A SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA IS INEVITABLE IF THE SECOND AMENDMENT WITHERS AND DIES

A SEDITIOUS PRESS AND THE NEW PROGRESSIVE LEFT DEMOCRATS SEEK TO UNDERMINE A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

“If the media were honest, they would say, Look, here are the interests we represent and this is the framework within which we look at things. This is our set of beliefs and commitments. That’s what they would say, very much as their critics say. For example, I don’t try to hide my commitments, and the Washington Post and New York Times shouldn’t do it either. However, they must do it, because this mask of balance and objectivity is a crucial part of the propaganda function. In fact, they actually go beyond that. They try to present themselves as adversarial to power, as subversive, digging away at powerful institutions and undermining them. The academic profession plays along with this game.” Quotation one, ~Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist, from Lecture titled, “Media, Knowledge, and Objectivity,” June 16, 1993“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business . . . the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.” Quotation two, ~Noam Chomsky, from article, titled, “Force and Opinion,” in Z MagazineThe picture of the world that’s presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It’s all been a marvelous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting.” Quotation three, ~Noam Chomsky, from his book, “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”

PART ONE

With this latest “mass” shooting, in Odessa, Texas, the antigun zealots and their fellow travelers in the Press lost little time in exploiting the tragedy. The antigun seditious Press, always protective of its fundamental right  of freedom of the Press  under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, misuses that fundamental right to launch a vicious assault on another but equally, sacred, fundamental right—a sacred, inviolate right that tens of millions of average, law-abiding, responsible, and rational citizens exercise every day, as is their prerogative: the sacred, inviolate, and unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms—a right as fundamental, immutable, unalienable as is the freedom of the Press that our seemingly Free Press seems exclusively concerned about securing, perhaps well aware that the seditious dogma it propagates can and should be constrained.In that regard it should be mentioned that President Trump can certainly take action to choke the Press for the malicious, bald-faced lies elicited from it, if he had the mind to do so; but he hasn’t done so, which speaks to his restraint, something that can’t be said for Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, who, as the Baltimore Examiner reported, prosecuted and spied on reporters to constrain the Press, and he did so several times. Obama’s actions amounted to an abuse of power that Obama never had to answer for. President Trump’s actions unlike those of Obama have amounted to amounted to mere rebukes against the Press. But Trump, unlike Obama, did have and does have every reason to clamp down on the Press for having orchestrating a comprehensive attack on him, an attack that goes well beyond criticism, amounting to vicious defamation of character and a fusillade of malicious lies. The Press sneers at the President, castigates him, ridicules him; derides, mocks, and taunts him viciously, constantly, relentlessly. The Press refers to Trump as an autocrat, and a danger to our Nation. Honestly? Which President is it who has really demonstrated autocratic tendencies? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? And, if, God forbid, any of the current crop of Democratic Party candidates for U.S. President is elected President in 2020, it will be that person that ushers in a totalitarian regime.Yet, the seditious Press, ever protective of and jealous of its own inviolate right and prerogatives codified in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, perverts that right and has done so, since the earliest days of Donald Trump’s Presidency, launching endless scurrilous, pernicious, bombastic, inflammatory ad hominem attacks on Trump and on his Administration’s policies; trying to frustrate him at every turn, in every manner; intent on accomplishing that detestable aim; deliberately, seditiously making it difficult for the President to perform his duties in accordance with his Oath of Office set forth in Article 2, Section One, Clause 8 of the Constitution—doing everything it can to wear the President down, sabotage his efforts, and blind to the fact that harming the President means harming the Nation, the Constitution, and the American people. Trump has persevered through all of this, weathered the storm of noxious, incessant verbal and written assaults on his character and his policies and that speaks volumes to his fortitude, stamina, strength of will, to overcome adversity—adversity that, unfortunately and disturbingly, emanates from within the Nation, than outside it.

AN ATTACK ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS AN ATTACK ON THE NATION, ON THE CONSTITUTION, ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, ON THE FOUNDERS AND ON THE FOUNDERS’ VISION FOR THIS NATION

The attack by the Press is pervasive, vigorous, vicious, vile, and all-consuming: a constant barrage of invective directed against President Trump, against the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, against guns and gun owners, against NRA; even against the founders of our Republic, and their vision for our Country of which the Constitution is the Nation’s blueprint. The Press has conspired with others who are intent on undermining all of it. This virulent, seditious, antigun Press is intent on denying to Americans their sacred, inviolate, unalienable right to defend their life, safety, and well-being, with the best means available, a firearm. Through its incessant assault on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and through its never-ending, attack on the President who has, for the most part, defended that right, and against NRA that tirelessly protects it, the Press would also, not surprisingly, place obstacles in the path of Americans who recognize that the most effective way to guard against the insinuation of tyranny into our Nation is by dint of an armed citizenry.Obviously, a seditious Press knows this, and, as that same seditious, incorrigible Press, is in league with Left-wing extremists—who some people refer to as the New Progressive Left—whose sick and bizarre vision for America mandates the establishment of a Marxist/Socialist dictatorship, a dictatorship our Nation is inexorably chugging along toward. The public should well take note of what a Marxist/Socialist Dictatorship shall bring: misery, oppression, hopelessness for and in the lives of every American. And, don’t think that such a hell-world cannot come to pass. For, if the New Progressive Left actually succeeds, in the forthcoming General Election, in taking control of both chambers of Congress, and of the U.S. Presidency, as well, autocracy will manifest itself, and it will manifest quickly. Tyranny of Government—the very fear of the founders of the Republic—will be inevitable.A vision of our Country grounded on the tenets of Collectivism, rather than on the tenets of Individualism, as it presently is, is now a stark possibility, as extremist Left-wing elements have high-jacked the Democratic Party. That is plain. And the Press knows this too; welcomes it; nurtures it. And why not? After all, the seditious Press has been high-jacked by extremist Left-wing elements, too, using its First Amendment freedom, ironically and disturbingly, not to defend, safeguard, preserve, and strengthen our Constitutional Republic—but to undermine and destroy it, commencing with an unending parade of indictments against the Second Amendment and vicious and unparalleled attacks on the President and, indeed, on the very institution of the Presidency that this Nation has never before seen.But, to condemn one fundamental right is to condemn them all, including the Freedom of the Press—a singular right that Mark Levin, an attorney, author, and true Patriot, has perceptively referred to as the "Unfreedom of the Press," and has so titled his recent best-selling non-fiction book on the subject of the Press; as the Press, today, has corrupted the very right it disingenuously defends and extols, but misuses to undercut the Second Amendment, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and, in fact, undermines the very right, the Freedom of the Press, that it seemingly fervently defends; for all ten Amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights go together to form a single coherent, comprehensive whole. The Bill of Rights is a unique testament to the importance the founders of our Nation, the framers of our Constitution, placed in the American people; for it is American people in whom sovereign power over the Nation rests, not the federal Government.The Government the framers constructed is a Government divided into three separate but co-equal Branches, each with its own set of limited powers, as meticulously set out in the Articles of the Constitution. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people as set forth in and made abundantly clear in the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. And, if those who exert power and authority in Government ever forget where it is that true lawful, sovereign power resides, then the right codified in the Second Amendment exists to remind them that Government was created to serve the American people, and not the other way around; nor does Government exist to serve itself.The founders of our Nation, the framers of our Constitution, would be absolutely appalled to witness the Press’ perversion of its sacred freedom. These extremist Left-wing elements that have taken over a substantial part of our news media and news commentary are a deadly contagion, spouting vile venom and filth, dispersing it with pomposity and sanctimony, on radio, on television, in printed media, and over the internet—indeed, everywhere throughout the Country and the world.And this so-called New Progressive Left plague is firmly planted in and dispersed throughout our institutions of Government—federal, State, and local—and it is a prominent fixture in the entertainment business. The New Progressive Left is pervasive in the Press and in media. It has permeated the major technology companies. But all this spawn of the New Progressive Left know full well it cannot dismantle a free, Constitutional Republic so easily. The New Progressive Left brood cannot long survive as long as there exists an armed citizenry. The root system of the New Progressive Left will wither and die as long as there exists an armed citizenry in the U.S. But an armed citizenry will only continue to exist if the American public manifests and maintains its strength of will and an indefatigable faith in our founders’ vision for our Nation and does not fall prey to the specious emotional laden nonsense constantly flowing through and out of the radical Left’s echo chamber: the Unfree Press.__________________________________________________________

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS MUST NOT BUCKLE UNDER TO THE PRESS AND TO DEMOCRATS WHO EXPLOIT TRAGEDY TO UNDERCUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART TWO

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”~ George Orwell, writer and essayist, from his novel on a Dystopian society, "1984"

ENGAGING IN COMPROMISE WITH THOSE WHO ABHOR FIREARMS AND WHO DETEST THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO EXERCISE THEIR SACRED RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS WILL SERVE ONLY TO COMPROMISE THAT RIGHT, DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT

The American citizenry are a free, powerful, sovereign people living in a free Constitutional Republic; a Nation that belongs to the entire citizenry, not to a select few individuals among the citizenry; and definitely not to the Government, an entity created to serve the citizenry, not to subjugate and oppress it. The words codified in the Second Amendment make this fundamental truth plain. The exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms make this truth a reality. The New Progressive Left seeks to erase the words of the Second Amendment from the Constitution. The New Progressive Left demands the surrender of all firearms from the hands of the citizenry. Government control over an armed citizenry is impossible. Those Leftist radical elements know this and it infuriates them. The need for an armed citizenry, as the framers of the Constitution planned for, intended, and made eminently clear in the words of the Second Amendment, is indisputable, inescapable; and, as we see more so, today, than ever before, their vision for this Country cannot remain true and pure without an armed citizenry. The Leftist extremists come up against an impenetrable roadblock in the very existence of the Second Amendment. They realize their vision of a Marxist/Socialist Country, where America is merely a small cog in a mammoth Marxist/Socialist new world order, cannot come to fruition as long as the American people possess firearms, and they find this state of affairs intolerable.But, as long as the founders’ vision for our Nation remains fixed in the psyche of the American citizenry, and as long as the American public remains mindful, vigilant, and  undeterred by the dire threat the New Progressive Left poses to our Nation, and as long as the American public, the silent majority, is resolved to prevent the Left’s replacing the founders' vision for our Country with that of their own, will the American public be able to effectively resist and forestall the establishment here of a Marxist, Socialist dictatorship--a dictatorship in which the betrayers of our Nation, consisting of the New Progressive Left itself, but also comprising crass opportunists, stand willing to sell their very souls to secure for themselves nothing but personal aggrandizement—bootlickers and lemmings all—ready to abase themselves, obediently taking their marching orders from their overlords holed up in Brussels.If these radical Left-wing elements succeed in compromising the Nation by undercutting the Constitution, then the American people, like the populations of the EU, will face unending misery; misery manifesting in the suppression of basic freedoms, constant surveillance, control over thought and conduct, and penury; a sad, oppressive life, nay, something less than life: mere existence—in a new political, social, economic, and cultural construct; one that has erased the independence and sovereignty of our Nation and of all Western nation-states; destroying, as well, the constitutions, laws, and jurisprudence of all nation-states.But to accomplish their goal, the New Progressive Left in our Country must indoctrinate our children, and reeducate those adults who aren’t so easily susceptible to prolific proselytizing and propagandizing; those adults who are not so willing to accept the fiction that our fundamental rights and liberties aren’t rights at all and never had been, but are merely man-made constructs, mere privileges, bestowed on the American people by grace of Government and by that same authority of Government would those same privileges be rescinded.If the public believes the fiction—if, in fact, the public believes that fundamental, immutable, unalienable rights are not, at all, rights preexistent in man, bestowed on man by a loving Divine Creator, but are mere privileges, vouchsafe granted by Government to men—then these Marxists, Socialists, and Communists, will find it much easier to weaken and ultimately negate the one right that alone serves as the means of preventing subjugation of the American citizenry, and it is that one, fundamental right that most concerns them: the right of the people to keep and bear arms.The problem for those of us who seek to preserve and strengthen our sacred right of the people to keep and bear arms is found less in the Radical Left or New Progressive Left elements now controlling the seditious Press and who have insinuated themselves in and are now legion in the Democratic Party, and more in the growing possibility that the U.S. President and Congressional Republicans might actually consider negotiating with the Democrats and in so doing, weaken rather than preserve and strengthen the right of the people to keep and bear arms. What we must do is to make plain to both the U.S. President and to Congressional Republicans that they must not capitulate. We must make clear to President Trump and to Congressional Republicans that to cave in to Democrat demands for “muscular new gun control proposals,”—that Progressive Left Democrat Candidates for U.S. President, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, are calling for, as reported by The New York Times, on September 3, 2019, in an article title, “Demanding Gun Control, but Differing on Tactics,”—is not the way to deal with these gun grabbers.Our Nation already has more than enough restrictive gun laws. We don’t need more; for more gun laws will not make this Nation safer. More restrictive gun laws, targeting the tens of millions of average, law-abiding, rational, responsible American citizen, which is the aim of the New Progressive Left Congressional Democrats will only make this Nation less safe--will leave those Americans without the means of adequate defense against the psychopathic criminals and dangerous psychotic lunatics who prey on innocent Americans. And, be well aware of this: The gun control proposals of Democratic Party candidates policy goals is specifically designed to target the millions of average, law-abiding gun owners, not the common criminal, the vicious drug cartels, or the occasional lunatic. We know that; and Democrats know that too. And, they don't deny it. The Press doesn't ask these candidates for U.S. President what their gun measures are really designed to do, whom it is they are really targeting. But, then, they are of one mind with antigun New Progressive Left. And, apparently, the U.S. President and Congressional Republicans aren't asking either. These “muscular new gun control measures” various Democratic Party candidates for U.S. President are calling for are directed squarely at the millions of law-abiding gun owners, not common criminals, not psychopathic gang members, not psychotic lunatics, all of whom are not permitted to own and possess firearms under current federal law, anyway—federal law that in many instances isn’t enforced. And this indisputable truth compels one unmistakable, disturbing conclusion: That further gun control laws the New Progressive Left Democratic Presidential candidates are vociferously and blatantly arguing for are not directed to reducing gun violence; nor, for that matter, are they directed toward the reduction of violence of any kind. The appeal for more restrictive gun measures is a makeweight, a platitude, for on close inspection, the logic behind the appeal falls apart, and one realizes the scam for what it is and that those demanding comprehensive gun control are really calling for comprehensive population control. The expression 'muscular, ' in muscular new gun measures' even sounds ominous. It alludes to something a criminal psychopath would utter, as the Progressive New Left intends to "muscle" the  average, honest, law-abiding, rational, responsible American citizen out of  their firearms--in other words, force average Americans to surrender their firearms on pain of serious repercussions for an American citizen who fails to do so. But, even taking the implausible platitude of ending gun violence for what it is, namely a ruse to compel the American citizenry to surrender its firearms—a ruse that has become ever clearer in the assertion, and severe in the contemplation of it—what we need to do is to understand what the core issue really is and drill down to that core issue and resolve that core issue. The question that we need to ask is this: how do we best contain violence directed toward innocent people? Focusing on guns merely serves to obscure the core issue and resolution of it, if we assume, for purpose of argument that containing violence is what the New Progressive Left has in mind and what they really want to resolve as well. But, to cut to the chase: they really don't. The New Progressive Left isn't interested in curtailing gun violence against innocent Americans. For, if they did, they would be approaching the issue sensibly, reasonably. Their objective would be to to curtail violence, whatever the mechanism employed. But they don't do that. And even apropos of guns, the New Progressive Left isn't really interested in curtailing violence committed by criminals and the occasional lunatic. Their interest is simply banning as many firearms as they can and that means targeting as many people as they can who happen to possess guns, namely tens of millions of average, law-abiding, rational, responsible American citizens. And, even on that score, they aren't honest. For, while it may seem superficially plausible to target as many gun as possible, the reason for doing so has little to do with preventing violence, for if the New Progressive Left were successful in that endeavor all that they would accomplish would be to leave tens of millions of average, law-abiding Americans defenseless, at the mercy of criminal predators and dangerous lunatics who will be able to get their hands on firearms anyway. So, it isn't curtailing violence against innocent people that the New Progressive Left is interested in protecting from "gun" violence. It is those very people that the New Progressive Left fears because tens of millions of armed Americans is a formidable force that can oppose a tyrannical Government, and it is just that sort of Government that the New Progressive Left is intent on creating. Guns themselves are merely an implement. Bad actors, the agents of violence will always be able to obtain firearms as most now do anyway, not in gun stores, or over the internet, or at gun shows, but on the Black Market. So, if it is containing societal violence, then Congress should address that. And, if not, then President Trump and Congressional Republicans should call Democrats out for their ruse. For gun control only increases the risk of societal violence, as gun control that Democrats have in mind is not a surgical strike targeting the criminal and the dangerous lunatic; it is a sledge hammer targeting the law-abiding citizenry.President Trump and  Republicans must not be hesitant in calling these Democrats out. They should ask the question directly, first of themselves and then of the radical Left Democrats: What is the goal of the New Progressive Left Congressional Democrats in calling for gun control? Is their goal to reduce societal violence or is it to disarm the American citizenry? Congressional legislation is a function of the matter to be addressed, and that is where attention ought to be focused. Taking Democrats at their word, if, then, Democrats truly desire to curtail violence in society, thereby promoting public safety, attention should be directed to answering that question, but attention is never directed to that question; not really, for that is not what Democrats want. That is not what they are after. What they seek is comprehensive citizen disarmament, and withal, removing the incipient threat to the unconstitutional usurpation of Government power and authority. In so doing the New Progressive Left turns the paramount concern of the founders of our free Republic, on its head. For an armed citizenry was precisely what the founders prescribed; for their aim was to deter the rise of tyranny, not enable it.The Press, echoing the demands of Democratic Party Presidential Candidates, with whom the Press is in league, pretends to be interested in promoting public safety, failing to realize or even to consider that an armed citizenry is the best defense against armed assailants. The goal of the Progressive New Left isn’t really public safety at all. If it were, attention would be directed to incarcerating serial criminals in prison where they belong; placing the criminally insane in institutions where they can receive the care they need and the public can be spared the danger the criminally insane pose; and deporting illegal aliens who commit the serious crimes of rape, armed robbery, assault, and murder, instead of releasing them out into the public where they can commit crimes anew.But, many Democrats, including their leaders, aren’t concerned about any of that. If they were, then they would spend more time campaigning for toughened sentencing against hardened criminals, and institutionalizing dangerous psychotics who have demonstrated a predilection for violence, and deporting illegal aliens who have demonstrated a proclivity toward violence. But we see none of that happening. We see, instead, Democrats spending much of their time campaigning for more restrictive gun laws, directed to the law-abiding citizen, which, if enacted, would have the perverse result of leaving the law-abiding citizen defenseless. The need for further restrictive gun laws is, then, again, just a ruse—all directed to one ultimate goal: de facto repeal of the Second Amendment, after which the amassing of Government power can take off, unconfined by the limitations imposed on Government in the first three Articles of the U.S. Constitution, and undeterred by, and no longer concerned with the threat an armed citizenry poses to Government's usurpation of power, which the New Progressive Left has sought all along. No longer would the need exist for the Government tyrants to go through the motions of complying with the Constitution, for the means to compel Government compliance with the limitations the Constitution imposes on Government. an armed citizenry, would no longer exist.____________________________________________________

NEW GUN CONTROL PROPOSALS ARE CITIZEN/POPULATION CONTROL PROPOSALS; THEY ARE BLATANT ATTEMPTS TO WEAKEN THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART THREE

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.” ~Noah Webster, American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author; from his essay, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” 1787

SO-CALLED COMMON-SENSE GUN MEASURES THAT RESTRICT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL!

THE ANTIGUN NEW PROGRESSIVE LEFT DEMOCRATS BETRAY OUR NATION WITH FOUR EXTREMELY RESTRICTIVE GUN PROPOSALS THEY ARE DEAD SET ON IMPLEMENTING AND WILL IN FACT IMPLEMENT IF DEMOCRATS TAKE CONTROL OF BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS AND THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE, THE U.S. PRESIDENCY, IN THE UPCOMING GENERAL ELECTION

We hear the expression "common-sense gun measures" bandied about often enough; so often, in fact, that the average person doesn't bother to give it much thought, but takes the veracity of the expression as self-evident true. But, it it? On even cursory inspection such so-called "common-sense gun measures" that operate to restrict the average, law-abiding, responsible, and rational American's exercise of the natural, fundamental, and immutable, and unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms makes no sense at all. The expression is an oxymoron and nonsensical. That fact becomes painfully obvious when one takes a long hard look at particular measures these Antigun Progressive New Left politicians have in mind. When these politicians assert that this or that gun measure makes perfect common sense, you can rest assured that it does not. The problem is that, while these politicians will tell you that this or that gun policy or gun measure will reduce "gun violence," they don't provide you with sound evidence to support their statements; nor do they give the American public a good sense of how the restrictive gun measure is designed to work, and how it is expected to be implemented. They probably don't have a clue themselves. Still, once the public gets a handle on what these antigun radical Left-wing politicians are really up to--constraining the exercise of the Second Amendment to the point that the right codified in it becomes essentially nugatory and not, contrary to what they insist, reducing "gun violence," and promoting public safety--it becomes abundantly evident that these gun control measures, when utilized together, are directed to do three things very, very well: all of them directed to disarming the citizenry and, hence, destroying the Second Amendment; and none of them directed to reducing "gun violence" and promoting "public safety"The New Progressive Left politicians' goal of disarming the citizenry through legislation, through Administrative rule-making, and through executive order--operating as a de facto repeal of the Second Amendment--has essentially three components:First, the New Progressive Left politicians seek to expand exponentially the kinds of guns and components of firearms the average law-abiding, rational, responsible citizen will no longer be permitted lawfully to possess, and, for those individuals who are permitted to lawfully possess firearms, these antigun politicians seek to control the number of firearms a person may own and possess and to strictly control the amount of ammunition and the kinds of ammunition that a gun owner is permitted to have. Second, The New Progressive Left politicians seek to expand exponentially the domain of American citizens who are prohibited from lawfully owning and possessing firearms, components of firearms, and ammunition. Third, as for those Americans who are not immediately prohibited from exercising the sacred right that is codified in the Second Amendment, the New Progressive Left politicians' "common-sense" gun policies and  gun measures are designed to be oppressive, exceedingly so, in order to make ownership and possession of firearms, ammunition, and component parts of firearms, an expensive proposition and an administrative ordeal to maintain lawfully, if the gun owner is to avoid loss of his personalty and suffer civil or even criminal prosecution. Below, we discuss a few of the ramifications of the recent antigun proposals the New Progressive Left politicians have vociferously argued for, as echoed, incessantly, by a seditious Press.Note: three of the four restrictive gun measures have been around four decades. Every so often, when a lunatic goes off half-cocked, the gun grabbers bring these proposals out of the closet and try to push them, anew, on the public. These proposals include, one, bans on commonly owned firearms; two, expansive gun background checks; and, three, so-called "gun buybacks." The fourth restrictive gun measure"Red Flag" laws, is fairly new. But, any one of these four draconian gun measures clearly infringes on the Second Amendment and negatively impacts or directly infringes other Constitutional rights and liberties as well. If all of these antigun measures were to be implemented, the Second Amendment would become effectively nugatory. But, that is the point of them. And with the last few shooting incidents, hyped up, endlessly and vigorously, by a seditious Press, we see these politicians and the Press effectively manipulating public opinion to the point that even some Congressional Republicans and Republican State Government Officials are coming on board. The Second Amendment is again under dangerous siege. 

