2nd amend second 2a

digitally disappear sil vly

merri ok

see gun control

see ginni clarence

see school shooter

see violence 4 civil war 2 self-defense from demon-rats

see assault weapons

see mass shooter

SEE GUBMINT TYRANT THEY ARE COMING FOR YOU HYPE FEAR

see Dorr bros 2a absolutist GOA

active measures disinfo

see Matthew McConaughey

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AN 2 26

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is under fire over her anti-gun remarks, becoming the latest Trump administration official caught in a firearms backlash. Her threat to jail anyone who brings a gun into Washington, D.C., has set off a revolt across the political spectrum, spearheaded by right-wing gun groups and GOP lawmakers.

“You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” Pirro said on Fox News Monday afternoon. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back, and that makes all the difference.”

The New York Times reported that Pirro’s remarks “could deepen a growing rift between gun owners and the Trump administration.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) slammed Pirro, warning her, “Come and Take It.”

“I bring a gun into the district every week,” he wrote to Pirro. “I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others.”

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) declared, “This is not how this works,” and urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to “have a quick conversation” with Pirro for a “course correction here.”

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) added, “The District of Columbia has been ‘shall issue’ since 2017 when the requirement that you must have a ‘good reason’ to carry a handgun was struck down. Non-residents can obtain a permit in DC — don’t ask me how I know.”

U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), citing the Second Amendment, wrote: “Shall NOT be infringed is NOT a suggestion.”

“Our Second Amendment freedoms don’t disappear when we cross state lines or enter our nation’s capital city,” he added, before calling for a nationwide concealed carry reciprocity law.

Gun Owners of America, also, called for passage of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act in response to Pirro’s remarks, as did other gun rights groups.

“Unacceptable and intolerable” is how the National Association for Gun Rights characterized Pirro’s remarks, before turning its focus to the law.

“Jeanine Pirro threatening to arrest people for carrying in DC, even if they are law-abiding and licensed, shows how broken and out of touch these gun laws are,” the group said. “This is why we need Real Constitutional Carry nationwide. Bureaucrats act like the 2A does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights.”

The NRA did not mention Pirro by name, but also called for passage of the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, before declaring, “Your right to self-defense should not end simply because you crossed a state line or into Washington, D.C.”

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough, a former Republican U.S. Congressman, now an independent, called Pirro’s remarks “Unconstitutional drivel.”

Another former GOP congressman Joe Walsh, now a Democrat, called Pirro’s remarks the “latest piece of evidence in the Trump administration’s war against gun rights.”

“What Pirro just made is an un-constitutional threat against every American’s right to the 2nd Amendment, on national tv,” The Lincoln Project commented. “Trump and his admin are again trying to strip you of a constitutional right.”

Indeed, as Politico reported, President Donald Trump himself just last week said, “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns,” in relation to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents. Pretti was a licensed, concealed carry holder.

Trump went even further, saying, “certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” and, “I don’t like that he had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines, that’s a lot of bad stuff.”

FBI Director Kash Patel recently said, “you cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem also said that she didn’t “know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”

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Federal Judge Orders 2nd Amendment Orgs to Turn Over Membership Names

...District Court Judge issued a ruling for the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) that covers almost no one and requires the organizations to turn over membership rolls to the federal government.

The case, Caleb Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), was filed by the two organizations on November 6, 2020, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Lafayette Division. It challenged the constitutionality of prohibiting 18- to 20-year-olds from transferring firearms through federal firearms licensees (FFLs). The prohibition is in place because the federal government will not approve anyone under the age of 21 through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) when purchasing a handgun.

The federal statute was ruled constitutional at the District Court level by Trump appointee Judge Robert Summerhays, leading the plaintiffs to file an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. A three-judge panel would strike down the District Court’s ruling and remand the case back to the lower court, ordering the judge to issue a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs.

The judge would begrudgingly issue the ruling for the plaintiffs, but it was issued in such a way that it covered almost no one. First, the judge limited the ruling only to the members of the plaintiffs’ organization in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, leaving members living in the 47 remaining states of the country out in the cold.

Next, the judge stated that only people who were members on November 6, 2020, are covered, meaning that to be covered, you would have had to be a member of SAF or FPC, no older than 13 years of age in 2020. Although we do not have an exact number of SAF and FPC active members, which was 13 in 2020, it can’t be that many, or none at all. Many believe this move by the judge was intentional, aimed at complying with the higher court while still achieving his desired outcome.

*“The practical effect of this order is almost laughable if it wasn’t so frustrating and didn’t impact the Second Amendment rights of thousands of individuals,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “What the court has done here is say that this law is unconstitutional, but in order for an 18-year-old to avoid having their constitutional rights trounced by it today, they must live in one of only three states in the nation and have been a member of SAF at age 13. And even then, they’re only covered if SAF discloses their membership to the government under duress. We’re currently examining our options in relation to the relief granted and will vigorously defend our members’ right to free association and privacy of such.”

The judge also ordered the plaintiffs to turn over their membership rolls from November 6, 2020, within 21 days. This demand for membership lists would provide the government with a list of gun owners. Gun owners are hesitant to share information with the government. One example of why gun owners do not trust their information with the government is when the ATF was using the NICS monitoring system to share information with the states about gun owners who purchased state-prohibited firearms outside the state.

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MAY 2025

WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — A D.C. man was sentenced Thursday for wielding a loaded machine gun towards an elementary school in October 2024, according to the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the District of Columbia.

Jason Jerome Bell, 21, pleaded guilty in January to unlawful possession of a machine gun and carrying a pistol without a license. He was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.

Suspect charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO as an act of terrorism, authorities announce

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UPI

DOJ permits sale of triggers that allow rifles to fire like machine guns

Allen Cone

:{Sun, May 18, 2025

The U.S. Justice Department said it will allow the sale of devices, including by Rare Breed Firarms that enable standard guns to operate like machine guns. Photo courtesy Rare Breed Firearms/Instagram

May 18 (UPI) -- The federal government will allow the sale of devices that enable standard rifles to operate like machine guns, a move that angered gun control groups.

The Justice Department said Friday it reached a settlement with Rare Breed Triggers. This is in accordance with President Donald Trump's Feb. 17 executive order Protecting Second Amendment Rights and the attorney general's Second Amendment Enforcement Task Force announced on April 8.

Steven King, owner of Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, Mo., shows off the popular Smith and Wesson AR-15, 556 caliber rifle. File photo by Bill Greenblatt

"This Department of Justice believes that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right," Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. "And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety."

There are two ways to speed the firing of bullets. Bump stocks use the recoil of the weapon to repeatedly bump the trigger, while trigger devices are aftermarket items that directly engage the trigger.

During the first Trump administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned bump stocks, which mimic rapid trigger pulls to fire rapidly in a way similar to a machine gun. In 2017, the gunman in a mass shooting killed 58 people in Las Vegas while firing from his hotel room window using bump stocks.

In 2022, ATF included specific trigger devices under the National Firearms Act of 1934. The ATF determined that the devices allow a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle to fire as fast as a military M-16 in automatic mode.

In 2023, the Justice Department, as part of the Biden administration, brought a lawsuit in New York against Rare Breed Triggers.

The National Association of Gun Rights filed a separate lawsuit in Texas challenging the ban and a judge there ruled the ban was unlawful.

In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote in Cargill v. Garland, ruled ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule classifying a bump stock as a "machine gun."

The Court's majority found that bump stocks do not meet the definition of a machine gun because they didn't allow for automatic fire with the single pull of a trigger.

The next month, the Northern District of Texas applied the case to a device called a "forced-reset trigger" and concluded that they also cannot be classified as a "machine gun."

DOJ is avoiding additional legal action against Rare Breed Triggers in appeals and related cases concerning the similar issue, Bondi said.

Sneaky New Move By Shameless Republicans Puts Millions Of American Lives In Danger

HuffPost

The settlement with Rare Breed Triggers includes agreed-upon conditions that significantly advance public safety with respect to FRTs, including that Rare Breed will not develop or design them for use in any pistol and will enforce its patents to prevent infringement that could threaten public safety.

Rare Breed also agreed promote the safe and responsible use of its products.

"The cuffs are off. As of May 16, 2025, we're free! Expect the website to be updated on Monday, May 19," the company posted on its website.

The decision was condemned by Vanessa Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Giffords, the national gun violence prevention group led by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in 2011 while meeting with constituents in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.

"The Trump administration has just effectively legalized machine guns. Lives will be lost because of his actions," Gonzalez said. "This is an incredibly dangerous move that will enable shooters to inflict horrific damage. The only people who benefit from these being on the market are the people who will make money from selling them, everyone else will suffer the consequences."

The national gun control advocacy group Brady United said in a press release that "highly dangerous weapons of war can now be purchased anonymously" and without a background check.

"The Trump Administration's secret settlement with the gun lobby to permit the sale of Forced Reset Triggers will turn already deadly firearms into weapons of mass destruction," Kris Brown, president of Brady United, said in the release.

"Machine guns are weapons of war that have absolutely no place in our communities. This dangerous backroom deal is not only an astonishing abuse of power, but undermines decades of sensible government gun safety policy and puts whole communities at immediate serious risk," he said.

Brady previous was called the National Council to Control Handguns and founded in 1974 by Dr. Mark Borinsky, whose son was shot and killed in 1974.

In 1981, White House Press Secretary Jim "the Bear" Brady suffered a bullet to the head, and the organization now bears his name.

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an 12 24

In February 2024, the Hawaii Supreme Court was highly critical of views on the Second Amendment expressed by the U.S. Supreme Court's far-right justices. And two of those justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, expressed their indignation in an opinion released on Monday, December 9.

According to Slate legal expert Mark Joseph Stern, "It now appears the critique has gotten under some justices' skin. In an opinion on Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, railed against the Hawaii Supreme Court's top-to-bottom evisceration of his own gun-rights opinions. But Thomas and Alito protest too much: Their grousing is pure projection, accusing the Hawaii Supreme Court of committing the same sins at the heart of their own Second Amendment rulings."

Stern continues, "Given an opening to defend their Second Amendment views, the conservative justices whiffed — and, in their anger, fabricated a new rule that would make it even easier for law-breaking citizens to challenge gun regulations. It has never been more apparent that, as the Hawaii Supreme Court charged, SCOTUS' gun enthusiasts are making it up as they go along."

In February, the Hawaii Supreme Court described the High Court's right wing as extreme ideologues where the Second Amendment is concerned.

The case that "set off the clash," according to Stern, was Hawaii v. Wilson — which, Stern argues, "should not be a difficult one."

"Christopher Wilson, the defendant, allegedly trespassed on someone else's property while carrying a loaded gun in his waistband," Stern explains. "Hawaii requires residents to obtain a permit to own a handgun; Wilson didn't have one. The state also requires a license for concealed carry; Wilson didn't have that either. Prosecutors charged him with criminal trespass and gun charges stemming from his possession of an illegal firearm and ammunition. Wilson contested the charges, arguing that they violated his rights under the Second Amendment."

Stern adds, "He also claimed that the charges ran afoul of a provision of the Hawaii Constitution that uses the exact same words as the Second Amendment. The Hawaii Supreme Court rejected Wilson’s arguments. It began by refusing to interpret the Hawaii Constitution in line with SCOTUS’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, which prohibits any gun restriction that isn’t rooted in the nation's 'history and tradition.'"

READ MORE:['No guardrails': How Trump could weaponize the DOJ to intimidate Congress and media]

*Mark Joseph Stern's full article for Slate is available at this link.

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.

6 24 bump stocks sotomayor dissent quacks duck vs 8-1

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GOP-backed House nominee posted a false claim that Jewish people “gave up their firearms to Hitler,” spurring the Holocaust

Special ProgramsGuns & Public Safety

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published 09/17/24 12:00 PM EDT

Right-wing commentator and U.S. House nominee Lily Tang Williams repeatedly shared a false meme criticizing Jewish people for supposedly giving “up their firearms to Hitler” and suggesting that led to their deaths in the Holocaust. The New Hampshire Republican even doubled down on the meme when apparently shown a fact check.

Williams is a public speaker and commentator who has appeared in conservative media outlets, including Fox News, Newsmax TV, and Tim Pool’s podcast. She won the September 10 Republican primary in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the Republican’s House campaign arm, has backed her campaign. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a top-ranked House Republican, has also endorsed Williams.

