Archive for the ‘Second Amendment’ Category

Perhaps the more accurate title of this post should be ‘When will Leftists protest these civil rights’? FIRE’s Susan Kruth’s article on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s revised regulations outlines changes to Obama administration’s anti-due process regulations.

Let’s be clear. The Obama administration’s Education Department was anti-civil rights. When it came to dealing with alleged sexual assault on campus, the Obama administration’s Education Department “encouraged schools to have a single investigator adjudicate sexual misconduct cases through a series of separate meetings with the parties and witnesses.” By contrast, the DeVos-proposed regulations pertaining to alleged sexual assault “requires that schools ‘must provide for a live hearing’ when adjudicating a case.”

In other words, universities must allow a cross-examination of the accuser. Nameless, faceless accusers won’t have their ‘day in court’. Kruth continues with this:

Having a live hearing ensures that all parties can see exactly the same evidence and testimony that the fact-finder is seeing, so that he or she can rebut that evidence and testimony as fully as he or she is able.

The department’s new rules go on to require a typical and critically important feature of live hearings: cross-examination of all witnesses, including the parties. The Supreme Court has called cross-examination the “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth,” and it can be especially paramount in cases that hinge on witness testimony, as the Sixth Circuit emphasized just two months ago.

How an administration that swore an oath to uphold the Constitution can deprive people of this basic civil right is startling. Further, it’s time to admit that leftist Democrats are now fascists and/or anarchists. IF you think I’m kidding, check out Eric Swalwell’s proposal:

In a USA Today op-ed entitled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons “would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”

Look at the mental gymnastics Rep. Swalwell employs to justify this confiscation:

You’re probably wondering what gun confiscation has to do with due process rights. That’s a fair question. They’re both part of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The right to keep and bear arms is a sacred right. I prefer referring to it as the right to protect myself and my family. It’s a natural right. The Supreme Court has called the right to due process and to confront your accuser the “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”

It isn’t supposition to say that Democrats have opposed the right to protect yourself and your family from burglars and criminals as vigorously as they’ve opposed the right of people to cross-examine their accusers. What other constitutional rights do Democrats want to sacrifice on the altar of political correctness?

According to this article, House Democrats unveiled their agenda for the first 100 days of the 116th Congress. According to the article, the “Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, promises that the first bill voted on by the new Congress will focus on campaign finance and ethics reforms. According to news accounts, H.R. 1 would, among other things, establish automatic voter registration and “reinvigorate” the Voting Rights Act.”

Further, House Democrats want to overwhelm Republicans by pushing “public financing of congressional campaigns, with a 6-to-1 government match on small dollar donations.” Democrats will certainly define small dollar donations to their advantage.

The reason they’ll do that is because, according to Tucker Carlson’s op-ed, when “a Republican wins an election, it’s fine to question the legitimacy of the process. Democrats have been doing since the days Trump was elected two years ago. That’s patriotic. It’s your duty. But when the Democratic Party’s power is at stake, raising questions about the process is wrong. Indeed it’s nothing less than the road to dictatorship.”

It’s worse than that. Here’s Howard Dean talking about this topic:

In other words, in 2018, Dean vehemently insisted that the nation was in a fight of “good vs. evil” while being convinced that “we’re the good” and that Republicans were the evil. That’s literally what he said a couple weeks ago. That isn’t the first time he’s made that statement. When he was DNC Chair in 2005, he said this:

And concluding his backyard speech with a litany of Democratic values, he added: “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”

Think about that a second. In 2005, Howard Dean thought that George W. Bush was a hardcore conservative who was a religious extremist. Now, he’s insisting that President Trump is an extremist who thinks that the US-Mexican border should be protected.

What’s funny is that Democrats think that’s immoral. That puts the Democrats on the opposite side of the Founding Fathers. In Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution, Congress is authorized to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” It doesn’t say that Mexicans and Central Americans will “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” in consultation with Congress.

BTW, Democrats insist that the mobile mob making its way through Mexico isn’t an invasion. Here’s the official definition of invasion:

entrance as if to take possession or overrun:
infringement by intrusion.

CNN and Jim Acosta need better dictionaries. More importantly, Democrats need to start telling the whole truth more often:

Gun control was not a big issue in the midterm campaign, despite promises by gun control advocates to make it a centerpiece of the elections in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. The issue “evaporated during the final weeks of the election in all but very safe liberal districts,” noted Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner. “But now that the Democrats have won the House,” Bedard notes, “leaders feel emboldened to raise calls for expanded background checks and an assault weapon ban.”

