considering alternative proposals that would either strengthen or weaken the legislation.
Manchin’s plan is essentially the same as the aforementioned writer. Talk enough and everyone will eventually agree to agree, or agree to disagree but go along, or something like that. And despite the fact that I have pointed out the inherent weakness in the language of the bill (see “notwithstanding”), Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation staked an authorship claim to the bill.
Cover, as they see it. Toomey needs it, and thinks it will be enough, and I sense a problem with Manchin. This has turned into his centerpiece legislation, and he knows that he either needs to convince gun owners that it’s okay, or succeed for Mr. Obama so that he has a place in the administration if he becomes so toxic in West Virginia that he can no longer function or live there.
But the reason our writer at Toledo Blade received such criticism is that the polls are wrong, and there is no cover. Senator Chris Murphy puts the order like this: “The N.R.A., doing the bidding of the industry, ratchets up paranoia about government so that those people will go out and buy more guns.”
Murphy has it all wrong. The NRA is hearing from its constituency (that would be us), and the firearms manufacturers do our bidding. We’re the boss. A firearm hasn’t been fully vetted until it hits the American civilian market (the military forces its folks to use the bidder of choice), and the manufacturers respond to us. They make what we want. They earn our money, and if you think that we sit back and wait for the manufacturers to tell us what to think, just ask Smith and Wesson what happened as a result of their agreement with the Clinton administration.
Having Alan Gottlieb on their side won’t work. There is no cover large enough to protect them. More talk won’t convince us to take part in their intentions, or to approve those who do. As long as common ground or compromise means more gun laws (as opposed to repeal of some of the ones we already have), there is no common ground, and there is no compromise.
No new gun laws. Period. No compromise, no vacillation. It’s more than the proposed bill being a “slippery slope.” It is that, but it’s more. The law itself does nothing for crime, and universal background checks (and the corollary national gun registry) empower the government rather than the people. As one writer put it:
This entire gun-control farce is a rigged, premeditated sham, and the outcome was determined before a single page of this legislative abortion hit the senate floor. The bill itself is a convoluted mess, with ambiguous terms, poorly worded and broad declarations, and is nothing less than an article of outright tyranny that no civil and liberty loving patriot should be able to peacefully tolerate. This is by deliberate design. Easy to follow, clear, and reasonable laws are not a tool tyrants can easily exploit or profit from.
Because this law would empower the federal government and interfere with our rights, it would be what we call an intolerable act. You cannot talk us into agreeing with an intolerable act regardless of how emotionally you present your case or how long you persevere, and you’re warned to tread carefully.
The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid’s gun control bill are billed as a “compromise” which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in fact major advancements for gun control. In particular:
1. The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry.
2. The provision which is supposed to strengthen existing federal law protecting the interstate transportation of personal firearms in fact cripples that protection.
Let’s start with registration. Here’s the Machin-Toomey text.
(c) Prohibition of National Gun Registry.-Section 923 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
“(m) The Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize the records of the
“(1) acquisition or disposition of firearms, or any portion thereof, maintained by
“(A) a person with a valid, current license under this chapter;
“(B) an unlicensed transferor under section 922(t); or
“(2) possession or ownership of a firearm, maintained by any medical or health insurance entity.”.
The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations. For example, the Secretary of HHS may consolidate and centralize whatever firearms records are maintained by any medical or health insurance entity. The Secretary of the Army may consolidate and centralize records about personal guns owned by military personnel and their families.
The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of “a person with a valid, current license under this chapter.” In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.
Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.
Which of course is what I’ve been saying, although not in as much detail. Read it all. On and on it goes. The bill is more than just a sellout. It’s Fascism, plain and simple.
The draft of S. 649 that provides the framework for the legislative arguments that lie ahead contains an item that could prove highly controversial, even though no one has, until now, recognized it, let alone raised it as an issue. While there is much to discuss in the entire bill, one particular seemingly-overlooked section could prove contentious not by what it includes, but by what it doesn’t, and that in turn reflects recent and profound political changes that have marked significant milestones in the Obama administration’s “progressive” agenda.
