I thought it was AR 15s! Have you guys been lying to us?
Short answer: Yes.
Maybe we should ask for Universal Background check before buying a pool.
And the Liberty Safe boondoggle gets even more interesting.
Although now Liberty Safes has come out with a Mea Culpa and promises over a stack of bibles this crap won’t happen again, something has come up that makes me think they may be fibbing a bit.
Liberty Safe was sold to Monomoy Capital Partners in 2021, a liberal East Coast investment firm. I pulled the FEC reports on the company and found approximately $400,000 over the last 10 cycles of max donations to Democrats like:
Raphael Warnock in GA
John Fetterman in PA… pic.twitter.com/WqnlQpPnrA— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 7, 2023
I need to post a screenshot because details matter.
If you bought a Libert Safe after 2021, your monies probably went to fund not only Liberal democrats but outright support for Gun Control.
I now believe this is no longer a case of some mid-level idiot making a decision beyond his/her scope but a willful assistance by the company to the Federal Two-Tiered Justice System.
Act accordingly.
Hat Tip RobertoEcho
On Musk, X, and the ADL
Starting late last week the topic #BanTheADL ran on Twitter (X).
It’s taken me a while to put into words what I have been feeling about that.
Here it is:
I have made no bones about the fact that I hate what the ADL has become.
If you study politics and bureaucracy, you will learn about two inevitable sets of laws.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, states that, “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”
And
Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics:
- Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
- Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
- The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Jonathan Greenblatt is Pournelle’s Iron Law and Robert Conquest’s second and third laws of politics in human form.
A former Obama aide, he took the ADL from an organization that was non-partisan and focused on cataloging antisemitic incidents into a Progressive Leftist shakedown organization. The ADL consistently downplayed or ignored Leftist antisemitism while turning any Right-Wing foible and mention of George Soros into a Nazi rally.
He borrowed from the Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson school of fundraising and used the threat of accusations of antisemitism to strongarm donations from companies, who would pay for the ADL’s blessing.
Under Greenblatt, the ADL doubled its funding and forgot all about Jews. The ADL wouldn’t say shit about Jews getting beaten up on the streets of NYC by black people but would lecture about the Jewish values of trans-rights and defending drag queen storytime.
The way that the ADL had gone aggressively after conservative Christian groups and bought into the Woke perspective on white privilege and how only whites can be racist, reinforced antisemitic conspiracy theories that the Jews are both anti-Christian and anti-White.
Greenblatt has successfully destroyed both the credibility and the legacy of the ADL.
Elon Musk was the first business leader to push back against them, and technically, nothing he said was wrong.
But…
Have you ever had a fight with your family? You can fight among yourselves, but as soon as an outsider criticizes a family member, that’s out of line.
I feel like criticism of the ADL is exactly that.
If the ADL is to be taken down, it should be us Jews who do it, and nobody else.
The problem is that the alt-Right antisemites have jumped into this frey in the worst way.
For them, the ADL is a stand-in for “all Jews everywhere.”
You will see things like “the noticing” posted. That, is the conspiracy theory that the Jews secretly control everything and are out to destroy White Christian America and the ADL is their watchdog to stop people from noticing what the evil Jews are up to.
Another attack is that the ADL was never a good organization and was founded in disrepute. They say that the ADL was founded to “defend a pedophile rapist Jew.” That is such a perversion of history, but the antisemites have turned it into lore.
In 1913, in Atlanta, Leo Frank was convicted of the murder of factory girl Mary Phagan. The evidence of Frank’s guilt was circumstantial at best, and his conviction was dubious. It involved both a lot of antisemitism and racism in the Deep South. At one point, when the evidence pointed to the black night watchman, the prosecution said that the night watchman couldn’t have done it because blacks were too stupid to plan a complex crime. The Frank trial led to a resurgence of the Klan in Georgia.
He was convicted, but his death sentence was commuted due to the dubious level of the conviction. A mob broke into the jail and lynched Frank. The mob then held a Klan rally.
None of the mob were arrested, prosecuted, or convicted.
This was the basis on which the ADL was founded. But according to the White Supremacist antisemites, the trial was a paragon of American jurisprudence, the ADL lied to get a pedophile rapist let out of jail, and in the most extreme comments, Frank deserved to get lynched.
And since that is what they attribute the ADL to, it will always, to them, be an evil organization, founded in evil, by evil Jews.
And these people have been boosting #BanTheADL.
Consequently, only a small percentage of the people on Twitter pushing this are people who seem to have a legitimate grievance that the ADL is no longer a credible civil rights organization and they should stop being able to influence social media companies, and the larger percentage is antisemites who want to lash out at the Jews and want to destroy any organization that might help Jews.
It’s like if your family is having a fight and all of a sudden a mob comes in to kill the side of your family you’re arguing with.
I want Greenblatt fired, I want the ADL overhauled, and I want a strong, non-partisan organization that will help to protect the Jews.
They just want to destroy us, all of us, and they will start with the ADL.
