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Gun owners prevail against lawless Harrisburg City

Gun owners have finally prevailed against the lawless and dishonest City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in a case that was first filed in January 2015, and now, over nine years later, has finally reached a conclusion favorable to logic, to the rule of law, and to fealty to the various federal and state constititional clauses enshrining firearms rights as “Shall not be infringed” and “Shall not be questioned.”

The case was originally brought by Kim Stolfer of Firearms Owners Against Crime, against Harrisburg City, as a result of Harrisburg City openly, brazenly, lawlessly disregarding superseding state law when the city passed and implemented a number of anti-gun ordinances.

In Pennsylvania, state law holds that no political subdivision can enact its own gun regulations, for the same reason that no one wants to go to jail for having an abortion that is legal in the township next door, but illegal in your own township, same state, and because no one wants to encounter different driver’s license requirements in East Succotash, PA, than those found in Wild West Philly, PA.  Such a fractured arrangement would be untenable, unsustainable, a legal catastrophe. The law must be unified across the state so that the citizens can live there normally.

And so many years ago, Pennsylvania enacted a pre-emption law that says only the state can pass firearms restrictions, not municipalities. Oh, for lawless leftists this kind of common sense law is a challenge, and of course Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg had to test the citizenry. And they have lost time and again, every time one of these places places an innocent gun owner in handcuffs. As a result, numerous large sum financial judgments have been generously granted to gun owners discriminated against by these lawless political subdivisions over the years.

Think about this: Democrat-run Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh not only wantonly waste taxpayer’s limited dollars by trying to defend the indefensible here in court, they then have to pay out huge awards to aggrieved victims. None of this has to happen, but the mindset of Democrats everywhere seems to be so hell-bent on lawlessness and abusing political opponents.

And we here in Harrisburg are about to begin that financial award phase of our lawsuit, now that it has been successfully decided just days ago, when Judge Andrew Dowling decided that Harrisburg City’s gun ordinances violated state law.

In addition to Kim Stolfer there is another hero here, Attorney Joshua Prince, who has climbed Mount Everest a hundred times over the past nine years in his hard work to keep the city accountable and the rule of law alive. I do not know what the payment arrangement betwen FOAC and Josh Prince is, but I am sure Josh is not getting much more than a few bucks an hour at the present. A financial award commensurate with appropriately smacking down the city’s lawlessness might and hopefully will reset the ledger in favor of Joshua Prince. Josh also maintains a stable of attorneys helping him.

Other people involved in this lawsuit are Kim Stolfer’s successor at FOAC-ILLEA, a dogged and articulate ex-cop named Jim Stoker, a plaintiff named Howard Bullock, who works in the City of Harrisburg, and yours truly, moi, Josh First, who lives in the City of Harrisburg. Part of my sometimes colorful testimony in court last month is highlighted below.

Josh Prince’s blog post today about this important holding is here. The actual court decision is here.

If you are a gun owner, or a freedom lover, or a good government believer, definitely donate some bucks to FOAC-ILLEA. They have earned your support!

Had my day in court

Literally had my day in court yesterday, in the Dauphin County courthouse in Downtown Harrisburg. After nearly ten years of taxpayer-funded expensive stonewalling and dodging and delaying, Harrisburg City’s expensive taxpayer-funded attorneys (Lavery) were forced to actually litigate.

Harrisburg City was forced to actually argue for and explain why it has maintained three patently illegal ordinances on the books for years. At issue are city ordinances that criminalize carrying guns in a public park, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and failing to report a lost or stolen gun.

Each of these ordinances is subject to state pre-emption, because Pennsylvania state law clearly prohibits any political subdivision, like Harrisburg City, from creating its own gun regulations. This is in order to avoid a crazy-quilt pattern of gun laws within a state, where just crossing from one municipality to another, one township to the township next door, with a firearm, could result in an unintentional felony and violent arrest and incarceration. No society can operate like that, whether it’s gun regulations, abortion regulations, car regulations etc.

So, somehow the elected officials of Harrisburg City believed they were above the law, and they passed these illegal city ordinances. A group I belong to FOAC-ILLEA and Firearms Owners Against Crime, filed suit against the city many years ago, to compel the city to remove these illegal ordinances. After all, what is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books? What is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books, and actually spending hundreds of thousands of Harrisburg taxpayer dollars fighting to keep said illegal laws in place?

I will tell you why these ordinances are on the books: Harrisburg City wants to have the threat of these ordinances to use against people the city doesn’t like. People with different political beliefs, maybe the wrong skin color, maybe the wrong religion, you name it, these illegal ordinances can and will be used by city leaders for purely political and punitive purposes.