As Media Matters previously reported, conservatives have repeatedly promoted a meme on social media claiming that Jewish people “gave up their firearms to Hitler.” The meme reads: “To all the kids that walked out of school to protest guns. These are the shoes of Jews that gave up their firearms to Hitler. They were led into gas chambers, murdered and buried in mass graves. Pick up a history book and you’ll realize what happens when u give up freedoms and why we have them.”

Williams reposted that meme on social media in June 2022 and April 2023. She wrote: “Remember what happened to Jews after they gave up their guns to Hitler. Our #2A exists to prevent tyranny. If you want to reduce mass shootings in schools, repeal gun free zones where the criminals always target our most vulnerable people.”

She also directed the meme toward Parkland, Florida, mass shooting survivor David Hogg, writing: “To the ppl who were in the ⁦@AMarch4OurLives⁩, who are demanding for more #guncontrol, research & study history on your own. Don’t rely on schools & media to tell you the truth: what happens when citizens are disarmed by their gov. #lily4congress ⁦@davidhogg111.”

The line of attack regarding the Holocaust and gun control has also been employed by right-wing media figures over the years.

The argument is a severe misreading of history. As PolitiFact wrote in 2019, “The message that gun control measures helped cause the deaths of Holocaust victims is wrong. Let's make something clear: The Nazis did deny guns specifically to Jews. But, given the size of their forces and their methods of confiscation and extermination, this is a trivial factor. The notion that it would have made any difference is unreasonable.”

Williams shared and disputed that PolitiFact article, writing: “They need to listen to the survivors of the Holocaust.”

Republican politicians have also drawn criticism for making the argument. In 2015, for instance, right-wing commentator and then-Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson made a similar analogy about the Holocaust and gun control.

In response, Holocaust scholar Alan E. Steinweis wrote: “I can think of no serious work of scholarship on the Nazi dictatorship or on the causes of the Holocaust in which Nazi gun control measures feature as a significant factor.” He added: “If the United States is going to arrive at a workable compromise solution to its gun problem, it will not be accomplished through the use of historical analogies that are false, silly and insulting.”

Media Matters has documented instances over the years of Republicans backing commentators with histories of vitriolic or extremist rhetoric when they run for office.

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december 19, 2018 wapo

Russian national Maria Butina recently pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for her government during the 2016 presidential campaign, revealing how well Russia knows the fault lines of U.S. politics and culture, and the extent to which it will go to divide and conquer American democracy.

Russia’s target was the National Rifle Association, which represents the zenith of discord and dysfunction in U.S. politics. With a stranglehold over Republican officeholders, the organization has stoked the most polarizing cultural fracture in the United States: the gun debate.

The debate is deeply polarizing, even though consensus exists on both the left and the right about the need for greater regulation, evidenced Tuesday by the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks. Yet the NRA has spent decades inflaming fears of “big government” by pushing the concept that any common-sense gun control represents an attack on the Second Amendment. Russia seized on the gun debate because it is ripe for misinformation that can further polarize Americans, even when Americans agree more than they disagree.

Founded in 1871 by a Union army veteran to encourage greater marksmanship and sports shooting, the NRA has only recently become a powerful, and controversial, political force. The group began to develop an interest in politics during the 1930s, but it was not until 1975 that the NRA created its Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) to defend the Second Amendment from supposed legislative threats.

Although the NRA was influential in forming federal gun laws between the 1930s and 1960s, it was not until the mid-1970s that politics became its raison d’etre. That shift happened just as the politics of the group began to change. Before 1977, the NRA represented the national consensus on common-sense gun regulations, even agreeing with the need for sales of handguns to be subject to background checks. Enter Harlon Carter. Carter took charge of the ILA in its first year of operation and demanded that the NRA become more politically focused, leading to his dismissal in 1976. At the NRA’s annual convention in 1977, however, Carter regained power after being elected executive vice president. From this position, he dictated the NRA’s rise to power as an anti-regulation lobbying force.

The NRA’s political turn transformed it into a prominent partisan group with a highly engaged membership and, eventually, the ability to defeat any meaningful gun-control legislation. There was a clear synergy between the political rhetoric of the NRA and Republicans’ opposition to federal initiatives that supposedly transgressed American liberties. As the NRA became a powerful fundraiser, supporting congressional candidates for the first time in 1980, Republicans became submissive to its demands.

Over time, that left it an increasingly partisan organization, as Democrats sympathetic to the NRA’s agenda and Republican proponents of gun control left office. The NRA gained newfound political might after Democrats muscled the Assault Weapons Ban through Congress in 1994 and lost control of both chambers the same year, with veteran Democrats crediting their defeat to the NRA’s opposition. Party leaders concluded that crossing the NRA in the future would be politically deadly.

The NRA also became an increasing political powerhouse, thanks to prolific fundraising. In the first presidential election cycle following the 1999 Columbine massacre, then the United States’ deadliest school shooting, the NRA raised $20 million for elections on both the federal and state level. By 2016, the NRA dwarfed this figure, disbursing $419 million in an attempt to avoid a continuation of Obama-era gun control advocacy under Hillary Clinton.

The organization also wasn’t shy about working to defeat Republicans in primary elections who crossed its priorities.

As a result, despite tragic and horrific school shootings, like the mass shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., six years ago this month, gun-control measures remain bottled up in Congress. The inability of Congress to protect American citizens through bipartisan legislation at the federal level has resulted in a patchwork of gun regulations across the country, with so many loopholes that states’ stricter laws are rendered largely meaningless as people and guns cross state lines.

In October 2017, following the massacre in Las Vegas, there was a brief moment of bipartisan reconciliation as people became familiar with the accessibility of bump stocks, which allow a semiautomatic weapon to become akin to a fully automatic killing machine, producing the carnage that occurred on the Strip.

And yet even with the support of President Trump, the ban on bump stocks was delayed for almost 15 months, due to the intransigence of some lawmakers and the persistent lobbying of the NRA. Depending on where one stands on this issue, the ban indicates either Trump’s lack of appreciation of the hold the NRA has on his party or the faintest glimmer of moral courage (or at least an ability to read the polls).

Russia’s infiltration of the NRA represents an ingenious maneuver to sow greater disunity among U.S. voters. It’s also instructive to Americans about the danger of the NRA. The group exacerbates fault lines in the ongoing culture wars, even though Americans have far more in common on gun laws than the NRA would like them to believe. The power wielded by the organization distinguishes it as a special interest that contorts democracy, making it the perfect tool for Russia.

Russia understands that the NRA’s ability to polarize Americans are part of a self-destructive tendency within American political debates. The Parkland shooting in Florida earlier this year and the March for Our Lives movement that followed quickly turned into a partisan brawl during this midterm election year.

While checks and balances protect U.S. democracy, there are only limited checks on accessibility to guns. The proliferation of mass shootings and increasing gun violence — just-released Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data revealsthat more people died from guns last year than in any other year since at least 1968 — exposes how the greatest threat to American peace and prosperity is sometimes divisions among Americans themselves. The Russians understand that. It’s past time Americans understand it, as well.

Laura Ellyn Smith teaches at Oxford University while undertaking a second doctorate in U.S. history. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at Richmond the American International University.follow on X @OvalOfferings

an 6 24 raw

Supreme Court on Friday ruled in an 8-1 vote that the government had the right to restrict access to firearms for alleged domestic abusers.

However, there was one notable dissent in the ruling: Justice Clarence Thomas.

As flagged by Slate's Mark Joseph Stern, Thomas argued that all regulations of firearms should be deemed in violation of the Second Amendment "unless it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

Thomas then claimed that there is "not a single historical regulation" that "justifes the statute at issue."

Commenting on this, Stern said that Thomas seemed to be arguing that restricting abusers' access to firearms was off-limits because "wife-beating was not generally a crime" at the time of the country's founding in the 18th Century.

Stern was not the only observer to express shock at the logic behind Thomas' ruling.

"And Thomas’s dissent is utterly ridiculous and disingenuous," argued former tennis starMartina Navratilova. He is a disgrace to our highest court. Anita Hill should have been believed!!!"

"Clarence Thomas is the only Supreme Court justice who wants to arm domestic abusers," wrote former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob. "He’s a pox on our society."

Matt Fuller, the cofounder of the centrist think tank Third Way, also had a horrified reaction to the Thomas dissent.

"Three reactions: 1) I can't believe this was even a question 2) Thank God 3) Clarence Thomas is a corrupt lunatic," he wrote.

Fred Guttenberg, a gun safety advocate whose daughter was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, said that Thomas' dissent "is only further proof that he is simply a threat to America."

NOTUS Reports' Matt Fuller, meanwhile, simply posted a description of the brutal assault that respondent Zackey Rahimi allegedly gave to his girlfriend and commented, "Clarence Thomas thinks this person should be allowed to have a gun."

NOTE SELF DEFENSE OF HIGH HEELS?

mma 5 24

May 22, 2024, edition of Newsmax's *Eric Bolling: The Balance

ERIC BOLLING: I have to bring some of these things up. You're so right about all these things. License to kill - now, mind you, Mar-a-Lago is a secure location. It has U.S. Secret Service all over the place all the time. Those documents weren't gonna get stolen or mutilated during a raid.

License to shoot and kill — there were innocent people standing around Mar-a-Lago. People staying there, friends, guests. What happens if Donald Trump is there and sees someone — an FBI agent roughing up Barron Trump or Melania Trump in their — in her closet, which we know they went through, and decides to push back? Is there gonna be a gunfight at Mar-a-Lago because the FBI and the Secret Service are going to get into it? I'd also like to point out that picture we showed a couple of times with the classified documents that FBI gave us was fake, staged. Those aren't the documents they found. The documents they found that were classified, didn't have those markings on it.

That is a picture the FBI put together to make it look worse than it was. I can't even begin to tell you how angry I am at what's going on because they can do — Stephen, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was put in place for this and they're showing us that they are a tyrannical government that we need to be armed to protect ourselves from. Am I wrong?

Media Matters' Matt Gertz previously discussed the MAGA claims regarding FBI guidelines on use of force at Mar-a-Lago:

Over a handful of hours on Tuesday, the right’s conspiracy theory ecosystem concocted a sinister plot by President Joe Biden to assassinate his predecessor out of the banal fact that FBI agents received standard instructions on the use of force before conducting a court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022.

Hundreds of pages of filings were unsealed on Tuesday in Trump’s classified documents case, revealing that the former president — who is charged with 40 federal criminal counts related to his alleged willful retention of documents after leaving the White House — had multiple documents marked “classified” in his bedroom that were discovered months after the 2022 search.

Credible outlets reviewed the documents and produced a wave of news stories detailing what a judge described as “strong evidence” of Trump’s allegedly criminal acts. Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA media supporters ginned up a counternarrative based on a credulous reading of a deceptive argument from Trump’s lawyers that was included in the unsealed documents.

A Fox News reporter has since noted that the same “standard” use of force policy was in place when FBI agents visited the home of President Joe Biden.

Regarding Bolling's claim that the photo at Mar-a-Lago was staged, The New York Times reported in 2022:

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump took to his social media site to say that “the F.B.I., during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending that it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see.”

But the genesis of the photograph appears to be in keeping with standard protocols for how federal agents handle evidence they come across in a search.

The folders were arrayed by agents at Mar-a-Lago after being removed from what the filing indicated was Mr. Trump’s office — they were not discovered scattered on the floor, according to two federal law enforcement officials.

The Justice Department would not comment on the specifics of the photograph. But it is standard practice for the F.B.I. to take evidentiary pictures of materials recovered in a search to ensure that items are properly cataloged and accounted for.

AGREES W ALL BS

stepHen miller lawless regime that’s in power

host go after joe sixpACK...

===

propulsion kid at earth day kirk fan 2a ~ gubmint (taxes)

mma 5 24

right-wing media figures have spent the last year hyping the potential for mass political violence and baselessly asserting the 2024 election will be stolen. In a new interview with Time magazine, former President Donald Trump appeared to give fuel to both of those trends.

In the interview, Trump refused to condemn or discourage any future violent actions by his supporters if he loses the general election in November. When asked by Time whether he was concerned about political violence following the election, Trump responded: “I think we're gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence.” Time later followed up, asking, “What if you don’t win, sir?”