Sort of like the college kids who campaigned for their great god-man Obama, only to find out that the economy sucks, there are no jobs, they have huge loans to pay off with no hope of ever getting their heads above water, drones could be watching their actions from the sky, SWAT teams continue to swoop in and shoot at them for smoking pot, and there is no hope of any kind of support, financial or medical, from a country that is far worse off than flat broke. Is that the kind of oops we’re talking about?
The Toomey (R) – Manchin (D) deal is said to involve gives and takeaways to gun owner rights. But David Addington at Heritage has written a smart analysis of at least one peril that America faces with the plan.
The STM bill fuzzes up the law prohibiting a federal gun registry. First, the legislation says that nothing in the legislation shall be construed to allow establishment of a federal firearms registry. In addition, it says that the Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize records of firearms acquisition and disposition maintained by licensed importers, manufacturers, and dealers, and by buyers and sellers at gun shows (and makes it a crime for him to do so).
But then, the STM bill takes those protections away by using the all-powerful word “notwithstanding”—”notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the Attorney General may implement this subsection with regulations.” The courts may construe the “notwithstanding” to allow Attorney General Eric Holder to issue regulations that could begin to create a federal registry of firearms, because the law says he can implement the subsection without regard to the protections against a registry elsewhere in the legislation.
The courts view the word “notwithstanding” as very powerful. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in 1989 in Crowley Caribbean Transport v. U.S. in reference to the phrase “notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter” that “a clearer statement of intent is difficult to imagine” to push aside other laws. The same court indicated in 1991 in Liberty Maritime Corporation v. U.S. that a grant of authority to a department head to be exercised “notwithstanding” any other law generally grants the broadest possible discretion to the department head. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1992 in Conoco, Inc. v. Skinner took a somewhat different approach, in which the judges themselves divine the congressional intent whether to let the word “notwithstanding” in a law override other conflicting provisions of the same law.
It has been postulated that the Republicans have outsmarted the Democrats by forcing a vote on any number of measures that actually make things better for our rights, while giving them only a little of their own demands – or – by forcing the Democrats to vote on an outrageous bill that will force them out of office in the next election. I don’t subscribe to either view, for a number of reasons.
First, this is more than likely to be yet another “you have to pass the bill in order to see what’s in it” example of ruling by ignorance. Second, the GOP is full of cave-ins and sell-outs, and has been for a very long time. Third, the GOP just isn’t that smart. They’re basically a very stolid, slow, confused bunch, many of whom act without any real principles. Leave it to the GOP leadership to miscount their own votes, thinking that they can stop the legislation at the end, only to see defections and thus new gun control laws. When this is over I expect to see GOP leadership looking stunned and shell shocked at what happened to them, just like with Obamacare.
Furthermore, I have warned against laws that can be broadly interpreted within some regulatory framework crafted by armies of lawyers sitting inside the beltway. Nothing good will come of it, and we all know that nothing they have done really addresses the real problem of ending phony gun free zones. And finally, we have discussed why universal background checks (and their corollary, a federal gun registry) are a bad thing, the quintessential element of any gun control program, and the goal of every progressive.
The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.
Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it. The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.
Gun control is evil, at the same time both a function and a sign of wicked rulers.
The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.
We are not willing to give a little here as long as we can take a little there. The message has been clear from the beginning – and won’t change now. No new laws. Not a single one. If we have good and laudable goals (such as the repeal of the Hughes amendment), it’s our task to work to make that happen, rather than acquiescing to the very touchstone of gun control – universal background checks.
If we cannot pull this off, then America is truly lost, and the next steps are obvious.
JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.
Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.
After the meeting, he said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.
Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.
Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential. The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun.
The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.
“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”
He said he intends to ask Replogle for full details at an appropriations committee hearing on the patrol’s budget on Thursday morning.
The patrol responded by confirming that it had shared the list of concealed weapons holders with federal authorities.
“The information was provided to law enforcement for law enforcement investigative purposes,” Capt. Tim Hull wrote in an email response to questions from the Tribune.