Even if the city charges someone with these ordinances and eventually loses in court, the city will still have won. Because the criminal process is the punishment. Simply dragging someone through the expensive, scary legal process from being arrested and handcuffed, having their person and home ransacked by police, being jailed, having to get a lawyer, maybe losing your job, is pretty bad punishment. So even if the city eventually loses a criminal prosecution with any of these ordinances, they will have really hurt someone.

And that is the purpose of ALL liberals everywhere, to scare and control and punitively hurt and damage people who disagree with them. Especially gun owning individuals who represent an armed citizenry capable of pushing back against tyrannical government. Like all liberal-run Democrat Party bastions everywhere across America, Harrisburg City desires to control its citizens, not represent them.

And so yesterday we finally got to sit in Judge Andrew Dowling’s court room and have a real, genuine legal offense-defense. It was something out of a Hollywood movie, with real court room drama, an occasionally piqued or openly amused judge, a sharp litigator (Joshua Prince) and a defense attorney who – no lie, no embellishment here – actually bellowed “I am being bushwhacked! This is an ambush!” after the judge reminded him that he was the attorney who said let’s move this trial to this date today.

Being the plaintiff of record from Harrisburg City itself, I had my opportunity to testify from the witness stand. I was cross examined at length, sometimes with real humor, by the defense counsel. I really don’t believe myself to be a “lawbreaker” when I am defying a patently illegal law, and it was nice to see the attorney have to concede that. I also enjoyed recounting how, during the catastrophic flood of 2011, I walked up and down my block and adjoining blocks with a shotgun and a handgun, to deter looters. That raised eyebrows, and led to an interesting line of questioning from the defense counsel and thumbs-up from my fellow plaintiffs.

Other plaintiffs, Howard Bullock, who lives outside Harrisburg City but who works within it, and Jim Stoker, president of FOAC, also took the witness stand, and were also cross-examined. All three of us did well representing our case. And the bushwhacked lawyer who raised ridiculous objection after ridiculous objection, including once to his own statements (the judge kindly reminded him that he was now arguing against himself), was clearly deflated after Judge Dowling said he would issue a decision on this trial.

Nearly ten years of Harrisburg taxpayer gravy train defending the indefensible are about to end for Lavery Law!  And for me, the rule of law is being established, our flag of freedom being firmly planted in a small county court room far from the public eye. Not one news reporter was present, not one City employee, nobody but us freedom fighters, the judge and his staff, and the hapless bushwhacked lawyer.

Once again the forgotten taxpayer is out of sight, out of mind, though a holding of any sort in this case will then raise questions about why Harrisburg City spends hundreds of thousands of rare taxpayer dollars so frivolously and carelessly.

It was a great day for the law and a great day to be in court forcing the law to be upheld by striking illegal laws from the books. Thanks to attorney Joshua Prince for representing the rule of law, and to Judge Dowling for running his court room fairly and often with real humor and sharp observations.

(L to R) Plaintiff Howard Bullock, attorney Joshua Prince, attorney Kevin Fenchak, attorney Dillon Harris, plaintiff Yours Truly Josh First, and plaintiff Jim Stoker of FOAC fame in the Dauphin County courthouse yesterday.

a “Day of Rage” can cut lots of ways

So Hamas leadership has called for a “Muslim Day of Rage” today against Israel, Christians, Jews, gays, and Hindus around the entire world. Their spokesmen have made it explicitly clear that the entire planet and everyone on it is their target, today and the rest of the tomorrows.

I have known many Muslims during my adult life. Some were real friends to me, and they stood firm against the evil call of Islamic imperialism and Islamic supremacy. Probably because they had been westernized by growing up in a pluralistic America. Their vision for themselves was as an equal citizen along with everyone else around them, all of us watching out for each other because none of us were superior to the other. Our equal standing as different individuals before the American law binds us different people, yes, but in a true brotherhood. We need these and other brave Muslims to once again stand up and say to Hamas “You do not speak for me.”

The problem with the silence from pro-equality American and British Muslims is that people living around them then infer that they do support Hamas and genocide. Fear is a toxic poison, and if people become afraid, then they, too, can lash out at those they believe are their enemies. This “Day of Rage” thing can cut a lot of different ways, and the Hamas messaging can stir up a lot of equal or greater reactions in response. If you rub the genie bottle, and the genie comes out, you don’t always get your wishes met. Instead, the genie very often plays tricks on you and turns your wishes upside down.

You are a person who wants a global violent jihad against innocent people? Careful what you wish for, because it could turn and bite you, instead.

It would be really nice to see Western Muslims standing publicly against Hamas and Islamic supremacism and imperialism, and standing for and with those billions of humans who have been declared unclean infidels and had a target painted on them by Hamas and their terroristic brethren. If you tell me that you ask for salaam every day, then this is salaam, and today is the day to show you mean it.

