WA: Court Rules For NRA in Legal Challenge to Ballot Title

As seen in The Clue Meter: WA: NRA Files Legal Challenge Against Misleading Ballot Title for Gun Control Initiative, a legal challenge was filed against a gun-grabbing ballot initiative here in Washington on the grounds that the title was illegally misleading.

This just in:
From NRA-ILA:

Yesterday, in a defeat for Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Initiative 1639 proponents, the Thurston County Superior Court sided in part with the NRA and found that certain parts of the ballot title were deceptive and misleading.  As a result, they ordered amendments to several key provisions of the initiative’s ballot title.  While the ballot title remains inadequate to inform voters of the real effects of the initiative, the outcome of yesterday’s hearings did result in clarifying changes that more accurately describe the sweeping provisions of the initiative’s text. With the title for Initiative 1639 now finalized, proponents of this 22-page initiative will have until July 6th to get 259,622 valid signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot. As previously reported, NRA filed a legal challenge in Thurston County Superior Court contesting the ballot title language as prepared by anti-gun Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson.  Yesterday, the court held a hearing on the legal challenges filed by NRA and other petitioners.   Some of the changes included: Changing “enhanced” background checks to “increased”.  Initiative 1639 would require state background checks on all purchases and transfers of commonly owned semi-automatic firearms. Added “allows fees” to the description.  The proposed initiative would allow the Department of Licensing to charge a $25 purchase fee (GUN TAX) on transfers of semi-automatic rifles. Clarified the description for the storage mandate provision.  If passed, Initiative 1639 would criminalize firearm owners that store firearms in a non-compliant manner if they are accessed by a prohibited person or minor. Initiative 1639, filed by Michael Bloomberg’s front group, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, is an egregious attack on Second Amendment freedoms and comes just months after they failed to enact their gun ban agenda in Olympia. Your NRA-ILA will continue to keep you updated on the status of the initiative, so please stay tuned to your email inbox and www.nraila.org .  Also, a couple more releases, after the jump...

WA: NRA Files Legal Challenge Against Misleading Ballot Title for Gun Control Initiative

This just in:
NRA-ILA | Washington: NRA Files Legal Challenge Against Misleading Ballot Title for Gun Control Initiative

Thursday, May 17, 2018 

Yesterday, NRA filed a legal challenge in the Thurston County Superior Court objecting to the misleading and inadequate ballot title for Initiative 1639, which seeks to further restrict the Second Amendment rights of Washington's law-abiding citizens.  The Thurston County Superior Court will review all legal challenges before the ballot title and summary can be finalized for the initiative.

Initiative 1639, filed by Michael Bloomberg’s front group, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, is an egregious attack on Second Amendment freedoms and comes just months after failing to enact their gun ban agenda in Olympia.  Proponents of this 22-page initiative will have until July 6^th to get 259,622 valid signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot.

Please spread the word to your family, friends, and fellow gun owners about this latest attack on self-defense rights in the Evergreen State!  Help protect Second Amendment rights in Washington and decline to sign this initiative petition.  

The proposed initiative, if passed, would do the following:

• Require a 10 Day Waiting Period for Commonly Owned Rifles.  All semi-automatic rifle purchases and transfers would be subjected to a waiting period of 10 business days.

• Establish a Government Registry of Firearms.  Current law states the Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) “may” keep copies of pistol purchase applications.  The proposed initiative would instead require the DOL to keep copies of these purchase applications, and would expand this government registry to include semi-automatic rifle purchases.

• Require Completion of a Training Course to Purchase Rifles.  This initiative would also require all purchasers of semi-automatic rifles to show they have completed a firearm safety training course within the last five years in order to proceed with the sale.

• Impose up to a $25 Purchase Fee (GUN TAX) for Semi-Automatic Rifles.  The Washington Department of Licensing would be allowed to charge up to a $25 fee for each semi-automatic rifle purchase.  

• Require Gun Owners to Lock Up their Firearms or Face Criminal Charges.  Individuals would be required to lock up their firearms or potentially face a criminal charge of “Community Endangerment Due to Unsafe Storage of a Firearm” if the firearm is accessed by a prohibited person or minor.  This intrusive proposal invades people’s homes and forces them to render their firearms useless in a self-defense situation by locking them up.