Ron Replogle and Tim Hull (and whoever else participated in this outrage) are criminals who broke the law, and being in law enforcement and allegedly doing something for “law enforcement purposes” doesn’t give them the right to break the law. That’s just a myth and excuse, and a bad one at that. Furthermore, they did so in order to increase the power of the totalitarians ruling the collective which lives in the hive, and so it’s especially loathsome and immoral. Sometimes laws have nothing whatsoever to do with morality, and sometimes things that are immoral are quite legal.
In this case, what these men did was both illegal and immoral, and they deserve our most sincere contempt and disgust. Opprobrium and public humiliation isn’t enough for them. These men need to be in the state penitentiary with the general prison population.
Kurt Hofmann on whether the proposed gun control laws “deserve” a vote up or down:
The only problem is that they do not “deserve a vote,” not really. The Constitution, with its limits on federal power, takes certain policy options off the table–no matter how popular they are. Fundamental human rights are not subject to a popularity contest–they cannot be. When the rights of 49% of the people can be voted away by the other 51% (or even the rights of 10%, by the other 90%), they are not “rights” at all.
As longtime readers know, I have little passion for pure democracy — a system by which 51 percent of the people can give 49 percent of the people a wedgie. If America were a pure democracy, the citizens of the 10 most populous states could impose their will on the other 40 states.
Read it all at Examiner. But expecting the Senate to understand the constitution is like expecting my dog to do calculus.
A pair of bipartisan senators on Wednesday announced they’ve reached an agreement over a bill to expand background checks for gun sales, marking a significant first step as Congress attempts to tackle the thorny issue of gun control. While the Senate is now one step closer to actually voting on the legislation, the bill’s fate remains far from certain, its authors acknowledged.
“I think this is a fluid situation, and it’s hard to predict,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., one of the drafters of the background check bill, said of the legislation’s chances. He added, however, that the legislation represents common ground and that he’s “hopeful” it can pass.
“Criminals and the dangerously mentally ill shouldn’t have guns,” Toomey said. “I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that premise.”
You’re a liar. That criminals and the dangerously mentally ill shouldn’t have guns isn’t your premise. Your premise is that what you propose for universal background checks would have any effect on criminals and the dangerously mentally ill having guns. I think you know that this is a false premise and doesn’t comport with the facts and data. In fact, let me remind you just why the left really wants universal background checks.
The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.
Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it. The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.
Thus ends two non-remarkable careers in politics. I hope you enjoy your new buddies, Pat.
Why Toomey felt compelled to take this stance, particularly noting the slim margin he was elected to office by and the likelihood that angry gun owners will remember at the polls if he decides to seek office again, remain unclear. While the bill is far short of what President Obama wants to sign into law, if it passes, it will be used as the plateau from which the next series of demands will be issued.
I don’t know why Toomey felt compelled to take this stance. Why does any tyrant feel compelled to be one? Original sin due to the “federal headship” of Adam. If you don’t like that answer, you don’t hurt my feelings. Queue one up of your own. Either way, I hope Toomey chokes.
Two influential senators, one from each party, are working on an agreement that could expand background checks on firearms sales to include gun shows and online transactions, Senate aides said Sunday.
If completed, the effort could represent a major breakthrough in the effort by President Barack Obama and his allies to restrict guns following last December’s massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., could nail down an accord early this week, said the aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private talks. With the Senate returning Monday from a two-week recess, the chamber’s debate on gun control legislation could begin as soon as Tuesday, though it might be delayed if the lawmakers need more time to complete a deal, the aides said.
The potential deal, which aides cautioned still might change, would exempt transactions between relatives and temporary transfers for hunters and sportsmen, they said.
Manchin is a moderate who touts an A rating from the National Rifle Association, which has opposed Obama’s gun control drive. Toomey has solid conservative credentials and was elected to the Senate two years ago with tea party support from his Democratic-leaning state.
A united front by the two lawmakers would make it easier for gun control advocates to attract support from moderate Democrats who have been wary of supporting the effort and from Republicans who have largely opposed it so far.
As for Toomey, you go right ahead and connect with your “moderate” constituency. I hope you choke on them. Remember when it was urgent necessity to elect Toomey to the Senate? Yea, just like it was to elect Scott Brown, who supports a so-called assault weapons ban.