RADICAL AND PROGRESSIVE LEFT’S FOUR-PRONG STRATEGY FOR DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN THE EVENT DEMOCRATS TAKE CONTROL OF BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS AND THE U.S. PRESIDENCY

FIRST PRONG: INSTITUTE NEW BANS ON SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS , AMMUNITION MAGAZINES, AND OTHER GUN COMPONENTS AND GUN ACCESSORIESIt isn't bans on some semiautomatic weapons that the New Progressive Left is gunning for: It’s a ban on all semiautomatic weapons and on all component parts of those weapons, and on all accessories for those weapons; The very fact that the Radical Left uses vague and scary expressions, 'assault weapon' and 'high capacity magazine' isn’t not by accident, and this point must be clearly pointed out, apart from the pejorative connotations of those expressions. The expressions are deliberately ‘scary’ to instill a feeling of repugnance in the minds of the target audience. And the expressions are vague and open-ended in meaning to allow Congress to place into these categories anything and everything they wish. The Arbalest Quarrel has previously and repeatedly pointed out that the goal of antigun proponents is to ban all semiautomatic weapons, not just some of them, and this has proved prescient as the Radical Left and New Progressive Left antigun crowd is beginning to use the expressions, ‘semiautomatic weapon’ and ‘semiautomatic weapon’ interchangeably. More so than revolvers, semiautomatic firearms have become the weapons of choice for personal defense. They are weapons in common use by millions of Americans, and, they are the weapons that the antigun Progressive New Left is most desirous of banning outright, along with their ammunition magazines. If these radical antigun Leftists are successful, then exercise of the Second Amendment will become increasingly more difficult, and that is the real aim of antigun zealots. Their goal is to destroy the Second Amendment because the citizenry's exercise of the right to keep and bear arms, codified in the Second Amendment, operates as an existential threat to the ultimate goal they wish to achieve: absolute control of the population and subjugation of the citizenry. To achieve the ultimate goal of expanding Government exponentially and controlling all thought and behavior of the American public through absolute control of the police, the military, the intelligence apparatuses, the media, and control of the policy-making arms of Government, the New Progressive Left antigun zealots realize they must disarm the citizenry. De facto repeal of the right of the Second Amendment is, then, their penultimate goal. The New Progressive Left must accomplish destruction of the Second Amendment if they are to be able to subjugate the citizenry, and, in so doing, they will begin to bring to fruition, their ultimate goal: a Marxist-Socialist Dictatorship that will emerge from the tattered remains of our Republic. But, the New Progressive Left politicians must first curry public support for their unconstitutional, unconscionable antigun policy objectives and measures. In that effort we find antigun groups, the Press, and antigun politicians of the New Progressive Left unfailingly and endlessly utilizing the fictions their public relations firms create for the specific purpose of manipulating the public into supporting policies antithetical to preservation of the Second Amendment. These fictions include loaded, emotionally charged terminology: ‘assault weapon,’ ‘military styled assault rifle,’ ‘weapon of war,’ and “high capacity magazine.” The public usually doesn’t even bother to ask for explication of these expressions, and in the few instances when it does ask for an explication, we see the antigun spokesperson often saying that the targeted weapons look like and operate like military weapons. This, of course is a nonsensical response, first, because the military isn't interested in the appearance of firearms merely for the sake of appearance, anyway, and, second, because the antigun pronouncement that civilian “assault weapons” operate like military “assault rifles” is simply wrong.In weapons’ design and fabrication for military application, form follows function, not the other way around, and the critical importance of function of a weapon is that of operation and handling. The military, ‘assault rifle,’ by definition, is a selective fire, intermediate caliber weapon. The civilian version of an assault rifle, if the notion of a ‘civilian version’ of military assault rifle is even meaningful, is hardly an adequate descriptor for weapons found in the non-military marketplace since such weapons are not capable of full auto or short burst auto fire.Antigun politicians and antigun zealots also claim that ‘assault weapons’ aren't utilized for and are not really useful for hunting small game. But, how would they even know? They never bother to explain, and the assertion is hardly self-evident, true. In fact, the assertion is false on two grounds. First, many Americans do use the weapon for hunting. It is light, accurate, and suitable for and, so, often marketed for that purpose. Antigun politicians and antigun zealots also claim that ‘assault weapons’ aren't utilized for and are not really useful for hunting small game. But, how would they even know? They never bother to explain, and the assertion is hardly self-evident, true. In fact, the assertion is false on two grounds. First, many Americans do use the weapon for hunting. It is light, accurate, and suitable for and, so, often marketed for that purpose. Second, even assuming, for purpose of argument, that the antigun zealot’s claim were true, it doesn’t follow that Americans don’t have a right to possess these ‘assault weapons’ for other lawful uses, such as for home defense or simply for target shooting, or for competitive shooting. , even assuming, for purpose of argument, that the antigun zealot’s claim were true, it doesn’t follow that Americans don’t have a right to possess these ‘assault weapons’ for other lawful uses, such as for home defense or simply for target shooting, or for competitive shooting. Those are all legitimate purposes. Further, suppose, an American simply wants a fully functional ‘assault weapon’ as a collectible. Why shouldn’t a law-abiding, responsible, rational American citizen be able to own and possess that weapon? It is no answer to say no American needs one. But, that is the answer often given. In fact, why should the law-abiding, responsible, rational American citizen even have to proffer a reason for owning and possessing a so-called 'assault weapon' at all. The antigun New Progressive Left activist simply presumes that a person must explain why he wishes to own and possess this or that firearm. No he doesn't. Where in the Constitution, in the Second Amendment, or in any other provision of the Constitution, does it say that an American citizen must demonstrate a purpose for or need for owning and possessing a particular firearm? Nowhere. The implicit understanding of the text of the Second Amendment is that a weapon be a personnel weapon, that, in fact, is expected to be used for, inter alia, military use. So, contrary, to the antigun New Progressive Left’s assertion that civilians are not permitted to own and possess a 'weapon of war,'—a shibboleth that is accepted as true and obviously so—the import of the Second Amendment points to the falsity of the New Progressive Left’s claim. A salient, and, indeed, the salient import of the Second Amendment is that the Nation is to be protected by a citizen army, no less so than by the Government's own standing army to help thwart a foreign aggressor; but also, and more particularly today, to protect the sovereignty, the integrity, and the autonomy of the American people from the visible and perverse threat posed by seditious insurgents within the Nation. The threat that the antigun New Progressive Left poses to the American citizenry is manifest in the desire of the New Progressive Left’s intent on creating a massive, omnipotent, onmniscent, and omnipresent federal Government: the antigun New Progressive Left’s God! To that end, the antigun New Progressive Left has demonstrated an overt proclivity and, indeed, a marked, staunch, and, in their own words, 'muscular' desire to disarm the public, for the unmistakeable, albeit unstated, purpose of controlling it. No better reason, then, for the civilian citizenry of the Nation to be well-armed, and well-armed, to the hilt, and with actual selective-fire assault rifles and submachine guns, not merely armed, then, with what the antigun Progressive New Left refers, inaccurately and pejoratively, as 'weapons of war' and 'as military style assault weapons.’ For rhe real threat posed to the preservation of our Nation to as a free, Constitutional Republic and a free people, comes from those within the Nation, as subsidized by seditious billionaires both within and outside the Country, who desire to destroy the very framework of our Nation, as designed and created by our founders. No better evidence is there of their seditious intent, than their desire to disarm the citizenry; and no better reason, then, for the citizenry to be well-armed. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Heller, the seminal Second Amendment case, has made abundantly clear that firearms in common use, which includes those antigun Leftists refer to under the pejorative ‘assault weapons,’ and ‘military styled assault rifles,’ and ‘weapons of war,’ are a protected category of firearms under the Heller standard. One would wonder whether, given the dire threat posed by insurgents in our midst would not had led the late Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, to conclude that, as consistent with the import and purport of our Second Amendment, a citizen army should be armed with military personnel weapons to best thwart a takeover of our Nation's Government by those hell-bent in instituting a Marxist-Socialist Dictatorship—a form of Government altogether inconsistent with the framework that the founders of our free Republic had heretofore established for it, as set forth in the U.S. Constitution that the States had ratified—a Constitution that includes a well-stocked set of elemental,fundamental, immutable, unalienable rights and liberties that are not to be modified, abrogated, ignored, or perfunctorily dismissed. As for ammunition magazines, the retort to the perfunctory exclamation of the antigun New Progressive Left that no one needs high capacity magazines is threefold. First, we begin with the obvious: ammunition magazines are a necessary component of semiautomatic weapons. And, as for what constitutes an acceptable number of cartridges, and what might, to the antigun radical Left activist constitute an unacceptable, “high capacity,” ammunition magazine, no one can reasonably define what ‘high capacity’ means; any attempt to do so reduces to arbitrary absurdity. Second, an ammunition magazine holding several rounds, for home defense, makes simple common-sense, whether an innocent individual faces one assailant or several assailants. The imposition of limitations on the number of cartridges a given ammunition magazine is, for a particular firearms, under law, permitted to hold, are ultimately arbitrary senseless and pointless. Third, going back to the initial antigun pronouncement that the average, law-abiding, rational, responsible civilian citizen simply doesn’t need a ‘high capacity’ ammunition magazines, whatever that expression, ‘high capacity’ means, simply begs the question whether one does need such high capacity ammunition magazines to adequately thwart a potential threat. "Need," in and of itself, namely "need per se," is defined by purpose. But, the antigun proponent’s pronouncement that a person doesn’t need a ‘high capacity magazine’ is logically faulty on other grounds. There are many things a person possesses that a person may not need. There are wants as well. Suppose I just happen to want a so-called ‘assault weapon’ and so-called high capacity ammunition magazine, as a component of that weapon. Why shouldn’t I, as an average, law-abiding, rational, responsible citizen, be able to have one? It is no answer to say society will be safer if I don’t have certain weapons and certain ammunition magazines. Extrapolating from misuse of any firearm by a dangerous lunatic and psychopathic criminal to me and tens of millions of other Americans who desire to exercise their natural right to own and possess these firearms and ammunition magazines and who are not lunatics or psychopathic criminals is to constrain, unconstitutionally and unconscionably, tens of millions of Americans due to the actions of a few undesirables. Again, the idea promulgated by antigun proponents that society, the Collective, the Hive, will be better off if those tens of millions of law-abiding, rational, responsible citizens don’t have access to these weapons and components even if they themselves are not a danger to society and never would be is to accept an ethical position, utilitarian consequentialist, that most Americans don’t ascribe to: the idea that it is better to lose a few innocent lives for the apparent benefit of a larger group. But, that is an alien concept, abhorrent to most Americans, and certainly abhorrent to those who founded our Nation. People are not ants or bees, even as these New Progressive Leftists believe them to be so, and would treat people as such.And, as 'need' is defined by purpose, no greater need exists, today, than for a citizen army to be well-armed against the real threat of a Marxist-Socialist takeover of the Government and the enslavement of the American citizenry that such a takeover would entail. It is just this dire need that exists and more so now than ever before in light of those who argue that no need exists for so-called ‘weapons of war.’ The American citizenry must be well-armed to thwart a possible takeover of our Government by this antigun New Progressive Left that is intent on destroying our Nation's Constitution; that is intent on erasing our Nation's history; and that is intent on endowing the federal Government with the means necessary to do so: to subjugate the American citizenry, and thoroughly control all thought and action. The American citizenry must never be taken in by the duplicitous, claim made by this insurgent antigun New Progressive Left that its motive for disarming Americans is simply a desire to protect the life, well-being, and safety of Americans and that society, the Collective, is best served if Americans are disarmed, even if that means that the lives of individuals in that society will be placed in danger therewith. What in fact does it even mean to say that it is okay to lose a few innocent lives through the disarming the citizenry if the greater society, the greater Collective, the greater Hive, is secure? If a Left-wing extremist argues that the well-being of ten lives are worth more than the well-being of one, what is the sanctity in numbers if not for the individual? And, how, for that matter, is one better served to have lost his or her life for having not had the effective means a firearm provides to secure it, to be told that his sacrifice is an acceptable loss because the Collective, the Hive has been better served thereby? Really. If the antigun New Progressive Left proponent doesn’t give a damn about the sanctity of the individual, where is the sanctity found in numbers alone? And, why should that Collective, that Hive even bother to exist at all, that the multitude is nothing more than expendable fodder anyway? Who, then, or what, then, is better served? And, is everyone truly in the same boat, abjectly defenseless? What about those policy maker and billionaire elites who live behind gated communities, and who travel in armored vehicles, with a contingency of armed guards? “Oh,” the hoi poloi is told, “they are the queen bees!” “Their lives are worth so much more than yours!” How so? That the New Progressive Left so decrees THAT to be so? But, how does that idea square with the notion that the antigun New Progressive and Radical Left and cares about securing the life, safety, and well-being of Americans, when their Collectivist and Utilitiarian Consequentialist precepts dictates quite clearly that they don’t give a damn at all? It is all just empty words! In fact, the ethical, political, and social position of the New Progressive Left is bankrupt. We see that in the fact that the New Progressive Left supports late term abortion. They don’t care about the most innocent of human life, so it is highly doubtful that they vouchsafe care about ten or twenty, or a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand or a hundred thousand lives. Reducing life to mere numbers reduces to absurdity the New Progressive Left’s concern about the value of human life at all. These people are simply masters of emotional rhetoric. Phrases like, military styled assault rifle,’ and ‘weapon of war,’ and ‘high capacity magazine,’ are emotionally charged, deliberately deceptive phrases, intended to and calculated to spark a feeling of unease in the target audience: the American public, thereby making the public receptive to bans on any firearms and any gun components that fall into the named categories. But, the fact that they really don’t care about the life of individuals is reflected in their policy stances on immigration and abortion, as well as on the matter of firearms ownership and possession. Hence, any argument they make even if superficially plausible is vacuous, because the basis for it concern for human life, really doesn’t exist at all. It is just a platitude, a makeweight, a sad, disturbing ruse.

SECOND PRONG: ENCOURAGE EVERY STATE TO ENACT “RED FLAG” LAWS

This restrictive gun policy objective entails expanding the list of individuals who are not permitted to own or possess firearms. New Progressive Left Democratic Party candidates for U.S. President—namely, the front runners—all support across the board State enactment of so-called “Red Flag” laws. Several States have already enacted such laws, and all of them either directly infringe the Second Amendment or otherwise come dangerously close to doing so and certainly impinge upon one's exercise of the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. Although the text of these laws as they presently exist in those jurisdictions that presently have them, or that are otherwise in the process of enacting Red Flag laws or considering enacting Red Flag laws, do vary from State to State. But, all of these Red Flag laws have one defining characteristic: they all operate ex parte. What does that mean? It means that Courts conduct hearings  where only one party to the action is present at the hearing, namely the party who is attempting to obtain a Court order against another party who is not initially present at the Court hearing to defend his interests. The interest at stake here is retention of one's personal property, namely, one's firearms. In an ex parte hearing, under Red Flag laws, one party, or side, at the hearing seeks a Court order requiring the other party, who isn't present at the hearing, an American citizen who has  committed no crime but whom the accuser is claiming is nonetheless dangerous because that person has firearms in his or her possession,. to surrender those firearms to Governmental authority. Thus, the accuser is seeking the removal of that person’s personal property, that person’s firearms— prior to the affected party’s ability to present a case in his or her defense, who would obviously wish to keep his personal property but cannot do so because the affected party has no opportunity to confront the accuser until some point subsequent to the actual removal of the person’s personalty, their firearms, assuming the Court issues an order requiring the surrendering of weapons to Governmental authority. It is only after the fact, the removal of the firearms--the personal property--takes place, that a hearing is conducted where both sides are present and the party, against whom the action was taken, attempts to make a case for restoration of his personal property. All of these “Red Flag” laws, play on some variation of this theme and all of them impinge upon or are in danger of impinging upon the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. So, all of these "Red Flag" laws are Constitutionally suspect and they all should be scrutinized before enactment to see if they pass Constitutional muster. But, that never happens. The question is do we really need these laws to protect society from the possibility of danger. And that notion of 'possibility' is a red herring. We would ask: How “possible” is that possibility of danger, and how do we know that a person, whomever it is that may target a person’s firearms, is doing so with an honest motive. And even if the accuser has an ostensibly honest motive for bringing action against a gun owner, forcing a person to forsake his personal property by Court order, under a State’s “Red Flag” law, the machinery of justice is, for all that, moving against a person who has committed no crime. The Court is faced with the dubious task of rendering an adverse decision against a person without having actually met with the person and therefore has no opportunity to conduct and to preside over an adversary proceeding to which all American citizens are entitled. Ex parte proceedings are, not surprisingly, frowned on in the law, as they are by nature, contrary to our Nation's sacred jurisprudential principles. Generally, a full adversary proceeding can and should be conducted. Likely, we would see that the person who is making a claim against individual without having to confront that person in open Court, would think twice about the danger presented, if a full adversary hearing were conducted. But, suppose the danger is imminent or appears to be truly imminent. In that event, every State has mechanisms by which a person can request a Court to order a personal protection order against that person who is deemed a threat. That too is handled ex parte, and a Court if convinced that a threat is imminent could certainly issue an ex parte order requiring of the person who is deemed a threat, to relinquish his or her firearms if they have any. Thus, Red Flag laws don’t do anything that personal protection orders don’t already accomplish except they make it easier for more people to make spurious, specious claims against people, often for ulterior motives, and yet avoid having to face the consequences for making those false claims, as Red Flag laws do not generally, if not invariably, provide a mechanism through which a person wrongly targeted can bring action against his or her accuser.Secondly, under federal law, 18 U.S.C § 922(g) and (n), individuals, including those convicted of felonies and those who had been institutionalized for mental illness, are not permitted to own and possess firearms anyway unless they obtain a certificate of relief from disability. Red Flag laws operate as a backdoor for expanding the domain of individuals not permitted to own or possess a firearm. Since antigun proponents denounce out-of-hand the right of the people to keep and bear arms, it should not come as a surprise that they would look for seemingly plausible ways to expand the domain of people considered unfit to own and possess firearms beyond those categories that already exist in federal law, claiming as they always do, that what motivates them is the desire to protect society when that is patently untrue. What really motivates these people is a desire to reduce the Second Amendment to a nullity, under the pretext that they give a damn about the life, safety, and well being of others. But they don’t because they don’t recognize that a person has a right of self-defense and don’t care that a firearm is the best means by which a person can effectively defend themselves against attack; and as they place their faith in Government to control the masses, and don’t trust the citizenry, their entire view of man and man’s relationship to Government and to each other is the obverse of that of the founders of our Nation. The Second Amendment isn’t consistent with the tenets of Collectivism.

THIRD PRONG: "EXPAND" GUN BACKGROUND CHECKS

Expanding background checks, delaying the purchase of, trade, or resale of guns and gun paraphernalia is merely another 'muscular' attempt to slowly whittle away at the true efficacy of the right codified in the Second Amendment. It is merely another mechanism to reduce the right of the people to keep and bear arms to a nullity. It need hardly be said that most criminals don’t obtain their firearms lawfully. They either steal firearms or obtain them on the black market or through straw purchases all of which are illegal, If the stated purpose is to close what antigun proponents point to as loopholes, then let’s take a look at those purported loopholes. One concern mentioned is that people don’t have to go to the holder of an FFL to obtain a firearm if one purchases a firearm directly or if a person purchases a firearm from another person at a gun show, where laws are not enforced. Well, actually they are. No one is permitted to sell, trade, or otherwise dispose of firearms without complying with federal law and applicable State law. Purchases through the internet have to be made through the intermediary of a person holding an FFL. Purchases at gun shows are usually made through a holder of an FFL directly as are purchases made at a retail gun store where the sellers would be required to have an FFL, and possibly a State gun license as well. What about private sales at gun shows? Well, sellers of firearms are still required to comply with the law. No one is permitted to dispose of a firearm to an individual who is prohibited from federal law from possessing a firearm. Antigun groups like to argue that “gun” people are unscrupulous. Well, no they aren’t. Law-abiding gun owners are the most scrupulous of American citizens. See NRA discussion on thisThe antigun New Progressive Left, viewing gun ownership as evil, doesn’t draw a tenable distinction between law-abiding gun owners and criminals. But, this should come as no surprise. The Progressive New Left conflates the two groups, illegal aliens and legal immigrants, to make the spurious argument that President Trump is against immigration. No he isn’t, and never was. During his campaign he pointed out over and over again that what he does oppose is “illegal immigration.” The Progressive New Left seems to have amnesia about this. The President’s immigration policies since holding Office are systematize and streamline legal immigration, and to get a handle on illegal movement of people and drugs across our Nation’s borders that, for decades Congress has failed to deal with. And, so, the problem has worsened through the years, becoming virtually impossible to manage now. And President Trump is receiving no more assistance from Congress now, than had any President before him. He is not suggesting anything unusual. Other Countries control their Nation’s borders. Consider Canada for example. Why should our Nation be different?While blasé about controlling illegal traffic across our Nation’s Southern Border, it is wondrous strange that the antigun Progressive New Left is so particular about clamping down on the law-abiding citizen’s wish merely to exercise his right to keep and bear arms without being plagued by hundreds of extraneous laws drawn up merely to frustrate and oppressive the gun owner. The instant gun background check program has worked fine. Instances of so-called “mass shootings” are few in number and pale into insignificance when compared to the daily shootings due to criminal misuse of firearms. The Progressive New Left seems to be little bothered by that, only drawing attention to, and with great fanfare, the use of a firearm by the occasional lunatic who goes off half-cocked. And their answers are directed not to dealing effectively with those sorry souls, but for tens of millions of innocent, average, law-abiding, rational, responsible individuals.

FOURTH PRONG: IMPLEMENT GUN "BUYBACK"  MEASURES 

Gun buybacks fall into two categories. One category utilized by various Cities in the past is “gun buybacks” as voluntary program that antigun politicians draw out of the closet now and again merely as a political stunt. These buybacks are directed, of course, not to the psychopathic killer, common criminal, or to those few individuals who suffer from psychoses that truly represent a danger both to themselves and others abd then goes off half-cocked. No! These gun buybacks are directed to the average, law-abiding, responsible gun owner. But, not surprisingly, gun owners who take part in these programs do not surrender expensive firearms, but, rather, old, probably inoperable firearms. Even the liberal weblog, Trace, admits that the truly voluntary “buybacks” don’t work to lower crime rates, as criminals don’t take part in these programs. Why should they? And, those individuals who do surrender firearms to police authorities for a few bucks aren’t people who misuse firearms anyway. So, then, what seemingly plausible basis is there for these buyback programs? The implicit, but false, assumption, is that by reducing the number of guns in the public domain that will, ipso facto, reduce “gun” violence. Yet, that idea, on its face, is ridiculous, and not simply due to the volume of firearms in the public domain, if that is a sound factor for accounting for “gun violence” anyway because, again, the people who take part in the program are not those who commit crimes with guns—or with any other implement for that matter. So, this category of gun buybacks is at best, a poor solution to resolving the problem of criminal violence and, at worst, it is a cruel hoax, designed to give some ignorant Americans the feeling that Government is doing something effective about crime rates in some urban areas when it really isn’t and is simply a “smoke and mirrors” scheme to create the false impression that Government truly cares about providing a safe and secure City environment for the public, when Government doesn’t really give a damn at all. Antigun groups and antigun politicians are aware of this, of course, but in rebuttal, simply assert that gun buyback programs do work, especially those that are structured properly. The website gunxgun.org, an antigun site, that, curiously, says virtually nothing about itself and, we surmise, is likely a vehicle of large well-funded antigun groups seeking to jump start grassroots efforts to assist them in their agenda, undermining the Second Amendment, to acknowledges that, on a macro level, namely, in the public domain, these gun buyback programs, to date, don’t make communities any safer. What the site does say is that, homes are safer, once firearms are removed from the home: no guns in the home means no gun violence. Well, that point is true, but only trivially so. For, this doesn’t mean people prone to violence in the home won’t or can’t find the means to injure or kill another human being whether a gun is the implement of harm or some other implement. But, what is really interesting about the comment is the implicit point made that is a running theme through all attempts to impose on the public more and more draconian gun schemes. The running theme is that the citizenry cannot be trusted; that all people are potentially a danger both to themselves and to others, and that society as a whole is safer and more secure if firearms are removed from the homes. But, what of the obverse? Aren’t particular individuals in the community thereby made less safe  having lost the most suitable means available to secure both their life and that of their family, namely that a  firearm provides? The fact of the matter is that the antigun New Progressive Left cares little, if at all, for the well-being and safety of individuals in society. They are only interested in protecting the wealthy, and well-connected and powerful. For these people—people who ascribe to the tenets of Collectivism—perceive our Country, our society, as an ant colony or bee hive. As long as the greater Collective, the Hive, is secure—meaning that as long as they, “the elite” of society are safe and secure—that is all that truly matters. They view the mass of society, the Hoi Poloi, as expendable. That is the inference to be drawn from their policy goals. For all their talk about concern for the masses, including illegal aliens—even those who are acutely dangerous to the life, health, safety, and well-being of the citizenry—the New Progressive Left cares little for the sanctity and inviolability of the American citizen. They seek to control all thought, and all conduct, to treat everyone equally—that is to say, subjugated, submissive to the will of the State, the Government, a Government they control. The New Progressive Left’s vision for  our Nation is the antithesis of that of our founders. It is little wonder then that these people attack their memory, demolish our monuments, and seek to erase our history. The Second category of gun “buyback” programs and one championed by Democratic Party nominee for U.S. President, Eric Swalwell, and a signature component of his campaign before that campaign came to an abrupt end, isn’t a gun buyback program at all. It’s a confiscation scheme, similar to the infamous gun confiscation schemes employed by the Australian and New Zealand Governments, neither Government of which recognizes the fundamental, unalienable, immutable right of its citizens—really subjects—to keep and bear arms. What Eric Swalwell championed, and what Democratic Party nominee for U.S. President, Joe Biden, has taken up is a antigun policy measure mandating that the American public surrender any and all firearms that the Government deems unsuitable for public ownership and possession and which it places under the banned category of ‘assault weapons,’ which means, as we, at the Arbalest Quarrel, have known all along and as we have heretofore so stated on our website: the eventual confiscation of all semiautomatic firearms. The expression, ‘buyback,’ always a misnomer, is, as conceived by and mentioned by Joe Biden and, in fact, as understood and desired by the Democratic Party Progressive New Left, not a buyback at all, under any reasonable interpretation. It is a blatant gun confiscation scheme scarcely cloaked as a “gun buyback.” The program as envisioned isn’t voluntary. It’s mandatory. As conceived, and as it would likely be implemented either by any Democratic Party New Progressive Left—if that Candidate is elected U.S. President—any firearm designated by the New Progressive Left to be an ‘assault weapon,’ would be illegal. Any American citizen who presently has one or more such weapons would be required to surrender them to Governmental authority. If the Democratic Party controls both Houses of Congress we can expect Congress to enact mandatory gun confiscation, along with other draconian “muscular” laws. If the Republicans retain control of the Senate, mandatory confiscation is unlikely to be enacted. But, if a Democrat secures the U.S. Presidency, the American public may very well see a flurry of executive orders operating as law, and accomplishing, then, the same thing as a Congressional enactment. Kamala Harris has threatened to issue just such an executive order were she to secure her Party’s nomination and then secure the Presidency. Such law or executive order would be immediately challenged. A mandatory gun confiscation scheme amounts to an illegal taking under the Fifth Amendment’s ‘just compensation’ clause as semiautomatic weapons--essentially every weapon, now, that the New Progressive Left lumps under the fictions of 'assault weapons' or 'weapons of war'--manufactured by reputable companies like Smith and Wesson, Colt, Sturm Ruger, Beretta, Sig Sauer, Heckler and Koch, Remington, and many others, all of which produce extremely well-designed and engineered products. These firearms cost, on the retail market, several hundred and even several thousand dollars. A gun confiscation scheme would not provide just compensation for these firearms. A gun confiscation scheme would also, and obviously, infringe the Second Amendment. And such a gun confiscation scheme would infringe the Searches and Seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment. The gun confiscation scheme targeting semiautomatic weapons would impinge on both the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Even the Freedom of Speech clause of the First Amendment would be implicated and violated as well. But, then, the New Progressive Left doesn’t give a damn about the Bill of Rights, and never did. It is all sham for them to even suggest that they do. But, if it should come to pass the New Progressive Left does take control of Government--both Houses of Congress, and the U.S. Presidency-- the American citizenry will see Government imposing a flurry of unconstitutional, unconscionable gun restrictions on the American citizenry such as this Nation has never seen before. The New Progressive Left intends to force their new vision of America on the Nation, a vision diametrically opposed to that of our founders, the framers of our Constitution. And the New Progressive Left will commence with an attempt at de facto destruction of the Second Amendment. The founders of our free Republic would not abide this; and those of us who believe in our Nation as a Constitutional Republic, where the American people, the citizenry, are the ultimate sovereign of their Nation, not Government, and where Government was created to serve the people and not the other way around, should not abide this occurrence either, and most likely, won't.When firearms are removed from average, law-abiding, rational citizens in violation of Due Process requirements, and when those American citizens, for whom draconian gun laws do not preclude gun ownership and possession, are oppressed by complex gun registration requirements making gun ownership and possession an increasingly difficult, time-consuming and expensive process, and when guns are treated less like personal property and more like State owned property that Americans can only rent for use at a particular time and at a particular place, after which guns must be returned to the State, to be secured and stored, then it should be clear to all Americans that the goal of gun control is not public safety and never was. The goal is population control and always has been.__________________________________________________________