• Restricts Adults Aged 18-20 from Acquiring Modern Rifles.  Adults aged 18-20 would be prohibited from purchasing semi-automatic rifles and would not be allowed to receive them through a transfer or loan.  The proposed initiative would deny a segment of law-abiding adults from access to the most modern and effective firearms for self-defense, thus depriving them of their constitutional rights. 

• Require “Warnings” for Firearm Purchases.  All firearm purchases would come with a notification about the “inherent risks” of firearm ownership as an attempt to further stigmatize firearms.

Again, please spread the word for your family, friends and fellow gun owners about the latest attack on Second Amendment rights in Washington.  Your NRA-ILA will continue to keep you updated on the status of the initiative, so please stay tuned to your email inbox and www.nraila.org.

Eternal vigilance, etc.

We never did, really...

‘We don’t have the gear': How the Pentagon is struggling with electronic warfare - The Washington Post

An interesting -- and scary -- read (Times two)

The Intelligence Lessons of San Bernardino | | Observer

While the importance of metadata to American counterterrorism will continue to be a hot-button topic, the disastrous effect of the Snowden affair and its political aftershocks on our intelligence agencies is not up for debate. Neither is the fact, as attested to by several Western intelligence chiefs, that Snowden’s leaks have made terrorists more careful in their communications, and therefore more difficult to intercept. Just as bad, several top secret NSA programs, beyond metadata, that assisted counterterrorism have been downscaled since 2013 out of fears they may “look bad” if leaked.

“Before Snowden we had a definite bias for action,” explained a senior NSA official with extensive experience in counterterrorism. “But now we all wonder how the White House will react if this winds up in the newspapers.” “It’s all legal,” the official added, “the lawyers have approved, and boy do we have lots of lawyers – but will Obama throw us under the bus again?”

That concern is widespread in American counterterrorism circles, where the Obama administration’s worries about appearing “Islamophobic” are well known. This White House early on warned intelligence personnel about using the term “Islamic terrorism” even in classified reports that would never be released to the public. “Since 2009 we’ve opened investigations of groups we knew to be harmless,” explained a Pentagon counterterrorism official, “they weren’t Muslims, and we needed some ‘balance’ in case the White House asked if we were ‘profiling’ potential terrorists.”

 Edited to add: Administration nixed probe into Southern California jihadists | TheHill

We had these two groups in our sights; if the investigation had continued and additional links been identified and dots connected, we might have given advance warning of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. It could also have led to denial of Malik’s K-1 visa or possibly gotten Farook placed on the No Fly list.

But after more than six months of research and tracking; over 1,200 law enforcement actions and more than 300 terrorists identified; and a commendation for our efforts; DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the Department of State and DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?

Worse still, the administration then went back and erased the dots we were diligently connecting. Even as DHS closed my investigation, I knew that data I was looking at could prove significant to future counterterror efforts and tried to prevent the information from being lost to law enforcement. In 2013, I met with the DHS Inspector General in coordination with several members of Congress to attempt to warn the American people’s elected representatives about the threat.

In retaliation, DHS and the Department of Justice subjected me to a series of investigations and adverse actions, including one by that same Inspector General. None of them showed any wrongdoing; they seemed aimed at stopping me from blowing the whistle on this problem. Earlier this year, I was finally able to honorably retire from government and I’m now taking my story to the American people as a warning.

Seen on Twitter

So, back in Formerly Great Britain, some adherent of the Religion of Peace went all Sudden Jihad Syndrome and cut someone's throat in the Tube.

A bystander informed him that he was, in fact, "no Muslim", earning said bystander all sorts of plaudits, and a hashtag of his  very own..

Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan had some observations:

I'm all for the #YouAintNoMuslimBruv guy; but doesn't the chap who physically confronted the knife man deserve rather more plaudits?

— Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) December 7, 2015

So did I:

In the XXI Century, Hashtag Activism > Courageous Action. https://t.co/7ixmDPi3iP

— Drang (@DWDrang) December 7, 2015

#Paris, more

Mostly courtesy Instapundit, again.
The jihadis’ master plan to break us | New York Post
Good stuff there.

The Islamic State’s message is stark: Western civilization is doomed. Its last bastion, America, lacks the will for war. The infidel loves life and treats it as an endless feast. Jihadis have to ruin that feast and persuade the “infidel” to abandon this world in exchange for greater rewards in the next.