The Republican party is dead. It’s merely a different color of vanilla, no different than the Democrats. And that’s why they lost the last election. And lose they will, again and again, trying to connect with their “moderate” constituency, because that’s what the highly paid talking heads and moron consultants are telling them they need to do. Choke and turn blue on it.
David Codrea is a little wiser in his counsel for Toomey:
As for Toomey, if he and his staff hadn’t opened their yaps to indicate things were open to discussion, they wouldn’t be in this self-created pickle. He, too, has had a pretty good record on guns (even Gun Owners of America grades him at “A-”), and he needs to be reminded that his duty is to improve that score, not to threaten the rights of a core constituency that entrusted him with power.
Read it all at Examiner. Okay. Change his mind and remember his supposed values, or choke and turn blue. Either way is fine with me.
Nonprofit Quarterly recently carried a commentary on Lindsey Graham and his comments on AR-15s that took a detour into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rick Cohen’s thoughts make for interesting reading.
Our impression of American behavior during disasters has been that people generally pull together, that adversity brings out the best in us. Sure, we know that people do very bad things, but the press often notes how people also go out of their way to help and protect their neighbors. In fact, that feeling of mutuality was what we thought undergirded the nonprofit sector in a democratic society.
It must be that we fell for some Panglossian view of America, if we are to believe Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Graham grilled Attorney General Eric Holder about the proposed ban on assault weapons. We haven’t seen the news reports that verify what Graham says happened—or sort of happened—to spark his support for carrying around military-style assault weapons:
“Can you imagine a circumstance where an AR-15 would be a better defense tool than, say, a double-barrel shotgun? Let me give you an example, that you have (sic) an lawless environment, where you have an natural disaster or some catastrophic event — and those things unfortunately do happen, and law and order breaks down because the police can’t travel, there’s no communication. And there are armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods. Can you imagine a situation where your home happens to be in the crosshairs of this group that a better self-defense weapon may be a semiautomatic AR-15 vs. a double-barrel shotgun?
I’m afraid that world does exist. It existed in New Orleans, to some extent up in Long Island [after Hurricane Sandy], it could exist tomorrow if there’s a cyber attack against [the] country and the power grid goes down and the dams are released and chemical plants are — discharges.
What I’m saying is if my family was in the crosshairs of gangs that were roaming around neighborhoods in New Orleans or any other location, the deterrent effect of an AR-15 to protect my family, I think, is greater than a double-barrel shotgun.”
As far as we can tell, Graham must be referencing a gang of white vigilantes in New Orleans’ Algiers Point neighborhood who, armed with shotguns and assault weapons, allegedly opened fire on African Americans “with impunity” after Hurricane Katrina; the militia was reportedly on the lookout for anyone who “didn’t belong” in the neighborhood, as reported by ProPublica and The Nation. If so, maybe Graham’s fears would have more of a basis in reality if he looked a little more like Holder and was facing a white militia armed with AR-15s.
It is in vogue to tell this revisionist history of Katrina. We’ll deal with this shortly, but before we do that and in order to set the stage for our response, we will now be the ones to take a detour into another crisis to watch how a nation behaved. We’ll address AR-15s, catastrophies and totalitarian governments, but for now let’s briefly revisit the fall of the Berlin wall, the role of one church, and the actions of the East Gernam Army.
OathKeepers has an interview with Lt. Colonel Gunter Spens, in which he describes the fact that the East German Army simply refused to obey orders to stop the protests at the wall and stayed on base. True enough for part of the story, and as much as I admire Oath Keepers, it isn’t as simple as this and there is more to the story. This is the church that brought down the wall.
In the GDR, atheism was the norm. Churches like St. Nikolai were spied on but allowed to remain open.
“In the GDR, the church provided the only free space,” Fuhrer said in an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. “Everything that could not be discussed in public could be discussed in church, and in this way the church represented a unique spiritual and physical space in which people were free.”
In the early 1980s, Fuhrer began holding weekly prayers for peace.
Every Monday, worshippers recited the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Few came at first, but attendance grew as the Soviet Union began opening to the West.
The prayer service, Fuhrer said, “was something very special in East Germany. Here a critical mass grew under the roof of the church — young people, Christians and non-Christians, and later, those who wanted to leave (East Germany) joined us and sought refuge here.”
