Yes, Virginia, there is life after Fast & Furious gunrunning.

Jones Walker Adds Former White House Official

Advancing the cause of unconstitutional black-robed banditry.

Breyer’s dangerous dissent in McCutcheon (the campaign finance case)

In short, once one adopts the Progressive view of freedom of speech as only going so far as to protect the public interest in a well-functioning marketplace of ideas, there is no obvious reason to limit reduced scrutiny of government “public interest” regulation of speech to campaign finance regulations. Nor is it obvious why the Court should give strict scrutiny to speech restrictions that don’t directly affect the marketplace of ideas, instead of just using a malleable test balancing “speech interests” versus other interests. Not surprisingly, then, Breyer is the Justice who is least inclined to protect freedom of speech in a variety of contexts.

Kill a congressman for Christ?

The entire Bill of Rights seems to be out of favor in CT.

A Connecticut community college suspended a student veteran for his aggressive questioning of Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy during a public forum, prompting a First Amendment advocacy group to condemn the college for its flagrant disrespect for free speech and due process.

'Proliferation' of armed units seen in federal agencies

"It's one of the untold stories about government," said former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who lives in Taos, is an avid skier and has been a leading critic of the operation that turned up only a few minor infractions. "People don't grasp the size and the scope of these entities and their law enforcement arms."

David Codrea's excellent suggestion for the CT situation: An early warning commo network.

What would it take to establish an unofficial "emergency broadcast system" that would be within the average gun owner's reach and capabilities to participate in? Would there be a better place to test it than one where the only way to enforce existing law is through widespread initiation of force against the multitudes defying it? One thing we know: Creatures of darkness hate the light.

Reese family challenges appeals panel overturning of new trial order

Attorneys for the Reese family filed a petition for rehearing en banc Tuesday in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver. This latest move by the defense challenges a March 19 decision by a three judge panel overturning a District Court decision that the family of former gun dealers merited a new trial based on the prosecution withholding evidence that a witness had been the subject of a criminal investigation.

NRA lobbyist breaks Illinois law, helps change it

"I had a run-in with a couple of cops and because of it, it educated me about the law, and I thought there were some inequities of the law that needed fixed," Vandermyde said.

"Coloradans Fight Gun-Control Laws."

Attorneys called several witnesses Wednesday, including Florida State professor and gun control expert Gary Kleck, and Colorado Farm Bureau Public Policy Coordinator Nicholas Colglazier.

Wargaming the opening blows of civil war in Connecticut. The lessons of Waco and the phrase that the smartest state cops in CT are most afraid of.

Dan Zimmerman at The Truth About Guns asks Could Connecticut Gun Laws Spark Another Waco?

There’s been a lot of discussion among members of the Armed Intelligentsia lately about how Connecticut’s finest might proceed if they decide to confiscate unregistered guns from the state’s 100,000 or more newly-minted felons. The level of concern is evidenced by daily long comment threads, speculative posts by people who are not members of law enforcement, and even a couple of contributed opinions from the LEO community. The rational consensus seems to be that if the gun-grab order were given, cops would pinch a registration scofflaw at the grocery store, at work, on the road…anyplace other than his or her home where a Ruby Ridge-style tragedy might ensue. Here I propose the alternative–that LEOs might not in fact be that rational if and when the time comes . . .

Zimmerman concludes:

I don’t mean to tar all LEOs with this brush. . . . (b)ut, they are at least as prone to groupthink and bunker mentality as any other organization, and likely more so given the nature of their work. It’s what led Lon Horiuchi to kill someone he couldn’t even see, and what led the LAPD to shoot up a random truck and two innocent citizens during the manhunt for Micheal Dorner.

So it’s not that some cops are willing and eager jackbooted thugs. The potential danger in Connecticut is that someday soon, officers like the ones who ran the Waco siege may show up at the home of a gun owner who’s done nothing but have his name appear on a list of people whose registration forms arrived on Jan 2. They’ll be thoroughly convinced that gun owner is a violent domestic terrorist who’s holding the rest of the family hostage. They’ll demand his or her spouse or children in exchange for food or a phone call.

