assault weapons AR 15

blank 919 belated?

see uvalde daniel defense

see mass shooter (always have one?!)

yikes promote 2nd on kyle, 2nd civil war

SEE MACHINE GUN

see AR15

see radicalization

see man male

BO did nothing? sales spiked when wackos thot he would?! also covid / defund the police have spiked sales

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some states some progress? CA? bunch of mass shoot, ALWAYS assault rifle eg nashville?)

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this may be extension of thoughts and prayers now is not the time in our grief over mass shootings we cannot be rational in our decision (to increase gun control regulations)

how sleazy is the left that they would use the lives of children and grief of parents to score political points

-=-=-

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James Fishback Urges People To Buy An AR-15 To Protect Their Children From 'James Talafreako'

RWW 10 26

-=-=

-=-=-

an 10 24

Police in Tempe, Arizona have arrested a man they believe is responsible for a spate of shootings at a Democratic field office in the pivotal battleground state. The alleged shooter's cache of weapons and ammunition suggests he may have been planning a politically motivated mass shooting.

Phoenix-based ABC affiliate KNXV reported Wednesday that 60 year-old Jeffrey Michael Kelly has been arrested in connection with three different shootings reported at the campaign office since September. Democrats have since closed that office and moved operations to an undisclosed location out of concern for the safety of workers and volunteers.

Kelly has since been charged with unlawful discharge, shooting at a non-residential structure, terrorism and criminal damage. He is also accused of "hanging suspicious bags of white powder from several political signs lined with razor blades," according to KVXN.

The Democratic field office was targeted in three separate shootings on September 16, September 23 and October 6. Witnesses reported a silver Toyota Highlander SUV near the scene. No one was in the office at the time of the shootings, and no deaths or injuries were reported in either incident.

According to Phoenix-based outlets KTVK and KPHO, Kelly allegedly used Google Maps to search the location of the field office, and he was also reportedly seen posting "anti-Democratic ideology signs" in several locations near his home.

KVXN further reported that when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms searched Kelly's home, they found a massive arsenal of weapons, including 120 firearms, approximately 250,000 rounds of ammunition and a grenade launcher, in addition to body armor. Maricopa County Deputy County Attorney Nena Bhatia said it's likely Kelly was planning a mass shooting.

"The state and law enforcement believe that this person was preparing to commit an act of mass casualty with the guns he had, and that his progression of violence was escalating," she said.

While the types of guns investigators and caliber of ammunition seized has not yet been disclosed, it's worth noting that an AK-47 in its fully automatic setting is capable of firing 600 rounds a minute**. This means that without even counting for time to reload, it would take approximately seven hours to fire 250,000 rounds of ammunition continuously.

Kelly is currently being held on a $500,000 bond, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. His next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday, October 29.

Click here to read KVXN's article in full.

===

kpfa

10.12.23 - 10:00AM Guest: Zusha Elinson is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he covers America’s gun culture and industry. He is the co-author with journalist Cameron McWhirter of the new book American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15.

===

an 5 24

far-right Youtube influencer Brandon Herrera is set to face-off against incumbent US Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) in a primary race Tuesday. The Daily Beast reported in March that "'a Trumpworld source' said Herrera would be 'a disaster for Republicans' if elected."

A Sunday, May 26 Daily Beast article reports the "**gunfluencer" — who has over 3 million subscribers — recently "posted to YouTube a video in which he wears a balaclava, fires an Armalite rifle, uses Irish stereotypes while joking about the IRA [Irish Republican Army], and says he 'f–king hate[s] the British.'"

The Beast reports:

*The Armalite assault rifle was an American gun that became synonymous with the Provisional Irish Republican Army or IRA, the dominant republican terror group during the Troubles, the period of violent unrest in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain from 1968 to 1998.

*The accepted death toll from the Troubles, established in the book Lost Lives by authors David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea, is 3,720. The Provisional IRA killed more than 1,700 people–hundreds of them civilians. According to Ulster University, a college in Northern Ireland, more than 47,000 people were injured in shootings, bombings and other acts of violence

READ MORE:['Disgusting': MAGA rages after far-right YouTuber running for Congress mocks Trump’s son

Vice president of the gun control group Giffords, Chris Harris, told the Beast, "Brandon Herrera is reckless and dangerous. He gleefully promotes violence and extremism."

The Beast also notes:

*Also known as the AK Guy, Herrera has more than 3.4 million followers on YouTube. His videos have courted trouble before. Earlier this year, in response to a video in which Herrera fires a German World War II submachine gun (which he calls 'the original ghetto blaster') and goose-steps while an associate wears a German uniform, Gonzales branded his opponent a 'known neo-Nazi.'

*Herrera denied the charge, saying: 'This is the death spiral ladies and gentlemen. He has to cry to his liberal friends about me, because Republicans won’t listen anymore.'

Gonzales's district — which Herrera is vying for — includes Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in 2022.

While the YouTuber has secured support from hardliner GOP lawmakers like US Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Herrera may have hurt his chance of securing a primary win in March when he posted a video making fun ofDonald Trump's son, Barron.

"I’ve heard that Brandon Herrera has a problem with keeping his mouth shut and has a problem with saying stupid stuff, and this is just the tip of the iceberg," a Republican operative told the Beast. "Brandon Herrera is going to have a very bad time over the next couple months if what I’ve heard is true."

Former Anti-Slavery International director Aidan McQuade, who's from Northern Ireland slammed the GOP hopeful "for displaying 'jaw-dropping stupidity'" in the video.

"It is quite an achievement to make a video of which the anti-Irish stereotyping is the least offensive part," McQuade told the Beast.

*The Daily Beast's full report is here (subscription required).

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1123

'Ho hum that’s just America': Top Dem furious over report of man with AR-15 near US Capitol - Alternet.org

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6 23 raw

new York (AFP) - An American man was found guilty on Friday of massacring 11 Jewish worshippers five years ago in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history, local media reported.

Robert Bowers was convicted of opening fire inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2018.

The 50-year-old was found guilty of all 63 federal charges against him, including hate crimes resulting in death, CNN, ABC and others reported.

A jury will now decide whether Bowers should receive the death penalty for the mass shooting.

Prosecutors told his trial that Bowers methodically tracked down victims at the synagogue, shooting many of them multiple times and from close range.

The court heard that the former truck driver yelled "All Jews must die!" during the rampage that added to fears about a resurgence of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis across the United States.

The incident occurred during Shabbat services and Bowers was armed with anAR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle and three Glock handguns. He was arrested at the scene.

Members of three congregations in the synagogue were killed, while two additional worshippers and several police officers were also wounded.

Bowers had expressed strong anti-Semitic views online ahead of the attack.

Donald Trump, then the US president, called for Bowers to receive the death penalty, which federal prosecutors formally requested in August 2019.

The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden has not carried out any federal executions since he came to power in January 2021, however.

Bowers' defense team has argued that their client suffers from schizophrenia. They offered a guilty plea in exchange for life in prison, which was rejected by the prosecution.

Bowers' lawyers did not dispute during the trial that it was Bowers who shot the congregants, but they argued that he had not been motivated by a hatred of Jewish people.

They claimed he had a "misguided intent" of wanting to stop one of the Jewish organizations from helping immigrants settle in the United States.

The trial opened in late April and came amid a rising number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League.

In 2022, the US-based Jewish group registered 3,697 acts of harassment, vandalism and assault, a 36 percent increase over the prior year and the highest since it began keeping records in 1979.

The United States is home to around six million Jewish people, according to a Pew Research Center study published in May 2021.

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no lnx

an 5 23

Texas mall shooter wore neo-Nazi symbol and shared 'white-supremacist content online': report

Maya BoddieMay 07, 2023

The man who murdered eight people using an AR-15 at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, Saturday likely identified with neo-Nazi beliefs,The Washington Post reports.

Allen resident Mauricio Garcio,according to The Post wore a "patch on his chest" at the time of the shooting that read "RWDS," meaning "Right Wing Death Squad," a "phrase popular among right wing extremists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists."

Additionally, NBC reports Garcia "interacted with neo-Nazi and white supremacist content online."

READ MORE: All extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing radicals

Last year, an Anti-Defamation League's Center (ADLC) on Extremism report revealed "all extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists," adding, "More than four out of five extremist-related murders last year were committed by white supremacist right-wing extremists."

The report also noted "nearly all extremist-related mass killings were committed by right-wing extremists, and warns the number of those mass murders 'is of growing concern.'"

An official familiar with the matter told NBC not only did Garcia engage with neo-Nazi content online, but he also posted such content himself.

Regarding the issue of gun violence specifically pertaining to Texas, The Post reports:

In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 4,613 firearms-related deaths in Texas. The state's annual death toll from guns has increased steadily since 2014.

Led by Abbott, Texas has moved in recent years to loosen restrictions on firearms. In 2021, the state began allowing permitless carry so residents can carry handguns in public without a license.The state 'does not specifically put restrictions on who can carry a long gunsuch as a rifle or shotgun,' according to a Texas government website.

READ MORE: Gavin Newsom takes aim at Texas gun laws

ADLC's report added the "main threat in the near future will likely be white supremacist shooters," noting, "The increase in the number of mass killing attempts, meanwhile, is one of the most alarming trends in recent years."

READ MORE: Robert Reich breaks down the Texas law that protects gun manufacturers from discrimination

The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required). NBC's report is here.

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xmas card w assault weapons common?! took off flag pin for ar15? fetish vice signal

https://www.alternet.org/insensitive-creepy-and-ghoulish-republicans-are-doing-gunowners-more-harm-than-good-conservative/

an 4 23

no linx

:{:{}:

daily Beast opinion columnist and Never Trump conservative Matt Lewis has his share of disagreements with liberals and progressives where gun control is concerned. Lewis considers himself staunchly pro-2nd Amendment, and he isn't shy about saying that he grew up around a "gun culture."

:{:{}:

But in a scathing column published on April 17, Lewis takes issue with the "insensitive, creepy, and ghoulish" way in which many "Republican politicians" address the gun control issue. And he believes that the theatrics of Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and other MAGA Republicans are doing the 2nd Amendment more harm than good.

"When I was around ten," Lewis recalls, "my grandfather gave me a real shotgun. My dad intervened to make sure that I did not have unfettered access to it, and that I could only shoot it with his direct supervision. My dad was a prison guard and an avid hunter. He took gun ownership seriously. All this to say, I'm not a gun-grabbing city slicker — though I do think there are common sense reforms we should consider, including red flag laws and background checks."

READ MORE: Guns don't kill Americans, Republicans do

Lewis continues, "I’m not offended by law-abiding Americans who have guns for hunting and protection. What I am offended by are weirdos who want to go out of their way to constantly remind you that they are armed to the teeth."

The conservative columnist has no problem with conservatives debating liberals and progressives vigorously on gun control; what he objects to are the "bizarre" and "weird" theatrics — especially when they follow a mass shooting.

"In the wake of all the violence we have seen in recent decades," Lewis laments, "I would expect 2nd Amendment advocates to go out of their way to demonstrate responsible gun ownership. Remember the Party of Personal Responsibility? Instead, it seems like Republican politicians are going out of their way to fetishize guns. They are more than just for protection or sport. They are a way of life, a religion, a culture."

:{:{}:

Even Republicans with strong pro-2nd Amendment voting records, Lewis argues, risk being attacked as "squishy RINOs" by MAGA Republicans if they aren't "performative" enough.

READ MORE: How the gun-loving South dominates these United States

"Clearly, what we are seeing is some sort of vice signaling, presumably because the demand to be perceived as a performatively tough Second Amendment advocate is so intense that mere words and past votes are no longer persuasive enough," Lewis observes. "In addition to supporting the right to bear arms, you now also have to demonstrate that you are a gun fanatic."

READ MORE: Students across the country walk out of school to protest gun violence

Read Matt Lewis' full Daily Beast column at this link (subscription required).

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https://www.alternet.org/send/house-republicans-shooting/

no lnx vid twt an 3 23

Watch: Here’s how 5 House Republicans are responding to the TN school shooting that left 6 dead

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: U.S. Rep.-elect Andy Ogles (R-TN) casts his vote in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 06, 2023 in Washington, DC. The House of Representatives is meeting to vote for the next Speaker after House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) failed to earn more than 218 votes on several ballots; the first time in 100 years that the Speaker was not elected on the first ballot. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

David Badashand

The New Civil Rights Movement

March 29, 2023

There are 535 seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and another six non-voting seats for delegates. After Monday’s horrific mass shooting at a private Christian elementary school, where three nine-year olds and three adults were shot to death, very few Members appeared on-camera to talk with reporters about the tragedy.

The Democrats who did advocated for various gun control measures, including reinstating the federal assault weapons ban signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton that Republican lawmakers and President George W. Bush refused to renew in 2004, after which mass shootings and gun violence skyrocketed.

President Joe Biden this week repeatedly called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, a call he has made over and over again.

In addition to calling for an assault weapons ban, House and Senate Democrats responded to the mass shooting at Covenant Presbyterian Elementary in Nashville by calling for tighter gun control measures including implementing red flag laws.

READ MORE: ‘Troubling Questions’: Experts Slam Ginni Thomas’ Group That Waged Cultural War Against the Left via Web of Dark Money Orgs

The parents of the Nashville shooter have said their child had an emotional disorder and should not have had any firearms. Three were used in the assault and another four were found at the shooter’s home.Tennessee has no red flag law so police were not legally allowed to take the guns away.

After last year’s school mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were shot to death, some states took action. Tennessee, where the Nashville school shooting became the nation’s 130th this year, did little.

“We’re not looking at gun restriction laws in my administration right now,”Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, said after the tragedy. “Criminals don’t follow laws, criminals break laws. Whether they are a gun law, a drug law, criminals break laws.”

“We can’t control what they do.”

But in a sense, Governor Lee did control what they do.

READ MORE: Tennessee Governor Slammed After ‘Praying’ for Nashville School Community Without Mentioning Mass Shooting

In 2021 ago he signed into law a permit-less open-carry law: no permit required, no training required, no background check required.

A Tennessee Republican U.S. Congressman, Tim Burchett this week repeatedly decreed there’s nothing that can be done.

:{:{}:

Echoing almost word-for-word Governor Lee’s remarks from three years ago, in now-viral video, Rep. Burchett infamously on Monday declared, “We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals.”

He did, however, invoke religion, calling for a Christian revival, and declaring that was the answer to fixing mass shootings and gun violence.}:

:{:{On Tuesday Rep. Burchett was back in front of the cameras, furthering his call to do nothing.}:

“I don’t know what law we could pass,” he said. “Evil people are going to do evil things.”}:

:{:{}:

U.S. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) appeared on CNN this week and responded to the Nashville slaughter by defending his threat to President Biden to try to take his AR-15 away.

In a rare example of excellent journalism, CNN’s Phil Mattingly pressed Buck after the far-right Republican tried to change the topic.

“If Joe Biden is interested in reaching a resolution on the issue let him deal with the Southern border,” Buck defiantly declared, literally blaming President Biden’s border policies for gun violence.

