David Codrea:

As is typical with such publications, it only looks at (less than) half of the equation, disregarding the substantial number of defensive gun uses that occur each year …

David is on the case of that presumed “study” that concluded you are at risk for suicide if you own weapons, with no increase in personal security.  I’m glad David had the patience to undo the silliness in the report, since I usually skip past reports like this in a few seconds.  Listen folks.  I work engineering and science for a living.  When someone tells you that “science proves …,” or “science demonstratrates …,” take it with a grain of salt (and usually ignore it).  Like I have said before.  If you want me to give a report on science or engineering the time of day, get a registered professional engineer to prepare the calculations, seal the work with his PE seal, and send it to me for review.  Otherwise you’re just wasting my time.

David:

There’s another consideration, a speculation really, as information is sketchy: While ATF is prohibited by law from creating a database of gun owners, it appears federal power can trump state safeguards on medical marijuana records …

Well, you know what I have to say about that!  Federal regulation should NEVER be able to trump state laws on anything.  And oh, by the way, get cancer, and you may lose your guns.  Kurt Hofmann is also covering this issue.

Kurt Hofmann:

That last sentence is where the entire counterargument falls apart. No one seriously asserts a right to “murder, rape, and thieve out of self-defense.” Murder, rape and theft are all intrinsically evil acts, which violate the rights of others, and there is therefore no “right” to commit them–for anyone.

Kurt is dealing with one of the classical objections to our objections to more gun laws.  Kurt’s thinking is my thinking exactly.  But there are already laws against murder rape and kidnapping.  Making more doesn’t change things.

Daniel Greenfield (via WRSA):

Mayor Bloomberg flubbed the snow challenge badly. Instead of preparing road salt, he banned salt in restaurants. Instead of having a snow strategy for the winter, he had a Global Warming strategy for the next fifty years. Instead of doing his job, he kept trying to transform the people.

And his successor is no better.

Bill de Blasio’s focus after his petty and mean-spirited inauguration was a ban on carriage horses in Central Park at the behest of a real estate developer who backed his campaign and has his eye on their stables, a tussle over who will get the credit for Pre-K with Governor Cuomo and the beating of Kang Wong, an 84-year-old man, over a jaywalking ticket.

I think it’s awesome.  New Yorkers elected him.  Now.  Live with the consequences.

Daily Caller reports on Castle Rock repealing their ban on open carry.  Good for them.

Coloradoan.com:

The embattled Berthoud police department bought fully automatic military-grade machine guns, hired officers who showed “glaring” signs of illegal and inappropriate behavior, and then gave them “woefully inadequate” training, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith says.

In a letter sent to town officials and made public Tuesday night, Smith offers a scathing critique of the department, which has come under fire for child-abuse allegations leveled against one of its officers. That officer was arrested, and Police Chief Glenn Johnson resigned amidst allegations he knew about the accusations against his officer but did nothing.

Since October, Smith’s deputies have been serving as the town’s police force at officials’ request.

In his letter, Smith said the department was rife with mismanagement, from poorly handled evidence, paperwork and personnel files to broken Tasers and in-car laptops. He said problems within the department risked breaking the trust between the public and law enforcement, and risked letting criminals go unprosecuted because court documents weren’t being filed on time.“Most shockingly, fully automatic machine guns (not appropriate for standard police operations) were acquired from the military and were stored in open room with minimal security,” Smith wrote. “At the Berthoud Police Department, we found that the chief has overlooked and neglected many of the things that are absolutely necessary to leading an effective and accountable police operation.”

[ … ]

“The application and hiring process for town officers allowed unqualified individuals to be hired and to maintain employment, despite glaring warning signs of inappropriate and sometimes illegal behavior,” Smith wrote to the town. “Paperwork filing appeared to be haphazard at best. The chief did not maintain appropriate personnel files on his officers, yet he had documents in town filing cabinets from his previous employment. Those files should have never left those agencies.”

[ … ]

Police officer Jeremy Yachik was fired by the town in October after he was arrested on child-abuse charges after video surfaced of Yachick allegedly beating his daughter.

Good grief.  And they say that we’re unqualified to own fully automatic firearms.  Perhaps rather than repealing the Hughes amendment (itself an obscene abomination) as I have advocated, we ought to insist that it be repealed for us and applied exclusively to law enforcement.

These guys were just a dangerous hazard top to bottom.

