The Omnibus Strikes Again….

The omnibus budget bill strikes once again.

Yesterday, September 26, 2022, A new gun control law went into affect. It was a law nobody, myself included, knew had been passed.  Known as the NICS Denial Notification Act, gun grabbers attempted to pass it as a standalone bill in 2021. They weren’t successful. Never made it out of committee.

So instead, they did what they have done in the past: attached it as an amendment to a massive budget bill. The budget bill was passed.

This new bill, which went into affect yesterday, requires firearms dealers to supply law enforcement with the names and addresses of individuals who are denied on firearms background checks. This is actually done automatically via the NICS background check system.

On the surface, this appears to be a logical system. After all, you wouldn’t be denied on a background check unless you had something criminal in your history. Someone like that shouldn’t be allowed to own guns. 

But here’s the rub: speaking from experience, I can tell you with assurance that the background check system is riddled with an accuracy. 98% of denials are overturned on appeal, meaning that the individual who received the denial was NEVER GUILTY OF ANYTHING in the first place. You may be denied if your name is similar or identical to that of a criminal.  This is especially concerning in a day and age in which identity theft is out of control. You may never have done anything criminal in your life, yet on the basis of this background check you can be denied you’re right to purchase a firearm, and once more, the moment you are denied YOU BECOME LEGALLY INELIGIBLE TO OWN OR POSSESS FIREARMS - period.  In point of fact, at this moment, law enforcement can come to your home and confiscate all of your firearms – even though you personally have done nothing wrong. It is now up to you to prove that you are innocent; there is no presumption of innocence, no innocent until proven guilty.  You are presumed to be guilty until you prove otherwise.

Yes, there is a process to appeal a denial, one that generally takes months to work through, and if law enforcement confiscated your firearms(I fully expect that a number of more “progressive” jurisdictions to take full advantage of this law to do just that), you will, in many instances, have to sue to get them back.

Mr. President, Reinstate The Fairness Doctrine….

Mr. President:

Reinstate the fairness doctrine.  

If you are truly as concerned with the polarization of this country as you claim to be, then one of the best steps you can take is to reinstate the fairness doctrine.

The fairness doctrine required media outlets to present BOTH SIDES of controversial issues.  Since the final demise of the doctrine in 2011, media outlets have been free to promote pet agendas, singular points of view.  The elimination of this rule has been cited in research as a major contributing factor in the rise of polarization we witness today.

IF you are as concerned with the polarization of the country as you claim to be, it is within your authority to issue an executive order requiring the FCC, as a federal agency under your immediate authority, to reinstate and enforce the fairness doctrine.

If we are going to address extremism in all of its forms, it begins with ensuring that people have access to UNBIASED INFORMATION REGARDING BOTH SIDES of controversial issues.  The media play a major role in that endeavor.

Please take a moment to sign my petition:

https://chng.it/q4nkq8B5bq

Turn About Is Fair Play….?

Mr. President, Madam Vice-President, Gov. Newsom, et al:

I guess no one in the general public has stopped to think that all the Republicans did was turn the Democrats’ playbook against them.  

For over 50 years the Democrats have used busing to solve problems. They bused inner-city kids to surrounding white school districts where the kids weren’t wanted, causing chaos in those school systems. And oh yeah, no one stopped to ask those inner-city kids if they wanted to be shipped out to those surrounding school districts, you just did it. 

During the Obama administration unaccompanied alien children and illegal aliens were bused from detention and processing centers in the border states to cities in the north, where they were dropped off without asking them if that’s where they wanted to go, and without asking the cities if they wanted them in the first place. It caused chaos. 

Now the Republicans have found a way to raise awareness of an issue by using the Democrats own playbook against them: busing illegal aliens to the cities and states where legislators are shouting the loudest to throw the borders open. They’re not asking the aliens if they want to go, they’re not asking the receiving cities whether they want them, they’re just doing what the Democrats did: shipping them. 

Predictably, it’s doing what it did when the democrats did it: causing chaos.

So it was OK for the democrats to do it, but not the republicans.

9/11: NEVER Forget….

I was at home when the 911 attacks occurred.  I received a call from my wife, who was at work and, as was her custom at the time, had a television going in her classroom with the news. She called to tell me to turn on the TV: “A plane just flew into one of the twin towers of the world trade center. They don’t know if it was an accident or if it was on purpose.“ I turned on the TV just in time to see the second jet fly into the second tower.

Kinda removed all the questions about whether it was an accident…

As was the case with many people across the country, I spent the next several hours watching the coverage of the events as they unfolded that day.

We live right around the corner from one of the mosques  in Grand Rapids, about 500 feet away as the crow flies. They called an emergency meeting in response to the attacks, and while most of the congregants were crammed inside their little building, there was a group of young men who gathered in the intersection seventy five feet from my front yard, and they were whooping it up in celebration. I don’t care what the news says, I know what I saw that day. 

There were people celebrating the attacks.  

In my home town.

In my neighborhood.

On my street.

I saw it with my own eyes.

That scene is burned into my memory.