Gun control advocates tout the fact that 15 House Republicans with “A” ratings from the NRA lost their elections. But gun control advocates lost seats in the Senate. That includes Joseph Donnelly, who lost his bid in Indiana. Pro-gun rights Josh Hawley unseated Claire McCaskill in Missouri. According to the NRA, candidates backed by gun rights group won 106 races, and lost 33 despite being outspent by gun control supporters. This was not the groundswell of support for gun control laws that advocates promised.

These items might gather majority support in polls but they don’t excite people. If Democrats pass tax increases in the House and the economy falters after that, they’ll rightly get blamed. If the Democrats focus on investigations, gun control and campaign finance reform instead of focusing on keeping the economy going strong, they’ll deserve the blame they’ll get.

Briana Bierschbach’s article for MPR is a nice run-down of the DFL’s ‘Dumpster Fire Day’. The article opens by saying “At the end of filings Tuesday, Minnesota Democrats were facing a six-way primary for attorney general in August, a sudden eight-way intraparty battle for U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison’s seat, and an unexpected, three-way primary for the open governor’s seat. It was all part of what was described by some Democrats and Republicans as a “dumpster fire” day for Minnesota’s DFL Party. And it had plenty of people wondering: What does this mean for Minnesota Democrats in such a pivotal election year?”

Saying that the DFL isn’t united is understatement. This is the fight that Ken Martin has tried avoiding the past 5 years. In the DFL gubernatorial primary, it pits the Iron Range against Twin Cities environmentalists. When that primary ends, will the DFL be able to unite? That’s far from a foregone conclusion.

This paragraph jumped out at me:

Three-term Attorney General Lori Swanson went into the party’s convention Saturday seeking the endorsement for her job, but newcomer Pelikan ran to her left and was a close second to her on the first ballot. Swanson unexpectedly dropped out of that endorsing contest and instead moved on to run in the governor’s primary, setting off the mass of filings Tuesday.

What’s important is what’s missing. What’s missing is the fact that Matt Pelikan outed his opponent as having an A rating from the NRA. Within 15 minutes of that bomb getting dropped, Swanson had dropped out of the endorsement fight.

Broton worries that the DFL candidates it will hurt most are those in races not facing primaries but are top-tier targets in November. That includes the 1st congressional district, which is open after U.S. Rep. Tim Walz decided to seek the governor’s office, and the 2nd and 3rd Congressional Districts in the suburbs. “My fear is that this will actually hurt [2nd District candidate] Angie Craig and [1st District candidate] Dan Feehan,” he said. “These other races that are really competitive and they need the resources in the fall.”

Broton is right. These primaries eat up lots of resources. That won’t help Craig or Feehan. Still, that’s just one of the DFL’s problems.

The fact that the DFL is openly hostile to the Second Amendment is cause for GOP celebration. It won’t DFL candidates in the Twin Cities much to oppose the Second Amendment. In outstate Minnesota, that’s a different story. DFL legislative candidates campaigning in outstate Minnesota should wear flack jackets if they oppose the Second Amendment.

The DFL isn’t the semi-sane party that it used to be. They’re crazy. That’s why they’ll do poorly in outstate Minnesota.

I don’t know why I used the question mark in the title but it’s there and I’m too lazy to change it this morning. But I digress. The point of this post is to highlight the DFL’s gubernatorial ticket’s utter hostility towards legal gun owners. This morning, the Gun Owners Caucus issued a fact sheet on the ‘Erin Squared’ ticket vis a vis gun control.

It started by saying “The battle lines couldn’t be more clear. This weekend, at their convention in Rochester, the DFL endorsed the most extreme anti-gun ticket we’ve seen in Minnesota. DFL-endorsed Governor candidate Erin Murphy, an anti-gun State Representative who is proud of her “F” rating from the NRA and the Caucus. She’s been hostile to gun owners from her very first term.”

It went downhill from there, which might lead people to wonder how it can go downhill from an F rating. Here’s how:

DFL-endorsed Lt. Governor candidate Erin Maye Quade, also an anti-gun State Representative who signed onto Linda Slocum’s egregious HF 3022 gun ban bill earlier this year only to later withdrawal calling it a clerical mistake. Her spouse is a former full-time employee at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun Everytown activist organization.

Nothing says the DFL hates law-abiding gun owners better than an all-Metro, gun-hating ticket at the top of the ballot.

