Coup de Etat in progress?

James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, has taken a paid leave from the conservative nonprofit media organization as its board considers whether to remove him from his leadership position, according to current and former employees of the organization.

James O’Keefe Is on Paid Leave From Project Veritas (nymag.com)

The Medellin Cartel had the infamous “Plomo o Plata” (Lead or silver) to obtain peoples’ silence or cooperation. I believe that after the latest attack on Pfizer, they may have been issue the Amrican verison of that: Law or Cash.

What is the threat of a couple dozen local Federal raids to assorted PV homes among high-powered fiends?

California police come after Project Veritas journalist. This is INSANE. pic.twitter.com/D7tMRVz8WO

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) February 9, 2023

O’Keefe may be getting a lounge chair next to Matt Drudge wherever he is hiding. Then again, I would not be surprised if he is suddenly found dead of an “accidental ” OD with a needle up his arm and tons of child porn in his electronic devices. It would make for a nice ending for some corporations and politicians, don’t you think?

18 USC §922(g) is the prohibited person section of US federal law. It has 9 different sections, each one addressing one class of people to be denied their rights.

The Constitution says that “The People” is all of the people. The question being asked again and again is who belongs to the class “The People”.

It is clear that a US Citizen is part of “The People”. That implies to me that felons are also part of “The People”.

Do you lose your citizenship if you are wanted by the law? Nope.

Do you lose your citizenship if you partake in the “devil’s lettuce?” Nope.

Do you lose your citizenship if you have ever been in a mental institution? Nope.

Do you lose your citizenship if you have been dishonorably discharged from the military? Nope.

You lose your citizenship when you renounce it.

If you are imprisoned, you lose access to many things. They don’t allow drugs, weapons and many other things. Doesn’t mean those things aren’t getting into prisons, it just means it is against the rules and a prisoner can be punished if they are found breaking those rules.

In addition, we have the question of being an alien. Are the legal aliens living here part of “The People”? How about illegal aliens? Are they?

Originally, §922(g) was about transferring firearms. Now it is about both transferring and possessing.

The government has defined classes of people that they feel should be excluded from “The People”. The short is that they have said that these classes of people are not “virtuous”.

In Soviet Russia they had mental asylums. People were committed if they were mentally unstable. Unfortunately this turned into a catch all for “enemy of the state.” Since the state was wonderful, anybody that spoke out against the state must be crazy. If they were crazy the were committed. This made society “safer”.

If the government can define what is and is not a virtuous person and also define “The People” as only those that are law abiding and virtuous, they can remove any right at will. They just exclude you from “The People” and your rights evaporate.

We now have multiple cases challenging parts of §922(g). In OK, tenth circuit, a district court has ruled §922(g)(3), drug user, as unconstitutional. The fifth circuit court has ruled that §922(g)(8) is unconstitutional. A district judge in the western district of KY, sixth circuit, has found §922(g)(8) unconstitutional.

We need to wait to see if the state appeals these cases. It would not surprise me if Texas does appeal. If they appeal and it gets to the Supreme Court it could be a quick case where TX puts in a lackluster performance and parts of §922(g) go away across the entire country.

Other states which are anti-gun might very well not appeal losses at the district or circuit levels in order to keep the case from getting to the Supreme Court.

Over in California, Judge Benitez just dropped the hammer on the state in a number of cases, 3 IIRC.

The State Defendants are directed to file a brief which identifies the best historical regulation that is a proper analogue and relevantly similar to a (statewide prohibition on a firearm with listed features) (statewide prohibition of an ammunition feeding device or a limit on the amount of ammunition) (statewide background check for buying ammunition). The brief shall be limited to 5 pages and shall be filed with the brief currently due 30 days after the filing of the law list.

I tried to find what “filing of the law list”, regardless, the worse it could be is 30 days from now. The best it could be is just a few days because Benitez ordered all briefings be provided to him with in a short period of time once the ninth circuit court kicked these cases back to him.

At the same time we have a number of states attempting to ban assault weapons and magazines because the are exceptionally deadly/dangerous. We have a bunch of states that are attempting to make their entire state a sensitive place via a patchwork of explicit places that are listed as sensitive.

In all cases that are being tracked by me, we are winning. Not as fast as I would like, but we are winning.

Over on “But HE said it first!”, Crawford mentioned:

Colleges are teaching students that “whiteness must be eliminated”. Granted, they don’t strictly mean white people, but the way they define “whiteness” maps to traditional American values.

I decided that I would see what my Left (and other) friends would say about this. I posted up something on my FB wall, basically asking people why I ought to be embarrassed or upset about being white. I mean, I’m lily white. I have Magyar blood on one side and British on the other. The only thing whiter than me is a Scottish redhead.

Yet I feel no shame over this. I know the media is speaking about how whiteness is some sort of disease we need to get rid of. I don’t see any of my friends saying it, but because of who I am In The Real World [tm], I sort of self select. But I know that a lot of those people read the media that’s presenting this message. So I asked, at noon on Feb 2nd.

And here it is, some 6 days later, and I had a mere handful of responses. Most were of the type to say, “That’s crazy, no one should be saying that.” They all expressed concern over what I was reporting. Because they’re my friends, they all went and checked out the links I sent, and then went off to process what they’d read.

And then there was that one. I’m sure you know the type. Presents as cute, fluffy, innocent… right up until something challenges their world view.

