Second Amendment Archives - Page 2 of 18

The Bookworm Room 7/17/16 — the “I’m all riled up” edition and open thread

July 17, 2016 by Bookworm

Blacks and Muslims should be angry at their criminal cohorts, not at us. In the context of an article about political correctness, Andrew Klavan said something I’ve been struggling to say for some time. He acknowledges that blacks are on the receiving end of much more police activity, something frustrating and insulting to law-abiding blacks, but that’s because the black community’s bad eggs commit a disproportionate amount of American crime. Likewise, because children have big mouths, perfectly nice Muslim kids in school find themselves being called terrorists, reflecting the fact that acts of mass violence all over the world come primarily from their co-religionists. That’s certainly not nice, but Klavan says that law-abiding blacks and Muslims are putting blame in the wrong place:

It seems to me if you are an innocent black person being troubled by the cops, if you are an innocent Muslim under suspicion from your neighbors, the people you should be angry at, the people to blame, are not the people acting on rational suspicion. The people at fault are the bad guys who have drawn that suspicion unfairly onto you.

A black man targeted by the police shouldn’t be angry at the police. He should be angry at the thugs and criminals who look like him and make his race a target. And before Muslims blame non-Muslims for the prejudice against them, maybe they ought to look to — and openly condemn — those Muslims who have given their religion a very bad name indeed.

The problem is prejudice, yes. But it’s the tribal prejudice that says we should blame others before we blame “our own.” “Our own” are the good guys, no matter what race or religion we are.

Someone should read those words out loud at the Republican Party Convention. They’re very important.

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The Devil and Gun Control

July 16, 2016 by Bookworm 11 Comments

Gun control proponents have a problem. Irrefutable data shows that, since 1992, as American gun ownership has gone up, crime has gone down. When pressed about the dramatic decrease in crime, the best that the Left can do is to point to anything but the increase in privately held weapons:

Possible reasons for the decline include the country’s high incarceration rate, an aging population and an increased use of security cameras and cell phone videos capturing incidents.

If gun grabbers were forced to grapple with the fact that the increase in guns tracking precisely with the decrease in crime, they’d also have to acknowledge that all the aging Americans, the imprisoned Americans, and the video cameras are irrelevant. Why? Because if more guns really meant more crime, as they insist, the 300 million guns in America today would more than offset age, imprisonment, and video.

The fact is — as even the CDC was forced to admit — that guns are used defensively as often as 1.2 million times a year. This short John Stossel piece gives a very down-and-dirty explanation for the fact that, while guns are a problem when they’re in criminal hands, they’re not a problem in the hands of law-abiding citizens (and, in America, most citizens are law-abiding or at least non-violent):

So what do you do if you desperately want gun control, but the data refuses to cooperate? Well, I can imagine Lucifer and his chief minion having a meeting that goes something like this:

The scene: A well-appointed office in Hell. Satan, in a snazzy red suit is seated behind a heavy oak desk. Standing in front of the desk, facing him, is Jezebeth, a pimply young demon, who’s one of his primary Earth operatives. The year: 2009.

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The Bookworm Beat 7/6/16 — The Hillary Moves On edition and open thread

July 6, 2016 by Bookworm 15 Comments

Now that we’re the Banana Republic of America, I think it’s time for the #NeverTrump crowd to have a little “Come To Jesus” talk to determine whether they want Hillary the Untouchable, and her entire Leftist panoply of friends and goals, in the White House, or whether they’re willing to gamble on Trump, who at least gives lip service to a strong foreign policy that recognizes the problems with Islamists; supporting Israel; supporting the troops; supporting the Second Amendment; and supporting the pro-Life agenda.

This is not the time for holier (or “politically purer”) than thou. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is the time for imperfect emergency surgery to keep the patient alive, rather than an exquisitely rendered surgery while the patient bleeds out on the operating table.