The Tribune Papers:

By Linda Crisp-In recent news, it has been reported that six U.S. Forest Service (USFS) employees from Western North Carolina were awarded “Law Enforcement and Investigations Awards” by the USFS for their roles in “Operation Something Bruin”, a four-year, multi-agency investigation targeting “bear poachers” in WNC and surrounding states, resulting in arrests in February 2013.

Also, in October, the National Wildlife Federation bestowed “prestigious conservation honors” on Sgt. Chad Arnold, an officer from Charlotte with the Special Investigations Unit of the N.C. Wildlife Commission. Arnold was named “Wildlife Enforcement Officer of the Year”, and the Commission was named the “Natural Resources Agency of the Year”, according to a press release from the N.C. Wildlife Commission.

After state and federal wildlife officials arrested these “so-called” poachers in February, 2013, the state dismissed all charges on some of them in April, 2013. Some hunters were arrested again in June, 2013 by United States Forest Service officials.

The Wildlife Federation, United States Forest Service, state and federal officials have been too hasty in handing out awards and congratulating themselves.

In 2009, Arnold (undercover alias “Chad Ryan”), and Davey Webb (alias Davey Williams), a wildlife agent from Georgia, visited a gun shop in Bryson City, N.C. According to the shop owner, they stated that they wanted to get involved in bear hunting and asked for recommendations of hunting guides in the area. However, according to subsequent reports, they were supposed to be infiltrating “known poaching circles”. The gun shop owner told them about some hunters he knew in Graham County, N.C. These agents hunted with men in Graham, Swain, Jackson, and Haywood from 2009-2012.

In late 2010 through 2011, under time constraints, and possibly due to not finding any illegal activity, Arnold and Webb resorted to various schemes to try to entice the hunters to break laws.

During one hunter’s trial in Haywood County, agents admitted to buying illegal bait for bears in Tennessee, and placing it in a hunter’s yard in Graham County. Hunters witnessed the officers killing at least four of the ten bears that were taken. These agents, against the advice of hunters, removed the bears’ gallbladders and called hunters from surrounding counties to try to get them to participate in the illegal selling of bear parts. The hunters refused to take part in this illegal activity. These are only two of the many tactics used in attempts to entrap hunters of Western North Carolina.

According to one attorney, Arnold admitted in court to violating 39 wildlife laws.

So far what is being discussed is very serious: illegalities, violations of civil rights, waste of taxpayer money, and corruption.  But it gets worse still.

Additionally, state and federal agents employed “Gestapo-like” techniques in search and seizure of so-called “evidence”, including improper service of search-warrants.

Men in bullet-proof vests, with M-16 rifles came into homes where women were alone.

In one house, more than 20 agents with guns drawn, terrorized screaming toddlers and left them unsupervised while the parents were roughed up, searched, handcuffed, and taken outside the home. To this day, these children display post-traumatic stress symptoms.

They left homes in disarray and removed items unrelated to bear hunting: a laptop computer, hunting picture of deceased family member, legally killed mounted deer and boar heads, duck and turkey calls belonging to a four-year-old boy, a boat and boat titles, a front-end loader, personal vehicles, and many other items, which have not been returned.

To date, hunters who have had jury trials have not been convicted. In one case in Graham County, agents could not produce video “evidence”. Enticements were made by prosecutors including an offer to drop some charges if the hunter involved would plead guilty. The hunter refused and requested a jury trial. In this case, all charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

Various new releases by state and federal agencies, as well as the media, have already labeled all the hunters as “poachers”; however, most of these men have not had their “day in court”. Whatever happened to due process of law and “innocent until proven guilty”?

To add insult to injury, some hunters who have not been convicted of anything have been assigned federal probation officers who visit monthly.

“Something IS Brewing” in WNC; that “SOMETHING” would be tempers. The hunters involved are tired of being falsely accused, their rights ignored, and their reputations ruined.

The citizens of WNC and Northern Georgia are now organizing to get some answers from these agencies on why their constitutional rights have been ignored and proper due process of law not given.

A public hearing is currently being planned for mid-January 2014. Organizers are asking for Governor Pat McCrory, Congressman Mark Meadows and all elected officials to initiate investigations of all officers and agencies involved in “Operation Something Bruin”. If you have information to share, or would like to participate, please send an e-mail to SomethingBrewing2013@yahoo.com , or letter to P.O. Box 948, Bryson City, N.C., 28713.

