Opponents of the Second Amendment Don’t Like the First, Either

KevinLeave a comment

Progressive Governments’ Economic War on the NRA Fails in Court

Not long ago, progressive state and local officials nationwide were vowing to take down the hated National Rifle Association by targeting its pocketbook. When city authorities in Los Angeles and San Francisco gave that idea a try, they were following the lead of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had unleashed New York financial regulators to go after the gun-rights organization’s access to insurance and banking services.

Now all three are facing a reckoning in court, based not on the Second Amendment but on the First. Without needing to even consider the issue of gun rights, federal courts are recognizing that boycotts enforced by government power can menace free speech and free association.

The amusing part is that the public officials themselves are helping to provide the basis for these rulings by tweeting and speechifying about how much damage they intend to do the NRA.

 “Gun Control” isn’t about guns, it’s about control, and that pesky Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution stand in our rightful rulers way!

Gun Control Requires Astroturf

KevinLeave a comment

March For Our Lives Raised Nearly All Funding from Secret Six-Figure Donations

The gun-control group responsible for a 2018 march on Washington, D.C., raised the vast majority of its funds from undisclosed donations over six figures, a recently released tax document shows.

The March For Our Lives Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization launched in the aftermath of the deadly 2018 shootings at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is bankrolled almost entirely by large donations in excess of $100,000. The group reported $17,879,150 in contributions and grants over the course of 2018, its first year of operations. Ninety-five percent of those contributions came from 36 donations between $100,000 and $3,504,717—a grand total of $16,922,331.

As Tam once wrote,

Poor Lefties; they’ve been playing on astroturf so long that they don’t know grassroots even when fed a mouthful of divot.

 Edited to add:  See also Everytown’s Finances at Shall Not Be Questioned.

Does This Signal the Beginning of the End for Political Correctness?

KevinLeave a comment

I’m sure by now you’ve seen this, or heard it, or read the transcript, but Ricky Gervais, hosting the 2020 Golden Globes (for the last time) went absolutely SAVAGE on Tinselgrad:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCNdTLHZAeo]
The transcript (because I’m sure that every effort will be made to scrub all copies of the video from the internet):

Hello and welcome to the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel here in Los Angeles. I’m Ricky Gervais, thank you.

You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting these awards, so I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did. I’m joking, I never did. NBC clearly don’t care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Heart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets — hello?

Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax. Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.

But you all look lovely all dolled up. You came here in your limos. I came here in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. No, shush. It’s her daughter I feel sorry for. OK? That must be the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs.

Lots of big celebrities here tonight. Legends. Icons. This table alone — Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro … Baby Yoda. Oh, that’s Joe Pesci, sorry. I love you man. Don’t have me whacked. But tonight isn’t just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They’re all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He’s coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland, Two Popes. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. Hollywood Foreign press are all very racist. Fifth time. So. We were going to do an In-Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn’t diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year. Let’s see what happens.

No one cares about movies anymore. No one goes to cinema, no one really watches network TV. Everyone is watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out, going, “Well done Netflix. You win everything. Good night.” But no, we got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of Afterlife instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself cause his wife dies of cancer and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert, season two is on the way so in the end he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he’s your friend but I don’t care.

Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I’ve heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie’s Choice. I mean, that would just be Meryl just going, “Well, it’s gotta be this one then.” All the best actors have jumped to Netflix, HBO. And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn’t acting anymore. It’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we’d know who’d win that.

Martin Scorsese made the news for his controversial comments about the Marvel franchise. He said they’re not real cinema and they remind him about theme parks. I agree. Although I don’t know what he’s doing hanging around theme parks. He’s not big enough to go on the rides. He’s tiny. The Irishman was amazing. It was amazing. It was great. Long, but amazing. It wasn’t the only epic movie. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, nearly three hours long. Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like, “Come on, Leo, mate.You’re nearly 50-something.”

The world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy. He was also in the movie Cats. No one saw that movie. And the reviews, shocking. I saw one that said, “This is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs.” But Dame Judi Dench defended the film saying it was the film she was born to play because she loves nothing better than plunking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg and licking her ass. (Coughs) Hairball. She’s old-school.

It’s the last time, who cares? Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.

Edited to add (from Ed Driscoll at Instapundit):

Bringing Sandra Bullock on stage to announce the final award, Gervais said, “Our next presenter starred in Netflix’s ‘Bird Box,’ a movie where people survive by acting like they don’t see a thing. Sort of like working for Harvey Weinstein.” After the crowd erupted in boos, Gervais replied, “You did it! I didn’t, you did it!”