And now on to the links:

No, Trump is not an antisemite. Trump’s Jewish son-in-law says stop listening to Leftist garbage — Trump is not an antisemite (or a racist) and he strongly supports Israel. Trump is being slimed by the Left and it behooves us to remember two things: First, the Left, from Marx to Hitler to Stalin and on forward to the present day, is the party of antisemitism in Europe and in America. Second, this sliming is coming from a presidential candidate who greatly admires Max Blumenthal, one of the most vile antisemites in America. The Left’s outrage is a con.

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The Bookworm Beat 72/16 — the guns, Islam, gender, and illustrated edition

July 2, 2016 by Bookworm 4 Comments

As I promised earlier, I’ve got many, many more posters to share with you. Off we go:

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Add your voice to an MSNBC poll about open carry

June 27, 2016 by Bookworm 4 Comments

Online polls are, of course, totally unscientific because they don’t measure numbers, just passion. That is, the people who care most about the issue are the ones who bother to show up for an online poll.

As for me, I do love it when that passion favors my point of view, especially when the website running the poll is an avid opponent of my point of view. So it as that, as of now, MSNBC’s poll about open carry shows that 92% of respondents favor open care. If you’d like to add your voice, go here.

Thoughts on ESPN’s “OJ : Made in America”

June 23, 2016 by Bookworm 2 Comments

Summer is a difficult time for blogging, because everyone is home all the time. Although I’m a sociable, extroverted person, I need at least a little solitude to think and write, and I’m not getting that. Time to blog has been in even shorter supply the past few nights because we’ve been watching ESPN’s O.J. : Made in America, a ten-hour documentary about O.J. Simpson from childhood through to his most recent incarceration.

Although I know that ESPN is the ugly love-child of the old “Wide World of Sports” and MSNBC (in other words, sports with a hard Left spin), I remember enough of the events in real time to know that it was a factually honest documentary. Indeed, even its focus on race was appropriate, because that, of course, is what the trial ended up being about.

Since I did spend so much of my life recently watching about OJ, I figured I’d share with you some of the thoughts I had as I watched.

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[VIDEO] Trey Gowdy on the trashing of the Second Amendment

June 16, 2016 by Bookworm 5 Comments

I wish that Trey Gowdy could have made more headway on his various investigations, but there’s no doubt that he’s a superb cross-examiner. Clear, organized, and extraordinarily gifted at getting his point across — and in this case, his point is that the government has created a regime that deprives Americans of a core constitutional right without due process. It’s such a gross government overreach that I don’t even feel a smidgen of sympathy for the apparatchik caught in Gowdy’s crosshairs during this examination:

[BOOK] Our Second Amendment Rights in Ten Essays

June 15, 2016 by Bookworm 9 Comments

With the President and every Democrat and Progressive in America loudly hollering that we need to do away with the Second Amendment, I thought it would be a good time to remind you of my book, which is short, cheap, and useful for the intellectual fight against those who want to leave only the government armed. Please recall that Hillary has made gun grabbing a central part of her platform, something that she will emphasize in the wake of the jihadist shooting in Orlando.

When it comes to guns in America, should voters buy what Hillary is selling? Is Heller wrong and did the Founders intend that the Second Amendment not apply to cities and states? Do strict gun control laws in other countries work to reduce violent crime and mass murder? And are Progressives properly identifying the real threat to American lives or will their plans create a bigger threat to us than any individual mass murderer could?

These are not hypothetical questions. They’re important because Hillary, if she’s president, will nominate at least one Supreme Court justice and possibly more. Then, following in Obama’s footsteps, she’ll use her pen and her phone to issue executive orders limiting American gun rights.

The good news is that Hillary is wrong about everything. She incorrectly interprets the Constitution; she misunderstands the impact that guns have on mass murders; she’s wrong about America’s allegedly skyrocketing crime rate; and she’s wrong that those countries that have banned guns have benefitted from those bans.

Just because Hillary’s wrong, of course, doesn’t mean people won’t accept her arguments. Indeed, living as I do in a Blue community, I am constantly surrounded by people spouting this same mix of ideas, arguments, and misinformation. I’ve therefore repeatedly addressed all of Hillary’s arguments, as well as many others that she hasn’t yet made during this campaign season.