The moment they pointed weapons at people it left the category of mere corruption and became dangerous.  The good folk of Western North Carolina don’t have the L.A. Times to which they can turn.  They are doing the best they can do to bring attention to this outrageous abuse of power and authority.

I too call on Governor Pat McCrory to intervene and investigate these abuses and illegalities.  This kind of thing will go on as long as we allow it to.

David Codrea:

While doing some internet searches to support Saturday’s column about Oregon Firearms Federation accusing anti-gun state senator Floyd Prozanski of lying when he promised his bill regarding private transfers would not accomplish registration, I by chance came across a bizarre “tweet” from an unlikely source.

“Oregon Firearms Federation are pigs” …

David also covered this same sort of hate-filled, violent, cruel reaction from the anti-gunners here.  Have you asked yourself why the anti-gunners are so violent?  I have, and I have my own views of the nature of progressives and totalitarians and why they do what they do.

Kurt Hofmann:

Last year, Missouri HB 436. the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” was passed by large, bipartisan majorities, in both chambers of the Missouri legislature, and then vetoed by Governor Jay Nixon (D). The House overrode Nixon’s veto, but the Senate fell one vote short–that failure aided and abetted by a stab in the back from Republican senate “leadership.” This year, Representative Doug Funderburk (R-103rd District) is trying again …

I hope it has better success, and for heaven’s sake, make it a serious effort as we’ve discussed before.

Mike Vanderboegh is covering the new ATF appropriations bill.  Their efforts are likely to be damaging.  You know my view on this.  The second amendment – while I do not believe that it has a limitation to applicability to states or citizens in all of their relationships with all of government – was primarily written as was the balance of the constitution.  It circumscribes the power of the federal government.  The upshot is that all federal laws concerning firearms – each and every one of them – are unconstitutional.  Now there’s a cost savings idea for the administration concerning ATF funding.

WRSA: A nice looking H&K AR-15 to be sure.  I’ll stick with my Rock River Arms AR-15 because I like it.  Very much.  Very much indeed.  And I will just never have an NFA weapon because I’ll never beg the ATF for permission to do or have anything.

Finally, Semper Fee, dude.  My son Josh says, “She’s such an idiot. What kind of person lives as long as she has and never hears those words pronounced?  A raging, tree hugging, urban-spawned progressive.”

Guns.com:

Dash cam footage recently obtained by M Live shows the 14-minute confrontation in March between Grand Rapids Police Officers and 28-year-old Johann Deffert over a legally possessed firearm. An incident which has resulted in a federal lawsuit against the city and the officers involved.

Deffert was simply taking a walk down the street on a Sunday morning after he had finished enjoying breakfast at a nearby restaurant when he was stopped and detained by police because he was openly carrying a holstered handgun, which is legal in the state of Michigan.

Officer William Moe was the first to confront Deffert after a woman called 911 to report that she had seen a man walking on the sidewalk with a gun “strapped to his leg.” The woman was surprised when the 911 operator informed her that open carry was legal in the state.

After asking several questions about what is and is not legal when it comes to carrying firearms in the state, the woman insisted that the man looked “scary” because he was wearing camo and carrying a gun.

I see “scary” looking people every day and I don’t call the police to investigate them.  There is no law against looking scary.

The dispatcher sent an officer out to investigate the report of a “suspicious person.”

As Moe pulled his patrol car to the area where Deffert was walking, he told the dispatcher that the man did appear to have a holstered weapon and claimed that the man was “talking to nobody.”

As Moe exited the car, with his service pistol drawn and trained on Deffert, he ordered the man to get down on the ground and put his hands up. “Do not move,” he instructed Deffert, asking, “Why do you have a handgun on you?”

Deffert remained calm, cooperative and respectful and replied, “It’s my constitutional right to defend myself.”

But apparently that answer was not sufficient for Moe, who continued to probe the man about why he would be walking down the street openly carrying a firearm and eventually said, “I gotta make sure you’re not a felon, right?” Deffert informed the officer that he actually did not have to check on that and even offered to show him the penal code.

I’ve got a big, big problem here.  First of all not only is Michigan an open carry state, it has no stop and identify statute.  As far as the police officer is concerned, the person could have been Mutt or Jeff.  It doesn’t matter.  The officer violated the law by stopping him for the purpose of identifying who he is.  Here is the video.

