The popular firearm message board AR15.com, commonly referred to as ARFCOM got the boot from GoDaddy it appears.
No official explanation for it is currently in circulation, although that may change. The moves by Big Tech to quash anything remotely resembling insurrectional speech, in their efforts to root out hiding places for the “real deal” of actual organization (as if that could ever work on the internet as a whole) appears to be expanding. They are going to be using the broadest possible definitions.
The massive scope of the AR15.com message board and the number of topics covered makes it that much more likely they could find some pretense to pull the plug, and it appears they did. Or they just did and will cover pretense later, if they can be bothered at all.
I am beginning to believe someone out there forgot to shout “Jumanji” at midnight on NYE…
Jokes aside, message boards and forums are under the magnifying glass and the magnifying glass is angled for the sun to do its work. For those of you who actively speak in groups, forums, and social media pockets, be very aware and make your groups and friends aware that the hosting entities are in a “Nuke ’em first, due process later.” type of mood when it comes to posts.
Yes, Twitter just lost $5,000,000,000 for this type of censoring action but we are currently sitting in mid-swing of the digital axe on the internet chopping block. Momentum is a difficult thing to cease.
It is a reversal of earlier sentiments and decisions where the commission chose to leave the policy as is and allowed open and concealed carry within the public spaces of the Lansing locale.
We believe such a ban is unnecessary as there has not been a firearms discharge at Michigan’s Capitol, intentional or negligent, in the 142 year history of the building. – MCRGO Spokesman
Speaking with MCRGO on this, the ban has no historical basis as a hazard to legislators as a firearm has never, in 142 years, been discharged on purpose or by accident in the building. Nobody was shot, nobody was shot at and missed, nobody was hit on accident, and nobody put an extra hole into a floor or ceiling or anywhere else it shouldn’t have been. At least with a firearm, I cannot say definitively that contractors haven’t messed up and broken something.
While concealed carry has not been affected, much to the consternation of anti-gun activists, the unanimous choice is quite clearly a reactionary one to recent events. They fear that something could happen and are taking an imagery step towards preventing that.
I say imaginary quite deliberately.
The banning of open carry does not prevent a determined bad actor from accessing the private areas of the Capitol grounds any more now than it did prior to the change, believing otherwise is asinine
It does not prevent lawful concealed carriers from accessing the grounds as normal, as is their legal right
It does not prevent illegal concealed carriers, regardless of intention (just based on licensure or no), from accessing the public spaces of the grounds or make their detection more likely than it was previously
It only, if this even, is a token prevention of access to people who did not hold an intent to use a firearm against the Capitol in the first place. This is in the hopes that they hypothetically prevent one of these individuals who didn’t intend to use their gun from changing their mind and using it or accidently firing the firearm… which again, has never happened in Lansing. Which obviously leaves the intentional aggression avenue open, as it always was, and reduces the effectiveness of this action to hypothetically preventing anegligentdischarge… since that is so common it hasn’t happened ever in the 142 operable years.
This is a loss, and one that the commission should be encouraged to reverse in a continued show of faith in their electorate and in the history of the Michigan Capitol.
I won’t bury the lead on this one. Twitter lost $5,000,000,000 (Billion, with a B) for barring the President of the United States from using the platform. Due to the actions (or inactions, it changes depending on the moment and who you are speaking with) of the President on January the 6th, during the certification of election results, Twitter and several other platforms banned Donald Trump permanently. My favorite of the bans was Spotify, as if the President was going to fire-up a podcast really quick or listen to a fiery workout playlist to cause trouble.
Anyway, that was Big Tech’s reaction.
Reaction, meet consequence.
The events in the Capitol Building are going to have a variety of consequences, arrests for trespassing, damage, and property theft are going to be prominent among them. I suspect charges in the death of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher, and we will see how the investigation of Ashli Babbitt’s death at the hands of Capitol Police results.
But the reactions to those events and the rhetoric describing this event as a “Coup,” (see, I used “quotes” to indicate an ironic or ‘tongue-in-cheek’ use of the term) instead of a riot or “mostly peaceful protest,” are going to have consequences too. Big Tech censuring and censoring the elected leader of the United States of America, and thereby validating fears of media manipulation and censorship, was going to hurt them.
The back of more than one camel is being broken as we roll into 2021.
The election certification broke the dam on right leaning groups rioting after the quiet but firm support of many on the left towards their teams riots. The reaction from Big Tech broke wavering faith in their platform(s) to the tune of about 12% of of their (Twitter’s) total stock value, about 160% of President Trump’s net worth too, by the way.
Think about that ratio for a second. Twitter could have paid the President directly a dollar for every dollar he has, and is worth through holdings, and it would have been cheaper. They could have cut him a check after his term as President that doubled his net worth instantly to just chill out on the tweeting, and it would have been less money.
Not that it wouldn’t have been a form of censoring too, and ethically and legally unviable, but it would’ve been cheaper.
Can you stand another food post? Well you’re getting one anyway, because it’s been the only thing that has kept me from choking something this past week.
Like many of the rest of you I am emotionally struggling.
Violence, Lies, Character Assassination, Deplatforming, Double-standards, Hypocrisy, Partisan Censorship, Election Fraud – it was enough to make me want to storm a few buildings myself.
Except that would just get me arrested, and likely un-licensed and unemployed. So what is a middle-aged conservative woman to do with all that pent-up rage?