With the Second Amendment taking pride of place in this year’s election, I’ve consolidated these well-honed arguments into ten easy-to-read essays and published them in a very short (63 page) ebook, Our Second Amendment Rights In Ten Essays. It’s a bargain at only 99 cents.

Here’s the table of contents, so you know what you’re getting into if you buy the book and spend the hour or two that it will take to read it:

1. A Typical Discussion With Gun Grabbers; Or, What Second Amendment Supporters Are Up Against

2. Guns Are Most Dangerous When The Government Is The Only One That Has Them

3. America’s Founding Fathers Ratified The Second Amendment Because They Knew That Government Is Dangerous

4. A Self-Defended Society Is A Safe Society

5. Gun Grabbers Ignore That Guns Not Only Take Lives, They Save Lives

6. Beware Of Arguments Comparing American Gun Crime To That In Other Nations; These Arguments Are Always Dishonest

7. The Only Way Gun-Control Activists Can Support Their Position Is To Lie

8. Disarming Americans Is A Racist Thing To Do; Therefore, Second Amendment Supporters Are Anti-Racists

9. Jews, Of All People, Should Always Support The Second Amendment

10. If We Really Want To Protect Our Children, We Shouldn’t Ban Guns, We Should Ban School Buses

Given the low price, you have little to lose by downloading the book and giving it a try. If you like it, I ask only two things: (1) please recommend or loan the book to your friends, and (2) please stop by its Amazon page to give it some stars and a nice review.

The Jihadists’ Niemöller poem

June 14, 2016 by Bookworm 4 Comments

After World War II, Pastor Martin Niemöller penned his famous “First they came” poem, detailing the cowardice of the intelligentsia in the lead-up to WWII. It’s time for an updated version of that, one for the jihadists in our midst:

First they came for the box cutters and utility blades,
But I did not need a box cutter because I had shoes.

Then they came for the shoes,
But I did not need shoes because I had bottles of baby formula.

Then they came for the water bottles and baby formula,
But I did not need water bottles and baby formula because I had legally purchased guns.

Then they came for the legally purchased guns,
But I did not need legally purchased guns because I had . . .

. . . Illegally acquired guns, bombs, toxic gas, machetes, knives, blunt objects (including my own fists and feet), acid, cages full of people drowned, grenade launchers, accelerants to burn people alive, buildings from which to throw people, crosses on which to crucify them, ropes with which to hang them, control over food so as to starve them, and all the other weapons of death and torture available to a depraved mind.

But I have to tell you — I’m awfully glad they came for the legally purchased guns because, once they were completely disarmed, it made it so much easier for me to terrorize Americans and Europeans.

By the way, now they’re not coming for anything any more. Why not? Because they are all either dead, enslaved, or converted.

I won.

After the Orlando shooting, Leftists again fail to read the handwriting on the wall

June 12, 2016 by Bookworm 44 Comments

Belshazzar was a great king who sneered at the Bible, partied decadently, and failed to read the handwriting on the wall when he might still have saved himself and his people.* His story is the story of the American Left.

For the entirely of the Obama presidency, the Left focuses obsessively on sex and drugs, gun control, and abandoning reason, whether this abandonment takes the form of their faith in the failed gods of climate change; their insistence that sex, which is embedded in our DNA, is a mere societal construct; or their refusal to recognize that there is an enemy massing at the gate. (Heck! Their chosen leader keeps inviting the enemy in, in ever greater numbers.)

Here’s what we know:

Islam is fanatically anti-gay:

This is what Muslims do to gays when they get the opportunity —

ISIS throws them off roofs:

Iran hangs them:

Saudi Arabia imprisons, beats, and executes gays. “Malaysian law currently provides for whipping and up to a 20-year prison sentence for homosexual acts involving either men or women.” Being gay in the Palestinian world is so dangerous that gay men routinely seek haven in Israel. Afghanistan imposes the death penalty for homosexuality. However, in a world where men can go throughout their lives without ever seeing any women except their mother, the Afghanis have added a sick twist: Sex with a beardless boy is not considered homosexuality, so child rape is normative and, indeed, subject to full societal approval.

