Rulers, ‘Foolers,’ and Shooters: They’re Closing the Cage in Plain Sight

A picture that has been around awhile depicts Homo sapiens society at its finest…as it truly is. There are four “tiers,” so to speak, with the politicians, royalty, and rulers occupying the uppermost level, followed by the clergymen and religious swamis on tier two, and then the gendarmes/police/soldiers on tier three. The bottom tier is occupied by the people, supporting the other three tiers upon their back. The caption is “We rule you [Leaders], we fool you [Religious Heads], we shoot you [the “Enforcer” class].

These “tiers” are to be found in every nation, among every people and tongue. It is not a new concept: these three levels of nabobs have existed ever since man formed social communities that encompassed more than the nuclear family.

The difference between the past and now: for the first time, these tiers will soon be interconnected regardless of location and mutually supportive of one another to obtain global totalitarian rule.

They already have so much in place, as outlined in previous articles: cell phones for most of the populations that transmit user location along with biometrics (in the latest models), interconnected CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) cameras that coordinate and fix your position with the phones, and a record of all that you buy or sell at a POS (Point of Sale) in the happy big-box stores. They have laws to make you pay taxes on income, property, and they will come to seize your property and/or you if you don’t pay it…with force.

The laws are increasing in number, tightening the corral around you in your daily life…controlling where you can live, what type of home you can build, how you can communicate on the Internet, how you conduct business. Every business has a corresponding government inspector or regulator. The death of cash is coming soon, as governments replace it with EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) completely: they will then be able to keep track of every dime you earn or spend, keep track of what they can tax you (overt theft) and what they can pilfer (covert theft, in the case of an electronic “glitch,” a “matter of national security,” or some other nonsensical operation).

Many people do not realize the depth…the lengths these people are going to in order to achieve global totalitarian rule over all mankind. Recently Bill Gates announced a decision to invest with corporations to place 500 satellites in orbit to be able to monitor every inch of the globe in real-time surveillance. Last week he announced his intentions to develop a “super vaccine” in order to “safeguard” the health of the planet from an outbreak that could kill tens of millions of people.

There is one “biggie” that must be “taken care of” before all this control can be finalized: They must first confiscate all firearms.

The most recent news headlines show their intent to do just that. Let’s take it by “category” of the three tiers:

1. Rulers: The United States’ very own Representative Eric Swalwell, (D-CA) is the one representing the first big push toward totalitarian takeover via gun seizures. On Thursday, 5/3/18, Swalwell (as reported by NBC News on an interview with Swalwell by USA Today) proposed a complete ban of what he describes as “military-style semiautomatic assault weapons,” along with a government “buy-back” of these rifles…and pursuit of those who refuse it. Swalwell describes this last part as “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.” Swalwell cited the Australian mandatory gun buyback laws and as an example used the “unprompted” walkout and demonstrations of Parkland High School students after that school’s shooting. Here’s what Swalwell had to say:

“There’s something new and different about the surviving Parkland high schoolers’ demands.  They dismiss the moral equivalence we’ve made for far too long regarding the Second Amendment.  I’ve been guilty of it myself, telling constituents and reporters that ‘we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.’  The right to live is supreme over any other.  Australia got it right.”

2. Foolers: On Sunday, 5/6/18, the Pope came out and said that all firearms must be confiscated and taken away, and that the only firearms must be in the hands of the UN (United Nations).  This is not a new thought, as it was John F. Kennedy who proposed a ban of all nuclear weapons and firearms, with the UN “peacekeepers” being the only ones who retained any weapons.  That “clarion call” has been echoed by the UN Small Arms Treaty (the one that Bolton…current Secretary of State…refused to sign when he was UN ambassador under Bush Jr.).  Sure, many may try to disregard what the Pope is saying…but you can’t completely discount anyone who has a billion people under his dominion, spiritually and economically.


3. Shooters: There are two excellent articles for your perusal written by John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute. One of them is entitled Armed and Dangerous: If Police Don’t Have to Protect the Public, What Good Are They? on 2/28/18. The other more recent article of 5/2/18 is entitled Dial T for Tyranny: While America Feuds, the Police State Shifts Into High Gear.

In “tier 1” of the “Rulers,” we have a sitting Representative of Congress who openly advocates bypassing the 2^nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States by banning a specific type of rifle; he also proposes the governmental “buying” of those semiautomatic rifles. It would do well here to remember the words of Alexis DeTocqueville in “Democracy in America,” [para.] “The end of the Republic [America] will come when the government can buy the people with their own money.” Then(so-called) Representative Swalwell suggested the government follow (in the event weapons owners do not submit) a violation of due process, as well as the supreme law of the land to illegally confiscate any weapons not submitted under a proposed government buyback…a clear violation of the 2^nd Amendment.

It runs deeper, as we can see how the “Parkland Students” cited as an example by Swalwell are the new mantra, the new paradigm to enforce social consciousness and supplant Constitutional law with the law of the mob…the “tyranny of the majority” (a phrase of DeTocqueville) inflicting its wishes. Then there’s the “Australia got it right” grammatical eyesore of Swalwell’s populist jargon, a phony attempt to appear “grass roots” and an average guy…jargon that also pushes the “groupthink” (Australia’s doing it, why shouldn’t we?) so necessary to obtain global governance.

In “tier 2” we have a Marxist who is the leader of one of the world’s largest religions openly calling for a confiscation of the guns, with only the UN holding them. As mentioned, this guy has more than a billion people under his control, and he’s clearly in the “pocket” of those moving toward global governance. Standard Alinsky principle in “Rules for Radicals” is “organizing the organized.” His loyal followers will follow his lead. Don’t worry: Protestants, Jews, Mormons, and all the others are also “subjected” to the same playbook, perhaps not under one “figurehead” but with their own “Master of Puppets” enforcing their submittal to his/her authority and then compliance with outside directives of the governments.

In “tier 3,” when you read these articles, you will come to see how there is no more “Officer Friendly.” The police are duty-bound to protect the taxpaying corporate entities, businesses, and politico-oligarchy, and nothing more. They are our jailers, not our protectors. They ensure the continuity of the establishment: the existing social, political, religious, and economic order of things, nothing more. Those who mistakenly believe in the law (as police officers) will eventually be marginalized and drummed out of the force. Recently it was reported in Austin, TX that trainees/police cadets were informed by their instructors that the public are nothing more than cockroaches. In truth, the public pays for their funding…and they are under governmental control and direction: to obtain ad valorem for the municipal and state coffers while keeping the beeves moving, “tagging” the strays with tickets for the quotas and ensuring the docility of the herd.

The rulers, “foolers,” and shooters are tightening their grasp by the day, aided by the ever-increasing technology that allows for more surveillance and control, along with the stultified and complacent mentality of the public. There is a conspiracy, but it is not a theory: it is a fact. It is no longer a hidden agenda, but openly being pursued in plain sight.  The goal is global governance and the complete abrogation of all rights. We’re seeing it today, and it becomes worse with the passage of time.

How Gun Control Laws for “Mentally Ill” Could Disarm Those Who Question Authority

This article was originally published by John Vibes at TheFreeThoughtProject.com

In the growing debate surrounding the natural right to self-defense, one of the most popular proposed methods of gun control has been restrictions on gun-ownership for those who are deemed to be mentally ill. This is a measure that is often suggested by liberals and conservatives alike, but it is important to stop and consider what something like this might entail.