And of course the second and biggest problem is that he unholstered his weapon and aimed it at Deffert.  This is an obvious lack of muzzle discipline and highly irresponsible and dangerous.  If we do things like that we get arrested on felony charges and go to prison, which is exactly what should happen to this officer.

Deffert has filed a lawsuit against the city.  I hope he wins, but more than that, I hope that God visits his wrath on the police department.  As for their police department response, they have requested that the case be thrown out.  Of course they have.  They should mind their manners a little more.  The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department was rebuked by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for this very thing.

Communist Cuomo in his own words.

The amusing thing is that he tried to walk this back by quoting his own words which are exactly as recorded above.  I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it again.  I plan my gun purchases around not buying products made in New York if possible.

So Remington, Kimber, and any other gun manufacturers still in New York – I have one question.  Why?  Why haven’t you relocated to another state where I can once again consider doing business with your company?

Orangeburg, S.C.

South Carolina authorities are searching for seven men involved in a bizarre home invasion and kidnapping.

Police were called to an Orangeburg home at approximately 3:55p.m. on Tuesday in reference to an burglary and kidnapping.

Authorities say their investigation indicates seven unknown males with guns forced their way into the residence, forcing three adults and six juveniles to the floor. One of the gunmen struck a 52-year-old woman in the head with a gun while she was protecting her grandson. A 4-month-old was taken from the residence.

According to police, this was a targeted crime.

Renee Gilliard wasn’t home at the time but said she was horrified to learn the only thing the intruders found was her baby girl. The baby was gone for about two hours before she was found in Berkeley County by a passerby who saw the criminals discard the child on the side of the road.

Yea.  A seven-man home invasion.  If you’re toting a 1911 from room to room, you’d better be damned accurate with that thing.  I have carried a rifle from room to room before around the house, but it’s truly obnoxious.  I would carry a 1911 around the house, but in a seven-man home invasion I think I’d be better off with one of my polymer-frame double-stack pistols.

This will be a little different than some articles, a throwback to my military blogging, and very frank.  It will likely offend some people, and since it comes straight from a former enlisted Marine, there is slight language warning.

I should say up front that I like for the comments to be free flowing where readers can disagree with my views (respectfully, of course).  But in this instance I would offer up the following guidelines.  First, stick to the point of the article.  The article isn’t about the justification or lack thereof for OEF, OIF, or any other campaign or operation.  The article isn’t about politics.  Second, there will be no disparaging comments about Navy SEALs, the U.S. Marine Corps, or my son Daniel (whose assessment this is).  I will spam all such comments.  Finally, if you make comments about the “military-industrial complex,” I will laugh at you as I spam your comment.

This article is about tactics, plain and simple.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It will be frank, open, and honest.  Nothing herein is construed to malign the bravery and exploits of anyone in any operation, anywhere, at any time.  It comes from a former enlisted Marine, so take it for what it’s worth – a former enlisted Marine’s view of Operation Red Wings.  With that said, I’ll now offer up my son Daniel’s comments regarding the movie Lone Survivor, knowing the story beforehand, but commenting to me after having seen the movie.

“This operation should never have come off the way it did.  The Marines don’t take chances.  I saw a room full of Navy SEALs sitting on their assess back at the FOB doing nothing but monitoring comms.  If you set four SEALs down by helicopter, you could have set an entire platoon down.  There was no reason to limit the recon team to four.”

“I was on a recon mission in Fallujah, and we had an entire platoon.  We were monitoring a mosque for anti-American messaging, and we were beside a building (abandoned school) that AQ was using to execute leaders of Fallujah.  We were watching the mosque and someone came over comms and said, “Um guys, there are dudes with masks on that just got out of cars with some other dude who had a hood on.”  We started watching them, and sure enough, they were AQ getting reading to execute another elder.  We laid waste to them because we had a platoon, not a four man fire team.  Even when doing recon, we have enough men.  We escorted snipers to their two- or three-day post, and then escorted them back.  We didn’t want our Scout Snipers getting killed on the way to or from their post.”

“Alternatively, since you knew comms was going to be bad on the other side of that mountain, you could have set down another team of four SEALs on top of the mountain or near it, who could have then relayed comms to the FOB from the recon team.  We did stuff like that all the time.  There was no excuse to have sent a team of four.  And there was no excuse to have poor comms when you knew you were going to have poor comms.”