As a college student in those years, Sylke Schumann was one of the hundreds, then thousands, who joined the vigils in the sanctuary at St. Nikolai and then marched in the streets holding candles and calling for change.
“Seeing all these people gather in this place … from week to week and more and more people gathering, you had the feeling this time really the government had to listen to you,” Schumann said.
In October 1989, on the 40th anniversary of the GDR, the government cracked down.
Protesters in Leipzig were beaten and arrested. Two days later, St. Nikolai Church was full to overflowing for the weekly vigil. When it was over, 70,000 people marched through the city as armed soldiers looked on, but did nothing.
And even this report doesn’t tell the whole story. I was a member of a church during this time that received regular (underground) reports from East German churches about the events of that era. When society has rejected God and embraced totalitarianism, the men can become lovers of power or drunkards and whore chasers. Not all men do, but many succumb to this fate.
But oftentimes the women – mothers and grandmothers who want their children to be raised with a sense of morality and the knowledge of God – toe the line. Secretly they teach their children. Their children learn to love their mothers and the instruction, and like ticking time bombs that explode later in life, that instruction proves determinative.
And toe the line the women did. The crowds were heavily populated with mothers and grandmothers, and the boys who populated the East German Army remembered their instruction. They wouldn’t discharge their weapons at their own blood, and whether it was the instruction in underground churches or the simple fact that the boys wouldn’t kill their mothers or mothers of colleagues, no rounds were fired. It had little to do with orders to stay in garrison. If the East German Army had deployed (as some of them did), they would simply have watched as the wall fell without a shot.
Now, let’s return to the issue of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Except for the horrible racist, Aryan gangs who abused the black folk, it was a veritable Shangri La indeed. Except for the white folk everyone would have gotten along just swimmingly. White Aryan gangs in the middle of New Orleans. You simply can’t make this up.
Except that this isn’t reality. Revisionist doesn’t even begin to describe that view. That view is an outright fabrication and falsehood. A more accurate and honest accounting shows how rough the time was.
In the City of Vultures, a New Zealander is one of the few remaining police officers who has stayed behind to protect the helpless.
James Gourlie, 30, formerly of Christchurch, is one of six officers who have remained out of a district force of 200.
“This is my district. I will not abandon my district, my county, my workmates or these people,” he told the Herald On Sunday last night.
Mr Gourlie was speaking while preparing for another night patrol from the Hampton Inn, which he and fellow officers took over after their police station was overrun. For its single entrance, and the war zone outside, they have dubbed the hotel “The Fortress”.
It’s been six days and five nights of lawlessness since Hurricane Katrina hit. In the vacuum left by Katrina, anarchy has reigned. Human vultures have preyed on the helpless, pillaging homes and shops, committing murder and rape.
The decision to stay while hundreds of fellow officers fled has left them bitter. Mr Gourlie returned after getting his American wife Jennifer out of New Orleans.
When one fellow officer and friend pulled out for Texas on Friday, taking two automatic rifles and a shotgun, he earned his colleagues’ anger.
“They’re preserving their lives but they’re risking their friends,” said Mr Gourlie, of the “cowards” who have left. “You know what the New Zealand and Australian way is – and that ain’t the Anzac way. You sacrifice yourself for your mates.”
There are incidents every day involving weapons, although Mr Gourlie is thankful he has not yet had to shoot anyone. The times the officers have intervened, those desperate for help have wept and offered thanks.
A fellow officer was killed after warning looters away from a store. A looter pushed a gun against his head and pulled the trigger. “It was heartbreaking to see this police officer lying on his back, blood pouring out of his head.”
There are gangs of armed thugs in the convention centre. One young hood the officers pulled up was carrying a civilian version of a military M-16 rifle.
“There’s shooting. The thugs inside, they have come outside. They are running up and down, disturbing people with impunity. They know we can’t cross the road and engage them because we don’t know where their cohorts are. We are so vastly outnumbered, especially at night,” said Mr Gourlie.
There has also been murder and rape. In one awful case, a 15-year-old girl had suffered both, her body stuffed into an oven with her throat slit.
“I would expect something like this in a war zone in the Middle East. You’d be stupid not to be afraid. It’s how you face it that counts.”