He also tried to link the Nashville mass shooting to a mental health problem and then tried to link that to drug laws and a lack of funding for states for mental health services.

Rep. Buck last year voted against two mental health bills, and since 2019 has voted against the vast majority of 40 or so health care bills.}:

“What’s the burden on you?” Matttingly asked Buck.

READ MORE: New WSJ Poll Is Devastating for DeSantis and His ‘Anti-Woke’ Policies

Unyieldingly, Buck replied, “My burden is to follow the Constitution, and the Second Amendment protects – there are more than two million AR-15s.”

:{:{Republican U.S. Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents Nashville, Tennessee and came under fire again this week for his 2021 Christmas card showing him and his family, including young children, holding assault weapons, was asked about banning AR-15s.}:

Rep. Ogles’ response was to answer the question with another question: “Why not talk about the real issue facing this country?” which he declared, like Rep. Buck and others, ismental health. He then walked away.}:

:{:{U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) took a different tact on the GOP’s do-nothing policy while supporting the GOP’s walk-away response.}:

He equated assault weapons with politics and emotions.

“If you’re gonna talk about the AR-15 you’re talking politics now,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.“Let’s not get into politics. let’s not get into emotion, because emotion feels good, but emotion doesn’t solve problems.”}:

He then just walked away.

But perhaps the greatest example of the Republican response to gun violence and mass shootings came from House Republican’s leader, Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

On Tuesday, McCarthy stood in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall to pose for photos with some tourists.

:{:{CNN’s Manu Raju asked the Speaker about the “incredibly serious situation” in Nashville, suggesting it required a response from the Speaker of the House.}:

McCarthy’s response?

He refused to provide one, then walked away.}:

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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2 23 random next segment

https://www.thefirsttv.com/watch/debunking-the-lefts-gun-myths/

gee i got a bunch of guns but dunno which wd be an assault weapon [pix a wall of them presumably in a store, none for hunting

good ol boy assault weapon a made up word by dems in 90's

WR Hawkins is the gun expert for Breitbart News whose here to shatter all the bogus claims the Left loves to make about guns and the 2nd amendment. Did you know it was the Clinton administration that came up with the ‘assault weapon’ term? Did you know that California, a state with gun control laws since the early 90s has one of the highest mass shooting rates? Hawkins reveals all in this informative less on the 2nd amendment.

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an 2 23

A new report from the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism reveals that all extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists. More than four out of five extremist-related murders last year were committed by white supremacist right-wing extremists.The report finds that nearly all extremist-related mass killings were committed by right-wing extremists, and warns the number of those mass murders "is of growing concern."

"All the extremist-related murders in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists of various kinds," the ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) reports, "who typically commit most such killings each year but only occasionally are responsible for all (the last time this occurred was 2012)."

"Left-wing extremists engage in violence ranging from assaults to fire-bombings and arsons, but since the late 1980s have not often targeted people with deadly violence."

The report adds: "White supremacists commit the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, but in 2022 the percentage was unusually high: 21 of the 25 murders were linked to white supremacists. Again, this is primarily due to mass shootings. Only one of the murders was committed by a right-wing anti-government extremist—the lowest number since 2017."

Last year, COE notes, "domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the U.S., in 12 separate incidents. This represents a decrease from the 33 extremist-related murders documented in 2021 and is comparable to the 22 extremist-related murders in 2020. It continues the recent trend of fewer extremist-related killings after a five-year span of 47-78 extremist-related murders per year (2015-2019)."

The Associated Press, pointing to the "especially high number" of extremist killings "linked to white supremacy" reports they "include a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 Black shoppers dead and a mass shooting that killed five people at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado."

The "main threat in the near future will likely be white supremacist shooters, the report found," The AP adds. "The increase in the number of mass killing attempts, meanwhile, is one of the most alarming trends in recent years, said Center on Extremism Vice President Oren Segal."

In a separate article on that LGBT nightclub mass shooting, Club Q, also published Thursday, the AP reports the "22-year-old accused of carrying out the deadly mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in November ran aneo-Nazi websiteand used gay and racial slurs while gaming online, a police detective testified Wednesday."

"Anderson Lee Aldrich also posted an image of a rifle scope trained on a gay pride parade and used a bigoted slur when referring to someone who was gay, Detective Rebecca Joines said."

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an 2 23

kentucky State Representative Josie Raymond (D-31st District) delivered an impassioned floor speech on Wednesday in opposition to legislation that would nullify federal firearm restrictions across The Bluegrass State.

Assemblyman Josh Bray's (R-71st District) House Bill 153 "would make Kentucky a Second Amendment sanctuary" and "is a duplicate bill filed last year that would essentially prevent a federal ban on firearms — were it to happen — from applying inKentucky," where "115 out of 120 counties already have Second Amendment sanctuaries in place," Link nky reported on Tuesday.

After the measure was approved by the Republican-dominated House Veterans, Military, and Public Protection Committee, the proposal advanced for debate by the full chamber, at which point Raymond stood up and excoriated her GOP colleagues for prioritizing weapons of mass death over human lives.

"So I think I speak for a lot of people watching when I say, what are y'all doing? Why are we wasting time and resources passing unnecessary, unwise, unconstitutional legislation to pledge allegiance to hunks of metal that are being used to kill our children?" Raymond asked. "Sometimes in public policy, you know that it takes a tragedy to force policy change to force action from elected representatives. Unfortunately, when it comes to gun violence, we know better."

Raymond recalled that "when children were killed at Marshall County High School, this body did not act to keep guns out of the hands of children. Instead, this body said that newspapers could not publish pictures of the mutilated little bodies of our children after they've been shot and killed at school."

Raymond noted that "against the wishes of police,this body passed legislation to allow the carrying of guns – concealed guns – without any permit or training. Practical or merely symbolic, mere posturing, when we pass legislation that salutes guns over the lives of Kentuckians, we're making it known who we really serve."

Concluding her remarks, Raymond exclaimed that "this is lunacy, Mr. Speaker! This is idiocy. And I vote no."

Watch below or at this link.

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bill to make ar15 am official gun?!

an 2 23

At least three House Republicans this week began wearing pins in the shape of an assault weapon on their clothing. U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY), U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), and U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) were all caught on camera with the pins, leading some to express outrage.

U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) was among the first to circulate images of the two Republicans wearing the pins.

“Where are these assault weapon pins coming from? Who is passing these out?” he asked.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-assault-weapons-are-not-threat-anybody

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https://www.alternet.org/capitol-rioter-sobbing-in-court/

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yay

an me 1 23

A small faction of sheriffs in the state of Illinois is pushing back against the state's ban on assault rifles, an initiative being enforced by Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker's (D) office.

According to NBC Chicago, a legal battle is brewing in the state as some believe the newly passed piece of legislation —House-Bill 5471, also referred to as the Protect Illinois Communities Act— violates Second Amendment rights.

Per the news outlet, a number of law enforcement officials in the state have weighed in with their assessments of the bill offering relatively critical opinions of it.

McHenry County, Ill. Sheriff Robb Tadelman took to social media with his concerns following the passing of the bill. “Neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state, nor will we be arresting or housing law-abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance with this act,” he said.

Other Illinois law enforcement officials in various counties also weighed in with similar concerns, namely Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey, Sheriff Jack Harlan in Boone County, and Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana, according to NBC Chicago.

In fact, Downey released a statement on the sheriff department's Facebook page addressing the new bill. Some Republican lawmakers have also echoed law enforcement officials' concerns.

“We will not comply with this legislation because we don’t have to,” said former Illinois State Rep and Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey “Our Constitution protects us. The sponsors of this bill may have won a temporary victory today, but they will lose because they cannot get around the rights we have guaranteed in our Constitution.”

Despite the critical takes on the new law, Pritzker and his office are standing firm in support of it.

“Anybody who doesn’t comply, there are consequences for that,” Pritzker said. “You don’t get to choose which laws you comply with in the state of Illinois. The State Police is responsible for enforcement, as are all law enforcement all across this state. They will, in fact, do their job or they won’t be in their job.”

Per the news outlet, the governor's office also described the pushback as "'political grandstanding at its worst,' and said that sheriffs and departments that refuse to enforce the ban are 'in violation of their oath of office.'"

“The assault weapons ban is the law of Illinois. The General Assembly passed the bill and the governor signed it into law to protect children in schools, worshippers at church and families at parades from the fear of sudden mass murder,” a spokesperson said. “Sheriffs have a constitutional duty to uphold the laws of the state, not pick and choose which laws they support and when.”

Pritzker’s spokesperson also said, “We’re confident that this law will hold up to any future legal challenges."

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12 22

Biden 1st to go to victims ceremony; schumer pledge before end yr?

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tim-pool/tim-pool-and-guests-discuss-how-acquire-guns-without-attracting-attention-authorities

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turner diary?

12 22

The “rule of three” is one of those informal guidelines that help us journalists decide whether an event is newsworthy. If something occurs three times, it’s probably a trend. Trends are newsworthy.

Trends can be fads, but three rifle attacks on critical infrastructure in less than 10 years – two this week alone – isn’t a fad. That goes double since the attacks appear to correlate with another political trend, which is wider and greater social acceptance of trans people.

Even as GOP-dominated state legislatures move to restrict trans rights, more than 500 municipal governments are moving the other way, opening cities to greater equality and freedom. Two hundred major urban centers and 50 state capitals have enacted or are set to enact laws, policies and services inclusive of the LGBT-plus people.

That’s democratic politics. It never stops. But neither does the political violence that erupts in reaction to democratic politics. The more Americans perceive trans people as people, rather than subhuman perversions, the more political violence we can expect.

Hence the nature of the ongoing right-wing insurgency.

It’s not a fad

Two electrical substations were damaged Saturday in Moore County, North Carolina, knocking out power in more than 37,000 homes.

In what police said was an “intentional” and “malicious” attack, a person or persons “open fired” on the transformers, leaving behind more than two dozen shell casings from a “high-powered rifle.”

Investigators initially said there was no evidence linking the attack to “a local drag show that had been targeted with threats of violence and calls to cancel the show in recent weeks,” reported USA Today.

There’s still no hard evidence linking the events, but investigators appear now to be broadening their perspective, setting the attack, according to CNN, “in context with the growing tensions and armed confrontations around similar LBGTQ+ events across the country.”

They are looking at “writings by extremists on online forums encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure” as well as “a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ+ events by domestic extremists.”

CNN reported that paramilitaries have for the last two years used online forums to discuss attacking critical infrastructure, including the power grid, and to encourage individuals to act. These paramilitaries “posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles.”

A government report from 2013 determined that attacks on 17 transformers in Silicon Valley were the result of sniper fire. More than 100 bullets were expended over 20 minutes, leaving scores of thousands without power and costing the public utility $15 million.

The Seattle Times reported today the investigation of at least five rifle attacks on electrical substations in Washington state. The damage was similar to the damage in North Carolina. Authorities there said it was a “deliberate physical attack,” though the newspaper reported it was unclear whether they caused service disruptions.

That, my friend, is three related events. It’s not a fad.

It’s a trend.

“Normal reality”

It’s also an example of the friction between democratic politics and an established political order (white power) that refuses to yield to democratic politics. That friction can be healthy, but more often than not in this country a consequence of it has been political violence.

It bears repeating at this point that the greatest locus of friction was probably when Americans elected their first Black president. Given that white power was “normal reality” to most white Americans, Barack Obama’s ascendance was a perversion of the natural order.

I don’t find it surprising that a person or persons fired on 17 electrical substations after Obama was reelected in 2012. If democratic politics couldn’t stop “normal reality” from being turned upside down, political violence was justified in returning us to “normal reality.”

But the attack on critical infrastructure was, in 2013, an outlier.

Most of the political violence we have seen since then has been inflicted on people. As I have said before, every shooting massacre is a reaction to white people’s perceived loss of racial status. There have been so many mass shootings, in fact, that if they happened anywhere else in the world, they would be called an insurgency.

If the attackers were Black or brown, yes! Then that’s an insurgency! But we don’t call it that. Most people in this country are white and most white people can’t see a political insurgency in front of them, even when it erupts in schools, even when it mows down children

Property over people

Maybe that will change given this new trend.

This is America, after all. Here, the rights of property have historically superseded the rights of people, as is evidenced by Republican legislators bent on outlawing gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, banning certain trans-related books in public schools and forbidding the discussion of LGBT-plus topics in the classroom.

All of that is jim-dandy, as is the massacre of innocents, but taking out the power supply? That crosses the line. Crosses! The! Line!

There’s no hope for gun control as long as the Republicans don’t want it – and they won’t want it when the status quo is mere mass death.

The Republicans, however, are the party of property, of business, of old white people. Power outages cost time. Time costs money. And money is the entire point of living a once-only existence on Earth.

I’m not the only one who sees a crack in the GOP’s united front. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said Tuesday:

“When we look at all the money that’s being lost by businesses here at Christmastime, when we look at threats to people in nursing homes having lost power, hospitals having to run off generators and not being able to do certain kinds of operations at this point – all of those are deep concerns here, and we can’t let this happen” (italics mine).

I’m not holding my breath, but if this new trend gains some momentum, we might see a few Republicans actually stand up to the paramilitaries among them and put an end to this insurgency.

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an 8 22

House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has proposed two pieces of legislation aiming to incorporate more accountability measures for the firearm industry.

According to NBC News, the two bills seek to create penalties for gun manufacturers that sell "weapons of war" to civilian customers. The two measures focus on imposing tax increases and the creation of a criminal tracking system.

The first measure, the Firearm Industry Fairness Act, would "impose a 20% tax on the total revenue earned by manufacturers who produce assault weapons and high-capacity magazines."

The Democratic lawmaker explained that the money generated from the newly-imposed tax would be utilized for "gun violence prevention efforts and to support shooting victims."

The second piece of legislation, which is the Firearm Industry Crime and Trafficking Accountability Act, per the news outlet "would require every company that manufactures guns to create a system that tracks crimes committed with firearms they've sold, using data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives."

"This summer, my Committee heard from those touched by gun violence in this country, including parents who lost their child, a doctor who lost his patients, and the mother of a young boy who lost his father," Maloney said in a statement. "These Americans, along with so many others from Uvalde, Buffalo, and Highland Park, urged Congress to take action to stop gun violence."

She added, "House Democrats have already passed a ban on assault weapons, but as we wait for the Senate to act, we must pursue other crucial reforms."

Per the House Oversight Committee, the proposed legislation would "mandate that those manufacturers cease distributing weapons to a retailer when they have reason to believe that the guns sold by that retailer are being trafficked or used for criminal purposes."

The latest follows a letter Maloney penned to executives from a number of gun manufacturers including Daniel Defense, Smith & Wesson Sturm, and Ruger & Co.

She noted that the information obtained from firearm manufaturers “has heightened the committee’s concern that your company is continuing to profit from the sale and marketing of weapons of war to civilians despite the harm these weapons cause."