 

 

Post Office is a gun free zone, right? Nope!

Anyone who uses a US Post Office facility is probably aware of the many signs posted against bringing firearms into the premises. The signs show different types of handguns, from the iconic Colt Detective Special .38 Special snubnose, to the old Colt and Smith & Wesson Police revolver, to the Glock semiautomatic. All of these firearm depictions have a red circle and line slash across the firearm image, which is a loud and clear message: No firearms allowed here.

And although I have not researched the recent prosecutions against Americans for breaking this particular gun free zone law, I imagine that when people are prosecuted for it, they are absolutely hammered. Gotta make examples of these kinds of law breakers, is the thinking of the federal bureaucrats in charge of enforcing this law.

Yesterday I was in Uptown Harrisburg’s Post Office, and the man in front of me (there is always a long line at this postal facility) had a semiauto pistol sticking out of his left waist band. He also was speaking simultaneously into three different cell phones. His sideways baseball hat added a real confidence-inspiring impression of him as a law-abiding citizen of upstanding moral character.

The guy standing behind me had a pierced nose and earrings on both ears, but said quietly to anyone who was near enough to hear him “Jesus. Look at this guy. I don’t carry [my pistol] in here because I would get into trouble, and I can’t afford it.”

I concurred with the nose piercing guy, and said in return “I just want everyone else to follow the same laws that I have to follow,” to which nose piercing guy nodded in agreement. He rarely took his eye off the pistol grip sticking out for all in line to see.

When my turn to send the certified mail envelope came, I asked the teller/ clerk if she had seen the pistol out in plain view. “No I did not see it. And I am not a police officer,” she said.

And thus we have a prime example of how “Gun Free Zones” are total bullschiff. The only people who obey them are people like me, who do not break the law and who are afraid to break the law. The consequences of me and other good people breaking the law and getting in trouble would be catastrophic to our lives, to my life. So I was standing there, completely unarmed and defenseless against an obvious criminal flaunting his illegal firearm in a “Gun Free Zone.”

The only people who promote “Gun Free Zones” are those who actually want law-abiding citizens to cower in fear from law-breakers and aggressive criminals. As we saw in Biden’s crazy ‘F-15 versus AR-15’ speech last week, beating down and subjugating the good people in America is the goal of one political party. Apparently we good people are the threat to that political party, while violent criminals are not.

“Gun Free Zones” are BS, they mean nothing, no one enforces them against the bad people who violate them. They are meant just to limit the good law-abiding people who need guns for self protection against criminals.

Just say No to “Gun Free Zones.”

Conoy Township in Lancaster County is not a gun free zone, and it is an exceptionally safe place.

Roe v. Wade was never about abortion

Like so many other far-reaching court decisions, or laws, or executive orders emanating from Washington, DC, Roe v. Wade was originally cast publicly as something it actually wasn’t.

Yes, on its face Roe v. Wade was about abortion, the termination of human life while still inside the mother’s body. But in fact, the way the court’s decision was structured, it was the exuberantly creative legal theory behind the Roe decision that was most important. And it was that legal theory that laid the ground work for so much of the openly political activist behavior we see emanating from way too many judges and federal bureaucrats across America.

Roe v. Wade was decided within a time of great social turmoil and cultural change, and a lot of the contemporaneous political activism pressure from the Left is visible in Roe. Especially the twin evil sisters of moral relativism and intellectual relativism. One example is the in-artfully creative use of the word “penumbra,” a sort of shadowy shadow that reputedly lay over so many different amendments to the US Constitution that clearly listing them all was just too tiring to Roe’s authors. Yes, the Court majority invoked aspects of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and went on to stitch together a pseudo- logical framework for legal decision (then using the 14th Amendment) making that is still with us today.

Vagueness as a reason for heavy handed policy is now the Left’s standard. “Because we told you to do it” is the way that is spelled out.

Every professor who taught me constitutional law was a liberal, and every single time any one of them delved into Roe, a smirk was on their face. Lots of eye rolling and chuckling accompanied these professors’ analysis of the poor legal reasoning behind the decision. Which meant to me then, and even more so now, that no one with real constitutional law training believed Roe was a legitimate legal decision based on actual logic, law, and fundamental constitutional principles. Rather, all the liberals who exulted in Roe did so because it backdoor-attained a policy goal they could not achieve through the legislative process, and because it established a mush-headed standard for all future legal decisions.