One “can” find peace by quiet acceptance and laying it in the hands of the faith of one’s choice. Except how does anything ever change that way? But speaking up/out uses up valuable emotional energy and further stokes my inner fury. Spending my days in a state of simmering rage only interrupts my sleep, destroys my appetite (well that is not necessarily a bad thing – ha!), and destroys my health – both mental and physical. Rage with no outlet is useless and can be self-destructive.
In struggling to find a coping mechanism, I have found one activity which soothes both ends of that inner turmoil – food prepping. There are others – writing to one’s congresscritter (uhh, yeah), buying and loading more magazines (if you can find ammo), target practice (ammo again), dry fire, etc, but I have found that food prepping gives me more peace of mind.
The end of the gardening season has not ended my food-related activities. I’ve already written about learning how to pressure can.
Since gaining those skills I’ve spent all of my holidays and weekends off pressure canning turkey, soups, boar sausage, chick peas (for hummus), and pot roast. I’ve also been busy dehydrating more basic veggie staples such as carrots and potatoes.
I canned last year’s frozen boar sausage into patties to extend the shelf life.Dehydrating potatoes keeps them from going bad too soon.
I’ve got another frozen turkey yet to can too. It’s in the fridge defrosting now and I’ll do that during what would have been SHOT week, which I’m taking the time off for even though it was cancelled. Also in the offing is French Onion Soup and Turkey Pot Pie filling to be canned.
Fortunately my ammo situation is *mumble mumble*, but my canning lid supply is marginal. I have enough for a few more months, but scouting stores for lids has become my new day-off activity. Stocks of canning supplies are slowly coming back, but canning manufacturers experienced a “run” this year not unlike the one ammo manufacturers are still trying to catch up on.
It got so bad that people trying to buy lids online found themselves scammed by Chinese knock-offs and even unscrupulous people sealing up old used lids in boxes and selling them as new. Jars are infinitely reusable, but the flat part of the two-piece lids are supposed to be single use. There are a few makers of reusable lids which I’ll be looking into for the future, but in the meantime I am always on the lookout for those little green boxes. It gives me something else to do when I’m scouring the internet and getting angry.
I made a social media post this past week about buying additional beans and rice to sooth my political anxieties, too. Adding to the stockpile can give at least a little peace of mind about an uncertain future which might include job loss and being “cancelled” for thinking wrong thoughts.
That’s not to mention the soothing manual activity of chopping, cutting and handling the food. Many people find repetitive physical tasks to be calming. Some people clean the house when they’re worried. Some people mow the lawn. I have found that chopping veggies for soup, baking bread, etc is calming. It lets my mind rest for a few minutes – concentrating on the task at hand rather than ruminating about events which may adversely impact my life, but over which I have little control.
Granted having a full pantry (and buckets and tubs and…) won’t keep me from being sent to the Gulag for Wrongthink and Thoughtcrime, but it can at least help cushion the blow if the new puppeteers in office are determined to make the United States the new Venezuela.
If you’ve been shooting for a few years now, you know that ammo droughts come and go. They occur whenever something upsets the balance of life. In 2020 we had massive upsets to the balance. You got the joy of COVID, the riots, and then a Democratic President-Elect. Just one of these things can kill the ammo supply, and we got three in a row. Heck gun supply is dead, from shotguns to 80% lowers. Going into 2021, finding ammo is pretty tough, but as an experienced shooter and drought survivalist, I do have a few tips and tricks I live by.
Finding Ammo 101 – Avoid Resellers
Gougers, Scalpers, whatever you call them, often have a store of ammo or buy up a ton of ammo at a time and resell it at a crazy markup. This year we’ve seen people in literal ammo vans selling cartridges like some kind of Libertarian ice cream man. People like to blame them for ammo’s price, but ultimately it’s on the people purchasing the ammo. Finding ammo is tough, but this drought will last longer if people buy ammo at these crazy costs because it will fuel the resellers.
I know it can be challenging, but let these people sit on their stupid investment. We can self-correct this action and prevent it for future ammo droughts.
The Online Option
Online ammo stores can be fantastic because of live inventory updates and the fact you don’t have to put pants on to buy ammo. Finding ammo online is much quicker than searching store by store. I also tend to avoid dedicated gun websites because their prices have risen quite a bit.
Outside of searching for hours at a time online, sign up for notifications. One of my favorite websites is Academy’s. You can sign up for notifications, order online, or see the inventory of stores near you. Right now, as I type this, they have 223 Remington for seven bucks a box at my local Academy. Other big retailers often have the same functions that allow you to sign up for notifications and see inventories online.
Aggregators are your best friend. Gun Bot works to aggregate ammo sales from various companies and presents them to you in one long list with links to jump to. You can search by caliber, and find what you need over dozens of websites. With the current crop of people purchasing ammunition, the website has some trouble staying updated, but they typically work well.
Look Everywhere
Traveling through a small town and spot a gun store? Swing in. The same goes for archery stores, outfitters, and beyond. Stop and look everywhere you can. Often rural hardware stores carry ammo; heck, in the south, our gas stations have it. Stop and look, and look hard and look everywhere. I just bought an old bulk box of Aguila 22 LR for 30 bucks at a small outdoors store that didn’t even sell guns.
Gotta Be Friendly
Let’s talk about social engineering, which sounds almost corrupt, but it is a fancy way of saying be a nice person. Make friends with the folks at your local gunshop. At this point, it’s likely hard for them to get inventory, so if you can buy the occasional piece of cleaning gear, magazine, or accessory, you’ll probably make a good impression on them. That’s great because it might allow you to ask to get a call when they get ammo in or have them hold a few boxes for you.
