Democrats Hate Gun Owners. Now What?

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Last Wednesday, Colorado Governor John “Hick” Hickenlooper signed a partisan Democrat bill that outlawed nearly every pistol and rifle. All Glock pistols, the most popular brand, are now banned. Any magazine that can be “readily modified” to hold more than 15 rounds is now illegal. Perhaps the shop-lifter who sponsored the bill does not know, but almost all magazines are readily modified to hold extra rounds. Since no other state has such a law and Colorado is quite small, manufacturers may not make special 15 round magazines that cannot be modified. Further, existing weapons cannot be transferred, lent, gifted, or inherited. Colorado citizens will now really resemble Old-West denizens because the only sidearm now allowed will resemble John Wayne’s Colt .45 revolver.

V.P. Biden equates anyone who thinks gun-control is pointless and an affront to the values of the Constitution to a “black helicopter” conspiracy theorist. Democrats call gun-rights advocates “gun nuts” and “heartless.” The Old Media is fully engaged in marginalizing the image of gun owners and gun-rights advocates, and all the major TV carriers ban gun advertisements. In short, Democrats and their OM fellow travelers hate guns owners and want to disarm regular, honest people.

The US House will serve as a firewall against national gun-bans this year, and Coloradans who were caught off-guard by a Governor who had recently rejected gun-bans, are organizing politically. The NRA is suing New York for its six round magazine law, so perhaps Colorado is next on their list. The latest Democrat anti-gun-rights Napoleonic charge may well be repelled by common sense and political organization, but the Democrats have made clear that this issue is always a hidden priority. Democrats hate guns and want to disarm responsible citizens. What should be done to contain their totalitarian instincts permanently?

Gun owners are regular people who fully reflect the diversity of the US populace. Hunters, target shooters, homeowners, gun owners are spread across all parts of the US. Guns are also safe; owning a gun is safer than owning a swimming pool. The OM likes to demagogue that people with guns are more likely to commit suicide or be shot themselves. Maybe suicidal people and people who live in dangerous neighborhoods seek out pistols (i.e. Selection bias). In any event gun violence by honest people is rare, and deranged rampages are rarer still. Criminals are both the true source of gun violence and the ones who could not care less about a magazine-size misdemeanor on top of a murder charge.

Self-defense-rights advocates should seek to normalize the public image of gun owners. The left already knows that gun owners are actually pedestrian and mild. That is why far-left activists are attempting to silence gun-owner publications. That is why far-left bureaucrats attempt to raid the homes of fathers who post pictures of their sons exercising good gun safety. The Left’s goal is to maintain the false image of gun owners as irresponsible racists.

Fight back. Post a picture of yourself safely holding a pistol that Hick or Mayor Bloomberg would outlaw. Share your skeet scores on Facebook. Leave an outdoor magazine in your office’s waiting room. Teach a friend who has never held a firearm the rules of safe gun handling, and then take him to the range. Let people know you own a weapon and ask them if they think you are a “nut.” Ask them how many mouth-breathing, drooling “gun-nuts” they actually know. The Democrats waged a long-term battle against gun ownership by building a straw-man gun owner who is racist and paranoid. The battle to secure the right to bear arms will never stop, and the battle’s foundation is exercising The Right responsibly and conspicuously.

Cyprus To The Hill?

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Last Week, the EU and Cyprus imagined another way to fund government bailouts and spending – wealth confiscation. Under the still changing plan, bank savings would be confiscated at a rate of 3 to 15%. The reaction, which only a EU bureaucrat could not foresee, has been a run on the banks; only an idiot would keep his money in a bank when confiscation was on the table. The EU showed its communist side with the plan; to the EU, there is no distinction between private and public wealth, and personal savings are not particularly sacred. Indeed, many European nations have annual wealth taxes, albeit at much lower rates. Those familiar with the Takings Clause in the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment might release a righteous howl: never in the US! We are protected! We have rights! Well, no. Confiscation at a greater rate than in Cyprus did once happen in the US, and without a vote, and another form of confiscation is happening right now.