When any collective group is banned from owning a gun, they are effectively turned into second-class citizens. In the case of mental illness, that classification is so vague and open to interpretation that it could possibly be applied to over half of the population, depending on which criteria you use.

Mental illness can be very hard to identify since there is no kind of official test for most conditions, most people are diagnosed according to the subjective opinions of the doctors that observe them. Even the most severe conditions, like schizophrenia, can be very difficult to identify and is often misdiagnosed.

Psychiatric drugs are another possible factor that could get someone marked by the government as mentally unstable, but a classification like this would allow for large portions of the US population to be disarmed.

According to a 2016 study by JAMA Internal Medicine, more than 1 in 6 Americans are on some type of psychiatric drug. This is not to mention the large number of people who report symptoms of depression or anxiety and don’t take medication.

A policy like this could also allow the government to disarm dissidents and political enemies. As psychiatry became more influential towards the middle of the 20th century, rulers around the world began using “mental illness” as an excuse to lock away anyone who might disagree with them. The Soviet regime became notorious for this practice by labeling all political dissidents as “mentally ill” so they could be locked away in institutions where they were no threat to the establishment.

The United States government also has a long history of slapping unruly citizens with the mark of mental illness. President Franklin Roosevelt famously called his detractors “the lunatic fringe,” and this type of attitude towards activists has carried on in the halls of government to this day.

In the dictionary of mental illnesses, known as DSM-5, published by the American Psychiatric Association, there is actually a condition listed for people who have a problem with authority. Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a name that psychiatrists made up to identify children who won’t do what they are told, and now even adults are being diagnosed with this condition as well.

Meanwhile, politicians and mainstream media are quick to label anyone who questions the official narrative as a “conspiracy theorist,” a term that has been falsely associated with mental illness in pop culture.

A study in 2017 set out to determine whether or not believing in conspiracy theories was a form of mental illness. As expected they found the exact answer that they were looking for, people who don’t trust the government and mainstream media are crazy, and suffering from something called illusory pattern perception.

There is another dilemma that arises in the discussion of disarming people who are accused of having a mental illness, and that is the fact mentally ill people are 10 times more likely to be victims of violence than the rest of society because they are often seen as easy targets.

Complicating matters further is the fact that these people can’t depend on the police to help them in these situations, as studies have shown that the mentally ill are 16 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than the average person.

According to the Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center, a minimum of 1 in 4 fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness.

To prevent mentally ill people from owning firearms is a severe form of “ableist” discrimination, and also opens the door for nearly anyone to be classified as mentally ill.

There are sometimes extreme cases where a person’s mental instability is creating a dangerous situation for the community, like the recent Parkland shooting, for example. In this case, the shooter had a known history of violence, regularly made threats and was visited by police on numerous occasions because of his threatening behavior. In cases like this, it is reasonable to keep an eye on someone, restrict their access to firearms, or possibly quarantine them from society in the most extreme situations.

There are many laws on the books currently would have allowed the FBI or local police to intervene in their initial encounters with the shooter, but they decided that a student known for violent outbursts and talking about carrying out school shootings was not worth looking into.

As TFTP reported earlier this month, there is a law on the books known as the Extreme Risk Protection Order or ERPO, which went into effect in June of 2017. This law is used when a person is considered an “extreme” threat as reported by police and family members. An ERPO must be approved by a judge and only after this person is proven to be a danger to themselves or others can police move in to confiscate their weapons.

These types of targeted approaches specifically aimed at individuals who are a known source of violence in the community would do far more to prevent tragedies from happening, than a wide-reaching law that could threaten the rights and safety of millions of innocent gun owners.

Repealing the Second Amendment is easier than you think

In Tuesday’s New York Times, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens calls for a repeal of the Second Amendment, calling it a “relic of the 18th century.”

In response, many commentators have focused on what would be involved in repealing the amendment, noting that the formal amendment process is very costly and difficult. Amending the Constitution requires securing two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate — and then three-fourths of the states would have to ratify the amendment.

We Don’t Amend the Constitution the Old-Fashioned Way Anymore

It’s true that amending the constitution the old-fashioned way is not easy.

Historically, though, many reformers and activists thought it worth the effort. For example, reformers in the early 20th century advocated for, and passed, many new amendments that drastically changed the nature of the federal government. New amendments involving the income tax, the selection of US senators, and alcohol prohibition were all passed. Other major amendments came close to passing, such as one outlawing child labor, which would have expanded federal oversight of household chores for children.

But, in practice, there is another way to amend the Constitution, and this has become increasingly seen as the only way to modify the Constitution in recent decades. This other method is used almost annually through landmark Supreme Court decisions that create new “rights” or re-interpret the Constitution, or apply the provisions in the Constitution in new ways. The practical effect of these legal changes has been to amend the Constitution. And, this can be done without having to go through all the trouble of having to convince a sizable portion of the population to vote for the change.

We can find many examples of this if we look.

On the matter of abortion, for example, the Court in 1973 simply invented a new federal “right” to an abortion, and one that could be banned or regulated by federal law. Prior to this decision, it was almost universally accepted — among both pro- and anti-abortion observers — that abortion was a matter for state and local governments. The Supreme Court, without a formal amendment, nevertheless effectively amended the Constitution unilaterally.

Another example can be found during the New Deal. For years, the federal courts had opposed the sorts of federal regulatory schemes that Franklin Roosevelt was attempting to pass as part of his New Deal. Faced with court intransigence, Roosevelt threatened to “pack the court” and to heap political pressure on the Court. Nearly overnight, the Court began to approve New Deal legislation that it had previously opposed. Now, new federal regulations that had previously been deemed unconstitutional were now all constitutional. No constitutional amendment was necessary.

Indeed, even on the matter of gun control, courts have recently re-interpreted the Constitution in brand new ways.

In the 2008 case of District of Columbia vs. Heller, the Court expanded the Second Amendment to apply to state and local governments as well. Previous to this, state and local governments were far more unlimited in how they regulated guns.

Prior to the case, it was not quite clear, legally speaking, if the Amendment was subject to “incorporation” and thus applied to all levels of government. 

The Heller decision, which Stevens dissented on, expanded state and local restrictions on guns.

Historical experience backs this up since we find that state and local controls on gun ownership were common in the 19th century, and federal courts were not in the habit of striking them down. After all, municipal-level gun control measures could be found in many parts of the United States, including the so-called “Wild West.” Another example is the 1876 constitution of the State of Colorado which explicitly bans concealed weapons.

With Heller, however, the Second Amendment was expanded — and this was a de facto amendment to the US Constitution as well.

When these changes take place, they happen without asking the voters to approve the changes or debate the issues. All that is needed is for five judges in Washington, DC, to agree.

Although we often hear from some conservatives that the United States is becoming more democratic, the truth is that the old highly democratic means of amending the Constitution is now all but shunned. The modern habit is to defer to the “experts” — federal judges.

This way of thinking is alive and well today. There was once broad agreement, for example, that prohibiting broad classes of substances required a change to the Constitution. This is why the prohibition of alcohol required a constitutional amendment 90 years ago.