That’s the Muslim culture — it’s sick, ugly, violent, and murderous.

And what do we know about Omar Mateen, the man responsible for shooting up an Orlando nightclub, killing 50 and wounding 53 members of the LGBT community? Well, we know a lot:

1. Mateen was an American-born Muslim.

2. His father ran for President of Afghanistan and strongly supported the Taliban.

3. Mateen opened the attack by hollering “Allahu Akbar,” the standard jihadist cry.

4. During the rampage, Mateen specifically called 911 to pledge allegiance to ISIS (see photos ISIS throwing gays off buildings, above).

5. During the same call, Mateen made known his support for the Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon.

6. U.S. Security knew about Mateen’s Islamic loyalty, but beyond questioning him a few times, was passive. (Probably because the Obama administration’s top-down leadership makes it clear that law enforcement should not scrutinize Muslims.)

7. The evidence for his alleged non-Islamic instability is that his ex-wife says he was violent and beat her — which is unstable by American standards, but normative in Afghani Muslim culture.

So let’s put the pieces together: A culture that loathes gays; a culture that kills gays whenever it has the power to do so; and a man who comes from and swears allegiance to that culture and who, when he has the power to do so, kills gays. I think we’re on to something here. The problem is Islam.

For a few, brief hours this morning, the Leftists on my Facebook feed were mourning the dead and making tentative little comments in the direction of Islam maybe, just maybe, having a problem. Heck, over at Mediate (a Progressive outlet), Tommy Christopher temporarily took his blinders off entirely:

We don’t know much about the shooter yet, but let’s keep it real, folks, we know enough about him to know that maybe it’s time we take the politically correct gloves off and realize that maybe the people calling for a total ban on these people aren’t completely off-base. Just a temporary ban, until we can figure this out.

As a liberal, it’s hard for me to admit that maybe I’ve been wrong in supporting the sorts of half-measures that allowed this atrocity to take place, but freedom is important to me. But our weak-willed politicians have failed to keep us safe from these people, unwilling even to find abetter way to vet them, let alone to keep the most dangerous ones from slipping through. I’ve heard all of the arguments before, that not all of them are killers, but all of the killers seem to be them. Meanwhile, we have a president who refuses to even identify them by name.

The Constitution protects their most cherished practices, but it doesn’t, or it shouldn’t, protect this unmitigated slaughter. We shouldn’t need to infringe on the good ones to weed out the bad ones, we just need the good ones to be a little more cooperative. When was the last time you heard one of them denounce their own for this perversion of their beliefs? They act like this scourge has nothing to do with them, when clearly, this scourge emanates from within their ranks, and they actively oppose any effort to stem it. In fact, their perfect solution is to attract more converts.

After reading that, a friend and I were speaking and we thought/hoped that maybe those who died in Orlando were martyrs to a real cause — with that cause being the Left finally waking up to the reality, which is that the enemy is real, it is reading the Koran, and it wants to kill us.

I should have known better than to get my hopes up. Obama instantly put the blame where he feels it belongs to be — on Americans and their guns (emphasis mine):

We are still learning all the facts. This is an open investigation. We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer. The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism. And I’ve directed that we must spare no effort to determine what — if any — inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups. What is clear is that he was a person filled with hatred. Over the coming days, we’ll uncover why and how this happened, and we will go wherever the facts lead us.

[snip]

The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub — it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

[snip]

Today marks the most deadly shooting in American history. The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle. This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.

Boom!

First, no mention of Islam. Indeed, Obama questioned whether there even was an ideology (“if any”) driving the attack, despite the fact that the killer belongs to a religion that hates and kills gays, and swore fealty to the worst branch of that religion as he was slaughtering the innocents.