“Well, I do think we're gonna win,” Trump responded, adding, “I don't think they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible.”

“And if we don't win, you know, it depends,” he said. “It always depends on the fairness of an election. I don't believe they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time. I don't think they'll be able to get away with it.”

Trump has long pushed election denialism and is currently facing charges for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including attempting to prevent certification of the results during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He has also been open in his embrace of street vigilantism, famously instructing far-right extremist gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” following large-scale anti-racist demonstrations in the summer of 2020.

Beyond Trump’s own comments, consumers of right-wing media have been fed a steady diet of commentary that normalizes political violence, making it appear inevitable. In one particularly clear example from March, BlazeTV’s Steve Deace said, “I think there will be violence after the election regardless of the outcome,” and wished that “Trump had acted the way we wanted him to in the summer of 2020” by cracking down harder on the left-wing protests, predicting that it “would have rallied people that were either on the fence and sick of all that crap or inspired his own base all the more.”

These right-wing fantasies about large-scale violence often take the form of claiming the United States is headed toward another civil war as a result of left-wing provocation.

Last August, on the same evening that Trump surrendered to authorities in Georgia on charges he’d acted to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin appeared on Newsmax.

“I think those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice and I want to ask them, ‘What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war?’ because that's what's going to happen,” Palin said. “We're not going to keep putting up with this."

Palin agreed with the host that “we need to get angry,” adding, “We do need to rise up and take our country back.”

The same month, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was asked a question about whether right-wing activists should form militias, and responded by warning that “the bad guys are trying to provoke us into a civil war.” He then advised the audience that “you need to have systems and backup plans of self-sovereignty [if], God forbid, our entire society falls apart and/or our government becomes even more tyrannical and authoritarian,” concluding, “That's why we have the Second Amendment."

Trump and right-wing media are in a feedback loop, each feeding the other's fantasies about impending political violence and rigged elections.

In October, Daily Wire host Micheal Knowles argued that a judge’s decision to allow a challenge to Trump’s candidacy based on the 14th Amendment meant that “we are dangerously close to the conditions that we were at in 1860."

“And I'm not one of these catastrophists who says that we're always going to be on the brink of civil war, and we're all gonna — I'm certainly not encouraging civil war by any means,” Knowles said. “But it could happen. … Civil wars happen. And the liberals would appear to be cultivating the conditions to make it much more likely."

January saw right-wing media figures turn the civil war rhetoric on overdrive after the Supreme Court allowed the Biden administration to remove razor wire Texas state authorities had placed along the U.S.-Mexico border.

On his January 23 show, Kirk said that if Texas ignored the ruling, “some people would say, ‘Well, that's the seeds of a civil war,’” adding, “By the way, I'm all on board."

In the same episode, Kirk told his audience: “Native-born Americans, you better buy weapons, everybody. Have a lot of guns at your disposal. I would never leave your home without a weapon. It's the new country we live in. It is Mad Max. Biden is creating Mad Max. You're on your own."

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh argued that “the solution is obvious, which is that red state governors will need to ignore the Supreme Court,” warning ominously that “the last civil war was unimaginable until it wasn't. That was a lesson this country learned in the middle of the 19th century. And if the Biden administration is somehow still in office after this next election, then just as abruptly, we might have to learn it again.”

Walsh’s then-colleague Candace Owens similarly claimed, “We are edging very closely to a civil war."

Even when right-wing figures aren’t normalizing civil war rhetoric or rationalizing mass violence, they extoll the virtues of breaking the law on behalf of the MAGA movement.

In March, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told attendees at a right-wing activists conference, “You have to be prepared to go to prison” in order “to take on the deep state.” Just days later, Kirk defended a Turning Point USA activist charged in the January 6 Capitol riot, calling the case “typical Soviet-style indictment BS” and promising, “I'm gonna keep on standing behind her.”

“These are modern day hostages that are being held by this regime,” he added.

In the Time interview, Trump said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning the more than 800 people who have been sentenced for their role in January 6, who he has also referred to as “hostages,” “political prisoners,” and “patriots.” (Earlier this month, a group of Proud Boys appeared outside a Trump rally in North Carolina, with one member holding a sign demanding the release of January 6 prisoners.)

Another key aspect of Trump’s Time interview is his false insistence that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and that the only way he could lose in November is also rigged against him.

Here again Trump has myriad allies in right-wing media. In January, Fox News was already casting doubt on the 2024 election, with host Laura Ingraham baseless claiming, “The Democrats are going to stop at nothing” to win, including trying “to game the system or yeah, maybe even cheat.”

Bannon frequently makes the same accusations. Just in the last few months, he’s said that Democrats need “phony fake voters” to win and claimed, “The only way they defeat Trump is they steal it.” In March, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appeared on Bannon’s podcast and declared, “We know they are publicly trying to steal this election again.”

For his part, Kirk recently hosted an entire conference devoted to election denialism with the expressed purpose of “competing right up against” the Republican National Committee, which was holding a winter meeting in the hotel next door.

All of these comments together create a media environment where consumers of conservative news are prepared to reject the outcome of the November election if Trump loses. Those same audiences have been primed to expect — or potentially engage in — right-wing vigilantism following a Biden victory.

Last July, a poll from The Associated Press found that “only 22% of Republicans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming presidential election will be counted accurately compared to 71% of Democrats, underscoring a partisan divide fueled by a relentless campaign of lies related to the 2020 presidential election.” Separately, a March poll from PBS found that “28% of Republicans strongly agree or agree that Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track.” (That number was 12% for Democratic voters.)

Trump and right-wing media are in a feedback loop, each feeding the other's fantasies about impending political violence and rigged elections. The Time interview makes clear that Trump will continue to pour fuel on this fire.

kirk said some dead kids prudent worth price of 2a?

boebert on kirk. on dave rubin arm teachers

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ana animates violence

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rww January 29, 2024

Trump campaign troll Brenden Dilley is not happy with the Family Research Council’s David Closson for criticizing the cultish “So God Made Trump” video produced by Dilley’s “meme team.”: “You’re just bloviating about how you’re an expert on God and the Bible, but what you really are is a gigantic cunt.”
Paula White, former President Donald Trump’s faith adviser, on the other hand, seems to be a big fan of the video.
Ben Zeisloft claims that “the Second Amendment is a Christian proposition”: “The right to protect your life from evildoers flows directly from the inalienable right to life you have from your Creator.”
Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers that the radical legislation he has introduced to abolish abortion, pornography, and no-fault divorce is unlikely even to get a hearing in the legislature.
Finally, self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman says that “Jesus wasn’t some little limp-wristed, weak-kneed little guy that walked around.” How does Kunneman know this? “I’ve seen Jesus. He’s a man’s man!”

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an 8 23

Firearms are leading cause of death in Tennessee kids: report

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rww 8 23

right-wing commentator Anna Perez reacted to the latest indictment of former President Donald Trump—this time for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—by calling for an armed uprising and revolution.

Perez is a far-right commentator with a penchant for spreading QAnon and other conspiracy theories who hosts a program called “WrongThink,” which airs on the MAGA streaming network Live From America TVand provides her with a platform from which to promote her own bigotry and nonsensical outrage.

She was being Wednesday night by Elijah Schaffer, an equally bigoted broadcaster who used to host a program on The Blaze network until he was fired for reportedly drunkenly groping a female colleague, about Trump’s latest indictment, which Schaffer proclaimed to be “tyranny.”

Perez agreed and suggested that the proper response is to take up arms.

“Here’s the reality,” Perez said. “The [America] Revolution was an insurrection. What else would it be?What happened is people stood up against the tyrants that were basically controlling their every move.… They were living under absolute tyranny, and what did they decide to do? They decided to take up arms against the government. They formed militias in their communities, and they took up arms against the most powerful military in the world.”

“Are we not living under very similar circumstances here in America?” she asked. “Does this not call for the same, if not a similar response, to that situation? Why else would we have a Second Amendment? They specifically put the Second Amendment in there because we didn’t ever want to have to come to this point, to be quite honest.”

“I’m not calling for violence,” Perez unconvincingly insisted while simultaneously declaring that the American people must “realize that there is a Second Amendment for a reason.”

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gun debate so

https://www.alternet.org/you-cant-be-serious-newsom/

no lnx

'You can’t be serious': Gavin Newsom mocks Mississippi GOP gov for challenging him to a gun 'debate'

Brandon Gage June 08, 2023

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday unveiled his proposal for a constitutional amendment to address gun violence.

"I'm proposing the 28th Amendmentto the United States Constitution to help end our nation's gun violence crisis," Newsom posted on Twitter along with a video address. "The American people are sick of Congress' inaction. The 28th will enshrine 4 widely supported gun safety freedoms -- while leaving the 2nd Amendment intact: 1) Raising the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 2) Universal background checks 3) A reasonable waiting period for gun purchases 4) Banning the civilian purchase of assault weapons."

Newsom said in the two-minute spot:

Every time it's the same. They tell us we can't stop these massacres. They tell us we have to stand by and watch tragedy after tragedy unfold in our communities. They say we can't stop domestic terrorism without violating the Second Amendment, and thoughts and prayers are the best we can do. I'm here to say that's a lie in this country. We do have the power, the power to change things, to reclaim our freedom from fear. Her ability to make a more perfect union is literally written into the Constitution. So today I'm proposing the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to do just that.

The 28th Amendment permanently enshrines four additions to the laws of our land. It raises the minimum age to purchase a firearm from eighteen to twenty-one because we can't buy a beer. You shouldn't be able to buy a gun.

It mandates universal background checks to prevent truly dangerous people from purchasing a gun that can be used in a crime, and institutes reasonable waiting periods for all gun purchases, and it bans civilians from buying assault rifles, those weapons of war our Founding Fathers never foresaw. This will guarantee states as well the ability to enact common sense gun safety laws while leaving the Second Amendment intact and respecting America's gun-owning tradition.

The 28th locks in the common sense constitutional protections that Democrats, Republicans, independents, and gun owners overwhelmingly support. And it ensures NRA-owned politicians can never strip those protections away.

This fight won't be easy, and it certainly won't be fast. Convening a constitutional convention requires two-thirds of the states to call for this. California will be the first, but that's just the beginning. Join us by going to campaign for democracy.com and signing the petition to protect our communities and protect our freedom. Support the 28th.

READ MORE: 'Humiliated': Mississippi girl 'forced to miss their graduation' after judge’s anti-trans decision

A few hours later, and although not mentioned personally, Republican Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves challenged Newsom to an exchange of ideas.According to the Violence Policy Center, Mississippi boasts the highest rate of gun deaths per capita of any state.

"Gov. Newsom, I am willing to debate you on this in Mississippi any time. So on your next trip to our state to campaign for my opponent, give me a call," Reeves tweeted on Thursday afternoon.

Newsom fired right back.

"Can't wait for you to defend the fact that Mississippi has the highest gun violence death rate in the nation…. (377% higher than California’s, by the way)," Newsom wrote. "You can't be serious."

READ MORE: Mississippi Gov. slammed for re-election bid launch of 'cosplaying' clip of him 'shooting' people of color

Watch Newsom's announcement below or at this link.

READ MORE: Ex-US attorney explains why this NFL star is a critical piece in the Mississippi welfare investigation

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https://www.alternet.org/jericho-march-extremists-illustrate-threat/

an 5 23

no lnx

as Donald Trump plots a return to the White House in 2025, his past courtship of militant far-right groups — some of whom led the mob that overran the U.S. Capitol — highlights an ongoing threat of political violence in the United States.

Trump has continued to signal to violent extremists since Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021. In February, the former president amplified a user on the Truth Social platform who pledged that his supporters will “physically fight for him” to win the Republican nomination while warning that “we Are Locked and LOADED.”

Jacob Glick, a former investigative counsel for the January 6th Committee, told Raw Story it’s largely beside the point whether Trump directly or indirectly coordinated with the militant groups that attacked the Capitol — including, most prominently, leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who have been convicted of seditious conspiracy.

“The scheme is in plain sight,” said Glick, who now serves as policy counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center. “The fact is that both Trump’s authoritarianism and the fascistic bloodlust of the militant groups who aligned with him were out in the open. They each saw each other without necessarily communicating directly. That doesn’t make it any less dangerous. That’s how this anti-democratic dynamic has operated throughout history.”

