It took two years for the courts to figure out that the Constitution doesn’t grant government the power to enact COVID restrictions.
Antigun
The Clock is Ticking
So now that I have had a chance to review the new ATF gun grab, I can say that I anticipated much of what was in there. However, there is one part that I must admit not being adequately equipped for. Upper receivers are now considered to be firearms, as are 80 percent lowers. This creates a national problem for the USA, as well as a personal problem for me.
Since uppers are now firearms, and any unserialized firearm that comes into the possession of any FFL must be serialized, this is going to be a big problem. Unless an FFL holder is an 07 (manufacturer), it looks like the serial number has to come from the ATF itself. This will cause every handgun slide and every AR upper to be serialized (registered) with an ATF provided serial number. This sets up a nationwide firearm registry.
If I am correct about this, this creates a real problem for every gun owner in the country. This kind of registration has only one purpose: confiscation.
Now I anticipated 80 percent lowers becoming firearms. The uppers, I did not. Over the past year, I have managed to amass a good number of 80 percent lowers and stripped uppers of the AR15, Glock 19, and the AR308 varieties. A <classified> number of them have already been converted into firearms. Due to supply chain issues, what I have is a mismatch between the number of uppers and the number of lowers. Some of that has been corrected, but I am stuck on others. I need a few Glock uppers (slide assemblies), and a small number of AR308 uppers. I can’t find bargains right now on either one. They are all out of stock or so expensive that I just can’t justify it.
The clock is ticking. I have just a few weeks to secure what I need, create the firearms, and cache them before it becomes a crime.
Antigun
New Gun Laws
Biden’s ATF released new gun laws today. I tried to get a quick read on its impact, but that will be impossible. The released document is nearly 400 pages long, and is a complicated, confusing mess that will take lawyers and the courts years to settle. Read it for yourself (pdf warning) as I have hosted it here at Sector Ocho for your convenience.
The Biden administration has, through the ATF, completely circumvented Congress and rewritten US law.
My initial opinion on this new law is that it is vague and open to numerous interpretation, which is exactly how the ATF has always done business. For example, it defines an externally visible housing or holding structure or one or more fire control components to be considered as a frame or receiver. Examples of fire control components may include but are not limited to any of the following parts: bolt, bolt carrier breechblock cylinder, firing pin, hammer, striker, slide rails or trigger mechanism.
Does this mean AR upper receivers and slides for handguns will begin to be considered as firearms too? It’s quite possible!
This will be a mess.
Criminals
The Story Keeps Changing
As far back as February 8, Russia claimed that the US had secret laboratories in Ukraine that were and are researching biological weapons. Russia claimed that they had destroyed 7 of the 11 laboratories using missiles during the early hours of the Russian invasion. Politifact, the same people who told us all about COVID and totally debunked the rumors of a stolen election, immediately fact checked the entire story as being “false”
On March 8, China echoed Russia’s claims that the Pentagon has been funding bioweapons labs in Ukraine.
The US called the claims absurd on March 9th. The US press secretary took to Twitter to call the claims made by Russia “preposterous” and made the claim that it was a disinformation operation by both China and Russia.
In a statement, Ned Price, spokesperson for the Department of State, accused Russia of “inventing false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine” and said Washington was “in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.”
John Kirby, Pentagon spokesperson, called the Russian accusations “absurd,” “laughable,” and a “bunch of malarkey.” “There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” he told reporters.
Then on March 10, the US government admitted that there were biological research laboratories, but stated that the labs were not secret and were not being used to research weapons. The US maintained that, even though the labs were funded through the Department of Defense, they were for purely scientific in nature and totally not for biological warfare.
On March 11, the World Health Organization advised the Ukraine to destroy the pathogens in the laboratories so that they wouldn’t fall into Russian hands. You know, because the pathogens that are in the labs are totally for peaceful research and couldn’t possibly be weapons, but would be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. We all know how forthright and trustworthy the WHO is, since they so masterfully and truthfully handled the worldwide COVID response.
Then on March 14, White House press secretary Jen Psaki cautioned officials to be on the lookout “for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them.”
On March 15, the UK intelligence community predicted that Russia would use fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction to discredit the west and justify their invasion of Ukraine.