In Obama’s eyes, Islam will forever remain pure and peaceful. Indeed, Obama once said that the call to prayer is ““one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” This is the call to prayer, just so you can compare its prettiness to, say, bird calls, the wind in the trees, a loved one’s voice, a Beethoven concerto, or anything else you like.

Second, he makes it political: Gay nightclubs, he assures us, are about civil rights. Back in my youth in San Francisco, when I had a bunch of gay friends, I had the occasion to visit gay nightclubs with them. They are not venues for advocating for civil rights. They’re for dancing — great dancing — and anonymous gay sex.

Third, Obama makes the death about Americans — read: Republicans — and their love of guns. San Bernardino was a gun control failure. Orlando is a gun control failure. Apparently 9/11, during which no guns were used, was also a gun control failure. Because in Obama’s world, when it comes to Islam, it’s never about Islam; it’s always about destroying the Second Amendment.

Well, within minutes of Obama’s statements, my Progressive friends got their marching orders. Here’s a sampling of my feed:

You know what? These people are sick. And when I say “these people,” I’m not talking about murderous Muslims, I’m talking about brain-dead Progressives. They worship multiple false idols. (Speaking of which, Planned Parenthood came out strongly against murdering innocents. Really, it did:

The handwriting is on the wall in letters big enough to be seen from outer space and they witter on about guns. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of them that if one or more of the people in the nightclub had also been armed, there’s a real possibility that they could have stopped the shooter when the number of victims was still in the single digits. That’s what happened in Israel when it relaxed its strict gun laws in the face of Muslim machine gun attacks.

How many more conservatives and others who recognize the threat from Islam are going to have to die because of this blind stupidity? And honestly, as long as they’re shouting for gun control, not Muslim control, I don’t give a flying fuck how many more gun control Leftists die. They deserve to be the first sacrifices on their own insane, blood-drenched altar.

In the coming election, as between Trump and Hillary (and no, neither Scott Walker nor Mitt Romney, nor anyone else, will get drafted at the convention), I’m voting for Trump and wish I could vote twice. Hillary is the queen of gun control and the friend of every Muslim, from her aide Huma Abedin (a true daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood), to all the Saudis** and Iranians whose backsides she’s kissed over the years in exchange for their money. Trump, whatever else his other issues, has the raw courage to state loudly and brutally that we have a problem with Islam, because Islam has a problem with us.

So ask yourself: Do you really want this woman in the White House?

Hillary getting friendly with Yassir Arafat’s wife, Suha

_____________________________________
* 1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. 2 Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein. 3 Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them. 4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. 5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. *** 24 Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written. 25 And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. 26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. 27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. 28 PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. 29 Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. 30 In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. (From The Book of Daniel, Chapter 5, King James Edition.)

** And yes, I know that the Saudis, terrified by the Iranian threat, are drawing closer to Israel, but that does not erase the fact that it is their money that funded the Sunni Wahabbism that underlies so much of the Muslim world’s fanaticism today. Israel is making common cause with Saudi Arabia because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hillary is making common cause with a country that bans all religions but Islam, cuts of thieves hands, gives its beheaders full-time work, censors all free political speech, subordinates women, and kills or tortures cause because . . . money.

***

For more of my thoughts on the incalculable benefits of our Second Amendment, complete with actual facts and real arguments, please think about buying my latest ebook, Our Second Amendment Rights In Ten Essays

When it comes to Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment, be very afraid

June 6, 2016 by Bookworm 47 Comments

Warning! Warning! Warning! Okay, two warnings really. The first warning is that Hillary is out to get your guns. The second warning is that I’m going to use this post to shill my collection of essays, Our Second Amendment Rights In Ten Essays. I consider the second item something of an antidote to the first.