So today, some fifty years after Roe v. Wade-type legal analysis has wafted its way throughout the legal profession, the courts, and the bureaucracy, we see the ultimate and inevitable result of such a “creative” legal approach: Although the Second Amendment says crystal clearly that citizens may both keep and publicly bear firearms, and that this right shall not be infringed, a zillion policy makers and courts blatantly ignore 2A’s plain wording and just start throwing anti-gun policy ideas into the pot. These judges give no respect to what the Constitution actually says; rather, they use their court rooms purely for writing policies that fit their political views. Same goes for ATF bureaucrats.

I blame Roe v. Wade for where our court system is now. And where it is now is not just political policy shops in black robes, but we have defiant leftist activists in black robes, who simply ignore the Supreme Court’s precedents and make their own damned ruling. Even if their damned ruling is totally contrary to a US Supreme Court decision from just weeks or months ago. This approach is junk law, and it calls into question the entire field of jurisprudence. It highlights in just one more way how the Left is hell bent for leather to implement its political policy goals, at whatever cost to America’s legal and cultural fabric.

In case you don’t know it, when a lower court openly defies the Supreme Court, the entire court system is thrown out the window. We then have nothing but anarchy.

So, when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two weeks ago, it was not surprising to see the Left melt down, as if their ability to kill babies had in fact been fully deprived of them. After all, when a person sees every branch of government as nothing more than a policy shop devoid of logical process, then everything becomes about winning or losing the policy war. Here the Left feels they have lost, when in fact, all this recent Court decision did was turn the issue over to the various states (No, Barack, there are not 57 states). Where actual voters get to choose how they want their state government to address what should be a sensitive subject.

(The same 1960s and 1970s people who had just protested against American soldiers as “baby killers” in Vietnam then became the biggest champions of killing babies…go figure).

To its proponents and supporters, Roe v. Wade was never really about abortion or babies, it was about introducing a weak-minded, unprincipled, grab-what-you-can “by any means necessary” approach to forming government policy. And in fact one of the main reasons I left my US EPA policy job in Washington, DC, was because I personally witnessed many regulations and rules being formed exactly this way, where (liberal/ Left) agency staff would literally just imagine a bunch of shit and put it in the regulation or rule. Justified or no, or extra cost to industry and consumers be damned. It is a terrible way to run representative government. But it is the way that Roe taught liberals and Leftists to think about government.

As a proponent of good government, where transparency and accountability are everyday occurrences for the taxpayers, I am glad that Roe is gone. Now the politically difficult part of democracy is upon all of us: Figuring out how many babies people can kill, when, and where. Based on my principles, I would expect this democratic process to follow a certain logic path. But we are not dealing with principles here, but rather a passion on the Left for absolute control. And they don’t like losing control. Or thinking hard. Or debating issues with evidence and cross-examination and due process.

Should be interesting going forward.

 

Matthew McConaughey = Hollywood Idiot #1,367,189

So an actor named Matthew McConaughey has stepped into the freedom debate, advocating for stripping law-abiding citizens of our Constitutional rights because of what certainly appears to be a remarkably well funded and coordinated attack on the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school.

None of what McConaughey advocates for would have stopped the attack, although “hardening” the school would have easily defeated the mysterious gunman. McConaughey did not advocate for hardening public schools. He wants American gun owners to be at the mercy of unaccountable bureaucrats and vindictive neighbors who disagree with private gun ownership, period.

Why the hell does any American in their right mind care what this actor guy says? McConaughey is a paid actor, someone who engages in silly dress-up and make-believe fairy tales for a living. This ain’t rocket science stuff, it is childish. McConaughey is just one more idiot from Hollywood, whose forte is definitely not public policy. And we all know that lawless, goofball, doped up, Marxist Hollywood has been at war with a Constitutional America for fifty years, in any case. So of course people from Hollywood will come up with all kinds of ridiculous policy ideas like McConaughey has.

I for one do not care about McConaughey’s opinions, nor do I care for his acting. Actors are a dime a dozen, generally unimpressive to seriously failed as individuals, and they depend upon the support of their audience to make the ridiculous millions of dollars they get for simply fooling around in front of a camera.

McConaughey has definitely lost a lot of his audience with his publicity stunt. But then again, he probably already has so much money in the bank from ticket-buying gun owners while he has play-acted being a violent gun owner in his movies that he doesn’t have to work for a living.

If only some Hollywood script writer would write this whole farce up into a movie…it would probably make a lot of money as a macabre comedy.

A Uvalde Memorial Day weekend

In the spirit of this Memorial Day weekend, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the 19 child students and two teachers sacrificed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, last week, to advance the Democrat Party’s pursuit of absolute and total control over every American.