By April 1, the US government’s story had changed. Now the Pentagon was telling Congress that there are “no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with.”
According to a Pentagon fact sheet released in March (pdf warning), since 2005, the United States has “invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine … supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.”
Robert Pope, the director of the DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in February that the labs might contain Soviet-era bioweapons and warned that the conflict in Ukraine could accidentally lead to the dangerous disease-causing pathogens being released. Wait a minute- I thought the Pentagon said that there were “no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with?”
The ever changing nature of the story being released by the Pentagon is what smells like disinformation. Have you ever caught someone in a lie, so that person then modifies the lie to fit the newly discovered facts? That is what this looks like.
The most likely story that fits these facts is that the US, along with the rest of NATO, has been engaged in illegal research into biological weapons in China (don’t forget that Fauci was funneling money into the Wuhan lab) and the Ukraine. The Ukraine was kicking some of the money back to the then Vice President of the US in order to keep the money train moving. They did this by hiring Hunter Biden at an outrageous salary to be in charge of a fake company that he was wholly unqualified to run.
It is looking more and more like our government is evil, corrupt, and willing to do anything to gain more power.
Gaming the Courts
Important SCOTUS case
A restaurant owner filed a complaint about a Federal cop with that cop’s supervisor. The cop responded by getting other Federal agencies (including the IRS) to place the owner under a microscope. The restaurant owner sued, and now that case is headed to SCOTUS.
If SCOTUS holds that this cop is immune from lawsuits, even while he is willingly and knowingly violating someone’s Constitutional rights, expect police behavior to get worse. We all know that SCOTUS is likely to support the cop’s behavior.
It’s almost like we live in a police state where the only way you can get justice is to mete it out yourself.
Police State
Sad, but Necessary
It isn’t time yet. The people who would oppose government don’t have enough popular support to win the fight. Yet. That is why scenes like this, as sad and infuriating as they are, have to happen:
The average American isn’t going to take sides unless one side or the other overtly plays the cowboy in the black hat. Scenes where frail old ladies with walkers are trampled by horses and cops butt stroke unarmed protesters who actually ARE peaceful will have to be played dozens of times before support rises to the point where things turn.
Every time a scene like this happens, a few people change their minds. The cops aren’t doing themselves any good by being this heavy handed.
tyranny
You Must Pay
Let’s say that your Florida house has solar installed. Your system is so good that you have enough power to be completely off the grid. You don’t need outside power, so your house only uses about $5 of electricity each month. Too bad for you, because Florida utility companies have recently instituted minimum billing. Even if you don’t use their product, you have to pay them for it.
You can’t even disconnect from them, because Florida law requires all homes to be connected to the electric grid.
This is one of those times where Florida law is a bit too draconian for my taste.
Criminals
Policing For Profit, Episode CXVII
There is an old quote where a bank robber was asked why he robs banks. He replied, “Because that is where the money is.” It seems that the police have decided to take his advice and begin robbing the modern day version of the stagecoach. The Feds are helping them.
Sheriffs in California and Kansas have exploited the fact that marijuana distribution, while legal in those states, is illegal under Federal Law. Because of this fact, they are having deputies conduct traffic stops on the armored cars and confiscating all of the money. In the case of Kansas, no law is being broken in Kansas. The cops are merely stopping the armored cars that are transporting the cash from Missouri pot shops to Colorado banks.
As soon as the money is seized, the cops turn the money over to the Feds, which places it out of the jurisdiction of state judges, who are then unable to intervene. Under Federal forfeiture laws, the local cops get 80% of whatever the Federal government confiscates. Getting $800,000 for a traffic stop is a pretty lucrative business move.
This is purely an attempt to use badges to conduct armed robbery. The cops want people not to oppose them, but that is pretty hard to do when you are acting more like a criminal gang than you are a legitimate law enforcement agency.
Antigun
President Potato is Wrong
President Biden made a speech on gun control in New York. He said that
When the [Second] Amendment was passed, it didn’t say that anyone could own any kind of gun and any kind of weapon. You couldn’t buy a cannon when this Amendment was passed, so there’s no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons.