It still drops off from there:

DFL-endorsed Attorney General candidate Matt Peliken, an anti-gun attorney who has called for complete bans on many semi-automatic firearms under the guise of ‘gun safety’ legislation. He was introduced at the convention by the leader of the state-based anti-gun organization Protect Minnesota, Rev. Nancy Nord Bence.

How do you think these candidates make rural DFL voters feel on gun issues? With this much hostility towards law-abiding gun owners at the top of the DFL ticket, it’s difficult to picture enthusiasm for the DFL ticket.

Finally, check this statement out.

H/T: Ed Morrissey/Hot Air

We must not be in Parkland because this “school resource officer stopped an armed teenager at a high school Wednesday morning.” We know from past reporting that Parkland school resource officers stay outside the school and establish perimeters. They also resign after school shootings after they’re called out by other police departments for not doing their jobs.

According to the ABC article, “the 19-year-old suspect fired several shots near a gym at Dixon High School, the school resource officer reported the incident to authorities and then confronted the gunman, Dixon police chief Steven Howell said at a news conference. When confronted, the suspect, a former student at Dixon High School, started running away, and the officer pursued him, Howell said. The suspect shot several rounds at the officer, and the officer then returned fire, hitting the gunman, the chief added.”

Here’s the good news:

The suspect was taken into custody with what are believed to be non-life-threatening injuries, police said. The suspect was identified on Wednesday evening as Matthew A. Milby, according to Illinois State Police. He faces three charges of aggravated discharge of a firearm.

Milby is currently under surveillance at a hospital and will be taken to jail when he is discharged, state police said. No students or staff were injured but the high school and all other schools in the district were placed on lockdown, Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss said in a statement.

Gun-free zones are for idiots. This verifies the old saying that “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Thanks to this school resource officer, one good man did something smart.

Today on At Issue, Tim Walz tried sounding reasonable about Second Amendment issues while preaching the mantra of ‘common sense gun laws’. During the interview, Walz claimed that he’s uniquely qualified to get gun control legislation passed because he’s had an A rating from the NRA. After that, Walz immediately reminds lefty voters that he’s still on their side, that he’s the only person who can navigate that minefield without getting blown to smithereens.

Among the ‘common sense’ gun bills that Rep. Walz has proposed is an assault weapons ban. That isn’t common sense. It’s just politically popular within the DFL:

As recently as 2016, Guns and Ammo magazine called Walz one of the 20 best lawmakers on gun rights. He said in an interview Tuesday that his relationships with gun owners would allow him to bring them into the conversation. “This is about bringing in responsible gun owners who understand something’s got to be done,” Walz said.

Bryan Strawser, chairman of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said Walz is mistaken: “Tim Walz’s relationship with gun owners was directly related to his strong advocacy for gun rights. He will soon learn how little of their support he has since he has forsaken them for political expediency.”

Gun rights advocates won’t waste their time on a politician who’s flip-flopped on this issue while pandering for votes. Gun rights advocates want someone who’s rock-solid in their beliefs, someone who’s thought these things through. Clearly, Tim Walz is just a cheap politician who will say anything to get elected. That isn’t a principled man who will fight for people’s constitutional rights. That’s just a politician who will sell his soul to the devil.

Tim Walz had credibility with guns rights advocacy. Then he sold his soul to the devil to win an election. Now, he’s a man without a country, metaphorically speaking. Once, he had credibility with gun owners. He’s always had credibility issues with gun-grabbing Metrocrats. Now he’s got credibility issues with both groups.

First, Tim Walz wanted to be the man who made Minnesota a sanctuary state:

Now, he’s trying to weasel his way through this fight with gun owners. That’s what I’d call a politically disastrous week for Walz.

Technorati: Tim Walz, Second Amendment, NRA, Sanctuary State, DFL, Tim Pawlenty, Credibility, MNGOP, Election 2018

If stupidity were money, the writer of this LTE would be wealthy. Early in the LTE, the writer poses a hypothetical situation, saying “Say Matt, 23, dies from an IED in Afghanistan. His rising life is cut short. The anguish is felt by his grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, in-laws, nephews, nieces — and all their friends and relatives, and Matt’s uncles, aunts, cousins, acquaintances, friends, HS classmates, their parents, college classmates, friends, girlfriends, athletic mates, armed service mates, acquaintances — pain multiplied exponentially compared to an abortion. Pain that goes on forever.”