No deaths are ever too many in the Democrat Party’s pursuit of the latest bloody crisis they can leverage into illgotten political gains. From late-term abortions where the living child is literally euthanized after having been born, to innocent school children gunned down in defunded police-free schools, the Democrat Party stands proudly for one thing: Death to children every day. Because God knows, the Democrat Party must always have a crisis to exploit to help them move otherwise unpopular and poorly considered legislation, and no sacrifice for that is too big or too sad.

We must also acknowledge the importance here of the Child Molesting and Pedophile Groomers’ Lobby, aka the National Education Association and its many state and local affiliate teachers’ unions. They, too, wish to exert unchallenged control over all taxpayer-funded government schools, where they exploit small children in psychopathic social experiments pitting the kids against their loving, devoted parents. Nothing happens in public schools without the teachers’ unions lobby say-so, and so their well considered decision to leave public schools as vulnerable soft targets is implemented everywhere across America. They can’t have their bloody crises without the soft targets inviting them.

The teachers’ unions are A-OK with sacrificing children and even some teachers to move their political football down the field. Recall that a great many of the teachers and politicians and basketball coaches demanding gun confiscation today are the very same people who demanded that local police forces be defunded and also stay the hell out of schools yesterday.

Yes, it is true that these teachers’ unions and their political allies speak out of both sides of their mouths, but what is the point of being logical and reasonable when your end goal is the total collapse of American civilization?

We have learned some disturbing facts about the Uvalde massacre over the past few days: A teacher propped open a door that cross-dressing murderer Salvador Ramos then walked through unopposed, after he had spent TWELVE MINUTES shooting his guns at the school building with no apparent return fire or police response. He must have realized that the school was undefended and also welcoming to mass murderers, and so he literally waltzed in.

And apparently the law enforcement officials who did eventually respond milled about outside for an hour like a bunch of scared school girls, and not like the trained burly men with firearms they actually are. What a bunch of cowards. And then these same cowardly law enforcement officials turned their violent attention onto the terrified parents they were blocking from the school, tasing one father and handcuffing a mother.

In other words, the police at Uvalde were too busy “saving” the parents outside to go inside the school to actually intervene and save the kids from Ramos.

You can’t make this stuff up, but a lot of this failure has to be associated with the Democrat Party’s efforts to defund and defang the police across America. As a result, a lot of police everywhere these days feel confused and uncertain about what they are supposed to do, and how much trouble they will get into with angry Democrats if they actually shoot a child murderer dripping blood from his hands. Because a heroic police officer to you and me is always a cold blooded murderer to the Democrat Party….

Gun confiscation from law abiding citizens is the Democrat Party’s goal here, for the simple reason that an armed populace is impossible to rule over the way that the Democrat Party intends. So, what’s a few sacrifices here and there in the pursuit of absolute and total control of all 350 million Americans?

Those of us inclined to think of and memorialize bloody American sacrifice differently than this cynical Democrat ploy can recall that our Memorial Day tomorrow is not just about those military personnel who gave their lives abroad for our freedom here at home. We also recall that in our own War for Independence, many unarmed heroes gave their lives right here on American soil so that future generations might live in freedom from government.

And this is how I prefer to think of the Uvalde kids and teachers now, as domestic heroes whose sacrifice will not have been in vain. Because so many Americans are catching on now to the Democrat Party’s anarchic lawlessness, and they see through their calls for more government control over our law-abiding lives.

 

True spirit of an American president

What follows below is the real spirit of the true American president and every true American citizen. Not a corrupt Marxist thief who stole the would-be elected position through vote fraud and now seeks to coerce free American citizens to become feudal serfs under the thumb of tyrannical government bureaucrats, but a freedom-loving, citizen-loving, Constitution-loving American through-and-through.

An order of April 6, 1779, issued in Boston and now preserved in the Emmet Collection of the New York Public Library (also on display in Morristown, New Jersey), describes in detail the required arms and accouterments of that day (1779) for America citizens. Its spelling is of that time:

To Shrimpton Hutchinson Esq.
SIR,

You are hereby ordered and directed, to compleat yourself with ARMS and Accoutrements, by the 12th Instant, upon failure thereof, you are liable to a FINE of THREE POUNDS; and for every Sixty Days after, a FINE OF SIX POUNDS, agreable to Law.

Articles of Equipment,

A good Fire-Arm, with a Steel or Iron Ram-Rod, and a Spring to retain the same, a Worm, Priming wire and Brash, and a Bayonet fitted to your GUN, a Scabbard and Belt therefor, and a Cutting Sword, or a Tomahawk or Hatchet, a Poach containing a Cartridge Box, that will hold fifteen Rounds of Cartridges at least, a hundred Buck Shot, a Jack-Knife and Tow for Wadding, six Flints, one pound powder, forty Leaden Balls fitted to your GUN, a Knapsack and Blanket a Canteen or Wooden Bottle sufficient to hold one Quart.

