Prosecutors initially included a charge of abortion against the Queens man arrested Friday in his pregnant girlfriend’s murder — but rescinded it because of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new Reproductive Health Act.
I remember cases I read about where a boyfriend or husband would kick a woman in the belly trying to induce a miscarriage because he did not want the baby. But now thanks to science and Liberal laws, the same thing can be achieved in the State of New York by slipping several doses of “Day After” pill or any other chemical that can induce a miscarriage to an unsuspecting pregnant woman. If caught, he may get a charge for the pill ingestion (not sure what it could be) but gets away with murder.
That is the progress you’ll find with the Progressives.
The big news here is that the media is dying. And in its desperation, its members are seeking survival strategies. Reporters are unionizing at an unprecedented pace in a futile effort at surviving the rounds of consolidations and layoffs. That strategy didn’t save anyone at Gawker, Al Jazeera America or the Huffington Post. Unions can’t save a bad business model that takes entire companies down with it.
Long article, but well worth it with your Sunday morning coffee. Slinging poo and lying at over half your customers with every edition is not a smart business strategy.
Late last year I covered a story out of New York, in which law makers wanted people who wanted to be gun owners to have to submit three years worth of social media and internet search history to the police for review in order to obtain a gun permit.
I swear, there are half a dozen states – New York, Illinois, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut – that as soon as one passes a super restrictive law or finds something new to tax, the other states go all “hold my beer” and try to out tyrant the others.
That’s why Didech is proposing gun buyers reveal their public social media accounts to Illinois police before they’re approved for a firearm license.
“A lot of people who are having mental health issues will often post on their social media pages that they’re about to hurt themselves or others,” Didech said. “We need to give those people the help they need.”
If this was about giving people the help they need, why are they filtering it through the FOID system?
Furthermore, I didn’t think the state bureaucrats who worked for the ISP processing FOID applications were mental health experts.
Pro-gun groups are outraged.
“When people look at this everyone who has a Facebook account or email account or Twitter account will be incensed or should be,” said Richard Pearson with the Illinois State Rifle Association.
Yes, they should be.
But the ACLU is opposed as well.
Rebecca Glenberg with ACLU Illinois says the bill “doesn’t say anything about how that list will be retained and for how long and what uses it might be put to.”
I said this before about New York City’s abuse of gravity knife laws:
If you are a politician, and you manage to unite the NRA and ACLU against you, that is absolute proof that you are being a tyrannical fucking asshole and you need to stop doing what you are doing.
Yes, I am aware in this case, it is the ISLA, but the principle is the same.
The first amendment group worries police scanning social media may show bias.
No shit.
“A person’s political beliefs, a person’s religious beliefs, things that should not play a part in whether someone gets a FOID card,” Glenberg said.
Wow, the ACLU of Illinois has a principled, intelligent person on their staff. He’s dead right, of course. All you need is someone working for the ISP who agrees with Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, that MAGA hats are the new Klan hood and Trump supporters are racist “Trumpanzees” to see that some FOID applicant liked a Trump 2020 Facebook page and that application will get rejected.
After three years in Chicago, I know people like that work for the state government.
But Didech isn’t deterred.
“It gives Illinois State Police additional tools to make sure that dangerous weapons aren’t getting into the hands of dangerous people,” he said.
I highly doubt that. What it will do is keep FOID cards out of the hands of law abiding citizens that say things the Illinois state bureaucrats don’t like.
Didech says his bill is a less intrusive version of a similar measure that’s been proposed in New York state. That version allows police to recover a gun license applicant’s entire browsing history. Even Didech says that goes too far.
Oh gee. Illinois gets to look at your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but not your whole Google search history. That’s totally better.
Amends the Firearm Owners Identification Card Act. Provides that the Department of State Police shall conduct a search of the purchasers’ social media accounts available to the public to determine if there is any information that would disqualify the person from obtaining or require revocation of a currently valid Firearm Owner’s Identification Card. Provides that each applicant for a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card shall furnish to the Department of State Police a list of every social media account.