A patch on a tactical vest worn by a Trump supporter at the Jericho March rally reads: "Water boarding is how we baptize the terrorists." Jordan Green/Raw Story

Glick pointed to one particular strand of the Jan. 6 story as exemplifying Trump’s proximity to the militant groups.

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Robert M. Weaver, then employed in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, co-organized the Jericho March — a series of quasi-religious gatherings attended by a loose coalition of Trump supporters who staged weekly rallies in state capitols that culminated with a major demonstration in Washington, D.C., in December 2020.

The Jericho March helped set the stage for what transpired less than a month later on Jan. 6, 2021.

Texts obtained by the January 6th Committee show that Weaver communicated extensively with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, a featured speaker at the rally, and also received confirmation of Trump’s approval through an undisclosed contact within the Trump camp.

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“What the messages show is a really egregious instance of a pro-Trump political operative serving in the administration at the time who was extremely active in Stop the Steal — welcoming the help of armed extremists and didn’t reject it,” Glick told Raw Story.

A representative for the Trump campaign could not be reached for comment.

Weaver’s collaboration with Rhodes — now among six Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy — represents a “mainstreaming and normalization of political violence” seen in multiple instances of crossover between political operatives and militants in the runup to Jan. 6, Glick said, adding, “The Jericho March was 1,000 percent in that category.”

‘Let his church roar’

Weaver presented an unlikely candidate to lead the Christian nationalist wing of the election denial movement. It’s a movement that materialized quickly, one bent on keeping Trump in power after 2020 election returns showed the former president losing the electoral vote to Democrat Joe Biden.

A member of the Quapaw Tribe in Oklahoma with a business background in healthcare and employee benefits, Trump had made Weaver part of his administration. Then-President Trump first tapped Weaver to lead the Indian Health Service in 2017. But Weaver withdrew following a report by the Wall Street Journal that indicated his resume inaccurately stated his qualifications.

Despite being denied the leadership post, which required Senate confirmation, Weaver in July 2020 joined U.S. Department of Health and Human Services staff as anadviser to the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

While other political operatives such as Ali Alexander, Amy Kremer, Felisa Blazek and Tomi Collins began organizing weekly rallies to sow doubt about the result of the 2020 election, Weaver launched a similar effort tomobilize Christians and a smaller subset of conservative Jews behind Trump. Weaver teamed up with Arina Grossu, a former Family Research Council spokesperson who was also working at Health and Human Services at the time, to lead what they called the Jericho March.

A self-described “holy roller, speaking-in-tongues” Pentecostal Christian, Weaver recalled during a Dec. 9, 2020, interview with Christian radio host Eric Metaxas that two days after the election he cried out to God in prayer, and then heard a voice telling him: “It’s not over.”

Weaver told Metaxas: “And the vision was of people all over the crowd, shofars blowing. I saw Catholics. I saw evangelical Christians. Charismatic Christians. I saw all kinds of nuns. I saw Jewish rabbis. I saw people praying. The church was united. And I knew that we were supposed to march on the 12th, that God was showing us that. And I knew we were also supposed to go to the contested states, and do the same thing. And it wasn’t just one time. God said to do it every day at noon, so we’ve been doing it since.”

]A man holding a pro-Second Amendment flag raises his hand during a praise song at the Jericho March in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 12, 2020. Jordan Green/Raw Story

As described by Weaver and others, the Jericho March was inspired by the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, in which Joshua, the successor to Moses, leads an army of Israelites who conquer the ancient city of Jericho by marching around it seven times while blowing horns, with the walls crumbling at the seventh pass.

“God had told me that this was about unity,” Weaver said. “He told me to let his church roar.”

On the same day he described his vision to Metaxas, Rhodes added Weaver to the “Dec. 12 DC Security/Leadership” Signal chat, according to the communications which Weaver turned over to the January 6th Committee.

In a separate text obtained by the January 6th Committee, Weaver introduced Rhodes to Stephen Brown, whom the organizers hired to handle logistics for the event, writing: “Steve meet Stewart with Oathkeepers security. Please get with him to work on extra security.” Not only did the Oath Keepers provide additional security for the rally, but Rhodes spoke from the stage during the event.

Responding to news on the eve of the rally that the Supreme Court would refuse to hear a challenge filed by the Texas attorney general, Rhodes launched into a rant in the “Dec. 12 DC Security/Leadership” chat labeling the justices as “compromised or deep state traitors” and calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

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“We are at war,” Rhodes wrote. “At war with China and all its American proxies, who are the domestic traitors and insurrectionists. Trump needs to be a wartime president and wage war on our enemies. That is all he has left. If he doesn’t do that, then we will have to fight against an illegitimate Biden regime and all of the deep state with him. It will be a bloody and desperate fight.”

Rhodes' comments on theSignal chat previewed his remarks when he took the stage the next day.

“He had these grand visions of being a paramilitary leader,” Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, told the January 6th Committee during a public hearing last July. “And the Insurrection Act would have given him a path forward with that. The fact that the president was communicating, whether directly or indirectly messaging that gave him the nod. All I can do is thank the gods that things did not go any worse that day.”

Trump ‘encouraged by’ Jericho marches

While Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder, was emboldened by Trump’s flirtation with the Insurrection Act in 2020, the Jericho March organizers were able to cite the president’s approval to galvanize supporters. Trump’s benediction was passed down to Weaver through a contact at the White House, his co-organizer told the January 6th Committee.

:{:{}:

In a Nov. 10, 2020 Jericho March newsletter obtained by the committee, Arina Grossu wrote: “President Trump is also aware of the Jericho Marches and is encouraged by them.”

One of the staff members asked Grossu how she knew that Trump was aware of the marches.

“So that is a question for Rob,” she responded. “I don’t have — I was not in those conversations or in any of those — I did not have that kind of connection.”

Grossu also told the committee thatin the days leading up to the Dec. 12 rally, “there was talk that maybe he would fly over,” and indeed Trump did signal his approval to the rally by flying over in Marine One that day.

President Trump flies over the Jericho March in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 12, 2020. Jordan Green/Raw Story

Again, Grossu said her information came from Weaver.

“Rob would probably know more about details of that,” she said. Grossu said she did not know the identity of Weaver’s point of contact at the White House.

The committee did not depose Weaver, although he did provide documents. Reached by phone by Raw Story last week, Weaver abruptly hung up.

The Dec. 12, 2020, Jericho March event in Washington, D.C. was a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the insurrection,in Glick’s view.

Two days later, the duly appointed electors would meet to cast electoral votes on behalf of their respective states. And in the early morning hours of Dec. 19, following a late-night meeting at the White House at which Trump’s allies urged him to call out the National Guard to seize voting machinery, Trump would summon his supporters to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 with his infamous “be there, will be wild” tweet.

:{:{}:

“It’s all of the January 6th story compressed into one disturbing arc,” Glick said. “December 12th was such an important day in terms of proving that model of political-militant coordination can work. They were able to replicate it on January 6th.

“December 12th was also important because Trump flew over the rally,” he continued. “That night D.C. descends into violence. He sends out his tweet a week later. We see Trump witnessing firsthand the violent potential of the Stop the Steal movement on the ground in D.C. Then, a few days later, when his paths to victory are all but closed off, he calls out his supporters again.”

“Be there, will be wild” was only the culmination of Trump’s courtship of militant groups, Glick said.

“The dynamics are crystal clear in the January 6th Committee report, in the DOJ prosecutions and in public reports,” Glick said. “Trump leaned into the potentially violent power of his base, while he was simultaneously orchestrating multiple illegal schemes to undermine the election. His extreme base followed those cues. They engaged in a call and response that stretched back for months and years before January 6th.”

Trump cultivated militant far-right groups throughout the 2020 campaign.

The former president kicked off his last re-election campaign with a speech in Orlando, Fla. in June 2019 in which he complained that “our patriotic movement has been under assault from the very first day” as members of the Proud Boys street gang prowled the streets outside the venue chanting, “Pinochet did nothing wrong” in homage to the late Chilean dictator known for extrajudicial execution of political opponents.

Days before a January 2020 Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va. that attracted militia members, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists, Trump tweeted: “Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attackin the Great Commonwealth of Virginia.” As protests against COVID restrictions took shape across the country — including one in which men in tactical gear carried assault rifles into the Michigan state capitol — a couple months later, Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” and, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege.”

During his first debate with Joe Biden in September 2020, Trump infamously instructed the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” And in the closing days of the campaign, he minimized a plot by Three Percenters to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,telling supporters at a rally in Lansing that “people are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t.”

‘2024 is the final battle’

The same contours of desperation that drove Trump’s 2020 campaign are in place again for his 2024 bid.

While Trump is the early favorite to again win the Republican presidential nomination, significant trouble looms for him. The multiple criminal investigations against Trump may only increase the incentive for him to inflame his supporters with appeals to base fears. He will also face a 2024 Republican primary featuring several legitimate, conservative candidates intent on ending Trump’s political career for good.

Recalling that the Trump campaign sought to link civil unrest that erupted during his administration to Biden, Kristofer Goldsmith — a military veteran who leads the anti-sedition group Task Force Butler — predicted that Trump will encourage rioting during the 2024 election in order to inflict political damage on his Democratic opponent.

“Any opportunity he has to inspire a riot, especially in American cities — what are traditionally considered Democrat-controlled areas — he has every incentive to inspire riots, and there are tons of neo-Nazis around the country who are desperate for that kind of permission structure,” Goldsmith said.

While militant leaders such as Rhodes looked to Trump for approval to carry out acts of violence, Trump signaled to extremists at key moments during the 2020 campaign when he needed to energize his base by invoking fears about federal investigations, gun control, urban crime, and pandemic restrictions.

Goldsmith said Trump shows every sign of similarly exploiting anti-LGBTQ hate as the 2024 campaign unfolds.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Trump-backing Jan. 6 ‘marshals’ ditched their pink vests and staged an insurrection

“The way that the last two years have gone with the radicalization of the Republican Party and the adoption of legislation specifically targeting, taking away the rights of, and imposing restrictions on the LGBTQ community, I expect Trump to use that,” Goldsmith told Raw Story. “I expect Trump to use the LGBTQ community as a punching bag to further radicalize the Republican Party — to give permission to elements of the far right that have a desire to go out and use violence.”

:{:{}:

During a campaign rally in New Hampshire last month, Trump demonstrated how his rhetoric has evolved since he left the White House in January 2021. Specifically, he used anti-LGBTQ language and apocalyptic political imagery to excite his supporters.

“Does anybody really believe what’s going on in this country?” Trump asked. “I will sign a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states. And this is what we must do to save our country from destruction. 2024 is the final battle. If we don’t take it over, we’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Far from condemning those who committed violence on his behalf, Trump has offered symbolic support.

The former president glorified the rioters who attacked the Capitol by playing a recording of Jan. 6 defendants housed at the D.C. jail singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” during a recent rally in Waco, Texas. And last week, during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire, Trump said he was inclined to pardon many of those who face criminal charges in the attack. That signaling gives a green light to future violence, Goldsmith said.

“He wants to assure his fascist troops and out-and-out neo-Nazis that he will go to bat for them if they commit violence on his behalf,” Goldsmith said.

Again, as in 2020, Trump is refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of any outcome in the 2024 election that does not make him the victor, while claiming that America’s very nationhood is at stake.

“I’m just telling you,” he said during his campaign rally in New Hampshire last month, “if we allow them to cheat, because that’s the only way they’re going to win the election — if we allow them to cheat again, you’re not going to have a country.”

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ca is officially a devil term/ verb 2nd amend isgod term:expects to end/win argument

recall req sacrifice thus sacred; empir # do not matter ca 44th tx 26th gun deaths

no lnx twit vid

'So we’re legislating nothing': Texas Democrat stumps GOP sponsor of anti-'tyrannical government' bill

Brandon Gage

May 07, 2023

Texas State Representative Jarvis Johnson [AA] (D-Houston) stumped State Representative Carrie Isaac (R-Dripping Springs) during last Thursday's debate over a proposal that Isaac sponsored to supposedly shield Texans from California's "tyrannical government."

