Senator Feinstein of California has introduced legislation to prohibit the manufacture and sale and transfer of common rifles and standard capacity magazines:
Feinsteins bill would graciously allow you to keep what you currently own… so long as you don’t move across state lines, probably. And when you die? The government gets your stuff because of course they do. And the police? They get to keep all the “assault weapons” they like.
BOHICA.
Just passed today in the House, H.R. 1446: “Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021.”
Currently, if you buy a gun from a firearms dealer you need to complete a background check. Normally that takes a matter of seconds… your criminal record, if any, is in government computers and shouldn’t take but a split second to pull up. Current law gives the government three days to complete the check, for reasons which are inexplicable; as previously stated, it should take less time than it takes to google “background check.” Back when i lived in Utah, you could go to a gun store or a gun show, find what you wanted, fork over your cash, fill out your paperwork, wait a minute while the dealer calls up the FBI and gets the go ahead… then you collect your new firearm and wander away, a happy citizen.
But H.R. 1446 turns that maximum of three day waiting period into a *minimum* twelve day waiting period. From the summary of the bill:
This bill revises background check requirements applicable to proposed firearm transfers from a federal firearms licensee (e.g., a licensed gun dealer) to an unlicensed person.
Specifically, it increases the amount of time, from 3 business days to a minimum of 10 business days, that a federal firearms licensee must wait to receive a completed background check prior to transferring a firearm to an unlicensed person. (This type of transaction is often referred to as a default proceed transaction.)
If a submitted background check remains incomplete after 10 business days, then the prospective purchaser may submit a petition for a final firearms eligibility determination. If an additional 10 days elapse without a final determination, then the federal firearms licensee may transfer the firearm to the prospective purchaser.
This will largely end gun shows in free states like Utah, since customers will know that they will not be walking out with the product they want. And even for gun stores, the chances are good that it will take a full month (20 business days is four weeks for Monday through Friday… not counting the innumerable Federal holidays) before the bureaucrats get around to giving the go-ahead. It is a safe bet that this process will be used to slow down the firearms business as much as possible… the system that works just fine now in a matter of seconds will very likely be throttled to make sure that it takes as long as governmentally possible. Doubtless the post-ten-day petitioning process will be a nightmare… un-navigable websites, or the requirement to physically fill out paperwork that you can’t actually physically get. I can see the petitioning process requiring the gun buyer to send a physical letter to some distant Federal facility to request the paperwork; it’ll take days for the postal system to get the letter there, it’ll take days for the letter to get processed through the doubtless grossly overloaded front office staffed by people who were suspended from the DMV for working too slowly, it’ll take days more for the postal system to send the buyer the paperwork. Once received, the paperwork will be an incomprehensible mass of gobbledygook, a crummy novella of plot holes and spelling errors. The buyer will spend days trying to fill it out, collecting required data from sources around the country. The post office will spend more days sending it where it needs to go, to face another set of DMV rejects… who will be specially trained to find the flaws in the paperwork, the trick questions that either mean the paperwork is sent back to the petitioner to do over again (after a suitable waiting period)… or just outright rejected. That second ten-day waiting period refers to the period *after* the petition has been received. And it’s clearly possible for the Feds to make sure that it takes a buyer *weeks* to get the petition sent in. Hell, the easiest thing in the world for them to do is simply not set up a petition process. If there’s no way for you to petition… you *can’t* petition.
The lying authoritarian anti-American scumbags who sponsored this bill claim that it will “strengthen” the background check process.” They say this without explaining why the current system is somehow insufficient. The bill now goes to the Senate where it may or may not pass. If it does pass, obviously China’s best buddy will sign the bill into law. At that point a 120 day clock will start ticking down until the law comes into effect. By that point the $1400 “stimulus” payments should have been received. I hope everyone takes that money and that 120 days to go out and buy as many guns as possible.
Alternatively: use your stimulus funds to procure the hardware needed to machine proper firearms or firearm components. Ten people working together would have $12,000 worth of machine tools. I suspect that’s quite sufficient to set up a workshop that will convert plain blocks of aluminum, steel or even titanium into AR-15 receivers.
It’s an act, alright. It’s essentially an attempt to cement a permanent Democrat coup d’etat by setting up the voting system for rampant fraud.
Behold the modern American institute of higher learning:
For some reason YouTube’s algorithm decided I needed to see this. So, guess what, you get to see it too: a British school girl undergoing one dire Tourette’s tic attack. Comes complete with NSFW language and some seriously self-destructive actions. This is clearly a heck of an issue for her. But imagine what her life would have been like a few centuries ago when the only explanation for this would have been demonic possession or some such.
We live in some crazy damned times. There are a *lot* of people out there with a large range of emotional/mental/psychological/neurological issues… and a lot more people who tell them that they should feel proud for it. That they should revel in it. That children should be indoctrinated to actually desire such things. That society should tell these people that their delusions are *real.* That rather than seeking a cure, they should be rolling around in their troubles like a glue-covered pig rolling in glitter. But I have the sneaking suspicion that if this girl was given the opportunity to take a single pill that would end her Tourettes side effect free, she’d leap at it.
In a Star Trek future, Doctor McCoy would run a tricorder over her, diagnose her problem and zap her with Space Magic Healing Ray (TM), and she’d be fine from then on. Someone with cancer or schizophrenia or clinical depression… same thing. But if someone came along who claimed to be a pandemifurrytwospirittransGorn… why, gotta *celebrate* that and lock up anyone who says “maybe they’re just nuts.”
Once again, this time with feeling:
Sen. Johnson: “How many firearms were confiscated in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds during that day?”