The other day, Hillary appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, who is a dedicated Hillary water carrier. Despite his lobbing softballs at her about her stand on gun rights, Hillary got tangled in the weeds of her own words, veering behind incoherence and scariness. What she wanted to say was “You have no gun rights.” Knowing, though, that this wouldn’t for a large number of Americans, she vomited up this mess of words:

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[FREE BOOK] Our Second Amendment Rights in Ten Essays

May 24, 2016 by Bookworm 6 Comments

[I’m keeping this pinned to the top through Thursday. Scroll down for new posts.]

Hillary Clinton intends to destroy the Second Amendment. Just the other day, one of her spokespeople sent out this email:

Clinton believes Heller was wrongly decided in that cities and states should have the power to craft common sense laws to keep their residents safe, like safe storage laws to prevent toddlers from accessing guns. In overturning Washington D.C.’s safe storage law, Clinton worries that Heller may open the door to overturning thoughtful, common sense safety measures in the future.

Not only does Hillary want to reverse D.C. v. Heller, Justice Scalia’s exquisite opinion about the limits that the Second Amendment places on government, she also favors gun confiscation and tight government control over guns:

You know, Australia’s a good example, Canada’s a good example, the UK’s a good example. Why? Because each of them had mass killings, Australia had a huge mass killing about 20 or 25 years ago. Canada did as well, so did the UK. In reaction, they passed much stricter gun laws.

In the Australian example, as I recall, that was a buyback program. The Australian government as part of trying to clamp down on the availability of … weapons offered a good price for buying hundreds of thousands of guns and basically clamped down going forward, in terms of having more of a background check approach, more of a permitting approach.

But they believed, and I think the evidence supports them, that by offering to buy back those guns, they were able to, you know, curtail the supply and set a different standard for gun purchases in the future.

When it comes to guns in America, should voters buy what Hillary is selling? Is Heller wrong and did the Founders intend that the Second Amendment not apply to cities and states? Do strict gun control laws in other countries work to reduce violent crime and mass murder? And is Hillary properly identifying the real threat to American lives or will her plans create a bigger threat to us than any individual mass murderer could?

Here’s the table of contents, so you know what you’re getting into if you buy the book and spend the hour or two that it will take to read it:

1. A Typical Discussion With Gun Grabbers; Or, What Second Amendment Supporters Are Up Against

2. Guns Are Most Dangerous When The Government Is The Only One That Has Them

3. America’s Founding Fathers Ratified The Second Amendment Because They Knew That Government Is Dangerous

4. A Self-Defended Society Is A Safe Society

5. Gun Grabbers Ignore That Guns Not Only Take Lives, They Save Lives

6. Beware Of Arguments Comparing American Gun Crime To That In Other Nations; These Arguments Are Always Dishonest

7. The Only Way Gun-Control Activists Can Support Their Position Is To Lie

8. Disarming Americans Is A Racist Thing To Do; Therefore, Second Amendment Supporters Are Anti-Racists

9. Jews, Of All People, Should Always Support The Second Amendment

10. If We Really Want To Protect Our Children, We Shouldn’t Ban Guns, We Should Ban School Buses

Given the price — free — you’ve got nothing to lose by downloading the book and giving it a try. If you like it, I ask only two things: (1) please recommend or loan the book to your friends, and (2) please stop by its Amazon page to give it some stars and a nice review.

Why Trump is probably not a fascist

May 21, 2016 by Bookworm 13 Comments

I bow to no person when it comes to my concerns about Trump’s disregard for the Constitution. But is he a fascist? I doubt it.

First, Congress probably won’t be his friend, so it will finally start guarding its power more jealously than it did with Obama.

Second, what’s one of the first thing fascists usually do when they seize power? They seize weapons. Dictatorship and an armed citizenry don’t go together. Trump, however, got the NRA’s imprimatur because one of the few things he’s been consistent and clear about is his respect for the Second Amendment.

If I’m worried about fascism, shouldn’t I be more afraid of the candidate who wants a disarmed citizenry than the one who wants to keep us armed?

