Oh, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas (or F*ck This) depending upon which side of the gun control spectrum you fall on, assuming this is a polarizing issue for you as it is for me. I am firmly in the parenthetical category.

However, it is not all sunshine and roses for the gun restrictions crowd, although they are likely to smile and pretend it is clear skies while the thunderhead rolls in.

But they aren’t all putting on the delusional brave face. This report, from San Diego of all places (I would generally expect more enthusiasm but this is the AP, not Mother Jones or Vox) details one of the chief difficulties.

Market Saturation.

Gun restrictions face uphill battle even under Biden

SAN DIEGO (AP) – The gun debate in America will soon enter a new chapter with a Democrat in the White House after four years under President Donald Trump in which gun control advocates developed a long wish list for reform amid a spate of large-scale mass killings in places like Las Vegas, El Paso and Parkland, Florida.

Ah, already we have selective memory. We didn’t mention Pulse in Orlando, Florida. We didn’t mention the slaying of officers in Dallas, Texas during the march over the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. We didn’t mention the Kalamazoo, MI Uber Killer, or the federal officer who killed 3 and injured 3 in Bethesda and Beltsville, Maryland… Would those happening to be in the year 2016 make them irrelevant?

The items on the agenda — largely relegated to the political shelf in recent years — include renewing a ban on AR-style rifles, universal background checks, restrictions on high-capacity magazines and a federal red flag law designed to prevent people at risk of harming themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.

Oh, look… the same empirically terrible ideas as usual, I’m sure they’ll work this time though…

Let’s break these down… again.

• Ban “Assault Weapons”
  • Nebulous definition unless it is so broadly applied it covers the whole of semi-automatics
  • Targets the method less likely to be used in homicide than sharp objects and blunt force
  • Would reduce homicides by 2-4%, at most, and relies on 3 impossibilities to achieve that efficiency rate
    • First, all the homicides accounted for would have to be done with a banned weapon. They are not
    • Second, none of the killers must pick an alternate method. They would
    • Third, we must assume “ban” means gone and no longer available in circulation legally or illegally. This is impossible as shown by every nation with a ban in place
• “Universal” Background Checks
  • Relies on voluntary compliance
  • No practical method of enforcement
• Magazine Capacity Ban
  • Has minimal correlation with the lethality of mass casualty attacks
    • High casualty counts have been achieved with high capacity and low capacity firearms with equal ease
    • Other factors tend to drive casualty counts
      • Time in which the shooter encounters effective resistance
      • Environment keeping people close to the shooter
      • Environment keeping people from knowing there is a threat
      • Shooter’s own motives and actions
        • Specific target, mass casualty, or mix
        • Change or acceleration of motive (single homicide becoming a mass killing/suicide)
        • Psychological desire to continue
  • There are hundreds of millions units in circulation
• “Red Flag” Law
  • Designed ostensibly for the safety of vulnerable individuals and those around them during a suspected temporary mental crisis, example: severe depression
  • In practice has subjective problems, due process concerns, bureaucratic implementation and recovery problems, and can easily be weaponized against an individual
    • “Red Flagging” may not be as potentially lethal as “SWATing” but the disruption to someone’s life for a selfish, vindictive, or malicious reason is still immense
      • There are usually very weak provisions in place to prevent misuse
  • Most of the effective methods used under “Red Flag” are available to family member, friends, and law enforcement through other channels, and voluntarily available to the person in potential crisis
  • The Help/Harm ratio on these laws is suspect, especially with voluntary alternatives. Active engagement by the individual is preferred

Now, back to the AP

But virtually all of those will require Congress to act.

Yes, as they should require. The President should in no way wield that authority.

The most coveted piece of legislation by gun control advocates has been a renewal of the ban on “assault weapons” that expired in 2004. Biden played a central role in pushing through that decade-long ban, and he has pledged to push for another ban on the semiautomatic long guns that have only surged in popularity since their return to the market.

Interesting… I thought the big push and the great saving laws were going to be Universal Background Checks and Red Flag Laws, now its an Assault Weapons Ban again. Saturation of AR-type rifles into the market (and that is a nebulous distinction because we don’t have clear criteria) has at the very least doubled since 2004’s sunset on the first ban.

Much has changed since that ban was pushed through — from the political landscape to the saturation of those firearms in the civilian market.

In the years leading up to and following the ban, there were an estimated 8.5 million AR-platform rifles in circulation in the United States. Since the ban was lifted, the rifles — called “modern sporting rifles” by the industry — have only surged in popularity. The National Shooting Sports Foundation now estimates there are more than 17 million in circulation. And there are likely significantly more after this year, which consistently smashed monthly records for federal background checks.

It’s good to see the AP pulling reliable numbers. We are sitting at about 21 million background checks for 2020 according to the NSSF, upwards of 10 million of those are new owners. This does not begin to estimate the number of firearms sold that didn’t need a background check and didn’t end up on NICS because they were legal individual to individual transfers.

How many people bought their first gun off a friend or family member who had one to spare? How many more million new owners are there with that method?

The Point

The point is that with a 50/50 Senate and a bare majority in the House of Representatives, combined with a more vibrant and larger gun owning populous than ever before after the year that proved gun control was useless. They are going to have an uphill challenge even holding all the cards and the Congress, already on the nation’s shitlist for many-a-reason, is going to need to earn good grace points.

Some of them remember, hell the President-Elect should remember, just what the AWB cost them in 1994.

It will be a fight, it is coming, but socially and informationally we are in a much better position than 94 had us.

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.

I find that hilarious.

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 not a 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.

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.

When people are no longer willing to lose at the polls, it’s time to make elections less important.

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.

They have no clue.

Welcome to 2021

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.

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.

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?