RADICAL LEFT FRAMES FALSE SMOKE AND MIRRORS ISSUES: “GUN VIOLENCE’ AND ‘GUN CONTROL’ TO ADVANCE ITS ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT AGENDA

PART FOUR

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” First quotation ~ Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany, 1933-1945“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly— it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” Second quotation~ Joseph Goebbels“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” ~ Philip K. Dick, Twentieth Century American author; prolific writer of science fiction and winner of prestigious Hugo award for best novel: “The Man in the High Castle,” published in 1962It should be evident to President Trump and to Congressional Republicans that all these calls for further gun restrictions, many of them coming from all of the leading Democratic Party Candidates for U.S. President—Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Pete Buttigieg—are evidence of a personal bias against guns generally, and against civilian gun ownership particularly; and all of them vying for a chance to impose their Marxist/Socialist agenda on the entire Nation.Every one of these people clamors for further gun background checks, enactment of “Red Flag laws,” and bans on so-called “assault weapons,”  and so-called "gun buybacks." Not one of these people has the least interest in securing, preserving, and strengthening the Second Amendment. To the contrary, they all wish to dispense with the Second Amendment altogether, and their gun control measures are clear evidence of that, and their recent pronouncements on the subject make that fact abundantly clear. A slippery slope to Armageddon is not fallacy here. Prima facie evidence exists for this conclusion. De facto repeal of the Second Amendment is the goal of the New Progressive Left.The New Progressive Left seeks nothing less than a complete transformation of our Nation into a Marxist/Socialist State, and they have been appealing to the public to make that nightmare a reality.The present crop of Democratic Party candidates for U.S. President know that the transformation sought isn’t tenable as long as the public does in fact keep and bear arms and they mean to change that; to change public attitude toward guns and toward self-defense by means of guns; and, with the Press, with whom these New Progressive Left candidates have an incestuous relationship and with whom they are constantly collaborating, in an attempt to control the running narrative of solving “gun violence” with a new wave of “gun control measures,” we see the New Progressive Act employing a massive Psy-Ops campaign against Americans, inserting memes into the psyche of the citizenry: ‘guns are evil,’ ‘guns cause crime,’ ‘civilized people don’t need guns and don’t want them,’ ‘guns turn good people into bad people,’ and so on and so forth.But, the issue of ‘gun violence’ is nothing more than a fiction, a straw man devised and concocted out of whole cloth by public relations firms for their client, the antigun New Progressive Left. This straw man created is diabolical in the conception, cunningly employed in practice. The New Progressive Left uses this straw man to deliberately draw attention of the public and Congress away from the two truly legitimate issues: the causes of ‘societal violence’ and the perpetrators of it. By framing the issues in the way it does--on implements of violence, rather than on the root causes of violence and on the perpetrators of violence, the New Progressive Left forces Congress and the public to focus attention on a false issue, ‘guns' per se--'gun violence'--as if the gun itself was the perpetrator of violence. But, there is method to the New Progressive Left's madness: An all-consuming obsession with  undermining the Second Amendment; wasting tax dollars pursuing a bugaboo that the radical Left itself had evoked; and deliberately fomenting anger and resentment in the public, in furtherance of its own misbegotten and loathsome agenda. The New Progressive Left, by sleight of hand, conveys the impression that the true threats to society are guns, gun owners, the Second Amendment, the NRA, and firearms manufacturers, notwithstanding that the true threats to societal equanimity and serenity fall squarely on the New Progressive Left itself and on those who sympathize with their agenda: the Hollywood producers who create films that glorify killers and their misuse of firearms, and the radical political Left-wing Hollywood actors who portray these killers, even as they bemoan guns and demean law-abiding gun owners and the NRA off camera; the software programmers, creators of thousands of gruesome video games; and the technology industry whose new and ever evolving products serve, increasingly, to induce human beings to spend more time in the world of virtual reality rather than in the real reality, cultivating real relationships and real human interaction. In fact the New Progressive Left, is directly responsible for creating the environment in which societal violence is nurtured and in which that violence is allowed to grow and flourish. The New Progressive Left does this through the constant vitriol it spouts and the false dichotomy it has conceived--a society of victims and victimizers. It has created a false dichotomy in attempt to foment the very violence it disingenuously tells us it seeks to curtail and that, it claims, deceitfully, would be curtailed, if only the citizenry would surrender its firearms--all of them, as if "the gun" is the root of problem of society, when the root problem, rests, of course, in the disease that is the New Progressive Left itself and in those radical, anarchist elements in society who desire to tear down the very framework of a free Republic that the founders lovingly gave to us. The radical Left elements and anarchists are the rot and cancer that must be cut out, but the New Progressive Left diabolically focuses the public's attention away from itself and  directs the public's attention on the healthy tissue of society, our Nation's Constitution,  urging excision of great portions of the Constitution, commencing, not unsurprisingly, with the Second Amendment--suggesting major changes, involving a general weakening of the other natural, fundamental, and immutable rights; and these unspeakably evil, ruthless elements, are calling for, nay, demanding a major reworking of the Articles of the Constitution. And, many members of the polity have, unfortunately, been seduced by the sanctimonious bellowing of these radical Left elements, and many members of the polity have bought into this dangerous nonsense. How is it that many members of the polity have been seduced?Through use of military techniques of psychological conditioning and brainwashing, the New Progressive Left controls public opinion, and seeks to force Congress to bend to its will. The New Progressive Left has deliberately created a toxic environment throughout the Country, creating division among the polity, fomenting violence, all in an attempt to exert pressure on Congress; to extort concessions from Congress that serve the interests of the Progressive New Left, and not the interests of the public. Through deliberate deception, the New Progressive Left eggs the public on in a naked attempt to cajole both the U.S. President and Congressional Republicans to enact further gun control laws that the President and Congressional Republicans know full well are not in the best interests of the public; are antithetical to the import and purport of the Second Amendment; and are detrimental to the preservation of a free Republic. But how many citizens have fallen prey to the constant, pounding of the deceptive messaging of the Radical Left elements and the Radical Left Press? How many Americans have really jumped on the antigun bandwagon? How many of them have been unconsciously and unconscionably manipulated into fully accepting such ludicrous, outlandish antigun, Anti-Second Amendment policy proposals? How many Americans have been reduced to raging, uncontrollable beasts, the acolytes of the New Progressive and Radical Left politicians, those laughing hyenas and  jackals, sitting in their lofty perches, spurring the doting lemmings on and over the cliff. Apparently, all too many Americans have been seduced. Radical shock therapy may be necessary to draw these Americans out of their brain-induced stupor.___________________________________________

DEMOCRATS AND THE PRESS URGE CONGRESS TO ENACT NEW RESTRICTIVE GUN LAWS TO FURTHER RADICAL LEFT AGENDA

PART FIVE

In an article posted in The New York Times, on September 2, 2019, titled, “Congress Faces Fresh Urgency On Gun Laws,” the Times is pressing Congress to cave to the frenetic urging of the Leftist antigun crowd, hell-bent on further weakening the Second Amendment, having found an opening in the recent spate of random shootings that occurred in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and, now, Odessa, Texas; exploiting these tragedies, appealing to emotion, rather than to reason, employing the informal logical fallacy of ad misericordium, a fallacy well known to the ancient Greeks: the fallacy of appealing cunningly to pity, misery, and sympathy--playing on the public's emotions, rather than appealing to the public's reason, to obtain the goal, an unarmed citizenry that, if that should come to pass, will not secure public safety, but will endanger the life and safety of the citizenry and will be an open invitation to tyranny. Where will appeals to pity and sympathy for Americans rest, then?Extremist elements are hammering Congress to enact, first and foremost more gun background checks, even as the New York Times acknowledges in its own story that: “In fact, whether a background check would have prevented the West Texas gunman from acquiring his weapon is not known. Chief Michael Gerke of the Odessa Police Department said the gunman, who had been fired from a trucking job, had used an AR-15-style rifle, but had a criminal record. It was not clear on Sunday whether the gun had been acquired legally, and the authorities stressed that they had not established a motive.”What is deeply disturbing, perplexing and distressing is that President Trump seems to be allowing himself to be caught up in the frenzied emotion of the moment, seeming to give in to moronic emotional, irrational rhetoric, spawned by another convenient shooting incident. We say this because President Trump has himself resorted to using the same language of the antigun zealots, such as “common-sense” gun laws; and “really common-sense sensible, important background checks” as he appears to be considering the proposals coming from U.S. Presidential Democratic Party candidates. The New York Times details all of this in its typical tabloid fashion, using colorful adjectives and inapt language, like, ‘gruesome,’ and ‘ massacre,’ and ‘assault weapon,’ and ‘powerful gun rights lobbying group’—which emphasizes the NY Times own personal distaste for guns generally; its abhorrence of civilian ownership of guns particularly; and its hatred of the NRA, singularly and emphatically. The article, appearing in the national news section of the paper, reads more like an Op-Ed piece than a news story. But, then, from the content of New York “news” reporting today it is clear that no efficacious distinction exists any longer between the reporting of news and opining about it. The use of Section Headings in the newspaper are superfluous, and need no longer exist, but the paper keeps up the pretense, obviously to confuse its readers into believing that what they take for fact is merely personal value judgment, and what they take for personal value judgment is fact and, as between the two, the way the world is and a normative account of the way the world ought to be is, ultimately, the same; that there is no appreciable difference--as fact and value judgment are one and the same so, that, as what is reported as news and expounded upon in the same news story is, in fact, all news, an exposition of and on reality, on the way things are. And, so the seditious Press tries to make its case against guns and civilian gun ownership, as it always, does as the following purported story illustrates. The NY Times “reports/opines”:“The deadly shooting spree in West Texas this weekend — the latest in an especially gruesome summer of massacres — has intensified pressure on congressional Republicans to take up gun safety legislation, giving fresh urgency to a debate that was already expected to be at the top of lawmakers’ agenda when they return to the Capitol next week.The attack in Midland and Odessa, Tex., which left seven dead and 22 wounded, comes weeks after a 24-year-old gunman with an assault weapon killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio, in early August. That massacre, hours after one that killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, thrust gun violence into the Washington debate just as Congress left town for its annual August recess.President Trump expressed new openness to gun safety laws — including, he said then, “really common-sense sensible, important background checks” for gun buyers — and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, promised a Senate debate. But in the weeks since, with lawmakers scattered across the country in their home districts, the issue seemed to drift from public view.Now it has come roaring back, with Congress set to return on Sept. 9. At a briefing about Hurricane Dorian at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters on Sunday, Mr. Trump, who has a record of flip-flopping on gun safety, pledged to find a way to “substantially reduce” mass shootings. But he earlier appeared to dismiss background checks, telling reporters that “they would not have stopped any of it.”Behind the scenes, in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, White House officials have been quietly engaged in bipartisan talks with senators who support expanding background checks and so-called red flag laws. The laws make it easier for law enforcement to take guns from people deemed dangerous by a judge who issues a special type of order, called an “extreme risk protection order.”Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said in an interview on Sunday that the two sides still seemed far apart. Mr. Blumenthal said much would depend on whether the president, who has been consulting with the National Rifle Association, was willing to stand up to the powerful gun rights lobbying group.‘I think there is a sense that the American people just desperately want something to be done, and they have to respond to that imperative,’ he said, ‘but are so far nowhere near crossing the Rubicon to stand up to the gun lobby and the N.R.A. as far as I can tell.’”________________________________________Thank you, New York Times, for working diligently and tirelessly on behalf of the Marxist/Socialist new world order. Profuse thanks for once again misleading the American people, spinning elaborate fairy tales about the horrors of guns and “gun violence,” and about that evil, “powerful gun rights lobbying group.” And what is this all for?” We know the answer; you don’t have tell us. You have written a collection of Grimm’s fairy tales—grim indeed—dedicated to the cause of bringing the United States into line that it may be included in the serried ranks of the EU. To accomplish that, you are doing your part to first achieve the penultimate goal.  So, kudos to you. And, what is that penultimate goal? It is to deny to the American people the ability to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear arms; of course it is!And, what is the ultimate goal of the Marxist/Socialist new world order? You don’t have to tell us because we know the answer to that question too. Once the American citizenry is effectively disarmed, the Marxist/Socialist dystopian dream—the dismantling of a free, Constitutional Republic—can proceed, unimpeded by a disaffected, unruly and restless, and rebellious American citizenry. Whatever is then left of our Nation can then be thrust into the framework of a new transnational political, social, economic, and cultural system of governance. Quite an accomplishment, that!But, you might want to ask the founders of our Nation, those who risked their lives and well-being to realize their vision of a free sovereign people, living in a free Land, what they happen to think of your new world order you have planned for a new generation of Americans, existing subjugated and subservient to foreign taskmasters. We suspect they would be less than delighted; less than thrilled with the transformation of our Nation into a despotic wasteland. And, we suspect they would be less than overawed at seeing our Nation and the American people controlled with rein, and bridle, and whip by foreign overlords, riding roughshod over them.___________________________________________________________

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS MUST NOT BE PUSHED INTO COMPROMISING THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART SIX

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”~ Samuel Adams, American Statesman, political philosopher, and one of the founding fathers; from his letter to James Warren, February 12, 1779“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” ~Patrick Henry, American Attorney and a Founding Father; and famous Antifederalist; quotation from “Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution” Note: the Antifederalists demanded that Man’s natural rights be codified in a Bill of Rights and that the Bill of Rights be formally incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. The Federalists thought that a formal codification of natural rights, since preexistent in Man (both Federalists and Antifederalists took as self-evident the veracity of certain rights bestowed on man by the Divine Creator) was unnecessary, as the powers of a Federal Government were to be limited; all other rights and powers retained by the States and the people. The Antifederalists feared that Government would not be held properly in check unless those serving in Government were constantly reminded of the fact that the citizenry would be armed. The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights serves as that reminder—a painful thorn in the side of the Radical Left elements today that are forced to deal with it. Circumstances of the present day aptly demonstrate the Antifederalists concern to be acutely and eerily prescient. Fortunately for us, the Antifederalists won the day, and the Constitution was ratified with a set of the quintessential natural rights etched in stone, an integral part and the most critical part of the U.S. Constitution.“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” ~St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803The Democratic Party Leadership, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, say they are willing to work with President Trump, as reported by The New York Times. Isn’t that nice! We would advise the President and Congressional Republicans to be extremely wary of the overture coming from those two.In the article published in The New York Times on September 16, 2019, titled, “Schumer and Pelosi, Talking to Trump, Try to Sweeten the deal.” The Times reports that,“The top two Democrats in Congress, seeking to ramp up pressure on Republicans to pass legislation extending background checks to all gun buyers, told President Trump on Sunday that they would join him at the White House for a “historic signing ceremony at the Rose Garden” if he agreed to the measure.The offer, made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, during an 11-minute phone conversation with Mr. Trump, comes as the president is considering a package of measures to respond to the mass shootings that have terrorized the nation in recent months. The three spoke only about gun legislation, according to aides.Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that the conversation was cordial but that Mr. Trump “made no commitments” on a House-passed background checks bill that Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer are urging him to support.Mr. Trump “instead indicated his interest in working to find a bipartisan legislative solution on appropriate responses to the issue of mass gun violence,” Mr. Deere said.Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer want Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, to take up the bill, but the senator has refused to do so without knowing whether the president would sign it. ‘This morning, we made it clear to the president that any proposal he endorses that does not include the House-passed universal background checks legislation will not get the job done, as dangerous loopholes will still exist and people who shouldn’t have guns will still have access,’ their statement said, adding, ‘We know that to save as many lives as possible, the Senate must pass this bill and the president must sign it.’Their pressure continued a campaign on an issue that has dominated the political debate in Washington and on the Democratic presidential campaign trail since a string of mass shootings over the summer.A White House official, speaking anonymously to discuss internal deliberations, said on Sunday that the president had instructed his advisers to continue to work to find a range of policies that would go after illegal gun sales while protecting the Second Amendment, and expand the role of mental health professionals.”The President needs to be very, very careful suggesting to Schumer and Pelosi that he is conducive to entertaining a gun measure that, on its face, may seem narrowly tailored to constraining the criminal or dangerous lunatic but that can, and most likely would, operate as a backdoor to restricting exercise of the right embodied in the Second Amendment, for the population at large. He may find himself entangled in their antigun mythos. And, if so, he will find it exceedingly difficult to extricate himself from it. Clearly, Left-wing extremists, of which Schumer and Pelosi must be counted among them are desirous of controlling the law-abiding gun owners’ exercise of their Second Amendment right even as they claim only to be concerned with, or suggest that they are only concerned with reducing “gun” violence. But we are talking here of a population consisting of the criminal sociopathic element or dangerous psychotic element of society. Or are we? The Democrats aren’t really saying, and we’ve seen where all of this is headed, before. We know how this plays out; as it always plays out. The Democratic Party Leadership, along with more and more radical Leftist members of the Party, all of whom are taking their cue from members of radical Left-wing Socialist and Communist groups active in this Country, lurking in the shadows, ingratiating themselves with radical Congressional Democrats, have an agenda with items to tick off. One of the items, a key item, is to whittle away at the Second Amendment. An armed citizenry is an abomination for the Radical Left and New Progressive Left Democrats and for those operating closely with them, orchestrating policy. As they all abhor the Second Amendment, and they are fearful of an armed citizenry, these Radical Left and New Progressive Left Democrats will use every opportunity they can to constrain law-abiding citizens from exercising their God-given right to keep and bear arms. If they succeed, tyranny looms._____________________________________________________________

HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS SHOULD DEAL WITH DEMOCRATS WHO DEMAND MORE GUN CONTROL

PART SEVEN

“Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please! Come in close where everyone can see! I got a tale to tell, it isn’t gonna cost a dime! (And if you believe that, we’re gonna get along just fine.)” ~ Stephen King, American author of horror, fantasy, and the supernatural; first quotation from his novel, “Needful Things,” published 1991“There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.” ~Stephen King, second quotation from his novel, “Needful Things,” published 1991

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS MUST NOT BE PUSHED INTO NEGOTIATING WITH DEMOCRATS ON TERMS THAT DEMOCRATS CREATE.

THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS MUST CONTROL THE NARRATIVE; TAKE A STRONG STAND AGAINST PERPETRATORS OF VIOLENCE; AND STRENGTHEN THE SECOND AMENDMENT

If Government seriously wishes to deal with violence in society, we have an answer for the President and for Congressional Republicans. To begin, the President, along with House and Senate Republicans, should keep uppermost in mind that the issue that they are confronted with involves “societal violence,” not “gun violence.” For, construing societal violence as gun violence tends to create the illusion that societal violence equates with and reduces merely to a consideration of the existence of guns in society. Get rid of guns, so these Democrats will tell the American public and the problem of violence in society will take care of itself. But, that notion is simply false, and somehow suggests that Congress need not concern itself with the motives of a psychopath or dangerous psychotic in committing a violent act, but only with the implement a person prone to violence might happen to use to harm an innocent human being. And, on that score the concern is not with just any implement—a knife, a bomb, a truck, a hammer, a rope, an axe, one’s own hands, or anything else an evil or sick person bent on doing harm to an innocent person might conceive of using and then put to use—but with a very specific implement that the psychopathic criminal or dangerous psychotic lunatic might happen to use to commit a horrific act of violence: namely a firearm. That, of course, is ridiculous. Yet, reducing the issue of societal violence to gun violence compels one, say a medical researcher or legislator, to focus on the implement of violence rather than on environmental factors at work, along with the genetic markers, that predispose a person to engage in violence in first place. Indeed, the very fact medical researchers working for the CDC would waste research dollars focusing on “gun violence” is, in itself, singularly bizarre, as it compels fascination in the implement of violence a psychopath or dangerous psychotic might happen to employ in wreaking havoc, rather than on the state of mind of the psychopathic killer and of the dangerous psychotic that predisposes that person to commit an act of horrific violence in the first place. Yet, this is precisely what the Radical Left focuses on and what it would have the CDC spend time and money on. This is wasted effort directing medical researchers and legislators to chase after ghosts, and bugbears, and bugaboos. But, that is their intent, predicated on a false premise: that guns somehow predispose a person, any person, to commit horrific acts of violence. For, if true—and for those who have a phobia of or personal abhorrence toward guns, they would presume truth where none exists—the conclusion they seek, which is embedded in the premise, is preordained: the citizenry must be divested of its firearms.So it is that Radical Left Congressional Legislators constantly rant and rave over the scourge of “gun violence,” rather than on the real scourge in this Nation: “societal violence.” In so doing, these reprobates in Congress castigate the gun as if the inanimate object were the perpetrator of the violence, rather than the sentient being who happened to use the gun to harm innocent people. It is all a lie. A tale that Radical Left Congressional Legislators weave. These radical Leftists focus their attention on guns as the means to drive the debate and to drive passage of legislation directed to curbing gun ownership among tens of millions of average, responsible, rational, law-abiding, notwithstanding that it is these American patriots who own and possess firearms who can best thwart societal violence. By keeping public attention focused essentially on guns, rather than on the psychopathic or psychotic human agent who misuses guns, Congressional Democrats make clear their desire to enact laws targeting guns themselves and, by extension, targeting the vast majority of those who own and possess guns: the average, law-abiding, responsible, rational gun owner. The argument oft made by Democrats, either tacitly or expressly, is that gun violence is a function of the sheer number of guns that exists in the Nation and that since the vast number of guns are owned by law-abiding Americans, and not by the criminal or the occasional lunatic who goes off half-cocked, it is necessary to attack the volume of guns outstanding and that means attacking the millions of law-abiding citizens who own and possess them. But, one could more sensibly argue that, since the law-abiding gun owner does not commit the crimes that take place, it is illogical to conclude that the volume of guns outstanding is a legitimate factor in accounting for violence that ensues as a result of misuse of firearms as it is the relatively small population of criminals and psychotic lunatics who misuse firearms. So, it is those individuals who should be the focus of attention; not “the gun” nor the law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owner. After all, guns are not sentient beings. Guns don’t commit violence in the absence of a human agent.Radical Left anti-Second Amendment members of Congress, aided by a sympathetic Press, drumming nonsense about guns, fanning the flames of anger toward guns and irrational fear about them, are trying to draw you into the narrative about guns they have constructed. The President and Congressional Republicans must not for this. For the narrative constructed is a fairy tale, the purpose of which is to destroy the Second Amendment. The President and Congressional Republicans must not lose sight of this fact for a moment.The real issue that Congress needs to confront is how to deal with the perpetrators of violence. The mechanism that perpetrators may happen to use to commit violence—in some instances but not in all instances, and, in fact, not in most instances—the gun, does not address the underlying cause or causes of that societal violence, nor does it serve to deal with the perpetrators of it. So, it is a fruitless endeavor to go after “guns.” Guns are not the key to dealing with violence. The key to dealing with violence is to attend to the perpetrator of it and what drives that person to commit violence at all. Once you focus your attention on the right issue, you won’t be led astray into the Leftist narrative and you won’t be drawn into a morass, proposing solutions that don’t work and, quite frankly, are not meant to work to lessen violence in society. The anti-Second Amendment members of Congress only mean to lead Congressional Republicans astray. They intend to  encourage Republicans to enact laws that serve the Radical and New Progressive Left’s own policy agenda, as dictated to them by American Socialists and Communists. What they all want to do is continually weaken the Second Amendment, until the right of the people to keep and bear arms is essentially nugatory, amounting to the disarming the tens of millions of average, law-abiding, responsible, sane Americans; utilizing the lowest common denominator in society, the psychopathic killer, the common criminal, and the dangerous psychotic lunatic to attain that singular objective. It should be manifestly clear to Congressional Republicans that the matter Congress should be addressing is how to minimize acts of violence in society and how to minimize such acts by those who seek to do violence, and that you should not be focusing attention on the mere tool that some of these dangerous elements in society use to effectuate that violence. The President and Congressional Republicans must make clear to radical Left-wing Democrats that the nature of the issue to be addressed is how to best deal with the dangerous criminal element in society and how best to deal with the dangerous psychotic element in society. These are the issues to be addressed; and these issues have nothing whatsoever to do with the issues that the radical Left-wing Democrats seek to direct Congressional attention to, if only obliquely: disarming the law-abiding citizen, and oppressing the law-abiding citizen who seeks to exercise his natural right to keep and bear arms. If the President and Congressional Republicans allow Democrats to frame the issues and, thus, frame the debate, the result attained will do nothing to curb violence in society and will do everything to leave the average, law-abiding, responsible, rational American citizen defenseless, and, at once, invite tyranny. But, the most disturbing thing of all is that the President and Congressional Republicans will have had a hand in all of this, unaware that they have been manipulated and played for dupes all along.

THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS MUST CONTROL THE "GUN" NARRATIVE; TAKE A STRONG STAND AGAINST PERPETRATORS OF VIOLENCE AND NOT AGAINST GUNS; AND STRENGTHEN THE SECOND AMENDMENT

The real issue to be confronted is how to deal with the perpetrators of violence. The mechanism that perpetrators may happen to use to commit violence, in some instances but not in all instances, and, in fact, not in most instances, i.e., the gun, does not address the underlying cause or causes of that societal violence, nor does it serve to deal with the perpetrators of it. So, it is a fruitless endeavor to go after “guns.” Guns are not the key to dealing with violence. The key to dealing with violence is to attend to the perpetrator of it and what drives that person to commit violence at all. Once the President and Congressional Republicans mist focus their attention on the right issue, to avoid being led astray into the Leftist narrative. Otherwise they will be drawn into a morass, playing the Democrats’ game, proposing solutions that don’t work and, quite frankly, are not meant to work to lessen violence in society. The anti-Second Amendment members of Congress only mean to lead the President and Congressional Republicans astray. They intend to encourage the President and Republicans to enact laws that serve the Radical Left and New Progressive Left’s own policy agenda: weakening the Second Amendment, disarming the tens of millions of average, sane Americans; utilizing the lowest common denominator in society, the psychopathic killer, the common criminal, and the dangerous psychotic lunatic to attain that singular objective. The President and Congressional Republicans must make clear to radical Left-wing Democrats the issues to be addressed and not allow radical Left-wing Democrats to compel them to address issues they wish for the Trump Administration and for Republicans to address. For the goal of Democrats is not the President’s goal or that of Republicans. The Democratic Party leadership and other Radical Left Democrats have only one goal in mind, even if they talk only obliquely about it: eventual total citizen disarmament.________________________________________

DEMOCRATS TREAT GUNS AS SENTIENT BEINGS AND THAT LIE INFORMS THEIR ACTIONS

PART EIGHT

“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.” ~Jeff Cooper, U.S. Marine, firearms instructor, and author of, “The Art of the Rifle”Guns are not sentient beings. They are no more the perpetrator of violence than a knife, bomb, or motor vehicle is the perpetrator of violence. The issue that Democrats want the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans to deal with does not and never did have anything to do with guns, regardless of what those radical Left Democrats have said. They are setting a trap for President Trump and for Republicans if they even begin to think about negotiating with them over new restrictive gun laws. The salient goal of the Democrat Party leadership and of other Radical Left Democrats is to weaken the Second Amendment, not to preserve and strengthen it; and that salient goal has nothing to do with curbing gun violence, or curbing, for that matter, any violence. A Funny thing about that, though: one would think that all members of Congress would be doing their damnedest to preserve and strengthen the Bill of Rights—all ten of them. But, not all of them do. The Radical Left politicians seek to constrain and weaken the Bill of Rights. They seek to weaken the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment. They seek to constrain and weaken the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment. They seek to weaken the due process, equal protection, and just compensation clauses of the Fifth Amendment. And, they seek to disembowel the Second Amendment. And, when the Bill of Rights is gutted, our Free Republic will fall. But, placing that hard fact aside, we must ask: What really motivates Radical Left and New Progressive Left Democrats? Do they really seek to promote public safety and public order? Hardly! But, assuming for sake of argument that these Democrats do have public safety and public order in mind as the impetus propelling them to attack the Bill of Rights and, especially, to viciously attack the Second Amendment. At what cost are public safety and public order thereby secured? We know the answer to these question. There’s no reason to guess. The citizenry must forego exercise of the sacred right to keep and bear arms codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. But, then, shall Americans truly forsake their fundamental, natural, immutable, and unalienable rights for purported public safety and public order that Democrats promise to give them in return for the sacrifice of those sacred, inviolate rights and liberties—sacred, inviolate rights and liberties that the founders of our Republic and framers of our Constitution had fought and bled for and gave their life to secure for Americans, thereafter and ever after, and that good, decent, patriotic Americans have since fought and bled for and gave their life to secure for each and every American? If the citizenry does forsake its God-given rights, then the citizenry forsakes the very mechanism by which and through which it holds a capacious and rapacious Government in check. This isn’t bare and base conjecture. This is hard fact. And, this is principal reason why the Second Amendment must always be robustly defended.President Trump and Congressional Republicans must not fall into the Democrats’ snare. For, Democrats view the issue of violence solely from the standpoint of a need to take guns away from citizens as they abhor guns and they abhor civilian gun ownership. And that fact has become more in evidence in recent weeks and months. Democrats don’t even pretend any longer to preface their remarks, as they once did, with the phrase: “of course we respect the Second Amendment.” Obviously, they don’t; and they never did. And, they have since doffed the mask to convey the illusion that they did care in preserving the Second Amendment. The Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans must not go down the path that Democrats are leading them. It’s a no-win situation for them if they do; it's a no-win situation for the Nation; it's a no-win situation for the people of our Nation; and it's a no-win situation for our Constitution.

CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS MUST GET BACK ON TRACK IF THEY ARE TO REIN IN DEMOCRAT PARTY LEADERSHIP AND OTHER RADICAL CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS

President Trump and Congressional Republicans must give no thought to the nonsense spouted by the Radical Left about the need for more restrictive, draconian gun laws: laws needlessly, mindlessly expanding background checks, and Congressional Republicans must give no thought to enacting unconstitutional national ‘red-flag’ laws, and laws that have, as their salient purpose, the removal of firearms—semiautomatic firearms, pejoratively and erroneously referred to as ‘assault weapons’ and ‘weapons of war’—that the anti-Second Amendment Left-wing extremists in Congress seek to confiscate from tens of millions of average, sane, responsible, law-abiding citizens. None of these restrictive gun proposals will work to protect innocent Americans. None of these proposals would ever work. And, here’s the kicker: none of these proposals was ever expected or truly intended to work! They are simply designed to whittle away the basic right, that is fundamental to the safeguarding of our Free, Constitutional Republic, and that is fundamental to what it means to be an American citizen. If President Trump and Congressional Republicans think that any one or more of these anti-Second Amendment gun measures would work to curb societal violence, and if they would even think of jumping on the bandwagon just to “play it safe,” politically, that would be one sure way to destroy their political futures. To play the game the radical Left Democrats want the President and Republicans to play means only that they have allowed yourselves to play into the hands of those forces in our Nation who seek nothing less than to destroy the very foundation of our Nation. They seek not to preserve the Nation, nor to preserve the life, safety, and well-being of Americans who reside in the Nation.

THE SUREST WAY TO DESTROY OUR FREE REPUBLIC IS TO UNDERMINE THE IMPORT AND PURPORT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT

If someone wanted to destroy our Nation, the surest way to do so would be to undermine the Second Amendment. That, in fact, is what extremists in this Nation, seek to do; to reshape our Nation into something completely at odds with the vision of a free Republic that our founders sought to create and to preserve. Don’t Republicans see that? Can’t they see that? The founders of our Nation, the framers of our Constitution saw the possibility that the foundation of our Nation could be threatened as much by dangerous, rabid forces within the Country, as well from threats arising outside the Country They knew this to be true. That is why they placed the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights of our Nation’s Constitution, creating a citizen army. And, contrary to what some may Americans may believe, including some jurists, most prominently, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the Second Amendment, along with other rights, comprising our Bill of Rights, are fundamental, unalienable, immutable rights—rights that exist intrinsically in man, and, as such, they are rights that predate the creation of our Nation as a free Republic. The Second Amendment is as important today as it was at the time of the ratification of our Constitution. Indeed, the Second Amendment may be more important today. For, the Democrats, controlled now by the New Progressive Left and other radical Left elements within the Party seek to transform our society beyond anything the founders of our Nation could imagine or foresee, except, perhaps, in their worst nightmares. They would be absolutely appalled to envision our Nation moving in the direction the leading Democratic Party candidates for U.S. President seek to drive our Nation toward: a Marxist/Socialist nightmare, if any one of them were actually elected to that high Officee.____________________________________________________

THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS  MUST CONTROL THE NARRATIVE ON GUN ISSUES, AND THAT MEANS STRENGTHENING THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND DIRECTING ATTENTION ON THE PERPETRATORS OF VIOLENCE, NOT ON LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS WHO SEEK MERELY TO EXERCISE THEIR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

PART NINE

LEFT-WING EXTREMISTS HAVE HIJACKED THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

“We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.” ~ First Quotation, Vladimir Lenin, Russian Revolutionary, Head of Soviet Russia from 1917 through 1924“The goal of socialism is communism.” ~ Second Quotation, Vladimir LeninUnfortunately for us, Left-wing extremists, Marxists, Socialists, and Communists have hijacked the Democrat Party. They did this so that they could use the Party—a well ensconced institution of Government—to their advantage; to work through their own agenda: an agenda antithetical to the best interests of our Nation as a free Republic and antithetical to preservation of our Constitution; antithetical to the best interests of the American citizenry; and antithetical to our rich cultural and historical heritage. They seek to subvert this Nation. They seek to transform our Nation into a Marxist/Socialist Dictatorship, and thence, to an out-and-out Communist State. But President Trump, Congressional Republicans, and the Americans citizenry know this or ought to know this. Left-wing extremists are unapologetic in their aims. They are inveterate liars and ruthless to the core. Given these facts, why would the President and Congressional Republicans even consider negotiating with these reprobates at all, as these extremists seek, as the first item on their agenda to enact more restrictive gun laws that do nothing to protect the citizenry but leave the American citizenry defenseless—prey to the lowest common denominator in society, the criminal, psychopathic and sociopathic elements and to dangerous psychotic elements; and susceptible to an overreaching, overarching, overbearing Government that is capable of harassing, subjugating, and controlling the unarmed American citizenry?‘These Left-wing extremists seek to disarm the American citizenry, making the citizenry decidedly and decisively less safe. Criminals and dangerous lunatics would have open season on the innocent human beings in our Nation; and the New Progressive Left and other radical Left-wing elements in Government would have open season on the Constitution; ripping it from its moor; thrusting the Nation into chaos; enabling radical elements in our Nation to exploit the chaos to institute revolution—a revolution that is not designed to create a stronger Nation, nor to preserve the autonomy and individuality of each American citizen in it, but to twist and contort the fundamental underpinnings of our Nation into something abhorrent and horrific, something completely antithetical to what the framers of our Constitution, envisioned, proposed, and successfully implemented—a Dystopian vision of our future, completely at odds with the vision of that of the framers of our Constitution, the founders of a free Constitutional Republic..The American people tolerate much and can forgive much. But, Americans are very attuned to duplicity, mendacity, hypocrisy, and outright stupidity. Neither the President nor Congressional Republicans will save their jobs by failing to stand up for the Nation, for the American people, and for our Constitution against the Leftist extremists who seek to destroy it all.To behave like the New Progressive Left and other Left-wing radicals in the Democrat Party will, in the eyes of Americans, would only serve to make the President and Congressional Republicans, one of them. The President and Congressional Republicans will be be dead wrong if they think they can play both sides against the middle.___________________________________________________________________

HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP AND CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS SHOULD DEAL WITH DEMOCRATS WHO DEMAND MORE GUN CONTROL

PART NINE

NINE POINTS  TO PONDERFirst, understand that the Radical Left Democrats focus their attention on guns as the means to drive the debate and to drive passage of legislation directed to curbing gun ownership among tens of millions of average, responsible, rational, law-abiding, when it is these American patriots who own and possess firearms who can best thwart societal violence. Radical Left anti-Second Amendment members of Congress, aided by a sympathetic Press, drumming nonsense about guns, fanning the flames of anger toward guns and irrational fear about them, are trying to draw you into the narrative about guns they have constructed. Don’t fall for it. For the narrative constructed is a fairy tale, the purpose of which is to destroy the Second Amendment. Don’t lose sight of that fact for a moment. Second, so, then what is the real issue? The real issue you need to confront is how to deal with the perpetrators of violence. The mechanism that perpetrators may happen to use to commit violence—in some instances but not in all instances, and, in fact, not in most instances—the gun, does not address the underlying cause or causes of that societal violence, nor does it serve to deal with the perpetrators of it. So, it is a fruitless endeavor to go after “guns.” Guns are not the key to dealing with violence. The key to dealing with violence is to attend to the perpetrator of it and what drives that person to commit violence at all. Once you focus your attention on the right issue, you won’t be led astray into the Leftist narrative and you won’t be drawn into a morass, proposing solutions that don’t work and, quite frankly, are not meant to work to lessen violence in society. The anti-Second Amendment members of Congress only mean to lead you astray. Don't let them, for they intend to encourage you to enact laws that serve the Radical and New Progressive Left’s own policy agenda: weakening the Second Amendment, disarming the tens of millions of average, sane Americans; utilizing the lowest common denominator in society, the psychopathic killer, the common criminal, and the dangerous psychotic lunatic to attain that singular objective. It should be manifestly clear to you that the matter Congress should be addressing is how to minimize acts of violence in society and how to minimize such acts by those who seek to do violence, and that you should not be focusing attention on the mere tool that some of these dangerous elements in society use to effectuate that violence. You should make clear to radical Left-wing Democrats the issues that you wish to address, and not allow radical Left-wing Democrats to compel you to address issues they wish for you to address, that they may attain their goal: eventual citizen disarmament.Third, so, then, make clear to all Congressional Democrats that you want to address societal violence. To do that, you must gain control of the narrative. Explain to the Democrat Party Leadership and to other Radical Left Democrats that if they truly wish to curb societal violence, then discussion and debate must be directed to the issue of societal violence and the perpetrators of that violence. The issue before you is not about guns or gun violence. The issue of societal violence never was about guns and gun violence. Redirect discussion in the direction it belongs: on the causes of societal violence and the measures to be taken against those that threaten innocent lives, regardless of the implements they use. You must create the narrative, and make Congressional Democrats follow your lead.Fourth if Democrats continue to scream for more gun restrictions, targeting tens of millions of law-abiding citizens, tell them that those laws that target misuse of firearms should be vigorously enforced. The Nation does not need more restrictive gun laws, targeting the average, law-abiding, responsible, rational gun owner, when the laws already enacted are not enforced against perpetrators of violence: the common criminal, the psychopathic gang member, and the dangerous lunatic.Fifth, if Democrats insist on enacting restrictive gun laws infringing the Second Amendment, then force these antigun elements in the Democrat Party to explain how further gun restrictions, targeting tens of millions of average, law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners will curb or curtail societal violence. These radical Left Democrats can’t, of course, offer a sound logical explanation because their goal is to disarm the civilian population. That was always their goal. A rash of “mass” shootings is, for these Democrats, simply a pretext to accomplish that end. But, they will never admit that. So, hit these Democrats with the truth. Tell them that their attack on firearms is and always was a fairy tale concocted by public relations firms at the direction of the extremist Left-wing elements who seek to wrest Government control from the hands of the citizenry, where power truly belongs, and that you will not assist them in delivering that power to those who seek to bring to fruition a new vision of our Country, a vision inconsistent with that of our founders. Tell these Democrats that you will not assist them in tearing down the U.S. Constitution. Sixth, tell these Democrats that you are well aware that their gun policies are not designed to safeguard of our Nation; tell them that enactment into law of the gun policies they seek won’t preserve our Nation, that the gun proposed gun policies they seek to enact into law would only endanger the very foundation of the Nation. Tell these Democrats that you are sick and tired of hearing the same “song” over and over again. Tell them that you have heard well enough from these anti-Second Amendment elements in the Democrat Party, in the seditious Press, and in the Nation at large, once again and ever again, as bring out of the attic the same old tired firearms proposals—and occasionally, as with “Red Flag” laws, concoct new ones—and that all of these proposals are designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to weaken and ultimately to destroy the Second Amendment in order to undercut the entire Constitution, the very foundation and framework of our free Republic, and a free, autonomous citizenry. Tell them you will not tolerate the constant unconstitutional and unconscionable battering of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Seventh, make plain to the reprobates in the Democratic Party that the best way to protect innocent lives is by enforcing those numerous laws against criminals and the criminally insane that we already have on the books, and make clear that Congress must aggressively enforce those laws before considering adding more restrictive gun laws into the mix. Ask those who seek to disarm the citizenry to explain why they think we need more restrictive gun laws, targeting the average, law-abiding, rational American citizen, anyway. Make these reprobates produce sound evidence to support their position. Eighth, force Democrats to acknowledge that they are simply exploiting tragic incidents to bring their ultimate goal into fruition: de facto repeal of the Second Amendment. Force them to acknowledge that what it is they really seek, what it is they really want is not “gun control” but “citizen/population control” and what they truly seek to control is not the common criminal or the occasional lunatic, but the average, law-abiding citizen. Force these New Progressive Left and radical Left-wing Democrats to acknowledge that they see an armed citizenry as the real threat to the kind of Country they envision, and that the kind of Country they want to erect is abhorrent to the Nation the founders sought to give Americans and which they did give to Americans: a free Republic.Nine, tell Democrats that the gun policies they seek to enact into law, including, inter alia, unnecessary gun background checks and extended gun transfer waiting periods, bans on semiautomatic firearms, ‘red flag’ laws, and universal gun confiscation measures disguised as voluntary ‘gun buybacks,’ are inconsistent with the present framework of our Nation, and that, if Democrats are unhappy with that framework and seek to dismantle it in order to create another one to their liking, then you are not interested in talking with them; that the gun measures they seek to implement are beyond the pale, and that you are at an impasse.__________________________________________

IF GUN MEASURES ARE WHAT DEMOCRATS WANT, THEN CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS SHOULD GIVE THEM ONE AND IT IS ONE REPUBLICANS HAVE PROMULGATED BEFORE

PART NINE

“While the people have property, arms in their hands, and only a spark of a noble spirit, the most corrupt congress must be mad to form any project of tyranny. ~Reverend Nicholas Collin, writing under the pseudonym,” ‘Foreign Spectator,’ taken from an article he penned, appearing in a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette,  November 7, 1788“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” ~Joseph Story, early Jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court in the 19th Century; quotation from Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” 1833“Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.” ~Alan Dershowitz, Contemporary American lawyer and academic; Professor Emeritus, Harvard University; and scholar of United States constitutional law and criminal law; well-noted, self-ascribed Civil Libertarian; now apparently loathed by the Left-wing “power elite” for having the audacity to assail the ACLU, and for defending President Trump; often a guest on Fox News; but shunned by the mainstream networks, CNN, MSNBC, et.al.

A GUN MEASURE THAT WOULD WORK TO CURB SOCIETAL VIOLENCE

Democrats have recently proposed a flurry of restrictive gun laws targeting tens of millions of law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners. Those antigun measures are not carefully constructed to target the criminal and occasional lunatic. The American public knows this. Hopefully, the President and Congressional Republicans know this, too. Such draconian gun measures will not make our Nation safer, and are not designed to make our Nation safer. They are only designed to weaken the Second Amendment. But, if any federal legislation would tend to strengthen, rather than weaken, the Second Amendment, what would that legislation look like? There is such a gun law, and it is one that would enable the average, law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owner to carry a gun for self-defense wherever that person travels in this Nation and in the territories of our Nation. Such a gun law would deal effectively with societal violence. And such Congressional bills had been introduced to realize the goal of reducing societal violence.Perhaps Congressional Republicans need to be reminded that they had a bill once to deal effectively with societal violence. In fact they had several such bills, when they controlled both Houses of Congress when the 115th Congress was in session. These sets of bills involved National Concealed Handgun Carry Reciprocity.* What happened to those bills? One that had actually passed the House, 115 H.R. 38, was allowed to die in Senate Committee. Well, it is high time to resurrect that bill. The best way to deal with Democrats’ concern over so-called “gun violence” is, after all, to enact a bill that deals effectively with all societal violence perpetrated by both the criminal psychopath and the dangerous psychotic lunatic. Looking at the issue of societal violence as “gun violence” in order to deny to the average American citizen the best means available to defend their life and safety, namely through that which a firearm provides, is a blind, nothing more; a media creation, hyped up by Democrats as if it were a real issue. It isn’t. And, media concocted phrases such as ‘assault weapon’ and ‘weapon of war’ are mere pejoratives and erroneous fictions at that. Such firearms are semiautomatic weapons specifically designed for civilian use, for legitimate purposes. Congressional Republicans should tell antigun Left-wing Democrats that Republicans will henceforth refrain from using glib terminology, a fiction, created merely to inflame the public, nothing more. Republicans should not encourage use of fictions that are created merely for their emotional impact and that enable Democrats to control the running narrative against guns and civilian gun ownership in order to promote an agenda designed to weaken the Second Amendment. What Should Congressional Republicans Do?Congressional Republicans should draft a new bill calling for national concealed handgun carry reciprocity. The answer to “gun” violence—an effective answer to any violence, really—is found in firearms in the hands of those who are best equipped to deal with that violence immediately when violence occurs or is threatened, before police officers can respond to it. This means that a firearm in the hands of the average, responsible, rational law-abiding citizen is the best response to a threat of imminent violence. Congress should also enforce laws against perpetrators of violence, and really enforce those laws; not pretend to enforce them. This is absolutely necessary before Congress gets swept up into the maelstrom of enacting any new restrictive “gun” laws that invariably target tens of millions of average, law-abiding, responsible, rational American citizen gun owners.A national concealed handgun carry reciprocity bill will certainly get the attention of Leftist extremists self-righteously exclaiming that it is either “their way or the highway.” Republicans might tell the antigun Radical Leftists to take the highway and leave the Nation alone, in peace, for the tens of millions of Americans who believe our Nation is doing just fine as a free Constitutional Republic, with the Bill of Rights intact. Republicans should tell these radical Leftist Democrats that our Nation’s Constitution does not need more tweaking. It is time for Republicans to control the narrative on guns and on other major issues confronting our Nation, including illegal border crossings and at-will abortion.Republicans can present a reasoned and cogent argument for national handgun carry reciprocity as that law strengthens and preserves the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Sure, the New Progressive Left and other radical Left-wing Democrats will scoff, or laugh, or walk off in a huff, but the fact remains that their attempts to create more and more restrictive gun laws only serves to make a mockery of our Bill of Rights.Did not President Trump make crystal clear in his State of the Union address that this Nation will never become a Socialist State? Did Republicans not notice that most Democrats did not applaud the President when Trump asserted the Nation will never become a Socialist State, but sat sullenly in silence at his remark?Republicans must remain true to the vision that the founders had for this Country, a vision that has allowed our Nation and its people to prosper for over two hundred years; a vision that has made our Nation the most powerful on Earth. Republicans might remind Left-wing Democrats and those who support them that this Nation has succeeded admirably and completely in defeating outside threats; and Republicans should tell these Left-wing Democrats that Americans will succeed in defeating threats emanating from within the Nation as well. President Trump and Congressional Republicans should explain to these reprobates on the other side of the aisle that, despite Left-wing Democrats’ intense distaste for the very existence of the fundamental, indelible, unalienable, immutable right of the people to keep and bear arms as codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution and despite their singular intent and reprehensible desire to destroy the exercise of that primordial, natural right bestowed on man by the Divine Creator, they will not succeed in their efforts to disarm the American citizenry—ever!__________________________________________________________*The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively about this. See, e.g., the Arbalest Quarrel article on House bill 115 H.R. 38 to enact national concealed handgun carry reciprocity, a bill that passed the House but died in Senate Committee. Of Course, a federal law authorizing what already exists intrinsically in man, i.e., the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as codified in the Second Amendment, should not be necessary, as such law is at best redundant. But, there is another issue of more pressing concern with a federal mandate, or multi-State compact, permitting a law-abiding citizen to carry a handgun concealed throughout the Nation and throughout the Nation’s territories. There is the incipient danger in even countenancing that such Government action is necessary if the right exists implicitly in the American citizenry. For, asserting that Governmental action is necessary to secure the right, in effect, then, undermines, paradoxically, the very nature of the right secured—turning a fundamental right into something less than it is and what it was, as codified, meant to be—transforming it into a statutory right, which is, then, something less a fundamental right, something more akin to a privilege, which is what a Government-made right really is. For, if, truly, Government bestows a right, that can only mean that the right did not exist until Government created it. And, if Government creates a right that it bestows to this person or that person, then Government, as the creator of the right, may also, ipso facto, rescind one’s exercise of it or repeal it outright so that no one can exercise it. Thus, if Congress were to enact national handgun carry reciprocity legislation, there is a real danger in the public tacitly acknowledging that Government has created a right that had not hitherto existed before Congressional enabling legislation that created the right. This undermines the strength of the Second Amendment, essentially subordinating it to mere Statute; subjecting the Second Amendment to constant tinkering: modification, refinement, and loss of import and purport. But, we talk about the need for national handgun carry reciprocity anyway because of the many laws, through the decades that have whittled away at the efficacy of the Second Amendment; and we see this constant disturbing churning away of a God-given right, continuing through the recent flurry of restrictive gun proposals being actively bandied about now—another disheartening round of efforts to undercut the strength of the fundamental, immutable, unalienable right codified in the Second Amendment._________________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