Chron explained on Friday that "House Bill 3137 stops a municipality from instituting regulations surrounding the transfer, possession, wearing, carrying, ownership, storage, transportation, licensing, or registration of firearms, air guns, knives, ammunition, or firearm-related gun supplies or accessories. At the same time, the bill prohibits local governments from requiring gun owners to get liability insurance for damages resulting from negligent or willful acts involving firearms."

The outlet also noted that "according to a February report by Reuters, the San Jose bill passed in January 2022 with an ordinance requiring gun owners to obtain liability insurance to cover negligence or accidents from using firearms. The San Jose bill also requires gun owners to pay a yearly fee to gun violence prevention organizations the city manager picks. Due to pending litigation, the bill hasn't been enforced in the city yet."

READ MORE: 'Now it’s God’s fault': Texas Republican slammed for claiming 'the almighty' controls shootings

Bit by bit, Johnson poked holes in Isaac's assertions.

"What does your bill specifically do?" Johnson asked Isaac.

"It will not allow municipalities to require insurance on firearms," Isaac replied.

"So otherwise, other words, does your bill prohibit mayors, city councils, and county commissioners from legally governing themselves when it comes to guns?" Johnson wondered.

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene blames Texas mall shooting on 'mental illness' and 'evil forces'

"They do not have this right," Isaac declared.

"They don't have the right to do what?" Johnson followed up.

"To infringe upon our second amendment," Isaac said.

"Who — you mean again, cities, mayors," Johnson clarified.

"Correct," Isaac confirmed.

"Do mayors, city councils, and county commissioners have a right to pass laws that protect the citizens of their community?" Johnson posited.

"As long as it doesn't infringe on our constitutional rights," Isaac responded as her comrades began surrounding her.

"The constitutional right to do what?" Johnson pressed.

"To protect ourselves with our Second Amendment," Isaac proclaimed.

"From what?" Johnson continued.

"From a tyrannical government," Isaac reiterated.

"A tyrannical government. Which government currently is being tyrannical?" Johnson asked.

"Say that again, I'm sorry," Isaac requested.

"Which government is currently being tyrannical?" Johnson repeated.

Isaac struggled to provide a coherent answer.

"Yeah. It would prevent any tyrannical gun, any tyrannical," she said amid whispers from her colleagues.

"Is there a municipality currently that this law is in place?" Johnson asked.

:{:{}:

"That's not what this is about," a male voice grumbles.

:{:{}:

"Yes, actually there is," Isaac stated.

:{:{}:

"Where?" asked Johnson.

:{:{}:

"San Jose, California," Isaac said.

"Oh, I, I didn't know we were California. I'm asking in Texas..." Johnson quipped.

"I'm sorry, say that again," Isaac requested again.

:{:{}:

"Is there a city in Texas?" Johnson asked more forcefully.

:{:{}:

At this point, Isaac was being fed answers.

"Answer every question. Keep saying what you want us say," Isaac was told.

"Um, no, there is not, and that's the, and this still will prevent that from happening here in Texas," Isaac insisted.

"So then that means we're legislating nothing?" Johnson pointed out.

"We're preventing it from happening here in Texas," Isaac shot back.

"So it hasn't happened yet," Johnson said.

"That's correct," Isaac agreed.

"So, again, we're legislating nothing," Johnson added.

"Don't California my Texas," Isaac snapped.

"Are we legislating nothing?" Johnson asked one last time, albeit in vain. "So we're legislating nothing."

Watch below or at this link.

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an 5 23 no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/kari-lake-2659985749/

former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake recently took aim at Fox News live on-air describing the news outlet as a “globalist network.”

The far-right political figure's remarks came during her recent appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" on Monday, May 8.

During the segment, the two discussed gun control and Morgan mentioned a Fox News poll released back in April. The poll suggested that American voters actually support the idea of stricter laws on gun control.

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READ MORE: Kari Lake goes off the deep end in latest rant about the Arizona gubernatorial election being stolen from her

:{:{}:

"Something has to be done. We can agree on this, right? A Fox News poll revealed that 87 percent of Americans back stricter background checks. 81 percent agreed the legal age to buy a gun should be raised to 21," Morgan explained.

:{:{}:

He continued, "80 percent agreed that anyone who buys a gun should go for a mental health assessment. 80 percent want police to take guns from people consider the dangers for themselves. 77 percent want a 30-day waiting up period. All gun purchases."

:{:{}:

"Okay, that doesn't surprise me because Fox News is a globalist network pushing a globalist agenda and the globalists want to make sure Fox News is watched," Lake said.

Morgan added, “Fox News is watched by a lot of gun owners."

READ MORE: Watch: Kari Lake threatens to cancel the Super Bowl if the NFL objects to her immigration policies

However, Lake doubled down saying, “Fox News is a globalist network run by globalists who want to bring down our constitution and take away our Second Amendment."

Morgan made a move to challenge Lake's claim saying, “I don’t think Fox News is a globalist network. It’s the biggest conservative network in the country."

“They fired Tucker Carlson,” Lake said.

Morgan argued that most of the network's viewers likely have pro-gun beliefs.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Do you need a timeout?' Journalist tells Kari Lake to 'grow up' after she calls Arizona a 'banana republic'

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---

xmas card w assault weapons common?!

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.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-celebrate-expulsion-tennessee-lawmakers-and-liken-it-january-6

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tucker indict not time to give up AR15

fla say gay

https://www.alternet.org/usa-now-majority-permitless-carry/

---

big protests post nashville, he has to spox?

https://www.alternet.org/its-worth-it-charlie-kirk/ for 2a

---

an 3 23

sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday she is "heartbroken" over the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people, although the lawmaker's campaign received $1.3 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA).

On Wednesday Blackburn tweeted, "My heart is broken over the unspeakable evil that occurred Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville, and my family and I are grieving along with those who lost loved ones. Now is a time for our community to come together in prayer and lift one another up."

Following the Monday shooting, the senator tweeted, "Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. My office is in contact with federal, state, & local officials, & we stand ready to assist. Thank you to the first responders working on site. Please join us in prayer for those affected."

According to Politico, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Blackburn's tweet, saying, "You received $1,306,130 in donations from the NRA. You voted against the most recent bipartisan gun package in June. If you're so 'ready to assist' -- start by doing your job and passing commonsense gun laws that will help prevent tragedies like the one today."

Politico also reports:

Blackburn voted against the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, stating that the gun control bill 'would erode Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.' The measure provides grants for states to implement so-called red flag laws, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed threats to themselves or others, as well as other crisis intervention programs.

Twitter users found the NRA-funded senator's heartbreak hard to believe....egs

---

violence implicit?

mma 3 23

ERIC BOLLING (HOST): Here they go again, Ted. Obama tried to do it. Biden's trying to do it, go around Congress and take a God-given right away from us. Your thoughts.

TED NUGENT (GUEST): Well, the entire US government right now, it seems, only the guilty need to feel guilty, which would be about 99 percent are liars - psychotic, maniac, evil, tyrannical, oath-violating liars. Let me get this straight - if I'm keeping and bearing arms, then I'm legal based on, not just the self-evident truth of a God-given right, but those that are attempting to infringe on it, those are the bad guys. So let's say, I'm working with some of my friends at the ATF -- I think there's three good ones there -- and maybe some of the FBI -- I don't know if there's any good ones there anymore -- let's say they try to infringe on me. Let's say they try to tell me to pursue an immoral, illegal law in the United States of America and register my guns and get a permit for my First Amendment, or maybe a permit for my Second Amendment. If they give me that decree, I'm arresting them. They're infringing. He's infringing. Somebody arrest the president. He's the one violating the Constitution. Eric, who the hell doesn't know this?

BOLLING: You know, Ted -- you know, meanwhile, they want to take our guns away, as you point out, which isprotection against a tyrannical government.That's what it was put in place for, noteworthy on Ides of March when, you know, Caesar was shot by Brutus and others because it was tyranny.

---

https://www.alternet.org/menacing-wickedness-marjorie-taylor-greene/

no lnx twt

:{:{on June 22nd, 2021, then-freshman United States Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) filed House Resolution 3960 to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, alleging that the agency was in cahoots with President Joe Biden to strip American citizens of their right to bear arms.}:

"The ATF's ongoing, unconstutional [sic] attacks on the Second Amendment must end," Greene's office stated of the Brian A. Terry Memorial Eliminate the ATF Act, which went nowhere because Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. The typo still appears on Greene's website.

Like most right-wing lawmakers, Greene is steadfastly opposed to any form of sensible gun control, even as thousands of Americans are killed by bullets every year. But Monday's mass shooting at the private Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee that claimed the lives of at least six people marked an escalation in Greene's rhetoric and actions aimed at thwarting efforts to save lives.}:

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene garners few sympathizers after claiming she was 'attacked' in a restaurant

:{:{At around the same time that Greene baselessly blamed Biden for the slaughter, Greene and other members of their state's Capitol Hill delegation were obstructing a routine ATF inspection of a weapons retailer in Smyrna, Georgia.}:

Footage of the confrontation was posted to Twitter along with a screenshot of Greene boastfully writing that the ATF abandoned its assignment "after we questioned their motives."

In the video, Greene flexed her power.

"We're members of Congress," she said, adding that "I serve on the Oversight Committee."}:

READ MORE: Watch: Jamie Raskin shreds Marjorie Taylor Greene at hearing for sympathizing with insurrectionists

:{:{Greene also complained to the ATF officer that the "government has been weaponized," that "people feel like their gun rights are threatened," and that "gun dealers feel like their businesses are threatened."}:

Given the day's events, social media users tore into Greene with exasperated disgust.}:

Jayme Ruimveld: "Is this today? Is she running her mouth about guns while children have been murdered by guns at their preschool? Not a shred of decency. Not an ounce of respect or concern for the grieving families. Absolutely soulless."

Kat: "And they're worried about gun vendors, feeling threatened!"

Judy Miron: "There are 7 more people dead, 3 of them children today in Nashville.. and she complains about ATF inspections!! Time to get rid of her. Vote her out!!"

Michelle: "Marge is nothing but a heartless hateful little troll."

Leon: "Meanwhile children died today at a Christian School, but hey as long as your precious 2nd Amendment that was written for Flintlock rifles is protected right."

Cathy Coleman: "There is something very wrong with MTG and the Republican members of Congress who hover around her & follow her lead. Something beyond dirty politics or unbridled ambition - there is a menacing wickedness and cruelty about them all."

ZoëbethC-MeidasMighty: "Just as another shooter shows up in Tennessee to kill elementary school kids. They got their priorities straight. I bet after lunch it's more bills to ban Drag Shows on a federal level."

Marcus Flowers: "As America grieves over yet another school shooting, this time in Nashville, Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to prevent the ATF from doing their job. Common Sense Gun Legislation is necessary. We must do something to protect our children."

Seth Abramson: "Marjorie Taylor Greene is all about 'good guys with guns' until a violent insurrectionist smashes the window of the Speaker's Lobby inside a closed-to-the-public United States Capitol so a military veteran can leap into the breach and kidnap or kill a sitting member of Congress."

Watch the encounter below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Performative disgrace': Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed for defending Ashli Babbitt while misspelling her name

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---

yikes clarence originalist

comm dr an

dem orig?!

Legal experts said Friday that a federal judge's ruling in West Virginia illustrates the danger posed by the U.S. Supreme Court's right wing majority, which ruled this year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that restrictions on firearms must fall within the so-called "historical tradition" of gun laws.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, who was appointed to the Southern District of West Virginia by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, ruledagainst a federal law prohibiting people from possessing firearms with serial numbers that have been "altered, obliterated, or removed."

"Serial numbers were largely unknown to the Framers, Goodwin wrote. And so the Second Amendment confers a right to remove them from modern weapons."

Serial numbers have been required for guns since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and are intended to prevent the illegal sale of guns and to allowing law enforcement to trace firearms.

But basing his ruling on the majority Supreme Court opinionwritten by Justice Clarence Thomas in June, Goodwin said Wednesday that requiring serial numbers is not part of the "historical tradition of firearm regulation" and therefore runs afoul of the Second Amendment.

In his majority opinion in Bruen, which overturned New York's state law restricting the concealed carry of firearms in public, Thomas wrote that for a gun control law to stand, the federal, state, or local government "must affirmatively prove that its firearm regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms."