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cpb dad rescued dtr?

https://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/16023/20220530/gun-manufacturer-of-firearm-used-in-uvalde-massacre-paired-love-of-guns-with-love-of-the-bible-report-says.htm

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https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-suggests-uvalde-students-needed-jr-15s-defense-1729317

Marjorie Taylor Greene Suggests Uvalde Students Needed JR-15s for Defense

BY AILA SLISCO ON 7/29/22

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE

ASSAULT WEAPONS

UVALDE

CHILDREN

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says that the elementary school students killed during the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, earlier this year could have "defended themselves" had they been armed with assault weapons marketed to children.

Greene, who represents Georgia's 14th Congressional District, said that the Robb Elementary School victims "needed" to be armed with JR-15s, a small semi-automatic rifle modeled on the AR-15 and introduced earlier this year with a marketing campaign targeting children.Greene made the suggestion on Twitter while the House was meeting to debate an assault weapons ban, which included a moment where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi denounced JR-15s as "disgusting."

"The kids at Uvalde needed JR-15s to defend themselves from the evil maniac that didn't care about laws," Greene tweeted while sharing a photo of Pelosi next to a JR-15 poster during the House hearing. "At least they could have defended themselves since no one else did, while their parents were held back by police."

"'Give the guns to the government' & they'll protect you," she added, alongside a "face with rolling eyes" emoji.

Greene's Communications Director Nick Dyer declined to comment when asked by Newsweek whether the congresswoman supported all elementary schoolchildren being armed with assault weapons as a tactic to defend against mass shootings.

The Uvalde shooting was the country's second-most deadly elementary school shooting, resulting in the deaths of 19 children and three adults including the shooter. The deadliest elementary school shooting—the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut—left 20 children and eight adults including the shooter dead.

Marjorie Taylor Greene JR-15s Guns Children Shootings

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the victims of the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, "needed" assault weapons marketed to children. Greene is pictured during an event in Newark, Ohio, on April 30, 2022.

Weapons manufacturer Wee1 Tactical's JR-15 poster describes the firearm as an opportunity for children to acquire a real semi-automatic assault weapon that "looks, feels, and operates just like Mom and Dad's gun."

The company also said that the JR-15 was intended to serve as an early introduction to guns that would lead to children becoming lifelong customers of the firearms industry.

"We believe that this introduction early on will produce a deep respect for firearms that continue and last for a lifetime of safety," Wee1 Tactical said in a press release that has since been removed from the company's website, according to Insider.

Pelosi expressed astonishment at Wee1 Tactical's JR-15 marketing campaign during Thursday's House hearing. The California Democrat spoke about the campaign while next to large reproduction of the company's colorful promotional poster, featuring cartoon images of girl and boy skull characters.

Background Checks for Gun Purchases Spiked in Texas After Uvalde Shooting

Every Republican to Vote Against an Assault Weapons Ban

Marjorie Taylor Greene Defends Nationalist Speech as 'She Is a Nazi' Trends

"It's particularly sickening to now see these same deadly weapons—are you ready for this?—being marketed to children," Pelosi said while discussing the poster. "Here's an advertisement for a JR-15, designed to be a so-called 'smaller, safer, lighter' version of the horrific AR-15, which has been used to murder so many of their playmates and friends."

"Look at this...these little skulls with ponytailsand that," she continued, pointing out the cartoon characters on the poster. "This callousness is disgusting. It's despicable and it reminds us that the crisis of gun violence requires action."

Newsweek reached out to Pelosi's office to comment.

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an 7 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ar-15-manufacturer-mass-shootings/

AR-15 manufacturer: Mass shootings are 'evil,' but what about the welfare of guns?

David Edwards and Raw Story July 27, 2022

The CEO of an AR-15 manufacturing company testified on Wednesday that mass shootings are "pure evil" -- but he said that it was the future of assault-style rifles that really "concerned" him.

In his opening remarks to the House Oversight Committee, Daniel Defense CEO Marty Daniel began by acknowledging that mass shootings like the one at a school in Uvalde, Texas were "evil acts."

"I am concerned, however, that the stated implied purpose of this hearing is to vilify, blame and try to ban over 24 million sporting rifles already in circulation that are lawfully possessed and commonly used by millions of Americans to protect their homes and loved ones," the CEO said, "to safely sport shoot with family and friends and to put food on the table as licensed hunters."

He added: "I believe in God and my faith guides me and my family. Fundamentally, I also believe there is good and evil in our lives and what we saw in Uvalde, Buffalo and Highland Park was pure evil."

Daniel asserted that the assault-style rifles sold today are "substantially the same as those [firearms] manufactured over 100 years ago."

"I believe that our nation's response needs not to focus on the type of gun but the type of persons who would commit mass shootings," he said.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/pennsylvanias-gop-gubernatorial-nominee-is-a-christian-nationalist-who-associates-with-ar-15-fetishists-historian/

no lnx

in the swing state of Pennsylvania, Republicans have a nominated a gubernatorial candidate who is even to the right of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is competing with Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, is way beyond conservative — he’s extreme.

History professor Thomas Lecaque, who teaches at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, lays out some reasons why Mastriano is so dangerous in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 31. The Republican who may be Pennsylvania’s next governor, Lecaque warns, is afar-right Christian nationalist and an “insurrectionist” who associates with AR-15 fetishists.

“Mastriano’s résumé hits all the main points of today’s bog-standard MAGA candidate template,” Lecaque explains. “He’s an insurrectionist who ginned up enthusiasm for the attempted coup as a featured speaker for Jericho March’s rally in December 2020 before participating — by his own admission — in the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6, 2021…. Mastriano also has an increasingly familiar religious profile.”

Lecaque continues,“He has described the Gulf War, in which he served in 1991, as a ‘holy’ war — a belief reflected in his bizarre 2002 graduate thesis, ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Sphinx.’ He has attended events of the Charismatic Christian dominionist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. He shares anti-Muslim memes, hangs out with militia members to guard Confederate statues at Gettysburg, and constantly hits all the main themes of Christian nationalist discourse in his speeches and other activities.”

:{:{}:

Moreover, Lecaque adds, Mastriano “associates with an extremist sect that places special emphasis on America’s most notorious gun.”

The “extremist sect” that Lecaque is referring to is the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church, a.k.a. Rod of Iron Ministries,founded by the Rev. Hyung Jin Moon — who is the youngest son of the late Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon and also goes by Sean Moon. And the “notorious gun” is the semiautomatic AR-15, which was used in two mass shootings in May: one in Buffalo, New York on May 10, and the other in Uvalde, Texas on May 24.

“Rod of Iron continues the Unification Church’s tradition of apocalypticism, but adds to this framework beliefs derived a variety of sources that include, most importantly, the rhetoric, imagery, and ideology of both QAnon and Christian nationalism,” Lecaque observes. “The younger Moon wrote a constitution for the messianic kingdom he and his followers believe will replace the United States following its collapse…. Members of the church perform ceremonies wearing bullet crowns and carrying AR-15s.”

:{:{}:

Mastriano, Lecaque notes, has been “a speaker at Rod of Iron events.” According to Lecaque, Mastriano and Moon “are fellow travelers not only in promoting far-right Christian nationalist politics, but also, in being January 6th insurrectionists.”

“Moon reportedly stormed the Capitol with over 50 of his followers,” Lecaque writes. “But the most important connection between Mastriano and Moon is their shared belief in an apocalyptic religion that imagines the present moment as a battleground between good and evil at the advent of the End Times. Rev. Sean Moon derived his church’s unusual name from Revelation 2:27, ‘he shall rule them with a rod of iron.’ He takes the rod to be the AR-15.”

The Book of Revelation part is important. In far-right evangelical fundamentalism, the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is an obsession — and it fits in with their End Times theology.

“The Book of Revelation — also known as the Apocalypse of John — is the final book of the Bible and the place where Moon came to his beliefs about the cosmic significance of the AR-15,” Lecaque observes. “What he and other cultists should consider is that the apocalypse they desire might reveal a different deity than they expect.”

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aha/hmmn:

ar15 totemic, tribal membership and a tool/power/spell to defend themselves (hype fear soc med] gubmint tyrant black antifa commie rioters --> MAGA

chris hayes had 2 experts and ref'd sev artl but not sure i found]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/guns-republican-primary-campaign-ads-midterms-1336903/

see greitens rino hunt, assault ar15

no lnx twt many pix

The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns

Conservative candidates have responded to the attack on the Capitol by doubling down on firearm worship and violent imagery to court their base

By RYAN BORT

A Republican official poses with a large gunA Republican official poses with a large gun

20,885 people were killed by guns in America in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That figure does not include suicides.

Youtube

Garrett Soldano released a pretty strange campaign ad last fall. The only words spoken in it came from a voice aggressively asking, “WHO?” and a chorus twice chanting “WE THE PEOPLE!” in response. The rest of the ad was 45 seconds of Soldano firing various weapons at a gun range, set to a heavy, looping guitar riff.

Soldano is not running for sheriff, or even for a seat in the state House. He’s a Republican running to become the next governor of Michigan.

Soldano’s ad may have been absurd, but it wasn’t atypical. Republican candidates are turning to guns, guns, guns in a very big way ahead of the midterms, serving their potential constituents with a torrent of campaign ads, Instagram posts, and even Christmas cards of themselves toting and firing deadly weapons. Conservatives using guns in campaign ads is nothing new, of course, but the way in which they’re being used in the wake of Trump’s term in office — and particularly in the wake the violent attack on the Capitol that ended it — portends a dark future for the party, and if it regains control of Washington, D.C., for the nation.

Ron Filipkowski, a researcher who tracks right-wing activity online and has highlighted several examples of Republicans going gun crazy in their campaign ads, says the use of guns in ads has “absolutely” ratcheted up this primary cycle compared to 2020 and 2018.

[RELATED STORIES

GOP Candidate Fantasizes About Murdering Political Opponents in New Ad [greitens?]

Ohio Shrinks Training Requirement for Teachers to Carry Guns From 700 Hours to 24]

“I started noticing it and was like, ‘What’s going on?'” he says. “I think it’s almost like the [Lauren] Boebert-, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene-ization of the whole America First movement that’s driving the Republican Party now. It’s those candidates who are the ones that are doing it. I feel like the establishment candidates kind of feel like they have to do it too, now.”

Boebert built her successful 2020 campaign largely around guns, and last year released an ad promising to carry a Glock on Capitol Hill. Greene in an ad for her 2020 campaign cocked an assault rifle as she warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her district, and last fall blew up a Prius with a 50-caliber rifle. Establishment Republicans like Lindsey Graham, who last year released a video of himself at a shooting range in khakis, are struggling to keep up, but the point is that they feel like they need to try. This is what the party is now.

Filipowski says he really started noticing the uptick in gun-centric ads, which were often the first big campaign rollout ads candidates would release, last fall. They haven’t stopped since.

Here’s Max Miller, a former Trump aide running for the Ohio U.S. House seat left vacant by retiring Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, talking about using “a rifle to protect our country.”

Here’s Georgia U.S. House candidate Michael Collins blowing up “Nancy Pelosi’s Plan for America” before hopping in a big rig, throwing a football, and firing another assault rifle for good measure. “I’m not afraid to say I was pro-Trump from Day One,” he adds.

Here’s Blake Masters, who’s running for Senate in Arizona, with an intimate — and frankly, creepy — ad about his love for his Walther PPK and silencers.

Masters, a venture capitalist and favorite of Trump-loving billionaire Peter Thiel, has featured guns prominently throughout his primary campaign. He responded to President Biden’s promise on Monday to crack down on “ghost guns,” which are homemade and untraceable, by tweeting a picture of a “ghost gun” he recently built himself. “Very legal & very cool,” he wrote.

“Our founders built their own guns,” Masters added. “They intended us to as well — it’s the ultimate political act, a liberty the 2A protects. Technology will not stop. With 3D printing, this is going to get easier year after year. I’ll be a political check on ‘gun control,’ but the technological check is inevitable.”

Masters isn’t the only Republican to cry that the Second Amendment is under assault while vowing to scale back gun reform policy — Florida U.S. House candidate Anthony Sabatini even responded to Biden’s address on Tuesday by calling for the abolition of the ATF — and if the party takes back Congress in November they are likely to attempt to pass a slew of pro-gun legislation, from clearing the way for nationwide open carry to doing away with background checks. “Far-right politicians in primaries are licking the boots of gun lobbyists,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts told Rolling Stone in an email on Tuesday. They’ll certainly continue to do so once in office.

But there’s something more insidious behind the sudden rash of pro-gun ads than protecting the Second Amendment. It’s a visual reminder that the party believes Jan. 6 was a good thing, that the attack on the Capitol was a valiant effort, and that Republicans deserve candidates who is willing to implicitly or explicitly condone the use of violence to reclaim a bygone version of the United Statesthey’ve seen slip through their fingers under Democratic leadership — to make America great again.

“It’s an extremist movement,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project. “The GOP base, at least a wide swath of it, has been radicalized. There are very few things you can do to demonstrate you’re more extreme and intense on tribal issues than to insinuate, tacitly or overtly, violence, that you are willing to fight for the cause. That’s what it is. It’s not a Second Amendment issue. It’s saying, ‘I’m this intense. I’m this extreme. I’m willing to go to these measures to fight for our tribe.’ That’s what it’s all about.”

As Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin put it in an ad released Monday in which she fires an assault rifle, “the Second Amendment wasn’t ratified into the Bill of Rights so we could bird hunt.”

“The Second Amendment has always been a defensive posture,” Madrid continues. “It’s always been don’t take my guns. What we are moving into now is something foundationally different. It’s now advocating that gun ownership and bearing arms is a virtue. It’s not a right. It’s almost an obligation. … There’s a desire to see a society that is centralized on this type of weaponry. There’s a lot of paranoia involved here, but it’s also demonstrative of a society that a lot of these members feel is out of their control.They feel quote unquote America is gone. It’s behind them. It’s already been taken, and theonly way to defend themselves from whatever that boogeyman is, is to have a stockpile of gold bullion, canned goods, and a ton of weaponry.”

Madrid, like Filipkowski, acknowledges that the use of guns in political ads is “growing,” and that by 2024 Republicans are going to be blowing stuff up. “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says. “There’s the 1776 rhetoric and there’s the patriot rhetoric, and there’s the American flag that’s always waved. It’s this absurd definition of what American is, and it’s getting more and more extreme in the Republican Party every election cycle.”

The fact that it’s getting so extreme among Republicans, and Republicans alone, may lead some to believe that the tenor of the ads could calm down a little ahead of the general election, when candidates typically pivot to a more moderate message in an effort to court a wider swath of voters.

In last year’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin hammered guns, abortion, and his love of Trump during the Republican primary, but eased up on guns and abortion and distanced himself from Trump ahead of the general election, which he went on to win convincingly over Democrat Terry McAullife.

But this new fixation on guns is not coming from savvy billionaires like Youngkin. It’s coming from the hardcore MAGA set, and not only is it likely to stick around beyond the primaries, it’s likely hardwired into the DNA of a party now driven by extremism, conspiracy, and a belief that violence is a legitimate tool to achieve desired political outcomes.