WOW. The savagery was cranked to eleven!

UPDATE 1/10/20:  Another data point –  Boy George comes out swinging against wokeness

Pullquote:

80s icon Boy George has joined the ranks of Morrissey and Kanye West by rejecting woke ideology and advocating for common sense. As a result, he has come under fire for speaking truth to trans. He expressed himself over a few days, saying that regardless of his own inclinations to costume, radical trans ideology is basically a crazy trend.

Analysis: TRUE

KevinLeave a comment

2019 Was a Bad Year for the “Only Cops Should Have Guns” Narrative
Pullquote 1:
On December 29, an armed gunman entered the West Freeway Church of Christ in Texas and shot two members of the congregation. Within six seconds, a third member of the congregation drew a weapon and shot the gunman dead.
The events were captured on live-streamed video, with the dramatic events — in the minds of many observers — highlighting the benefits of privately owned firearms as a defense against armed criminals. Moreover, the gunman, who had a criminal history, obtained his gun illegally, and demonstrated one of the central pitfalls of the gun-control narrative: namely, that those with criminal intent are not easily restrained by laws controlling access to firearms.
Pullquote 2:
To many people who aren’t left-leaning journalists, it is hardly “terrifying” that some other private citizens of unknown expertise were armed in the congregation. After all, these people never fired a shot once they saw the shooter had been incapacitated. None of them provided any reason to suspect they pose any risk to anyone else.
On the other hand, 2019 has provided plenty of reminders of what sort of “expertise” and heroism government-provided security forces offer.
And, finally, as seen on Facebook:

We’ve Been Saying This for YEARS

KevinLeave a comment

They’re SAFETY EQUIPMENT:

Spokane Police will add suppressors to rifles, citing concerns about hearing damage

Pullquote:

Rifles carried by Spokane police on patrol will soon be equipped with suppressors, a move the department says will protect officers and civilians from hearing damage.

“It’s nothing more than like the muffler you put on your car,” said Lt. Rob Boothe, the range master and lead firearms instructor for the department.Outfitting the department’s 181 service rifles with suppressors will protect the city from the legal costs of worker’s compensation claims filed by officers, as well as from potential lawsuits filed by bystanders whose ears are exposed to firearm blasts. The sound of a fired shot can be louder than the takeoff of jet engines, the department says.

So why do we ordinary citizens have to put in an application that requires a photograph, fingerprints, a background check and a $200 tax for a piece of SAFETY EQUIPMENT?

The .gov Can’t Keep Up with Current Demand…

KevinLeave a comment

…so hey! Let’s expand the program with UNIVERSAL background checks!

Gun background checks are on pace to break record in 2019

200,000 checks on Black Friday alone. Enough to arm the United States Marine Corps.

However,

FBI never completes hundreds of thousands of gun checks

So it makes PERFECT sense to double or triple the number of background checks! Right?

Why is it that the .gov is the only entity that when it fails at something it doubles-down?

There are No “Solutions” – Only “Trade-offs”

KevinLeave a comment

Today’s Electric Car Batteries Will Be Tomorrow’s E-Waste Crisis, Scientists Warn

Wind turbines kill endangered bird species, electric cars require toxic batteries and run off of coal-fired power plants, The infrastructure necessary to provide charging stations for plug-in EV’s will cost billions and require even more power generation, but no one wants a nuclear power plant in their back yard.

Engineering isn’t about “solutions,” it’s about picking the best options and minimizing the costs of the trade-offs.

Politics is only about getting elected and re-elected. Politicians can promise the moon without any concern about the costs – monetary, environmental, social. And they depend on a public ignorant to the realities. Shouts of “Consensus!” are used to ensure that no one opposed gets listened to.

That’s not how science – or engineering – work. Reality is what remains even if you don’t believe in it.

Second Thoughts on the Second Amendment?

KevinLeave a comment

Remember, over the period from 1933 to 1945 the Nazi regime alone murdered approximately 12,000,000 people. In the United States, at our current rate of criminal homicide, it would take 695 years to kill as many people as the German government did in twelve. The Soviet Union? By one estimate between 1917 and 1987, that government killed approximately 62,000,000. Communist China? Between 1949 and 1987, 76,000,000. (Who knows how many since, with the Uyghurs and Hong Kong.)

Individuals kill retail. Governments do it wholesale. As 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in one of his best dissents:

All too many of the other great tragedies of history – Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few – were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

The residents of Hong Kong understand that now. And apparently some Americans are starting to grasp it, too.