Two weeks ago, I wrote last week’s Friday Feedback. I was about to travel to visit my parents for the first time in years to say goodbye. I knew it was going to be hard, I wrote assuming it would be, scheduled it and planned to correct if I was wrong.
It was a hard week.
This week was harder.
That is at a personal level.
At a more 2A level, I have been thinking about where we are today vs. where we were in years past.
I turned 18 and could have purchased an M-16. The tax stamp would have accounted for 25% of my costs, not counting the other hoops. It wasn’t worth it to me. I wasn’t interested in firearms. I was into stereos, music, and knives.
In 1986, it became prohibitively expensive to purchase a machine gun. All because of an amendment to a bill attempting to protect gun owners. I was pleased that we could not travel throughout the states without being at risk for having a gun in the wrong state.
Little did I understand how that wasn’t really true.
Nor did I understand that machine guns would become so expensive.
When I purchased my first firearms, I was surprised to learn how hard it was to get a permit to carry my firearm with me.
Today, every firearm I own has a holster for it OR a sling if it has sling mounts. At the time, most gun stores in my area didn’t even bother to carry holsters. There were a few, but so few people ever carried a handgun that it wasn’t a good use of shelf space.
I remember listening to the horror stories about how people were having their rights stomped on because they had no standing. Only the militia had standing.
What I remember most vividly was the Heller decision. It was the end to this crap about not having standing. It meant that the rollback of all these infringements was just a few months away.
I believed that the courts would do the right thing.
There was that wonderful few weeks when Washington, D.C. was actually a constitutional carry location. The head of the MPD stated that D.C.’s permitting laws had been declared unconstitutional. Until new, constitutional, regulations were put in place, if you were not a prohibited person, you could carry in D.C.
When Bruen came out, I expected a slew of lawsuits designed to attack the infringements that existed. I did not expect the Bruen tantrum response bills.
I knew that some courts would fight. I wasn’t surprised when the Ninth Circuit kicked the GVR’d cases down to the district level for new briefings in light of Bruen.
I was pleasantly surprised when the Fourth Circuit heard their GVR’d case right away. And then they went radio silent for over a year.
But something different is happening this time. The 2A community started politely, they filed their suits and saw where things went. They got their cases to the circuit courts, and we watched the circuit courts uphold infringements of every sort.
I don’t expect the 2A community to go quietly into the night. But I was not expecting the level of ferocious attacks I’ve been seeing.
There are far too many briefs, orders, motions, and opinions coming out that are more impolite than I’d ever expect to see. Courts are being called out on their shit.
We are taking these cases to the Supreme Court, over and over again. And we are being heard. The Circuit courts are scrambling to find something. They know they are twisting the Supreme Court’s words to infringe when that should not be allowed.
There have been too many times when the Circuit courts have modified their behavior, fearing the Supreme Court intervening in their cases.
Are you feeling positive about the course things are taking?
The comments are open, let’s hear your thoughts.
Comments
7 responses to “Friday Feedback”
28 states are now Constitutional Carry. We the People are winning. ignore mainstream media they never tell the truth. liberals are scared. people everywhere are starting to push back. We have had enough of liberals bullshit policys that just destroy this country. never give up the fight. never. liberals want you to feel defeated. then you give up. We the People HAVE to speak our minds. PC shiite has made many cowards. history IS repeating itself- its 1775 all over again. us “normal” people have busy lives and many “don’t have time” for politics. We the People MUST make time for it. the rock of Freedom has been chipped down to a brick. time to make bricks and build a wall around liberals….
I think the big difference of now vs then is the legal calculus is on our side. Nothing is a sure thing. But its as close to a sure thing we can have with breun, heller, McDonald, and miller all together. Plus favorable swept under the rug lower court opinions that say things like AR 15s don’t meet the statutory requirements of a firearm.
There was an article in today’s WSJ saying that the US Senate filibuster is at risk, with Sinema and Manchin both retiring. If the Dems retain power in the Senate, it’s likely to go away next session because no other Democrat supports the filibuster.
If so, Dems are likely to pack the court and immediately start taking away our rights. They are also likely to create new voting laws to give them a permanent majority.
Plan accordingly.
Typical leftists.
When they are losing, change the rules. Children do the same.
Andrew Breitbart said it right when he noted that “Politics is downstream of culture.” As is policy. In the long run, it does not matter what the courts say or the laws state if the culture does not support it. The courts can put duct tape on our rights, and when conservatives get a temporary advantage in a legislature they can pass a law or two, but the trend will follow culture.
That’s why it’s all about controlling the narrative and the media. The courts can call things unconstitutional, but as long as the kids are being taught that anything other than authoritarian socialism and Weimar Republic morality is “evil,” and as long as there is no real cultural response, the people teaching the kids will win.
The problem is that most conservatives have become part of this, not because they embrace the decline and decadence of the West, but because they have accepted that their resistance is wrong or at least distasteful. They have internalized the idea that causing someone else to feel bad is a greater sin than speaking out against degneracy and decay. They have already given up the field of battle. And they more they give up, the less effective they can be in whatever efforts they do make.
I saw this a fair amount when I was active in some things that were going on in Washington. Many of my colleagues professed to me privately that they agreed with me about issues but that they didn’t want to seem obstructionist. We had to be willing to “compromise” so that we could have a “place at the table” when it came to policy decisions. What it meant was that they effectively censored themselves, and the “compromise” only occurred in one direction. And because they were part of that “compromise” they defended it, and ended up being prophets for the very things they said they opposed in private.
The only real solution in the near term is a cultural and religious revival. It will require martyrs who pay the price for standing for their beliefs. Some folk are willing — JK Rowling, Mark Steyn, folk who pray at abortion clinics, bakers who refuse to make cakes, etc. Eventually it will come to a “We are Spartacus” point where a lot of people will have to willingly suffer. It may be too late for that. The long term result is, of course, collapse and rebuilding of a different society altogether. None of us will be here for that.
Sadly, 35 million K-12 public school students use Chromebooks and Google Classroom apps which are subject to Google’s biased search results and Gemini AI interjections. And even more so in the “suggestions” provided once you start typing in the search bar as well as most other blank fields.
It is a propagandists dream.
Yes…tye 2A community is fighting back against the left and fighting hard. But the problem they have is enormous, al ist insurmountable. That problem is simple. In the real world the gun grabbing left is not burdened by laws, opinions or rulings. They routinely ignore them and do so with impunity. To the left Heller, Bruen and any other ruling they don’t like are things they simply IGNORE. And they do so without fear of any consequences. That’s a tough situation to face when YOU are bound by laws, rules and regulations but your opponent is not.