Be friendly, don’t point guns at them, and try not to spend their time looking at a dozen weapons you aren’t going to buy. Running a local gun store is a tough business, so not being an ass is a valuable commodity. Be friendly to your local gun store owners and employees.
Finding Ammo in 2021
Finding ammo in 2021 isn’t going to be easy. Vista has a year backlog, Remington died at the wrong time, and we have 8 million new gun owners. Not only do we have a ton of people buying ammo because of pandemics, elections, and riots, but new gun owners are also filling their carts. That’s good and bad. New gun owners could become new gun voters, but that also means a helluva lot of people are buying ammo.
When this drought is over, buy a box once a week or so, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you go from some ammo to what the media would call an ‘arsenal.’
The MCRGO put out the following FAQ: I applied for a new concealed pistol license. The 45 day wait has passed. I haven’t received the card in mail. I’m guessing it’s due to COVID. May I use my receipt as my license until the card is mailed?
The answer: We are receiving a lot of questions recently related to late issued concealed pistol licenses. The answer to your question is found in MCL 28.425b.
I’ll save you the two paragraphs, but you are welcome to click the link to the statute, the answer is yes.
The receipt becomes the CPL in Michigan in conjunction with the state ID of the receipt holder. This persists until license is issued or the notice of statutory disqualification is issued.
This notice brings up an excellent point in the firearms supply line that is worth mentioning
The whole system is strained
Name a part of the firearm industry where there is currently a wait… scratch that, name a part of the industry where there currently isn’t a wait. I’ll wait…
Bad pun passed, the points of transfer are strained to their max right now and anywhere there is a legally mandated wait there is a tremendous backlog. CCW type applications, massive backlog. Wait times for state and local firearm purchases, huge backlogs. Anywhere that isn’t using the Brady dates for NICS transfers, you bet there is a backlog. And NFA transfers… I don’t want to know how far those are going to get behind.
For reference, I have waited up to 13 months for a standard Form 4 NFA transfer and that was not an unheard of wait time. My shortest was 6 months. I have seen as short as 4 and as great as 18 months. This is a bureaucratically imposed wait time, not a legally imposed one. Meaning there is no X number of days that you must wait to take possession of your item, it is just whenever the form is done at the ATF. Your Form 4 could clear in a few days worth of mail delay if the form was taken care of immediately and had no errors to correct. It might be done same day or next day if it was digital.
I have an SOT for my work here and one of the perks was going to be next day NFA transfers. Because Form 3’s are digitally available on the E-From website and both the transferee (me) and transferor (them) have SOT’d FFL’s there was no background check process. Just an inventory transfer that usually took 24-48 hours/1-2 business day’s, they don’t work on Wednesday’s IIRC.
That is right, Wednesday doesn’t count.
Current times are up to 15 Days. A 7x-14x increase. I cannot imagine how Form 4 wait times are going to jump. 7-14 times? Probably not, but expect several months added if you filed recently. Form 1’s are in the 2 month range, up from as low as a single week.
But… That means they can deny without ‘denying’ by just not getting to the paperwork.
Yes, bureaucracy is where the ‘Right Delayed is a Right Denied’ holds its entrenched position. All wait times are up. A 3 day wait may not have seemed much of an inconvenience but what about 3 weeks? Just for a backlog. This is a life saving defensive implement that you have a legal right to possess uninfringed.
Any transfer that does not have a legally mandated maximum time allotted for transfer, and an action/penalty for the government failing to meet its mandate, means that your transfer and acquisition of a firearm, ammunition, or license is at the whims of them completing their paperwork. At what time period does the bureaucratic backlog become a legally actionable infringement? That is very hard to say if it isn’t written.
Most of the governing offices have mandates that they must get to the paperwork, they cannot just arbitrarily toss it, but the mandate of getting to it in a timely manner is entirely up to the rulesets in place. Brady, for example, allows for a transfer after three business days, as written, and after the date issued by the FBI from NICS in practice. This is a maximum allotted time to complete a transfer process, imposed on the government, and the action after the allotted time is that the firearm transfer may proceed. An FFL can, at their discretion, wait longer for NICS but they are not required to do so under federal law. This is an example of an accountability stipulation, and one that works fairly well. The same stipulation falls apart without a time-out function.
Certain states have mandated FFL’s wait for NICS or the state equivalent organizations. Theses organizations, as far as I’m aware, do not impose a maximum time allotted, and thus remove the right of their legal applicants to an expedient legal service and deny them their second amendment right simultaneously. Government defining what are, and the people agreeing with, reasonable process times is paramount in regulation. There have to be written proceed rules if the government is too busy.
By mandating a legal form or forms be completed and processed by the government, but without mandating a legal time limit that the government can process these within, they set up the structure to put purchasers into a legal limbo (the plane, not the party game) where purchasers are subject to wait until the government ‘gets around to it.’ There is very limited recourse an individual can seek because the government has not violated their own rules in processing times as long as they are still “processing” it. This makes for a lengthy and expensive legal battle into suing the government to get to their job that they created, mandated, and then didn’t prioritize because of X, Y, or Z circumstance.
COVID is one such extremely straining and extremely serious circumstance that has been highlighting weaknesses in the system. The apparatus in place had minimal to no provisions for low staff, closed offices, remote processing, and complying with mandates that were crafted for times where everything was always working at normal capacity. If you need to get X form and go to Y place to have it filled out, all fine and good if Y is open to the public. What if it isn’t? You have defacto banned new gun owners and purchasers by closing a mandated link in the chain. If something is government mandated it is an essential service it cannot close.