Those are two different goals. Those people who are also attacking the ADL are not my allies, they are my enemies.
The problem is that Musk doesn’t seem to get that. I don’t think he’s an antisemite, he’s just being oblivious to how the antisemites have latched onto his legitimate grievance for their own purpose.
The whole fucking thing is a terrible shit-show and the Jews with pay mightily for it.
On the Liberty Safe issue
Each of us here at the GFZ has a niche that we get into.
Miguel is our security camera guy. AWA is our digital security guy. I am our physical security guy.
I have been following the Liberty Safe kerfuffle and wanted to give my opinion.
To do this accurately, I’m going to break this down into two separate issues: security and policy.
First, security.
I have a couple of Fort Knox safes. When I bought them, I registered them with Fort Knox. In my paperwork packet is information about how Fort Knox keeps the combination for my S&G mechanical dial lock. If I ever forget my combination, I can provide my serial number, proof of purchase, and other information on a notarized form, or on law enforcement letterhead and they will provide the combination to a licensed locksmith to come and open my safe.
In the event that I die, my inheritors can provide paperwork, including proof that they inherited my safe, and Fort Knox will dispatch a locksmith to open the safe and give them the combination.
Across the board, it seems that every US gun safe manufacturer has a similar system and policy.
When my dad died suddenly, we had to go through all sorts of rigamarole to get access to his bank accounts, credit cards, safety deposit boxes, internet passwords, etc.
A safe is no different. I’ve seen some people say online, “Drill the safe.” That’s stupid.
My safes are very expensive. A safe has value in and of itself, beyond its contents. Once a safe is drilled, it’s dead. It’s been irreparably damaged. My lawful inheritors should be able to open my safe without having to destroy it and its value.
As much digging as I have done online, I have not come across a single incident that involved a criminal opening a safe by getting the combination from the manufacturer.
It’s a ridiculous premise if you think about it. A mechanical lock has a combination. Digital locks apparently have a master override code. I would assume that the master code is specific to the lock and not universal to all the locks of a particular make and model. If your garage door opener has a unique code, so can your safe.
A thief would have to know the location of your safe and get its serial number from inside the safe, and then in an act of identity theft that includes a public notary, request your combination.
As for the storage of that information by the manufacturer, that falls under corporate security, with layers and layers of protection to keep customer records safe.
Your $2,500 Liberty safe from Cabela’s, sitting in your basement in your suburban home, is not going to get targeted to that degree. You have to worry about the local hoodlums with crowbars who want your stuff to sell for drugs.
If your safe is opened with the combination, I can guarantee it’s because you wrote it down somewhere and they found it, or your bitch ex-wife told someone the combination (that was the only verifiable anecdote of a guy who had his safe burglarized with the combination).
The people online who are going nuts over the idea that their safe has a backdoor master code are being paranoid.
Let me draw you this parallel.
When I got my Mustang, it came with one key fob. My fob got damaged and didn’t work anymore. I had to have it towed to the Ford dealership. There, I had to provide my license, registration, proof of insurance, and proof of ownership (car loan documents) so the dealer could contact Ford corporate and with the VIN, order a new key fob that would work with my car.
Imagine if I took my car to Ford and they said, “We don’t keep that information. Those key fobs were the only ones in existence for your car. Your car is effectively totaled, you’ll never get it started again.”
That’s fucking stupid.
And try as I might, I have yet to find an incident of a criminal ordering a new fob for a particular VIN to steal a car. All of the fob thefts I have read about are from people who have lost control of their fob and had it cloned.
Security failures like this are almost never the result of a top-level breach (somebody hacking Ford and getting all the fob codes or hacking Liberty and getting all the master codes), but a low-level breach (writing your password down so you don’t forget it or leaving your key for your other car at home while you go on vacation).
At the end of the day, I have to remind people: You’re not that special, Ocean’s 11 is not going to carry out a multi-level caper involving corporate espionage to make off with your guns.
From a physcial security standpoint, this is not a serious concern for me.
If it is a concern for you, my two recommended options are: buy a used safe with cash so the company record doesn’t have your information, buy a new safe and pay a locksmith to replace the lock so the lock is different than the one in the company record. Then make sure you don’t die without some executor knowing the combination or your inheritors will have to drill your safe.
Second, policy.
This is where Liberty fucked up.
Liberty should have had a policy that says if law enforcement wants the code to a safe, then they have to get a judge to sign a warrant that compels Liberty to provide the code.
Providing the code to law enforcement because they have a warrant to search the homeowner’s home is bad policy.
Unfortunately, Liberty will pay for that.
What I hope to see come out of this is a broad reaction from all US gun safe manufacturers to clarify their policy on the conditions in which they would provide combinations to law enforcement, and that should require a warrant for the combination from the manufacturer.
I hope Liberty recovers, they make good products. It’s important for law-abiding citizens to own gun safes and to lock up their guns to prevent unauthorized access, and having a gun safe company go under Bud Lite style won’t help any of us in the long run.
