Tag Archives: freedom

California Gun Control

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California has a new law, with effect at the start of this year, that requires semiautomatic pistols sold there to have microstamping capability on the pistols’ firing pins. The tech would stamp the brass when the pistol discharges a round, and from that, the brass could be tied back to the pistol that fired it.

As part of the implementation, the California Department of Justice now asks Firearm manufacturers and Interested Parties a number of questions about how the rule should be implemented. These questions include

  • Who is best suited to provide the microstamp to the DOJ?
  • When should the microstamp be provided to the DOJ?
  • How should the microstamp be provided to the DOJ?
  • If a microstamp part needs to be replaced, should the regulated replacement part have the same microstamp as the original?

This Interested Party offers some answers, even though I’m not a citizen of California, being glad instead to be a citizen of Texas:

  • No one
  • Never
  • N/A, see above
  • N/A, see above

California’s move is just another in a long chain of efforts by gun control…persons…to build up a database of who has what firearms so they can be seized at a later date.

Some European Questions

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In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the supposed unity of Europe against Russian President Putin and Europe’s dependency on the US in countering Putin, there were these questions the men and women of Europe’s governments have—especially in the face of Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden’s waffling on military and economic aid to Ukraine and his slow-walking that military aid.

  1. How much firepower should Ukraine receive in its quest to retake occupied territory from Russia’s invasion forces?
  2. How much Western weaponry would risk an uncontrolled escalation of the war?
  3. And what sort of compromises should Ukraine contemplate if it can’t drive Russian troops off its land entirely?

As might be expected, I have answers.

  1. All that the Ukrainian military needs, of the type they say they need (most assuredly not the type the Know Betters of the Pentagon say they need), and as fast as they can absorb it.
  2. Quit worrying about it. The barbarian’s conventional forces are in no position to escalate—or widen—anything, and even the barbarian chieftain understands that going nuclear, even if only tactical, will bring about the destruction of Russia and more importantly to the chieftain, his personal destruction.
  3. See 1 above. Zelenskyy has been quite clear about this, the pretended confusion of the Western press notwithstanding. The barbarian’s departure from Ukraine is a prerequisite to peace negotiation.

Concerning that last, I’ve written before that border negotiations must begin with, and the only border-related compromise permissible is, how far back from the Ukraine border Russian roads and railroads must be torn up and the terrain (re)sown with Russian olive trees.

They Don’t Clash

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New Jersey has a new gun control law, one which Governor Phil Murphy (D) signed just last week.

Under the new law, concealed carry is not allowed in “high-density” locations, places with vulnerable populations or where there is First Amendment or government activity.

New Jerseyans can’t exercise their Second Amendment rights where they’re exercising their First Amendment rights? How does that work, exactly? The two sets of rights are synergistic, not conflicting.

And of what is Murphy’s government so terrified that his administration’s “activities” need to be protected from the people for whom he works?

There’s this fillip, too:

The new law also restricts who is ineligible to obtain a carry permit, including those with an outstanding arrest [warrant]….

But not convicted of the charge. So much for innocent until proven guilty in New Jersey.

And

…four endorsements of character from non-related references must be provided with applications.

Those four endorsers, too, each will be…interviewed…by Murphy’s government men. Murphy’s government not only is tracking New Jersey citizens who have firearms, now he intends to track those who support those who have firearms, also.

Never mind that the Supreme Court’s rulings in NY State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, District of Columbia v Heller, and McDonald v City of Chicago individually and together acknowledged that the right of us Americans to keep and bear Arms is an individual right rather than a collective one, and that they acknowledged that we don’t have to satisfy Government of any sort of “need” or “suitability of purpose” in our keeping and bearing. Never mind, either, that the rulings also required carry permit issuance to be based on strictly objective criteria, not on a government functionary’s wholly subjective assessment of “character” references.

The opening line of our Constitution—the opening phrase—is We the People of the United States.  It’s our Constitution, not Government’s. We are sovereign in our nation, not Government. It’s our obligation to enforce our rights; Government can act (and should), legitimately, only to assist us, not to usurp our duties. We defend our nation; Government acts in our name for us, not in its own name for itself.

Our Second Amendment rights are critical to all of that. Without our individual, personal keep[ing] and bear[ing] Arms, we cannot do any of that. That’s why our right shall not be infringed. Especially where First Amendment or government activities are occurring.

This is one example of why we can’t trust gun control pushers. They have no understanding whatsoever of our Bill of Rights and, by extension, of our Constitution.

Not Just DoJ

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It has come to light that DoJ prosecutors convened a grand jury and got subpoenas with which to investigate then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R) and a number of Republican Committee staffers during Nunes’ Committee investigations into what are now known to be Progressive-Democratic Party collusion with DoJ to create a false narrative of Republican collusion with Russia.

“The FBI and DOJ spied on a presidential campaign, and when Congress began exposing what they were doing, they spied on us to find out what we knew and how we knew it,” Nunes said. “It’s an egregious abuse of power that the next Congress must investigate so these agencies can be held accountable and reformed.”
The subpoenas demanded a broad swath of records from Google, including “all customer and subscriber account information” for [then-Committee Senior Counsel Kash] Patel and the other staffer, “addresses (including mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses,” user names, “screen names,” “local and long distance telephone connection records,” and even the “means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records.”

That’s bad enough, but I’m especially concerned about another, closely related matter. Retired FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence, Kevin Brock:

A federal grand jury subpoena for records can only be issued after some type of criminal investigation has been opened.  So whoever sought the subpoena will have to be prepared to articulate why they thought these staffers broke the law. And it better be a substantial violation, something more than just a media leak investigation for example, otherwise it will risk being perceived as a gross misuse of the grand jury process to intimidate or chill a congressional committee demanding pointed answers from DOJ.

The larger question in my view—especially if the subpoenas were issued on an allegation of a chump change crime—is who were the judges, if any, who played along and approved the grand jury subpoenas, what were their rationales for their approvals? Also, who were the prosecutors convening the grand jury? It’s possible they came from the DC US Attorney’s Office, but who in particular?

Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

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Lots of folks tout cryptocurrency as the be-all and end-all of currency and liberation of our money from Evil Government.

However.

Here’s a bit about blockchain.

A blockchain is a distributed database or ledger that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. … The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party.

Guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data—the fidelity part of that is that each transaction of good in a sequence of transactions is explicitly tracked and its provenance known: who or what did the transaction and who or what received the transaction. At every step of the way from first origin of the first transaction to the last recipient of the last transaction.

Here’s a bit about cryptocurrency, using the hoary Bitcoin as a canonical example.

The key thing to understand here is that Bitcoin merely uses blockchain as a means to transparently record a ledger of payments, but blockchain can, in theory, be used to immutably record any number of data points.

Cryptocurrencies use blockchain—and that ledger, here, of payments (from whom or what to what or whom)—to track the financial transactions.

That immutable record of transactions is just what governments love to have in order to track their subjects’ doings.

Cryptocurrencies are encrypted, though—that’s the “crypto” part. Except that any encryption mechanism can be cracked, and governments have the resources to do exactly that should the men in government decide they have a “need” to.

On the other hand, cash transactions still are untrackable.