Unfortunately this is just more of the same when it comes to the 2A being a second class right, not granted the same weight as other constitutional protections. Anything they can reasonably dismiss as unimportant or ‘non-mandatory’ would be until they were legally challenged. We saw this in the ‘Essential Business’ fight and we are seeing it still with overwhelmed and backlogged systems.
Backlogs happen, but without a legal time-out function there is minimal pressure to correct the backlog. The government doesn’t get in trouble for not following their own mandated paperwork rules if there is no written provision for it. Only you, the individual following the rule, are left hanging in the wind.
In Conclusion
Wait times are bullshit.
Wait times with no time-out mandate are an extra special level of bullshit.
We must put pressure on our local, state, and federal rule-makers to include maximum allotted time provisions in any mandatory paperwork and encourage them to remove as much mandatory paperwork as possible to ease both their time requirements and the waiting burden of the citizen.
Between various SOCOM reports and durability from commercial sources the resume is strong on these if your requirement is durability beyond all. And mine was. I didn’t need a “quietest first shot” or single shot. I needed flash and noise reduction, durability, and as little deflection shift suppressed/unsuppresed.
I wanted something I wouldn’t have to worry more about than I do the rifle. One that could go on 7.62, 5.56, and 6.5 rifles. A “one can fits most” situation.
Mike (GarandThumb) takes it us through the details so go ahead and hit that play button. You’re on lunch anyway.
Oh, and 80,000 Rounds so it’ll will probably outlast my barrels.
And you can beat the carbon lock by firing a live round and launching the can.. and that’s just fun.
This is a word I am seeing a whole lot of this morning.
Coup; a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.or a notable or successful stroke or move.
The Trump protester and Q-Anon actors in D.C. yesterday accomplished neither, and they had no hope of doing so. EDIT: In case my tone here is not clear. The events in D.C. were nota coup. They were not structured to be a coup, by all appearances.
Even had the crowd done the unthinkable and somehow seized and held Congressional members, that would not have changed the certified results of the election. The protested results out of states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, to highlight election irregularities and possible cases of fraud, were all found wanting of evidence and sent up certified. The incursion into the chambers would not have changed this.
Was there fraud? Yes. Was it more than the usual multi-ballot attempts and other garbage? No. And it isn’t like all those fraudulent votes got counted when they were found to be fraudulent. Do we believe for a single moment that if a credible case could have been built against Joe Biden’s win in such a close election that it would not have? This wouldn’t have over turned a landslide victory, Biden won by the width his well used nose hairs of a margin.
A minor shift in political parlance could have seen all the objections and anger flowing the opposite way with a Trump victory.
President Trump lost this election all on his own. He played the cult of personality card and it didn’t carry far enough. For each of his arguably positive political achievements there existed arguably and objectively negative counter points and while it almost carried… it didn’t.
Had the media been unfair to him? Yes, but that isn’t new. Nor was it an insurmountable challenge in 2016. But in 2020 it was a different challenge and the base beneath had shifted. This loss starts and ends with the President.
So what did happen in Washington D.C. if it was not a Coup D’état?
Tantrum; an uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child.
“Typically,” but not always.
The protest in D.C. wanted to, in their words, “Stop the Steal.” This had only the barest of validity in facts but you can protest just about anything you want to validly. I was once swept into a circumcision protest. Yes, that’s a thing apparently. Nope, I don’t understand. But I was told very emphatically that I, “deserve my whole penis.”
However the riot in D.C. wanted what every riot wants… to break shit.
A coup, or similar held to account event, would have seized the chambers and then held them until they found and returned the Congress. A coup would have direction. A coup would have a goal for legitimizing, in some manner, their actions. They might hold Congress until their demand of a new special presidential election, or a supervised recount of the disputed states, or every member of the House and Senate personally gave the President a hearty hug and handshake.
Something.
Image via Reason.com
Instead we have broken windows, broken doors, trashed offices and hallways, one woman shot dead at the hands of Capitol Police, one Capitol Police officer dead of what is believed to be complications from an injury (I suspect head injury), and three dead of various stress induced medical incidents. No political ultimatum, even a goofy one.
That subheading and the linked article at Reason bring up a very important question. One that we gun owners have been trying to solidify an answer toward on many fronts. Elections shouldn’t threaten us very much. The 546 elected and appointed Federal managers we have in D.C. shouldn’t actively terrify us, no matter their political leaning. Whether it was Trump or Obama, AOC or Ted Cruz, who the elected officials are should only vary between a mild comfort and a slight annoyance as the various topics advance or stagnate around an immutable foundation of constitutional bedrock.
“How do you maintain a political system when much of the population ceases to believe in its underlying principles? The problem is not just President Donald Trump—whose petulant refusal to accept his loss at the polls set the grounds for the violence that disrupted Congress’s count of Electoral College votes—but also his cultists who are more interested in maintaining one thuggish politician in power than they are in how power is acquired and used. Beyond them are all too many Americans who have come to believe they can’t afford to lose elections.” – Reason, J.C. Tuccille
This is a banner year of distrust.
“The election results didn’t exactly sweep in an era of good feelings. Twenty-four (24%) percent of likely U.S. voters “think Biden voters are America’s biggest enemy as 2020 draws to a close,” Rasmussen Reports noted early in December. “Nearly as many (22%) regard Trump voters as the biggest enemy.”