INTRODUCTION TO ARBALEST QUARREL SERIES ON RADICAL LEFT/PROGRESSIVE DUPLICITY, MENDACITY, AND HYPOCRISY

PART ONE

“Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." ~Chuang Tse: XXIII, translated by the American writer, Ursula K. Le Guin; epigraph to Chapter 3 of her 1971 Sci Fi novella, “The Lathe of Heaven”

THE RADICAL LEFT AND PROGRESSIVES WILL CRUSH AMERICA INTO SUBMISSION IF THE NATION CONTINUES TO LISTEN TO THE NONSENSE  THEY SPOUT, FOR IT ISN'T KNOWLEDGE OR UNDERSTANDING THEY HAVE; AND HAVING NO WISDOM TO IMPART, THEY HAVE NOTHING OF NOTE TO SHARE

LOSS OF OUR NATION BEGINS WITH LOSS OF AN ARMED CITIZENRY

Never in our history, since the birth of the Nation itself, has our Nation faced a direct threat to its survival as it is facing today. This isn’t hyperbole. This is fact. Even in the face of the ravages of the American Civil War, and the calamity of the Second World War, and the threat posed to our Nation by Russia during its existence as the once powerful Soviet Union, during the Cold War era, has this Nation come closer to Armageddon. This fact is plain as day, on constant display, having commenced on the very day the Presidency of Donald Trump began—on noon EST on January 20, 2017, when Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.Jealous and powerful elements both here and abroad have mobilized and joined forces to bring Trump down and have failed miserably. They are apoplectic over their consistent failures, and have been raging ever since.Immensely powerful, extraordinarily wealthy, abjectly ruthless, sinister, secretive forces, residing both here and abroad, have operated in concert to attack Trump’s Presidency and by extension to attack millions of Americans who voted for him in the General Election of 2016.These rapacious forces are ever devising and orchestrating, machinating and scheming. And they do so through the amalgam of: a duplicitous and compliant Press; treacherous and hypocritical politicians; recalcitrant and poisonous Federal Government bureaucrats; pestilential sympathizers in the entertainment business; virulent and violent and bellicose Radical Left activists; injurious or lackadaisical jurists; a pernicious academia; rapacious technology chieftains; and a host of hangers-on and fellow travelers and Anti-American sympathizers among the polity, have—all of them—failed to bring destruction both to the man and the Nation. They have failed to topple Trump and to destroy his Administration; and they have failed to destroy the will of the American people; and, to date, they have failed, utterly, to convince Americans to relinquish their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms; albeit, not for want of trying; and they are still doggedly trying.The only thing these perfidious, treacherous, malevolent, abhorrent forces have succeeded in doing is to draw unwanted attention to their goal of sucking the lifeblood out of this Nation, in a naked attempt to bring the Nation to heel; into the fold of the EU; and eventually, inexorably, unerringly into the grip of a new trans-global, supranational political, social, cultural, economic, financial, and legal system of governance; a new socialist world order ruled by a small cadre of sinister ministers, its heart resting in the interstices and bowels of Brussels.With 2020 hindsight the envious, fuming forces that had connived, threatened, and cajoled, albeit all for naught, to bring their stooge, the duplicitous, hypocritical, arrogant, and loathsome Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the seat of power in Washington, D.C., have licked their wounds and are intent on redressing their previous failure; to force the United States back on track toward realization of the goal of a one world socialist Government. And, if these ruthless forces succeed in placing their lackey, their factotum in the Oval Office, in 2020, everything this Nation has gained through the sacrifices of American patriots, from the American Revolution to the present day, will have been in vain. For, Americans will lose everything that has defined them and that has defined the Nation for over two hundred hears, commencing with loss of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the most sacred fundamental, immutable right of all.

WHAT CAN ALL OF US DO TO KEEP THE RADICAL LEFT ANTIGUN MOB FROM INFRINGING THE FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL, UNALIENABLE, IMMUTABLE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS?

Tell your Congressional Delegation, and your State and local Legislators that you expect them to honor their sworn oath and commitment to uphold the U.S. Constitution, as this requires them to take action to preserve and strengthen the right of the people to keep and bear arms; and that means protecting the natural right of self-defense. It also means that such firearms that are in common use including semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns, as well as revolvers, should be available to the average, law-abiding, rational American citizen. How can we best to achieve this goal? We can achieve this goal by meeting the threat to our most sacred, sacrosanct right by meeting those who would destroy our Nation’s Birthright head-on. Tell your Congressional Delegation to recommit to passing National Concealed Handgun Carry legislation.The most effective way to attack antigun Radical Leftists seeking to weaken the Second Amendment that it may wither on the vine, is not—as all too many Republicans have been seen doing—by capitulating to the Radical Left on the issue of gun ownership and gun possession; nor is it by sheepishly agreeing with and groveling to Radical Left antigun politicians in the Democratic Party and to Grassroots antigun activists. Doing so won’t serve to preserve our sacred right, but, rather, will compromise our sacred, unalienable right. No! We must not capitulate and we must convince Republicans in Congress not to capitulate to the antigun mob. They must never capitulate.

WE CANNOT SECURE OUR NATION BY RELINQUISHING OUR FIREARMS BUT WE SHALL SURELY LOSE OUR NATION FOR HAVING DONE SO

Americans cannot preserve the Second Amendment by negotiating with those intent on destroying it. And the Radical Left, along with the inordinately wealthy Globalist elites, who lust for world domination, have no intention of preserving the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in any form. Consider: no American can any longer easily and readily obtain a machine gun, submachine gun, selective fire assault rifle, short barrel shotguns and rifles, since they are all stringently regulated by the Federal Government. Even though these rifles, shotguns, and other firearms are personnel weapons, they are no longer readily available to the public, as the availability of these weapons went out the door with the passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), over eighty years. And, as the Arbalest Quarrel has repeatedly stated, the assault on “assault weapons” is an attack on all semiautomatic weapons, as the Radical Left antigun mob is aggressively mounting a campaign to ban all of them, not just some of them. Recently, the Radical Left “Mother Jones” made this very point. The title of the article, written by the Blogger, Kevin Drum, says it all: “We Need to Ban Semi-Automatic Firearms.”At least the guy is being honest, and not pretending to convey the impression that most Radical Left antigun proponents attempt to convey to the public, namely, that they wish to ban only some semiautomatic weapons, not all of them, just “weapons of war,” qua “assault weapons.” Were the antigun mob to get their way, an effective ban on some semiautomatic weapons would lead eventually and invariably to a ban on all semiautomatic weapons. And, from there, the Radical Left antigun mob would move for a ban on revolvers, single action and double action; and, on and on, to a ban on single shot firearms and black powder muzzle loaders. The Radical Left intends to confiscate all firearms, thus essentially negating lawful exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.The best way to defend the unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms is by clashing with the Radical Left elements in Congress and in the populace who seek to destroy it—bringing the fight directly, unabashedly, unreservedly, and forcefully to them.Keep uppermost in mind: the goal of the Radical Left is the same as the goal of transnationalist Globalist Elites. For, they both seek to undermine the United States as an independent sovereign Nation-State—to transform the Nation into a Socialist haven for millions of illegal aliens who have no understanding of our Nation’s history or any appreciation for our Nation’s Constitution, or of the nature of natural rights upon which our free Republic is grounded. The Radical Left and the transnationalists Global elite have no desire to educate illegal aliens, or even legal immigrants, for that matter, that they may readily assimilate; for, to do so, would defeat the aim of the Radical Left and the transnationalist Global elites, as they are in agreement on what they both seek to accomplish. They seek to effectuate a massive political, social, cultural, and economic transformation of our Country and, thereby, to bring the United States into the fold of the European Union. This was already underway during the Obama era, and it was to continue under Hillary Clinton, had she been “crowned” President.Fortunately, the Clinton Presidency bid failed. But, undaunted, the rapacious forces, that have sought ever to destroy this Nation, fervently desire to get back on track and to get back on track quickly, if need be, no later than 2020. They could not do so to date, try as they did, orchestrating a complex strategy directed to impeaching President Trump and removing him from Office. That didn’t happen. And it isn’t going to happen. But, there is no guarantee that these anti-American forces won’t succeed in sitting a Democratic Party stooge in the White House in 2020, and they are plugging away to do just that. But, in the interim, with their plan of undermining the sovereignty of our Nation—if not sooner, then later—they know they must weaken the Bill of Rights. And to do so, they know they must commence with de facto repeal of the Second Amendment. We see this occurring with the latest call for new curbs on semiautomatic weapons that the Radical Left subsumes under the false vernacular of ‘assault weapon.’ We see it in the Radical Left’s call for universal background checks, whatever that means. And, we see it in the call for application of so-called “Red Flag” laws, throughout the Nation.As the Arbalest Quarrel has previously stated, antigun groups have undertaken three salient tactics in their aggressive assault on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and these tactics are always taken out of the closet whenever a mass shooting occurs, as such a tragic event operates as a useful pretext for through which the Radical Left antigun zealots assail the Second Amendment again and again.Their tactics include, first, expanding the domain of banned firearms. Americans see this in the ferocious, noxious, incessant attack on semiautomatic firearms, aka, assault weapons.Their tactics include, second, expanding the domain of individuals who are not permitted to own or possess any firearm. Americans see this in the attempt to impose draconian, unconstitutional “Red Flag” laws on thousands of average, law-abiding American citizens. Red Flags operate by turning this Country into a Nation of spies, Shoo-flies. Doing so is the hallmark of the Totalitarian State, where people spy on others and pry into the affairs of others.And, their tactics include, third, making it increasingly difficult for Americans to exercise the right to keep and bear arms—increasingly difficult for those Americans who don’t otherwise fall within a statutory prohibition preventing them from owning and possessing firearms or fall victim to oppressive Red Flag laws.This third tactic involves making gun ownership and possession an administratively demanding, daunting, onerous, expensive, and psychologically depressing experience and proposition for gun owners, as gun owners will never know when something they do or something they say might tend to negatively impact continued exercise of their Second Amendment right. Radical Left antigun elements in our Nation, along with their transnationalist benefactors, know that one major stumbling block to defeating the Second Amendment and, in fact, one major stumbling block in compromising any of the other Nine Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that comprise our Bill of Rights, is to effectuate a change in the way in which Americans view their Bill of Rights, to change their mindset. What does that mean? Just this: The founders of our Free Republic perceived the Bill of Rights to comprise laws intrinsic to man. That is to say, the founders perceived the rights, codified in the Bill of Rights, to precede the creation of the Nation. They perceived the rights as an indelible part of the psyche of man. And, what does that mean? It means that the first Ten Amendments comprise rights and liberties bequeathed to man by the Divine Creator. This is what the founders meant by referring to the rights as fundamental, unalienable, and immutable. Since such rights are not created by man, no man can lawfully or morally rescind those rights. This proposition entails that Government, as a man-made construct, cannot lawfully or morally rescind the rights embodied the Bill of Rights, either.For the Radical Left and their transnationalist benefactors, these ideas, that serve both as the cornerstone of our Constitutional Republic, and the cornerstone of individual autonomy, are an anathema. That is why they feel obliged to ignore, modify, abrogate or utterly erase any Right set forth in the Bill of Rights, when circumstance, as they see it, dictates, or mere fancy happens to affect them. For both the Radical Left and for their transnationalist benefactors, no rights and liberties exist that are not perceived as man-made, bestowed on man by other men or by Government; and, so, they perceive nothing in rights and liberties and laws that isn’t subject to refinement or outright abrogation. This is a very dangerous viewpoint; one that is at loggerheads with the very preservation of our Nation as a free Republic; and one that is at loggerheads with the idea of the dignity and autonomy of man.We will explore these ideas in depth in the next several articles, utilizing the assertions and policy statements of two Radical Left “Potentates,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Senator (D-CA), Kamala Harris, as examples of the logically unsound underpinnings of the Collectivist ideology that the Radical Left embraces.We will demonstrate, through an analysis of their assertions and policy statements, the true danger the Radical Left poses to our Nation, to its Constitution and to its people. By extension we will show how the assertions and policy positions of the Radical Left are incoherent and nonsensical, and that, on logical grounds, alone, do not provide an intellectually satisfactory and morally and legally sustainable basis for transformation of this Nation in the way and manner they seek.The Socialist Utopian dream that both the Radical Left and the Globalist “elites” envision, as bringing public order and comfort to its inhabitants, is doomed to failure. Indeed what it is they truly seek to accomplish is more likely a cold calculated ruse in which to bind this Nation to other Western Nations, in a reprehensible attempt to effectuate a one world Socialist union of once independent nation-states. In that effort, if they succeed, we will witness the dire realization of a Radical Left Socialist Dystopian nightmare; a nightmare that will bring misery, remorse, and profound unease to us all.__________________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE COURTS, NO LESS THAN CONGRESS, IS WHERE ONE WILL FIND THE SECOND AMENDMENT EITHER SAFEGUARDED AND STRENGTHENED OR ENDANGERED AND WEAKENED.

REPUBLICAN CONTROL OF ALL THREE-BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT IS NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN BOTH THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE OF OUR NATION STATE, AND THE SUPREMACY OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND OUR SYSTEM OF LAWS.

The mandate of a Republican controlled Congress, and of a Republican President and of a federal court system--comprising jurists who recognize the supremacy of our laws and of our Constitution over foreign laws and over the decisions of foreign tribunals and who recognize and appreciate the critical importance of the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people, as codified in the Bill of Rights--is this: to maintain our roots as a unique People; to make certain that our Country continues to exist as a free Republic and as an independent, sovereign Nation, beholden to no other Nation or to any group of Nations; and to keep sacred the supremacy of our Constitution and our system of laws, grounded in the sanctity of the Bill of Rights--a Bill of Rights that has no parallel in any other Nation on this Earth. To succeed in this mandate it is imperative that: one, Congress retain a Conservative Republican majority; two, that Donald Trump remain as U.S. President through two terms in Office; and, three, that the U.S. Supreme Court hold a conservative-wing majority and that the lower federal Courts seat a majority of  jurists who recognize and appreciate the supremacy of our Constitution and of our laws and of our sacred rights and liberties, and who render opinions with that principle omnipresent.Obviously, those malevolent forces that seek to undermine the sovereignty of this Nation, that seek to subvert the will of the American People, that seek to undercut and subordinate our Constitution, our system of laws and our fundamental rights and liberties, are working for the precise opposite. They seek to gain Democratic Party majorities in both Houses of Congress in the midterm elections, and, if they can accomplish that, they will undoubtedly pursue efforts to impeach Trump, using the tenuous, ludicrous, tax-payer funded Mueller investigation, chasing after ghosts, as a springboard to destroy the Trump Presidency. These individuals and groups, bankrolled by a shadowy, secretive, ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elite”, hope, as well, to create a liberal wing majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. To do that, they must win back the White House.Those who seek to destroy the sovereignty of this Nation and to undermine the true import and purport of the Bill of Rights are rankled by two specific events that they cannot, and, obviously, will not abide: one, the failure to usher Hillary Rodham Clinton into the Office of U.S. President, which they thought was an assured bet; and, two, the failure to seat Merrick Garland—the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and President Barack Obama’s nominee—on the U.S. Supreme Court. These critical and monumental failures of the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elite” who bankroll and control the Deep State of the federal Government—the forces that would dare crush this Nation and the American people into submission—have suffered an extraordinary setback in their plans for world domination. To reset the clock in accordance with their global strategy, they have been forced to show their hand. The negative forces that manipulate and control the Government of this Nation and that manipulate and control the Governments of those Nations that comprise the EU have emerged from the shadows and have forced their toadies in this Country to surface from the depths of the Deep State of the federal Government, to undermine, at every turn, the efforts of the duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump. Not content to undermine and undercut the President's policy objectives, which they attack at every turn through the well-orchestrated media circus they control, they attack the man himself, disrespectfully, caustically, and reprehensibly; and, in so doing, they demonstrate as well their disrespect for this Nation, and  for this Nation’s core values, and for this Nation’s system of laws, and for the people of this Nation who elected Donald Trump, who was then inaugurated the 45^th President of the United States, on January 20, 2017, succeeding Barack Obama.The election of Donald Trump as U.S. President has thrown a wrench into the well-oiled and greased machine of the Deep State of the federal Government of the United States. This singularly important event has thrown the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist elites, headed by the international Rothschild clan, into a state of consternation, of befuddlement, of rage and turmoil, of chaos. Their well-laid plans for world domination sees the United States as an important cog in an expansive industrial and financial machine comprising the New World Order, for no other Western Nation has as impressive a military and as impressive an intelligence apparatus, and as adept technological capabilities as those of the United States. As the forces that would crush this Nation and its people into submission have suffered a severe and costly set-back, they intend to set matters aright. The American people bear witness to the raw extent of the power and reach of these forces: one, the naked audacity of their actions; two, the evident contempt in which they hold the American people; three, the bald self-assurance and aplomb by which they plan and orchestrate a campaign of deliberate deception—through the mainstream media—a campaign of disinformation and misinformation through which they hope and trust they can manipulate the American people into accepting a bizarre worldview--one inimical to the needs and desires and well-being of the American people; four, the obscene loathing they express toward our Bill of Rights; five, the demonstrative malevolence they have shown toward the U.S. President and toward his Administration; and, six, the abject hatred they display toward this Nation’s Constitution, toward this Nation’s unique history, toward this Nation’s core values, toward this Nation’s system of laws and morals. And through the levers of media and of the Deep-State of Government that they control, they give mere lip-service and lip-homage to those very things Americans hold most dear.The Arbalest Quarrel has done its part. We have worked to help elect Donald Trump as President of the United States and have worked, as well, to defeat the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. But our work has not ended. It has, perforce, just begun.We must continue to support President Trump from the forces that, having failed to prevent his electoral success, seek, now, to place obstacles in his path, making it difficult for him to implement the policies he has promised—policies that are at loggerheads with those hostile internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist financial and industrial forces that seek global domination which, in accordance with their plans for world domination, requires the crushing of Western Nation States, including the crushing of our Nation State, the crushing of the sovereignty and independence of our Nation state; and, with that, the subordination of our laws to that of international laws and treaties and the subordination of our Courts to that of foreign Courts and foreign Tribunals; and the undermining of the sacred rights and liberties of the American citizenry. These extremely powerful, extraordinarily wealthy, and abjectly ruthless and cunning globalist forces seek eventually to topple Donald Trump and his administration. They seek also to take back control of the two Houses of Congress. We must therefore work to maintain House and Senate Republican Majorities.Further, we must work toward and anticipation of the confirmation of at least one additional, and, hopefully, two or, better yet, three conservative-wing Justices to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. With the passing of the eminent and brilliant jurist and true American patriot, Justice Antonin Scalia, we have lost a mighty champion of liberty in the vein of the founders of this Nation, the framers of our Constitution. We hope and trust and pray that, before the end of this year, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy and/or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and/or Justice Stephen Breyer will retire. That will pave the way for President Trump to nominate at least one and conceivably two, and optimally three more American jurists, to sit on the high Court who, as with Trump’s nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, hold jurisprudential values and who would apply the same methodology to deciding cases as do Justices Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, which the late Justice Antonin Scalia had set the course. With strong and true conservative-wing Justices on the high Court, who hold a clear majority, we will see the Court agreeing to hear critical Second Amendment cases and, thereupon, rendering decisions that, with the Court’s untarnished and supreme judicial imprimatur, makes clear the import of the natural, fundamental rights and liberties of American citizens as codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution in the manner the framers’ intended.

THE ARBALEST QUARREL LOOKS BACK ON WORK COMPLETED IN 2017 AND THEN FORWARD TO OUR TASKS FOR 2018

WHAT WERE SOME OF OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 2017?

Let us step back for a moment and look at just a few of the tasks we completed in 2017, and remark briefly on tasks we have set for ourselves in 2018. Much of our work, consistent with the primary purpose of the Arbalest Quarrel involved detailed, comprehensive analyses of critical federal and State Court cases impacting the Second Amendment. One of those cases is Soto vs. Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC., 2016 Conn. Super. LEXIS 2626; CCH Prod. Liab. Rep. P19,932. Soto is an active case. The Soto case arises from the deadly attack that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when a deranged young adult, Adam Lanza, 20 years old, stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School, fatally shooting twenty children and six adults, before turning a handgun on and killing himself. According to the allegations of the Soto Plaintiffs' First Amended Complaint (CM), Adam Lanza murdered these school children and school staff with a Bushmaster AR-15, model XM15-E2S rifle. Defendant Bushmaster prevailed in the lower Superior Court (trial Court), and we analyzed the Superior Court decision in depth. Plaintiffs appealed the adverse decision directly to the Connecticut Supreme Court, bypassing the State Court of Appeals, and the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed to hear argument. We will be analyzing the Briefs of Plaintiffs and Defendants in the case and will also analyze selected amicus (friend of Court) Briefs in that case. Over 50 amicus briefs were filed in that case. We also provided comprehensive analyses in an “assault weapons” case, (Kolbe vs. O’Malley, 42. F. Supp. 3d 768 (D. Md. 2014); vacated and remanded, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2016); rev’d en banc, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017) ), which we had hoped would be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court—the high Court failing to have granted certiorari in an earlier disastrous “assault weapons” case, Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 784 F.3d 406, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 6902 (7th Cir. Ill., 2015). Alas, the high Court failed to garner four votes, allowing the case to be heard in the high Court. Had the high Court agreed to hear the case, Americans would see a definitive ruling on whether so-called “assault weapons” fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection. Obviously, the liberal wing of the Court and at least two "apparent" conservative wing Justices, likely, Anthony Kennedy and the Chief Justice, John Roberts, did not want to resolve this case, and, so, to date, resolution of “assault weapons” as protected firearms within the core of the Second Amendment remains in abeyance, with liberal Circuit Court of Appeal Judges ruling that semiautomatic "assault weapons" do not fall within the core of the Second Amendment and, so, are not protected.In addition, we looked at two Congressional bills that, if enacted, strengthen the Second Amendment. We looked at national concealed handgun carry reciprocity legislation, pending in Congress, H.R. 38, and looked at Congressman Chris Collins’ bill, the “Second Amendment Guarantee Act” (H.R. 3576) (“SAGA”) which has been referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, on September 6, 2017 where it presently sits. We also did our part to sidetrack Obama’s attempt to sit Judge Merrick Garland on the U.S. Supreme Court. When we feel it critical that our representatives in Congress be notified of specific and extraordinary dangers presented to our Nation, we have not hesitated to contact them. When, after the passing of the exceptional U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, we have seen that President Barack Obama wasted little time in nominating a person to serve as a new ninth member of the high Court who would, given the opportunity, assist the liberal-wing Justices—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—in unwinding case law that Justice Scalia helped to shape in his many illustrious years on the Bench. That person who President Barack Obama had hoped to see confirmed is Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Arbalest Quarrel took strong exception to the possibility of seeing Judge Garland sitting on the high Court. We sent a letter to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley, requesting the Senator to refrain from allowing a confirmation hearing to proceed. Had a confirmation proceeding been held, that would have resulted in Judge Merrick Garland sitting on the high Court as an Associate Justice. Of that, we have no doubt, as U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch has articulated that point. According to the liberal political commentary website, "New Republic," Senator Hatch said that there was "no question" that Judge Merrick Garland would be confirmed were a confirmation hearing held. The Arbalest Quarrel explained the singular danger Judge Merrick Garland posed to the preservation of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution if Merrick Garland sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. In our letter we took exception to pronouncements of several academicians who had also written a letter to Senator Grassley. Those academicians argued that nothing in the record of Judge Garland’s service as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals suggests that an inference can be drawn concerning Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy toward the Second Amendment. We disagreed with the pronouncements of those academicians. We pointed to specific examples in the judicial record that establish beyond doubt that Judge Merrick Garland holds great and abiding antipathy toward the Second Amendment; and that Judge Garland’s antipathy toward the Second Amendment is very much in evidence in the judicial record, contrary to the pronouncements of those academicians who promote the Judge’s ascendancy to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our concern was not directed to Judge Garland’s ability as a jurist. We have no doubt that Judge Garland has a bright and, conceivably, brilliant legal mind. But, when that brilliance is coupled with a philosophy at loggerheads with the philosophy of another brilliant Justice, Antonin Scalia, then we know that preservation of the natural, substantive fundamental rights of the American citizenry—particularly the right of the people to keep and bear arms—are in jeopardy. In a series of in depth articles, we have written extensively about Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy. We pointed out that Judge Garland’s judicial approach is clearly antithetical to that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and that Justice Scalia’s illustrious work would be undone were Judge Garland to sit on the high Court. In our letter to Senator Grassley, we provided a link to the Arbalest Quarrel website and encouraged the Senator to peruse our analytical articles on Judge Garland, as the letter only touched upon the matters of concern.