“Another example showing that they didn’t think ahead and plan for the worst is …” (and at that point I interjected, “Why wasn’t anyone carrying …”) a SAW (Daniel said)?  ‘Yes’, I responded.  “The fact that they had suppressed, scoped weapons shows that they were not prepared to lay down suppressive fire.  They hadn’t planned for the worst.  Marines plan for the worst.”

“Furthermore, they were laying around when the goat herders stumbled up.  If it had been my fire team, I would have said “never stop moving, but if you do, then we’re going to dig in and act like we’re going to defend this terrain to the death.”  We would have dug in in such a manner that we had interlocking fields of fire, all built around a SAW where we could have done fire and maneuver.”

“Next, about that conversation they had concerning the goat herders.  I would have ended it in a hurry.  I would have popped both goat herders and then popped all of the goats.  They could charge me later, but in the mean time the operation was compromised and it was time to leave.”  (Editorial note: Comments at this article dream up scenarios where they could have taken the “prisoners” with them and avoided all of the problems.  It’s all a day dream.  Attempting to take the goat herders to the top of the mountain would have slowed them and left them in the same situation, as well as told the goat herders that they were unwilling to shoot them, at which point the goat herders would have done the same thing, run down the mountain and tell the Taliban commanders).

He said that they badly underestimated the capabilities of the Afghan fighters.  Those folks were born there, and their lungs are acclimated to the thin air.  Given the weight of the kit they were hauling, it was foolish to think that they could have beaten indigenous men up to the top of the mountain when those men were wearing thin man-dresses and carrying nothing but an AK-47 and a couple of magazines.

I asked Daniel what the worst case was if an entire platoon of SEALs would have deployed instead of the four man recon team and the Taliban commander wasn’t in the village, and he said “So what?  Take some MREs with you, go into the village, drink chai with the elders, win a little hearts and minds, and get some intel.  Do counterinsurgency, something the SEALs think they’re too good to do.”

As for the loss of the QRF, Daniel was just livid.  The notion that the QRF lost its CAS to other missions or emergent problems is simply ridiculous.  Losing the Apache helicopters meant exactly one thing.  They lost the QRF.  Period.  If they weren’t dedicated resources, then they never really had a QRF to begin with.  And there was no reason that the C-130s shouldn’t have been refueled and circling above-head the entire time.  They dropped the four man team out there without the right support, without the right weapons (no area suppression weapon), without good comms, and finally, without applying classical infantry tactics.

“I’ve seen it before.  The CO didn’t want to hear about problems because they’re all playing the ‘my dick is bigger than your dick’ game.  They sent a SEAL team to do what they should have sent classical infantry to do.  They should have sent in a Marine Corps infantry platoon, or if you want to go all spec ops, send in Marine Force Recon.

“Or if you don’t want it to be a Marine Corps operation, send in the Rangers.  I understand that SEALs are pretty bad ass.  If you have complex HALO jumps and frogman operations, or hostage rescue, they are the guys to call.  But they don’t do classic infantry fire and maneuver, and that’s what was needed that day.  The Rangers are pretty bad ass too.  Send them in.  They know how to do fire and maneuver, set up interlocking fields of fire, develop enfilade fire, and so on.”

“I patrolled with SEALs once in Fallujah when they were looking for a HVT.  They have this attitude that ‘We’re SEALs.  We don’t need anyone or anything else.’  But that day they did.  They needed infantry, and command should have sent in enough men to prepare for the worst.  They took chances, and good men died as a result.”

Mike Vanderboegh:

Yet even the so-called “gun rights” media has been ignoring the story, apart from David Codrea, Kurt Hofmann and Anthony Martin.

I wouldn’t have expected the “prags” to cover it, of course. I have always made them nervous and occasionally, apoplectic. But there are others who I would have expected some coverage out of. Nada.

I’m not sure if I’m considered so-called gun rights media, but I’ve tried to send folks Mike’s direction and provide a brief bit of commentary here and here.  Mike is a semi-daily stop for me, as is Codrea, and you should spend a few minutes there every day yourself.

Regarding the “prags,” my experiences is somewhat different.  My article GOP Ready To Cave On Gun Control was linked by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.  Sebastian responded with Is The GOP Preparing To Cave?  The reason I know that it was a response to my article is that it was published after mine, and none of the organic links had any title even approaching “GOP Ready To Cave.”  This is what Sebastian said:

My big fear is that stories like this encourage the fatalistic among us, who will then fail to act because they think this is already a done deal, and nothing they do or say will matter. Let’s be focused on the real threats, and not rumors of threats, created by people who are drawing, to be charitable, questionable conclusions.