President Joe Biden on gun control
The Amendment didn’t say that, for two reasons: First, the Amendments to the Constitution don’t say that people can do anything. The Amendments say that the GOVERNMENT can’t do things. The government can’t infringe on the right keep to bear arms, is what it says. Second, people DID own cannons. Privately organized and funded artillery companies in the colonies date all the way back to the 1630s. A century later, in the 1740s, there are records of Benjamin Franklin helping organize artillery companies while stressing that they were made completely of volunteers and armed at their own expense.
One of the driving forces behind the first major battles of the Revolutionary was because the British soldiers were coming to confiscate privately-owned arms – including cannons and mortars – such as ones that were being held by veterans of the French and Indian War as war trophies.
In fact, there were people who owned entire warships. See my post on this from 2013.
During the course of the Revolution, approximately 1,700 letters of Marque were issued to privateers. In the War of 1812, President James Madison issued more than 500 letters of Marque to privateers. These letters of marque created what was, essentially, legal piracy, and it was sanctioned by the government and even deemed necessary. So how did these privateers arm their vessels? With cannons that they purchased as individuals.
Our colonial navy had approximately 1,200 cannons on board less than 65 ships. The privateers, on the other hand, had almost 15,000 cannons – all privately owned.
The National Firearms Act of 1934, which is, by far, the most restrictive piece of Federal legislation related to the ownership of arms, says nothing about cannons. It wasn’t until 1968 that things we regard as modern artillery were regulated further when ‘destructive devices’ were added to the law.
But muzzleloading cannons, like the ones used during the Revolutionary War remain conspicuously absent in any legislation. You could buy a cannon as an individual in the Revolution era, and you can still buy one today as an individual.
The President then went on to say that the DOJ will be issuing restrictions on guns made at home within the next few weeks, what he calls a “National ghost gun enforcement initiative.” He also took a shot at the “assault weapon” boogieman.
You know, futures cut short by a man with a stolen Glock with 40 rounds. A magazine with 40 rounds. And it’s really a weapon of war. One of the things I was proudest of years ago when I was in the Senate, I was able to get these weapons and the size of magazines outlawed, that got changed, got overruled, but I don’t see any rationale why there should be such a weapon able to be purchased. It doesn’t violate anybody’s Second Amendment rights to deny that.
President Joe Biden on the ’94 Assault Weapons Ban
The law didn’t get overruled. It expired. Because the law had a ten year expiration date built into it.
The President is also claiming that outlawing weapons doesn’t violate your right to own them. Since when?
Criminals
Policing for Profit
After my post from a couple of days ago, it has become apparent that some people think that speed cameras are a good idea, saying that they don’t speed, and are tired of people who do. It’s cute that those people think that speed cameras have anything to do with traffic safety or actual speeding.
In Baltimore, a speed camera issued a speeding ticket to a stationary car. The real story here isn’t that one car was erroneously ticketed. No, the real story is the fact that Baltimore’s 164 cameras have issued $48 million in tickets over the last three years. If the amount of the ticket, $40, is typical, this means that 400,000 tickets a year are issued by those 164 cameras: roughly 2400 tickets for each camera. The officers that review the pictures before a ticket is issued review and issue 1200 tickets per day. On an 8 hour workday, that leaves just 24 seconds for each picture to be reviewed and a citation issued. In other words, this is nothing but a revenue generator with few safeguards or oversight.
Officials in Heath, Ohio installed 2 speed cameras to watch for excessive speed on Route 79, an area that had seen only one crash in the previous two years. Those two cameras alone accounted for 5,000 traffic citations in just 4 weeks.
Since it was such a money maker, ten more cameras were installed to watch intersections in town and look for red light runners. Those ten cameras were responsible for 5,000 more tickets their first month. At those intersections, light runners had been responsible for only 16 traffic accidents over the previous two years.
In all, the traffic tickets will cost the drivers in the area more than $12,000,000 in fines each year, of which the city will keep $10,00,000.
Then there was the Long Island traffic cameras that were responsible for $2.4 million in School Zone speeding tickets during the summer, when there was no school in session.
The big winner here is actually the private company that installs and runs the cameras. They frequently are involved in kickback schemes.
Miami, Washington, DC, and half a dozen other cities have been involved in this fleecing of the public. No oversight, with a private company running the camera while giving some of the take back to the city.