A combined 46% of the nation are focused on the nation as the greatest enemy of the nation. Many for no better reasoning than a few buzzwords that end in ist, phobe, or some similar nonsense. A deeper look at policy support would probably put them very much in the same ballpark in a reasoned discussion. There will always remain a percentage of diametrically opposed voters and citizens in this nation, but it shouldn’t be this big. Vast mismanagement has made it this big. Cheap political steals and jabs have made it this big. Thinking of the political capital pocket book instead of good policy first have made it this big.
It’s tempting to suggest that the Trumpist rioters in D.C. did a credible job of fulfilling their detractors’ fears. But that overlooks the evidence from sources like the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group that neither dominant political tribe was prepared to accept a loss. Even the Biden-aligned Transition Integrity Project—which anticipated Trump’s bogus claims of electoral fraud and unwillingness to concede—also warned of political chaos if Biden’s supporters were disappointed. In the end it was the current president’s fans who rioted, but an uneventful tally of ballots didn’t appear to be in the cards.
Here is the crux of it folks. We were very likely to get a riot this year, and we got it. It didn’t matter who won because the other side is not in a position to trust the result. The biggest casualty of 2020 was trust, and that death has been building for years, perhaps decades.
Elected officials, like Trump, who defy constitutional constraints and sheer reason can be removed from office at the polls, by impeachment, or by processes such as those outlined in the 25th Amendment. But what do you do when many voters themselves think the only legitimate elections are those that they win? [emphasis added]
This isn’t Trump’s fault, he is the symptom, not the cause. This is the fault of the consistent provable deceit, bad faith politics, and cheap shot campaigning that we’ve seen come to prominence since as early a George W. Bush. Increasingly we saw both parties take every opportunity they saw to choose the low ground road to political points, because the low ground excited their extreme and vociferous bases and didn’t seem to alienate their larger more moderate middle enough to matter. The bases then hit the rising way to shout at their fellow man, Social Media.
The middle, the moderate, should arguably have allowed themselves to be alienated. But they are reasonable people and give the benefit of the doubt more often than not.
Which leads us back to the point gun owners have been trying to build and that Reason is making in the article.
One important step would be to make elections less consequential so that Americans aren’t so fearful of the instruments of government in the hands of their enemies.
“It is more and more dangerous to lose an election,” economist John Cochrane, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, wrote in September. “Regulation has supplanted legislation, and dear colleague letters, interpretations, and executive orders have supplanted regulation… The vanishing ability to lose an election and not be crushed is the core reason for increased partisan vitriol and astounding violation of basic norms on both sides of our political divide.”
A Democrat held election cycle should not spell doom for Republican institutions and causes, and vice versa. A Democrat held election cycle should have us grumbling about moderately higher tax rates for awhile and maybe a minimum wage hike the way a Republican held election cycle should make social welfare supporters grumble about less funding for those programs and causes.
Instead we live in an era of genuine fear that when the “enemy” (not opponent) takes office again there is a very real possibility the only solution believed to be left to the loser is violent resistance. The fear that the enemy party is going to come for and crush you is very real and has been validated by politicians coming after various groups, like gun owners.
In its reach into all areas of life, government in modern America increasingly resembles what the Israeli historian J. L. Talmon called “totalitarian democracy.” This approach “treats all human thought and action as having social significance, and therefore as falling within the orbit of political action.” Since there’s no room for going your own way, contests for political power necessarily become existential fights that nobody can afford to lose.
This political theory is the opposite of leaving people to their own devices for the most part and leaning on a constitutional societal core. Instead of very few things truly needing a vote, everything needs a vote to become the rule for all, even if that rule is actively hostile and detrimental to your livelihood, faith, and/or well-being.
We are at a time where we are clashing on many issues, some work together and many work at odds to each other. There is a gaping divide in governmental schools of thought to compound the general distrust of government.
It is a thoroughly poisoned well and will take an enormous amount of work to filter clean. The only alternative to that is to violently blast a new well, and the loudest voices calling for that option have no idea how to dig and set that well and how many people will be harmed in the process.
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TenPoint’s RS440 Havoc Xero expands on all the reasons I love the Mogadore, OH, company’s upper-end crossbows; it’s fast flat trajectory and bone-crunching penetration, yet not so fast that its accuracy suffers; it’s even more compact than prior models–a huge deal in the woods; it’s darn-near MOA-accurate; and it’s available with the most advanced optic ever produced so that range estimation and compensation is an afterthought. It’s downside? At $3,500 it costs as much as a rifle and European scope combo.
By double-dutying the Xero sight on a carbine or turkey-hunting shotgun after bow season, it makes more sense. You can also save more cash–and consolidate gear–by omitting a stand-alone rangefinder. Yet for others, such a toy for a hobby may never be worth its cost. I’ve done my best to test all of TenPoint and Garmin’s claims, and surprisingly, some of my results were actually better than those claims. What I do know for sure is that two great American companies, working together, have not only raised the bar in terms of archery technology, but they helped me bag a deer before the deer ran off, and for that alone I give due credit.
Well, that was one of the spicier days in American politics. There is no total yet on the damages of the Electoral Certification Tantrum of 2021, but from several stills people helped themselves in grand riotous tradition. The amount of security and intelligence damage as well as the physical property damage to the building is probably staggering.
The death toll on the day stands at four.