FBIAssistant Director Sanborn: “To my knowledge, we have not recovered any on that day from any other arrests at the scene at this point. But I don’t want to speak on behalf of Metro and Capitol Police. But to my knowledge, none.”
Johnson: “So nobody has been charged with an actual firearm weapon in the Capitol or on Capitol grounds?”
Sanborn: “Correct. The closest we came was the vehicle that had the Molotov cocktails in it. And when we did a search of that vehicle later on, there was a weapon.”
Johnson: “How many shots were fired that we know of?”
Sanborn: “I believe the only shots that were fired were the ones that results in the death of the one lady” [The woman killed by the Capitol Police].
The fear-mongering bootlickers claim that the “armed insurrectionists” had things like stun guns and – GASP HORROR – crutches.
I can’t even.
“Star Wars: The High Republic” is shaping up to be the idiotic trainwreck that it could be foreseen to be from the get-go. A new character is literally a rock named Geode. Why? I can only guess. But one obvious possibility is that geode here won’t have any personal pronouns, can’t be nailed down to having any race or gender… the perfect character for modern Disney Star Wars. Geode, by the way, is a navigator. On a vessel named The Vessel. THE VESSEL.
They’re not even *trying.*
And by the way:
So according to Disney Star Wars, the ultimate threat to the Jedi are boys. The Force Is Female indeed.
A lot of this seems *screamingly* unConstitutional. But I guess we should get used to seeing a lot of that over the next two to four years…
A hit piece on Elon Musk and his plans for Mars:
The money quote:
Sagan did believe in sending humans to Mars to first explore and eventually live there, to ensure humanity’s very long-term survival, but he also said this: “What shall we do with Mars? There are so many examples of human misuse of the Earth that even phrasing the question chills me. If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if [they] are only microbes.”
Musk, by contrast, is encouraging a feeling of entitlement to the cosmos—that we can and must colonize space, regardless of who or what might be there, all for a long-shot chance at security.
Huh. There’s a fair amount to disagree with here.
Firstly, Sagan, much as I like a lot of what he did, was wrong about the microbes. If there are Martian microbes… great, wonderful, huzzah. If they do not pose a threat to terrestrial life – and they probably wouldn’t – then the proper place for them in the future is in the Marsopolis Public Zoo And Museum. Life on Mars had its shot. The planet is dying, if not already dead; if Mars is to become a living world, it will be because humans do it. Microbes do not have rights; they certainly do not have the right to Mars that even *rabbits* do.
Now, if the author wants to get into a debate about what right to life alien microbes have, I can put her in touch with some folks who have some things to say about the right to life of human embryos.That, I suspect, would make for some entertaining debating.
Secondly, her dismissal of Musks notions about colonizing Mars: the man is right. We, especially the Western World, more especially America, *should* feel entitled to the cosmos. Whenever I hear some woke MFer tell me to “stay in my lane,” my immediate response is “Lady, I’m an American: the entire accessible universe is my lane. See you on Titan, chump!”
Everywhere we look in the heavens we see resources free for the taking. And everywhere we look – at least so far – we see no sign of those resources being owned. It’s a universe of riches and possibilities, and it is, so far as we can tell, friggen’ empty. It’s not just our right to colonize, commercialize, industrialize and exploit, it’s our responsibility. Everywhere we go for the most mundane or venal reasons, we will take along the ecosystem of Earth, or at least some fraction thereof. We will spread life throughout the cosmos.
Woke nags like this sure as hell won’t, though.
Legitimate reasons exist to feel concerned for long-term human survival, and, yes, having the ability to travel more efficiently throughout the solar system would be good. But I question anyone among the richest people in the world who sells a story of caring so much for human survival that he must send rockets into space. Someone in his position could do so many things on our little blue dot itself to help those in need.
To laugh at Sagan’s words is to miss the point entirely: There really is only one true home for us—and we’re already here.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhgh. Do I have to trot out Tsiolkovsky?
There was only one true home for us… the Olduvai Gorge. Until it wasn’t.
And note how she seems to think that *she* should be able to tell Musk how to spend his money. How many billionaires are there on Earth who *aren’t* spending their funds on building rockets? How many middle east oil billionaires are blowing far more than Musk is on SpaceX on truly useless self-aggrandizing crap? Why isn’t the author over yonder protesting the building – often with virtual slave labor – of vast and rather silly skyscrapers in the desert, or giant artificial island complexes? Why aren’t these billionaires instead following Israeli leads and making their deserts bloom?
Nah. Easier to whine about rockets because reasons.
I truly hope that Martian colonial craft will have names like “the Cecil Rhodes” and “the Rudyard Kipling.”
Another case where the video evidence *completely* demolishes the narrative that the SJW “activists” attempt to promote. Compare the events shown clearly on video with the nonsensical tirade shown here.
Short form: woman with two little kids is completely off her nut (mental issues? Drugs? Dunno), starts raving incoherently when some cops *politely* try to talk to her in the street. She starts shrieking paranoid delusional stuff, then takes off after a cop with a knife. Said cop tries to taser her and fails; another cop plugs her about four times. Getting stabby with a cop *does* make you a legally valid bullet sponge.
Getting stabby while yelling “Allahu ackbar” and telling your kids not to fear death… yeah, ya ain’t right in the head, lady.
The “activist” Leia Schenk here should, IMO, be held liable for causing emotional distress to the family, and perhaps also legally liable for slander. At the very least, her willingness – nay, eagerness – to launch head first into rage-filled protests over a situation which she clearly knows little about should be forever kept in mind when considering all the other protests that she and those like her launch into. All of 2020 would have been a more peaceful, less arsony, less deadly and all around less crazy year if people like Schenk had actually waited to see the evidence before they decided to take to the streets to burn down bookstores and loot coffee shops.