By the 1970s, though, passing constitutional amendments was out of style. Nowadays, when it comes to banning a variety of drugs other than alcohol, all that is necessary is to pass new federal statutes. The federal courts might strike those new laws down, or they might not. If the courts agree with new power grabs by Congress or the President, then the new change becomes constitutional. Fortunately for Congress and the President, the courts are very often inclined to agree.

From a political perspective, it’s just a lot easier to pass new federal laws and see what you can get away with.

This is why it’s very unlikely there’s going to be any formal repeal of the Second Amendment. Passing such an amendment would require a lot of time and effort from supporters — time and effort that could be better spent on getting a US president elected who will appoint judges who will act as if the Second Amendment had been repealed.

This is the way of amending the Constitution in modern America. While this has always been true to a significant extent, it is now all the more true that the federal courts are a political playground where judges make rulings that reflect their political ideologies.

John Paul Stevens knows all this, of course, and it’s extremely unlikely he thinks the Second Amendment will be repealed any time soon. He does know, however, that those who agree with him can affect what judges get appointed and how those judges rule. And that is how the Second Amendment will really be repealed.

Via Mises

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Featured Image: Clint Budd/Flickr

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Betrayal: How the REPUBLICANS Are Gutting the Second Amendment

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

Everyone likes to blame the Democrats for gun control, but here’s a news flash: those of us who fervently believe in the Second Amendment are actually being betrayed by members of the Republican party who are in Congress right now. Bills on the table right now would gut our right to bear arms, and the Congress is controlled by Republicans.

The spending bill that Congress hopes to pass is more than 2200 pages, according to Senator Rand Paul, who was outraged at being given less than a day to read the entire bill. Senator Paul live-tweeted his reading of the bill last night, and it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody else in Congress spent the evening reading it before they vote today.

Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses – and parties. $1.3 trillion. Busts budget caps. 2200 pages, with just hours to try to read it.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018

Well here it is, all 2,232 budget-busting pages. The House already started votes on it. The Senate is expected to soon. No one has read it. Congress is broken… pic.twitter.com/izvJlUEgUM

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018

How the spending bill affects our Second Amendment rights

In this budget bill are some insidious things that affect our Second Amendment rights.

The bill revives an Obama-era restriction on firearms for senior citizens.

Just before President Obama left office, his administration finalized new regulations banning Social Security recipients from buying a gun if they have trouble managing their finances.

Using the Congressional Review Act, Republicans and two Democrats passed a bill overturning the regulation. But the bill did more than that. It also prevents any future president from reinstituting the ban without new legislative authorization from Congress.

Unfortunately, the spending bill passed Thursday allows the ban to be reinstituted because it reauthorizes the 2007 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act. This act allowed government agencies, not just the courts, to determine if someone is mentally incompetent to buy or possess a gun.

House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said during testimony late Wednesday that he was “disturbed” that the bill would undo part of Republicans’ good work. But by Thursday morning, the House leadership had decided to go ahead with the measure. (source)

And that’s not all.

The bill funnels $50 million dollars into strict anti-gun organizations, namely the STOP School Violence Act, designed by the Sandy Hook Promise, which advocates extreme gun control.

At the same time, the bill forbids the use of federal money for arming and training school staff. That’s right – our tax dollars will be put to work against us. And representatives that are supposed to be pro-gun are allowing it to happen.

Finally, the bill will authorize the CDC to research “gun violence.” But the CDC has been allowed to research this for years, despite what you see to the contrary from the MSM. In 1996, the Dickey provision prohibited the CDC from using government funds to advocate or promote gun control.” There is no such provision in the current bill.

It isn’t just Democrats who are passing this bill.

This bill has passed the House by a vote of 256-167. The breakdown in the House of Representatives is 238 Republicans and 192 Democrats. If the Republicans were truly looking after our gun rights, as they like to advertise, this bill wouldn’t have passed the House.

Today it will be going before the Senate, where 60 votes will be needed to pass it. The Senate has 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats, which means that if it passes, the “pro-gun” Republicans have betrayed their constituents yet again.

Here’s what happens next:

Thursday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to end debate on the bill, triggering a 30-hour window senators can use to discuss it.

The debate time could be shortened if Paul and other senators unanimously agree to do so but it was unclear how far Paul would go to press his point.

If the whole 30-hour time is used, the earliest the Senate could vote to advance the so-called “omnibus” bill would be 1 a.m. Saturday morning.

The Senate would then have to wait even longer before taking any final vote to pass it. (source)

If (when) this revolting turn of events occurs and the bill is passed by the Senate, the President will most likely sign it according to White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

“In order to get the defense spending primarily, (and) all the rest of our priorities funded, we had to give away a lot of stuff that we didn’t want to give away,” Mulvaney said. (source)

And that’s not all.

The spending in this bill is truly obscene. You’d think an American budget would be focused on American interests, right?

Senator Paul tweeted these highlights lowlights.

o $5m for Vietnam Education Foundation Grants
o $2.579m for Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe
o $15m to USAID for promoting international higher education between universities
o $2.696bn for International Disaster Assistance

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018

o $1m for the World Meteorological Organization
o $218m for Promoting Democracy Development in Europe (yep..the birthplace of democracy needs promoting)
o $25m for International Religious Freedom
o $10m for disadvantaged Egyptian Students

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018

o $12m for Scholarships for Lebanon
o $20m for Middle East Partnership Initiative Scholarship Program
o $12m in military funding for Vietnam
o $3.5m in nutrition assistance to Laos
o $15m in Developmental assistance to China
o $10m for Women LEOs in Afghanistan

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018

Seriously.

If you voted Republican to protect your 2A rights, you were betrayed.

The long and the short of this?

• Who you vote for doesn’t matter.


• Having more Republicans than Democrats in Congress doesn’t matter.


• Our system is broken, and what you think about it doesn’t matter.

As long as our government passes bills with thousands of pages instead of single item bills, the public will continue to be betrayed and deceived. Those who believe that voting Republican will ensure their continued right to protect themselves have been deceived and until we refuse to keep putting these people in office who are there to serve themselves, not their constituencies, we will continue losing our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.

How is voting for the “lesser of two evils” working out for you?

What if we opted not to put any kind of evil in office, not just the lesser one? What if we opted to put the best of our country in positions of power, not just the less horrible of our country?

When are we going to say that we’ve had enough? At the rate we’re going, probably when it’s already too late and our corrupt system has enslaved us to the point that rebellion is futile.

The mainstream media is acting like Senator Rand Paul is a lunatic who is determined to shut down the government, but in reality, Senator Paul seems to be one of the only people in Washington DC who performing his due diligence.

Write to your local Senators and call their offices. (Find the contact info here.) Demand that they vote no on this spending bill.  We have to stop passing policies that haven’t even been read by those voting on them. Lawmaking should not be a game of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Government shutdowns have happened before and they’re mostly theater. We’ve been perfectly fine without them.

Marxist Wolves Circle the 2nd Amendment

There’s no need at this point to pull any punches, and the Marquis of Queensbury rules have already been tossed out the window. The wolves are circling to bring down the 2^nd Amendment. Those wolves are the establishment. There are no political parties: the political parties are merely the illusion of choice. The government has been removed from the control of “We the People” for more than a century. The wolves are the Federal Government, the State Governments, the Local and Municipal Governments. The wolves are the Democrats, the Republicans, and the far-left parties (Communists, Greens, etc.).