“It’s not going to change,” Madrid says. “This is not this is not a primary tactic. This is mainstream Republicanism. So once you start to move off of that, you will start to lose the intensity of the support and turnout you need from the shrinking Republican base. Radicalization is the goal. This is about saying I’m willing to go to arms to overthrow what’s here or what’s coming. I’m willing to be violent in that cause. It’s not a small fringe group. These people are winning Republican primaries.”

In This Article: guns, Lauren Boebert, marjorie taylor greene

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hayes https://www.msnbc.com/all

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/analysis-viral-rino-hunting-ad-goes-too-far

corruption [fbk removed twt block sharing]

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/hayes-for-the-far-right-violence-and-the-threat-of-it-are-the-point-142483525874

online ad rino hunt no bag limit

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/missouri-newspaper-slams-eric-greitens-for-vile-deeply-appalling-ad-promoting-violence-against-fellow-republicans/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/gop-senate-candidate-releases-rino-hunting-ad-aimed-fellow-republicans-rcna34388

nbc

ric Greitens, theembattled former Missouri governor-turned-GOP Senate candidate, released a campaign ad Monday in which he and a group of armed men in tactical gear are on the hunt for "RINOs" — Republicans in name only.

"We're going RINO hunting," a shotgun-toting Greitens, with a handgun holstered at his side, says before he bursts into a house with the men in tactical gear, one of whom throws what appears to be a flash-bang grenade.

"Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country,” he says at the end of the video, which encourages donors to pay $25 for a "RINO hunting" sticker.

Earlier in the video, Greitens, who resigned as governor in 2018 amid a sexual misconduct scandal and a campaign finance felony charge that was later dropped, says, "The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice."

The video was posted on Greitens' YouTube page, and he tweeted out a link to the ad. Hours after the tweet, Twitter put it behind a warning that said it "violated the Twitter Rules of abusive behavior" but that the site had "determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible."

A spokesperson for Facebook owner Meta said, “We removed this video for violating our policies prohibiting violence and incitement.”

David Lapan, a retired Marine colonel and former Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security spokesman,tweetedthat Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, "has dishonored himself, his oath, and the Navy.”

“This clear call for violence against his political opponents, using military images, is depraved & dangerous," he said.

"He is unfit for elected office & should be held accountable," Lapan said.

The Missouri Democratic Party tweeted that the ad was "Disgusting. But not surprising." It said it was another example of "violence, irresponsibility and reckless behavior from Greitens."

Greitens' campaign manager Dylan Johnson responded to the backlash by saying, "The response from America First voters to our groundbreaking ad has been overwhelming and supportive. Those who have an issue with the video and the metaphor are either lying or dumb. We believe Big Tech and its oligarchs are both."

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/republicans-guns-ads-posts/

no lnx

Guns are all over GOP ads and social media, prompting some criticism

The images have in recent years become more prevalent, and intentionally provocative, in Republican advertising, holiday greetings and other forms of communication with the public

Image without a caption

By Colby Itkowitz

May 31, 2022

audio: Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, posted a campaign ad addressing his support for the Second Amendment on April 29. (DoctorOz/Youtube)

Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick first shoots the hunting rifle he says he used as a teenager. Pow. Next, he cocks the rifle he says he used at the U.S. Military Academy and fires. Pow. Then he points a semiautomatic assault rifle like one he says he used in Iraq at a faraway target. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.

Former television personality and surgeon Mehmet Oz loads a shotgun and shoots. “When people say I don’t support guns? They’re dead wrong,” Oz says. The camera then zooms in on Oz locking a magazine onto an AR-15 style rifle.

McCormick and Oz, the finalists in a high-stakes Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania that has gone to a recount, have spent months trying to showcase their conservative bona fides to GOP base voters and head off skepticism of their elite backgrounds on Wall Street and in Hollywood, respectively. Part of that strategy involved commercials showing them shooting guns.

On April 29 Republican Pennsylvania senate candidate Mehmet Oz posted a campaign ad addressing his support for the 2nd Amendment. (Video: DoctorOz | YouTube)

Although candidates in both parties have long used guns as a campaign prop, the images have in recent years become more prevalent, and intentionally provocative, in Republican advertising, holidays greetings and other forms of communication with the public. Such placements convey a cultural and political solidarity with conservatives more powerfully than most anything else, according to Republican strategists and aides.

“It is a very visual example. It’s an illustration of where both sides are in that the more the right feels they are going to lose their Second Amendment rights, the further they’re going to go to defend them,” said Terry Sullivan, a veteran Republican strategist.

But as the nation reckons with a pair of deadly mass shootings at a Buffalo grocery store and a Texas elementary school, some are warning that these photos and videos are harmful and glorify the use and ownership of firearms designed to kill.

“These ads create a dangerous impression that firearms, and assault-style firearms specifically, are casual tools rather than dangerous weapons,” said Kris Brown, the president of Brady, a gun violence prevention organization. “To use them to grandstand and to provocate is dangerous.”

Some Republicans rejected that position, arguing they are promoting safe and legal gun use.

Last Christmas season, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) posted a holiday photo on social media showing him and his family posed in front of a Christmas tree, all clutching military-style firearms.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who has built her political brand in large measure around her devotion to guns, responded to Massie’s tweet with a photo of her and her sons holding similar assault rifles with a message to her colleague: “The Boeberts have your six” — military jargon for having someone’s back.

While most representatives of the elected officials and candidates cited in this report did not immediately respond to a request for comment, John Kennedy, communications director for Massie, defended his boss’s decision to promote his photograph and said it did not send a dangerous message.

“Rep. Massie’s photo was so popular with his Kentucky constituents that the most commonly heard complaint we received was that this photo was not released as the actual Christmas card,” Kennedy said.

Over the past several election cycles, Democrats running in rural, conservative-leaning states have also featured guns in their ads. In 2010, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) famously shot a gun at a Democratic environmental and energy proposal bill in a campaign ad, and eight years later, he released another one shooting at a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.

Democrats in recent years have outpaced Republican spending on gun-related ads, a signal of the party’s increasing inclination to campaign for stricter gun laws. But so far this year, Republicans have aired dozens more ads about guns than Democrats, according to data analyzed by AdImpact. The media-tracking firm identified 121 Republican ads dealing with guns and just 18 Democratic ones that are gun-related.

Sullivan said Republicans who highlight gun imagery in primaries where the competition for GOP base voters is intense might pay a political price in the general election. Others took a similar view.

“It seems to be a rite of passage now for Republicans in primaries to prove how tough they are protecting the Second Amendment,” said Neil Oxman, a Democratic communications strategist in Pennsylvania. “It is their calling card to tell Republican voters that they are conservative, and by doing that, you don’t really have to do anything else.By doing that, that’s enough for the Republican primary voters who have gone further and further to the right.”

Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to former vice president Mike Pence and worked on mass shootings and domestic terrorism issues, warned that the promotion of guns and violence by Republican candidates and elected officials has far reaching implications, in part by “normalizing and mainstreaming a weapon that is designed and meant to kill.”

Ron Filipkowski, a lifelong Republican who also broke with the party over former president Donald Trump and now tracks right-wing messaging, said he first noticed the uptick in gun-related GOP ads in August when he kept seeing Republican candidates sharing images of themselves with assault-style firearms and decided to tally them. He said he got to about a dozen before they became too frequent to keep up with in real-time.

“It’s really become a cultural thing now. It used to be a cultural thing as hunting goes, but these guys aren’t hunting … I’m talking about running around playing warrior. They view that as a sport now, and to participate in that sport, you need assault weapons,” Filipkowski said. “It’s the posing with them in pictures to say, ‘Hey, I’m a tough guy. I’m a badass. Come and take this away.' ”

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.)recently sent a mailer to constituents that showed her clutching an AR-15-style weapon in one picture and shooting a handgun in another. Kevin Knoth, Hartzler’s spokesman, said in an email that the mail was approved May 12 and sent for delivery May 13 before the deadly mass shootings at supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex.

Knoth did not respond directly when asked if Hartzler regrets that some of her constituents received the mailer after those tragedies, saying only that the congresswoman “is praying for all those lost and their loved ones” and is urging support for legislation to allow off-duty and retired law enforcement personnel to carry concealed firearms on school grounds.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey pointed guns at protesters in St. Louis who were marching to call for the resignation of Mayor Lyda Krewson on June 28, 2020. (Video: Daniel Shular via Storyful)

Mark McCloskey, who once pointed a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters and is now running in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Missouri, has images of assault weapons all over his social media. “Firearms are the ultimate equalizer,” one post says, over a photo of him holding a gun. On his campaign website, he boasts that his story “has empowered thousands of new gun owners across the country to purchase a firearm and learn how to defend themselves.”

This year, an Arizona Republican running to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly released an ad that portrayed him as a sheriff and showed him in an old Western-style standoff with actors playing Kelly, President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

In the ad, the GOP candidate, businessman Jim Lamon, says: “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown.” The three Democrats draw their weapons. Lamon points his gun and shoots the weapons out of their hands. The Kelly, Biden and Pelosi characters run away. The ad drew some criticism, including from Republican rivals.

Last spring, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) posted a video on Twitter of himself shooting an AR-15 in a gun range. “Now, why would anybody need to own an AR-15?” Graham asked in a follow-up post. “If there is a breakdown of law and order, and that can happen … it’s not impossible to find yourself in the modern world without any police protection, because that’s just the way the times are in which we live in.”

“Senator Graham is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said, when asked about the senator’s social media posts.

Political campaigns and organizations have held contests gifting military-assault weapons to supporters. In Georgia, Josh Clark, a Republican Senate candidate who recently lost the primary to former football star Herschel Walker, said in March that he planned togive away an AR-15 every weekuntil the election. His goal, he said, was to “advance” the use of AR-15 rifles, which he said “should be one of the most commonly owned firearms across America.”

Last fall, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) gave supporters a chance to win a 50-caliber rifle she used in an ad to blow up a Toyota Prius with the word “socialism” emblazoned on its side.The footage showed the massive explosion from various angles and directed viewers to a website that allowed them to enter to win Greene’s rifle.

“This is the same type of gun that TRIGGERS theFake News Media and Democratsall across the country,” Greene’s webpage read. “And it’s the same type of gun the hate-America gun-grabbers in DC would love to BAN if they ever get the votes.”

In January, Greene posted a photo with the contest recipient, both smiling as he cradled the massive weapon.

Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.

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an tom D 6 22 robert l

...I was done with guns and felt like a fool for ever thinking differently. But because of my experience I do understand why, in this thoroughly over-armed land of ours, so many others consider such weaponry (and far more powerful and deadly versions) so important to who they are. Having experienced a sense of that identity myself, I don’t look down on them for it. And I understand that behind the mostly male pleasure in being armed can lie complex feelings. As historian Adam Hochschild noted in the New York Review of Books several years ago:

The passion for guns felt by tens of millions of Americans also has deep social and economic roots. The fervor with which they believe liberals are trying to take all their guns away is so intense because so much else has been taken away.

Even more troubling is that many of them believe they will need those guns for defense against the rampaging gangs (calling themselves militias?) that would rise after the possible collapse of American democracy as we’ve known it, which any number of armed men don’t trust to protect them anyway. (Thank you, Donald Trump, most Republicans, and, alas, my old benefactor the NRA!)

Is stocking up on AR-15s and thousands of rounds of ammunition paranoia or preparation? While a Beretta would never be enough, it turns out that such lesser guns have done most of the damage to Americans. Mass murders with military-style automatic rifles, especially school shootings, have reaped so much of the attention, but it’s been handguns that have killed far more Americans every year, most often via suicide (which is why it’s so sad to see so many of us increasingly arming ourselves to the teeth).

More than half of the 45,222 gun-related deaths in 2020, the last year for which we have solid statistics, were suicides, while “only” (yes, put that in scare quotes) 513 of them were thanks to mass shootings, defined as an incident in which four or more people are shot, even if no one is killed.

Handguns, not long guns, were involved in 59% of the 13,620 deaths classified as murders that year as well, while assault rifles were involved only 3% of the time. So banning those military-grade weapons, manufactured to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible, while distinctly a sane idea amid this mounting firearms insanity of ours, would probably have little real effect on our proliferating gun culture. Given the politics right now, it’s hard to imagine any administration attempting to begin the disarming of America....

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pro publ an 5 22

the fact that the gunman responsible for this week’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, was able to buy two AR-15s days after his 18th birthday highlights how much easier it is for Americans to purchase rifles than handguns.

Under federal law, Americans buying handguns from licensed dealers must be at least 21, which would have precluded Salvador Ramos from buying that type of weapon. That trumps Texas law, which only requires buyers of any type of firearm to be 18 or older.

Following Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School, which killed 19 children and two adults, a growing number of lawmakers in Texas and beyond are calling for the minimum age to purchase assault rifles to be raised to 21 from 18. Doing so would require undoing nearly two centuries of more permissive regulations on so-called long guns.

“It’s something that could happen at either the state or federal level, but I don’t see movement on either front,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Only six states — Florida, Washington, Vermont, California, Illinois and Hawaii — have increased the minimum purchase age for long guns to 21, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.The majority did so following the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, where a then-19-year-old assailant killed 17 people at a high school.

Several states have since faced legal challenges.

The National Rifle Association sought to repeal the Florida law.

“The ban infringes the right of all 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms for the exercise of their Second Amendment rights, even for self-defense in the home,” the NRA argued in a court filing, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The ban does not just limit the right, it obliterates it.”

Government attorneys, however, argued that because “18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely likely to engage in impulsive, emotional, and risky behaviors that offer immediate or short-term rewards, drawing the line for legal purchase of firearms at 21 is a reasonable method of addressing the Legislature’s public safety concerns.”

A federal judge upheld the law last year; the NRA is appealing.

A U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled that California’s version of the law was unconstitutional, though it did uphold a provision that requires adults under 21 to obtain a hunting license before buying a rifle or shotgun.

After the shooting in Uvalde this week, lawmakers in New York and Utah also called on their states to raise the age limit for long gun purchases to 21. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced federal legislation earlier this month — less than a week before the Uvalde shooting — that would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21 from 18; the California Democrat said in a statement that it was in response to a shooting that killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket. That gunman also was 18 years old.

“It makes no sense that it’s illegal for someone under 21 to buy a handgun or even a beer, yet can legally buy an assault weapon,” she said.

Lindsay Nichols, federal policy director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that increasing the age requirement at the federal level may be more effective because federal authorities can inspect and discipline licensed firearm sellers.

“State authorities often don’t have a system in place for enforcing the laws governing” licensed dealers, Nichols said.

In the hours after the shooting in Uvalde, there was some confusion about what types of firearms Ramos had used. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially said that Ramos had a handgun and possibly a rifle. That prompted some to speculate that Ramos had been able to get hold of the weapons more easily because of recent changes to the gun laws in Texas, including a bill passed last year that allows Texans to carry handguns without a permit or training. But those early reports turned out to be inaccurate.