One woman, shot by Capitol Police/Security. There is video circulating of her attempting to climb past a barricade being defended by an officer with a drawn gun, she is shot once and falls back where the more widely circulated video can be seen. The other three died due to various medical emergencies. It was too much excitement/stress it sounds like and the circumstances at the Capitol Building triggered a lethal medical reaction different for each. No known information at this time on heart attacks, strokes, or breathing issues, perhaps aggravated by the use of crowd dispersal agents like CS and OC.
Be assured that the woman shot and killed will not be listed as killed by Capitol Police in any headline, thereby equating her death to direct action of the protestors. It’s an exploitable inference so why wouldn’t they use it…
Several police officers are reported as ‘injured’ although I don’t have details there on how minor or major.
All in all, it was riot.
Standoff with Capitol Security and Protestors, Atlas News
What I am most disappointed in this morning is how differently this is being treated than other riots. Why? Because it was the Capitol Building? Because the target of the particular mob’s ire was Congress certifying the election results?
Since when has a mob, a riot, held anything resembling political or ideological nuance? When has it needed anything more than a vague authority figure or group to be mad at in order to act. It didn’t at any point in 2020. Why is this different?
“Keith, this was the election results! It was a direct assault on the democratic process of our Republic.”
No, it wasn’t.
And, yes it was. But, you are again ascribing political nuance to an entity that has none. All that group knew, acting as the organism a mob becomes, was that ‘Congress bad! Mad at Congress!’ And all more thoughtful deeper motives, regardless of how well intentioned, well or poorly reasoned, legitimate or illegitimate, were gone. They will be recalled when the mob calms down, when the anger ebbs away.
Some in the mob will believe they had a plan, a purpose, the whole time. Those who have seen that a mob acts as the mob acts and disregards the higher will and moral authority of any individual member for whatever is an easy target, flashy and emotional, will recognize that is a futile thought. There is no higher purpose, only the mob.
So…what did we ultimately witness?
Was it Donald Trump attempting to hold onto power through literal mob rule?
No, I don’t think so. Not with any realistic intent.
Was it Donald Trump using the mob to throw a temper tantrum of sorts? Far more likely.
Given the unknowns and variances in the election in several key states that resulted in his electoral loss, then how vehemently he has held onto them, valid or otherwise, this feels a great deal like the kid at the playground who got tagged out with the ball and then kicked it into a thorn bush before stomping off.
A Balancing of Extremes?
Now that, we absolutely did witness.
Regardless… and let me emphasize that again.. Regardless of where you personally land socially in alignment with any of the movements that devolved into riots this past year, there was going to be a balancing escalation from an opposing faction. It was coming.
Why?
We had months of political endorsement and media endorsement of the BLM and Antifa actions to varying degrees. That sympathetic/endorsing variable attitude of the “mostly peaceful” protests from the political left and political left media created a opening for the tactic to be used against them in a reactionary fashion, making them look additionally hypocritical.. as hard as that is to do.
But now it has been done.
The factions currently screaming that DC yesterday was totally unacceptable and threated the safety of the Republic (or as they would say, “our Democracy”) but did not see the similar threats of mob rule/acts in June when DC was also on fire with a different riot (or vice versa, seeing this as good and that bad) are letting their personal biases and level of support for one or the other movements color the objective threat of a mob. The mob doesn’t care about your team or feelings of sympathy towards them.
Politicians this year, especially Democratic ones, adopted a new set of rules when it came to political discourse, whether they knew it or not. That new rule set, endorsed by their own words, helped pave the way to Capitol Hill yesterday. It is a reaction they should have seen coming. But I don’t ascribe politicians an appreciable level of self-awareness.
More likely, they would just obfuscate, obfuscate, and a little more obfuscation with various declarations of ‘out of context’ or ‘not what I/we meant’ and so on.
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaking of out of context quotes. How often was that one plastered upon the Twitter sphere this past year? How about yesterday from actors of a different political bend?
“Now I wanted to say something about the fact that we have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames. And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
All of a sudden riots are a symptom, not a cure.
The faction from the side that lost this election was very likely to riot, it had been that kind of year. Not everyone, not every single voter from the losing side, not even 1 in 1,000 from the losing side. Yet a riot was likely nonetheless.
Look now at the broad brush stroke reactions being plastered across social media.
How many posts have you seen, “If you voted for Trump you are a Bad Person, period.” or some variant? As if one binary choice the politicians offered us four years ago between Trump, and that paragon of virtue, Hillary Clinton, made you good or evil. That one singular choice.
That is the level of thought we have been reduced too, the social media bite, the Twitter post, the bad Meme.
The Path Ahead
We have two. The one we will likely take… and the one we should take.
We will likely see a Democratic reaction, we already are in fact, from the sympathetic media elements and the prominent party members taking full advantage of the free political capital they were just handed. Polishing their image of “reasonableness” and pressing the fact they hold all branches of government with the exception of the Supreme Court. The SCOTUS will only block the most egregious of advances and the Democrats do not have enough of a majority to press too aggressively anyway. But they have been given a hell of a pile of paving stones to start.
Yes, this could be used to press gun control as part of a broad security bill of some sort. Look for that.
The second path, the one we should take.. but won’t, is the one that the Democrat party would already have been wise to be following, but hasn’t.
The allegations of voter fraud and the instances of it would hold far less sway if the Democrats had been as dogged as the Republicans in rooting it out. If they had shown a willingness to concede races to the rightful winners (still themselves, probably) as long as we knew all the votes had been found and properly counted. If they hadn’t treated the opposition like imbecilic children for thinking there was voter fraud (and there absolutely, provably was) and instead went step in step with their opponents to count the votes, they would be looking like absolute saints right now. The winners would be exuding an attitude of listening to their electorate, even those who didn’t vote for them, right from the moment it looked like they won.