The gangs in the centre have now destroyed the generators, and last night was the first Katrina’s survivors have spent without light. “That’s one of the reasons why people are so afraid today.”
I am certainly no admirer of Lindsey Graham. His criticism of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul over their filibuster was petulant, and his friendship with John McCain shows that he wants to stay in power rather than hold government accountable. But from the mouth of the unexpected sometimes comes wisdom, even if by accident.
Unfortunately like the author says, Ameica is indeed like this concerning violence and danger, even if his intended target – white gangs – is a fabrication of his imagination. And during this period of peril for the citizens of New Orleans did the National Guard keep order? No, to their everlasting shame they spent their time confiscating weapons from law abiding citizens.
And yet, the National Guard had no evidence that New Orleans wouldn’t devolve into something like the L.A. riots, leaving people helpless and defenseless.
America as we have know it is dead. It is no more. The cities are violent and the government totalitarian. America is more bifurcated than it has ever been in history. Ninety million people are out of the labor force, and something approaching half of America pays no income tax. Keynesian economics has failed like a star burning out. The first medium size city has gone bankrupt, taking with it nearly one billion dollars in pensions for state workers. Note that this doesn’t include Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment payments, welfare, social security or any other federal program. One billion dollars – just on state pensions, just with one medium size city.
While the states are going down, the federal government is working hard at making itself more totalitarian than before.
The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.
According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”
Primarily, the ATF states it wants the database to speed-up criminal investigations. Instead of requiring an analyst to manually search around for your personal information, the database should “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches” such as social security numbers (or even just a fragment of one), vehicle serial codes, age range, “phonetic name spelling,” or a general area where your address is located. Input that data, and out comes your identity, while the computer automatically establishes connections you have with others.
Many other specific requirements are also to be expected for a federal law enforcement agency: searching names, phone numbers, “nationwide utility data” and reverse phone searches. The data will then be collected to help out during investigations and provide “relevant information and intelligence products.”
To do this and similar things they are spending the wealth of your children and children’s children. Ben Bernanke is trying ever so hard to keep hyperinflation under control and interest rates low in order to keep the deficit from exploding, but sooner or later America’s unfunded liabilities will come due and no amount fiat money will suffice. Fractional reserve banking will prove to people when hard times hit that their money doesn’t exist and cannot be withdrawn from their accounts. It’s just a waiting game, because the system cannot be saved.
The American experiment – subtended by wealth redistribution, race baiting, totalitarianism and the creation of taker class that leeches off of workers – is over. It has been replaced by Fabian socialism. But all is not lost. America will be reborn in a different form. Hard times are approaching, and there are some salient and hard questions that are a function of those hard times.
Will police, soldiers and Marines raise their weapons against American civilians? The Louisiana National Guard did. To each and every officer, soldier and Marine I tell you, you’d better not. God will condemn you for it. Your orders must be legal and moral to require your fealty, and notwithstanding the [il]legality of such an order, it would be immoral. Will you confiscate weapons if so ordered? You’d better not – God will condemn you for it. Each man lives his appointed days, and then he will face judgment. Do not face God having removed means of legitimate protection of the family. And do not face God having been the stooge for a tyrant. It matters little how long you live. It matters much how you live, and how you perish.
To parents, you must teach your children and instill in them a reverence for and love of liberty. Even for the old among us, you may very well end up training the very men who would otherwise be your tyrants, but who will remember their upbringing instead. Mothers and grandmothers, you essentially saved the day in East Germany. Don’t underestimate your role. Teaching the children is the most important job on earth.
Men, don’t be naive. God apparently granted a special dispensation to East Germany for a bloodless coup. It won’t happen that way anywhere else. The National Guard in many states has already shown that they will assist totalitarianism. The race riots in Los Angeles were nothing compared to what it will be like in the event of an economic collapse in America.
Teach the children. Defend the family. It isn’t just a right, it’s your God-given duty. And never, ever relinquish your weapons. That would be as immoral as the actions of totalitarians in confiscation. You shall not cooperate with the totalitarians and be approved by God. Never give up. God is on your side.
13 years, 6 months ago