Goodwin's opinion, said Demand Justice, which advocates for Supreme Court reform, demonstrates the far-reaching impact the Bruen ruling could have on gun laws across the country.

"That radical ruling is impacting measures as basic as a requirement that guns have serial numbers," said the group.

The case heard by Goodwin originated with a traffic stop in Charleston, West Virginia during which police found a gun with the serial number removed. The driver, Randy Price, had also been convicted of a felony.

Price argued in court that he had a constitutional right to have the firearm, while lawyers for the federal government said the law regarding serial numbers was a "commercial regulation" that did not violate the Second Amendment.

On Thursday, Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern wrote that while Goodwin's ruling "might sound bizarre... his analysis closely follows Thomas' test" that requires the government to prove a gun regulation had a historical "analogue" in 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, or 1868, when it was imposed throughout the U.S.:

The only remaining question is whether the government could find an analogous regulation from 1791 or 1868 that restricted the possession of guns with an altered serial number. It could not, for a fairly obvious reason: Serial numbers only became common following the mass production of firearms, which took off in the decades after the Civil War.

Serial numbers were largely unknown to the Framers, Goodwin wrote. And so the Second Amendment confers a right to remove them from modern weapons.

When Bruen was handed down in June, Stern called the ruling "a revolution in Second Amendment law" which would ultimately go "so, so far beyond concealed carry."

Goodwin noted in his opinion on Wednesday that firearms that can't be traced using a serial number "are likely to be used in violent crime and therefore a prohibition on their possession is desirable," but said that argument "is the exact type of means-end reasoning the Supreme Court has forbidden me from considering."

Stern suggested that parts of Goodwin's opinion read "as if the judge is desperate to show readers just how dangerous and radical [the Bruen] ruling is."

According to the Supreme Court, Stern wrote, "all that counts is that serial number laws arose over the last century, so they are too modern to comport with the Second Amendment. Goodwin made this point over and over again; it almost sounded like he was quietly protesting the extreme and dangerous results demanded by the Bruen test."

"His decision thus doubled as a warning," he added. "The Supreme Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence has grown so radical that it now shields criminals trying to conceal their involvement in a violent crime."

---

an 2 23

Although David Hogg lives in a state that finds itself dominated by Republicans in 2023, the 22-year-old Floridian has become one of the United States' best-known gun control activists. Hogg is a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre that occurred in Parkland, Florida on Valentine's Day 2018, and he has often used social media to speak out about gun control and the mass shootings that are so common in the United States.

Hogg addressed gun control once again in a Twitter thread posted on February 26, noting what the U.S. Constitution has to say about militias. And it didn't take right-wing Republicans long to become enraged by his comments.

Hogg posted,"You have no right to a gun. You are not a militia. When you're talking about your second amendment rights, you're talking about a state’s right to have what is today the National Guard. The modern interpretation of 2A is a ridiculous fraud pushed for decades by the gun lobby."

By "2A," Hogg is referring to the Second Amendment, which, he argues, Republicans have been misinterpreting.

"We need to stop using the NRA's talking points and the false interpretation of 2A they have been pushing for decades," Hogg argued. "Their version of 2A is younger than I am…. The future the gun lobby is pushing for is one with absolutely no gun regulation whatsoever where anyone can get a gun. That is the path we are going down right now. They want bad guys to have guns so they can use the rise in gun violence to sell more guns to scared people."

Republican attorney **Jenna Ellis, famous for promoting former President Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, was quick to slam Hogg and tweeted, "So the Constitution is a living, breathing, fluid document, except for THIS ONE ISSUE ONLY ALWAYS because it suits your (false) narrative."

Twitter user David Benjamin wrote that Hogg is a "paid shill for the [George] Soros crew."

Far-right talk radio host Lori Mills responded by posting, "Considering my state Government puts criminal rights above victims rights, my 2nd amendment right is and always will be mine. Don't break into my home, don't threaten my family and my gun will leave you alone."

Hogg's thread was mostly attacked by Republicans, but some Libertarians weighed in as well. @LPNational tweeted, "Our rights aren't subject to what you or any tyrant think we need."

Read David Hogg’s Twitter thread at this link.

---

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

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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an 223

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.

---

During a conversation about the mass shooting in Los Angles that took place late Saturday night and claimed at least ten lives, CNN "State of the Union" host Dana Bash called out at GOP lawmaker who attempted to brush off the need for new gun laws by pointing out gun violence in Chicago -- a favorite rightwing talking point.

Sitting down with McCaul to discuss what to expect now that Republicans have majority control of the House, Bash first asked about the latest gun-related bloodshed in California.

"I was a counter-terrorism federal prosecutor and I was chair of Homeland Security," the Texas Republican replied. "Chicago has probably some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, yet the highest murder rate. The way I look at it is we need the intelligence, we need information sharing, we need to connect the dots."

"Every one of these cases, and I guarantee you'll see it in this one as well, the shooter had warning signs along the way," he continued. "We just didn't respond or pick it up. In my judgment we can create a system. I introduced a bill that we can take published information on the internet, have an algorithm to stop the threat before it happens. That is a smart approach rather than violating Second Amendment rights. So, look, I hope we can get that passed -- we're seeing this movie way too many times."

"What about a red flag law? A federal red flag law?" Bash asked.

"In a way what i'm talking about are red flags," McCaul replied before adding, "Chicago, Illinois has red flags --"

"You keep bringing up Chicago, which I understand," the CNN host interjected before adding, "But the guns in Chicago come in from other places because there is a patchwork of laws across the country, there's no federal law."

'Right. Again, we stopped ---," he backtracked. "I saw it when I chaired Homeland, so many terror attacks because we got the threat information in advance and we stopped it. We can use the same formula here domestically, although it's a little different.The Constitution didn't apply overseas, but we can do that here and stop these threats before they happen."

Watch below or at this link:

---

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."

---

7 22 oversight, gop spout constant, shall not infringe jordan;

Jamie Raskin routs 2a BS const 7x says taking up arms ~ gov't is insurrection/treason

~ 2a minuteman BS:

http://www.armedwithreason.com/militia-myths-why-armed-populations-dont-prevent-tyranny-but-often-lead-to-it/

...

A well-armed population has the power to stop tyrannical governments. Our country was founded by such a battle, where a well-armed population succeeded in stopping tyranny and founded a government of the people.
Governments will inevitably abuse their power, and we must be ready to overthrow the government as a last resort to protect liberty.
Without guns, we are powerless to prevent government overreach.

Reality

It is worth noting at the outset that this fear of tyranny suddenly arising belies a fundamental misreading of how authoritarian regimes actually come to power. Namely, it assumes a false dichotomy between “the people” on one side and “the government” on the other. Government is not some foreign entity imposed on the people, which would only arise from a foreign country conquering the United States (not going to happen). Rather democratic government is derived from the people. A tyrannical government could only arise in the US with a majority of the population supporting it due to some economic or military crisis: in reaction, say, to a heavily armed minority attempting to enforce its will on the rest of the country. Government does not just “suddenly” become tyrannical. The debate should just end here. However, given that this a blog dedicated to thoroughly debunking myths, I will delve deeper.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The founding fathers were wrong.

Blasphemy, I know. Yet the idea that Militias are in anyway necessary or good for a free State has no historical justification, especially in the modern era. Militias (especially unregulated ones) are overwhelmingly detrimental to the existence of a free society, and at best are impotent in its defense. A historical analysis reveals that Militias are typically the gateway to tyranny, not the safeguard against it. A heavily armed population has little to no bearing on preventing tyranny.

Pro-gun arguments typically follow at least one of four paths:

Our own Revolutionary War shows militias are effective at protecting liberty.
Militias promote liberty.
Armed populations deter tyrants while unarmed populations are defenseless.
Disarming a population is the gateway to genocide.

All of these arguments are false. Let’s first look at our own Revolutionary War.

The idea that militias are the bulwark against tyranny typically begins in a faulty reading of American History. The Revolutionary War was not won by Militias, but rather the Continental Army with considerable help from the French. While it is probably an exaggeration to suggest that the Militia was completely worthless during the War, that is far closer to reality than the myth promulgated by some pro-gun advocates. And the Militias that did significantly contribute to the cause were organized by the states and represented a well-disciplined, cohesive fighting force that mirrored the Continental Army, not the minutemen of lore.

Moving to the modern era, Militias have a terrible history of creating tyranny, even when fighting against foreign powers. Militias that have been successful in warding off foreign aggression overwhelmingly opposed democratic rule. A few examples are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba, Somalia, Iraq, and southern Lebanon; in none of these countries did the militias promote a free State. Add to this list countries where militias have ripped apart society in tribal states or civil war (such as Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Colombia, and the Palestinian Territories) and we can form an even clearer picture of militias. For a more immediate example, one only has to look at the bewildering array of militias (more than “1,000” according to Robin Wright) currently fighting in Syria to see how little they promote democratic values and how ineffective they tend to be on the battlefield. While there may be an example of victorious militias replacing tyranny with freedom since the industrial age hiding somewhere in an obscure footnote of history, the rule that militias are detrimental to preserving freedom holds....

---

omg ginni

https://www.alternet.org/:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:**:{2010:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{/10**/ginni_thomas_think_tank_allied_with_group_that_celebrates_spanish_inquisition/

In recent days, the media has turned its attention to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- not for her troubling ties to right-wing extremist groups, but for her bizarre demand for an apology from the woman who accused her husband of sexual harassment more than a decade ago. Yet Mrs. Thomas' Tea Party think tank, Liberty Central, promotes the causes of groups that take pride in intolerance, including one right-wing Catholic group, Tradition, Family and Property, whose founder declared the Spanish Inquisition "the most beautiful page in the history of the Church."

:{Earlier this year, AlterNet reported on:{Liberty Central's embrace of Gun Owners of America}:, whose president, Larry Pratt -- guru to the militia movement -- unapologetically addressed a rally of white supremacists in 1992, and more recently told attendees of a gun owners' rally in Washington, D.C., that they are "at war" with the federal government.

We also looked at Liberty Central's relationship with the Missouri Sovereignty Project, which threatens armed insurrection against the government. Since then, Thomas has added to the "Friends of Liberty Central" page on her think tank's Web site a plug for Tradition, Family and Property, a virulently anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-democratic Catholic group founded in 1960 in opposition to Brazilian land reform.

TFP has long enjoyed ties to the far right in American politics, including the International Freedom Foundation, which existed primarily as an American front group for the apartheid regime in South Africa during the Reagan years, according to researcher Richard Bartholomew, and was once led by convicted felon and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But TFP is better known for its role in promoting and supporting authoritarian regimes in South America. Here's Bartholomew:

TFP played a role in the 1964 coup in Brazil, and in Uruguay it allegedly received explosives from the Brazilian military attaché that were used to attack communist installations. The editor of TFP's Chilean magazine, Jaime Guzmán, became chief ideologist for General Pinochet's regime.

If TFP's activities on behalf of torturers and anti-democratic forces weren't enough to give one pause, there's its status as a cult. TFP is an all-male organization that finds its recruits among adolescent boys, whom it trains in the use of the combat regalia of the Middle Ages -- maces, crossbows, and the like -- according to the late Penny Lernoux's 1989 book,People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism. The medieval games in which the boys partake are so brutal, Lernoux reported, that one recruit told her his arm had been broken three times in the exercises.

The medieval games continue today. Last July, TFP sponsored a 10-day "Call to Chivalry" camp in rural Louisiana, where, according to the group's Web site, boys and young men took part:

Some new skills were learned such as medieval spear throwing and archery. Mock sword battles with padded weapons were a great success as were paintball wars in the thick tropical-looking forest surrounding the property. An exhausting hike in the Tunica Hills Park taught a poignant lesson of endurance.

At the time Lernoux was reporting, recruits were taught to worship not only the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holiest woman in Catholicism, but also the flesh-and-blood mother of TFP founder Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, whom he referred to as Santa Monica. Oliveira, who died in 1995, loved the Spanish Inquisition, he wrote, "because, while it went on, the Catholic Church managed to cleanse itself of heretics." (Never mind that many of those so-called heretics were Jews who wanted nothing more than to practice their own faith, or people whose politics were inconvenient to the Spanish throne.)