And if s/he says no, as almost any of us would, the negotiator will just assume they’re holding out for more. They’ll think of the gun owner as the one who’s trading on the family’s lives. And then, at some point, they’ll call it quits and send in the tanks.

Zimmerman is correct that we should not expect completely rational behavior from CT state cops tasked with firearm confiscation raids. He is incorrect to think that the Waco paradigm -- fatally flawed or not -- is what we will see in CT. Unlike the Davidians, CT firearm owners will not sit still to be held under siege if they can help it.

Seven years ago I wrote "Resistance is Futile": Waco Rules vs. Romanian Rules, pointing out that we, at least, had learned the rules at Waco and would modify our behavior in accordance with that new understanding.

Nicolae Ceausescu after the application of Romanian Rules

(W)e've had almost 15 years to study Waco Rules now. Fifteen years of studying how to best direct the resources of the armed citizenry against the next predatory administration grown too big for its constitutional britches. Fifteen years of considering the lessons of Christmas, 1989. After the cold war with the Clintonistas, we gunnies began to understand the finer points of credible deterrence. Now, having completed a long and challenging curriculum, we certainly understand what Jefferson meant by "pardon and pacify them." It would be wiser if Mr. Prather and his historically foolish liberal friends did not seek to give us a final examination in this subject of study, for the results are NOT academic. Just ask Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. Of course, you'll have to go to Hell to do that.

This is also what I tried to get across to Eric Holder five years ago in my letter No More Free Wacos: An Explication of the Obvious Addressed to Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States.

Elena Ceausescu a little worse for wear. She thought Waco Rules applied. Oops.

As I tried to explain to the Legislatures of New Jersey and Rhode Island, asking them, "Are you seriously proposing to have your own skulls turned into soap dishes?" --

(W)e live in a different century than Jenny Brooks. Had Jenny understood the principles of 4th Generation Warfare, she would have sent her boys to kill the Confederate Governor of the state of Alabama and his political minions -- not to mention the Confederate congressmen who passed the despotic laws and the newspaper editors who endorsed them. For 4th Generation Warfare understands that the way to defeat an enemy is to directly engage the war makers and decision takers. Win the war there, and the raid parties stop coming. This is the reality of war in the 21st Century -- this is the reality of the civil war you risk by pushing people you barely understand who have decided in their own minds that they will be pushed no longer.

Viewed from this reality, the tyrannical legislators of Connecticut voted in favor of their very own suicide pact, although I daresay none of them understood that at the time.

One of the lessons of Waco that ALWAYS comes up in discussions of Waco among LEOs, regardless of their opinion of the legitimacy of the ATF's raid, is that the first and most deadly mistake to the ATF raid party was the fact that the operational security of the exercise was blown from the beginning and yet raid commanders insisted upon going ahead anyway. The Davidians knew they were coming. That the entire raid wasn't wiped out in a Davidian ambush can only be attributed to the fact that the Davidians were peaceful, "law-abiding" people and they didn't understand either the nature of their enemy or that their fate -- all of them, men, women and children -- was sealed when the ATF fired the first rounds.

We have had the benefit of more than two decades of hindsight, and no one -- especially the forces of state violence in CT -- should expect that their victims will be as obliging as the Davidians. Indeed, I learned in a conversation with a resident of the state this week that the scariest words that form and inform the nightmares of the LE analysts in that state is the haunting phrase of an imaginary phone call: "They're coming." The analysts know, if the politicians do not, that CT law enforcement is riddled with resisters -- Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, limitless friends and neighbors of the men and women whom the CT state legislature has made instant "criminals" -- who will send out the Paul Revere warning when they learn the raid parties are on the way.

It doesn't take a military genius to figure that some will get out of the way and fade into the countryside according to preparations they have already made. Some will get their families out and stay behind, because of health reasons or stubbornness, determined to give the raid party a real ambush as the Davidians did not.