The Bookworm Beat 5/18/16 — the “Supremes” edition and open thread

May 18, 2016 by Bookworm 41 Comments

This is a good, long post. Mix a martini or make yourself some hot chocolate, find a quiet place, settle back, and read away!

Trump woos conservatives. The big news today is Donald Trump’s list of proposed Supreme Court nominees, all of whom of are, in John Yoo’s words “outstanding conservatives.” As regular readers know, this list means a lot to me. I have four hot-button issues which drive my candidate choices and Supreme Court nominees are my top concern.

Although I was a Ted Cruz gal, and truly believed I was a #NeverTrump voter, once Trump became the presumptive nominee, I rediscovered my motto that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” That notion forced me to look at Hillary and conclude that, on the issues nearest to my heart, she will cause lasting, possibly irreparable damage.

These key issues are: (1) The Supreme Court, which Hillary will pack with Leftists; (2) our Second Amendment rights, which she has vowed to destroy (with the help of a Leftist Supreme Court); (3) Israel, which mirrors our own security situation and which Hillary will destroy; and (4) Islamic terrorism, something that Hillary will probably treat in the same way Obama does, given her history of making nice to people with terrorist connections (e.g., Huma, her Muslim Brotherhood gal pal; Yassir and Suha Arafat; and the Saudis).

On each of those issues, Trump promises the possibility of something better. And no, I’m not a fool. I know that Trump promises everything to everybody but, as I said, he still had the possibility of doing better than Hillary.

With today’s list of Supreme Court nominees, Trump assuaged my concerns on both Issue 1 (Supreme Court makeup) and Issue 2 (Second Amendment). I recognize that Trump can still do a bait-and-switch (something that the pundits to whom I’ve linked also fear), but he might not — unlike Hillary, who will definitely seek more Sotomayors, Ginsburgs, and Kagans.

Anyway, in addition to the Yoo reaction to Donald’s list, linked above, here are more reactions:

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What I learned from John Lott, author of “More Guns Less Crime”

May 12, 2016 by Bookworm 22 Comments

I attended a talk yesterday by Prof. John R. Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. He spoke for almost an hour, but was so interesting that everyone attending the talk was surprised when he looked at his watch and announced that he seemed to have run over time — and then he took questions. I took notes that I’d like to share with you. There was a lot of data, and I’m not as fast a note-taker as I was in my college days, so any mistakes here are entirely mine, not Prof. Lott’s.

Lott’s focus is not the Second Amendment, although he supports it, of course. Instead, he’s interested in the data, both in the U.S. and around the world. After all, those who seek to limit or remove guns will never engage in theoretical fights about defending ourselves against tyranny. Instead, they’ll always get right down to the nitty-gritty: “Guns kill people,” they say. “If guns were gone, fewer people will die.” As the title of Lott’s book says, though, the opposite is true.

Before digging into the relationship between guns and crime, Prof. Lott wanted to address the issue of government roadblocks to getting guns. This is going to be a hot-button issue in California this November because Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom collected enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot requiring background checks, not for gun purchases but for ammunition purchases. Newsom, who hopes to become California governor in 2018, has said of his initiative, “What makes guns dangerous is ammunition. Yet we don’t do background checks on ammo.”

The former party boy appears to think that his initiative very cleverly gets around the Second Amendment’s proscription against infringing on the right to bear arms. You see, he’s not going to touch the arms; he’s just going to infringe on the right to bear ammunition.

It doesn’t seem to occur to Newsom that the right to bear arms is meaningful only if those arms are functional. Otherwise, the Founders would have written that the right to play with kids’ toys that look like guns but aren’t really cannot be infringed. The scary thing is that, if Hillary gets her hands on the Supreme Court (or just follows Obama’s Executive Order pattern) he and other Progressives will get away with this kind of Constitution-destroying game playing.

But I digress. What I was saying is that, because of California’s upcoming ammunition ballot initiative, Lott wanted to talk about the way in which the background check system (a) discriminates against poor people; (b) discriminates against tens of thousands of potential gun buyers annually; and (c) discriminates against minorities.

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