The case of US wealth confiscation was Pres. Rosevelt’s infamous 1932 Executive Order #6102, which outlawed private ownership of gold and silver. Prior to Pres. Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard, cash and gold were the same thing much as are five nickels and a quarter. The gold standard made currency devaluation difficult, but shortly after forcing every citizen to convert his gold into currency, FDR and the Democrat Congress changed the gold window from $20.67 to $35 per ounce. The real value of everyone’s cash savings immediately dropped, which has always been the left-wing prescription for economic malaise. FDR’s gold manipulation was practically the same as the EU’s confiscation, only his was harsher. As with all devaluations and confiscations, FDR’s scheme did not work because money is a veil the market easily can see through; only investment and wealth creation solve economic malaise. Confiscation does, however, allow governments to continue their free-spending ways.

Today, the US Fed is pumping unprecedented liquidity into the monetary system. The Fed is using a two pronged approach to benefit government at the expense of savers. First, the Fed is buying government and semi-private bonds, pumping fresh cash into the market. Less well known, the Fed is also paying .25% interest on most money that banks return to the Fed. Normally, capital reserves held by banks are invested in highly secure private assets like repos and corporate paper, but these assets now have to compete with a very lucrative and risk-free Fed reserve window. Why should a bank invest in economic growth when it can earn a nice spread between CDs and the Fed? The Fed’s scheme prevents much of its money from reaching the private market, while slowly repairing the big banks’ balance sheets. Once the free money ends, however, look for the value of cash savings to plummet as banks are forced to actually put their money into the private market (i.e. increasing the M1 by multiplying cash through new loans). FDR and the EU both played the game of confiscation and devaluation, but the Fed’s game is stealthier.

Of course FDR and the EU’s confiscation schemes leave many assets untouched. Only cash is subject to full confiscation, often called devaluation. Indeed, negative cash (i.e. debt) benefits from devaluation, and governments owe the most debt. Other productive assets such as real estate and machinery eventually adjust their prices to compensate for devaluation. Stocks typically relinquish only some of their value to currency devaluation. Only cash savers are unprotected when governments look to confiscate. Savvy investors can avoid government devaluations and confiscations, but simpletons who see banks as stable, rather than instruments of government manipulation, get the shaft.

It is easy to look on Cyprus with bemusement and pity, what with their debt equal to 8x their economy. It might be comforting to think the EU’s blatant confiscation cannot happen in the US, but US savers already have been victims of worse. Politicians from both major US parties oppose a simple audit and sensible supervision of the Fed, which currently is unaccountable to any body. The cynical calculus is easy; the Fed is the enabler of government abuse, so why should the establishment rock the boat? Without the Fed’s loose money policies, the US Government might already be in bankruptcy under an impossible debt burden. The better way to view Cyprus is as a dire warning for a nation whose sovereign debt already exceeds its GDP.

Why Colorado Is Blue

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Today, Colorado Senate President, John Morse, will lead the Democrat charge to outlaw most weapons in Colorado. Most modern pistols, rifles, and shotguns will become illegal when using standard magazine sizes (over 15 rounds) and configurations (extendable shell tubes). Current owners will be allowed to keep the newly illegal weapons, but only in their direct possession (i.e. lending weapons is illegal, even having the weapons repaired is illegal). Democrats do not think these weapons are so bad they should be banned outright; rather they want to marginalize their owners and put them on a legal tightrope of intimidation. Mr. Morse, punk, further insults Colorado voters by limiting their right to object to 90 minutes, total, of debate. Morse, fascist, further had the temerity to complain about the NRA “bussing” in opponents, perhaps explaining his very undemocratic curtailment of debate. Well, Mr. Morse, traitor: boo-hoo; bussing in political activists is a Democrat tactic, and given Colorado’s demographics, you had better get used to it.

Ten years ago, Colorado was a reliably red state with nearly all statewide elected officials associating Republican. Even then Colorado was closely divided. A group of four hugely wealthy hard-left Democrats, including socialist Pat Stryker and gay-rights bully Tim Gill, knew that by increasing Denver registration and turnout, Colorado could turn blue. Colorado has only 5 million residents, so organizing Denver’s 620,000 left-leaning residents had a significant impact. The ‘Gang of Four’ used their wealth to do just that. Colorado must have been short of professional agitators because the Gang’s efforts relied on out-of-state community organizers. As a smallish and closely divided state, Colorado is open to influence by well-funded organizers who use out-of-state labor.