THE MISSION OF THE ARBALEST QUARREL 

The mission of the Arbalest Quarrel is to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Bill of Rights, and, principally, to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Arbalest Quarrel has written dozens of articles on newsworthy and noteworthy events, impacting the Second Amendment. Many of our articles appear in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. Most of the articles we prepare are comprehensive, extremely detailed, highly analytical expositions on Second Amendment issues. Many of our articles are written as part of lengthy, continuing series. Given the exigencies of time and of new and pressing newsworthy matters, we are often compelled to sidestep continuous work on a series, returning to a series later. Since threats to the Second Amendment are constant and continuous, much of the work that we may have left uncompleted in previous weeks or months is and remains pertinent. Some work that we do, involving analysis of active legal cases, such as the Soto case, cannot, of course, be completed until further action is taken by a Court and, in that event, we must await action before continuing discussion. In other cases, such as Kolbe, where we have commenced work, as part of a series, a higher Court, in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied a writ of certiorari, which means that the ruling or rulings of the second highest Court, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, remains the law in that judicial Circuit. But, as those cases involve an open-ended and critically important issue that the U.S. Supreme Court will, at some point be compelled to tackle, our analysis of lower U.S. District Court and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal decisions are still relevant and, so, hold more than historical value in terms of their impact on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Kolbe, for example, deals directly with the issue whether semiautomatic weapons, defined as ‘assault weapons’ fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment. As antigun groups intend to deny American citizens the right to legally own and possess “assault weapons,” and, as they seek, eventually, to ban civilian ownership and possession of all semiautomatic weapons, it is incumbent upon us and important to consider the legal arguments they present. Thus, at some point in time when the U.S. Supreme Court does deal with the issue as to the extent of or whether semiautomatic weapons defined as ‘assault weapons’ fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment or whether semiautomatic weapons, as a broad category of firearms, fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment--and the high Court will, at some moment in time have to consider the issue--we will have addressed, in depth, all or virtually all of the salient arguments that litigants happen to make. As we look back at the work over the years, we note our article, titled “The Arsenal of Destruction.” Concerning antigun groups efforts to defeat the right of the people to keep and bear arms, what we mentioned in that article is as true then as it is today. We said: Here is what we deemed then, as now, to be the salient methodologies antigun groups use to undercut the Second Amendment. There are probably more; undoubtedly, the antigun groups are busy concocting others even as we publish this list:

• ENACTMENT OF RESTRICTIVE GUN LAWS

• REWRITING/RECONFIGURING/RECONSTITUTING THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO UNDERCUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INDEPENDENT CLAUSE: “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

• EFFORTS TO REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT OUTRIGHT

• INDOCTRINATION OF AMERICA’S YOUTH

• MILITARIZATION/FEDERALIZATION OF CIVILIAN POLICE FORCES ACROSS THE COUNTRY THROUGH THE MACHINATIONS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

• DIRECT MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA ATTACKS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT

• USE OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND INDOCTRINATION OF THE PUBLIC BY MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA GROUPS

• SYSTEMATIC EROSION OF THE RULE OF LAW IN THE UNITED STATES

• DENIAL OF GUN POSSESSION TO ENTIRE GROUPS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS

• ILLEGAL ATTEMPTS BY CITIES AND TOWNSHIPS TO WEAKEN OR OVERRIDE STATE LAWS WHERE SUCH STATE LAWS ARE DESIGNED TO EXTEND SECOND AMENDMENT PROTECTIONS TO THEIR CITIZENS

• CREATING CONFUSION OVER THE CONCEPT OF ‘CITIZEN’ AND CREATING CONFUSION AS TO THE RIGHTS OF A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES

• EXECUTIVE BRANCH OVERREACH/USURPATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION BY THE UNITED STATES PRESIDENT IN CLEAR DEFIANCE OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS DOCTRINE SET FORTH IN AND THE MAINSTAY OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

• OVERRIDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS THROUGH INTERNATIONAL PACTS, TREATIES, AGREEMENTS, AND CONVENTIONS

• FALLACIOUS REASONING OF ANTIGUN GROUPS AND ANTIGUN GROUP DECEPTION AS TO THEIR ULTIMATE GOAL: DE JURE OR DE FACTO REPEAL OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

• ATTACK ON GUN RIGHTS’ ADVOCATES’ MORAL BELIEFS AND ETHICAL BELIEF SYSTEMS

• BATFE ADOPTION OF ONEROUS REQUIREMENTS FOR GUN DEALERS AND BATFE INTRUSION/ENCROACHMENT ON TRADITIONAL U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LAW MAKING AUTHORITY

• MISAPPLICATION/MISAPPROPRIATION OF THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LAW AND LEGAL DOCTRINE TO UNFAIRLY TARGET GUN MANUFACTURERS

• FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RESTRAINT OF TRADE: COERCING LENDING INSTITUTIONS TO REFRAIN FROM GIVING LOANS TO GUN DEALERS

• MANIPULATION OF THE COMPOSITION OF STATE LEGISLATURES AND OF THE U.S. CONGRESS BY MULTI-MILLIONAIRE/BILLIONAIRE TRANSNATIONAL GLOBALISTS THROUGH THE BANKROLLING OF POLITICIANS—WHO ACQUIESCE TO THEIR WISHES, AND WHO ARE WILLING TO DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT—AND THROUGH THE NAKED, SHAMELESS EXPLOITATION OF ATTACK ADS, TARGETING THE DEFENDERS OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT -- THOSE POLITICIANS WHO REFUSE TO KOWTOW TO THE ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA OF THE RUTHLESS MULTI-MILLIONAIRE AND BILLIONAIRE TRANSNATIONAL GLOBALISTS.

• GLOBAL CENSORSHIP/CONTROL OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET: UNDERMINING THE SECOND AMENDMENT BY CONTROLLING MESSAGING WITH THE AIM, ULTIMATELY, OF INSIDIOUSLY DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT THROUGH AN UNCONSCIONABLE INFRINGMENT UPON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: AS CONTEMPT FOR ONE AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS SHOWN, SO, AS WELL, IS CONTEMPT FOR THE OTHERS DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN

• DESTRUCTION OF SOVEREIGN NATION STATES AND OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF SOVEREIGN NATION STATES THROUGH THE CREATION OF, ESTABLISHMENT OF AND INEXORABLE EXPANSION OF AN INTERNATIONAL, NEOLIBERAL INSPIRED WORLD ORDER DEDICATED TO AND WORKING TOWARD THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES, AND THE ERADICATION OF PERSONAL AUTONOMY

We intended to do an article on each of these 21 strategies within the series. We didn’t complete the series, but we did write on several of these strategies and some of the strategies were touched upon in other articles. For example, our most recent article on the NY Times new “gag order” policy preventing its employees from exercising their freedom of free speech on their own time in vehicles other than the New York Times newspaper, actually is a response to two strategies we delineated on in “The Arsenal of Destruction":ONE: GLOBAL CENSORSHIP/CONTROL OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET: UNDERMINING THE SECOND AMENDMENT BY CONTROLLING MESSAGING WITH THE AIM, ULTIMATELY, OF INSIDIOUSLY DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT THROUGH AN UNCONSCIONABLE INFRINGMENT UPON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: AS CONTEMPT FOR ONE AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS SHOWN, SO, AS WELL, IS CONTEMPT FOR THE OTHERS DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN; and,TWO: USE OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND INDOCTRINATION OF THE PUBLIC BY MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA GROUPS.Our principal mission and raison d’etre—as mentioned, supra—is to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the preservation of, protection of, and strengthening of the Second Amendment all go hand-in-hand. There exist forces both inside and outside this Country that would like to repeal the Second Amendment. Of course, they realize that repealing, de jure, any one of the Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that comprise the Bill of Rights is virtually impossible. As natural rights, there is no mechanism for repealing these rights and liberties anyway, since no man created them. The Framers of the Constitution merely codified the rights that exist intrinsically in each American citizen. That doesn’t mean that a sacred right cannot be ignored or de facto repealed which effectively reduces the right to a nullity even as the words remain intact. Thus, if the words remain, but the intent behind the words is absent, hollowed out, the right, in essence, ceases to exist. We have seen this before. The fundamental right of Americans to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has been hollowed out, as Government agencies like the CIA and NSA download and keep digital records on everyone and everything. This is patently illegal, but Federal Government agencies do it anyway. The fundamental right of free speech is beginning to be hollowed out, too, as censorship, in the guise of “political correctness” is taking its toll on free speech. The fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms was dying a slow death until the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in two seminal cases, District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570; 128 S. Ct. 2783; 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010)), made clear what that right entails. The high Court made poignantly and categorically clear that this right—a right that must be recognized by both federal Government and by the States—is an individual right, a right, then, not connected to one’s service in a militia. Still, those Legislators and Jurists who seek to disembowel the Second Amendment have either ignored the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court or have actively tinkered with it, working around the edges of the Heller and McDonald holdings to slowly weaken the Second Amendment. But, to weaken the right is tantamount to destroying it; for the rights codified must be understood in the context the framers of the Constitution intended, as absolute imperatives. This doesn’t mean restrictions ought not be enacted that operate as deprivations on some individuals but, this deprivation is justified only if the threat posed by the one threatens the lives of millions of others, or where the threat posed by an individual undermines the sovereignty of this Nation.Consider the Second Amendment. Federal law bars persons adjudged mentally incompetent from owning and possessing firearms. Thus, the absolute right to own and possess firearms infringes the right of a person adjudged mentally incompetent but this is necessary to protect the lives of millions of innocent, law-abiding Americans. Federal law also prohibits illegal aliens from owning and possessing firearms. And, in so doing, we protect the sanctity of the notion of a Nation State comprising a unique citizenry. Antigun groups, though, don’t perceive the Bill of Rights as a set of natural rights, existing intrinsically in the individual, endowed by the Creator to the individual. They see the Bill of Rights in the same vein as do internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elites,” as mere man-made creations-- statutes enacted and repealed at the will and the whim of the of the rulers that draft and enact them. As they see nothing positive in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, they see nothing that mandates the preservation and strengthening of that right. So, those who attempt to restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms do not consider restrictions on the exercise of that right from the standpoint of the restriction's negative impact on the majority of rational, responsible, law-abiding American citizens, who wish to exercise their right, but, rather, see restrictions on the exercise of that fundamental right from the utilitarian consequentialist position. Consistent with utilitarian consequentialism, it is firearms in the hands of law-abiding rational, individual, not the occasional criminal or lunatic, that is perceived as posing the real danger, the real threat. And, what is that threat? It is a threat perceived as directed against society— against an amorphous collective “hive”—a threat perceived, eventually, as one directed against the entirety of the “free” world, a free world constituted as a "New World Order." It is not the criminal or lunatic possessing a firearm that concerns those that hold to the utilitarian consequentialist theory of morality that poses the greater threat to the well-being of society. In a constant flurry of new draconian firearms bills introduced in Congress, we see, in the draft language of these bills, that it is really the average law-abiding individual--the rational, responsible, law-abiding American citizen--against whom restrictive gun measures are really targeted and leveled. These restrictive gun bills are drafted and enacted in clear defiance of the right guaranteed in the Second Amendment.Our mission, our raison d’être, is to call out those disreputable groups and to call out those legislators and to call out those Hollywood film stars and moguls and to call out those mainstream news commentators and journalists and "comedians" and to call out those inordinately wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, extremely secretive, and absolutely ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist forces that mean—all of them—to destroy our Nation State and that mean to destroy our Bill of Rights, and that mean to do so all the while claiming their efforts have a rational, ethical basis. But their actions belie their assertions. Their actions belie their true intent. These individuals, these groups, these cold-hearted ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist “elites” that control the levers of finance and industry, that control major media organizations, that operate within and control the Deep State of Government within our own Nation mean to destroy the sovereignty and independence of this Nation and they mean to upend and to destroy the supremacy of our laws and of our Constitution.These individuals distort truth; they sow seeds of discord; they confuse and confound the ill-informed masses by challenging the Nation's core values and by interposing false substitutes for those core values. They rail against and dare to rewrite our Nation's history. They attack our Judeo-Christian ethic and our Christian heritage and traditions. They mean to destroy our Nation and our sacred Bill of Rights to pave the way for an antireligious, morally bankrupt trans-global corporate New World Order conglomerate—an amorphous, muddled indistinguishable conglomeration of once proud and unique independent Nation States—a union of populations comprising the entirety of the “free” world, which these internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist financiers and captains of industry plan to rule. We are beginning to see what this portends for the U.S. as they consolidate their power in the EU, with the assistance of their technocrats, their puppets.In their concerted effort to destroy the structure of and the very notion of the sanctity and sovereignty of Nation States, and of the sanctity and sovereignty of our Nation State in particular, we see insidious and perverse attempts by these internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elites”—through the mainstream media whom they control and through members of Congress whom they have bought—to play with language—to suggest that the notion, the idea of ‘American,’ of what the word ‘American’ means is simply a matter of personal belief. Why is such a ridiculous notion fostered? It is fostered for a reason. For, if what it means to be an ‘American,’ or, for that matter, what it means to be a Frenchman, or German, or Italian, or Canadian, for example, comes down to personal opinion and belief, then, the bonds between a person and that person’s Country is tenuous, amorphous, fragile, elusive, even illusive, and, ultimately, unimportant. This has serious ramifications for Nation States and repercussions for the people residing in a Nation State. Thus, if a person is to be deemed an American, for example, who simply and essentially believes him or herself to be an American, then, on that basis, alone, may presumptuously presume a right to live in this Country, to emigrate to this Country and to be endowed with all the rights and liberties that the United States Constitution provides.This open-ended concept of what it means to be an ‘American’ is deliberately and unconscionably fostered by those who seek an end to the very notion of a Nation State; who seek to portray people not as citizens of this or that Country but, literally, as “citizens of the world”—who may freely move about as they wish. This “open borders” philosophy is anathema to the concept of the primacy and sovereignty of Nation States which demands that independent, sovereign Nation States have a right and duty and responsibility to maintain and control their borders, and, in so doing, forestall emigration of undesirables to this Country. To allow essentially anyone and everyone to emigrate to this Country, is to denigrate and ultimately destroy the very foundation of the sovereignty and independence of a Nation State. A Nation State’s core ethical and religious and social values are in danger of erosion. That Nation’s historical roots are in danger of erosion. That Nation’s jurisprudential values and core economic principles are in danger of erosion.When educators, along with news organizations and legislators in the United States proclaim that illegal aliens are Americans, the Arbalest Quarrel has stepped in to set the record straight. Co-Founder and President of Arbalest Group, LLC., Stephen L. D’Andrilli wrote a reply to an article written by the Vice President of the United Federation of Teachers that appeared in the Union’s publication. The Arbalest Quarrel's response was published in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. Stephen has penned other cogent responses to the UFT that we, as strong supporters of America’s Bill of Rights, have taken exception with.

THE WORK AHEAD FOR THE ARBALEST QUARREL IN 2018

In 2018 we will continue to analyze federal and State gun laws; federal and State gun bills; and federal and State Court cases. We anticipate seeing one and perhaps two openings on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is imperative that President Trump have the opportunity to nominate one or more individuals to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.It is in the Courts, no less than in Congress that our Bill of Rights and, especially, our Second Amendment, will be preserved, strengthened, and expanded. We will otherwise see our Bill of Rights debilitated, weakened, and restricted.The House and, more importantly, the U.S. Senate must remain firmly in the hands of Republicans and, more especially, in the hands of those who espouse a conservative philosophy, reflective of the views and philosophy and sensibilities of the Founders of our Nation, the Framers of our Constitution, the Creators of our Free Republic—not those Centrists like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who hold to a decidedly globalist philosophy, who demonstrate globalist sympathies, and whose support of our Bill of Rights is lukewarm at best.The Democrats intend to take control of both Houses of Congress and they intend to weaken our Bill of Rights and to weaken especially the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, and the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. They intend, in league with their internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist benefactors, to weaken, debase and eventually curtail our natural, fundamental rights and liberties. For they mean to draw us insidiously into the arms of a New World Order. They intend to do this through the vehicle of international pacts and treaties and through mainstream news organizations that condition the American public to accept open borders and to accept an amorphous notion of what it means to be a citizen; and by conditioning the American public to accept the legitimacy of foreign courts to hear cases impacting our fundamental rights; and to condition the American public to accept the supremacy of international law over that of our Constitution, and over our system of laws, and over our jurisprudence; and to condition the public to accept historical revisionism, to accept bizarre, alien notions of morality and gender identity; and to condition the public to accept the dismantling of a Nation that is grounded in Christianity and in notions of self-reliance and initiative, individual responsibility. All these things are on the table, as Democrats and many Centrist Republicans seek to weaken the foundation of a Nation as designed and understood by the Founders of it.

IN CLOSING, WE SET FORTH THE FOLLOWING POINTS AND CAUTIONARY IMPERATIVES FOR OUR READERS:

If the American people are to maintain their unique roots, we must work, first and foremost to keep sacred the Bill of Rights, and that means we must understand the import and purport of the Bill of Rights as the drafters intended, and we must insist that rights and liberties be preserved, protected, and strengthened. We must argue for the continued primacy of this Country as a sovereign, independent Nation State and we must insist that the federal Government’s first order of business, as servants of the American people, is to see to the needs of and well-being of, and security and safety of the American people. And, who are the American people? They are the citizens of this Country and those citizens, the American people, do not include anyone who resides here illegally, whatever that person's motive or circumstance for being here. And, no individual who resides elsewhere has a right to emigrate to this Country simply because that person seeks to live here, for good or for ill; and no one who has entered this Country illegally, whether consciously or through no fault of their own, can demand, as a matter of right, as a matter of law, the right to remain here. For law is not ad hoc. If Congress deigns to allow illegal aliens to remain here, then Congress must refrain from granting such individuals, citizenship. For, to grant citizenship to those who have consciously or not ignored our law, or who claim an exception to law that does not presently exist in law will serve only to destroy our system of laws. To change law or to ignore law on a whim sets a poor precedent and such action, in the seeming moral sense of it, will destroy this Country from within.We must hold to our core values. We must not be seduced into accepting notions of moral and legal relativism and we must not fall prey to historical revisionism. These notions are poisonous, pernicious, debilitating. We are a People with one common language, English. No Nation has remained a separate and distinct Nation State that has inculcated, internalized a notion of bilingualism or multilingualism or that has abided bilingualism or multilingualism.No one, whether inside or outside Government, shall indoctrinate the American people. Each American citizen has a right to free expression and to freely express his or her mind. That an individual may wish to express an idea or to possess a physical item that another individual may personally dislike, or even abhor, so what of it? The founders of our free Republic and the framers of our Constitution did not undertake to institute or to insinuate into the natural and fundamental rights and liberties of the American people a notion of “political correctness.” Such a notion is of modern invention and vintage, designed to serve an ulterior purpose. Indeed, had the founders of our Republic thought of such an absurd concept at all they would undoubtedly have held political correctness to be decidedly politically incorrect. Nothing is more devastating or destructive to the citizenry of this Nation or, for that matter, to the citizenry of any nation state, than the sins of hypocrisy and sanctimony. Unfortunately, both are in abundance in this Nation. We can for that thank the arrogance of mainstream media and of those with power and money and influence, both here and abroad, who wish to dictate a mode of thought the rest of us are obliged to adhere to. The American people should be particularly wary of those legislators and those presumptuous “elites” who bandy about such expressions as “rule of law,” and “living Constitution,” and “open borders,” and “citizen of the world” and “job creator,” and “commonsense gun laws,” and “social Darwinism, and “identity politics,” and “political correctness.” These expressions, and there are others, have become trite and dangerous clichés, shorthand simplistic sloganeering, that are either misunderstood and therefore misused, or are otherwise given to suggest or convey something overtly positive, even exemplary, when, in fact, their utilization is meant to harm the American citizen, meant to harm you! Always be mindful of seemingly noble sounding and high-minded verbiage thrown out to the masses for consumption like so much popcorn and roasted peanuts and cotton candy. Be observant, be cautious, think critically before throwing your lot in with everyone else simply because everyone else is “doing it” or “believing it.” You are no longer in high school. There is no longer any need for you to belong to this or that “clique,” in order to "fit in."The framers of the Constitution glorified the right of the individual to be individual and to accept personal responsibility for one’s actions. Our sacred rights and liberties as codified in the Bill of Rights are a testament to that fact. That is our birthright. The right of free speech; freedom of association; the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. These are not mere platitudes. These are a few of the most important natural rights, codified in the Bill of Rights. They are absolute and unconditional, and they are slowly being eroded. Americans should consider, critically, how the words of a news commentator, or of a Hollywood star, or of a mega-sports star, or of a legislator, or of a financier, or of a government bureaucrat, or of a highly paid comic on nighttime  television meant to cajole or persuade Americans would impinge on or infringe those rights and liberties before you throw your lot in with them. For you may be hoodwinked into giving up everything of real consequence._________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE MECHANISMS FOR BRINGING DOWN A U.S. PRESIDENT

HOW TO DESTROY A U.S. PRESIDENT

PART THREE

THE FIRST MECHANISM: THE ETHICS IN GOVERNMENT ACT OF 1978—NOW DEFUNCT.