The wolves employ the coyotes: the youth, misguided and misled, who are interested in partying and doing the minimal to “get by” in life…an entitlement mindset. They know not that they will be “pruned” by the tree-trimmers…the ones who will rout these saplings out before they become aware…aware of the truth. The tree-trimmers are the ones who would chop down the tree of liberty…that selfsame tree that needs (in the words of Thomas Jefferson) to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and the blood of tyrants.

The youth are critical to the wolves from a voting perspective, because (as de Tocqueville wrote) they enable the wolves to attain victory through “the tyranny of the majority,” in which rights are trampled by using numbers to tip the balance and allow majority rule…no matter how mindless or uninformed. No matter that the mindless vote for one reason, while the wolves have another purpose in mind. Coyotes, the mindless, who will be enslaved and pruned when the right time arises.

First the guns: they must have the guns.

On Friday, Governor (in name only) Rick Scott of Florida signed a new, lovely law that is onerous to the Constitution and directly assaults the 2^nd Amendment. This excerpt from the AP holds the basic parameters:

…the law,…raises the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21; extends a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns; and bans bump stocks, which allow guns to mimic fully automatic fire.

As can be seen, the law is onerous to the Constitution. There is nothing that needs to be explained about the wording in the 2^nd Amendment “shall not be infringed upon,” regarding the right to keep and bear arms. Marbury vs. Madison established the fact that any law that is onerous to the Constitution is null and void, plain and simple.

The problem is their “public safety” and “extraordinary circumstances,” that arm the wolves for slashing the throats of the deer in the name of the “public good.”

Go ahead and take it to court. Go ahead. You’ll automatically open yourself up…come forth before the barbarian hordes. You’ll be identified, monitored, followed, and placed upon their list. You will be marginalized further. You’re already marginalized and outside of normative behavior if you’re a veteran, a patriot, a person who believes in God and freedom of worship, and anyone who is against the national sovereignty of the United States being removed in favor of global governance.

The paradigm has shifted and is being shifted: the globalist initiative is replacing the Constitution for the new American existing social, political, and economic order.

Go ahead and take it to court. The NRA is filing a suit to prevent it. Nevertheless, the wheels are in motion. You will be fighting against the State…a “creature” with unlimited resources, with the media in its pocket, with thousands of actors/victims and other “living stage props” to use to garner public sentiment against you.

Read “The Running Man,” by Richard Bachman (a pen-name used by Stephen King…and read the book, as the movie is BS and was to sell, not to give the true concept of what the Running Man “contest” was about).

Here’s an excerpt of that excellent work, spoken by the head of the Network, Dan Killian, to the hero/protagonist Ben Richards:

“Your work record has been spotty and you’ve been fired…let’s see…a total of six times for such things as insubordination, insulting superiors, and abusive criticism of authority.”

Richards shrugged.

“In short you’re regarded as antiauthoritarian and antisocial.  You’re a deviate who has been intelligent enough to stay out of prison and serious trouble with the government, and you’re not hooked on anything.”

Killian then goes on to tell Richards about the Running Man.

“The program is one of the surest ways the Network has of getting rid of embryo troublemakers such as yourself, Mr. Richards.  We’ve been on for six years.  To date, we have no survivals.  To be brutally honest, we expect to have none.”

“Then you’re running a crooked table,” Richards said flatly.

Killian seemed more amused than horrified.

“But we’re not.  You keep forgetting you’re an anachronism, Mr. Richards.  People won’t be…rooting for you to get away…They want to see you wiped out, and they’ll help if they can.”

Our society is upon the cusp of a transformation to that one…a society where it is mandatory to have a free television (termed the “FreeVee) in every home…to provide a modern form of the Roman “Games” of the Flavian Amphitheater and the Circus Maximus…enrapturing and distracting the public. A society where drugs are legalized and encouraged. A society of a repressive police state, where a rigid class structure has been established. A society that consists of most of the populace as dumbed-down, dependent upon the government for subsistence. A society where government and the oligarchy openly pollute the skies, while they walk around with filters to protect against it…at taxpayer expense.

A society of ghettos, of third-world living conditions, with heavily-guarded mansions and office buildings sporadically dotting the megalopolises. A society of economic decay and crony capitalism. A society that presents “freedom” and “patriotism” as binding ribbons in a theatrical manner to ensure conformity and social “groupthink” and actions of the herded. Rigidity of thought, of conformity, and the haves pursue thrills and personal gratification and the have-nots are too dulled, too herded, and too uneducated to enable a shift in the other direction.  A society where the guns are gone…have been gone for a while.

First, they need to get the guns, and they’re doing it now…with incremental slowness, but the snowball is beginning to build up speed and mass: In the end, they’ll go door to door.

On Friday night, 3/9/18, the largest Veterans’ home in the country had another shooting.  A 36-year-old former patient of the home went in and killed three psychological workers…whom the President came out on Saturday and praised glowingly as martyrs and heroines…tireless workers who strove for the benefit of veterans. I’m sure there’s more to the story than that…but there’s the narrative, awaiting the crafting of the wolves and their slime of the mainstream media.

The bill is entitled the “Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act,” after the school where the Cruz shooting occurred. The bill in Florida targets the youth…and now they have a pretext to come after the Veterans with this shooting.  Always for a reason of protecting the public.

But who will protect us from them, from the government?  Well, we will: that is what the 2^nd Amendment is for. The right to bear arms is our right…merely affirmed by the Constitution (and wisely so). As explained in the Declaration of Independence, when the “old guards” need to be changed…the guns are when they won’t bow out gracefully.

Government is when the leaders derive just powers…just, mind you…from the consent of the governed. We haven’t had true stewardship for a long time in the United States…I don’t care about the semantics…it is the end state that matters. The current state that we are in. The government goes against the wishes of the people.

The government always manages to drum up Republicans who will vote along with the Democrats to ram legislation down our throats.  In Illinois, gun confiscation is going to be finalized with a bill commanding those 18 to 20 years of age to turn in weapons that were legally purchased.  The article is entitled “Gun Confiscation Begins in Illinois,” dated 3/10/18, by Daniel J. Sobieski of American Thinker. Read it. Here are some of the key provisions for that “legislation” as mentioned in the article:

The bill that will now head to the Illinois Senate, HB 1465,

Makes it unlawful for any person within the State to knowingly deliver or sell, or cause to be delivered or sold, an assault weapon, assault weapon attachment, .50 caliber rifle, or .50 caliber cartridge to, any person under 21 years of age.

Makes it unlawful for any person under 21 years of age to knowingly possess an assault weapon, assault weapon attachment, .50 caliber rifle, or .50 caliber cartridge 90 days after the effective date of the bill. Provides exemptions and penalties.

Provides that it is unlawful for any person within the State to knowingly deliver or sell, or cause to be delivered or sold, a large capacity ammunition feeding device to a person under 21 years of age.

Provides that it is unlawful for any person under 21 years of age to possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device within the State.

Proving the line from the movie “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson is the truth of the matter: “An elected legislature can trample a man’s rights as easily as a king.”

Let’s really think about all of this. The piece “The Running Man” mentioned above can clearly be viewed as a work of dystopian literature, and it’s easy for most people to see the tie-in to our society’s degradation on the slope toward the society in the book.

How about we take it a step further? The main character in the book, Ben Richards, wanted to make the big dollars to help his sick daughter and enable her to recover. His back against the wall and hemmed in by a society that predetermined his entire existence, “The Running Man” was the only avenue for him.