After it became clear that the weapon used was a rifle, Texas Democrats questioned why Ramos was able to purchase one at the age of 18.

“Why do we accept a government that allows an 18 year old to buy an assault rifle, but not tobacco products?” state Rep. Nicole Collier, a Fort Worth Democrat who chairs the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said in a statement. “The hypocrisy of government is deafening. We can develop gun policy that does not infringe upon one’s constitutional right, while preserving and protecting life; that’s called multitasking and we can do that.”

State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, a Houston Democrat, called on Abbott to convene a special session of the Legislature so lawmakers could “pass real gun reforms,” including raising the minimum age to purchase long guns.

“Enough is enough,” he said.

Such a move would reverse a decades-old Texas system that treats handguns differently from long guns, which have long been exempted from state rules on open carry.

The disparate rules date back to the post-Civil War era, when the state — counter to its modern-day reputation — adopted some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

“Despite its stereotype of being a state where cowboys promiscuously tote six-shooters, Texas is one of the few states that absolutely prohibits the bearing of pistols by private individuals,” wrote firearms attorney Stephen Halbrook in a 1989 Baylor Law Review article, six years before former Texas Gov. George W. Bush relaxed rules on handguns considerably.

Following spasms of violence that were then plaguing the young state in the 19th century, lawmakers “started specifically targeting weapons that they equated with crime,” said Texas historian Brennan Rivas, who is writing a book about the state’s early gun laws. “They equated bowie knives, daggers and pistols with interpersonal violence and crime.”

Muskets, rifles and shotguns, by comparison, were excluded because they were used for hunting or participating in a militia.

“They didn’t consider long guns to be deadly weapons,” Rivas said. “Those had valuable uses. Whereas these other weapons were kind of like a plague on polite society.”

Lawmakers of that time could not have envisioned that long guns would evolve from lumbering hunting rifles into AR-15s capable of firing dozens of rounds per minute, Rivas added.

But any tighter requirements appear unlikely to pass in Texas.

Just last year, following high-profile massacres in El Paso and in Midland and Odessa in 2019, lawmakers approved a variety of measures that loosened gun regulations. In addition to authorizing the carrying of handguns in public without a permit or training, the laws ban the governor from limiting gun sales during an emergency and allow gun owners to bring their weapons into hotel rooms.

During a Wednesday press conference at Uvalde High School, Abbott repeated a claim he and other Republican state leaders have often made, that mental health issues are to blame for the streak of mass shootings, not lax gun regulations. Officials conceded that they were not aware that the gunman had any criminal or mental health issues.

“The ability of an 18-year-old to buy a long gun has been in place in the state of Texas for more than 60 years,” Abbott said. “And why is it that for the majority of those 60 years we did not have school shootings? And why is it that we do now?”

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3 22

Several U.S. Secret Service agents removed two men from a vehicle in the affluent Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and confiscated what appeared to be an assault-style firearm, according to Reuters.

In addition to the presumed firearm, witnesses also noted that the agents also "pulled what appeared to be body armor components" from the vehicle described as a "black four-door Ford sedan with Indiana plates that said Marine Corps Veteran."

Based on witness statements and photographs from the incident, one of the suspects was seen wearing a black hoodie and a pair of tan pans. The other suspect wore a baseball cap with a camouflage jacket.

Reuters also shed light on the other items agents confiscated.

"Police removed multiple military-style bags from the car, like duffles and packs, mostly Army green, and emptied their contents on the trunk and the street, video from the incident showed. Some items, including what appeared to be body armor plates, were laid on the ground and photographed by officers."

It is being reported that at least one of the suspects was transported away from the scene in a Secret Service van. Responding to requests for comments on the matter, the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department referred all questions to the Secret Service.

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2 22

ca busted work-around ar15

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an 2 22

A right-wing activist known for hosting a podcast about firearms along with his 67-year-old father has been arrested on federal charges of illegal possession of firearms, according to federal prosecutors.

Joseph Paul Berger, the 32-year-old host of the podcast “Alt-Right Armory,” was indicted along with his father, Joseph Raymond Berger. Both are from Bethlehem in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and the announcement of their arrest came on Thursday, February 10 from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Business Insider’s Kelsey Vlamis quotes William S. Walker, an acting special agent for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as saying, “This father-and-son duo possessed a small artillery of firearms in their home, including more than a dozen machine guns and silencers. This type of fire-power is incredibly dangerous if in the wrong hands.”

The indictment, according to Vlamis, alleged that the Bergers illegally possessed 13 fully automatic machine guns and 12 silencers.

U.S. Attorney Jennifer Williams warned, “These weapons are extremely dangerous, which is why there are laws regulating their possession.”

The Bergers have pleaded “not guilty” to the charges. If convicted, the men face up to 30 years in prison and $270,000 in fines.

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an 222

Carlson donated to Marjorie Taylor Greene in gun giveaway promo to 'blow away Democrats’ socialist agenda'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a campaign donation to U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last September as part of a gun giveaway for an assault-style rifle reportedly “loved...

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kirk asked when do we get to use the guns

it's a meme/ logo on flags

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omg yikes

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/trump-2655520362/

no lnx

'Barely concealed bloodlust': Claremont Institute laid out detailed plan for using cops to overturn Trump’s election loss

Travis Gettys and Raw Story November 08, 2021

The right-wing Claremont Institute published a report in mid-October 2020 that gamed out a scenario where Donald Trump would remain in office through an alliance between law enforcement and militant extremists.

The report was prepared by attorney John Eastman, who authored a memo laying out another strategy for keeping Trump in office, and former Trump deputy national security advisor K.T. McFarland, as well as Kevin Roberts, then-executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, alt-right figure Jeff Giesea and right-wing blogger Charles Haywood, reported The Bulwark.

"Despite the authors' pretensions to scholarship and rigor — 'for a simulation to be valuable, the other side gets a vote and actions must be based in realism' — the final document is a frenzied and paranoid piece of work, revealing of the anxieties and aspirations of the authoritarian right," writes columnist Christian Vanderbrouk. "Practically, the report is an instruction manual for how Trump partisans at all levels of government — aided by citizen 'posses' of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — could, quite literally, round up opposition activists, kill their leaders, and install Donald Trump for a second term in office."

Most of the predictions in the report, titled "79 Days to Inauguration," did not come to fruition, such as the authors' belief that some states' voting results would be fatally tainted by cyber attacks and suspicious fires, and left-wing mobs did not converge on Washington, D.C., to incite violence, and police did not execute antifa/Black Lives Matter leaders as part of a federal operation.

"A barely concealed bloodlust runs through the report," Vanderbrouk writes. "This isn't a serious wargame or a policy study so much as a bowdlerized retelling of The Turner Diaries."

The report was produced in response to the bipartisan Transition Integrity Project's (TIP) exercise on "Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition," which considered the prospect of Trump refusing to concede an election loss and made recommendations for avoiding a crisis -- which seems to be the opposite intent of the Claremont Institute's exercise.

"To the extent that the Claremont-TPPF report offers recommendations, they are mostly focused on how to emerge victorious from the chaos, including preparation 'for destructive urban unrest [with] potential targets includ[ing] ballot counting facilities, government buildings, especially state capitols and city halls, as well as television and radio studios,'" Vanderbrouk writes. "The Claremont task force seems either resigned to—or perhaps energized by—the view that 'prudent steps are likely to be spun as preparations for a military takeover or coup and may result in negative consequences either way.'"

"Either way. It's as if they're steering into the violence instead of trying to avoid it," he adds. "The message is clear:do whatever it takes to crush your opponents and all will be forgiven in the second Trump term."

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an 821

the men's fellowship was told to bring guns. "They call it Shootin' with the Savior," my friend said. "I'm 70 years old! And I am not going to march into the woods with a Bible and a gun, and line up for target practice. It's pure nonsense is what it is."

I've stopped in the parking lot to chat with Bob. Bob belongs to one of the biggest churches in town. This last year, he has been attending services remotely on Facebook. Though he has been an active member for decades, he's unsure whether he will go back. His pastor, he said, never took the covid seriously. "Remember that church shooting they had down in Texas a few years back?" Bob said as we stepped aside for two women to pass. "It wasn't two weeks 'til we had the whole church strung up with security cameras and men carrying guns inside and outside Sunday service. But the virus? The one that could actually kill me and my wife? Our pastor hardly mentions it."

Bob is an anti-Trump conservative and I am an outspoken liberal, both political outcasts here in rural Anderson County, Kentucky, population 23,000, where the disgraced former president won more than 70 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2020.

It is normal for us to see men carrying guns of all sizes whether at Walmart or the State Capitol 15 miles up the road. It is normal to see armed Three Percenters guarding the confederate statue on the courthouse lawn or standing outside the Judge Executive's office before a public meeting, having a laugh with the locals. And it is normal to see and hear the constant, unwavering refusal, in person and online, of these men refusing to wear masks or take the vaccine. Is that a diaper on your face?! Don't be a sheep! Fauci is a phony!Whether it is the national obsession with guns or the refusal of a free, lifesaving vaccine, either way, performative masculinity is literally killing us.

My own brother remains unvaccinated. In one of his Facebook profile photos, he appears fully decked out in his National Guard gear with AR-15 style rifles stacked on the ground in a circle around him. Photo title: "Me and my bitches." When I asked our (vaccinated) dad why my brother is not vaccinated, he told me that in the beginning it was politics. Now it's just chest-thumping stubbornness.

"He can't get vaccinated now," he said, "because then you'll be right."

"If I'm right that makes him a pussy?" I said.

"Exactly."

United States Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas—where the over-12 vaccination rate is 41.45 percent—recently spoke at the Third Annual Machine Gun Shoot in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. Cotton can be seen on camera, smiling and chatting with a crowd of men at the range while shooting large, heavy, rapid-fire guns.

Does anyone believe these men are vaccinated? And why is a senator from Arkansas wasting his time on a shooting range in New Hampshire? Because it is no longer enough to prove your presidential manhood by riding a horse (Ronald Reagan) or clearing brush (George W. Bush). You have to be filmed firing the biggest, loudest firearm you can. That or getting on Fox primetime to rant about how masks and vaccine requirements, like proposed gun laws, infringe on American freedoms.

United States Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote in her 2014 book, A Fighting Chance,that the country loses eight kids and teens to gun violence every day. "If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials," the Democrat wrote. "We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children."

We did not move heaven and earth, nor will we.

We can't get 30 percent to take a free vaccine.

The population of Kentucky is about the same as the population of Los Angeles, yet we rank 15th in the nation in gun suicides. Our junior United States Senator Rand Paul touts gun rights anytime someone hands him a microphone. Mass, preventable death does not move him. So it was no surprise this past year, as Americans were dying daily by the thousands, when Paul made himself infamous for publicly berating Dr. Anthony Fauci and for being on the Senate floor sans-mask throughout the covid pandemic.

What does it matter if 610,000 Americans are dead from a virus. Is that a diaper on your face?! Don't be a sheep! Fauci is a phony!Like Tom Cotton on the shooting range, performative masculinity is the drug Rand Paul's voting base is jonesing for. And who has time to move heaven and earth when there are elections to think about?

Like Bob, I missed Shootin' with the Savior, but I did go to an outdoor range during the pandemic where, with the help of firearms experts, I learned to shoot nine guns ranging in size from the AR-15 to a pistol I can fit in my pocket. I hadn't shot a gun in 40 years and wanted to see what all the Proud Boy hoopla was about. What I learned is the AR-15 is easy to shoot. Too easy. I did not mug for a camera crew to prove it.

Our health director here in Anderson County tells me that he's booking around 40 vaccine appointments a week, of which 30 might show up. Because school starts next week, on Saturday, he held a special clinic. Only 37 people came. Today, I asked him, "What's it going to take to get people's attention? The death of someone's child?"

He did not answer, nor did I expect him to.

Men have been gunning down children at schools since Columbine. Their stories are a blip in the news cycle. School kids dying from the virus will be one more blip.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/terror-plot-election/

jon s salon

Two California men disgruntled by Donald Trump's election loss have been charged by the Justice Department for attempting to blow up the California Democratic Party's headquarters in Sacramento.

The development, revealed in a newly unsealed indictment on Thursday, centers on Trump supporters Ian Benjamin Rogers and Jarrod Copeland, both of whom believed their attack would spark a "movement" to enlist an army of followers to their cause. Having settled on a plan of attack last December, Rogers asked his partner:"Do you think something is wrong with me how I'm excited to attack the [D]emocrats?"

The plan developed over the ensuing weeks, prosecutors alleged.

On January 4, just two days before the Capitol riot, Copeland told Rogers that he was excited to "become outlaws for real" if the 2020 election was certified in President Biden's favor.

Following the riot, Rogers sent Copeland a flurry of texts. "REVOLUTION," he wrote. "I'm f---ing juiced!!!!!" he said, adding: "I'm bout to throw my gear on and drive around andpunish [sic] sombitces."

"Sad it's come to thisbut I'm not going down without a fight," Rogers later added. "These commies need to be told what's up."

Days following their exchange on January 11, Napa County Sheriff's deputies arrested Rogers. Authorities seized between 45 and 50 firearms, including a number of assault rifles, machine guns, and three pipe bombs. Law enforcement also found approximately 15,000 rounds of ammunition.

At Rogers' personal place of business, law enforcement found copies of "The Anarchist Cookbook" and a "Homemade C-4 A Recipe for Survival," as well as "U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook."

This week, the FBI also arrested Copeland, who attempted to scrub his text exchanges following his friend's arrest. Prosecutors noted that Copeland had joined the military back in 2013, but was twice arrested for desertion. Following his "other than honorable" discharge from service, Copeland joined the Three Percenters,a far-right, anti-government militia – several of whose members were indicted by grand jury last June for participating the Capitol riot.

"Copeland's membership in an anti-government militia, and his motivations for planning these attacks are relevant because they are not fleeting or the product of a single, but past, perceived affront," prosecutors said in court documents. "His sentiments are deeply felt and long-standing and reflect a [sic] believe that the government is illegitimate."

Last October, one of the suspects involved in a failed plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was determined to be the second-in-command of Three Percenters' Wisconsin branch. A Three Percenter was also arrested three years earlier over a failed plot to detonate a car bomb attack on a bank in Oklahoma City. The plan was inspired by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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manchin waffles/fails 321

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bump stock?

The next day, Carrillo left Amaya's house. According to prosecutors, he picked up another Boogaloo Boi, Robert Justus Jr., and drove to downtown Oakland. It was 9:15 p.m., and crowds had gathered on Oakland's streets to protest and mourn Floyd's death. Meanwhile, blocks away, the two men drove a white Ford van around Oakland's federal courthouse, where David Patrick Underwood, a federal protective security officer, staffed a two-person guard hut. Prosecutors say Carrillo was in the back seat near the sliding door, carrying a short-barreled rifle, a “ghost weapon" with no serial number, making it almost impossible to trace. According to the FBI, it was an illegal machine gun optimized to fire bursts of shots automatically, with an added silencer.