In other words, our American citizen, Shrimpton Hutchinson [fabulous name!], Esq., was commanded by his government to prepare for war against enemies both foreign (British Redcoats) and domestic (anti-freedom, anti-America Tories/Royalists/Loyalists), by assembling his own personal war-making weapons and equipment. Notably a military-grade firearm and all of its necessities, plus what we would today call hiking and camping gear for Mister Hutchinson’s time afield as a citizen soldier.

This fierce founding spirit, strong among those who first created America, in its general sense and in its particular military-grade gear requirement, is still alive among those Americans who do not take our freedoms or founding principles for granted. We who embody this spirit today know that tyranny is always just one generation away, because unfortunately, a proportion of humans are always power-crazed control freaks, who will not rest until they have every person under their thumb and absolute control. It is just the nature of some people to be bad this way, and it is therefore the duty of freedom-loving people to reject and sometimes legally or even physically repel those bad people.

In this vein, several months ago, Pennsylvania attorney Josh Prince won a significant lawsuit about the ownership and use of private firearms here in Harrisburg, with implications for holding over-reaching, anti-freedom government bureaucrats accountable across the entire Commonwealth. In a nutshell, the Court held that Pennsylvania’s firearm pre-emption law means exactly what it says, which is that local municipalities cannot create a 2,500-municipality crazy patchwork of firearm regulations here, any more than local municipalities can create such a patchwork of abortion regulations or approved books regulations etc.

I am the Harrisburg City plaintiff in this lawsuit, brought and paid for by Firearm Owners Against Crime, a group of which I am a life member. Although I am not presently bearing arms against tyrants like our patriot friend Shrimpton Hutchinson in 1779, I am part of the ongoing legal contest to preserve the basic rights of free American citizens to own and bear military-grade firearms for our own self-preservation.

The irony of this is that I actually do not like or enjoy military-grade firearms. My greatest personal enjoyment and use of firearms is the old muzzle loaders and black powder cartridge sporting firearms of the 1770s through about 1910. It is that spirit of free choice you have between one firearm and another that I defend and promote.

Hopefully soon, America will have a person in the Oval Office worthy of being called President (and not President* or pResident), a person in and on whom the spirit of our founding principles sits deeply. A person who not only trusts his fellow citizens with military grade firearms, and who sees America as a government Of, By and For The People, but as in 1779 he demands that they personally keep and own such firearms at home and on their person, to be prepared always to use them in defense of America.

The spirit of America – a worker leaving his office while preparing to repel lawless tyrants. This is where your freedom comes from

This election map says it all

If you are shocked at how easily the 2020 election was stolen from the legal voters of America, then take heart. Two can play that game, and IF the Republican Party will only gain its nerve and assert itself half as hard as the Democrat Party, the tables can be turned.

After 300 Democrat Party lawsuits nationwide right before the 2020 election in dozens of states attempting to overturn established election laws, and about a dozen broad daylight unilateral and illegal usurpation of election law jurisdiction and plain-as-day constitutional limits by secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and other states that allowed unsupervised absentee ballots, ballot harvesting, delayed voting until the “right number” of votes are found, and a bunch of other non-transparent “voting” techniques that are all designed to steal elections, it is time for conservatives to quit whining and get with that program.

If you are in a lacrosse or hockey match, and one team is just high-sticking and high elbows right and left and beating the crap out of your team, and scoring on your team as a result, and the referees are not calling the illegal hits, then play the game to the referees. Play to the standard the referees are playing at, not to self-imposed rules that make you “better people” than the other team.

There is no need to be a martyr and to lose the entire game or match because you would not lower yourself to play (cheat) like the other team did. Forget that, play to win! Do whatever it takes, whatever the other team is doing, to win. That is fair. What is unfair is what happened in November 2020, where one political party changed all the rules at the last second, spammed the voting system in a bunch of swing states, and stole the election in a mass of vote fraud, and is now trying to shut down investigations into the obvious fraud.

If the 2020 election was fraud-free and clear, why is one political party doing its utmost to stop transparency into the voting process? In Arizona, the entire Democrat political party is seething around the Maricopa County vote recount, trying to stop it through legal channels, and also to infiltrate it and cloud its legitimacy.

And so, if you look at the map below, you will see that America is almost entirely red. That is, America is almost entirely conservative, patriotic, Constitutional, committed to the rule-of-law etc. Even in supposedly “blue” states like Virginia, Oregon, Washington State, and New York, the number of red voting districts far outnumber the blue ones.