Given the lack of numbers available to the state authorities, they will fall back on the federally-sponsored vertical integration of law enforcement. They will turn to the tried and true "joint task forces." Yet as the analysts know only too well, that merely increases exponentially the opportunities for operational security compromise. It also guarantees one other thing, which they may or may not have thought through: The moment that federal forces get involved in such firearm raids in CT is the moment that the civil war starts in all 50 states.

As my friend Bob Wright once told an FBI SAC in Albuquerque NM when he asked Bob if he would take his men out of state to the site of another potential Waco:

"Why would I want to do that? There's plenty of you federal sonsabitches around here."

More importantly, from the point of view of the war makers and decision takers at all levels, such tyrannical murders being perpetrated by a combination of federal, state and local para-militarized police in one place will lead to all of them being targets under 4GW. The spark may happen in CT, thanks to that state's legislative tyrants, but the conflagration could certainly envelope the entire country with terminal results to politicians and the physical supporters and intellectual cheerleaders who form the brains of the bloody-handed tools who execute their orders.

Unless the state of CT holds in abeyance any enforcement of this intolerable act -- at least until the Supreme Court can rule -- you can count that some day, in the wee hours of the morning, someone's phone will ring and the voice on the other end will say, "They're coming."

Mike Vanderboegh

III

Hypocrisy much? Bloomberg Biz Week's Barrett Criticizes NRA For Non-Existent Gloating in Leland Yee Case.

... In happier times, the Brady Campaign, a leading gun-control group, named Yee to its Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll. From here on out, the folks at Brady will need to do better background checks on potential political allies ...

ATF agents impersonated landlord with power company, report says.

Fred Cate, a privacy expert and law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, said such behavior erodes public trust in the federal government and that the agents involved violated the law. "Clearly this is rogue activity," Cate said. "No question about it."

EP Armory establishing legal defense fund to protect polymer precursor receivers

Acknowledging a necessary self-imposed silence as they marshal their legal resources following a March raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives in which polymer precursor receivers were seized, EP Armory (the manufacturer that supplied Ares Armor, itself the subject of ATF raids) issued a statement Monday updating customers and supporters on the status of their legal plight.

Sorry for the thin morning

I'm headed to the nephrologist to consult on the causes of my kidneys' threatened shutdown. More later,

Excellent graphic on the militarization of the police.

At arrestrecords.com

Doesn't look like I'm going to make it to Knob Creek this weekend.

Barring a miracle, I won't be at Knob Creek this weekend as planned. Too many problems of workload and health, resources and logistics have to be solved for me to make it and I can't make them happen fast enough. Sorry. Will let you know what happens as soon as I know.

LATER: Well, that's interesting. I'm so messed up, I mistook Knob Creek for this weekend when it is next weekend. So, maybe I'll make it after all. I'll see the nephrologist tomorrow, so maybe my kidney failure cause will be diagnosed and treatment begun by then.

"She didn't want to run them over." Problem areas: Situational awareness, willingness to drive the wrong way on a one-way street,enough ammunition and the will to use it.

"Stupid is as stupid does, Forrest."

Mob attack on family caught on camera. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Loeffle says after that, the situation quickly escalated. Her boyfriend, Ron Carter, was in the driver's seat and stopped the car to see what was going on. (Stupid.)

They say when he got out, the teens moved in on him. (Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.)

In today's collapsing civilization you must be aware and able to understand what's going on around you -- at all times. Anything less is not the fault of the savages who seek to victimize you and kill you, but yours.

What's he going to do when people start getting killed over this new unconstitutional law? I guess this guy drives the weeniewagon when it ventures into upstate New York.

NRA Board Member Tom King Laments Rhetoric At Pro-Gun Rallies

Original story.

Nice shot.

British sniper in Afghanistan kills six Taliban with one bullet

'Guns everywhere' in Georgia--why is that a problem?

There's a reason that the anti-self-defense zealots refuse to make a distinction between the concepts of "guns everywhere," and "guns everywhere except where there is no potential need for them." It's because even they lack the audacity to try to dispute the fact that no such distinction exists.