This is the text the bill wants to add to the FOID law:
The Department of State Police shall conduct a search of the purchasers’ social media accounts available to the public to determine if there is any information that would disqualify the person from obtaining or require revocation of a currently valid Firearm Owner’s Identification Card.
Every social media account available to the public? What does that mean? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr? What if you set your account to private? That seems like too easy a way to get around this law.
What about internet forums? Are you an AR15.com?
What if you are on Stormfront? I hate Illinois Nazis, but they have rights.
What other internet profiles can they look at? What about your Ashley Madison account that you don’t want your wife to know about? What if you are on Grindr but are not out of the closet yet? Does the ISP get to look at your dating profile on eHarmony? How about your PornHub account?
How will the ISP know if you gave them all of your accounts? Will they search your name and if something pops up that you didn’t turn over, will they deny you?
What if you don’t have Facebook or Twitter or Instagram? I don’t. I’m 35, so I probably should, but I got off Facebook 11 years ago and every time I think I should go back, I read another horror story of how it has become a cesspool and I figure it’s not worth it.
Will my lack of social media be held against me because as a 35 year old I should have Facebook and since I didn’t turn that over the ISP assumes I’m lying?
There is just too much wrong here for this bill to become law, but I don’t think that will stop it.
However, this bill leads me to a couple of thoughts. With New York and Illinois proposing this, you know that California will be next.
If or when that happens, it will be elevated to the national debate.
Gun rights advocates have said that UBCs make no sense without gun registration.
Is that what is next for social media. I can set up a Facebook page for a fictitious person. I can create and anonymous Tumblr account. Is the next step going to be some sort of social media registration where your accounts are tied to your actual ID using verifiable data, e.g. SSN?
What if your Facebook page is all mundane but you have a second account that uses a handle from which you lash out with hate and bile? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of this bill?
It seems like we are heading into some dangerous territory here.
Also.
If this bill gets close to passing, I can think of a good way of combating it. Just start signing politicians and bureaucrats up for every horrible fetish forum on the internet.
I would love to see someone ask Rep. Didech:
“Representative Didech, we decided to check up on your social media account. Your Facebook page is clean but you said some pretty racist things on TrannyGranny Forum, would you care to comment on that?”
One of the reasons I deride the NTY with the “taco stand” moniker is because they were saved from the bankruptcy hole by a friend of the Obamas, a Mexican national and Billionaire under the name of Carlos “Obamaphone” Slim who bought a considerable amount of shares of the rag to help it remain afloat.
I will never cease to be amazed at the disconnection between journalists and real life.
This hearing is significant as it is the first hearing on gun control in the House in eight years, as well as being conducted a week short of one year from the anniversary of the Parkland shooting.
What is said at this hearing is going to set the stage for whatever gun control bills the Democrats in the House come up with for the next two years, as well as whatever gun control they will push for as they ramp up campaigning for 2020.
There were a number of witnesses who testified before the House Judiciary Committee. It was lopsided for the anti-gun side, and frankly the pro-gun witnesses were not the ones I would have chosen.
C-Span has the video of the whole four hours of the hearing. At first I was going to cover this in one post, but that would have been a huge post and would have taken forever to write up. Instead I’m going to tackle it in shorter posts.
The entire video is below. Watch as much as you want, but I highly suggest you at least watch the first 12 minutes. That is the opening statements made by the Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA).
Compare and contrast the those two opening statements.
Rep. Nadler touches on all the typical Liberal talking points. There is too much gun violence in the US, much more compared to the rest of the developed world. It’s a national embarrassment. We have to do something about the guns.
Rep. Collins hammered home, again and again, how in just about every mass shooting we have seen, we have witnesses the systematic failure of government to deal with people who time and time should have been prohibited persons but were not, or passed background checks because the system failed. It was incredible to hear him say this, especially about Nikolas Cruz, with a MSD High student at the witness table in front of him.
Rep. Collins’ mentioning of the lack of federal firearm prosecutions under President Obama was particularity on point considering a later witness testified about more laws against straw man purchases – but I’ll get to her later.