Colorado’s shift to strong blue was complete in 2012 when the last levers of power shifted to Democrat control. Taking marching orders from Washington, the Democrat’s first order of business was to marginalize, criminalize, and deny the rights of gun owners. Morse must live under a rock to be surprised that the NRA and other rights organizations took an interest. With proper investment, Colorado can turn red again, especially with Second Amendment rights on the front burner. The NRA is itching to punish Democrats who attempt to ban guns, and Colorado’s small populace and frontier spirit makes it ground zero for a protracted fight. The Democrats will almost surely ban most weapons, and Gov. Hickenlooper has already pledged to reverse his positions and sign the bills.

While anyone taking political advice from V.P. Biden is a fool, Democrats must not have any inkling of the political hammer coming their way for making Colorado the most anti-rights and fascist state in the region. Morse should understand why Colorado turned blue, and he should also realize that the out-of-state tactics that put him in power will now throw him out.

Ann Coulter Has A Point

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Last week, conservative Ann Coulter took a swipe at libertarians, calling them “pussies” for their stance on marijuana. Coulter’s best qualities are her bluntness (get it?) and her willingness to fight. In her “pussies” comments, she argued that, since the US is a socialist welfare state, people’s choices regarding their lifestyles are her business – hence MJ should be illegal. Coulter has a point; socialism turns strangers into family. However, her conclusion that statism and central control are warranted is an abandonment of principle.

Libertarians come in several flavors, and nearly equally from left and right backgrounds. The actual Libertarian Party is dominated by barely reformed hippies and ideologues, who put drug policy front and center. Most libertarians, however, do not belong to the LP. While libertarians like GOP Sen. Rand Paul do not support the war on drugs, that issue is just an example in the spectrum of Constitutional abuses and overreaches by today’s government. Perhaps coincidentally, the Tea Party has embraced much of the constitutional libertarian platform of confining government to its enumerated powers.

When conservatives complain about the cost of providing services to immigrants and their children, libertarians blame welfare, not immigration. When conservatives like Coulter complain about the harm drugs do (never mind tobacco and booze), libertarians blame socialized medicine, not drugs. Perhaps Coulter is being pragmatic by acknowledging the US socialist family, but she is conceding this generation’s key battle and even the soul of the US by doing so.

Socialists refer to their subjects as family much as dictators refer to their subjects as their children. Under collectivism, the consequences of an individual’s bad choices (e.g. smoking, or drinking, or irresponsible debt) are borne by everyone. This creates what economists call a moral hazard. By mitigating the negative consequences of bad behavior, the deterrent is minimized. Why not borrow too much when the government will always bail me out? Why not smoke crack when food, shelter, and health care are available no matter how worthless drugs make me? Of course the government might outlaw crack, but the criminal deterrent has proven to be less effective than the personal ruin deterrent. The best policy regarding vices is for people to live with their decisions’ consequences, but socialism is a family where consequences are limited.

Coulter is a big sister who thinks MJ should be illegal so she does not have to pay for whatever negative consequences its users might incur. However, the socialist family is not one which libertarians wish to join. Banning drugs is ineffective at best, and the consequence of proscription might actually be more drug use based on decades’ long trends. Libertarians are not in favor of MJ, they are opposed to substituting personal responsibility for the socialist family. Liberals just like MJ for policy reasons. While MJ is a popular example and a clear policy argument, the issue is only an example of why the government should not be the master of a socialist family.

Still, Coulter has a point. The US is a socialist welfare state, and she is forced to be responsible for the bad choices of others. She is not wrong to expect good behavior from her wards. Perhaps Coulter has illuminated the key difference between conservatives and libertarians – Coulter is willing to be a member of today’s deeply flawed US socialist family, while libertarians are still willing to fight. As such a famous fighter, Ms. Coulter should try harder and expect a little more.

CO’s Hick Is Running For President

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Caught up in a wave of anti-gun-rights propaganda and irrational sentiment, the Colorado Legislature will vote today on unconstitutional and pointless anti-gun-rights bills. Among the four anti-gun-rights bills are a ban on magazines greater in capacity than 15 rounds and a requirement for criminal background checks even for private transfers of weapons. Of course, these bills will not prevent a single crime or shooting tragedy; they merely criminalize the lives of decent citizens. Further, since the background check bill is patently unenforceable, it is an obvious stepping stone to gun registration, the real goal of anti-gunners. Nobody should be surprised that once the Democrats took all the reins of power in Colorado, they immediately moved to strip citizens of their gun rights as their first priority. Colorado gerrymandering protects some fairly radical leftists who instinctively hate personal responsibility, especially as expressed in the right to self-defense. The surprise is that Gov. “Hick” Hickenlooper plans to sign the transparently fascist bills into law. The best explanation is that Hick is running for President.