A few paragraphs later, the writer employs a guilt-trip strategy, writing “Then the same goes for the loved ones and friends of the wounded — physically, emotionally, psychologically. Not to mention the loss of productivity to society. Add massive costs for decades more that you and I foot to aid the wounded warriors. And the conservative reaction to all this carnage? Threats of more wars. And big yawns; hiding behind the skirts of the NRA and a lack of common sense about the second amendment. (Bazookas, grenades and howitzers have been outlawed without ‘taking all our guns.’) If conservatives truly cared about gun deaths, their abortion signs would add, ‘Save our young adults. Outlaw AR-15s.'”

The writer must be physically fit because that’s a hell of a leap. Seriously, outlawing AR-15s won’t come close to putting a dent in mass shooting deaths. Eliminating AR-15s wouldn’t even eliminate 1% of shooting deaths.

Let’s talk about the forever popular with progressives assault weapons ban while we’re at it. The progressives’ definition of an assault weapon is nothing more than a scary-looking semi-automatic rifle. If people want to be consistent, people that want to ban ‘assault weapons’ would have to eliminate all semi-automatic weapons.

Here’s a question that hasn’t been discussed. If these gun grabbers truly wanted to put a significant dent in gun deaths, why aren’t they calling for the elimination of handguns?

Instead of going the gun-grabbing route, we’d be better off if we implemented programs that already have a history of success. Sen. Marco Rubio, the politician accused of having blood on his hands because he’s accepted campaign contributions from the NRA, wrote this op-ed to highlight what Congress has already done:

Just five weeks after the tragedy in Parkland, Congress passed a spending bill that authorizes $1 billion over the next decade to improve the safety of our schools. The STOP School Violence Act is set to immediately provide resources to schools and their communities to prevent violence before it ever begins.

Being proactive is better than efficiently reacting.

The new money would be available to local governments and schools to implement programs like Los Angeles County’s successful School Threat Assessment Response Team, which coordinates the efforts of law enforcement, schools and mental health professionals to make sure nobody slips through the cracks. It will fund anonymous reporting systems like the Safe UT app, and help school districts create and train intervention teams to seek out the troubled students most likely to pose risks like what happened in Parkland.

Rather than listen to the mindless yapping of young activists like David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, Congress has funded an effective program that seeks to expand from Los Angeles to the entire nation. Here’s why that’s important:

School safety programs that had previously been subject to budget cuts or staff turnover will have additional resources for operations and for investments in improvements. Local government officials, and the parents and families they represent, will be able to use the money for solutions that work best for their communities based on tried and true approaches.

It’s time for the activists to get off the stage. They’ve been discredited because improving school safety doesn’t require trampling people’s civil rights. Cameron Kasky, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez are poorly-trained actors with a loser’s script:

Once the media hysteria died after the Parkland shooting and people had time to investigate what actually happened, people noticed that Parkland officials made quite a few mistakes. Investigators noticed that Deputy Scot Peterson didn’t rush into the building to save students, instead opting to establish a perimeter from the safety of his car.

Thanks to a timeline published in this article, we know quite a few things about what happened that tragic day. We know that, sometime after 2:23 pm, Deputy Peterson shouted “Get the school locked down, gentlemen!” Potentially, this is a huge point in light of information that we’re now learning about. According to this article, “a threat assessment [was] performed months ahead of the tragedy.”

According to the source, the “threat assessment was done by a retired Secret Service agent, and it was known that he was going to do this assessment by the Safety Committee but that no one else at Stoneman Douglas would be aware of it, including administration except for that one administrator on the committee.” Further, it’s alleged that the “Secret Service agent came in. He parked in the front of the school for 20 minutes. He was never approached by anyone. He gained entry to the campus never being stopped by anyone at any time and put Post-Its on 21 random people.’ Each Post-It note represented a potential casualty.”

If this is verified as true, this is another bombshell. If true, it’s another instance of governmental incompetence. Allegedly, one of the recommendations from the former Secret Service agent was to keep the gates of the school locked. Another alleged recommendation was to not immediately evacuate the classroom in the event of a fire alarm. “Prior to the shooting, Cruz activated a fire alarm, sending students flooding into the hallway where he could target them.”

If I was the parent of one of the 14 students who lost their lives that day, I’d demand to know why these common sense precautions weren’t taken prior to the shooting. In one sense, in fact, it’s irrelevant whether a threat assessment was conducted. It’s irrelevant whether these recommendations were made, too.

These precautions have been implemented across the nation. Why didn’t the school board insist that these precautions be made? Cameron Kasky, David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez might be world-class activists but their credibility is definitely shrinking.