It really was a devastating opening statement, arguing that current gun control bills will not solve a single problem and will only serve to criminalize the Second Amendment.
The first witness to testify was Aalayah Eastmond. She is a senior at MSD High and witnessed the shooting first hand. While I have sympathy for her for what she and her family went through, afterwards she attached herself to the Brady Campaign and they filled her head with garbage. She is now being exploited, to regurgitate that garbage before the House.
Her testimony starts at 22:13 in the above video.
*As I write up these posts, I will post time stamps so readers can watch the relevant sections. I cannot post smaller clips from the C-Span video. I will also post relevant text from the testimony. I apologize that it is in all caps. C-Span does not provide transcripts, I can only copy the closed captioning text.
For Ms. Eastmond, the Brady Campaign posted a YouTube clip of her testimony, so you don’t have to go through the above video. If I find other such videos, I will post those as well.
MY FAMILY KNEW THIS BEFORE PARKLAND. 15 YEARS AGO IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, MY UNCLE PATRICK WAS SHOT AND KILLED. HE WAS JUST 18 YEARS OLD WITH HIS WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HIM. I ASK YOU GIVE MY GENERATION THE CHANCE HE NEVER HAD. MINORITY COMMUNITIES BEAR THE HEAVIEST BURDEN OF GUNMAN — GUN VIOLENCE. WE KNOW THIS AS A FACT. WEEKS AGO, A NEW REPORT SHOWED THE LIFE EXPECTANCY FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS HAS BEEN REDUCED BY FOUR YEARS ON AVERAGE BECAUSE OF GUN VIOLENCE.
First of all, we are going to see this a lot from the anti-gun side. We must do something about guns because people of color/minority communities/black and brown people/other PC jargon are more affected by gun violence. Hence, the failure to do something about guns is racist.
That same line of attack was used as part of the justification of the Green New Deal that climate change more adversely affects minorities communities because they are poorer so not dealing with climate change is racist.
This is gun control via social justice.
BUT THIS REPORT DIDN’T SHOW ME ANYTHING I DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW. GUN VIOLENCE IS THE EVERY DAY OCCURRENCE AND THE VAST MAJORITY OF AFFECTED COMMUNITIES ARE MINORITY COMMUNITIES. WE MUST STOP THIS SUPPLY OF GUNS AND MUST ENSURE THERE IS COMPREHENSIVE CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM TO ADDRESS THE STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY IN THE SYSTEM.
Did you catch that contradiction? We know that 51% of homicide victims are black and over 90% of those victims’ killers were also black. In the same breath she talks about criminal justice reform. For the Left, that usually involves reduced sentences, drug decriminalization, ending broken windows policing, ending three strikes laws, ending stop and frisk in NYC, among other policies. Where these have been tried, crime goes up.
“Crime will expand according to our willingness to put up with it.” Much of criminal justice reform is putting up with more crime. If your goal is to reduce the black homicide rate, you need to go after the criminals responsible for it. Heavier prosecution for non-violent gun crime is key, e.g., straw purchases and carrying illegal guns. Being easier on criminals while making it harder for law abiding citizens to buy guns won’t reduce the crime rate.
I IMPLORE YOU TO PASS LEGISLATION THAT WILL MAKE US ALL SAFER. TODAY IN AMERICA ANYONE CAN GO ON THE INTERNET ANSWER AN AD OR GO TO A GUN SHOW AND BUY A GUN WITH NO BACKGROUND CHECK REQUIRED.
That is very dubious. While technically correct under the right, and limited circumstances, I doubt the reality of personal sales has been explained to her.
THIS MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. I URGE YOU TO EXPAND BRADY BACKGROUND CHECKS BY VOTING FOR HR, REQUIRING CHECKS FOR VIRTUALLY ANY GUN TRANSACTION. THE ORIGINAL BRADY LAW PASSED WITH PARTISAN SUPPORT AND THIS SHOULD, TOO.
When an addict trades a gun he stole for drugs, and the dealer sells it to a criminal, which one of these people, knowingly committing a felony does the background check?