Hick, for those outside of Denver, is not an actual hick. He is a former oil man and restaurateur. Personally he is an elitist, arrogant to the point of being funny, and with no interest or sympathy to anyone beyond his political ambitions. He is a serial tax raiser with an extremely leftist and paternal agenda. However, the far-left Denver Post routinely describes him as a “moderate.” Publicly, Hick courts an image that is a mixture of Western style and geeky aw-shucks charm, but he is really an exceptionally driven politician who has always boxed above his weight. Why, then, did he voluntarily stick his nose into a divisive issue that has always proven to be a loser for Democrats, especially in the West?

Colorado is a divided state. Urban centers such as Denver and Boulder are extreme-Left. Few outsiders realize that these cities are as far left as the North East or California. Denver has produced the socialist, and unhinged, Reps. Schroeder and DeGette. Boulder is the home of Ward Churchill, the professor who lied about being Indian and who called the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns” because their work supported the evils of US capitalism. Most of the rest of Colorado is center-right, along with other Western States. State wide elections cannot be won solely with the lunatic-left urban vote, hence CO’s US Senators’ avoiding the gun issue with all their might. Hick, by comparison, initiated the gun debate in CO a few days before the CT tragedy. Hick’s predecessor’s union pandering forced him to not seek a second term, so Hick’s volunteering for the gun debate is curious politics at best. No polling exists, but Hick has probably abandoned an easy reelection for a toss-up against a gun-rights Republican.

Hick does not make these kinds of mistakes, and he has never been so bold about anything other than parking meter fees. Either he has gone crazy hanging-out with Hollywood and Washington leftists, or he has focused his sights outside of Colorado.

The conventional Democrat political wisdom is that the GOP is smashed and irrelevant. True or not, most Dems think the real 2016 Presidential Election is the Democrat primary. The US is lurching hard to the left, and Dems are falling over themselves to repudiate moderates like Pres. Clinton and align with socialists like Pres. Obama. Gov. Cuomo recently signed the most unconstitutional and disturbingly fascist gun law ever. Even GOP pols like Gov. Christie are shifting left, presumably to sail this new wind. These governors are national figures who are quite likely to run for President, so why is a backwater governor of a smallish state following their lead? Hick is aligning with the rest of the hard-left presidential field.

Hick wants to be President. He knows that Western Democrat money and votes for such an enterprise are in short supply, so his politics are mirroring the deep blue states along the coasts. Hick does not care what Coloradans want; he wants to be able to share a pleasant meal with Mayor Bloomberg, the extreme collectivist. Should Hick also come out against the Keystone-XL pipeline, his national ambitions may as well be painted on an Occupy Wall Street banner. Of course, the interests of Coloradans who want to live freely and exercise their natural and constitutional rights are merely stepping stones along his way.

Grammar Rebel

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Will Rogers famously wanted his epitaph to read “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I sometimes turn a joke on Mr. Rogers’s line, and say “I have never met anyone with good grammar I did not like.” Considering today’s state of affairs, grammar is an unlikely metric for kinship. The nation is overrun with a socialist fever, unsustainable government obligations, and appalling corruption. Why should grammar sit with these important issues?

Man’s greatest tool in building an environment to his liking is language. Every success employs communication and retrieval of archived knowledge. Employing Standard English is the least we can do to respect the foundation of society.

Also, anyone using correct grammar is part rebel. Grammar is not effectively taught in school, so anyone employing Standard English learned it elsewhere. Standard English is rarely spoken on the street, so its use is a conscious choice that sets grammar rebels apart. There are few rewards for tense agreement or proper gerund use, so the grammar rebel must do it for sport or to set an independent standard for himself. Those who claim to rebel by tattooing themselves or squatting with Occupy types are conformist and commonplace compared to a grammar rebel.