One mechanism to bring down a U.S. President is through Congressional Statute that calls for appointment of independent counsel to investigate and to prosecute crimes of the highest Government Officials, including those crimes, most notably, of a U.S. President, but only after the Attorney General has concluded, after conducting a preliminary investigation of possible criminal conduct, that further investigation is warranted.The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 was designed to ensure ethics and integrity in Government.The expression, “independent counsel” refers here to counsel in private practice: an attorney who is not, then, an employee of the federal Government but who wields expansive authority to undertake criminal investigations and prosecutions of high Government officials.The Act had a sunset provision. It would automatically lapse unless Congress reauthorized the Act and Congress did so: in 1982, 1987, and 1994. But the law lapsed in 1999 after Congress, under pressure from Bill Clinton’s Administration and by the Democratic Party, allowed it to lapse.Fifteen plus years passed, and then two Congressmen, Republicans, Michael Turner and Rick Allen, sought to revitalize ethics and integrity in Government, introducing the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016, H.R. 5271, on May 20, 2016. The two Congressmen took this action when it became apparent to them that the U.S. Department of Justice demonstrated reluctance to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for numerous and serious criminal acts—criminal acts conducted during Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.The Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016 would have required the Attorney General—at the time, Loretta Lynch—to make provision for appointment of outside counsel, in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Act, to investigate Hillary Clinton’s crimes and to prosecute Clinton for her crimes against this Nation and against the American people. Loretta Lynch would have been compelled to exercise her duty under the Act to relinquish further action by her Department in the Clinton investigation of felonious acts and hand over that investigation to outside counsel through the procedures set forth in the Act.Clearly, Hillary Clinton violated federal law—several laws, serious laws—felonies—and she committed those crimes several times, and over several years, during her tenure as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.The Arbalest Quarrel has dealt with this matter at length in articles posted on the Arbalest Quarrel website. The Arbalest Quarrel urged Congress to enact the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016, as it was clear to us that the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, would not recommend indictment of Hillary Clinton, or was pressured not to recommend indictment of Clinton. As of this writing, the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016 lies dormant—dead, really, in Committee. See, DEMOCRATS AND CENTRIST REPUBLICANS ARE THE PROBLEM. THERE IS A SOLUTION: IMMEDIATE ENACTMENT OF H.R. 5271; and THE FOUNDATION OF JUSTICE UNDONE BY THE FOUNDATION, CLINTON.THE SECOND MECHANISM: A DEPARTMENT-MADE RULE, CALLING FOR APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSELOstensibly, to fill the gap left through failure of Congress to reauthorize the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 or to replace it through passage of another similar Act, such as the one languishing in Congressional Committee—the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016, H.R. 5271—the Justice Department on its own initiative promulgated a rule, calling for the appointment of special, outside, counsel. That rule constitutes the second mechanism that might be used to destroy a United States President.The device employed by the Justice Department exists in an obscure federal regulation, falling within TITLE 28, JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION, CHAPTER VI, OFFICES OF INDEPENDENT COUNSEL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, PART 600, GENERAL POWERS OF SPECIAL COUNSEL. The mechanism here establishes the procedures for appointment of independent, private counsel to investigate violation of federal law when a conflict of interest within the Department of Justice precludes the Department from properly, effectively engaging in the investigation and prosecution of federal crimes committed by high ranking public officials. The mechanism is found in federal regulation: 28 CFR 600.1, titled, “Grounds for Appointing a Special Counsel.”It is through this mechanism that the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, intends, like Pontius Pilate, to wash the hands of personal responsibility on his part, on the part of his Office in the Justice Department, and on the part of the FBI, as he quietly sits by to watch the undermining of and possible destruction of the U.S. President, Donald Trump and his Administration, and, the undermining of the Second Branch of Government. We will look at this Rule, at length in a subsequent article in this series.We will seek to answer three questions. The first question is this: Is the federal Rule lawful? Americans often presume, wrongly, that rules a Government Agency promulgates, are lawful. A Government Agency can only promulgate rules in accordance with Congressional intent and objective, as reflected in Statute. When doing so properly, lawfully, agencies promulgate rules to give effect to Statutes—to enforce the laws Congress enacts, within the parameters established by Congress in Statute.This is as it should be under our three Branch system of Government. However, if the Statutes promulgated extend beyond the parameters set forth in Statute—or, in a worst-case scenario, are promulgated absent any Congressional Statutory authority, which means the Government agency has acted unlawfully, becoming, in effect, a Legislative Body unto itself—then such rules must be struck down as unconstitutional.The Second question is this: Assuming the Rule is lawful, did the Attorney General, or his Assistant—in the event the Attorney General recuses himself or herself—properly invoke the rule? There is a general assumption—one that the mainstream media has not investigated and one which Congress has not, evidently, bothered to consider—that the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, did properly invoke the Rule, appointing a Special Counsel. But did he? Once again, before we even get to that question, there is the fundamental question that goes to the constitutionality of the Rule itself. For, if the Rule has not been promulgated lawfully, then the issue whether the Deputy Attorney General had properly invoked the Rule is moot since under no circumstance can a special counsel be appointed because the Rule, under which such special counsel is appointed, is per se unconstitutional.There is a third question we must ask and answer. It is this: Assuming 28 CFR 600.1, titled, “Grounds for Appointing a Special Counsel,” is lawful, and, given that Congress would not enact the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016, why didn’t the Attorney General under then President Barack Obama--Loretta Lynch--invoke the 28 CFR 600.1, appointing outside “special counsel” to investigate and to proceed with the prosecution of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, unlike Donald Trump, did in fact commit unlawful felonious acts under federal law? It appears that the Department of Justice, through the Deputy Attorney General, Rod J. Rosenstein, is willing to invoke the Rule against Trump, with little thought as to the legal justification for the appointment, for there is no compelling, justifiable reason for him to do so as there exists an absence of any credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. President, Donald Trump, or on the part of anyone in his Administration or in his campaign, and there exists no probable cause that either the U.S. President or anyone in his Administration or in his campaign committed an act that can reasonably be attached to violation of federal law, despite the tortuous contortions of some politicians who would turn bare and baseless allegations into evidence of wrongdoing, and despite the mainstream media echoing the sentiments of the politicians bent on destroying the U.S. President and bent on destroying those in his Administration. Yet, there existed, at another point in time, in comparison, incongruously, no desire on the part of Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, or on the part of Lynch’s then diffident and reticent but now vociferous and strident Deputy Attorney General, Sally Yates, to invoke 28 CFR 600.1 against Hillary Clinton—a person whom the FBI had heretofore investigated over a substantial period of time, having found substantial evidence of multiple counts of serious crimes, committed multiple times, over a lengthy period of time. Fancy that!We will parse 28 CFR 600.1 in the next segment of this multipart series, dealing at length with the three questions posed.

THE THIRD MECHANISM: IMPEACHMENT

Impeachment is a process that Congress may invoke and that Congress alone may invoke. The mainstream media and more than a few unenlightened, vicious members of Congress, bandy impeachment about without a care as to the seriousness of it, especially when applied to the U.S. President—the literal embodiment of the Second Branch of Government.The most important clause, pertaining to the impeachment process, is that found in Article II, Section 4. It says:“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”One must understand that the impeachment process is, notably and singularly, a political process, not a criminal process. The question thus arises whether Congressional use of it, especially as against U.S. Presidents, springs less from the appearance of criminal wrongdoing on the part of a U.S. President, and more from the desire of some members of Congress who wish to use it against a U.S. President whom they simply dislike. We will take a close look at the mechanics of the impeachment process and then ascertain whether those in Congress who would dare use the impeachment process against Donald Trump would do so, not for any perceived wrong committed, but because they happen to bear a personal grudge against this U.S. President. If so, such sanctimonious members of Congress should suffer censure by their brethren.We will look closely at the mechanics of the impeachment process, under our Constitution.

THE FOURTH MECHANISM: APPLICATION OF THE 25^TH AMENDMENT

USCS Const. Amend. 25, USCS Const. Amend. 25, § 4 sets forth in pertinent part:“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [departments] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office."The forces that would dare destroy Donald Trump’s Presidency seek, in truth, to destroy this Nation and its Constitution, and its Bill of Rights. Until Donald Trump had taken the oath of Office, little if anything had ever been heard of the 25^th Amendment either in Congress or in the mainstream media. Curious, now that Donald Trump is the Nation’s 45^th President, the hidden forces that envision a New World Order, have pulled out all the stops, looking for a means, any means, through which to take down a man whose one cardinal sin is to dare place “America First” among Nations. For that reason—and as “payback” for upsetting the applecart—defeating their puppet, Hillary Rodham Clinton—the forces that would crush this Country and its people into submission will use a means, any means, however dubious, to destroy Trump and his Administration. If the insidious, powerful, ruthless forces, that hide in the shadows, succeed in undermining Trump's Presidency, the destruction of our free Republic and of our Constitution, upon which our Republic rests, will follow. The one entails the other.We will look at the history of, and the import and purport of, the 25^th Amendment in a forthcoming article.

FURTHER ANALYSIS, ON THE MECHANISMS TO DESTROY A U.S. PRESIDENT, TO CONTINUE, IN FUTURE ARTICLES

We will discuss these mechanisms, in depth, in subsequent articles. Congress and the mainstream media simply skirt over them. A deep understanding of these mechanisms deserves the attention of all Americans. The sanctity of the U.S. Constitution and the preservation of our free Republic are at stake. Beyond these critical concerns, we see a duty to protect the honor and good name of the U.S. President, Donald Trump, against the treachery of those who seek to tarnish his good name and his honor.________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

WHERE DOES THE MOST SERIOUS THREAT TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF AMERICANS REST? FROM CONGRESS? FROM THE PRESS? FROM THE PRESIDENT? FROM ALL THREE TAKEN TOGETHER? THE ANSWER MAY SURPRISE YOU!

KOLBE VS. HOGAN:

INTERIM REMARKS

The Arbalest Quarrel has been working steadily on a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the Kolbe case. We are taking a short timeout with this segment, subtitled, “Interim Remarks,” to place the substantial time we are devoting to Kolbe in proper perspective. We feel our analysis has singular importance now with the Senate Judiciary Hearings on the Gorsuch confirmation that took place these past few days, and which have concluded. Senate Democrats are now filibustering, to prevent a vote on the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.The Arbalest Quarrel will continue its comprehensive, analytical exposition of the Kolbe case, considering its negative impact on the Second Amendment and considering, as well, the failure of the Fourth Circuit to take proper note of and abide by the rulings and reasoning of the high Court in the seminal Heller case. The high Court provided clear guidance to the lower Courts for the proper handling of Second Amendment cases where government action attacks the core of the Second Amendment.What is unfortunately abundantly clear now is that lower federal Courts will, at times, ignore rulings and reasoning and guidance of the U.S. Supreme Court if those lower federal Courts do not agree with the methodology, the rulings, the reasoning, and the jurisprudential underpinnings of the law as reflected in specific cases. So it is that we see some United States Circuits ignoring the precepts of Heller. But, regardless of a jurist’s political and social philosophy, precedent must not be ignored. Precedent must never be ignored. All too often as we see, though, judicial precedent is ignored, and it is, not infrequently, ignored in the most important cases: those cases negatively impacting our most sacred rights and liberties.If anything came out of the Neil Gorsuch confirmation hearings —where Judge Gorsuch had to suffer through days of torturous questioning and insufferable pontificating of Senate Democrats sitting on the Judiciary Committee—the public has come to see that Judge Gorsuch believes fervently in the importance of legal precedent as the cornerstone of our system of laws. This is necessary if our system of laws is not to be reduced to a set of discordant, inconsistent body of law, providing no guidance on which Courts may reasonably rely.The public has also seen that Judge Gorsuch gives credence to the law enacted by Congress, as written. Judge Gorsuch does not allow personal feeling to sway his rulings. That seems to bother some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It should, though, give the public hope. For, the public can rest assured that Judge Gorsuch, sitting on the high Court as an Associate Justice, will demonstrate proper restraint—applying the law to the facts as that law exists, and not as he may, perhaps, rather like the law to be.What the law ought to be is subject matter for legal and political philosophical musings set down in essays. When a judge opines on a case before that judge, the jurist is not to render judgment on what the law ought to be but must predicate his or her rulings on what the state of the law is, and elucidate findings of fact and conclusions of law on that basis and on that basis alone. Frankly, all too often we do not see this. The worst and most dangerous example of improper legal judgment is judgment reflected in personal feeling peppered, if only tacitly, but unmistakably, in legal opinions—personal feeling overriding judicial restraint in matters directly impacting the Bill of Rights, not least of which, we see on the continued assault against the clear meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment.The rabid assault on the sanctity of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution continues unabated notwithstanding the clear reasoning of and holdings in the Heller case. But, where do the greatest and gravest threats rest?Contrary to popular opinion on the matter, the greatest threat to our Bill of Rights, generally, and the gravest danger to our Second Amendment, particularly, rests less upon the assertive, pretentious, sanctimonious, noxious rhetorical flourishes and rancor of some elected officials who disdainfully, arrogantly voice their antipathy toward the Second Amendment—even if that rancor is masked through the obligatory assertion, “but of course I support the Second Amendment,” as if, through the addition of that assertion to the official’s polemic, the elected official may effectively hide his or her clear distaste toward the very idea that the average, law-abiding, rational, American citizen—not working as a policeman, or as a soldier, or as a licensed bodyguard, or as a government or private security officer, or in some unknown, secretive governmental capacity, but merely, solely as a civilian—should actually ever be armed with—horror of horrors—a firearm.And, contrary to popular opinion on the matter, the greatest threat to our Bill of Rights, generally, and the gravest danger to our Second Amendment, particularly, rests less upon the loud, vociferous, discordant voice of writers, editors, and owners of mainstream media whose antipathy toward the right of the people to keep and bear arms is well-known by the public, and is at once both longstanding and supremely malevolent.Rather, the greatest threat to our Bill of Rights, generally, and the gravest danger to our Second Amendment, particularly, rests more on the actions of activist Jurists of the federal District and Circuit Courts whose arcane opinions, seemingly well-learned and well-reasoned, merely obscure an intent to defeat the Second Amendment despite clear guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court.The threat posed by an activist Judiciary to the preservation of our basic liberties, as envisioned by the founders of our Free Republic is very real, not to be reasonably denied. And that threat posed to our Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms is ultimately greater than that posed by either a recalcitrant Congress or a derelict Press.The danger posed by an activist Judiciary is greater and graver to our sacred rights and liberties because the Judiciary is the final arbiter of what our law means and, therefore, how the law impacts our lives.As our Constitution sets forth, Congress makes the law we live by. The Executive enforces the law that Congress enacts. But, as the grand interpreter of the law—what the law means and whether the law is consistent with the U.S. Constitution—whether a law shall operate at all, and, if so, the effect it has on our lives—it is for the Judiciary to say. It is not for Congress to say; and it is not for the U.S. President to say; and it is certainly, not for the Press to tell the American people what the law of the Land is.No! The Judiciary, alone, is the final arbiter of what the law is. Some may think the Judiciary wields less power than the two other Branches of Government. After all, the Judiciary does not have the power of the purse, which, along with the unequivocal and singular power to make law, exists in Congress alone. The Judiciary does not wield power over the military, or over the federal police agencies, or over the vast intelligence apparatuses, all of which fall within the direct purview of the Executive. But, as the final arbiter of our law—what the law means and how the law is to be applied—assuming we remain a Nation ruled by law, truly ruled by law, and not by men—no American should underestimate the power the Judiciary wields over our lives.Even the most uninformed citizens among us knows full well the power of the Judiciary in the matter of immigration. That has been on full display. That power can and, most recently has tied the hands of the U.S. President, as Commander in Chief of our Nation, taxed with the singular duty to protect the People of our great Nation from all threats both foreign and domestic.President Donald Trump, promising to do his best to defend this Nation against imminent and serious threat posed by Islamic terrorists —clearly among his most important duties as U.S. President—has been constrained and frustrated in that effort due to the machinations of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and thereafter by the U.S. District Court of Hawaii—Courts that have, through their actions, placed the welfare of this Nation and the physical safety of its citizens at considerable risk as those Courts, through their opinions, demonstrate that the wishes of non-citizens who seek to emigrate to America from failed States are to be given more consideration than are the health and well-being of this Nation and the physical safety of American citizens. And, it doesn’t stop there, with immigration.Activist U.S. District Court and U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges express their disdain of the Second Amendment and their continued defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court through decisions that rein in the right of the people to keep and bear arms. They denigrate the import and purport of our Second Amendment through manipulation of legal doctrine.If our pronouncement be undiplomatic, untactful toward the Judiciary, so be it. This is not a time for niceties. For the decisions of the Judiciary—the words expressed in opinions—are proof of political activism that strike at the heart of the health, welfare, and safety of our Nation and at the import and purport of our Bill of Rights.No less has the Fourth Circuit, in our estimate, manipulated legal doctrine, in denigration of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Obscuring opinion in arcane legalese does little to disguise the fact that legal opinions coming out of this Circuit in the recent Kolbe case are antithetical to and involve a misunderstanding—whether consciously deliberate or incautiously but honestly mistaken—of the rulings and reasoning of the Heller Court.The Fourth Circuit relies for support, in part, on similar rulings of its sister Courts, most notably, those of the Second, Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. By relying for support on opinions of their sister Courts, the Fourth Circuit aims, it seems to us, to deflect honest criticism away from itself, thereby suggesting that similar rulings of these other Courts that belie the rulings, reasoning, and clear guidance of the majority opinion, penned by Justice Scalia, in Heller, do somehow demonstrate that the Fourth Circuit does give due consideration to the holdings and reasoning of Heller, rather than contradicting the holdings and reasoning of that seminal Second Amendment case. But that is not the case at all.We firmly believe—as we have explained and will elucidate yet further—the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, en banc, having taken its cue from the U.S. District Court of Maryland and from the opinions of various sister Courts, strained to find a loophole in the Heller case to justify finding Maryland’s Firearm Safety Act to be legal. There isn’t any. So, the Fourth Circuit created one out of whole cloth.The gravest error of the Courts of the Fourth Circuit consists in the application of a standard of review that the Heller Court specifically rejected. Proceeding from an improper footing, an erroneous decision—but one the Fourth Circuit obviously wanted—could not but follow from the application of the wrong standard.Happy the Fourth Circuit would be, as would other United States Circuit Courts that elicit similar sympathies, if Heller were simply overturned. Were Judge Merrick Garland to have sat on the high Court, that pipedream for the antigun movement would come to pass. There is no doubt about that. Clearly, that was one end that Barack Obama had in mind which is why he nominated Merrick Garland to Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was one end that Hillary Clinton would have had in mind were she to have been elected U.S. President. For, she would certainly have been elated to sit Judge Garland on the high Court. Thankfully, neither the previous U.S. President or the one who would be Queen will never get their wish.If Judge Neil Gorsuch is confirmed and he should be and undoubtedly will be—despite a Democratic threat of filibuster of his confirmation which is now unfolding—the Heller case should remain untouched—even if ignored by various Circuit Courts as we see in Kolbe. Heller is the first case that extends—albeit tacitly—the idea that, where the very core of a fundamental right is attacked in a government action—a facial challenge to that governmental action will be given proper consideration.The U.S. Supreme Court made clear enough in Heller, to the surprise and, we are sure, much to the consternation of the D.C. Government and to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, that the U.S. Supreme Court would not shrink from applying facial challenge methodology to an action by government that attacks the core of the Second Amendment even if that had not previously been done. We should see that methodology applied as well in Kolbe if Kolbe or a similar case is heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. We hope and trust and pray that Judge Gorsuch sits on the high Court as the Ninth Justice when this happens.We continue with our analysis of the Kolbe case with Part Five of our multi-series article, to be posted shortly._________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved. 

THE STATISTS SPEARHEAD ATTACK AGAINST THE PRESIDENT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER THROUGH THE COURTS

The Ninth Circuit’s Decision, Enjoining the President’s Executive Order, Temporarily Suspending Refugees from Entering Our Country Who Reside in Failed States, Was Legally Wrongheaded. Who Really Was Behind the Filing of the Lawsuit? What Is the Basis for The President's Order? And, Why Did the Ninth Circuit Block Implementation of The President's Order?

PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS HIS WORK CUT OUT FOR HIM.

President Trump has promised to get our House in order. This is no small task given years of disassembling through the insidious machinations of Bill Clinton, George Bush Senior, George Bush Junior, and Barack Obama. These lackluster U.S. Presidents of the past decades have supported doctrines of liberal democracy, globalization, multiculturalism, and debilitating military interventionism and entangling alliances—all of which have, together, devastated the financial well-being of our Nation, and have denied to hard-working, proud Americans the financial and physical security they deserve—the financial and physical security they might have had but through the implementation of destructive trade policies and through seditious collusion with foreign Countries to keep our borders open; and through seductive psychological conditioning and indoctrination, designed to produce mass confusion in the public psyche—inverting and substituting the ideal of nationalism for the flawed notion of internationalism; the ideal of protectionism for the corporatists’ dream of globalization; the ideal of individualism for the morass of mass conformity and alien inclusiveness; the ideals expressed in Judeo-Christian morality for amorphous cultural and moral relativism.Through incessant, monotonous, repetitive sloganeering and messaging by the mainstream media, Americans are urged, even cajoled, to view patriotism as jingoism, national pride as nativism and racism, and love of Country and concern for one’s Nation and one’s Countrymen, first and foremost, as selfish parochialism.These past U.S. Presidents support the precepts of utilitarian consequentialism, an ethical position anathema to the Founders of our Republic and inconsistent with the import of the Bill of Rights. These Past U.S. Presidents worked to undermine our free Republic and worked to undermine the U.S. Constitution even as they declared, disingenuously and hypocritically, to support our free Republic and our Constitution. They have forsaken the American public, implementing policies that benefit a small, exceedingly powerful and ruthless, cunning and duplicitous, secretive and sinister, extraordinarily wealthy, elite coterie of internationalist globalist benefactors, hell bent on undermining and ultimately destroying the very  concept of the Nation State—our Nation State—working vigorously behind the scenes to dissolve our Nation’s sovereignty; weakening our Nation’s laws; doing nothing to secure our borders against waves of illegal migrants and criminal gangs and refugees and Muslim terrorists; spending frivolously on wars they have no intention of winning; involving our Country in innumerable foreign escapades that have nothing to do with our national security; throwing billions of our tax dollars to foreign countries that give us nothing in return except millions of their own wretched citizens who drain our own wealth and resources; and slowly moving our Country in the direction of an EU style social, political, economic construct through implementation of secretive international trade deals that harm our small businesses, destroy our manufacturing base and leave millions of hard-working Americans destitute. Not surprisingly they, and their international benefactors, are yet working, behind the scenes, taking every opportunity to frustrate the policies of President Donald Trump, sowing dissension, creating discord, inciting violence, vilifying our President, blocking our President at every turn—doing everything in their power to prevent him from doing his job, to prevent him from succeeding on behalf of our Nation and on behalf of its citizenry.The quick, violent, and virulent assault on the President’s January 27, 2017 Executive Order is a case in point. President Trump implemented this Executive Order for the legitimate purpose of protecting this Nation and its citizenry from acts of Islamic terrorism, sweeping across Western Europe, lest the unmitigated horror descending upon the EU work its way into the U.S.The title of the President’s Executive Order is: “PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES.” What does the January 27, 2017 order say? The principal purpose of the President’s Executive Order is laid out clearly, comprehensively, cogently, and candidly in the first three paragraphs:“The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States.  Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19 foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans.  And while the visa-issuance process was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks to better detect would-be terrorists from receiving visas, these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the United States.Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement program. Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States.  The United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism.In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.  The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.  In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including ‘honor’ killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.” The President should be commended for issuing this Order. The danger our Nation and our People face from Islamic terrorism isn’t hypothetical. It is real. The President of the United States has a duty to secure our borders against threats to our National Security and threats to the American citizenry.The duty of a U.S. President does not extend to salving a person’s feelings where demonstrable threats exist to the security of our Nation. President Trump has demonstrated a conscientious desire to protect this Country from harm—to protect this Country against the very harm destroying the fabric of social and political order in the EU. Yet, instead of standing behind Trump, Democrats in Congress attack this Order, and they blast the President for implementing it.Internationalist globalist forces drum up public resistance to the U.S. President’s Executive Order with the avid assistance of the insistent, quarrelsome and vocal mainstream media. Where are the Republicans in all of this? Most are staying acutely silent, apparently afraid to show backbone. Instead of actively supporting the U.S. President, Republicans remain, for the most part, complacent, thereby lending support to those who would place this Nation’s security at risk—a risk that the Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton, deemed perfectly acceptable. Other Republican members of Congress openly castigate the President, rather than come to his defense. As for the Democrats, they are rabble rousing, unabashedly inciting the unruly ignorant mob to agitate. The mainstream media, not content to report the news, has declared war on our President, using every opportunity to engage in confrontation with the President, castigating him, and disrespecting him, attempting to demean both him and his policies.Some elements within the federal bureaucracy—diehard fans of Barack Obama, still raging over Hillary Clinton’s defeat, are skirting with subversion and sedition because they have pointedly said they will not work with and on behalf of the United States President. That is reprehensible. Openly confronting the U.S. President cannot be condoned, much less encouraged. If Government bureaucrats disagree with the President, they should at least keep their mouths shut. They should not use their position as a soapbox to openly defy the President of the United States. If they cannot or will not work with the U.S. President, then they should resign from Government employment. That is the honorable thing to do. It is the only correct and proper thing to do if they do not wish to work with the President. Imagine an individual in the private sector openly defying his or her superior. How long do you think that person would remain at their job?

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER IS LAWFUL, CONTRARY TO THE DECISION OF THE NINTH CIRCUIT.