I first learned of the American branch of TFP by stumbling upon one of their demonstrations in midtown Manhattan in the late 1980s, when thegroup was coddled by the late Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor.They often assembled on the sidewalk near St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, decked out in red polyester sashes emblazoned with a yellow lion. Their big issue at that moment was the criminalization of flag desecration, which was a lure for collecting names and addresses on petition forms. I remember feeling disconcerted by their need to videotape each interaction they had with those they were trying to attract.

The group remains active in New York, though its red-sashed members are as likely to be seen in lower Manhattan than around the cathedral.

The Catholic crusades against the Muslim world are viewed as a time of glory by the devotees of TFP. Roberto de Mattei, who wrote a friendly biography of Oliveira and is said to be close to TFP, presented his revisionist history of the crusades at a 2006 conference at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. TFP is expressing its embrace of the medieval crusades in the chorus of intolerance raised against the Parc51 Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan, dispatching student volunteers to a September protest at the site where the World Trade Center once stood. (TFP video here.)

TFP maintains a presence on the campuses of U.S. Catholic colleges, and currently sponsors a petition drive to purge them of LGBT rights groups. It describes a Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the suit that struck down anti-sodomy laws, as America's "Moral 9/11." Clarence Thomas, incidentally, joined Antonin Scalia's dissent in that case, which accused the court's majority of having "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."

Ordinary Americans played a big role

The Declaration of Independence was written by wealthy white men, but the impetus for independence came from ordinary Americans. Historian Pauline Maier discovered that by July 2, 1776, when the Continental Congress voted to separate from Britain, 90 provincial and local bodies – conventions, town meetings and even grand juries – had already issued their own declarations or instructed Congress to.

In Maryland, county conventions demanded that the provincial convention tell Maryland's congressmen to support independence. Pennsylvania assemblymen required their congressional delegates to oppose independence – until Philadelphians gathered outside the State House, later named Independence Hall, and threatened to overthrow the legislature, which then dropped this instruction.

American independence is due in part to African Americans

Like the U.S. Constitution, the final version of the Declaration never uses the word “slave." But African Americans loomed large in the first draft, written by Thomas Jefferson.

In that early draft, Jefferson's single biggest grievance was that the mother country had first foisted enslaved Africans on white Americans and then attempted to incite them against their patriot owners. In an objection to which he gave 168 words – three times as many as any other complaint – Jefferson said George III had encouraged enslaved Americans “to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them."

Numerous other white Southerners joined Jefferson in venting their rage at the mother country for, as one put it, “pointing a dagger to their Throats, thru the hands of their Slaves."

Britain really had forged an informal alliance with African Americans – but it was the slaves who initiated it. In November 1774, James Madison became the first white American to report that slaves were plotting to take advantage of divisions between the colonies and the mother country to rebel and obtain their own freedom. Initially the British turned down African Americans' offer to fight for their king, but the slaves kept coming, and on November 15, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia, finally published an emancipation proclamation. It freed all rebel- (patriot-) owned slaves who could reach his lines and would fight to suppress the patriot rebellion....

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One of the Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election after the deadly insurrection of Trump supporters was shown to be a security risk on Thursday.

"New security measures outside the U.S. House chamber prevented a Republican lawmaker from bringing a gun onto the House floor Thursday. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), who has repeatedly flouted the magnetometers that were installed near the House chamber after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, set off the metal detectors while trying to enter.When an officer with a metal detector wand scanned him, a firearm was detected on Harris's side, concealed by his suit coat. Police refused to let Harris in, and the officer signaled a security agent that Harris had a gun on him by motioning toward his own firearm," HuffPost correspondent Matt Fuller reported Thursday.

"HuffPost witnessed the interaction and later confirmed with a Capitol official that Harris was carrying a gun. HuffPost watched Harris try to get another member to take the gun from him so he could go vote. The member, Rep. John Katko (R-NY), told Harris he didn't have 'a license' and refused to hold the weapon for him," the publication reported. "Harris then left on the elevators and 10 minutes later returned to the House chamber. He placed his cellphone and keys on a desk to the side, did not set off the magnetometer and was allowed to enter the House floor to vote on a waiver to allow retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to serve as President Joe Biden's defense secretary."

Harris isn't the only Republican who may be a security risk.

"During a security briefing with Democratic members early last week, some lawmakers suggested that members should have to go through a metal detector to get on the House floor. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO)has said she'll carry a gun around D.C., which does not allow the open carrying of a firearm, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) told his local paper that he was armed when insurrectionists stormed the Capitol," HuffPost reported. "On Thursday, HuffPost saw Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rick Allen (R-GA) and Boebert all refuse to be wanded down after setting off the magnetometer."

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stivers, scalise

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/house-metal-detector

no lnx twt

Republican lawmakers throw a fit over new metal detectors at the House chamber

Cody Fenwick January 13, 2021

Following the brutal assault on the U.S. Capitol last week by supporters of the president hoping to overturn the election, Congress is stepping up its security. And on Tuesday night, multiple Republican lawmakers expressed their outrage at new metal detectors placed at the entrance of the House chamber.

Officials seem to believe these measures are necessary following the attempted insurrection, especially in light of the fears that Republican members, some of whom have bragged about wanting to bring guns onto the House floor, may have been supportive of the mob.

"There are concerns about the gun-toting members, but also we don't know who they're going to bring to the inauguration who can bypass the metal detectors," on Democratic representative told CNN. "Until there's an investigation and until we understand our colleagues' level of complicity in the attack we don't know how involved they really were. Until we have answers I don't think we should trust them – not all of them of course, but some of them."

Perhaps further raising suspicions, Republicans were furious when they had to enter the chamber on Tuesday.

"Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who has bragged about her desire to carry a weapon on Capital Hill is currently in a standoff with Capitol Police at the newly installed Metal Detectors outside the chamber doors," CNN's Ryan Nobles reported on Tuesday evening. "Boebert walked through with her bag which set off the mags. She refused to offer the bag over to be searched and is now in a standoff with Cap Police."

He added: "Capitol Police won't let her in until Boebert shows them what is in her bag, she won't and is now standing by the entrance of the chamber. She is respectful but defiant."

On Twitter, she objected to the new policy:

Boebert has been of particular concern because she tweeted out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had left the chamber in the middle of the Jan.6 invasion by the pro-Trump mob, even though members were told not to share this kind of information for security reasons. Some believe she may have been intentionally trying to give the mob information about one of its targets. Boebert has previously expressed her support for the conspiracy fiction QAnon, though she subsequently said she was not a "follower." She has reportedly been tied to other extremist groups.

She wasn't the only one objecting to the new security measures on Tuesday, other reporters revealed.

Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona also complained about the change on Twitter, provoking many critics to point out that metal detectors are accepted at many other parts of life, such as in airports and some schools.

For members of Congress to enter the floor of the U.S. House, we now have to go through intense security measures, on top of the security we already go through. These new provisions include searches and being wanded like criminals. We now live in Pelosi’s communist America!

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/former-supreme-court-justice-john-paul-stevens-pens-passionate-plea-repeal-secon-0

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https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/some-pro-gun-facebook-pages-are-fearmongering-about-mass-violence-left-after-election

With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, three major pro-gun Facebook pages are fearmongering about Civil War-type violence from the left after the elections -- despite widespread evidence and reporting from experts that any violence which arises is likely to come from right-wing militias and white nationalist groups.

The Facebook pages The Truth About Guns, Guns Save Lives, and 2nd Amendment all shared articles to fearmonger about a looming threat of post-election violence coming from the left and aimed at supporters of President Donald Trump. The pages collectively have almost 2.5 million followers.

Despite attempts by right-wing and pro-gun media to tie this fear of post-election violence to the Black Lives Matter protests following the police killing of George Floyd, a study of 7,750 of those protests nationwide found that 93% were peaceful.

Another study by the same group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, and the research group Militia Watch found that five states do face a threat of increased election-related violence, but that it’s from right-wing militia groups.

On October 6, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf released a report saying the threat of violent white supremacy is the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland,” and wrote that he’s “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.” This echoes a statement FBI Director Christopher Wray made to Congress in February that “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” are now the “primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents” in the U.S.

The Truth About Guns

On October 22, the Facebook page of pro-gun blog The Truth About Guns shared its own article alleging that the majority of Americans are expecting post-election violence and suggesting steps people can take to protect themselves. Written by John Boch, the article cites a poll from The Independent and JL Partners which found that 73% of Biden supporters and 77% of Trump supporters are worried about election violence.

Boch wrote that he’s not surprised by these numbers given the nationwide “political violence” following the police killing of George Floyd, and he said part of the answer is to know “Antifa” is deploying “guerilla warfare tactics” and using smoke bombs to create a “fog of war.” Boch told his readers that “Antifa mobs can do pretty much anything they want to you and you can’t stop them,” and that if you get taken down in a fight, “They will kick you in the head with their steel toe boots until you’re unconscious or dead.”

The Truth About Guns shared this article on Facebook with the comment “Almost three-quarters of Americans expect violence during or after the election. Are you ready?” Many the commenters on the post either agreed antifa is a problem or stated that they’re prepared for violence.

Guns Save Lives

On October 23, the Facebook page Guns Save Lives shared an American Military News article about four “Trump-supporting households” in Milford and Brookline, New Hampshire, that supposedly received anonymous letters threatening to attack their homes if Trump loses reelection but refuses to concede. The reported text of the letter is the same as that of an unverified viral image.

In sharing the article, Guns Save Lives questioned whether all “Trump supporters need to worry about being attacked.” The post received 507 reactions and 308 comments, many of which threatened that Trump supporters own guns and are ready to respond to any violence.

2nd Amendment

On October 21, the Facebook page 2nd Amendment — which is the Facebook page for the Salem Media-owned, pro-gun blog Bearing Arms — shared its own article claiming that Americans are bracing “for inevitable post-election violence.” Relying on no specific evidence or reporting, but rather a poll of Americans’ concerns, author Tom Knighton wrote that there is “ample reason to believe” that the aftermath of the election “won’t be particularly” peaceful.

The Bearing Arms article is based on a poll conducted by ROKK Solutions, Engagious, and the Sports and Leisure Research Group which found that 61% of respondents said they were concerned about a second Civil War. Knighton took the poll results to mean that if Trump wins, there will be riots in protest and if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, his supporters “will be so smug and self-righteous that they’ll take things too far and then you end up with a riot.”

Bearing Arms shared the article on its Facebook page with the comment “We’re less than two weeks out.” It received over 1,200 reactions and 682 comments, many of which agreed that the left will burn down cities and noted that Trump supporters are “locked and loaded.”

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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.

:{:{}:

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. NEW ZEALAND?

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.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-tech-companies-enabling-far-right-talk-show-host-josh-bernsteins-extreme-rhetoric/

Far-right talk show host Josh Bernstein depends on major tech companies to support his broadcasts, which frequently contain violent rhetoric and conspiracy theories that may violate some of those tech platforms’ own stated policies.

:{:{}:

“The Josh Bernstein Show” is currently supported financially by a handful of business advertisers and paying fans on Patreon, a membership platform for online content creators, and reaches viewers via YouTube and the streaming platformRoku.

At the end of a uploaded to YouTube on Aug. 2, Bernstein made clear his reliance on Patreon. He told viewers that YouTube had at some point in time demonetized his channel, which if true, means that Bernstein’s content has been determined to be inappropriate for advertising on the platform and that Bernstein is unable to generate revenue from the number of views on his videos. Bernstein has 130,000 YouTube subscribers at the time of publication.

“Put $5, $10 a month on my Patreon. It’s not an expenditure, it’s an investment,” Bernstein said. “It’s an investment in future freedoms. It’s an investment in prosperity. Because I eat, sleep, and breathe protecting this nation.”

Bernstein also explained his intention to expand his efforts with Roku to get around the supposed “constant censorship” he faces on YouTube.

“Due to YouTube’s constant censorship of ’The Josh Bernstein Show,’ ‘The Josh Bernstein Show’ is expanding to Roku television where I will not be censored and you will be able to watch ’The Josh Bernstein Show’ for free,” Bernstein said. “I will also be continuing every single day to upload videos right here on YouTube on ’The Josh Bernstein Show’ channel that you are currently watching right now, and I will also be on [Patreon].”