How about with these guys, such as the one in the VA home that killed those three women…and then shot himself?

Everybody always comes out with the same theories…the “hidden Blackhawk helicopters backing up the shooter,” as in Vegas…always the 2^nd and 3^rd shooters on the grassy knoll. But what if the answer is a lot simpler than that?

How about the shooter is approached from the government…beforehand…and goes on his rampage with the express (and agreed-upon) end being he (the shooter) blows his own brains out? In exchange, the government, per say, might set up a tax-free account for 5 or 10 million for his family…who are oblivious to the agreement. He frees his family from poverty, and there’s nobody around to question his “insane motives,” and the government has its tool to be able to advance a totalitarian agenda even further…complete with (as in the “Hunger Games”) a list of “the fallen,” now martyred…with cannon fire in the background and a “grieving nation.”

How about that possibility? Because if anyone discounts the possibility, you better discount everything you have ever seen and/or read about that the government has done. They have the resources, the money, the ability. They have the planning skills to carry it out. They also will always be able to find someone to use in this capacity.

We are at the cusp of a totalitarian takeover by the government in the guise of governance for the public good and using de facto law that is passed off as de jure. By the time it is challenged in the “legal eagle” manner, it will be too late. Those in power will not relinquish it, and more: they will subvert every right to ensure they are in power and not you. All authority does come from the barrel of a gun: they don’t carry firearms to protect you. They carry them to dominate you, and they can enslave you at a moment’s notice. The 2^nd Amendment was to protect the citizens from an out of control government hell-bent on controlling your every action: a tyranny.

Jefferson: “When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

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Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne).  Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).  He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.

This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

Moron Gun Control: Women and Children First

This article was originally published by Uncola at TheTollOnline.com

I will make mere youths their officials; children will rule over them.

– Isaiah 3:4

Youths oppress my people, women rule over them…

 – Isaiah 3:12

Another shooting. They always appear to unveil in similar ways; like secret messages. First there is some sort of an active drill, either scheduled or ongoing, and then shots are fired, followed by eyewitness accounts of more than one shooter. Soon, the YouTube videos of those reporting on multiple attackers are scrubbed from the internet:

When shots were fired I saw him [right] after the fact, so, and the shots were coming from the other part of the building so there definitely had to be at least two shooters involved.

……..Additionally, it was reported by the father of a student who attends the school thatboth a fire drill and an active shooter drill were scheduled for Wednesday.

Within hours, the murderer is reported to be extremely troubled, if not insane, and likely on psychotropic drugs, as several people claim they all “saw it coming”, or, in some instances, saying they are completely surprised that the person they knew could massacre so many.

Additionally, prophetic postings placed prior on social media by the shooter are revealed and, sadly, they are rarely discovered until too late. Most commonly, of course, an AR-type or similar semi-automatic will have been used with the necessary large-capacity magazines. It is all quite convenient because both are highly coveted targets in the sites of politicians and globalists convening behind armed security on Capitol Hill or at the United Nations.

Finally, like the sun rising after a long dark night, the political establishment crows like over-caffeinated roosters about “doing something” so “it never happens again”.

Nothing new under the sun.

But what about “The Patriot Act”, the NSA, and that brand new data center in Utah? I thought our heroes we’re constantly monitoring in order to stop these events? In the case of the Parkland shooting what about eyewitness reports of someone firing rounds in the school while wearing body armor, helmet and mask? What are these national security agents doing every day anyway? Playing Angry Birds and Subway Surfers? Those slackers make love-sick FBI sweethearts Peter Strzok and Lisa Page look like Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

I want my money back.

Also, what happens to the mass causality survivors who claim to have seen multiple shooters? Well, after their cell phones are permanently confiscated by the authorities, and within weeks after their videos disappear from the internet, they start dying in freak ways and in numbers that defy normal actuarial tables. But don’t worry, the online fact-checker Snopes says it’s all just “great paranoia”.

In spite of any slight variances from the common patterns of mass shootings, the outcome is always predictable:  It’s getting late in the game and they want your guns. Who knew politicians could react so fast? But, then again, it’s for the children.

Regardless, the images linger and it’s hard to disremember certain elements of surreality that seemed, shall we say, spurious. In the Parkland shooting, specifically, both reporters and those being interviewed were one minute smiling and then the next feigning sadness and concern. It was strange.

Nevertheless, the politicians take action after every mass shooting and tell us “it’s for our own good”.

In the aftermath of the Sandyhook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, President Obama issued 23 executive actions and proposed 19 legislative actions. After the Virginia Tech shooting new rules were passed that allowed the Social Security Administration to provide information to the gun background check system of people with “mental disabilities”. After Vegas and Parkland, it was bump-stocks. Now, most recently at the time of this writing, it appears that even President Trump has “stunned lawmakers” with his “seeming embrace of gun control measures”.

Do you see a pattern?

To understand the borg mind, you must first understand the politicians and powerbrokers are fully aware of what they are doing. But, as far as the liberal snowflakes are concerned, they ALWAYS believe what they WISH to be true; facts be damned. Worse than that, they will not let go of what they wish were true even after they long cross the rubicon into devastating lunacy. By then, it becomes like a Chinese finger trap; the more you challenge their beliefs, the more they hold on.

Here are 10 truths the gun control morons hold to be self-evident:

1.) The Gun is Guilty

How can some people assign culpability to a mere tool you ask? It’s a fair question. Those who hate guns believe evil should be confronted through the elimination of its occasional means; a device, or gadget. This is not overly unlike someone dieting to lose weight by removing the silverware from their kitchen.

Actually, it is in fact worse. To protect the children from bodily harm, Big Mother desires to remove the allegorical silverware from the homes of metaphorical healthy eaters.

That’s insane.

From an ideological perspective, could that faulty logic eliminate profanity by stealing the adult books from those who don’t curse? Or prevent procrastination by purloining people’s calendars and clocks? Indeed, just as instruments to measure time illustrate the denotation and solution for procrastination and tardiness, so do guns, simultaneously, demonstrate the denotation and solution for evil.

Some women, some children, and most liberals, can’t seem to identify evil through the fog of their good intentions. This explains why they fail to see the irony when they call for people with guns to come save them from people with guns. Except, for whatever reason, they profess to favor those traveling from a distance away to save them as opposed to someone in their immediate proximity.

Indeed, why do gun control advocates prefer those with badges, 20 minutes away, over those with a permit who could save their lives, and the lives of others, in that very moment?

Perhaps, because logic is not a strong suit in the minds of some women, some children, and most liberals.

2.) Criminals Obey Laws

Wrong. In every mass shooting event in recent years, there were laws on the books designed to prevent the murder and mayhem. Think about that. Criminals care nothing for laws; neither will they be inhibited by them. If laws eliminated all access to acquiring guns legally, it would not stop criminals from getting them any more than the war on drugs terminated illegal drug use in America. Naturally, laws are only as effective as their enforcement; which, in the case of the Parkland shooting and all others, was far less than stellar to say the least; let alone prohibitive. Sure, seat belt laws may save the lives of compliant citizens in car accidents, but no law can prevent deliberate, calculated murder. Evil finds a way.