This means that if the red voting districts have the same 150% voter turnout that the blue voting districts had in the 2020 election, and that 97% of that 150% voter turnout goes to the Republican candidates, then the Republican Party should win handily just about everywhere. Even in states that supposedly have a Democrat Party voter edge. And especially in the swing states that so magically had Democrat Party-dominated cities vote at about 150% voter turnout in November 2020.

This would not be cheating, per se, it would simply be following the lead of the Democrat Party and doing just as they do. Everyone following the same rules of the game, the same referees.

And it means that when some federal investigators show up to view that 150% voter turnout, your county sheriff and dozens or hundreds of deputies not only physically stop the investigators from viewing the ballots, they arrest them for attempted vote tampering themselves. Holding a couple dozen communist anti-America federal employees without bail in East Succotash County Jail for a few months will probably send a strong message to communist-occupied Washington, DC, that our votes will not be stolen or rigged. The only unknown here is whether or not the Republican Party actually wants to win elections, or are they happy to be the powerless perpetual minority?

If every red voting district nationwide has the same 150% voter turnout that the Democrat Party claimed in many swing state cities, the Republican Party should do great in the 2022 election.

 

Will the US Supreme Court go rogue in the Corlett decision?

The US Supreme Court says it will hear arguments in a major Second Amendment (gun rights) case brought by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (Corlett, docket number 20-843) against the State of New York.

These two opponents are now met in legal battle, and the US Supreme Court is the final battlefield upon which the outcome will be legally determined. Legal being a kind of tenuous word these days, as all kinds of government agencies have taxpayer-paid staff who now illegally behave any damned way they want, with no legal accountability. The illegal behavior of the “public servants” raises the question whether the official decisions the various government agencies are then issuing are actually legal, and whether or not citizens should give a fig about them.

The case facts (the policy question) of Corlett are right out of the Constitution’s Second Amendment: The right to keep and BEAR arms. New York State says no, citizens have no intrinsic or Constitutional right to carry concealed or unconcealed firearms outside of their homes, without the state’s approval. And thus has New York State made getting a concealed carry license very difficult, and the penalties for law-abiding citizens who do carry without a license extremely harsh.

As you might guess, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association believes the opposite. They contend the plain meaning of the Second Amendment means what it says: To bear arms is to carry them in public, while the keep arms part is about having guns in your home. No license or government approval beyond what the Second Amendment says is necessary to keep or bear firearms, nor is government interference in such an individual Constitutional right lawful.

Moreover, they point out that the public policy question is on their side, because concealed carry permit holders are overwhelmingly law-abiding and safe. It does stand to reason that the people who go through the government red tape rigmarole presently needed to get a carry license are people who innately believe in following the law, in contrast to gang members and other urban scourges who carry and use guns illegally as part and parcel of their daily living. Therefore, New York’s stated purpose of limiting carry licenses for public safety and crime reduction is not only meaningless, because the current policy fails on both counts, it is actually having the opposite result. States with liberal concealed carry laws have seen a greatly reduced amount of violent crime, because would-be criminals understand they may encounter deadly force in response to their criminal behavior.

Many gun owners are excited about this case, after so many years of the Court declining to hear appeals of lower court decisions that were completely contrary to the Heller and MacDonald holdings (which were both strongly in keeping with the plain language of the Second Amendment’s very broad guarantee of individual gun rights). Well, hold your horses, people. The US Supreme Court has declined all kinds of appeals of lower court infringements of not just 2A, but what are in essence complete overturns of Heller and MacDonald precedents. The Supreme Court majority has allowed these lawless lower court decisions to stand. When the Court declined to hear appeals of lower court decisions on gun rights that were contrary to established Supreme Court precedent, the Court was more or less agreeing with the lower courts. The result has been a slow chiseling away of Constitutional Second Amendment rights by political activists sitting on lower courts, a slow erosion of the Supreme Court’s standing among and relevance to the citizenry, and a very clear message to Constitutionalists from all the courts: Do not hold hope for the American court system to protect individual American civil rights.

America’s court system is just as politicized and dysfunctional as the rest of our federal government. This is due to the divergent natures of the two types of people inhabiting our courts: Leftist activists for whom the law means nothing but a randomly opportunistic pathway to implement socialism and tyranny, and moderates who cannot be troubled to make a stand on hardly anything at all. So the moderates get swept away by the anti-law socialists. The Supreme Court is subject to these same forces.

Think about how America is still in the aftermath of the Court declining to hear enormously important cases about how some state administrative agencies (Pennsylvania’s Department of State being one) had unilaterally and illegally changed their state election laws right before the 2020 election, bypassing their own state constitutions and laws. And yesterday the Court sided 6-3 with a criminal illegal alien who fought his deportation on the grounds that the US Government had failed to give him “sufficient notice.”

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

If you are a convicted criminal illegal alien, the US Government and the citizen taxpayers empowering it owe you nothing but a swift kick in the ass on your way out of America.