ISIS calling | Power Line
Ditto.

One {thing that stood out} was that the attacks in Paris were coordinated by a cell operating from a neighboring country*. The attackers were divided into two groups, one that was assigned to suicide missions and one that was assigned to escape. That’s not the normal M.O. and the cops are asking why the change. Several did escape. At least one got to a neighboring country. The logical conclusion is that the escapees were being saved for “the next big thing.”

‘Anonymous’ Hackers Declare War on ISIS in Video Message.
Good for them.

Lots of speculation along these lines: Next Big Future: France could commit the foreign legion to Syria and could invoke NATO Article 5 requiring joint NATO action
Which would be real interesting when Turkey has to fish or cut bait...

Also, from that article:

The revelations that at least four French citizens were involved in the attacks — three brothers and a man who lived around Chartres, about 60 miles southwest of Paris — seemed destined to exacerbate longstanding fears in France about the place of Muslim immigrants and converts in French society. 

A France-U.S. Anti-Islamist Alliance - WSJ
(To read a WSJ article without subscribing, Google the title.)

{I}magine if Paris had joined the Americans in the invasion of Iraq; the now-dominant Western narrative of that conflict might have been very different. Because of the attacks Friday, the narrative will change. The soft-power-heavy, somewhat guilty Western analysis of Islamic militancy—where the progressive-minded avoid referring to Islam in describing an antipathy that sanctifies killing—is now dead in Europe and will soon be irretrievably embarrassing across the Atlantic.

President Obama’s inability to have an adult conversation about Islam’s manifest problems with modernity, which also tore Christianity apart, have kept the West’s loudest bully pulpit from provoking contentious and entirely appropriate debates among Muslims. The advancement in the Middle East of grand modern causes—the abolition of slavery, the slow march of women’s social and political rights, the expansion of education, the brutal tug of war between secularism and religion—has always been stirred by Western thought and actions.

Having the French more vigorously in this game will help compensate for the politically correct, ahistoric timidity that has seized much of the intelligentsia in the U.S. and Britain. Trailblazers in analyzing modern Islamic fundamentalism, the French could well rescue the American left from its fixation on Islamophobia. They could provide encouragement and cover to American liberals to reflect and act without fear of being labeled Islamophobes (who are a dime a dozen on the American right and, as handmaidens of isolationism, don’t matter).

 How comforting: ISIS Has Help Desk for Terrorists Staffed Around the Clock - NBC News
I can't help but think this represents an exploitable weakness...

When you've lost Diane Feinstein: Paris attacks: Dianne Feinstein breaks with Obama, says 'ISIL is not contained' - POLITICO

***

*Belgium.

Excellant review of the Westgate Mall attack

‘Close Your Eyes and Pretend to Be Dead’ | Foreign Policy

Far from a dramatic three-day standoff, the assault on the Westgate Mall lasted only a few hours, almost all of it taking place before Kenyan security forces even entered the building. When they finally did, it was only to shoot at one another before going on an armed looting spree that resulted in the collapse of the rear of the building, destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade. And there were only four gunmen, all of whom were buried in the rubble, along with much of the forensic evidence.

During the roughly three-and-a-half hours that the killers were loose in the mall, there was virtually no organized government response. But while Kenyan officials prevaricated, an unlikely coalition of licensed civilian gun owners and brave, resourceful individual police officers took it upon themselves to mount a rescue effort. Pieced together over 10 months from more than three dozen interviews with survivors, first responders, security officers, and investigators, the following account brings their story to life for the first time since the horrific terrorist attack occurred exactly two years ago.

An attack on a crowded shopping mall is a nightmare scenario everyone with a piece of the counter-terrorism role, or just an interest in it, has sweated over. It's easy to say it'll go better "here" than it did "there", but however it goes, it's not going to be pretty.

And I am reconsidering the easy way we dismiss so many of the techniques learned in classes like I wrote about in "Urban Defensive Tactics" class, 12/14/14 as being "inappropriate for non-LEOS or military."

Still highly unlikely we'll ever use them. And the conventional wisdom is that, in a case like that, even a trained, armed citizen should hunker down and defend self and other citizens, not go hunting the bad guys, if for no reason than to avoid being confused for a bad guy by the first responders, but...