3.) Citizens and Criminals are Synonymous

You’ve likely heard the saying: “The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Yet, in the eyes of the gun control advocates, there is no difference between the two. This explains why an effort has been undertaken nationwide to criminalize the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its members, for the crimes of one crazy child from Parkland, Florida. For now, though, this profound miscalculation by the Political Left has backfired. Pardon the pun.

4.) Rights Derive from Emotions

Actually, they don’t. Why must law-abiding citizens yield to the emotionalism of traumatized children, politicized law enforcement officers, and liberal snowflakes?  It seems they expect upright citizens to obey new rules designed to infringe upon the unalienable rights of others.  Why not just say “no” and ignore them?

Pure, unbridled emotionalism, like what was witnessed during the CNN Townhall rally after the Parkland shooting, was entirely unrelated to the fundamental rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.

Notwithstanding, the First Amendment allowed the CNN rally to occur.

Fortunately, the United States was founded upon natural, inalienable rights and constitutional law, instead of emotional reactions to public displays of sentimentality and melodrama; as demonstrated by vocal gun-grabbers on cable television.

5.) Consequential Correlating Factors are Irrelevant

Some women, certain children, corrupt Broward county sheriffs, and most liberal snowflakes today willfully employ convenient tunnel-vision in order to unjustifiably convict firearms for murder. In so doing, they maliciously downplay any other contributing factors behind every mass shooting. These would include mental illness, the side-effects of psychotropic drugs, law enforcement failures, bullying, and family neglect.

But more than that, what about the supplemental influences from violent Hollywood movies and video games? Think about that. Why do companies pay millions of dollars to entertainers and athletes to endorse their products? Because advertising works. But now we are expected to believe that violence in movies and video games cause no adverse effects on children?

Why are all of these considerations summarily dismissed by the Political Left in the national conversation on guns?Why is the blame always solely placed onto the gadget by those favoring gun control? Why do they push for more laws when the FBI and local law enforcement agencies appear completely helpless to prevent the mass shootings from occurring in the first place?

Good questions.

6.) Gun Free Zones are Safe

The Political Left believes in the infallibility of gun free zones so much, they now hope to take the program national. Unsurprisingly, the facts show gun free zones not safe. Quite the contrary. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, gun free zones have been targeted in 98% of all mass shootings since 1950.

This, in spite of politicians legislating to keep the children safe:

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, introduced the Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) to the U.S. Senate in 1990, and it was signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. The act was clearly proposed with the intent to prevent mass shootings at such precious areas as schools. But the act, as the statistic proves, did not result in the desired outcome.

Thanks for nothing, Joe and George. Again, I want my money back.

Evidently gun control doesn’t work but now the politicians have it all figured out? No thanks. I’ll pass. I’d rather put my faith in Santa Claus to bring me presents this Christmas, Robert Mueller to deliver justice to the highest offices of American Government, or Bill Clinton and his best friend, Jeffrey Epstein, to take our local girl scout troupe on a field trip to the Virgin Islands.

7.) Defense is Never a Good Offense

Those advocating for escalating gun control measures first mandate gun free zones, then, after the carnage, they double-down by fighting against the rights of trained teachers protecting themselves, and their students, from being sitting ducks.

Really?

Again, as stated heretofore, why do the gun control advocates favor those with badges 20 minutes away over someone with a permit who could save their lives, and the lives of others, in the moment?

Paradoxically, gun control advocates, gush over new laws to screen out potential shooters, yet they overwhelmingly distrust the laws designed to screen law-abiding concealed-carry permitholders?

Unbelievable.

Yet we are to believe it is the NRA who has blood on their hands? PUH-leese. Do these people think law-abiding citizens who value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are stupid?

Evidently.

8.) First Responders Are Never Late and Always Competent

See # 7 above. How many lives were lost in accordance to these false premises by so many “well-intentioned” women, children, liberal snowflakes, and bumbling law enforcement cowards?

Before answering, you may need to grab your calculator.

It seems, within the insane hive-mind of the Collective Left, only some lives matter.

9.) Victimized Teenagers are Superb Societal Strategists

In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, the Clinton News Network (CNN) Devolved Into A North Korean Kangaroo Court Peddling Gun Confiscation. During that embarrassing event, the children, and their handlers, shouted down anyone who sought to challenge their faulty premises. They did so because the handlers, like overbearing and manipulative mothers, told the children not to tolerate dissent because they were the survivors of a terrible massacre and their “March for Our Lives” movement was not political. No, this movement is not political even though they held a February rally at the Florida Statehouse in Tallahassee on their way to march on Washington DC later this month.

It really is amazing. Just a few short weeks ago, America’s teens were suffering from purposely consuming laundry detergent. Now, within a matter of days, they are politically organized in ways that make Martin Luther King, Jr. look like a piker in comparison.

Regarding the CNN Townhall rally, I read a blog comment that said “CNN treated those kids the way Bill Clinton treated Monica Lewinsky.” Someday, these children might realize how they were played like an aspiring Hollywood starlet in Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite.

10.) Government is Good

And now, the grandest, most astonishing, erroneous, supposition of all: Militias are so yesteryear.

In the days following the Parkland Florida shooting, Jim Quinn, the administrator of TheBurningPlatform.com, commented on a correlating thread there:

This week’s gun control argument in a nutshell: because government failed at every level, you need to have your rights curtailed…by the government that just failed at every level.

Indeed, what a great summary. One of the lies ceaselessly promulgated by the Radical Left is that governments are always good. Unfortunately, federal employees, welfare recipients, some survivors of mass casualty events, certain women and children, as well as politicians, pundits, and voters on both sides of the political aisle, appear to have zero immunity against that false assumption.

What short memories they have:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) was a political dissident and critic of communism. Like millions throughout history, he suffered under a government established forced-labor camp system; the Soviet gulags. Regarding that experience, he wrote:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956”.

It could never happen again, right? Guess not, according to the morons who believe history never repeats.

Conclusion

Liberals are like overprotective mothers; they control and suffocate in the name of love. Yet, their oppressive rules smell like grandma’s house did when you caught a whiff of aging, diseased flesh beneath the perfume.

It’s like when your girlfriend first told you she didn’t like your shirt and maybe you shouldn’t hang out with your friends so much. Or how your rich friend’s Mom never allowed you to enter into her perfect parlor where she kept all of her delicate decor and fine furnishings.

It was Ayn Rand who once described Man as viewing himself in relation to Nature as Woman views herself in relation to Man. In primitive societies, this is why men turned sticks into bows and arrows while women managed the household. It’s why men have hunted, fished, farmed, invented, and innovated, from the time he first crushed grapes. By and large, through the ages, men have faced the world logically, and practically, with little use for feelings.

As a matter of fact, liberals may even tell you it is for these very reasons why young boys kill. It would make for a beneficial discussion if the deceitfully duplicitous liberal charlatans stopped blaming the gun while ignoring all other contributing factors.

The Radical Left insincerely manipulates the national discussion on guns all the while knowing the great, big, feminine hive-mind views the world viscerally; and is, thus, easily influenced by emotions. This also explains why the Political Left constantly nurtures an overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction that circles in their heads like rabid squirrels. No wonder. It’s because feelings are not logical and emotions never fix anything. On the contrary, pandemic hysteria makes circumstances worse.