To be blunt: Because the Supreme Court allowed the 2020 election to be stolen, and would not even hear the monumental legal and policy issues raised during the steal, why would any of us believe they will stand in the way of the government trying to steal our guns?

If any particular official government entity or group of individuals is responsible for the destruction of America’s rule of law, it is the Supreme Court. No wonder fewer and fewer Americans have confidence in or loyalty to this failed government entity.

So, if you are one of the people salivating over the prospect of the Court hereby upholding the Second Amendment rights of the citizen serf in Corlett, you are DREAMING. Do not raise your own or anyone else’s expectations about the Supreme Court now swooping in to set things right on the Second Amendment. If anything, we should be prepared for this lawless body packed with leftist activists and cowards, with just a couple of loyal patriots (the two Constitutionalists Thomas and Alito), to throw the Second Amendment overboard. If anything, we should be raising people’s preparation levels for defending our 2A rights by all means necessary. The US Supreme Court has gone rogue and no American should look to the compromised traitors in it to provide any relief to USA citizens.

So come what may, regardless of what will be the Supreme Court’s latest decision on the Second Amendment, New York State citizens may yet determine on their own what they believe their individual rights to be, and also what the limits are on government interference in the private lives and rights of citizens. After all, both government and these various courts were established to resolve differences in favor of citizen rights that are already very clearly spelled out in our founding documents, including in New York’s own constitution. All of America’s founding documents were written and established to limit government and to elevate the citizen over government, a situation now being reversed in a nationwide atmosphere of autocratic government totalitarianism. New York State being an Exhibit A. Which the Supreme Court may well reinforce in its Corlett decision.

New York citizens may choose to protect themselves as they see fit, perhaps with a concealed handgun minus the license part. Obviously this is presently at some risk to a person’s liberty, due to New York’s anti-Constitution state administration.

And this raises the bigger question here: Will enough Americans rise up and re-assert our collective ownership of this thing called government, which has gone totally rogue and turned against us, the citizen taxpayers? Unfortunately, blood is probably going to flow in answering this question. We freedom loving citizens are being attacked and damaged by anti-freedom people who want full control of everyone and every decision we make. Human history demonstrates that only brute force can determine who prevails in these kinds of contests.

UPDATE: Reading the Washington Post assessment of this case provides insight into the minds of tyrants. The Washington Post wonders aloud what will happen if the Court is “too broad” in its reading of what can only be plainly read as a very broad individual right to keep and bear firearms. As a mouthpiece for the radical Left, the Washington Post sends public messages from elected officials to everyone else, and so they wonder if a “too broad” interpretation of the Second Amendment will result in the Court being “overhauled” by the Democrat Party with an increase in the number of leftist activist justices sitting on the bench. You can’t make this stuff up, and they are proudly stating up front that if the Left does not get what it wants, which is official tyranny via the Supreme Court, then they will artificially install a new Supreme Court that will give them the policy outcome they want, democracy be damned. When people use democratic processes to achieve non-democratic results, you are dealing with pure evil. Well, what am I saying…these people stole the 2020 election in broad daylight, so what else should be expected? My advice: Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves!

UPDATE May 2nd, 2021: The Supreme Court discredits itself yet again. The Court has declined to hear one of the most salient lawsuits of our time, that brought by Laura Loomer, whose weighty complaint to the Court was that the Big Tech digital media are illegal monopolies who illegally discriminate against Americans, and thereby violate citizens’ First Amendment free speech rights. Loomer being the Exhibit A of the moment. And we all know an awful lot of “cancel culture” discrimination by Big Tech has been going on the past  twelve months, affecting at least a third of the American citizenry, and you would think a reasonable Supreme Court would want to weigh in on this problem. But no, the Supreme Court continues to behave disgracefully and kick away the sniveling little wretches who keep showing up at the carriage door begging for some relief from their oppression.

This Court is daily diminishing its own usefulness and relevance to the American People, and the only answer why this is, is that the Court’s majority no longer sees themselves as part of the American republic or as guardians of the Constitution that holds the republic together.

If not us, We, The People, then who the hell is the Supreme Court working for? I think the Corlett case is going to demonstrate exactly who the Supreme Court is protecting and promoting these days: Tyrannical Big Government. I hope I am wrong, but looking at all these decisions the Court is making, including Loomer’s case, it is clear the US Supreme Court is AWOL.

Don’t you go and feel all alone if the Court’s anti-Constitution behavior leaves you thinking their decisions no longer have a binding effect on you. The Court is clearly now made of tyrants, and tyranny has no role or place on American soil, and they have no claim on the allegiance of the American citizen, much less our obedience.