90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Unelected NY Governor to require 3 years of social media history for gun carry permit

Applicants must also have 16 hours of firearm training, provide four character references, and list the contact information for any domestic partners or adults of any kind they live with.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul once again signed sweeping gun legislation into law on Friday that created several severe new restrictions on obtaining a gun in the state, including drastically increasing concealed carry regulations and requiring applicants to turn over social media history.

According to the the legislation, part of Hochul's new criteria to obtain a concealed carry permit will be an applicant giving the government a list containing three years of history of their current and inactive social media accounts. Applicants must also have 16 hours of firearm training, provide four character references, and list the contact information for any domestic partners or adults of any kind they live with.

Potential applicants will also be required to show "good moral character," meaning "the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others."

At a press conference regarding the new legislation, Hochul said "we are creating a definitive list of sensitive locations where individuals will not be able to carry firearms."

This list includes "schools, summer camps, libraries, daycares, parks and playgrounds, places children gather, theaters, museums, entertainment venues, places of worship for religious observation, polling places, educational institutions, and health medical facilities. Federal State Local government buildings, homeless and domestic violence shelters, places where alcohol is consumed, restaurants, bars, public transportation, subway buses, airports and at public demonstrations and rallies, and in Times Square."

Another new rule is a "Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property Owners." Hochul said of this law, "We are making 'no open carry' the default position for private businesses. That means that any business, grocery store, retail, private home, place that wants to allow guns on their premises will have to demonstrate that and establish that they put a sign out there that says...

Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date.
Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of "good intentions." Fifteenth-century Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola's "bonfire of the vanities" destroyed anything that could be seen to invite or reflect sin. The notorious 1933 Nazi book burning... in Berlin torched some 20,000 books deemed subversive or "un-German". During Communist China's decade-long Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s, the vast majority of China's traditional scrolls, literature and religious antiquities went up in smoke.
All three atrocities were celebrated as achievements for the "greater good" of society... Much like today's new censors who claim to "fight hate" because "that's not who we are," the arsonists of the past saw themselves as moral paragons, too. They purged anything "obscene" or "traditional" or "old," so that theocracy, Nazism, or communism could take root and grow.
There will one day be much disagreement as to how the same Western Civilization that produced the Enlightenment and its hallowed regard for free expression could once again surrender itself to the petty tyranny of censorship.... The answer is that the West has fallen into the same trap that always catches unsuspecting citizens by surprise: the steady encroachment on free speech has been sold as a "virtue" that all good people should applaud.
First, certain thoughts became "aggravating factors" that turned traditional crimes into new "hate crimes" deserving of additional punishment. Then the definition of what is "hateful" grew until politicians could comfortably decree anything at odds with their agendas to be examples of "hate." Who would be for "hate," after all? Surely no-one of good sense or good manners.
Now "hate" has transformed into an elusive description for any speech that can be alleged to cause the slightest of harms. From there, it was easy for the state to decree that "disinformation," or rather anything that can be seen to contradict the state's own official narratives, causes "harm," too. Those who despise free speech told society, "If you do not punish hate, then you're a bigot." And today, if you oppose the government's COVID-19, climate change, immigration or other contentious policies, your harmful "disinformation" must be punished, too.
On a plaque in the square [where the Nazis burned books] is a commemorative engraving... "That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people." That warning comes with no expiration date.

Attacks on free speech are on the rise. A British college recently expelled a student for expressing support for the government's official policy of deporting illegal immigrants. A Wisconsin school district charged three middle-schoolers with sexual harassment last month for refusing to use the plural pronoun "they" when referring to a single classmate. US President Joe Biden's National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy recently encouraged social media companies to censor from their online platforms any opinions that contradict Biden's climate change narrative.

In its continued commitment to preserve the government's monopoly over COVID-19 information, Twitter actually suspended a medical doctor for merely sharing a scientific study that suggests the Pfizer vaccine affects male fertility. And the NFL's Washington Commanders fined defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio $100,000 and forced him to apologize only weeks ago for having expressed his opinion that 2020's summer of riots across the United States after George Floyd's death was more destructive than the few hours of...

Visage à trois #341

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #507

We Need Donald J. Trump as President Now More Than Ever But first he must become House Speaker. Here's why.

The Supreme Court just stuck a dagger in America. They made five great rulings. They enraged Democrats from coast to coast. Overturning Roe v. Wade was the first blow. They supported guns. They supported prayer. They supported voter ID. They stopped the Environmental Protection Agency's climate-change overreach. Republicans rejoiced.

But sadly, they fooled us. The Supremes saved the worst for last. In their final decision, they reversed former President Donald Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy. That one decision just overwhelmed all the good they did. That last decision was the one that mattered.

The Supremes just opened the door to the end of America. They just opened the borders. Tens of millions will come. Why not? There's now nothing to stop them. They just won the lottery.

What good is saving the babies if you're going to destroy the country they're born into? What good is saving babies if you just stole their future? What good is saving babies if you're going to let millions of criminals, terrorists, pedophiles, child sex traffickers and tons of fentanyl into the USA?

What good is saving babies if you're going to paralyze the school and health care systems of America with tens of millions of new foreign invaders with their hands out and mouths open?

With negative GDP we're almost certainly already in recession, combined with a baby formula shortage and, coming soon, a terrible food shortage. And at this moment we open the floodgates?

Congratulations to the Supreme Court: You saved a few babies (only in red states, by the way), but you killed our country.

There is only one answer now. One small window. One final possibility to still save America...

Donald J. Trump.

We need Trump now more than ever. Only Trump has the cajones to stop this madness, this self-destruction, this national suicide. Trump is the only one who can bring us back from the abyss.

Trump is the one that Democrats, the media, the deep state and the D.C. Swamp fear. How do I know? Look at the news headlines. Trump is all they talk about. They are obsessed with stopping him, slandering him, destroying him, indicting him.

Even Howard Stern has gotten in on the act. The famous shock jock and comedian (who is no longer funny) claims to be running for president against Trump. He's got a bad case of "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

The media is even resorting to running stories 24/7 praising Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as...