Right Wing Watch has cataloged Bernstein’s violent rhetoric, hate speech, and conspiracy theories for years. On YouTube broadcasts and radio shows, Bernstein has argued or claimed that:

Liberal Jews deserve to be called anti-Semitic slurs.
He understands “why people are anti-Semitic, truly.”
He hates anti-Semitism, but if it keeps Sen. Bernie Sanders out of the White House, he’ll “take some anti-Semitism.”
Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros “should be **taking a long dirt nap immediately” and is a “kike.”
A man who committed a mass shooting in Texas in 2019 had “kind of a Jewish name,” which meant that “he’s likely a Democrat.”
People should disobey stay-at-home orders meant to lessen the spread of the coronavirus and should “not be afraid to use our Second Amendment” to do so.
Washington state gun owners should “defy” gun reform measures by shooting police officers if necessary.
White people should “get armed immediately” because some Black Lives Matter activists “want to spill white blood.”
He wants to see Joe Biden and “these bastards hang by the neck until it cracks” or else the American people will take matters into their own hands.
Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib “have earned every single one” of the death threats they have received.
Senior citizens should go to polling places to vote for President Donald Trump despite the health risks present during the COVID-19 pandemic, and if they catch the disease and die, “So be it.”

Some of these remarks appear to violate stated content guidelines for the platforms that Bernstein uses to reach viewers and to turn a profit....

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6/20

10 gun rights, denied cert need 4; cl thomas dissent on NJ req proof you need carry permit, // to speech or abort, joined by brett or gor?

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/reopen-protests-stir-up-the-far-right

right-wing protest events against states’ stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures have sprouted up across the country, attracting far-right activists who see a friendly avenue for their own extreme messages.

Protesters rallied in at least six states last week in opposition to measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, including orders to avoid public spaces, cancel social events, and close businesses deemed nonessential. The ”Reopen” events are the manifestation of a push by a powerful coalition of right-wing groups, including FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and the Heritage Foundation, to advance the reopening of the U.S. economy.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ family, is helping organize the state events on Facebook, and NBC News found that a family-run network of pro-gun Facebook groups is responsible for some of the largest protest pages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protests have received glowing coverage in right-wing media. Fox News has advertised the protests while the network’s hosts have spoken favorably about participants. The sudden spark of big-donor groups, state organizing, and right-wing media coverage invokes strong parallels to the astroturf origins of the Tea Party movement.

Minutes after a Fox News segment Friday about the protests, President Donald Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” All three states are led by Democratic governors.

[twt]

NBC News reported that Trump’s tweets led right-wing extremists online “to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict,” which extremists have spent decades claiming is inevitable in the United States. According to NBC News, the Network Contagion Research Institute recorded a major spike in the term “boogaloo,” which is a phrase popular with far-right extremists online to refer to a supposedly inevitable modern civil war.

In Michigan, protests reportedly attracted members of the violent hate groups, anti-government militias, anti-vaccination groups, and religious-right fundamentalists. The Guardian reports GUK that members of the Michigan Proud Boys hate group participated in a vehicle convoy, and an activist fromMichigan Liberty Militia whose Facebook page “features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front” was interviewed by local radio.

At the Texas state capitol in Austin last weekend, members of the Infowars entourage including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reportedly attracted hundreds of protesters for a rally called “You Can’t Close America” organized byInfowars host Owen Shroyer.As Right Wing Watch reported earlier this month, Shroyer had threatened to encourage the Infowars audience into “revolting” against social distancing measures if they were not lifted in a week.After protests in Michigan last Wednesday, Shroyer followed through on the promise and announced the Texas rally, which anti-vaccine activists attended.

[A QAnon supporter is seen protesting at an anti-quarantine rally in Olympia, Washington, on April 19, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Troy Schulz)]

The Colorado Times Recorder reported that “anti-vaccination activists, conspiracy theory advocates (including a Q-Anon supporter) and members of the Proud Boys hate group” were present at a “ReOpen Colorado” rally Sunday. Nathan Bernard reported that a “ReOpen Maine” rally Monday was organized in part by a state representative who “is known locally for spreading white nationalist conspiracy theories,” such as the claim that abortion and immigration are part of a plot to eliminate white people.

Protesting against stay-at-home orders has become a common cause for those among the far-right ranks. By calling COVID-19 a big hoax, asserting that the threat is overblown for political reasons,and advancing conspiracy theories about the search for a coronavirus vaccine, right-wing activists and media figures have created an environment for these protests to take hold. Meanwhile, unabashed extremists see the “Reopen” protest movement as fertile ground for their agendas–whether it be fomenting a rebellion against the government or targeting minority groups for hate.

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GOP mass exodus continues.U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, a three-term Republican from Florida, has just announced he will retire at the end of his term and not seek re-election in 2020. He becomes the third Republican in less than a week to retire.

The extremist Tea Party Republican lawmaker has a horrific record, including suggesting the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to own the exact same weapons of war the U.S. Armed Forces have – which would include nuclear weapons. (It does not.)

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/thomas-jefferson-and-the_b_273800.html

New Hampshire resident William Kostric caused a national stir on August 11 when he appeared outside President Obama’s town hall meeting in Portsmouth with a loaded semiautomatic handgun strapped to his leg. Kostric held a sign that read, “IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!” This was a reference to the following quote by Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Asked to explain the message he was trying to send, Kostric stated, “I wanted people to remember the rights that we have and how quickly we’re losing them in this country ... It doesn’t take a genius to see we’re traveling down a road at breakneck speed that’s towards tyranny.” While Kostric claimed he was not calling for violence, many viewed his actions as threatening and assumed that the “tyrant” he had in mind was the president.

It was certainly not the first time a gun rights activist had referred to Jefferson’s “tree of liberty” quote. On the day he bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, Timothy McVeigh wore a t-shirt that bore Jefferson’s words with an image of a tree with blood dripping from its branches. A Google search will reveal that the quote is cited on a myriad of pro-gun websites today, almost always with no context or source provided. But what was the context of Jefferson’s remarks, and what exactly did he mean?

“What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,” Jefferson wrote in a letter to William S. Smith, a diplomatic official in London, on November 13, 1787. Jefferson was commenting on Shays” Rebellion, an armed uprising in Massachusetts that had been put down earlier that year by organized state militia forces. “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion,” Jefferson remarked. “Let them take arms.”

In the same letter, however, Jefferson stated that the rebellion was “founded in ignorance ... The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.” Jefferson also referred to the delegates who had finalized a draft of the U.S. Constitution in September 1787, stating, “Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order.”

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention had indeed taken Shays’ Rebellion very seriously, viewing the lack of a strong institutional response to the incident as symptomatic of a weak central government that was struggling to preserve the liberties they had fought so hard for. The country could not be governed in a state of perpetual revolution, the delegates realized, and despite the fears of Anti-Federalists, the Constitution authorized Congress to raise a standing Army. Furthermore, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution stated that one of the purposes of the Militia was to “suppress Insurrections”—not to foment them.

One of the delegates at the convention was James Madison, the man who would draft the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1789. Jefferson exchanged letters frequently with Madison, sharing his view that Shays’ Rebellion was “absolutely unjustifiable,” but “did not appear to threaten serious consequences.” We need “a little rebellion now and then,” he told Madison. Madison disagreed, and supported Congressional enlistment of troops during the rebellion until “the spirit of insurrection was subdued.” In a speech before Congress on February 19, 1787, he argued that Shays’ rebels were “internal enemies” and constituted a threat to the “tranquility of the Union.” To Madison, the rebellion was treason.

With the drafting of the Constitution, Jefferson became more tempered in his own views, and acknowledged that well ordered republican democratic political processes could make armed violence unnecessary. In a letter to Dutch diplomat Charles William Frederick Dumas, Jefferson observed, “Happy for us, that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions.”

Upon becoming President of the United States in 1801, Jefferson’s views about executive power and private rebellion were further transformed. In contrast to his previous advocacy for a ban on standing armies, Jefferson proposed the creation of a national military academy, which was built in West Point, New York. In 1807, after Aaron Burr conspired with military officers to create an independent republic in the American Southwest, Jefferson declared him a traitor and had him arrested and prosecuted for treason. In 1808, Jefferson deployed U.S. Army troops inside the country to enforce a trade embargo against Great Britain and France. Historian Henry Adams observedabout Jefferson’s embargo policies: “Personal liberties and rights of property were more directly curtailed in the United States by embargo than in Great Britain by centuries of almost continuous foreign war.” Jefferson’s use of military personnel to enforce domestic laws remains unprecedented.

Those who hold the belief that the Second Amendment gives them an individual right to take violent action against our government should it lapse into “tyranny” have isolated Jefferson’s “tree of liberty” quote in order to justify a radical ideology. The truth is that Jefferson’s views on private rebellion were far more thoughtful and nuanced. While scholars like Saul Cornell have acknowledged that Jefferson affirmed an individual right to keep arms for private purposes, he never described disorganized or spontaneous insurrection as a right. Jefferson instead envisioned “a universally armed citizenry organized into well-regulated militia units based on a system of ‘ward republics’” as a deterrent against “usurpers” and a key guarantor of a healthy republic.

The anti-government protesters carrying semiautomatic handguns and assault weapons outside of contemporary town hall meetings would undoubtedly consider such detailed regulation of the Militia to be—for lack of a better word—“tyrannical.”

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/matt-barber-jesus-was-advocating-for-the-second-amendment

Anti-LGBTQ activist Matt Barber told American Family Radio listeners yesterday that the “uninfringeable constitutional right” to carry firearms is “as biblical as a shepherd boy’s slingshot” and claimed that Jesus Christ advocated for the Second Amendment.

Barber subbed in as the host of “Sandy Rios in the Morning” yesterday and discussed the March for Our Lives rallies last weekend that attracted hundreds of thousands of people to support calls for gun law reform.

“The uninfringeable constitutional right to arm and defend yourself, your family, your friends, your colleagues, and even perfect strangers—it’s not just as American as apple pie, as they say. Frankly, folks, it’s as biblical as a shepherd boy’s slingshot,” Barber said, referring to the biblical tale of David and Goliath.

“David, a man after God’s own heart, used a weapon of war—at that time, a slingshot—in order to take down Goliath. And in response to the explosive global threat of Islamic terrorism, of communism—yes, it’s back in vogue, folks—socialism, communism, particularly among millennials thought it has failed everywhere in the world with over 100 million deaths. Boy, it just keeps rearing its ugly head,” Barber said.

He went on to cite NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre’s speech at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, in which LaPierre warned that the Democrat Party was overrun with “saboteurs” with a secret socialist agenda.

He also turned to Luke 11:21, which reads, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe.”

“Think about that. There’s Jesus advocating for the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, to defend your own house, to keep your possessions, not to mention your wife, your children, to keep them safe,” Barber said.

from cox:

...Business interests also moved to distance themselves from the gun industry, a major funder of the NRA. On December 18, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management announced plans to sell the gun conglomerate Freedom Group after some investors expressed concern over the firm's relationship with the gun maker. Freedom Group owns Bushmaster, the company responsible for manufacturing the assault rifle used in the Newtown mass shooting, as well as assault weapons manufacturers Remington Arms and DPMS Panther Arms.

Many of the companies that make up the Freedom Group are NRA corporate sponsors, including Remington Arms, DPMS Panther Arms, H&R Firearms, Marlin and Para USA. Since 2005, Para USA has given between $100,000 and $249,999 to the NRA. DPMS Panther gave the NRA between $50,000 and $99,999 during the same period. Remington Arms, H&R Firearms, and Marlin have also all made contributions of $25,000 to $49,999. In 2011, Remington became the sponsor of the Friends of NRAtelevision show that airs on the Outdoor Channel.

On December 18, firearms retailer Dick's Sporting Goods announced plans to suspend the sale of assault rifles, for the time being, in its stores. The company also said that it was pulling all firearms from the shelves of its store closest to Newtown. The same day, the Discovery Channel announced that its America's Gunsshow, which had been by NRA News, was cancelled with no plans to air reruns. A spokesperson for Discovery also confirmed that NRA board member Ted Nugent's gun culture special Ted Nugent's Gun Country"would definitely not be returning to the Discovery Channel." Nugent had previously claimed that the Discovery Channel "want[s] to do [the special] as a regular feature."

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