Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 45 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Why All These Bundy Cases Ended up Jury Nullified

As Dave Hardy pointed out, this is a doozy. BLM agent accuses his superiors of numerous illegal abuses and misbehaviors in the Bundy Ranch case:

The investigation also indicated that on multiple occasions, former BLM Special Agent-in-Charge (SAC) Love specifically and purposely ignored U.S. Attorney’s Office and BLM civilian management direction and intent as well as Nevada State Official recommendations in order to command the most intrusive, oppressive, large scale, and militaristic trespass cattle impound possible. Additionally, this investigation also indicated excessive use of force, civil rights and policy violations. The investigation indicated that there was little doubt there was an improper cover-up in virtually every matter that a particular BLM SAC participated in, or oversaw and that the BLM SAC was immune from discipline and the consequences of his actions.

If BLM regularly deals with ranchers in this manner, it would explain why the Bundys were jury nullified even though they were guilty as hell.

All in all, it is my assessment, and the investigation showed that the 2014 Gold Butte Trespass Cattle Impound was in part a punitive and ego-driven expedition by Senior BLM Law Enforcement Supervisor (former BLM Special Agent-in-Charge Dan Love) that was only in part focused on the intent of the associated Federal Court Orders and the mission of our agency (to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America’s public lands for the multiple use and enjoyment of present and future generations).

Retaliation against dissidents and whistleblowers is endemic in the “civil service.” The fact that everyone so up in arms over Trump doing the kinds of things that has been routinely done in the federal bureaucracy for years has been, for me, a source of laughter and frustration. How often do you find yourself thinking about something a friend, colleague, or family member wrote: “You didn’t give a shit about X until biased news site Y just told you that Trump did X and now it’s the worst. thing. ever. Even though Obama and everyone that came before him did X all the time.”

We have some real serious issues about how the federal government runs, but we all need to be operating in the same reality to do something about it. We all increasingly don’t operate in the same reality. I’ve heard concerns for the “deep state” being dismissed as right-wing paranoia. I don’t care what you call it, this is the truth: the federal bureaucracy is a branch of government onto itself, which has very little accountability to the elected officials that under our system are supposed to lead it.

Article on AR-15s Not Completely Awful for CNN

There is a lot of sensationalist nonsense in this article on AR-15s, like “As gun sales kept climbing, so did the body count,” and a lot of crap about the AR-15 being designed for spray fire, but for the most part, this isn’t so badly done for agenda driven media, and reflects a lot of my memory of the issue. The big question I have, because I wasn’t in the issue at the time, is when high-power competitors made the jump from mostly using Garands and M1As to using AR-15s: did that transition start happening before the ban? Or did the ban culture of the late 80s and early 90s trigger competitors to give ARs a second look?

To All the Celebrating Dems

Congratulations! You beat a child molester. Barely.

The silver lining for the anti-gun among them is that this will probably destroy any prospect of National Reciprocity, unfortunately. But I can’t tell you I’m sorry Moore lost. If he had run for President, he would have topped Hillary in terms of “Worst. Presidential Candidate. Ever.” He would have written the DSCC’s 2018 campaign ads for them.

He joins such luminaries as Christine “I am not a witch!” O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Todd Akin. That is why the first thing I look at when I look at a candidate isn’t “Does he agree with me?” but “Can he win?” Because if the answer to the latter question is no, what’s the point? If you’re backing candidates that can’t win, the race is just an exercise in selfish delusions.

Also, I’m starting to think Steve Bannon was just a lucky bastard with Trump, rather than some kind of evil genius. He was also lucky to be going up against the “Worst. Presidential Candidate. Ever.” in terms of Hillary.

Was Luther Strange an establishment choice? Sure he was. But if he had been the nominee that race wouldn’t have even been close, and we’d only be looking at having to flip one vote for National Reciprocity instead of two.

The Senate Math for CCW in 2017

It’s not looking probable; we would need a miracle. Here’s the breakdown

Starting with the 2013 vote (57 Ayes to invoke cloture), I did up a spreadsheet of the likely vote results in 2017, based on current occupancy, the 2013 vote, and the Senators political stances on the issue.

I came out with maximum of 59 Aye votes (assuming Luther Strange gets to vote Aye or his replacement votes Aye).

The vote delta (because we had both gains and losses)

NH: -1 (Maggie Hassan replaced Kelly Ayotte)

IA: +1 (Joni Ernst replaced Tom Harkin)

SD: +1 (Mike Rounds replaced Tim Johnson)

WV: +1 (Shelley Moore replaced John Rockefeller)

However, what IÂ don’t see is the 60th vote. I broke out the Nay votes who are in seats up in 2018 in states that voted for Trump

Bill Nelson is a hard NO
Claire McCaskill is a hard NO
Sherrod Brown is a hard NO
Bob Casey is a firm No
Tammy Baldwin is a hard NO

And, if anyone flips to be the 60th, I wouldn’t put it past some of the presumptive Ayes to flip to Nay to prevent it. Fix NICS is already being pulled out as a cover for voting Nay (and was used for that purpose in the House).