Hours before, Carrillo had posted on Facebook that if “it's not kicking off in your hood then start it." Now, according to prosecutors, Justus drove toward the guard hut while Carrillo slid the van's door open and fired multiple bursts, killing Underwood and seriously wounding a second guard. “Did you see how they fucking fell?" Carrillo said as the van drove off, according to an account Justus gave investigators after turning himself in.

“In his mind, Steven was on a mission just like in the Air Force, except the enemy was the police," Amaya said.

A lawyer for Justus, who has been charged with aiding and abetting Underwood's murder, declined to discuss his client's alleged involvement with the Boogaloo Bois. Instead he pointed to court filings that describe what Justus told investigators. According to those records, Justus insisted to investigators that he felt he had to participate because he was “trapped in the van." He also claimed he told Carrillo, “I am not cool with this," and tried to think of ways to “talk Carrillo out of his plan," only for Carrillo to respond by pointing a rifle at him and asking if he was “a cop or a rat."

The shooting of both guards aligned neatly with Boogaloo ideology. “Use their anger to fuel our fire," Carrillo had written on Facebook that morning. “We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage." Sure enough, some conservative commentators rushed to blame Underwood's murder on antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters.

Four hours after Underwood's death, Carrillo received a text message from Hunter urging him to attack police buildings, court records show.

Carrillo's response: “I did better lol."

That weekend, when Carrillo returned to Amaya's house, he seemed “on edge and distracted," she recalled. He asked for a week's leave at Travis Air Force base and sent $200 to Hunter, congratulating him for “doing good shit out there." Most of the time, she said, Carrillo was glued to Facebook, following the news and commenting on viral videos of police clashing with protesters. “Who needs antifa to start riots when the police do it for you," read one of his posts.

In the days after the Oakland shooting, Carrillo communicated regularly with Rush and other members of the Grizzly Scouts on a WhatsApp group they called “209 Goon HQ," prosecutors say. (The area code for Mariposa County, home turf of the Grizzly Scouts, is 209.) Via WhatsApp, they repeatedly made references to the “Boog" and “discussed committing acts of violence against law enforcement," prosecutors allege.

On Saturday, June 6, Carrillo drove to his father's house in Ben Lomond. It was about 2 p.m. when Gutzwiller, a sergeant in the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, and two more deputies arrived at theproperty, which was guarded by a dog wearing a bulletproof vest and monitored by security cameras. They were responding to a call from a passerby who had spotted a suspicious white Ford van loaded with what appeared to be firearms and bomb-making material. When the deputies learned the van was registered to Carrillo's father, they pulled up to his house to question him.

The deputies did not realize Carrillo was above them, perched just 40 feet away in a covered, well-concealed position up a steep embankment, aiming the same “ghost" weapon that prosecutors say he had used in Oakland.

Based on the WhatsApp text messages that prosecutors say he sent at this time, Carrillo appeared to be trying to guide his fellow Grizzly Scouts on how they could join forces with him in a coordinated attack on the law enforcement officers gathering to search for him.

“Theyre waiting for reenforcements," he texted.

And this: “Theres inly one road in/out. Take them out when theyre coming in."

According to police, Carrillo “sniped" Gutzwiller, killing him with a single shot to the chest. Another deputy was also shot in the chest, but was saved by his bulletproof vest.

During the mayhem and bloodshed that followed, Carrillo engaged in a running gun battle with law enforcement officers, hurling pipe bombs and hijacking vehicles. In his own blood, he scrawled “BOOG" and “I became unreasonable" and “Stop the Duopoly" — all common Boogaloo slogans — on the hood of a car he had stolen. And at some point, he sent one more WhatsApp message to his fellow Grizzly Scouts: “Dudes i offed a fed."

For all of Carrillo's urgent appeals for reinforcements, there is no indication any Grizzly Scout tried to come to his aid. While questioning Carrillo's fiancée in August, Henry Montes, an investigator for the Santa Cruz County District Attorney's Office, offered a possible explanation. Some members of the Grizzly Scouts, he said, had told investigators that Carrillo was too extreme for them. “The things that he was saying made them think he wants to kill policemen," Montes told Amaya, according to a recording of the interview obtained by the news organizations.

“We spoke with some people who were no longer part of that group because they were afraid of Steven," Montes said.

A Jailhouse Wedding

In interviews, Carrillo's siblings describe a brother who suffered from years of severe mental health problems and didn't get the support and medical treatment he needed from the Air Force. “I could see his pain," Carrillo's sister, Ruby, said.

Over two hours of interviews, Carrillo himself did not attribute any of his actions to mental illness. Instead, he forthrightly proclaimed his support for the Boogaloo Bois and repeatedly challenged what he views as misconceptions about the group.

“I just want to say, the Boogaloo movement, you know, there's a lot in the paper that I feel like people don't understand," he said. “And that is the Boogaloo movement, it's all inclusive. It includes everyone. It's not a thing about race. It's about people that love freedom, liberty, and they're unhappy with the level of control that the government takes over our lives. So it's just a movement, it's a thought about freedom. It's just a complete love for freedom."

Meanwhile, as Carrillo sits in jail awaiting trial, his political evolution continues. In a letter he wrote to reporters in October, he referred to Joe Biden as a man who “sniffs kids," echoing QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that falsely accuses the Democratic Party of running a Satan-worshipping child sex-trafficking ring.

Carrillo's defense lawyers declined to comment.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/michael-moore-joke/

cdv

The right-wing "cancel culture" mob has once again grabbed their torches and pitchforks. Their newest target is documentary filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore.

What is Moore's most recent offense?

In response to Monday's mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, Moore tweeted"The life of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa shows that people can come from all over the world and truly assimilate into our beloved American culture," and included an image of the Statue of Liberty.

Alissa is the alleged shooter in the Boulder tragedy. He was born in Syria but came to the United States as a child in 2002.

Reasonable persons may choose to disagree with Moore's timing, or his tone. But the fact remains that his comments about the Boulder mass shooting are largely correct.

Those on the right and elsewhere who are performatively "outraged" at Moore's comment are just angry because he spoke the truth about America's gun culture and our societal addiction to mass shootings and gun violence.

A society's culture is not a buffet where a person chooses the things they like and then ignores or denies the existence of those they do not. Such thinking is immature, simplistic and lacks nuance. In other words, it confirms what research by social psychologists, neuroscientists and others has shown about how conservatives and right-wing authoritarians think about morality, politics and society more generally.

As demonstrated by historian Richard Slotkin in his landmark book "Gunfighter Nation", guns and gun violence are central to America's culture and identity.

During an interview with Bill Moyers about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Slotkin elaborated:

And what we have in this country is we have a history in which certain kinds of violence are associated for us with the growth of the republic, with the definition of what it is to be an American. And because we are also devoted to the notion of democratic individualism, we take that glorification of social violence, historical violence, political violence, and we grant the individual a kind of parallel right to exercise it, not only to protect life and property but to protect one's honor and to protect one's social or racial status. In the past that has been a legitimate grounds.

To that end, mass shootings and other examples of gun violence are one of the principal ways that America is truly an "exceptional" nation.

As I explained in an earlier essay at Salon:

The U.S. has the highest rate of gun-related deaths among wealthy nations. The number of deaths from gun violence would be even higher if not for dramatic recent advances in trauma and emergency medicine.

The U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country in the world — even more than Yemen, a nation torn apart for years by a bloody civil war. In fact, there are more guns in the United States than there are people. Gun violence is estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $200 billion a year, according to a 2019 report.

It is especially worth noting that just 3 percent of gun owners possess half the total number of guns in America. Some of these "super-owners" have dozens of guns. They are overwhelmingly white and male. …

While gun "advocates" have created superhero narratives, such as the fantasy about "a good guy with a gun" who stops "a bad guy with a gun," the reality is that a gun owner is much more likely to shoot a family member, a neighbor, a friend or themselves — by accident or suicide — than a criminal assailant. "Defensive gun use" statistics are inaccurate and wildly exaggerated.

Many members of the right-wing chattering class and others of that tribe are responding to Michael Moore's basic observations about guns and American culture as though they had suffered a narcissistic injury. This is true more generally in how the American right responds to nearly all attempts to enact reasonable gun safety laws.

But what is the source of this injury? For many gun owners, especially right-wing white men, the gun is a key part of their core identities in terms of privilege, sense of self and power. It is not just the gun that they fear will be regulated — they believe their literal personal existence will be imperiled if access to guns were to somehow be even marginally curtailed. Such deep attachment to guns as an extension of the self is largely explained by what social psychologists have termed "terror management theory."

This posits that because human beings are aware of their own mortality, they therefore develop compensatory behaviors which include cultural institutions like religion and patriotism. Symbols such as flags, and in the case of Christianity the crucifix, have a totem-like power which gives the believer and follower a sense of immortality. These systems of meaning and dynamics are at work on both a conscious and subconscious level, for individuals and society as a whole.

In American culture, guns have effectively become sacred objects. In that role, the gun is a means of symbolic and literal protection from death. It is also a tool for getting and keeping one group's power over others as seen with the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of black people, militarized policing, and the creation and maintenance of American empire.

Moore's tweet about guns and American culture were even more triggering for conservatives and other members of the right because he included an image of the Statue of Liberty, a sacred object in the national imagination.

It is no coincidence that death anxieties are a key factor that correlate with high levels of support for Trumpism and other authoritarian movements.

Public opinion polls show that as mass shootings and other gun violence has increased in America, Republicans actually oppose gun safety efforts even more. Predictably — and far more logically — Democrats and liberals respond to mass shootings and other gun-violence tragedies with greater support for gun safety laws.

Death anxiety has a profound influence on American politics in other ways as well: In red-state regions where coronavirus rates (and death rates) are highest, support for Donald Trump during the 2020 Election was also at its highest. In essence, death and sickness have made Trump's followers increasingly loyal to him and the Republican Party.

Ultimately, America's inability to create and enforce effective gun laws is rooted in competing conceptions of freedom. Conservatives emphasize "negative freedom" and a belief that government should be shrunk down to the bare minimum, and that "freedom from" is the most important aspect of democracy and human existence.

Liberals, progressives and other more humane thinkers understand that government can play a positive role in society. In this conception, "positive freedom" means that citizens can live better and more productive lives where, for example, they are free from anxieties about being killed in a mass shooting, or free from the fear that they may fall ill and not have access to health care, or free from the fear that their environment is dangerously polluted.

To state this equation differently, a gun owner's freedom ends at the boundaries and limits of public safety. Likewise, the "personal freedom" not to wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic ends at the health and safety of other people.

A healthy democracy always involves a balance between these positive and negative understandings of freedom.

What Michael Moore hinted at in his tweet about gun violence is the reality that we need to embrace a new form of American patriotism, one grounded in the facts and realities of American history, life and culture.

If the American people keep on lying to themselves about who they are, then the plague of mass shootings and gun violence will continue — and all the other existential problems in our society that feed into this epidemic of violence will keep getting worse as well.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/michigan-election/

hunter kos

the *Detroit Free Press* reports that the Michigan House and Senate buildings will be closed both to staffers and the public on Monday as the state's electors to the Electoral College meet to cast their votes for the state's presidential winner, Joe Biden. The Capitol was already expected to be closed to the public during the Electoral College meeting; this new, expanded closure also includes the building's legislative staff.

While neither Michigan State Police nor a spokesperson for the House Speaker's office would explain the reason for the closure, other than it being due to "security concerns," State Rep. Kevin Hertel tweeted that it was due to "credible threats" that "have been made as Michigan's electors" meet.

The state has been a hotspot of fascist militia activity. Michigan legislators has been the subject of armed protests by the far right and the Michigan governor, a Democrat, was the intended victim of a domestic terrorism plot in which members of a far-right group sought to kidnap and possibly execute her over the state's pandemic safety measures.

Only a week ago, armed rightwing protesters with the intellect of flatworms demonstrated at the house of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over rabid Republican conspiracy theories claiming Joe Biden's win over Donald Trump was fraudulent and/or a conspiracy.

There is no word on what security measures are in place as a response to the apparent "credible" threats aimed at disrupting the electors' official vote. Michigan state Republicans, however, have repeatedly encouraged the state's violent conspiracy theorists, most recently by inviting Trump "lawyers" Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis to present their election conspiracy claims to the Republican-led House.

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ref

wapo no lnx

Armed protesters alleging voter fraud surrounded the home of Michigan’s secretary of state

Michigan state officials decried protesters who gathered outside Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's home, accusing the group of “terrorizing” her family. (Paul Sancya/AP)

Katie Shepherd

Dec. 7, 2020

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had just finished wrapping string lights around her home’s portico on Saturday evening and was about to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with her 4-year-old son when a crowd of protesters marched up carrying American flags and guns.

About two dozen protesters chanted “Stop the Steal” and accused Benson, a Democrat and Michigan’s chief election officer, of ignoring widespread voter fraud — an echo of President Trump’s continued unfounded claims as he seeks to overturn the results of the election that President-elect Joe Biden won.

“She’s decided to completely ignore all of the credible, credible, fraudulent evidence that has been continually pointed out,” demonstrator Genevieve Peters said of Benson, as she live-streamed the protest in Detroit on Facebook. “We’re out here in front of the secretary of state’s house and we want her to know we will continue to be here.”

Although the group dispersed with no arrests when police responded just before 10 p.m. Saturday, Michigan state officials accused the group of “terrorizing” Benson’s family.

“They shouted baseless conspiracy theories about the election, and in videos uploaded to social media, at least one individual could be heard shouting ‘you’re murderers’ within earshot of her child’s bedroom,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy (D) said in a joint statement on Sunday. “This mob-like behavior is an affront to basic morality and decency.”

They added that “terrorizing children and families at their own homes is not activism.”

Vitriolic rhetoric has led bipartisan leaders to warn that Trump’s baseless attacks on the election are endangering election officials’ lives. Multiple Michigan officials have reported being threatened and harassed over the election results, as have officials in Georgia, Arizona, Vermont, Kentucky, Minnesota and Colorado.

Election officials warn Trump’s escalating attacks on voting are putting their staffs at risk

Benson also tied the Saturday protest to ongoing efforts by Trump’s supporters to undermine the election since polls closed on Election Day. On Nov. 4, election challengers shouted “Stop the count” inside a Detroit vote-counting center. About two weeks later, GOP appointees on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially refused to certify election results in the Detroit area, but later reversed course and formalized Biden’s victory.

Trump and his campaign have also challenged the election results in Michigan, calling on a discredited witness who went viral for her strange testimony on alleged election fraud, which she presented without evidence, in front of a state House panel.

Trump campaign’s star witness in Michigan was deemed ‘not credible.’ Then, her loud testimony went viral.