A happy nature of Standard English is its incompatibility with Political Correctness. Because the singular object is ‘his,’ and PC has no imagination, most people use ‘their’ (e.g. ‘everybody lost their investments when Ponzi was arrested’). Anyone with common sense knows that when ‘everybody’ and ‘his’ are used together, females are implied. PC militants know this too, but their motive is thought control. In 1984, George Orwell warned that language laws could be used to limit expression and thought; yet the same PC autocrats that assign Orwell to their students practice the perversion of language for political gain with no apparent ironic guilt. Anyone who still speaks Standard English or dares to use anachronisms such as ‘freshman’ vs. ‘first year student’ is a rebel who must signal danger to the PC police. PC is about limiting thought and expression so that ideology falls in line. Standard English is sublime resistance.

Grammar rebels are independent thinkers beyond PC politics. NBC anchors butcher the tool of their trade nightly, as do most newscasters. NBC news president Steve Capus resigned this month, coincident with numerous ethical scandals, including fraudulent editing of tapes to make innocent people sound racist and generally insensitive. NBC actively lies to promote its agenda, a practice well beyond ordinary bias. Bias is inevitable and universal, but active campaigns of deception are inexcusable. When a grammar rebel rejects the language of Brian Williams, it shows that he is informing himself elsewhere.

Be a grammar rebel; employ Standard English. There may be no better way of demonstrating independent thought and values on a daily basis. There may not be enough time, and certainly not enough energy to fight PC and the socialist Old Media at every turn, but a grammar rebel can stand apart without hardly never trying.

Multiply Liberty By 12

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With Pres. Obama’s declaration of war on liberty (a.k.a. his inaugural address), and with the GOP’s apparent capitulation on taxation and spending, libertarians seem to have little reason to hope. Polls show that as many as one in five Americans hold libertarian views (i.e. the government regulates too much and should not be involved in private moral issues). Why, then, does Washington largely ignore such a large voting block? Why, then, does Washington constantly try to control people’s private lives? The next two to four years look bleak, but a determined minority can check the Left through jury nullification.

If 20% of Americans think the government has gone too far, then nearly 94% of twelve person juries will have at least one liberty minded member. If the government knew that it had only about a 6% chance of convicting a defendant of violating an unjust law, its intrusions would stop.

The US legal system seeks to suppress juries’ right to nullify a law. Jurists are asked to swear an oath to follow the law as written and the judge’s instructions as delivered, but jurists need not ignore the Constitution, natural law, and common sense. The point of the Constitution’s mandate of a jury of peers is to prevent the imposition of imperious dictums and political populism upon defendants, not to enable the government to convict whomever it sees fit. Further, absent some malfeasance such as bribery, jurists cannot be punished for delivering a verdict with which the government disagrees.

No jury should ever convict someone for simply possessing or carrying a weapon. No jury should ever convict someone for simply possessing an intoxicant. No jury should send a man to prison for stupid and vague regulations such as importing lobster in bags vs. boxes. Juries should nullify cases where adults choose to eat unhealthy foods like raw milk. Juries should nullify any federal law that exceeds the limits of the 10th Amendment.

Of course, prosecutors are not fond of independent thinkers who would decide for themselves whether a statute is constitutional and just. Indeed, they interview jury candidates to weed out such troublemakers. When the prosecutor asks a candidate whether he will obey the judge’s instructions, the candidate might say “yes, but I obviously will not abandon common sense.”

Likewise, defense counsel has a selfish interest in his client’s freedom. Lawyers may not flatly ask candidates if they intend to nullify. Defense counselors might instead ask this: “have you read the US Constitution?” The correlation between having read the Constitution and being interested in preserving liberty should be quite strong. Jury nullification is not about freeing criminals but about stopping the tens of thousands of unjust and unconstitutional laws.

Dear Reader: the next time you receive a jury summons, do not think of it as an intrusion into your free time; rather, think of jury duty as a chance to defend liberty. Before voting to convict the defendant, ask yourself if a law was actually violated. Did the government have the right to enact this law? Is the law consistent with natural rights? Where in the US Constitution or your state constitution is the power to enact this law? If the law is unjust by these measures, then the real crime is in enforcing it. Jurists have the right and responsibility to consider higher laws before turning an ordinary citizen into a criminal.

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