This Executive Order is lawful. The principal duty of the U.S. President is mentioned in the oath he takes as set forth in the Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution: “Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: ‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’”Two of the laws the U.S. President must faithfully execute, which provide the impetus and legal ground for this Executive Order involve immigration. One is 8 U.S.C. § 1182, titled, “Inadmissible Aliens.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) says, in pertinent part, “Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President. Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”This Statute gives the President clear authority to suspend the refugee program and to take any action he deems necessary to prevent individuals who may pose a threat to our national security from entering our Country. That action includes precluding from entering our Country those denizens, residing in Countries that are failed States and otherwise openly hostile to our Nation and its citizens. Such failed States pose a true threat to the safety and the security of our Country and its People and to our National interests. Terrorists can and will infiltrate into this Country through the waves of refugees whom they follow, if these terrorists are given the opportunity.Another Statute, 8 USCS § 301, titled, “General authorization to delegate functions; publication of delegations,” authorizes the U.S. President to delegate responsibility for implementing his Executive Order to, inter alia, appropriate officials in the Executive Branch. In this instance, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is tasked with carrying out the Executive Order, suspending penetration of our Country by denizens of Countries adverse to our interests.8 USCS § 301, says:“The President of the United States is authorized to designate and empower the head of any department or agency in the executive branch, or any official thereof who is required to be appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to perform without approval, ratification, or other action by the President (1) any function which is vested in the President by law, or (2) any function which such officer is required or authorized by law to perform only with or subject to the approval, ratification, or other action of the President: Provided, that nothing contained herein shall relieve the President of his responsibility in office for the acts of any such head or other official designated by him to perform such functions.” Now, the internationalist globalist elites don’t like this Executive Order because it conflicts with their goal to seed disruption in our Country as they have seeded disruption in the EU. They seek to undermine the security of the United States, slowly whittling away at our National Sovereignty, paving the way for ultimate dismantling of our Nation and its Constitution, eventually surreptitiously taking over our Country. Still, these internationalist, globalist elites have little power to harm this Nation and its citizenry now that their puppet, Hillary Clinton, lost the U.S. Presidential election and is politically dead. Where, then, does the power of these singularly powerful, immensely wealthy, abjectly ruthless, and intensely private, secretive, sinister creatures lie?These “elites” still control the mainstream media. What does the mainstream media comprise? The mainstream media comprises major newspapers, including, inter alia, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. It includes major broadcast networks like ABC, CNBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS, and, yes, FOX network too—various gatekeepers on the right and on the left of the political spectrum. Yet, with the election of Donald Trump, this same mainstream has now fallen out of the mainstream. It has devolved into the voice of the extreme. As it has castigated the weblogs that supported Trump during the election cycle as being unruly, this same mainstream media has itself grown unruly. It has become increasingly boisterous, vituperative, obstreperous, sanctimonious.This mainstream media has lost any semblance of dignified restraint and measured tone in reporting. It disrespectfully denigrates the Office of the U.S. President at every turn because its owners, the internationalist globalist “elites” who rule the EU quietly with an iron fist behind the scenes, failed—which, for them, was an unbelievable turn of events—to seat their puppet, Hillary Clinton, in the White House. But, the American people have turned a deaf ear to the nonsense spouted by the mainstream media.What else do these internationalist, globalist “elites” have up their sleeve? They can, as we have seen, orchestrate mass marches and they can foment violence and chaos through the use of agents provocateur, buttressed by legions of ignorant Americans quick to jump of the cliff like willing lemmings as soon as they hear the appropriate buzzwords that flood the soft tissue of their mush-filled brains. These internationalist, globalist elites work hand in hand with subversive political groups like the George Soros Group, MoveOn.org, and the Groups, Code Pink, and Black Lives Matter.But, the American people have really nothing to fear from an unruly mob. For, the police, and the military, and, most importantly, an armed citizenry can contain an unruly mob. The Second Amendment still exists much to the chagrin of those that seek to do away with the Bill of Rights. And the American people need not fear the lurid nonsense spouted by the mainstream media that is growing increasingly unimportant and extraneous as the messages it conveys are clearly out of the mainstream.But the internationalist globalist elites can still manipulate the Judiciary. That is problematic. The mainstream media and an unruly mob do not constitute a Branch of Government. But, the Judiciary does. While the internationalist globalist elites won’t be able to compromise the U.S. Supreme Court once the U.S. Senate confirms Neil Gorsuch, still the third Branch of Government encompasses, today, more than the U.S. Supreme Court. The Judiciary comprises eleven U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal and over ninety lower U.S. District Courts. The Judiciary also includes a few specialized lower federal courts and several federal administrative boards.

FORUM SHOPPING DISPOSSESSES THE U.S. PRESIDENT OF HIS ABILITY TO PROTECT THIS NATION AND THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY FROM THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY AS THE U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT HAMSTRINGS THE PRESIDENT.

Less than a week had passed from the date of the signing of the President’s Executive Order to protect this Nation against intrusion into our Nation by Islamic terrorists, when the State of Washington—apparently at the behest of outside influences—filed a Complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.The U.S. District Court issued a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order), placing an immediate hold on execution of the Executive Order. A TRO is an extraordinary legal remedy. It is one Courts do not routinely issue. Courts do not routinely issue injunctions because Courts wish to give each side an opportunity to present facts and law in support of their position. In the absence of a full adversarial trial on the merits, injustice may occur. Therefore, a party seeking immediate relief—through preliminary injunction or TRO—must satisfy stringent tests.

POLITICAL MATTERS ARE NOT APPROPRIATE MATTERS OF JUDICIAL INQUIRY

THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT IS NOT CONTENT ON TELLING PRESIDENT TRUMP WHAT THE LAW IS; IT TELLS THE U.S. PRESIDENT HOW TO DO HIS JOB!

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS LEADING TO THE DECISION OF THE U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT, AFFIRMING THE DECISION OF THE U.S. DISTRICT IN PLACE.

The State of Washington, evidently taking its cue from the internationalist globalist elites who seek to undermine our free Republic, our Constitution, and our National Security, lost no time in preparing and filing a formal Complaint, seeking to preclude President Trump from implementing his travel ban. The Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint was filed on February 1, 2017.The Plaintiff State of Washington was joined, in the First Amended Complaint, by the Plaintiff State of Minnesota. The State of Washington, alleged, in principal part, that the President’s Executive Order is unconstitutional because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The State of Washington also alleged that the President’s Executive Order violates The Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1152(a)(1)(A), because that Act, as Plaintiff alleges, prohibits discrimination in the issuance of immigrant visas on the basis of race, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence. The State of Washington further alleged that the President’s Executive Order is discriminatory, violating the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fifth Amendment. The State of Washington also alleged the President's Executive Order violates the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 553 and 706(2)(D), because, as the State of Washington asserted, federal agencies must conduct formal rule making before engaging in action that impacts substantive rights. Lastly, the Plaintiff, State of Washington alleged the Executive Order violates the Tenth Amendment because, as the State of Washington asserted, “the Constitution prohibits the federal government from commandeering state legislative processes.”But, notwithstanding the bare recitation of these naked allegations, how is the State of Washington, as Plaintiff, in the suit, specifically harmed? Let’s see. The State claims:

THE STATE OF WASHINGTON ALLEGES THAT THE PRESIDENT’S EXECUTIVE ORDER HARMS THE STATE IN THE FOLLOWING WAYS:

“Washington’s interest in protecting the health, safety, and well-being of its residents, including protecting its residents from harms to their physical or economic health, is a quasi-sovereign interest.Washington also has an interest in ensuring that its residents are not excluded from the benefits that flow from participation in the federal system, including the rights and privileges provided by the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Washington’s interest in preventing and remedying injuries to the public’s health, safety, and well-being extends to all of Washington’s residents, including individuals who suffer indirect injuries and members of the general public.Immigration is an important economic driver in Washington. Many workers in Washington’s technology industry are immigrants, and many of those immigrant workers are from Muslim-majority countries. Many companies in Washington are dependent on foreign workers to operate and grow their businesses.The technology industry relies heavily on the H-1B visa program, through which highly skilled workers like software engineers are permitted to work in the United States. Washington ranks ninth in the U.S. by number of applications for high-tech visas.Microsoft, a corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, is the State’s top employer of H-1B visa holders and employs nearly 5,000 people through the program. Other Washington-based companies, including Amazon, Expedia, and Starbucks, employ thousands of H-1B visa holders.   Washington-based companies, including Amazon, Expedia, and Starbucks, employ thousands.The market for highly skilled workers and leaders in the technology industry is extremely competitive. Changes to U.S. immigration policy that restrict the flow of people may inhibit these companies’ ability to adequately staff their research and development efforts and recruit talent from overseas. If recruiting efforts are less successful, these companies’ abilities to develop and deliver successful products and services may be adversely affected.Microsoft’s U.S. workforce is heavily dependent on immigrants and guest workers. At least 76 employees at Microsoft are citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, or Yemen and hold U.S. temporary work visas. There may be other employees with permanent-resident status or green cards. These employees may be banned from re-entering the U.S. if they travel overseas or to the company’s offices in Vancouver, British Columbia.”The State thereupon asks, inter alia, for the Court to enjoin the Defendants, Donald Trump, President of the United States, and John Kelly, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, from implementing the Order. This means the State requests the U.S. District Court to issue its own Order preventing the President from exercising the President’s duty to faithfully execute the laws of the U.S., prior to an adversarial proceeding that would give the President and the Secretary of DHS an opportunity to be heard in open Court.

THE DISTRICT COURT SHOULD NEVER HAVE ISSUED A TRO, ENJOINING THE U.S. PRESIDENT FROM CARRYING OUT HIS EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT WAS DESIGNED MERELY AND ONLY TO PROTECT THIS NATION AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC FROM REAL HARM POSED BY THOSE INDIVIDUALS ENTERING THIS COUNTRY FROM SEVERAL NAMED COUNTRIES THAT HARBOR TERRORISTS.

The U.S. District Court should have summarily denied issuance of an injunction. Why? Injunctions are extraordinary remedies.Courts generally frown on issuing injunctions because injunctions amount to ex parte action. That means a Court renders an injunction prohibiting a Party against whom the injunction is issued from engaging in a particular action. The Court that issued an injunction is operating on the say-so of one party without bothering to hear from the other party against whom the injunction is issued. That is not how our legal system is meant to function. Our system is an adversarial system of justice. This means that each Party to a lawsuit is promised an opportunity to be heard, to present evidence in his or her behalf, and to have an opportunity to challenge the veracity of the allegations made against that Party. When a Court issues an injunction on the allegations proffered by one Party before the other Party has had an opportunity to be heard, the adversarial system of justice is dispensed with, and justice is denied the Party whose rebuttal arguments are never heard. This is bad enough where individuals stand to lose much in the way of their individual rights under the law. It is absolute insanity where, as here, the entire Nation and its citizens are placed at risk due to the action of one judge, operating out of one Court who orders that his injunction be given nationwide effect.

WHAT IS THE LEGAL MECHANISM FOR ISSUING A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION?

In the Ninth Circuit, A Court will issue an injunction—in the instant cast—the most extraordinary injunction—a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO)—when the Court is satisfied: one, that a Plaintiff is likely to suffer irreparable harm if the injunction isn’t issued immediately, and, two, the Party that seeks an injunction is likely to win on the merits, and, three, the equities tip in favor of the Party seeking an injunction, and if, four, issuance of an injunction is in the public interest. All four factors must be present. But, looking at just one factor here, namely, that Plaintiffs here, the State of Washington and the State of Minnesota, will, as the Court has determined, be irreparably harmed if the Court does not immediately prevent implementation of the U.S. President’s Order, the Complaint is devoid of anything concrete that so much as suggests the States would suffer irreparable harm if the Court does not enjoin the U.S. President and DHS from implementing the Executive Order. Yet, the District Court itself acknowledged, in Washington v. Trump, 2:17-cv-00141 (W.D. Wash. Feb. 3, 2017) that a preliminary injunction—of which the TRO is one type—is an extraordinary remedy that may only be awarded upon a clear showing that a Plaintiff is entitled to such relief, prior to a full-blown trial on the merits. But where in the Court’s Opinion ordering a TRO, in the context of the allegations of the Complaint, is there any indication that the Plaintiff would be irreparably harmed if the TRO isn’t issued?There isn’t any and that is reason enough for the Court to refrain from issuing a TRO. Then, too, there is nothing in the Court Opinion to buttress the Court’s finding that the State of Washington is likely to win the case on the merits. Moreover, the idea that the equities tip in favor of the Plaintiff is absurd on its face. How can one State possibly argue, with a straight face no less, that its claimed economic interests—not so much its own but that of a private Company, namely and especially that of the technology Company Microsoft—and that its claimed interest in protecting the Constitutional rights of individuals, who are not even citizens of the United States, and its claim of a public interest that is purportedly harmed by the U.S. President’s Executive Order, are all greater than the concern the President of the United States has for the security of the Nation and for the life and safety and well-being of the citizens of this Nation as a whole, thereby warranting, according to the U.S. District Court Judge, the awarding of an injunction, enjoining the U.S. President from carrying out his duties, under Article II of the Constitution, on behalf of this Nation and on behalf of its People?

THE U.S. PRESIDENT RESPONDS TO THE U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE’S ISSUANCE OF AN INJUNCTION

On February 3, 2017, the President of the United States filed his emergency motion to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, asking the Ninth Circuit to overturn the District Court’s issuance of a TRO. The President made clear that his Executive Order was a lawful exercise of his complete and absolute control over the admission of aliens into this Country. The President pointed out that the District Court had issued a sweeping injunction in the absence of any legal analysis. Essentially the District Court simply mouthed the platitudes for issuance of its TRO without explanation of how the State of Washington and Minnesota met their burden of proof, thereby begging the very question at issue: whether the Plaintiff States had provided a convincing showing of hardship in the absence of issuance of an injunction. Indeed, rationally, sensibly, one would think that the U.S. President’s Executive Order, predicated on his duty to protect the Nation against outside threats to this Nation and to its citizenry, would outweigh the States’ insistence that its personal economic interests and the economic and financial interests of a few private businesses, and the interests of non-citizens are harmed by the President’s Order and therefore must be protected. The State of Washington is essentially saying: “The United States be damned. The economic concerns of Microsoft and the concerns of non-citizen refugees count for more than the safety and well-being of the Nation and its people as a whole.” Certainly, more serious interests are at risk when a Court enjoins a U.S. President from acting on behalf of the Nation and the American People, which, after all, was the reason the President issued his Executive Order in the first place. Evidently, the Ninth Circuit didn't think so.The President also argues in his Motion that the Plaintiffs have not even presented a convincing argument that they have standing to present a case against the President and the Secretary of DHS, apart from the naked claim that the Court has subject matter jurisdiction over the case. The District Court itself proclaimed subject matter jurisdiction over the case when the Court should properly have questioned its jurisdiction because a State cannot properly bring suit to enforce purported rights on behalf of its citizens based on a State’s estimate of its citizens’ relationship with the federal government. In other words, it is for the citizens themselves to bring suit against the federal government, to vindicate rights, if they feel the federal government has violated their Constitutional rights. But, the U.S. District Court never questioned its own jurisdiction in the case. At the very least the Court could have and should have asked each of the Parties to the action to submit briefs on the standing issue. Instead the Court assumed it had subject matter jurisdiction and obligingly gave the State whatever it wanted, irrespective of the law.It must be pointed out that, in the first instance, a Federal Court must determine whether it has subject matter jurisdiction to even hear a case brought by a plaintiff before it--as required under Article III of the U.S. Constitution--before that Federal Court proceeds pell-mell to hear a case at all. In the matter before the Court, the Court assumed the State of Washington had standing and accepted at face value the allegations made in support of enjoining the United States President from carrying out his duties under Article II of the Constitution. A hearing on standing should have at least have been ordered prior to any consideration of issuance of an injunction against the U.S. President. The Court did not do this, and the President properly brought up the issue of standing in its Motion asking for emergency relief from the effect of the TRO, when it filed its Motion with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Citing United States Supreme Court precedent, the U.S. President correctly pointed out, in the Motion, citing legal precedent, that, “an order barring the Executive Branch from enforcing a Presidential Executive Order inherently imposes harm on the public, by thwarting the legal effect of the public’s chosen representative.” Yet, the U.S. District Court, in awarding Plaintiff States a TRO, opined that, the “States have met their burden of demonstrating that they face immediate and irreparable injury as a result of the signing and implementation of the Executive Order. The Executive Order adversely affects the States' residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel. These harms extend to the States by virtue of their roles as parens patriae of the residents living within their borders.” Think about that for a moment. The Court is saying that an inconvenience to a State’s residents in the areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel, count for more than the life, well-being, and safety of the citizenry of the entire Nation.You would think the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit would not only reverse the lower Court’s awarding of the TRO to Plaintiff States but would have chastised the District Court for awarding the TRO at all. Instead, the Ninth Circuit, in State of Washington vs. Trump, No. 17-35105 (9th Cir. Feb. 9, 2017), denied the Defendants' Emergency Motion for a Stay pending appeal, the effect of which was to affirm the District Court's awarding of a TRO to the Plaintiff States, Washington and Minnesota. The Ninth Circuit said, citing a U.S. Supreme Court case: “A stay is not a matter of right, even if irreparable injury might otherwise result.” Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 433 (2009) (quoting Virginian Ry. Co. v. United States, 272 U.S. 658, 672 (1926)). “It is instead ‘an exercise of judicial discretion,’ and ‘the propriety of its issue is dependent upon the circumstances of the particular case.’” Id. (quoting Virginian, 272 U.S. at 672-73) (alterations omitted). “The party requesting a stay bears the burden of showing that the circumstances justify an exercise of that discretion.” Id. at 433-34. The Nken vs. Holder case dealt with the meaning of 8 USCS § 1252(f), titled, “Judicial Review of Orders of Removal.” The Nken vs. Holder case has nothing to do with the present case. In Nken, the Petitioner, an alien, sought to stay his removal from the U.S., pending review of the removal order, but the Respondent, Attorney General, asserted that the alien could not meet the stringent requirements for a stay under 8 USCS § 1252(f). The alien appealed the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which denied the stay and the alien then appealed the adverse ruling to U.S. Supreme Court. The high Court affirmed the decision of the Fourth Circuit, denying the alien’s motion for a stay, pending the appeal of his removal from the United States.

THE NKEN CASE IS INAPPOSITE AND THE NINTH CIRCUIT MISUNDERSTANDS AND MISAPPLIES FEDERAL STATUTE, WHEN IT REFUSES TO ISSUE A STAY OF THE U.S. DISTRICT COURT’S RULING, ENJOINING THE PRESIDENT FROM IMPLEMENTING HIS SUSPENSION OF REFUGEE, SEEKING EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES FROM HOSTILE COUNTRIES.

The Ninth Circuit misapplies 8 USCS § 1252(f), titled, “Judicial Review of Orders of Removal.” The applicable section, titled, “Limit on injunctive relief,” says, “(1) In general. Regardless of the nature of the action or claim or of the identity of the party or parties bringing the action, no court (other than the Supreme Court) shall have jurisdiction or authority to enjoin or restrain the operation of the provisions of chapter 4 of title II [8 USCS §§ 1221 et seq.], as amended by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, other than with respect to the application of such provisions to an individual alien against whom proceedings under such chapter have been initiated. (2) Particular cases. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no court shall enjoin the removal of any alien pursuant to a final order under this section unless the alien shows by clear and convincing evidence that the entry or execution of such order is prohibited as a matter of law.” The prohibition on Courts against use of a stay here, even where hardship exists, applies to aliens who seek to prevent a Court from removing them from this Country, pending their appeal of a final removal order. In other words, aliens can’t claim hardship to prevent their removal from this Country on a final order in the absence of clear and convincing evidence that execution of the removal order is prohibited by law.In the instant case the President’s Motion for a stay of the District Court’s TRO has nothing whatsoever to do with the import of the Statute, 8 USCS § 1252(f). And the Nken case has nothing to do with the case before the Ninth Circuit, here. An alien isn’t seeking to prevent his or her removal from this Country. Rather, the President is precluding, temporarily, aliens, citizens of failed States that are known to harbor Islamic terrorists, from entering our Country. Moreover, even if 8 USCS § 1252(f) did extend to the President’s Executive Order, which it doesn’t, the District Court’s TRO is not a final order.By its nature preliminary injunctions, such as a TRO, are interim orders—they are not final orders on the merits. And this TRO deleteriously impacts the security of this Nation and the security of its citizenry. The Ninth Circuit is grasping at straws, citing law that has no bearing on the issuance of a TRO against a U.S. Presidential Executive Order, as the Ninth Circuit has, apparently, made up its mind before the fact to allow the U.S. District injunction to stand.Furthermore, constitutional rights do not apply to aliens. Aliens are, by definition, individuals who are not citizens. Due process concerns and equal protection concerns do not apply to non-citizens. No one who is not a citizen can claim legal right, under the Fifth Amendment, to enter our Country. Yet, the Ninth Circuit makes this very determination, essentially deciding the case on the merits to justify and sanctify the lower Court’s awarding of a TRO, with nationwide affect, on behalf of two States whose standing to bring suit against the U.S. President is tenuous at best.

IT IS NOT THE PRESIDENT WHO HAS INTRUDED UPON THE DOMAIN OF THE JUDICIARY IN VIOLATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF SEPARATION OF POWERS, BUT RATHER, IT IS THE JUDICIARY, HERE, THAT HAS BY ALL ACCOUNTS, IMPROPERLY INTRUDED UPON THE DOMAIN OF THE EXECUTIVE AND, IN SO DOING, HAS UNDERMINED THE SEPARATION OF POWERS DOCTRINE AND HAS MADE DIFFICULT THE PRESIDENT’S DUTY TO FAITHFULLY EXECUTE THE LAWS OF THIS NATION, AND, HAS, AS WELL, JEOPARDIZED THE SECURITY OF THIS NATION AND THE SAFETY AND WELL-BEING OF ITS CITIZENS.

In a seminal case, decided well over two hundred years ago, Marbury vs. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 1 CRANCH 137 (1803)—a case that all first year law students of accredited law schools study in depth, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court made clear the role of the Judiciary in our THREE BRANCH SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT. The Chief Justice, John Marshall, made clear the defining role of the Judiciary. He said, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.”  Thus, the Chief Justice made clear that while Congress shall make the laws of this Nation, and the President shall faithfully execute the laws of this Nation, it is the role of the Judiciary—and the role of the Judiciary alone—that shall determine what the law is. That specific role clearly demarcates a singular prerogative of the Judiciary if any doubt had previously existed as to the specific singular prerogative of the Judiciary.But, Marbury vs. Madison does not stand merely for the proposition that, in so asserting a specific defined role for the Judiciary upon which neither the President nor Congress may lawfully tread, there are not also areas in which the Judiciary, for its part, must not tread.  Clearly, when laying out the scope of judicial inquiry Chief Justice Marshall was also circumspect in laying out the limits of Judicial inquiry—the parameters beyond which the Judiciary must not tread. The Chief Justice stated, “Questions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court.” Expounding further, the Chief Justice stated, “By the constitution of the United States, the President is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience. To aid him in the performance of these duties, he is authorized to appoint certain officers, who act by his authority and in conformity with his orders. In such cases, their acts are his acts; and whatever opinion may be entertained of the manner in which executive discretion may be used, still there exists, and can exist, no power to control that discretion. The subjects are political. They respect the nation, not individual rights, and being entrusted to the executive, the decision of the executive is conclusive. The application of this remark will be perceived by adverting to the act of congress for establishing the department of foreign affairs. This office, as his duties were prescribed by that act, is to conform precisely to the will of the President. He is the mere organ by whom that will is communicated. The acts of such an officer, as an officer, can never be examinable by the courts.”It is a curious matter today that the Press, which isn’t a Branch of Government at all, often operates as if it is one, explaining as the voice of conscience—which it has little of—and the voice of reason—which has none of—how it is that, in its opinion, the U.S. President has overstepped his bounds of legal authority. The Press can, perhaps, be excused its excesses. It has long since lost credibility. But, the Ninth Circuit, for its part, should know better. It would have done well to read Marbury vs. Madison before rendering its decision in the latest case on the U.S. President’s temporary travel ban. Had the Ninth Circuit done so, it would have realized that it had transgressed the bounds of propriety by telling the President what his duty is, rather than more ably considering what its own duty is. Had the Ninth Circuit given more thought of the limits of judicial inquiry, it would have refrained from engaging in political matters where it has no business going, having no cognition of the dangers this Country faces from the outside—to which the U.S. President is particularly able to deal with and is charged to deal with—and unmindful of the dangers to the Constitution itself creates, on the inside, having failed to heed to its rightful purpose—namely, interpreting the laws of this Nation, and not telling the President what his job is and how he is expected to do that job and what he is expected to refrain from doing.The issuance of a TRO by the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington, in the absence of any demonstrative legal basis to do so, is an example of a Court improperly intruding on the legitimate authority of the Executive to faithfully execute the laws of the Land. The Ninth Circuit would have done well to remind the U.S. District Court not to intrude on Presidential prerogative. Instead, the Ninth Circuit makes matters worse by affirming the lower Court’s decision. The decision isn’t just wrongheaded from a legal standpoint, having misinterpreted the law. It is wrongheaded in another sense entirely. For the Ninth Circuit has taken a political matter—one wholly outside the purview of the Courts—and has turned it into a legal one, thereby improperly intruding on a domain completely outside Judicial review and outside Judicial prerogative. The President is right.The President’s Executive Order, faithfully executing the laws of Congress is unreviewable. The Ninth Circuit, in defiance, of the clear separation of powers, decided to review the Executive Order anyway. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit takes into account matters wholly outside the allegations of the Complaint, relying, in great part, on biased newspaper accounts and editorials to support the District Court’s issuance of a TRO. The Ninth Circuit also improperly considers remarks the President made in his campaign—essentially nothing more than rhetoric. But, the Ninth Circuit then uses those remarks against the President, arguing that the Executive Order follows from religious bias toward Muslims. That is patently ridiculous.The purport of the President’s Executive Order, on its face, is designed to protect this Country and its citizenry from the very problem facing the EU as a result of having taken in waves of refugees from the Middle East—many of whom have engaged in acts of terrorism across Europe. The President has taken a proactive stance, rather than a reactive stance, to protect American citizens from physical harm. The Ninth Circuit gives that matter no thought.The mainstream media, for its part, shows its abject ignorance of our laws and jurisprudence, and ignorance of the separation of powers doctrine by asserting bombastically that President Trump’s Executive Order is unconstitutional and that the President, rather than the Judiciary, has ignominiously encroached on the powers of the Judiciary by referring to the U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Washington as a “so-called Judge.” The admonition on the part of the President hardly constitutes encroachment on the Separation of Powers. Improper issuance of a TRO, made all the worse through affirmance of the District Court’s Order by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, however, does.Hopefully, Judge Gorsuch will soon be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. Supreme Court will put matters right. For this Country teeters on the brink of anarchy wrought by those who would insinuate odd notions of morality into the framework of our Constitution and thrust into the public’s psyche alien ideas, devoid of reasoned, sensible reflection.Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.