Now, maybe the GOP leadership knows something I don’t, or this really was a setup to burnish everybody’s 2A pro/con credentials. Whichever way that goes, if you want reciprocity this year, better start praying.

Should Have Cut a Deal When You Had a Chance

Prof. Adam Winkler is taking to the op-ed pages speaking out against H.R. 38, mostly because it lets people from California get an out of state license and carry in their home state. I’d note that previous versions did not have this feature, and were limited to non-residents and only to people with licenses. If gun control folks had cut a deal with us years ago, that’s the law they would have gotten. But they made us wait hoping things would get better for them. They bet wrong, so I have no sympathy. I have no sympathy for the argument that the law is unconstitutional:

The law is likely also unconstitutional. Congress has only limited powers, and the Supreme Court has expressly held Congress has little authority to regulate carrying guns on public streets.

The carry act has language seeking to work around this problem. It is limited to possessing or carrying a handgun that has traveled in interstate commerce. But this is a clear pretext, as nearly all guns travel in interstate commerce. Whether that pretextual hook will be enough for the courts we will have to see.

It’s enough to ban felons possessing firearms and to ban machine guns, isn’t it? Or does the “herpes theory” of the commerce clause only apply when we’re talking gun control, rather than civil rights protection. I’d give Prof. Winkler that there are potentialÂ Bourne issues with the 14th Amendment, but I don’t also see why Congress can’t enact this based either on Full Faith and Credit or its Militia powers. The contours of both have never really been all that extensively litigated. Even BourneÂ may not really be an issue, since it’s arguable that H.R. 38 compliments the right to carry, which was already assumed to exist in Heller. Additionally, H.R. 38 implements the kind of framework which is actually a more apt exercise of Congressional power than Judicial power. So are the Bourne issues really there? Bourne was meant to reinstate the Sherbert test, which SCOTUS decided to abandon. The RFRA specifically was targeted to overturn a Supreme Court decision. H.R. 38 does not do that. The Supreme Court recognized a right to carry in Heller, and applied it to the states under the 14th Amendment in McDonald. If one believes that the federal government has a role to play in civil rights protection, something that liberals used to strongly support, why should H.R. 38 be unconstitutional, rather than an appropriate exercise of Congress’ Section 5 powers of the 14th Amendment?

NRA Burns Florida Carry

I told people at NRA for a while they should do more to fight back against other gun groups who sabotage some of our best efforts when we try to argue not to let perfection be the enemy of good. It seems they are finally starting to do that:

Moms Demand Action should put Florida Carry’s representatives in red t-shirts and give them an award, because in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 12/5/2017 Florida Carry sided with Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action â€“ NOT Florida gun owners.

Ouch! I have to say, that’s brutal even by my standards. I can feel that burn all the way up here.

Post H.R. 38 Rant

I should be happy that HR 38 has passed the house, but I can’t muster a whole lot of excitement. We’ve done that before, and the Senate has always been the problem house. I’d like to think “We got this!,” but I know realistically we have a hard time getting 60 votes in the Senate. If FixNICS isn’t enough to give a handful of GOP Congressmen cover enough to vote in favor, how do we get to 60 votes in the Senate? Unless the filibuster rule changes, and at this point, I think it should, the Senate is a body that can confirm judges and pass budget bills, and that’s it. Maybe the FixNICS sweetener will get it 60 votes.

I got invited to participate in a Town Hall by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick last night, and we tried to get in a question about his vote on HR 38. It was interesting that he fielded two callers asking about the Bill, but neither of them knew he had just voted against it, or knew much about it. We made clear to staff queuing callers that we did know how he voted, but the clock ran out and we never got our question in. To the callers he did take, he stated he had issues with the bill, but supported it in concept. Of course, he never stated what those issues were, because he’s a worm. He even wormed his way out of saying whether he voted for or against it. Allowing your constituents to get arrested by the State of New Jersey for bearing arms is not supporting the Second Amendment, no matter how often you say you support it.

All three of them, Fitzpatrick, Meehan, and Costello, are scared to death of Bloomberg’s money, and the ads he could afford to run in this media market. None of this was a factor when the gun control movement was in dire financial straits. Bloomberg coming in with big money was all it took to undo years of progress we had made with lawmakers in this area. I had wondered why Bloomberg wasn’t running ads here, whereas he was in other swing or blue state GOP districts. Now I know; he had their votes in the bag already.

Costello was OK on the issue before Bloomberg brought his billions. Fitzpatrick’s seat has a had a history of anti-gun Republicans, and the Curt Weldon, who held Meehan’s seat for years, was always squishy too. So this isn’t new. But we’re going to need a lot more organization in the Southeast if we’re going to counter Bloomberg’s money. We’re going to need people to care, not take their rights for granted, and be willing to show up and be counted. That’s been the struggle. NRA seems to no longer be interested in real grassroots organization, and has instead started promoting a culture Â that only serves to feed anger and outrage on issues unrelated to guns. How are we going to useÂ all that anger? We have to do this ourselves.