“Through blatantly false press releases, purely political legislative hearings, bogus legal claims and so called ‘affidavits’ that fail to allege any clear or cogent evidence of wrongdoing, those unhappy with the results of this election have perpetuated an unprecedented, dangerous, egregious campaign to erode the public’s confidence in the results of one of the most secure, accessible and transparent elections in our state’s history,” Benson said in a statement Sunday.

The individuals gathered outside my home targeted me as Michigan’s Chief Election officer. But their threats were actually aimed at the 5.5million Michigan citizens who voted in this fall’s election, seeking to overturn their will. They will not succeed in doing so. My statement: pic.twitter.com/RSUnPSN4Aa

— Jocelyn Benson (@JocelynBenson) December 7, 2020

Benson is far from the only elected official who has been targeted this year by protesters at their residences.

People displeased with the coronavirus restrictions put in place by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) gathered in front of her Lansing home in April. Protesters opposing police violence against Black men this summer targeted mayors at their homes in Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; Seattle, and St. Louis.

Armed protestersalso flooded the Michigan Capitol in April to demand legislators put an end to a stay-at-home order in the state. The state’s Republican lawmakers complied, but Whitmer extended restrictions with executive orders anyway.

Public officials, including Benson on Sunday, have largely defended the right to protest while opposing demonstrations that target elected leaders at their homes.

“A line is crossed when gatherings are done with the primary purpose of intimidation of public officials who are carrying out the oath of office they solemnly took,” Benson said.

But Benson also said Saturday’s protest wouldn’t lead her to abandon her responsibility to defend the election results.

“Through threats of violence, intimidation, and bullying,the armed people outside my homeand their political allies seek to undermine and silence the will and voices of every voter in this state, no matter who they voted for,” Benson said. “But their efforts won’t carry the day.”

She called Michigan’s election results “unequivocal” and said she would defend the votes of 5.5 million Michigan citizens. With 2,804,040 votes, Biden won 50.62 percent of the vote in Michigan, surpassing Trump by more than 154,000 votes. The state’s results were certified on Nov. 23.

“The will of the people is clear,” she said. “And I will stand up every day in my job for all voters, even the votes of the protesters who banded together outside my home.”

Updated December 13, 2020

Election 2020: Biden defeats Trump

Supreme Court dismisses bid led by Texas attorney general to overturn the presidential election results

Trump and his GOP allies vow to ‘fight on’ after Supreme Court rejects legal challenge to overturn election results

Graphic: Where Republicans in Congress stand on Trump’s false claim of winning the election

Election results under attack: Here are the facts

Full election results

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/boogaloo-bois-member-charged-with-rioting-during-minneapolis-protests/

President Donald Trump and many of his allies in the right-wing media have been claiming that most or all of the political violence that has occurred in the United States following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 has come from the left — totally overlooking the history of violence associated with the Proud Boys, QAnon and a variety of white nationalist and militia groups.But federal prosecutors accused a Texas-based member of the far-right Boogaloo Bois on Friday of going to Minneapolis in late May with the intention of taking part in a riot.

Ivan Harrison Hunter is facing criminal charges for firing a semiautomatic weapon into a Minneapolis police precinct during the protests.

"Federal agents reviewed a video taken on the night of May 28 that shows an individual, later identified as Hunter, firing 13 rounds from an AK-47 style semiautomatic rifle into the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct building," KARE-TV, the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis, reports. "Law enforcement recovered discharged rifle casings from the scene that are consistent with an AK-47-style firearm."

According to KARE, "Investigators say they recovered social media posts Hunter made upon his return to Texas, describing his illegal activities in Minneapolis. They allege he was communicating with Michael Solomon, a Minneapolis resident and member of theBoogaloo Boiswho is federally charged with providing support to a terrorist organization, along with an associate named Benjamin Teeter."

The Boogaloo Bois are an extremist far-right movement that call for a second civil war in the United States and favor violent confrontations with law enforcement and politicians. In Northern California, Boogaloo supporter Steven Carrillo is facing murder charges for his role in a late May shooting in Oakland that left a Federal Protective Service officer dead. And some of the 13 men arrested in connection with a plot to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are believed by law enforcement to be connected to the Boogaloo movement; others allegedly involved in that plot, according to the FBI, were part of the Wolverine Watchmen, a far-right militia group.

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aha: nra a criminal enterprise/lobby that has amped up hysteria for decades so now we have bizillion assault rifles, some infiltration of cops and military by alt rt

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/far-right-militia-groups-are-quite-capable-of-launching-a-rural-insurgency-in-the-us-political-professor

[debate]...Biden on Tuesday night, September 29 — expressed his solidarity with the far-right Proud Boys, many critics accused him of promoting violence against his adversaries. Political violence in major cities is a possibility that Trump's detractors fear, but Vasabjit Banerjee, an assistant political science professor at Mississippi State University, warns of a possible "rural insurgency" in an article published in Just Security this week.

"The intrusions of white supremacist militias into cities to intimidate and attack protestors from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement highlights the possibility of rural insurgency," Banerjee explains. "Rural insurgencies range from week-long armed rebellions against local governments, law enforcement, and the wealthy to decades-long ones against subnational and national-level security forces, which seek to impose new revolutionary regimes."

Banerjee goes on to note that white supremacist and white nationalist groups have been expressing "fears of becoming a minority group due to changing demographics."

"The targets of such fears have shifted from primarily African-Americans to include non-White immigrants," Banerjee observes. "In conjunction with racial fears, other causes include anti-Semitism as well as perceived threats to Christianity from Muslims, who have replaced Catholics as antagonists. Some scholars have observed, however, that the militias do not constitute a cohesive movement, but have many groups with varied beliefs."

Trump's "anti-immigrant nativism" and promotion of "fundamentalist Christian beliefs" have been an inspiration to far-right militia groups, Banerjee warns.

"After he assumed office — in addition to his equivocation about deadly white supremacist attacks against protestors — his administration's policies also appeared to favor militia groups by reducing monitoring by federal law enforcement," Banerjee notes. "Trump may accept pre- and post-electoral violence by such militias during the 2020 elections, as indicated by his statements about the white supremacist Proud Boys during the first presidential debate."

According to Banerjee, insurgent groups in the U.S. could have easier access to weapons than insurgent groups in other countries.

Banerjee points out, "In most countries, insurgent groups must smuggle quantities of small arms, offered by willing foreign sponsors or bought in black markets, across international borders. In the United States, however, per capita gun ownership is the highest in the world, while gun laws are some of the least restrictive. Thus, militias can legally acquire vast quantities of small arms."

Banerjee concludes the article by emphasizing that the United States' "geography" — which includes a lot of wide-open spaces — would be conducive to a rural uprising.

"The preconditions for insurgencies are already present," Banerjee warns. "Consequently, militia groups deserve more scrutiny from security forces and a unified political consensus to deter and suppress them in order to maintain peace and stability."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/19-years-after-9-11-americas-biggest-terrorist-threat-is-far-right-white-supremacists-who-love-trump/

it was 19 years ago, on September 11, 2001, that the United States suffered the deadliest terrorist attack in its history. Almost 3000 people were killed when members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes, flying two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City and one of them into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; the fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although the 9/11 terrorist attacks underscored the dangerous fanaticism of far-right Islamist groups, countless Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump have ignored or downplayed another terrorist threat from the far right — white supremacy and white nationalism — and that threat is alive and well in the Trump era.

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Time and time again, Fox News and others in the far-right media have encouraged Republicans to believe that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) and Boko Haram have the market cornered on terrorism. Fox News will cover white supremacist attacks, but in a calmer way; when Islamists carry out terrorist attacks, Fox News’ message is, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” And anti-Islam extremists like Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer and his ally, Pamela Geller, would have us believe that the terrorist threat posed by white supremacists and white nationalists and the terrorist threat posed by Islamist groups are in no way comparable. But one need only look at the history of white supremacist terrorism to realize how ignorant that claim is.

To be sure, the Islamist ideology of ISIS and al-Qaeda — which is anti-democratic, anti-feminist and anti-gay — is something that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation should keep a close eye on. But it’s important to stress that groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are by no means typical of Islam on the whole; countless Muslims, as even President George W. Bush acknowledged, reject that ideology. And when it comes to terrorism, the claim that white supremacists are white nationalists are somehow less dangerous than radical Islamists is ludicrous.

White nationalists and white supremacists have carried out one terrorist attack after another in the Trump era.

item: in August 2019, more than 20 people were killed after a racist gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and killed more than 20 people, mostly Latino. His motivation was to combat “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Item: in October 2018, a white supremacist/white nationalist gunman attacked the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 people simply because they were Jewish.

Item: in 2018, domestic terrorist and Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc mailed a series of pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, including Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Item: in 2019, white nationalist Christopher Hasson, a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, was arrested on gun and drug charges and — according to law enforcement — was planning a terrorist plot against critics of Trump. Hasson’s hit list, investigators said, ranged from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren to media figures like CNN’s Chris Cuomo and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough (a former Republican congressman and Never Trump conservative).

Item: at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, neo-Nazi James Fields, Jr. rammed his vehicle into a group of counterdemonstrators and killed activist Heather Heyer. Fields was sentenced to life in prison.

Item: federal investigators have accused Steven Carrillo, a member of the far-right Boogaloo movement, of fatally shooting a security officer in Oakland on May 29.

But despite all that, Trump and his sycophants have downplayed the terrorist threat that white supremacists and white nationalists pose in the United States. Trump’s analysis of terrorism is painfully flawed. While he is correct that radical Islamists are a threat, Trump’s claim that left-wing Antifa is a terrorist movement is absolute nonsense: Antifa, for all their militant rhetoric, do not carry out the type of attacks that ISIS or the Ku Klux Klan are known for and do not fit the definition of terrorists. And Trump seriously downplays the threat posed by white nationalist extremists like QAnon and the Boogaloo movement (which calls for a race war).

Elizabeth Neumann, a conservative Republican who formerly served as assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department of Homeland Security, has announced that she plans to vote for former Vice President Joe Biden in November — and one of the main reasons is the fact that Trump has been downplaying the white nationalist/white supremacist threat. During a recent interview with National Public Radio, Neumann explained that for too long, Trump was uncomfortable with the term “domestic terrorism.”

Neumann told NPR, “The irony is that when (Trump) finally was comfortable with using the word domestic terrorism, it was in the context of Antifa and trying to exploit or sell a story that the looting and the violence that we have seen somewhat associated with peaceful protests is Antifa. And yet, if you look at the arrests that have occurred in the protests of the summer, it’s the Boogaloo movement — or it’s an association with QAnon. It’s the right side of the spectrum; it is not Antifa.”

Of course, white supremacist terrorism didn’t start in the Trump era. The Ku Klux Klan has been carrying out terrorist attacks for generations. But in the Trump era, white supremacists and white nationalists feel empowered by his racist rhetoric.

One of the most idiotic talking points one sometimes hears in the right-wing media is that the KKK are liberals. Never mind the fact that the KKK have a long history of targeting liberals and progressives for terrorist attacks.

The way to honor the memories of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks is not by promoting Islamophobia. President George W. Bush, for all his blunders, was spot on when he characterized al-Qaeda as a disgrace to Islam. The victims of 9/11, 19 years later, are honored by showing compassion for the victims of terrorist attacks in general — included those killed or injured by white nationalist and white supremacist supporters of President Donald Trump.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/

No governor or mayor has ever suggested suspending the 2nd Amendment, confiscating guns, or imposing martial law. Yet, in March, more guns were bought in the United States than ever before: around two million, roughly, sadly, the same amount as were purchased in the wake of the Sandy Hook murders and President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2008.

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roberts says 2nd time state legis closed by guns, 1st Oregon]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/michigan-cancels-legislative-session-to-avoid-armed-protesters?sref=Zd9D2evu

may 14

Michigan closed down its capitol in Lansing on Thursday and canceled its legislative session rather than face the possibility of an armed protest and death threats against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

The gathering, meant to advocate opening the state for business despite the coronavirus pandemic, followed one April 30 that resulted in pictures of protesters clad in military-style gear and carrying long guns crowding the statehouse. They confronted police and taunted lawmakers.

The shutdown was done with little fanfare at the end of Wednesday’s State Senate session. About 4:30 p.m., lawmakers in the Republican-majority chamber simply adjourned until Tuesday rather than call the next previously scheduled meeting for Thursday morning at 10 a.m. The Michigan State Police are closing the buildings due to the coronavirus, said spokesman Lieutenant Brian Oleksyk.

For the past week, lawmakers have been debating how to safely enable lawmakers to work and vote in session while the state’s laws allow people to bring firearms into the capitol building. The debate grew more tense in recent days as some lawmakers read about threats to the governor’s life on social media, which were published in the Detroit Metro Times.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued an opinion on May 11 saying that the State Capitol Commission -- a body of six lawmakers who oversee the building and its grounds -- could ban firearms. The commission voted to study a ban this week, but took no action.

Thursday’s protest, billed as “Judgment Day,” was organized by the right-wing group Michigan United for Liberty, which is protesting the state’s extended stay-at-home order. Whitmer pushed the order to the end of May while giving automakers, their suppliers and other manufacturers the green light to go back to work. On its Facebook page, the group posted a memo asking that protesters remain peaceful.

[pix: Protesters gather outside the doors of the chamber room at the Michigan Capitol Building on April 30.

Photographer: Matthew Hatcher/Bloomberg]

Still, lawmakers feared a repeat of April 30, when armed protesters entered the Senate Chamber and stood above them in a visitors gallery during the session.

State Senator Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat, on Tuesday proposed a bill to ban firearms in the capitol building. The bill has heavy support from her party.

virginia event? some rw arrested?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/radical-right-wing-paramilitary-group-recruits-texas-cops-for-bloody-civil-war-report

no lnx

radical right-wing paramilitary group recruits Texas cops for ‘bloody civil war’: report

Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story February 29, 2020

According to a report from the Star-Telegram, a senior member of the rightwing paramilitary group Oath Keepers who moved to Texas in 2015 is actively recruiting local law enforcement employees while telling them a “bloody civil war” against the U.S. government is on the horizon.

The report states that John D. Shirley, the national director of the Las Vegas-based Oath Keepers finagled himself a job as a county constable in Hood County which provided him with access to other police officers and now he is using his position to recruit.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Oath Keepers organization is “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today” with, reportedly, thousands of members made up of former law enforcement officials and military veterans.

The Star-Telegram reports that Shirley’s “Oath Keepers of Hood County” drive was scheduled at a local golf course earlier in the week before being canceled by the management because they felt the group had misrepresented itself when they booked the meeting place.

The report notes that Shirley has attempted to allay fears about the group’s intentions despite claims on their own website about a coming “New World order” and antisemitic rhetoric, that goes hand-in-hand with their unyielding defense of gun ownership.

According to Shirley, in column for the online publication Hood County Today, the Oath Keepers are not “anti-government” because, as he wrote, “I am a public servant OF the government,” before adding, “The U.S. Constitution, the document this organization holds as sacrosanct, is the foundational document of our GOVERNMENT.”

The report notes that local law officials say there is no policy that bans police from joining the group which has one local running for sheriff extremely concerned.