And another scenario skills learned in classes like the one described in Shooter Self-Care Class @ NRA AM2015 (Update) would be invaluable.

Also, had not heard that al-Shabab had launched another attack in Kenya, in spring of this year, on a University, where they killed even more.

Thoughts on murderous nut jobs

Well said: Virginia journalist killer getting just what he wanted. Editorial originally from the Arizona Republic, reproduced here in the Detroit Free Press.

In the meantime, of course, The Usual Suspects are waving the bloody shirt and demanding that us non-murderous non-nut jobs should be deprived of our rights.

Because it's the guns.

And, since the murderous nut job in this case was a member of the media, who murdered two fellow members of the media, the media will ignore the possibility that maybe the problem isn't guns, it's murderous nut jobs.

In addition to being a member of the media, the murderous nut job was a member of two other protected categories, as a gay African American male. Who was reportedly censured on the job for reporting on Election Day while wearing an Obama pin or sticker. And had to be escorted from the work place when he was terminated, after having filed grievances against just about everybody there.

But it's the guns.

Nut jobs are gonna nut, they're gonna find a grievance -- goes with the territory -- and once they go all murderous, they'll find the means.

Doesn't have to be a gun.

QOTD, 03/05/15

I just started reading Inventing Freedom, by Daniel Hannan, Member of European Parliament for South East England.

...to the Eurocrat, "unregulated” is more or less synonymous with "illegal."

For "Eurocrat", one can easily substitute, say, "Bureaucrat." Or "Statist." Or "Leftist."

The full quote runs thus:

British Euro-skepticism owes a great deal to a resentment of what is seen as unnecessary meddling, but, to the Eurocrat, "unregulated” is more or less synonymous with "illegal." I see the difference almost every day. Why, I often find myself asking in the European Parliament, do we need a new EU directive on, let's say, herbal medicine? Because, comes the answer there isn't one . In England, herbalists have been self regulating since the reign of Henry VIII. In most of Europe, such a state of affairs could never have come about.

The same "reasoning" leads to seeing "loopholes" anywhere the statist sees free men and women doing as they please.

"Life In The Caliphate"

As a follow-up to my previous post:
The American Interest has also published Caliphatalism? a look at Life Under the Caliphate.

"What ISIS Really Wants" - The Atlantic

What ISIS Really Wants - The Atlantic


Long article, amazed that it was published by The Atlantic. 

The Minuteman Reports

Barron was in Olympia for the rally on Thursday, and has his report: In which crazy comes out… (Get off my side)

Earworm, 2014 Election Edition (Dedicated to the I594 Campaign)

"Little White Lies" doesn't begin to cover the whoppers these dirtbags are telling, of course...

NOT GUILTY!

Zimmerman Verdict Reached: NOT GUILTY | Live video | Protests Reactions

Read This

What it is like to be a Muslim woman, and why we know what freedom is (and you may not) | Between a Veil and a Dark Place

Earworm, 06/07/2013

Linked in comments at Bobbi's:

At first I thought it was Leonard NIMOY!

Have never described myself as a fan of Leonard Cohen, and I doubt that'll be changing.

I do think a lot of statists -- who, BTW, I think are the most likely to listen to him -- should reflect on the message here and the fact that things are NOT getting better under Their Man...

That, friends and neighbors, is the way of government.

"A Timeline of Islamic Expansion In The Dark Ages"

A Timeline of Islamic Expansion In The Dark Ages | RedState
So you can tell the next dhimmi-wannabe who starts apologizing for the Islamic Extremists how historically wrong he is.

The Timeline itself is important, but the final three paragraphs are key:

As has often been noted, the early history of Muhammad as a military leader and Islam as the driving force of conquest is quite different from the early history of Christianity as the persecuted faith founded by a non-violent martyr, and these differing foundations have presented different challenges for Christian and Muslim thinkers dealing with questions of war, peace, and the defense of self and others. That said, none of this is intended to demonize Muslims as uniquely violent in the Dark Ages. Aggressive wars of conquest were the rule throughout the world in those centuries, and have become only fitfully less so into our own age.