But they didn’t take this path of assurance. The path of listening.
So, what will America fail to hear next… from whom?
I’m sure we’ll find out… because right now its looking like the year 2020 won…
UPDATE II: Video has emerged of a woman being shot in the neck or chest as protesters were banging on the doors of a Capitol Building room, reported to be the chamber and reported to have been by Capitol Police or related Capitol Security Forces. Medical aid has been rendered to the woman and she has been evacuated by EMS. She later died at the hospital.
Image via Atlas New IG.
A few sources have reported that the protest in Washington DC has resulted in shots fired. This is unknown whether it was Capitol Police or another source or if it was a mistaken report.
It is confirmed that protesters have entered all the way to congressional chambers.
Those protesting in support of President Donald Trump forced their way into the Capitol Building in a parallel to events we observed throughout 2020.
Via Atlas News IG Screenshot
The Congressional Chambers have been evacuated and ratification process of the electoral votes has been interrupted as protesters have gotten into multiple floors of the Capitol Building. As of now there has been no official declaration of a riot however DC’s Mayor has instituted a 6:00 pm curfew.
A suspicious item, some calling it an IED or Pipe Bomb, was detonated by bomb squad officers during the day also near the Capitol.
The Capitol Building has been cleared as of now.
Updates as we get them.
Personal Observation: The sheer lack of self-awareness out of many reports saying how “unprecedented” or “unexpected” this event is is just… disappointing. How quickly did we forget the “mostly peaceful” protests of the summer?
Governor DeWine has expanded Ohio’s Stand Your Ground rules from the restrictive home or car definition to any location a person has a lawful right to be.
Those of us on the side of common sense self defense rights cheer this common sense decision as it is an unreasonable burden to expect someone occupying a location lawfully to be required to flee from that location before using force against an assailant. It is equally asinine to expect them to not have to flee only in the presence of their vehicle or their home. The arbitrary requirement put a rather ridiculous physical proximity limit (like a “21ft” rule) on whether it was reasonable to use force to protect yourself if you were in danger or because of no other factor than your were at home or by your vehicle you had to flee first while in the exact same amount of immediate danger.
An individual’s duty to retreat before using force has been eliminated in Ohio under a gun rights bill signed by Ohio’s Republican governor on Monday. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill despite his vocal concerns that GOP lawmakers were ignoring his own legislation proposed following the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton.
The measure expands the so-called “stand your ground” right from an individual’s house and car to any place, “if that person is in a place in which the person lawfully has a right to be.”
As recently as last month DeWine hinted he might veto the bill, saying lawmakers should focus on what he sent them instead. But on Monday, he signed the bill in “the spirit of cooperation” with the General Assembly.
It is only controversial in that it is a win for common sense gun rights and a loss for those who wish to make the use of a firearm a complicated and therefore terrifying prospect. If the threshold to use a firearm is you are in reasonable fear for your life or another’s life immediately ending or being irreparably harmed, that is something people can quantify and understand. They can rationalize that the circumstances must make sense to them and a group of their peers. If you then throw in a ‘Duty to Retreat,’ even a conditional one, you muddy and obfuscate the absolute premise that you, a human being, have a right to protect your life from immediate extreme harm.
The right to self protection is inseparably bound to the right to life. It is not conditional. Protecting your life should not be conditional legally either beyond the basic premise that you are acting lawfully and peaceably and the other actor(s) are not by trying to kill you.
Ultimately here is the squeeze:
The.
Law.
Is.
Not.
Tactics.
It may be tactically advisable to retreat. It may not. It may be best to hide. It may be best to shoot. Any one of those options may be your best option of avoiding injury or further injury and reducing an immediate threat to a non-immediate or eliminated one.
The law cannot be used to ascribe tactics and retreat is a tactic, not a legally required altruism to “prove” you’re the victim. Because the law cannot be written in nuance enough to fairly and thoroughly cover tactics it should avoid doing so entirely. It cannot account for the variety of human and physical conditions that can be present in a lawful use of force or unlawful use of force scenarios from a tactical perspective. It must restrict itself, therefore, to the reasonable judgement of its citizenry both in acting and in judging the act on its own merits.
This change in the law is inline with that basic and fair fundamental principle.
“I look forward to working with members of the legislature in the future to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to protect the rights of citizens who follow the law,” DeWine said.
He said he was disappointed lawmakers didn’t add the measures he sought for more than a year that would toughen background checks and boost penalties for felons committing new crimes with guns.
The governor has pushed these proposals since the Aug. 4, 2019, Dayton massacre that killed nine and wounded more than two dozen.
Nan Whaley, the Democratic mayor of Dayton and a sometime ally of the governor, said she couldn’t “express my level of disappointment” and accused him of giving into extremists in his own party. Shortly after the Dayton shooting, she and DeWine pledged to work together on a bipartisan effort to change gun laws.
Nan Whaley is using a textbook example of emotional deflection to equate the reasonable removal of a dubious requirement and equating it to allowing a deliberate criminal act. With this rule in place, anyone at the Dayton bar where the very quick and brutal killings took place would have been required, by the law, to run from the shooter first before engaging and eliminating them as a threat despite it being tactically insane for that type and circumstance of attack. Because nobody was at home and nobody was by their car.