That one wrote a lengthy reply to me, basically saying that if someone had ever accused me of racism, that was obviously my own fault. They couldn’t possibly consider introducing me to people of color after my statements. Apparently, by this person’s commentary, I am responsible for how those OTHER people chose to label me, even though those others don’t know me (and this one person actually does, in person). I was online when it was posted, and went to read it. By the time I tried to reply (about 30 seconds later), the comment had been removed.

I wondered if it was FaceBook, because goodness knows, FB does that sometimes. But nope. Not only was the comment deleted, the person in question felt that my statement required them to unfriend me.

Don’t get me wrong, the person is welcome to unfriend me. After reading what they wrote, I was considering doing the same thing to them. I just found it interesting that they would write something that was victim blaming, and then delete it. I would think they saw the error of their ways, were it not for the unfriending.

So there you have it. I challenged my Left friends as I challenge my Right friends, and got mostly crickets. Those few replies I did get were the type to say, “That’s horrible; I’m not saying that.” I pointed out to them (as I did to people on here) that if they’re standing on the left side of the great divide with those people, then they are literally WITH those people. If they don’t want to be supporting those people, they need to step farther away from them.

I swear it is a Pavlovian reaction by now.  Only the physical threats from the missus stopped me from dumping a couple of hundred on blemished receivers.

According to a CBS poll, 70% of Americans are pessimistic about the state of the country.

A Gallup poll has 80% of Americans pessimistic about the state of the economy.

The labor force participation rate is holding at the lowest it’s been since we started measuring it.

Everything is more expensive and people have lost real buying power from their money.

According to Biden last night, everything is coming up roses and he’s the best President in history.

Social media has “Dark Biden” trending, because apparently Biden is a badass.

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it … And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable…what then?”

Welcome to 1984 2023, where your eyes and your wallet lie to you, and The Party is always right.

From last night’s State of the Union Address:

"Ban assault weapons now! Ban them now! Once and for all."

President Biden acknowledged Brandon Tsay, the 26-year-old who wrestled a gun away from the shooter in Monterey Park, California, and urged Congress to ban assault weapons during #SOTU2023 pic.twitter.com/49V9Iws3A9

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 8, 2023

This on the heels of the pistol brace ban is going to drive everything to a head.

It’s time that the Supreme Court finally tackle the issue of assault weapons and possibly the NFA with it.

After Bruen, I’m confident that such a decision will rule in our favor.

But it’s time to stop beating around the bush and knock this shit out once and for all.

B.L.U.F. Some of the media understands that the NYS CCIA is an overreach that accomplishes nothing.

One of the great stupidities of New York’s current gun-law debate is that existing laws merely required a couple of tweaks for them to prove effective — nowhere more so than in the need for a license-to-carry rule based on objective criteria rather than bias and favoritism.

There are a number of pundits talking about knee-jerk responses by the different states. The states that created a spaghetti bowl of new laws to throw at the wall. The states that created “Kill carry” bills which make it easier to get a CCW but which makes it almost impossible to actually carry anywhere.

The responses are starting to fall into a few categories:

• Sensitive Places
• Good Moral Character
• Prove you are a responsible law abiding citizen
• Expanded training that isn’t available
• Costs increases.
• Attempting to flip who has to prove history and tradition
• That particular thing isn’t covered under the second amendment because it isn’t an “arm” or it is “exceptionally dangerous”

Nobody wants to hear it in the era of “decarceration” and “depolicing,” but one of the major problems facing crime-ridden Democrat-run cities is that many firearms offenses — short of murder — now go largely unpunished: In Philadelphia, 61% of gun cases are dismissed without charges or trial, up from less than 30% as recently as 2016.

Yep, right on target there. If you put the bad guys in jail, they aren’t going to be doing bad things to us.

Of the 4,456 gun arrests NYPD made in 2021, there was at last count one (not a typo!) conviction at trial and far more dismissals (983) than plea deals (698). Statistically speaking, the most likely thing to happen after an arrest for illegally carrying a gun in New York is … nothing.

Imagine that, nearly 4.5 thousand people were arrested in NYC for violating some part of their gun laws in 2021 (pre Bruen) yet only one was taken to trial and convicted.

It is highly likely that the poor saps that did end up being punished after a gun arrest were mostly law abiding, people that caught up by the police because ???.

It reminds me of the stories of construction workers being stopped and frisked. Their pocket knives were found. The cops then did a “flick test” where they attempted to open the knife one handed. If they were able to do so, they worker was jacked up on a weapons violation.

The problem with New York City’s license-to-carry law was never that it was too strict — it was that it was arbitrary and favored the connected. Celebrities such as Steven Seagal and Joan Rivers were issued licenses, but ordinary New Yorkers long found it nearly impossible to get one. This wasn’t a matter of responsible gun ownership — asked in 2003 about the concealed-carry permit he had secured during his mayoral candidacy four decades earlier, William F. Buckley Jr. replied: “I have my pistol permit in my wallet, and no one knows where the gun is.”

The problem with New York City’s license-to-carry law was never that it was too strict — it was that it was arbitrary and favored the connected. Celebrities such as Steven Seagal and Joan Rivers were issued licenses, but ordinary New Yorkers long found it nearly impossible to get one. This wasn’t a matter of responsible gun ownership — asked in 2003 about the concealed-carry permit he had secured during his mayoral candidacy four decades earlier, William F. Buckley Jr. replied: “I have my pistol permit in my wallet, and no one knows where the gun is.”

And here is our words echoed back to us:

The license-holders are not the problem. The criminals are.

A new solution for New York’s gun problems: Enforcement and punishment

As legislators reconsider New York’s concealed weapons laws, more thought should be given to both preventing crime and issuing licenses equitably.