But the Crusades did not originate in a vacuum; they were launched in a world where the Roman Empire, the guardian of Western Civilization, had fallen to outside invaders 600 years earlier and European Christians had been on the defensive ever since. The Europe that would stand astride the non-Western world into the middle of the Twentieth Century was still distant in the future. The fearful and divided Christian principalities of 1095 had grown up in a world where Islam, not Christianity, had been the engine of imperial expansion for long before living memory.

Virtually nobody in the West and/or what passes for Christendom today argues that violence can or should be justified on the basis of things that happened a thousand years ago. The insistence of Islamist propagandists on revisiting such ancient history for present-day propaganda purposes should be resisted – but it should also be subjected to the corrective of accurate history. And that history is one in which Muslims carried the sword to Europe for centuries before Christian armies took the Crusade to them.

See also The Real History of the Crusades

Why "we can’t have a rational gun debate"

From the Iowa State University Daily:  Snell: Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned - Iowa State Daily: Opinion

I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being.

You hate me! You really hate me!

And damn does it feel good!

Chuck Todd: Obama 'Hates' 'Internet Media and Social Media' | NewsBusters

Seen at S. Weasel: Thanks, Obama!, via Daily Pundit: I Take My Motivations Where I Find Them

Making the facts fit the narrative -- by hook or by crook

Seen on the screen crawl of a TV set to CNN today:

SUSPECTS FROM CAUCASUS REGION OF EASTERN EUROPE

Um, no.

Okay, look, yes, Chechnya is on the eastern edge of Europe.  But it is hardly "European."  More to the point, when as a colleague pointed out today as I was shaking my head over this, "Most people haven't a clue where Chechnya is", to which I replied "They don't know where the Caucasus is, either, but saying 'Caucasian Region' makes it sound like the bombers were Westerners, which bolsters the whole 'murderous Tea Partying NRA members' meme they were trying to push."

The point being, Chechnya is a Muslim nation, which is infamous for it's violence; the Russians fought two bitter wars there, and have threatened more.  The domestic scene is hardly tranquil, and the government is regularly accused of oppression and "ethnic cleansing."

Nevertheless, to the average low information (AKA "Obama") voter, Caucasus=Caucasian=Northern European ("White") man.  (Low information voters, by definition, being unaware of and uninterested in the fact that the Chechens make extensive use of female homicide bombers.)

• Manhunt continues for teen bombing suspect; older brother killed - USA Today

• Suspected Boston bombers were refugees from brutal conflict - The Washington Post

Looks like they brought it with them.

The brothers who are alleged to have planted bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday reached the United States in 2002 after their ethnic Chechen family fled the Caucasus. They had been living in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan and were prevented from resettling in war-racked Chechnya.

In speaking about his boxing career in 2009, Tamerlan said he would not want to represent Russia, a hint that past troubles were not forgotten. In recent months, he appeared increasingly drawn to radical Islam. On a YouTube channel, he shared videos of lectures from a radical Islamic cleric; in one, voices can be heard singing in Arabic as bombs explode.

As I indicated in the footnote to my previous post, the Seattle metropolitan area has a large "Russian" immigrant community; "Russian" is in quotes because, by ethnicity and nation-of-origin, it is "Russian" only because it speaks that language; there are nearly as many Ukranians as actual Russians, for example, and I see many tattoos and bumper stickers, among other signs, indicating a connection to Chechnya.

If the mad "Russian" bombers are exporting their insane savagery to my area, I don't think I'll be going out unarmed if I can avoid it at all...

Anyway. Back to the topic of making the facts fit the narrative, somehow:  CNN Claims Pressure Cooker Bombs Somehow ‘Signature’ of Extreme Right Terrorists | NewsBusters

As Newsbusters points out, the CNN article fails to cite a single case of a "right wing" terrorism using pressure cookers. This pretty much ties in with all the claims by the leftist media, not to mention the hopes and prayers of leftists everywhere, that "Please let it have been a white man!" (IIRC, Salon.com ran an article with that title, almost word-for-word.)

Early in the days of this blog, I caught some flak for suggesting that it is a mistake to "ass-you-me that any act of terrorism must have been committed by a Muslim", or that all Muslims are terrorists. 
 
I still do not believe every Muslim is a terrorist. 

Unfortunately, the Muslim world does not seem very interested in proving otherwise.