There is one… One… textbook reaction to a near ambush, which Dayton shooting was, and that is shoot back and overwhelm the attacker. This goes for the military and law enforcement, immediate effective return fire. You will see a team or squad turn into the attack. You will see a police officer immediately draw and shoot the individual shooting at them, not turn and run to cover. It is because in that specific close proximity scenario there is only one avenue of action that offers a reasonable chance of survival in the time allotted for reacting, engage.
The law should never interfere with your safest course of action. It shouldn’t be illegal to drive under the speed limit in a blizzard, rain storm, or on icy roads. It shouldn’t be illegal to shoot, stab, or tackle an immediate threat when that is your best tactical option.
“Our state needs principled leaders who will stand up for what is right – not what is politically easy,” Whaley tweeted.
Sen. Kenny Yuko of Cleveland, the top Senate Democrat, called Monday “a sad day.”
“This is not what people meant when they asked us to ‘do something’ last year after the deadly mass shooting in Dayton,” Yuko said in a tweet.
Rep. Emilia Sykes of Akron, the top House Democrat, went further, calling DeWine “a coward.”
“Only cowards would pass and sign a bill that has been proven to disproportionately harm Black people,” added Sykes, who is Black.
I would like to see by what metric this bill disproportionately harms Black people. Deaths or injuries? I bet they do not account for Black DGU’s. I also bet the metrics are astronomically in favor of lawful Black DGU’s vs unlawful slayings and injuries. Keep in mind, the requirements to use lethal force under Ohio law did not change, only the requirement to run away first based on your proximity to your house or vehicle.
But what would a good gun control advocate be if they did not shill the low info talking points, I suppose.
The divisiveness of this new legislation is only upon logic first vs. advocacy first lines. Stand your ground legislation is logically consistent with the right to self preservation, it only mandates proper reasoned actions and does not mandate a situationally subjective tactic. It is therefore as fair a rule as can be made.
Photo by: David J. Phillip
Democratic presidential candidate former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke answers a question Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019, during a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by ABC at Texas Southern University in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
The Devil went down to Georgia…
And the Republicans have lost the Senate majority, it appears. The historically red state of Georgia has shifted purple and both Senate seats are currently projected to go to the Democrats.
Now, we can keep huffing and puffing and shouting about election fraud but let us not for a moment pretend that the Republicans set themselves up for great success here with their own antics. By eroding faith in the election and challenging results as they did, they drove away their own voter base who where the disenfranchised losing team this time.
Why would your voters turn up again to a “stolen” election? Why should they care? The game is rigged right? Turning up won’t make them win, they can just as comfortably complain that the Democrats stole the election from home knowing that the system was always going to deliver this result and they didn’t ‘play their farcical game’ by showing up.
The Loss of the Senate
What this means is the Biden White House has a reasonably reliable 51-50 vote in the Senate and a minor lead in the House 222-211 (2 open seats). We are as vulnerable as we could reasonably be to the passage of gun control legislation. The only worse stage set would be a 60-40 majority for Democrats but that was not a possibility given the current polictical landscape.
The nation is very nearly evenly split and in a most uncompromising humor with both sides ready to blame the other for stubbing their own toe. Democrats can’t accept that this was their own ridiculous attitudes that prevented a strong referendum on the Republicans, instead of a slimmest of margins victory in a contentious election with a lot of public sketchiness. Republicans equally, cannot admit (at least as a mature majority) that it was their antics and the actions of President Trump that made them vulnerable to this shift.
Neither side got their cake and everyone is mad at the ice cream flavor.
Gun Control Express?
No, actually. The freshly elected and newly restored Democrats are (probably) wiser than the loudest mouths of the gun control movement and not all of them are ignorant of the inclusive shift to the left politically that gun ownership has taken.
The political right is no longer synonymous with firearms freedoms alone and the left is no longer blanket gun bans and confiscations. Millions of Democratic voters bought handguns and AR-15’s in 2020, seeing a the need and utility for the first time in their lives. And unlike many clashing political issues, gun owners largely welcomed the new gun owners. There wasn’t some gate keeping political purity test beyond, “Hey, you just bought a gun. Let me know if you have questions.” and, “Yeah, you’re right. Ultimately it is up to you, nobody is coming to save you.”
This was not universal, nothing is, but the attitude new gun owners have overwhelming found is the right one, welcome and please feel free to ask questions.
Gun owners ability to answer said questions varies by knowledge and experience.
You tried, bud… This is a person who needs to master phonics and complete its transition to reading and writing comprehension before talking about the science of terminal ballistics. Priorities.
Back to Politics
Basically we ended up in, while not the worst possible, one of the worst realistically possible electoral situations when it comes to gun rights.
The saving grace is the fundamental shift of gun ownership’s base. It got bigger. Millions bigger, 2-4% of the voting population in the US bigger. How many elections would have swung, how many states would have changed hands in the other direction, by a 2-4% shift?
Gun owners tend to be a very motivated and very engaged base of voters so these 2-4% are likely to be very vocal in the defense of their newly realized right of defense. Especially after 2020.
Now, the race isn’t finalized and it could still theoretically end up 51-49 in favor of the Republicans. But I won’t hold my breath. A potentially rough 2 years+ of defending the 2nd it is looking to be.
Ever wondered what firearm models were “propped” in 1977 for Star Wars IV: A New Hope?
I certainly have, it’s fun to watch how the SciFi’d up a bunch of surplus guns. And that isn’t the only one its fun to look at. Battlestar Galatica, Firefly, Alien, Starship Troopers, all have creatively mocked up props and it’s fun to see where they came from.