No matter how emphatically they say it, the NRA doesn’t have blood on their hands. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office, aka Broward’s Cowards, have blood on their hands. Ditto with the School Board. Ditto with the people who repeatedly questioned Nikolas Cruz but didn’t institutionalize him.

With all of this information, it’s difficult to picture how the NRA is even slightly to blame for the Parkland Massacre.

It’s difficult taking Parkland students David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez and Cameron Kasky seriously, especially since their targeting seems more guided by ideology than logic. Their targets have been Marco Rubio, who definitely isn’t part of the problem, and the NRA. They’d have a hint of credibility if they’d taken the FBI and the Broward County’s Sheriff to task for their failings. Since that didn’t happen, there’s nothing that they’ve said that suggests that they’re serious policymakers.

This discredited trio seems disinterested in the fact that Deputy Scot Peterson ignored sheriff office’s protocol when he told other deputies “Do not approach the 12 or 1300 building, stay at least 500 feet away.” The sheriff’s protocol “calls for deputies to engage an active shooter until the threat is eliminated.”

By not engaging the shooter, Deputy Peterson didn’t do his job. The Parkland student activists haven’t criticized him or his wimpy sheriff boss. Why haven’t they taken aim at Dep. Peterson and Sheriff Israel? Is it because Sheriff is helping them criticize the NRA? If that’s the case, then these students aren’t principled problem solvers. They’re displaying the traits that do-nothing career politicians show.

Why haven’t these frauds gone after Sheriff Israel like this?

WPLG’s Bob Norman approached Sheriff Israel on Monday outside a Wings Plus restaurant where the Democrats club was scheduled to meet, asking the sheriff, “How do you have the time to politic when you got all these problems?”
“Your stories have never been balanced,” Sheriff Israel accused the reporter.

“This isn’t about me, sheriff,” Mr. Norman fired back. “There are 17 dead people. If you’re disappointed in me, I think there’s a lot of people disappointed in you.” “You know, I disagree with you,” Sheriff Israel said. “You haven’t heard? About the country being disappointed in you and the [Broward Sheriff’s Office]?” Mr. Norman asked. “No, not at all,” Sheriff Israel responded. “My job is to protect and serve the Broward County residents.” “Did you do that?” Mr. Norman asked. “Did you do that?”

“But when the report is in, we’ll have that conversation,” Sheriff Israel said. “Are you ever going to take responsibility for what happened at Stoneman Douglas?” Mr. Norman asked. “When the report’s in, we’ll have that conversation, Bob,” the sheriff repeated.

Gonzalez, Hogg and Kasky haven’t gone after these incompetents even though they stood by while their classmates died.

It’s impossible for me to take these students seriously because they haven’t proven that they’re interested in solving the problem. Thus far, they’re more interested in being media stars.

Technorati: Cameron Kasky, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Activists, Scot Peterson, Scott Israel, Gun Control, Democrats, Marco Rubio, NRA, Second Amendment, Election 2018

A liberal front group specializing in gun control bought a full page ad in the Star Tribune. Then the Strib published this article to make sure the organization got extra mileage for their ad buy.

In the article, the Strib wrote “A mysterious group operating under the name ‘Listen to the Children’ called out four members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation Monday on their positions on gun control measures and donations from the National Rifle Association. In a full-page ad in the Star Tribune a week ago, the group asked the entire Washington delegation if they would introduce, cosponsor or vote for legislation to ban the manufacture and sale of high-capacity magazines for firearms, and if they would return any donation from the NRA and its affiliates and refuse to accept future NRA donations.”

Later, Listen to the Children “the nonprofit placed another full-page ad, saying it received ‘yes’ responses from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Tina Smith, Rep. Tim Walz, Rep. Betty McCollum and Rep. Keith Ellison, all Democrats. The ad said that Rep. Erik Paulsen, a Republican, was the only one to respond ‘no’ to both of the group’s questions, but a spokesman for Paulsen’s office said their organization never responded to the ad. Rep. Jason Lewis and Rep. Tom Emmer, both Republicans, and Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat, also didn’t respond to the group, which stated in the ad that it considered a lack of response as “no” answers.”

Tim Walz and Tina Smith both essentially said that they don’t think that people should have the right to defend themselves. They also said that they’d reject any contributions from the NRA. With a significant portion of NRA members being blue collar people living in rural areas, Walz and Smith are essentially turning their backs on rural blue collar voters.

I hope rural blue collar voters remember that this November.