I don’t need Sebastian’s charity when I’m right, and I turned out right.  Cantor and Ryan pushed universal background checks, just like two GOP Senators are even now trying to push an unwarranted and intrusive expansion of mental health checks.  I know what Sebastian was thinking.  He wasn’t remembering the Barnhardt axiom (via WRSA).  At any rate, Sebastian responded to me without even linking my article and sending traffic my way, of course, unlike me where I follow proper internet protocol.  Bad form, I thought.  Still do.  The prags ignore Mike.  They respond to me without even linking.

David Codrea:

Running as an independent after being turned down for consideration by NRA’s nominating committee, Colandro promises to be the type of director capable of shaking up paid staff’s heretofore unbreakable grip on the board, paving the way for other candidates who would reform management policies away from an unsettling trend of offering compromises, political deal-making, and questionable political ratings …

David gives me a good reason to renew NRA membership, if for nothing more than to support folks like this.  As a nugget of gold, there is also a brief discussion on national right to carry in David’s article.

Kurt Hofmann:

I have never asked anyone to give my views any more weight because of my stint in the Army, and I will never claim that a person who has never served is therefore less qualified to comment on gun rights and “gun control.” Military service, past or present, plays no role in one’s authority on the issue of the right to keep and bear arms …

Oh, the progressives don’t really believe that as they claim.  They just believe that for cases like Robert Bateman because Bateman agrees with their view of gun control.  They don’t listen to those who have had military service and who disagree with their views, and they would just as soon throw Bateman under the bus when he’s finished pimping for them.  And military service doesn’t any more exclusively qualify one to comment on guns than it does for him to comment on driving a car because he drives away from the base for the weekend.

NSA phone spying is useless in preventing terrorist attacks.  But of course, that isn’t the point or purpose of the phone spying, is it?

On a different note, looks like another booger hook on the bang switch thing.

ABC News:

Having failed in an earlier effort to bar federal agents from enforcing gun regulations in Missouri, conservative lawmakers are trying a new tack this year: banding together with other like-minded states to defy certain federal laws at the same time.

Supporters believe it will be more difficult for the federal government to shrug off such statutes if more states act together.

Missouri’s latest proposal, introduced this past week, would attempt to nullify certain federal gun control regulations from being enforced in the state and subject law enforcement officers to criminal and civil penalties for carrying out such policies.

The state’s Republican-led Legislature came one vote shy of overriding Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of such a measure last year. This year’s bill adds a new twist, delaying the effective date for several years to allow time for other states to join the cause.

“We continue to see the federal government overreach their rightful bounds, and if we can create a situation where we have some unity among states, then I think it puts us in a better position to make that argument,” said Republican Sen. Brian Nieves, who is sponsoring the legislation.

Missouri’s efforts came after President Barack Obama called for expanded federal background checks and a ban on assault weapons following deadly mass shootings at a Colorado theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

Courts have consistently ruled that states cannot nullify federal laws, but that hasn’t stopped states from trying or ignoring them anyway. Last year, a federal appeals court struck down a 2009 Montana law that sought to prohibit federal regulation of guns that were manufactured in the state and remained within its borders.

A similar Kansas law that makes it a felony for a federal agent to attempt to enforce laws on guns made and owned in Kansas earned a rebuke from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

What else would you expect a federal court to decide?  And what else would you expect the communist Eric Holder to say?  We’ve discussed this before.  It is a mistake in strategy to look to the federal courts or any part of the federal government to protect your God-given rights, including your right to own weapons.

And nullification can work, but it has to have the support of the entire legislature and the Governor’s office, since the Governor is the chief law enforcement officer of the state.

These sideline discussions don’t rise to the level of strategy – not yet.  They’re still fumbling around with skirmish tactics.  If you have the full support of the state leaders, the next step is to craft the ensemble of laws for which federal agents will go to the state penitentiary.

Then when the first federal agent of any stripe attempts to enforce any of the laws in the ensemble you have crafted, put his ass in prison among the general population and throw away the key.  And then … use the state National Guard and if need be the unorganized militia to stop any further federal agents or anyone else from coming across state lines to free the federal agents from prison.

Then, and only then, will I believe that anyone is serious about nullification.  Then after other states see the success of the first state, they will learn the tactics and apply them.  And then it will be a strategy.