Truly, in America’s past, the Political Right leaned more masculine and the Political Left more feminine. It’s why Republicans tended to concern themselves with a strong foreign policy and national defense, whereas the predominant legislative initiatives by the Democrats were more domestic in nature. Back then, even though the parties vociferously disagreed, the marriage still maintained a sense of order. But that was back during a time when school shootings were near non-existent.

In the Strange New World, the dynamic has changed. Mom now runs the show and Dad has become her stepin-fetchit. And the kids? They take selfies while staging “non-political” marches to their state and national capital houses because they value their own reflections more than effective gun solutions that would actually work.

But they can’t be blamed. The children are misguided because they’ve been misled. Their collective fear and compassion has become gullibility. Skepticism of the facts is the right modus operandi during these times. And open debate is a good thing. Except in the minds of pussy-hat wearing liberals, feminists, inept law-enforcement agents, eager politicians, and confused children; all of whom lack tolerance, common sense, reason, and accountability.

In closing, I want to most tenderly address any reader who disagrees with either the underlying premises or expressed content in this essay. Please know, in accordance to the United States Constitution, and the spirit in which it was originally written, I will respect your right to believe whatever you desire along with your privilege to state your opinions in the public square. At the same time, however, I will very courteously say this once; and only once:

Don’t tread on me.

“Take The Guns First” – Trump Breaks With Republicans Over Gun-Control Plan

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

Update: US Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE). a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement regarding President Trump’s comments today on due process and the Second Amendment:

“Strong leaders don’t automatically agree with the last thing that was said to them. We have the Second and due process of law for a reason.

We’re not ditching any Constitutional protections simply because the last person the President talked to today doesn’t like them.“

*  *  *

President Trump told a group of lawmakers that they must do something to keep guns away from mentally ill individuals – even if that means raising the minimum age for rifle ownership to 21, Bloomberg reports.

His remarks appeared to contradict a CNN report from earlier in the week, which quoted anonymous White House aides saying Trump would soon walk back his support for raising the age limit.

But on Wednesday, in what the New York Times characterized as a “shocking” break with his Republican Congressional allies, Trump told lawmakers during a televised meeting in the Cabinet Room that easing gun owners’ ability to carry concealed weapons across state lines, a provision of the House-passed gun bill and the NRA’s top legislative priority, should be part of a separate bill, a strategy favored by Democrats. The House bill combining background check provisions with the loosening of concealed carry rules has stalled in the Senate after passing the House. Instead, Trump said he supports the proposal from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., which he says is best positioned to pass. Sen. Amy Klobuchar agreed that the Manchin-Toomey bill is a “good place to start.”

“It would be so beautiful to have one bill that everyone could support,” Mr. Trump said as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, sat smiling to his left. “It’s time that a president stepped up.”

Per the Times, Trump repeatedly suggested that the dynamics surrounding the gun control debate had shifted, in part, because of his presence in the Oval Office – a remark that earned him cheers from Democrats.

WATCH: President Trump: "I like taking the guns early … Take the guns first, go through due process second." pic.twitter.com/aydEZdAGq0

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 28, 2018

Trump predicted his plan would pass with broad support, suggesting that he plans to win over a sizable chunk of the Democratic caucus.

Trump told his audience that raising the ownership age is “something you have to think about,” Trump said. He added that “people don’t bring it up” because the NRA opposes the policy. Trump had initially claimed that he would convince the NRA to go along with it.

As the Hill pointed out, he also said he supports confiscating guns from mentally ill individuals, a position vociferously opposed by Republicans.

“I like taking the guns early like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.

“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.

He also said mentally ill people shouldn’t have guns.

“A lot of people are saying ‘oh you shouldn’t be saying that’,” Trump said. “But I don’t want mentally ill people having guns.”

To be sure, states don’t need to enact the exact same restrictions, Trump said. But “what does have to be the same is the background checks and all of the data.”

Per Reuters, Trump urged lawmakers to pass a comprehensive gun control bill as the national conversation surrounding gun control – a conversation that was triggered by a shooting at Marjory Douglas Tillman High School in Parkland Fla. The shooting left 14 students and 3 faculty dead, and more than a dozen injured.

Rebutting accusations that he is beholden to the NRA, Trump added that gun lovers have less power over him than lawmakers.

Earlier today, Dick’s Sporting Goods said it is “going to take a stand” and announced it would permanently ban sales of the AR-15 – the rifle used by Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz and several other mass shooters – from its stores.

The meeting with lawmakers was his fourth “free-flowing gun policy discussion” since the Valentine’s Day massacre in Florida, according to Reuters.

“We’re going to come up with some ideas,” Trump said.

“Hopefully we can put those ideas in a very bipartisan bill. It would be so beautiful to have one bill that everybody can support, as opposed to – you know – 15 bills, everybody’s got their own bill.”

Seven senators and representatives were invited to Wednesday’s session. The group included Democrats and Republicans who, according to Reuters, have diverse views on gun control.

Republican Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who have proposed legislation to fix holes in the background check system for gun buyers, and their Democratic co-sponsors.

Trump also said he backs Cornyn’s bill while urging senators to add more items to the bill to make it more comprehensive.

Gun Rights And Mental Health Restrictions: A Slippery Slope

This article was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, as in the wake of any mass shooting, there has been a scramble by various political groups to place blame for the violence. Everyone is looking for the source of the evil that causes these events, to little avail. In most cases, at least when it comes to the extreme Left, the blame is placed squarely on guns themselves. This is obviously an absurd notion. Placing blame on the particular tool used in the crime does not solve the problem of the criminal and what led him to the deed. Whether or not the tool made his crime “easier” is irrelevant to the greater disturbance at hand.

After years of debate and failed legislation, leftists have discovered that resistance to the incremental destruction of the 2^nd Amendment is insurmountable, and a change in narrative has occurred. Finally, we are talking more about mental health issues and a little less about guns. This is a win for gun rights, however, there is a danger that needs to be addressed.

First, while mental health is being presented in the mainstream media more and more as a central issue in mass shootings, I find it interesting that the problem of psychotropic pharmaceuticals has been conveniently ignored. In a large number of non-terrorist related shooting incidents, assailants have been subjected to long term psychotropic drug use. Why has this factor not been addressed?

Well, consider the fact that Big Pharma has spent at least $2.5 billion over the past ten years lobbying in Washington D.C. Compare this to the NRA lobbying budget, which in comparison was a paltry $20 million over the past 10 years according to OpenSecret.

This should put into perspective the idiocy of anti-gun advocates and their obsession with the “nefarious” NRA. The influence of the pharmaceutical industry is almost universally ignored when it comes to the debate on gun violence, yet their lobbying efforts dwarf all others. All this despite the fact that psychotropic drugs are proven to influence violent and even homicidal behavior in people.

Second, the focus on mental health in terms of the Parkland shooting seems to be glossing over the vast failings of the FBI and local law enforcement in following up and investigating the dozens of warnings they received about Nikolas Cruz.  As I outlined in my recent article ‘“Mass shootings will never negate the need for gun rights,” gun grabbers love to trot out legislation on increased background check restrictions and closing the “gun show loophole,” yet none of their suggested solutions would have stopped the Parkland tragedy from taking place.

The success of Nikolas Cruz’s attack was due to the abject failure of the FBI and law enforcement, NOT the failure of background checks. Had they done their jobs, Cruz never would have been able to purchase a firearm to begin with. I find it rather ironic that gun grabbers constantly argue that average citizens do not need guns for self defense because they have law enforcement to rely on, yet it was exactly the stupidity or inaction of law enforcement that opened the door wide for Cruz to (allegedly) kill.