If there is a silver lining, I look forward to possibly picking up a few used Liberties at pennies on the dollar from the same class of people that poured out all of their Bud Light.
I would
Seen on Facebook Marketplace:
Oh, I abso-fucking-lutely would.
Wife: “Why the fuck did you buy a dump truck bigger than our house.”
Me: “First of all, it’s a haul truck, not a dump truck. Second, this will hold 67 cubic yards. I’ll only have to make one trip to Home Depot for mulch.”
Also, do you have any idea how fucked up it is that a used 100-ton diesel haul truck is worth less than a used 3/4-ton diesel pickup?
New Yorkers learned the lesson of Daniel Penny
https://twitter.com/ViralNewsNYC/status/1698379241866285509?s=19
When you see a crazy homeless man attack someone, you just ignore that shit, because if you intervene, the city will destroy you.
It didn’t matter that everyone on the subway said Daniel Penny was a hero, the city is more interested in protecting its criminal vagrants than its citizens.
New Yorkers learned that lesson well, and nobody stopped an elderly woman from being beaten with a cane for almost three minutes.
Ronald Koons v. Attorney General New Jersey, a fisk
The Attorney General of New Jersey has filed a brief (100 pages!!!!) explaining why New Jersey’s de facto carry ban is actually constitutional.
(1900 words)
Introduction
The Second and Fourteenth Amendments have always coexisted comfortably with a wide range of firearms restrictions. As the record shows, States historically restricted firearms in particularly sensitive places—such as public assemblies, schools and other educational and literary gatherings, ballrooms, shows, fandangos, fairs, and taverns, parks, zoos, in transit, and more. Founding- and Reconstruction-era States likewise long required individuals to obtain consent from private property owners before carrying firearms onto their private lands. And States historically required individuals to make surety payments before carrying firearms in public, and they imposed strict liability regimes to cover the harms of firearms misuse. States have also long imposed fees relating to firearms or permits. And States have consistently sought to ensure that those who could not be trusted to carry a firearm in public will not do so—including by checking their backgrounds.
Given their historical pedigree, the provisions Plaintiffs challenge—Chapter 131’s sensitive-place restrictions, private-property provision, insurance requirement, fees, and character-reference requirement—all satisfy New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111 (2022). After all, Bruen adopted a historically-grounded test: if States originally understood that particular firearms policies were available under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, those policies remain on the table for them today. Yet despite the considerable evidence the State provided in its opening brief, Plaintiffs cannot produce a shred of evidence that anyone anywhere saw any of these laws as unconstitutional. In sharp contrast to the evidence in both Bruen and District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), this record contains no evidence that any court, State, official, or legal commentator viewed any of these historical sensitive-place requirements as unconstitutional. Plaintiffs cite nothing to suggest that any court, State, official, or legal commentator believed individuals had a right to carry firearms on private land without the owner’s consent. Their arguments are also bereft of evidence of any challenges to the historical surety laws or to strict-liability regimes. And Plaintiffs find no decision or even constitutional debate as to historical fees and permitting processes. Instead, the record reveals “no disputes regarding the lawfulness of such prohibitions.” Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2133.
Because Plaintiffs cannot identify contrary evidence, they repeatedly attempt to move the goalposts that Bruen laid out. Plaintiffs repeatedly castigate the State’s historical statutes as measuring “too few” in number, even when the State found eight or even thirty historical predecessor statutes—reasoning that the fact some other States took a different policy approach suggests New Jersey’s modern laws are unconstitutional. But Plaintiffs never explain how their view coheres with our federalist system, in which “the States may perform their role as laboratories for experimentation to devise various solutions where the best solution is far from clear.” United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 581 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). Plaintiffs also diminish the State’s voluminous historical evidence as coming “too late”—even though the antebellum and Reconstruction-era evidence consistently favors the State in this case, and even though Reconstruction-era evidence particularly informs how the States understood the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. Last, Plaintiffs insist sensitive places can only be ones with “comprehensive,” TSA-style security, but the very places that Bruen itself recognized as sensitive (like schools) could not fit the Plaintiffs’ overly-stringent and invented test.
The consequences of this debate are grave. Bruen recognized that the Constitution allows the States to address all manner of “regulatory challenges posed by firearms today.” 142 S.Ct. at 2132. So it adopted a historical and analogical test that allows States flexibility while protecting the constitutional right. Chapter 131 respects that decision, adopting only restrictions that are in line with a centuries-old historical record. Plaintiffs distort Bruen’s measured approach, seeking to impose on New Jersey “a regulatory straightjacket” that limits the State’s ability to protect residents from the scourge of firearms violence—limits that “our ancestors would never have accepted.” Id. at 2133 (quoting Drummond v. Robinson, 9 F.4th 217, 226 (3d Cir. 2021)). This Court should reject Plaintiffs’ arguments.
—ECF No. 108 Ronald Koons v. Attorney General New Jersey, No. 23-1900, slip op. at 1–3 (3d Cir.)