The number of guns used in crime that comes from gun shows or Armslist ads is less than a percent.
THE PROTECTION LAWFUL COMMERCE IN ARMS ACT ALSO KNOWN AS PLACA WAS PASSED BY CONGRESS 15 YEARS AGO. NO OTHER INDUSTRY HAS THIS PROTECTION FROM LAWSUITS. AND IT IS TIME THAT CONGRESS REPEAL THIS OUTRAGEOUS LAW.
No it should absolutely not be repealed. This is nothing short of gun bans by lawfare. No other industry needs this kind of protection because no other industry (so far) has been targeted for lawsuits for the deliberate misuse of their products.
The old stand by is “no judge would let the family of someone killed by a drunk driver sue Ford for making the car.” But that is not accurate because while drunk driving is a crime, the drunk is not intending to hurt someone, it is a crime of negligence.
A better example would be a class action lawsuit brought against Boeing for the people killed and injured on 9/11. Or perhaps a case against Bayer for making the rat poison used to commit a murder.
Of course an industry should be protected from lawsuits when their products are deliberately misused in a criminal way. The PLCAA was a response to Liberal abuse of the courts. Taking it down is like a bully saying to teacher “It’s not fair that Joey is hiding in the classroom, make him come outside so I can beat him up.”
CONGRESS SHOULD ENCOURAGE MORE STATES TO PASS THE LAWS. ASSAULT WEAPONS AND HIGH-CAPACITY MAGAZINES BELONG ON THE BATTLEFIELD, NOT IN OUR COMMUNITIES. MY CLASSMATES AND I HAVE SEEN HOW LETHAL THESE WEAPONS ARE. CONGRESS SHOULD RE INSTITUTE THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN.
AWBs and magazine capacity bans have done nothing to reduce crime. I’m sorry for her situation, but the very, very small percentage of people who get their hands on an AR and do a lot of damage with it doesn’t justify the collective punishment of millions of law abiding Americas.
Congress should push for laws that end qualified immunity so shitty sheriff deputies have an incentive to actually do something about the person causing the problems.
THE SHOOTER WHO KILLED NINE PEOPLE IN THE SOUTH CAROLINA CHURCH SHOOTING WAS ABLE TO BUY A GUN BECAUSE HIS BACKGROUND CHECK WAS NOT COMPLETED IN THREE DAYS. MOST FEDERAL CHECKS TAKE JUST MINUTES.
And here we have gun bans by slowing down NICS to a crawl.
I ALSO URGE YOU TO ADDRESS THE CONCERNS OF BLACK AND BROWN COMMUNITIES WHO ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED BY GUN VIOLENCE.
Social justice gun control. Maybe figuring out the root of the cause of the high crime rates in black and brown communities is a better solution.
RATHER THAN LISTEN TO SPECIAL INTERESTS, I ASK YOU TO LISTEN TO THE NATION’S YOUNG FEMALE AND — YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITIES WHO HAVE HAD ENOUGH. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR SCHOOLS, IN OUR MOVIE THEATERS, WORSHIP PLACES, NIGHT CLUBS AND RESTAURANTS AND STREETS AND COMMUNITIES. ENOUGH. WE HAVE ALL HAD ENOUGH.
Pay attention to the anti-gun special interest groups who have filled our heads with garbage and exploited our status as victims.
I HOPE YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH TOO AND USE THE POWER THAT THE PEOPLE HAVE VESTED IN YOU TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT. OUR LIVES DEPEND ON YOU. OUR LIVES ARE IN YOUR HANDS. THANK YOU.
No, our lives are not in Congress’ hands. Our rights are in their hands. You don’t save lives by eliminating rights.
She was in a Holocaust History class at the time of the shooting, she should understand how eliminating rights only increases the death toll.
Any student of the history of Prohibition would say the same thing.
She is only the first person to spew Brady gobbledygook. A doctor uses his credentialism to do that as the third witness.
I’ll get to him in the next post because this one is long enough already.