Let us not just talk about Delaware Valley Republicans, who invented the anti-gun Republican, after all. I’d also like to talk about retiring Congressman Massey and Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert, who is spreading the same bullshit. You see, Rep. Massey never supported H.R. 38, if you talk to his constituents. But once it became apparent he’d have to post a vote on it, he started spouting a bunch of nonsense about the FixNICS component of it. So now he gets to go down as Paul Revere sounding the alarm against a boogeyman of his own creation while posting a vote against us. Representative Gohmert seems to have joined him in this.

And yet, a lot of our people are buying this posturing hook, line and sinker. They are politicians. They don’t like the bill. They don’t want to vote for the bill. But rather than coming out and just stating they don’t and have never supported federal civil rights enforcement, they invented a narrative that turn them into the heroes. Even GOA, run by the Pratt family, who I’ve suspected have strong reservations about federal civil rights enforcement, didn’t feel they had the juice to come out against H.R. 38, but they sure were willing to spout bullshit. Another person I’ve long suspected of opposing federal civil rights enforcement is Dudley Brown, and he did not defy expectations either. Do you know why Bloomberg and the anti-gunners were against combining the two bills? Because they feared it would get us the 60 votes we needed to actually pass National Reciprocity, which they know will be a disaster for them. FixNICS is the same kind of thing we’ve done a million times. What’s the old saying? You can lead a bureaucrat to water, but you can’t make him do his fucking job? Or something like that.

I get that GOA and NAGR hate NICS, and I don’t think it’s worth a whole lot either. But as long as it’s the law of the land, and for the foreseeable future it will be, we have an interest in seeing it function well and do what it’s supposed to do. If extra funding for NICS gets us the biggest civil rights victory since FOPA, I’m willing to make that trade.

H.R. 38 – National Reciprocity – Passes House

Here’s the vote tally. It is not too much of a surprise my worm of a RINO Congressman voted no. Maybe I’ll volunteer for Dean Malik in the primary. Malik may or may not have a chance, and it would throw that seat to the Democrats, but that’s probably what’s going to happen anyway. Both the Fitzpatricks have been awful on this issue, and awful in general.

I don’t expect them to be all “machine guns for everybody” in a district in the Philadelphia Suburbs, but this isn’t going to help the GOP pick up those working class voters they will need to stay in power in an area where, among educated people, Progressive Democrats are successfully creating a monoculture. This was not the issue to show “independence” on.

Oh well, we didn’t need their votes anyway. On to the Senate …

National Reciprocity Vote Today

As we await the House vote on National Reciprocity, of course we have to be our own worst enemies. Seen from Evan Nappen on the Book O’ Face:

GOA has always hated NICS. NO new prohibited persons are created here. Letting a prohibited person get a gun does not help the dealer OR the person. If you have outstanding parking tickets and a warrant is out for you — pay your tickets, and PRESTO, you are no longer a prohibited person. Fix NICS will help get National Reciprocity over the goal line in the Senate which is the toughest fight.

That’s what bugs me: the implication that this bill does something new. If you have an outstanding warrant, you’re already a prohibited person under the law. That’s been the case since 1968. It’s that “Are you a fugitive from justice?” question on the 4473. And Evan is exactly right: no one benefits from the system clearing people that shouldn’t clear.

There’s a big question of whether Brian Fitzpatrick will vote with us. He’s one of three PA GOP lawmakers who is not a cosponsor. A lot of people here know stories of people getting into trouble in New Jersey with guns, and Fitzpatrick’s district shares its border with New Jersey. I’d really like to not have to “sanitize” my car every time I have to cross over the river.

Yep: Nothing like having to quash “fake news” from our “friends” the day before a critical vote on a major piece of legislation.

Charges of “Whataboutism”: A Pet Peeve of Mine

I see this accusation a lot on social media.Â Some have collectively decided to rename “rooting out hypocrisy and naked partisanship” as “whataboutism.” When I first saw it, I thought it was weak. It was pointed out that it was a Soviet propaganda technique, but while the Soviets used it to cover up their much deeper sins, they weren’t always wrong about the flaws in our own society. This expert from the linked article strikes me as quite right:

If the intent of asking the â€œwhat aboutâ€ question is indeed only to change the subject to protect a politician, then itâ€™s exactly what critics contend, an effort to distract, deflect, or rationalize.

However, making a comparison is justifiable if itâ€™s to flesh out the principles of a person silent about the conduct of a politician he likes while contending that hangingâ€™s too good (figuratively speaking) for a politician he dislikes.

I’d like to think we can all agree that having perverts in public office is a Very Bad Thing. But many of the people saying that have covered for and defended perverts in public office for years, and have only now taken to rooting them out because they are becoming a political liability. Alabamans appear to be overlooking Roy Moore’s sins. Why wouldn’t they? Dems partisans are happy to sweep the Clinton’s and their allies aside now that they aren’t politically useful. But Al Franken? Hell no, not him. They need him.

I am not trying to argue that Roy’s just fine because Al’s a perv too. I think both of them are unfit to hold public office. In better times, we’d probably get some broad agreement there. But these are not better times, rather a time of political realignment. As a certain blogging law professor likes to say, “We have the worst political class ever!” And as we all go through this realignment, this cold civil war of sorts, we sure do.