Clearly, the so-called “authorities” are not trustworthy enough to carry out the job of protecting us all from active shooters. The only people capable of stopping an active shooter in a fast and practical manner are armed citizens on the scene at the moment the attack begins.

Third, and most important, is the issue of mental health parameters and how they will be used to restrict gun rights. The ATF already has rules regarding people “adjudicated as mentally defective,” which includes people ruled a danger to themselves and others by a “court, board or commission or other lawful authority.” Now, these guidelines themselves can be rather broad, but abuse by government so far has been limited (though some instances have been egregious). If the Trump administration seeks to broaden the guidelines even further, then we may have a problem.

Take for example the unacceptable abuse of military veterans and their 2^nd Amendment rights by the Bureau of Veterans Affairs. The VA has in recent years placed restrictions on thousands of veterans, negating their gun rights without due process and without oversight. And all of this has been predicated on the claim that some veterans are “mentally defective” based on dubious parameters, including whether or not they let their spouse handle household finances.

This is what I am talking about when I bring up the dangers behind “mental illness” and gun rights. WHO gets to decide who is mentally ill and why they are mentally ill? Will this be done by a jury of our peers? Or, by an unaccountable and faceless bureaucracy? Will the guidelines for mental illness be strict and specific, or will they be broad and wide open to interpretation? Once a person has been labeled mentally defective, will they have the ability to appeal the decision, or will the label haunt them for the rest of their lives?

Gun rights activists should not put blind faith in the Trump administration to ensure that new mental health legislation will remain fair to the 2^nd Amendment. Unfortunately, Trump is on record as supporting the “No Fly List” gun control bill. This type of bill is something liberty activists opposed vehemently under the Obama administration because it allows the government to erase the gun rights of almost anyone without due process merely by placing them on an arbitrary watch list. A list, I will remind readers, that is a matter of national security and not subject to public overview.

Would a list of “mentally defective people” fall under the same Orwellian standards?

What about the new and disturbing designation by the psychiatric community of oppositional defiance disorder? This absurd “illness” is being applied to people as young as pre-school age and suggests that adults with the illness often display resistance to authority figures and government.

What if your opposition is not to “authority” in general, but to CORRUPT authority specifically? Is this mental illness, or the very epitome of sanity?

In the Soviet Union, it was all too common for the government to abuse “mental illness” designations as a means to silence and imprison political dissent. Anti-government agitation and propaganda were criminalized under Soviet legal codes, and these codes were frequently applied in conjunction with the psychiatric system. This was sometimes referred to as “punitive medicine.”

The problem with government and psychiatric institutions joining forces to determine constitutional rights for individuals should be obvious. Government should be as separate from the medical establishment as possible yet they are often intertwined to terrible effect. If mental illness is not adjudicated by a jury of ones peers and with extreme oversight by gun rights groups, then abuse of such laws by government is almost guaranteed. The temptation to use backdoor bureaucracy in a totalitarian manner to underhandedly confiscate guns and sabotage the 2^nd Amendment will be high.

It is also important to remember that even if you have placed full and blind faith in the Trump administration, there are no guarantees that the constitutional rules we allow him to bend today will not be completely broken by the next president in line. Gun rights are paramount to a free society. Without them, governments almost always revert to increased socialism and “tyranny creep” while violent crime continues or increases as the citizenry is left defenseless. Mental illness AND psychotropic drugs need to be taken seriously in terms of gun violence, but it is also vital that we do not allow the issue of mental health to be exploited as a subversive means to undermine our freedoms.

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You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

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Meet The California Special Agents Who Are “Coming For Your Guns”

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

An oft-echoed line from the left is “No One Wants To Take Your Guns!” But as Kurt Schlichter notes, this is another classic lie.

In fact, that’s exactly what liberals want to do. How do we know? They tell us when they think we are not looking – and, with more frequency, when we are. It’s fun when they say they don’t want to take your guns, then say you have to give up your ARs. If your opponent is getting wistful about Australia’s gun confiscation, he wants to take your guns.

Let’s get serious. They all want to take your guns. Why? Two reasons. First, it takes power from the citizenry. Liberals love that. Second, gun rights are important to normal Americans because the fact we maintain arms means we are not mere subjects. We are citizens, with the power to defend our freedom. Liberals hate that we have that dignity; taking our guns would humiliate us, and show us who is boss. They want to disarms us not because of the gun crime – name a liberal who wants to really do something about Chicago as opposed to hassling law-abiding normals – but because they hate us and want to see us submit.

Even the Fredocons are getting into the act, which is no surprise since Never Trumpism is always the first step downward to active liberalism. Pseudocon Bret Stephens demanded that America repeal the Second Amendment in the New York Times in October 2017. Fellow puffcon Ross Douthat simpered something similar, and the Captain Stubing of Conservatism, Bill Kristol, tweeted his concurrence.

And, As The Washington Post reports today, there is a group of California cops whose sole job is just that – confiscating your guns.

A broad, bald Tennessean, Special Agent Sam Richardson runs a six-person team of California Justice Department agents who are coming for your guns, but only if you no longer have the legal authority to own one in this state that has tightened firearm laws in increments over the years.

His division is the only law enforcement agency in the country assigned specifically to track down and take guns from felons, the mentally ill and others whose Second Amendment rights have been curtailed in court because of public safety concerns.

Notably, WaPo points out that these are the people who even the National Rifle Association says should not have guns, a statement echoing in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The program makes California’s gun-control policy perhaps the most aggressive in the nation. A dozen years ago, the state set up a database that flags law enforcement officials when a registered gun owner is convicted of a felony, deemed mentally ill, has received a restraining order or committed one of about 37 qualifying misdemeanors.

The list is known as the Armed Prohibited Persons System, and while it has failed to prevent mass shootings in San Bernardino, Isla Vista and other cities in the state, it has taken tens of thousands of guns out of the hands of people prohibited from having them.

The work of Richardson’s agents is overwhelming, with the number of guns and “prohibiteds” growing faster than the under-resourced teams can take them off the street. So is the ingenuity of those selling guns, and those making guns, and those owning guns, legally or not.

There are 10,226 people on the list statewide. Of those, about 2,000 are in Los Angeles County, a vast urban desert covered by only Richardson’s team and one other.

“All of this takes time and real resources,” said Xavier Becerra (D), California’s attorney general, who said he is requesting more money for the program this year. “As quickly as we get these guns off the street, others are getting guns.”

Not once has a target fired on them, but WaPo reports that they are threatened — some extreme gun rights websites seek to identify them and expose them online — so all except Richardson, who has appeared publicly, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that only their last names be used .

“We don’t have black helicopters, but we drive black cars and wear black uniforms,” Richardson said. “It plays into the mind-set of some of these people.”

Last year, state Justice Department agents seized 3,999 pistols and long guns, investigating more than 8,500 people in the process. The list has never dipped beneath 10,000 people since its earliest days.

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The timing of this ‘promotional’ piece from WaPo is fascinating, coming just a day after The White House said it is considering the idea of using restraining orders to take firearms away from people considered “dangerous” as part of its response to last week’s massacre at a Florida high school, two people familiar with the matter said.