According to Vance Keyes of Fort Worth, “I am absolutely concerned about militia groups infiltrating law enforcement. Their presence in policing undermines our obligation and ability to provide impartial justice … free from the thinly veiled, and often outright, racial bias that exist in such organizations.”

He added, “They destroy sincere efforts to strengthen police/community relations in minority communities. Their anti-government rhetoric is also an affront to police professionals that take seriously their obligation to public service and the rule of law.”

You can read more here.

ref no lnx

no lnx many

Fort Worth Star Telegram

A paranoid militia infiltrating Texas police is bent on rebellion, ‘ready to rise up’

BY BUD KENNEDY

FEBRUARY 28, 2020 09:26 AM

FORT WORTH

A revolution-minded, conspiracy-bent militia group named the Oath Keepers is recruiting law officers in Hood County to take up arms in what the founder predicts will be a “bloody civil war” against the U.S. government.

A national director of the Las Vegas-based Oath Keepers, John D. Shirley, moved to rural Hood County in 2015 and has been appointed by county commissioners as a constable, giving him both access to confidential information and a political platform to recruit more militia members.

A regional recruitment rally announced for Monday was canceled by Harbor Lakes Golf Club, citing misrepresentation. It was supposed to launch Shirley’s “Oath Keepers of Hood County” chapter.

The Oath Keepers’ current recruiting pitch focuses on gun rights and the Second Amendment. But unlike other gun libertarians, the Oath Keepers promote paranoid fears of a “New World Order” conspiracy and spread veiled anti-Semitism in distrusting “elites,” similar to discredited Austin showbiz personality Alex Jones.

Mainly, the group asks for money. Its website begs law officers and veterans to militarize and also pay $1,200 for a “lifetime membership” or $50-$120 for annual memberships.

“They view themselves as ready to rise up” to oppose the government, said Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League, which watches militia hobbyists and so-called patriot-movement groups along with monitoring neo-Nazis and race or religious hate groups.

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Officially, the Oath Keepers are nonpartisan and nondiscriminatory. The ADL labels the group as “anti-government extremist.”

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But the group rose in 2009 along with the Tea Party months after the election of President Barack Obama.

Founder Stewart Rhodes had worked and campaigned for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, a gun-libertarian Republican.

IMG_3398.jpg

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes at a 2013 rally in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Tyler Tjomsland AP/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW]

In a Jan. 22 speech posted on the Oath Keepers’ Facebook page, Rhodes claimed Americans have a legal right to the same weapons as the U.S. military.

“A weapon of war is what you want in your hands,” he said.

Accusing “pencil-neck lawyers” in government of conspiring against gun owners, Rhodes said “they know we will resist. And that’s precisely why they want your semiautomatic rifles. ... They are useful in resisting tyranny.”

The Oath Keepers’ mantra is a list of 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey” — say, turning cities into concentration camps, or forcing Americans into detention camps.

Neither seems likely in Hood County.

At the height of the recent debate over new stricter Virginia gun laws, Rhodes said in a speech: “We are being pushed towards a revolutionary war.”

He blamed presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg and Democratic campaign donor George Soros, both of Jewish descent, using the term “elites.”

“Texans beware — they’re coming for us,” he said.

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Constable John D. Shirley of rural Hood County is on the national board of Las Vegas-based Oath Keepers. WWW.CO.HOOD.TX.US]

Shirley, a retired Houston police officer, has said he was one of Rhodes’ first allies in 2009 and spoke at a2009 Tea Party rally, calling for law officers and veterans to organize. He has been described as the group’s law enforcement recruiter.

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He operates a false Twitter account, “@HoodCoTxConst2,” that is labeled the public office’s official Twitter feed but actually contains personal political content.

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It uses the official badge as artwork. Commenters or those sending direct messages may falsely believe they are sending information to a law enforcement agency and not to a political account.

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A false Twitter account uses a county badge but promotes Constable John D. Shirley’s political views. TWITTER.COM/HOODCOTXCONST2]

The badge appears to be used illegally for a private political account.

In a guest column in the online publication Hood County Today, Shirley wrote that the Oath Keepers shouldn’t be called anti-government, because “I am a public servant OF the government.”

He went on: “The U.S. Constitution, the document this organization holds as sacrosanct, is the foundational document of our GOVERNMENT.”

His Oath Keepers plans were first reported in the Hood County News..

Hood County Judge Ron Massengill did not return a message asking about Oath Keeper infiltration of law enforcement.

Sheriff Roger Deeds left a message saying he is not a member of the Oath Keepers but “I have heard of it.”

One of Shirley’s two opponents Tuesday in the Republican Party primary, Keith Martin, responded to a message and said he is not a member but “I am aware of the organization.”

Shirley’s other opponent, James D. Edwards, did not return messages left on both his personal and campaign Facebook pages.

I asked a Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office spokesman whether our county has a policy against outside memberships in militias like the Oath Keepers.

Tarrant County has no policy. Sheriff Bill Waybourn of Dalworthington Gardens had no comment.

His Democratic opponent, Vance Keyes of Fort Worth, had plenty of comment.

Keyes wrote by email that the Oath Keepers have no place in law enforcement.

“I am absolutely concerned about militia groups infiltrating law enforcement,” Keyes wrote.

“Their presence in policing undermines our obligation and ability to provide impartial justice ... free from the thinly veiled, and often outright, racial bias that exist in such organizations.

“ They destroy sincere efforts to strengthen police/community relations in minority communities. Their anti-government rhetoric is also an affront to police professionals that take seriously their obligation to public service and the rule of law.”

The Oath Keepers are selling poison. And charging $1,200.

BUD KENNEDY

Columnist Bud Kennedy is a Fort Worth guy who covered high school football at 16 and has moved on to two Super Bowls, seven political conventions and 16 Texas Legislature sessions. First on the scene of a 1988 DFW Airport crash, he interviewed passengers running from the burning plane. He made his first appearance in the paper before he was born: He was sold for $600 in the adoption classifieds.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/don-jr-posts-photos-of-his-assault-rifle-bearing-ancient-symbol-of-war-with-islam-now-used-by-white-supremacists-experts/

aha trump boys mantly men who kill endangered species, hunters, // coal rolling?!

aha 2: the opposite of virtue signalling? just "different" virtues?

919

beto, hell yes

seeAR15.com

no lnx twt

Reddit VirginiaCeci Freed / Media Matters

A pro-Trump subreddit is full of calls for violence in response to proposed Virginia gun safety laws

Reddit bars content that “encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm”

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 12/19/19 9:32 AM EST

Users on Reddit’s “r/The_Donald,” a prominent subreddit for supporters of President Donald Trump, have repeatedly issued calls for violence in response to proposed gun safety laws in Virginia, despite Reddit’s policy barring content that “encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm.”

The subreddit has already been quarantined by Reddit for past violations of that policy, but users have recently posted messages warning that “we’ll have no constitutional option but to give them the bullets,” claiming that “if it’s time to hide your guns, it’s time to use them,” and urging people to “exercise their second amendment on their government today.” Users have also posted that “not only is [violence] inevitable but it is necessary” and that this “ends with patriots shooting at an oppressive government and driving them out.” One user expressed a willingness to go “straight for the governor's mansion” as part of “a road trip to Virginia that might cost me my life.”

Reddit prohibits content that “encourages,” “incites,” or “calls for violence,” and the site previously quarantined “r/The_Donald” for violating the policy

Reddit: “Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm.” From the site’s “account and community restrictions” section:

Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. We understand there are sometimes reasons to post violent content (e.g., educational, newsworthy, artistic, satire, documentary, etc.) so if you’re going to post something violent in nature that does not violate these terms, ensure you provide context to the viewer so the reason for posting is clear.

If your content is borderline, please use a NSFW tag. Even mild violence can be difficult for someone to explain to others if they open it unexpectedly. [Reddit, accessed 12/18/19]

Reddit previously quarantined “r/The_Donald” for violating this policy. In June, Media Matters reported on multiple “r/The_Donald” users violating this policy by issuing calls to violence against Oregon law enforcement. Soon after, Reddit quarantined the subreddit, meaning it would no longer appear on the main Reddit feed. In a message shared by a moderator for “r/The_Donald” that explained the decision to quarantine the subreddit, a Reddit administrator wrote that “we are troubled that violent content more often goes unreported, and worse, is upvoted.” [Media Matters, 6/24/19; The Verge, 6/26/19; Reddit, accessed 12/18/19]

Reddit has previously banned multiple subreddits in violation of this policy. Reddit “shut down several Nazi and white supremacist subreddits” in 2017 because of its policy regarding inciting violence, according to The Verge. In 2018, the site banned the largest subreddit dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory, citing “repeated violations of the terms” of its content policy, NBC News reported, noting that the forum was “host to a stream of violent threats.” And on June 20, the platform banned the subreddit “r/frenworld,” which “featured racist and anti-Semitic Pepe the Frog-style cartoons,” with a spokesperson saying it “violated rules against encouraging and glorifying violence,” according to The Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer. [The Verge, 10/25/17; NBC News, 9/12/18; Twitter, 6/20/19]

Users of “r/The_Donald” have posted in support of violently opposing proposed gun safety laws and their potential enforcement

Virginia’s governor has proposed gun safety bills and said there will be “consequences” for law enforcement officials who refuse to enforce the bills if they become law. Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has proposed a series of gun safety bills for the next legislative session. In response, multiple counties in the state have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” adopting largely symbolic resolutions that say they will not enforce what they deem to be unconstitutional gun laws. Rep. Donald McEachin (D-VA) suggested that Northam use the commonwealth’s National Guard to enforce the bills if they become law, and Northam has warned of “consequences” if localities refuse to enforce new gun laws, adding that he would “cross that bridge if and when we get to it.” The Twitter account for the Virginia National Guard has tweeted that it had “not received any requests from the Governor, or anyone on his staff, about serving in a law enforcement role related to any proposed legislation” and encouraged residents to “be patient while we allow our elected officials to work through the legislative process.” [CNN, 11/6/19; WSLS, 12/12/19; Newsweek, 12/13/19; Twitter, 12/13/19]

Users on “r/The_Donald” have posted calls to violence against state government officials. In response to the discussion about the Virginia National Guard and the proposed gun safety laws, multiple users on the subreddit “r/The_Donald” have issued calls for violence to prevent the potential enforcement of the proposed laws.

A user wrote that, “If I have to take a road trip to Virginia that might cost me my life, I'm not fighting the guard.” Instead they claimed they would be “joining which ever band is going straight for the governor's mansion” because “it's the only way to strike fear into these tyrants in other states who are thinking this sounds like a great idea.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia1

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

Another user wrote that “as long as we're gonna have the gang together we should head west and teach Californian politicians a lesson too.” In response to a comment about possible “civil conflict,” the same user wrote that violence was “not only … inevitable but it is necessary.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia2

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

One user argued that “it may be time this has to play out” because “the Virginia legislature or governor cannot remove the second amendment.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia3

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user claimed that Virginia’s governor is “waging war on us” and that “the world is about to find out how powerful the 2nd amendment really is.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia4

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user argued that it was “time to ammo up” in response.

The Donald subreddit Virginia5

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

Another user argued that “when they cannot help but go for the guns, we'll have no constitutional option but to give them the bullets.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia6

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user encouraged “everyone [to] grab your Brown Besses,” a type of firearm used during the American Revolution.

The Donald subreddit Virginia7

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

In response to a recommendation that users “zero those sights” on their weapons, another user questioned which ammunition would be best used against law enforcement.

The Donald subreddit Virginia17

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

One user wrote that they would “have to finally drop coin on anAR15 and ammo if it's coming to this.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia10

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

Another user claimed that “if it’s time to hide your guns, it’s time to use them.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia11

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user suggested that it was “time for people in Virginia to move or to exercise their second amendment on their government today.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia12

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user responded to a post about police enforcing proposed gun safety bills by simply writing “cocks shotgun.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia13

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user wrote that this was “how it begins,” and that it “ends with patriots shooting at an oppressive government and driving them out.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia14

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user claimed to know “several Mississippians down here that would be willing to help you Virginia patriots out if thinks kick off.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia15

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

In response to a comment urging Trump (“45”) to “step in,” a user wrote, “.45 acp maybe,” referring to a popular type of ammunition.

The Donald subreddit Virginia16

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user wrote in response to the proposed bills that if violence occurs, “that will be the price you'll have to pay for liberty,” adding former President Thomas Jefferson’s quote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia18

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

Another user also cited Jefferson’s quote in response to Northam’s proposed bills.

The Donald subreddit Virginia22

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

One user argued, “If they start a war, we need to do what people typically do in a war.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia19

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user wrote that they “hope” that “every militia in Virginia is getting prepped for war.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia21

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

A user wrote that if “they want a war, the patriots in Virginia will give them one.”

The Donald subreddit Virginia20

[Reddit, accessed 12/17/19]

748 COMMENTS

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Media Matters for America

Walmart asks gun owners not to open-carry and announces plan to limit ammunition sales

David Badash / The New Civil Rights MovementSeptember 3, 2019

In response to two in-store shootings at its stores and the subsequent strong social media campaigns Walmart has just announced it will cease selling handgun and military assault rifle ammunition.…

919

CNN panel explodes in anger as Rick Santorum defends assault weapons after latest shooting

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

A CNN panel discussion on yet another mass shooting exploded into anger and yelling after former Sen. Rick Santorum refused to even consider stopping the sale of assault rifles after a massacre in Texas.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/cnn-panel-explodes-in-anger-as-rick-santorum-defends-assault-weapons-after-latest-shooting/

no lnx

CNN panel explodes in anger as Rick Santorum defends assault weapons after latest shooting

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story September 2, 2019

A CNN panel discussion on yet another mass shooting exploded into anger and yelling after former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) refused to even consider stopping the sale of assault rifles after a massacre in Texas.

Sitting in with “State of the Union” guest host Dana Bash, Santorum was given time to make his case.

“Obviously we have had a lot of horrific things happen and people react emotionally to them,” Santorum offered. “I think what we have found when we actually have these debates, and we think about the consequences of the things being talked about and the particulars, the American public and certainly member of Congress in both parties, frankly back down.”

That led DNC Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa to confront the former GOP lawmaker with the carnage in Odessa and Midland, Texas.

“I put my son to bed last night, he’s 11-months old,” she told Santorum. “There is a mother who did not do that because her daughter was shot in the face. When is it enough? I’m from Texas. Not even a month ago, the president said let’s pass background checks. What ended up happening?He backed down and called the NRA, that’s not realistic.”

Santorum then jumped in to say that none of the crimes being discussed by the panel could have been stopped by a background check, which set Hinojosa off.

“So you’re telling me you wouldn’t protect one life because of a background check?” she accused.

“Quit — stop –quit proposing things that limit people’s rightsthat won’t address the problem!” Santorum snapped as Hinojosa shook her head in disbelief. “And the problem, you know very well, is young males and it is a multi-faceted problem and all the left want to talk about is one aspect.”

Watch below: