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Friday, September 6, 2019

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA MAYOR TO TAX LAW ABIDING GUN OWNERS FOR THE ACTIONS OF CRIMINALS


Pushing A Second Amendment 'Poll Tax' in California

The mayor of San Jose, California, Sam Liccardo, wants to require every legal gun owner in the city to either carry firearms liability insurance or pay a fee in order to exercise their Second Amendment rights, while presidential candidates on the Left have their own ideas about making it too expensive or burdensome to legally keep and bear arms. Plus, Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon joins Cam to discuss the latest developments in the push for gun control laws around the nation.
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA MAYOR TO TAX LAW ABIDING GUN OWNERS FOR THE ACTIONS OF CRIMINALS
BY NRAHQ
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Fairfax, VA – -(Ammoland.com)- Last week, San Jose, Calif. Mayor Sam Liccardo took to the pages of the Washington Post to tout a plan to require law-abiding gun owners in his city to purchase firearms insurance.
Under the Liccardo proposal, firearms owners would be required to purchase “coverage for accidental discharge of the gun, and for the intentional acts of third parties who steal, borrow, or otherwise acquire the gun.” If unable to acquire insurance, or as an alternative to purchasing insurance, the city would “require gun owners to pay a per-household fee to participate in a public compensation pool to eliminate the public cost — a taxpayers subsidy — of gun violence resulting from private ownership.” Further, Liccardo wants the city to explore “a measure that would impose a tax on all ammunition and firearm purchases.”
It is instructive that the Liccardo “fee” and “tax” proposals were presented alongside his “insurance” proposal. As a practical matter, all three proposals are an attempt to tax law-abiding gun owners out of exercising their constitutionally-protected rights.
Contrary to the fawning media coverage of Liccardo’s “insurance” proposal, it is not a “different” approach to gun control. The notion of weaponizing insurance to attack gun owners has been around for decades. In 1996, Simi Valley, California Police Chief Randy G. Adams proposed a plan to require all concealed carry permit holders to obtain $1 million worth of liability insurance as a prerequisite to licensure. In recent years, lawmakers in several states have proposed legislation requiring gun owners to obtain such insurance.
In pushing his new tax, Liccardo repeatedly compares mandatory firearms liability insurance to mandates requiring car insurance. Here, the mayor is comparing apples to oranges. The vast majority of harm resulting from the use of motor vehicles is the result of accidents. There are a small and decreasing number of accidents involving firearms each year. However, the vast majority of harm perpetrated with firearms is intentional.
Under Liccardo’s proposal, the “insurance” would be for the rare accident and “the intentional acts of third parties.” In other words, accidents and circumstances where a criminal steals a gun from a law-abiding gun owner and commits a criminal act.
Now compare this to car insurance. If a criminal were to break into a victim’s garage, steal their car, and then run over a pedestrian, who would be held responsible? Not the car’s owner or their insurance company. The responsibility would rest where it belongs, on the criminal. Would it be proper to force law-abiding car owners to underwrite the costs of all the potential criminal misuse of their vehicles if stolen? Or, does society properly understand that the criminal’s actions are their own and treat them accordingly?
In his commentary, Liccardo adopts a collectivist approach to the issue of violence perpetrated with firearms. The mayor claims that “taxpayers have subsidized gun ownership and the harms that accompany it.” In economic terms, Liccardo might argue that the mere private ownership of firearms has negative externalities. Under this thinking, when a person buys a firearm, they are not internalizing the full cost of their decision to exercise their rights.
This issue of externalities is often illustrated in the environmental context. For instance, a person who drives will purchase gasoline for their car. As the car is driven, it emits pollution into the air. Absent a specific tax on the gasoline or car, an economist might point out that the driver did not pay a price sufficient to reflect the cost their pollution imposes on the rest of society. This societal cost that the driver did not pay for would be a negative externality.
Private firearms ownership does not map onto this kind of thinking. The mere presence of a firearm in the home of a law-abiding gun owner imposes no societal cost. If a criminal breaks into the home, steals the firearm, and misuses it, then that criminal has created a cost to society. Society can attempt to exact the price of that harm from the criminal using the criminal and civil judicial systems. Under Liccardo’s collectivist thinking, the law-abiding gun owner who was the victim of theft is in some part guilty alongside the criminal who stole and misused the firearm.
While Liccardo has draped his proposals in flowery language, in reality this is just another unsophisticated attempt to price Americans out of gun ownership. Liccardo appeared to admit that his proposal is aimed at pricing young adults out of exercising their Second Amendment right. An article from an NPR affiliate stated,
Just like how car insurance is expensive for young drivers, Liccardo says, premiums could help ensure more of the cost falls on “folks who should not be getting access to guns” in the first place.
Such candor is unwise. The federal courts have not looked favorably on attempts to curb constitutional rights through targeted taxation.
The 1983 U.S. Supreme Court case Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Com'r of Revenue addressed a discriminatory use tax on paper and ink consumed in publication. The Court determined that the tax was an unconstitutional attack on First Amendment rights. The Court explained that “A power to tax differentially, as opposed to a power to tax generally, gives a government a powerful weapon against the taxpayer selected.” Such a tax targeted at gun owners, even if disguised as an insurance requirement, would be a similarly suspect attack on Second Amendment rights.
Liccardo’s proposal is not without irony, as it comes at the same time there has been a push to restrict the types of insurance available to law-abiding gun owners. Anti-gun lawmakers in several jurisdictions have taken issue with insurance policies that protect law-abiding gun owners in the event they are forced to use a firearm in self-defense.
Last year, the CATO Institute pointed out one populous Northeastern state’s schizophrenia on this issue. Moreover, legislation has been introduced in California to restrict the types of insurance law-abiding gun owners may purchase.
Far from novel, Liccardo’s “insurance” proposal is just the latest attempt to place barriers between law-abiding Americans and their right to keep and bear arms.

National Rifle Association Institute For Legislative Action (NRA-ILA)
About: Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org

COMMUNIST CHINA PROHIBITING CHILDREN FROM CONVERTING TO CHRISTIAN FAITH

COMMUNIST CHINA PROHIBITING CHILDREN 
FROM CONVERTING TO CHRISTIAN FAITH 
BY DAVE BOHON
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
In its efforts to curb the rapid expansion of the Christian faith across communist China, the Beijing government is ramping up its enforcement of a law, long on the books, forbidding children from converting to Christianity before the age of 18.
Erik Burklin of China Partner, an organization that trains Chinese Christian leaders, told MissionNetworkNews.com that the law specifies that “you cannot proselytize or you cannot convert somebody under the age of 18.” Burklin said that before the law was enforced, “people were having their children come to church and many churches started what we would call Sunday school classes. They would use that time to teach children Bible verses and teach them Christian songs and so forth.”
With the recent crackdown, however, “many churches have been notified by Religious Affairs Bureau heads that they can no longer conduct Sunday school classes in their churches. They even put signage up in the entrance of some churches to indicate that.”
Burklin said that the law has made the efforts of his organization, which emphasizes training young people for ministry and church leadership, much more difficult. He told MissionNetworkNews.com that as staff of China Partner were conducting youth ministry training in China recently, they were approached by pastors with whom they had worked for many years. “They specifically came back to us saying, ‘Please, we can no longer invite you to come and do these youth ministry trainings for us because we need to adhere to this new enforcement of this law,’” Burklin recalled.
Tom Nettleton of Voice of the Martyrs, an organization that monitors persecution against Christians around the world, noted, “The Bible says train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it. The Chinese government, the Communist Party leaders, are very aware of that as well, and they want to train up a child to be a good Communist. And so churches that operate schools … have been targeted by the Chinese government. They are even looking at how parents are raising their children.”
Nettleton observed that the enforcement of the law against children becoming Christians “is part of a broader picture in China right now of a concerted effort to control all religious expression. Every aspect of the church, whether it be a registered church or an unregistered, is under the scrutiny of the Communist government. They are trying to bring every aspect of religious expression under their communist control.”
BitterWinter.com, which monitors religious liberty and human rights in China, recently reported that since the communist government implemented its Regulations on Religious Affairs in 2018, children are increasingly being prohibited from attending places of worship, and “schools around China have adopted unprecedented measures to keep students away from the matters of faith. The grooming of atheists starts at an early age — from kindergartens and primary schools.”
According to Bitter Winter, under the regulations “children are taught to oppose their religious relatives, [and] suffer great psychological stress out of fear that their parents or loved ones could be arrested because they go to church.”
One Christian Chinese mother told Bitter Winter: “Before starting school, I told my child about God’s creation, and he believed it. But after being taught at school, my child is like a different person. In atheistic China, these pure and innocent children have been taught to hate God.”
The Trump administration has been vocal in its support of the Church in China, and in its condemnation of China’s aggressive persecution of Christians. At a U.S. State Department sponsored conference in July, entitled the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo charged that China is “home to one of the worst human rights crises of our time. It is truly the stain of the century.”
Addressing the conference, Vice President Mike Pence said that while communist authorities have worked diligently to stop the spread of the Christian faith across China, “in one of the greatest ironies in the history of Christianity, in today’s Communist China, we actually see the fastest growth in the Christian faith that we have ever seen anywhere on earth in the last 2,000 years.”
Pence added that “just 70 years ago, when the Communist Party took power, there were fewer than half a million Chinese Christians. Yet today, just two generations later, faith in Jesus Christ has reached as many as 130 million Chinese Christians.”
Speaking on behalf of President Trump, the vice president declared that the “American people will always stand in solidarity with the people of all faiths in the People’s Republic of China. And we will pray for the day that they can live out their faith freely, without fear of persecution.”

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY'S JERRY FALWELL JR. BACKS CONGRESSMAN WHO OFFICIATED SAME SEX "WEDDING"

JERRY FALWELL JR. BELIEVES GAY "MARRIAGE" 
IS A SOCIAL (CIVIL) ISSUE, 
NOT A BIBLICAL OR MORAL ISSUE
REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN:
"LOVE IS LOVE" 
(NO MATTER WHAT GOD'S PLAN FOR ONE MAN & ONE WOMAN IS)
LIBERTY UNIVERSITY'S JERRY FALWELL JR. 
BACKS CONGRESSMAN WHO OFFICIATED 
SAME SEX "WEDDING" 
BY HEATHER CLARK
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
LYNCHBURG, Va. — Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, which touts itself as the world’s largest Christian university, wrote a letter on Tuesday to a Republican congressman who recently received a no confidence vote from a local GOP committee after he “happily” officiated a same-sex “wedding.” Falwell, also seeing that some leaders of the Republican Party within the district were backing away from Rep. Denver Riggleman, asserted that it is wrong for the congressman to be excluded over “social issues.” He advised that he plans to endorse Riggleman for reelection as he believes the party needs to be a “big tent” and unite.
“It is my understanding that certain leaders of the Republican Party in the 5th District are attempting to exclude you and others because of social issues,” Falwell wrote. “I was told that they are assuming that because you officiated at a gay marriage recently, that you are not socially conservative.”
“I believe that excluding other conservatives over issues that have already been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court does nothing but help the liberals gain more power,” he opined. “There is nothing that anyone in the House of Delegates or the Virginia Senate can do to change the law on gay marriage or abortion until the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its previous positions.”
Falwell asserted that his logic is “common sense,” and that if Republicans do not unite and think pragmatically, the liberals will win. He said that he wants to see Republicans retain control of the House of Delegates and the state Senate in November.
“I hope that the less pragmatic members of the party will wake up and realize that, in the words of Ben Franklin, ‘We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately,'” Falwell wrote. “I intend to endorse you in your bid for reelection in 2020 in light of your liberty-minded conservatism and our shared values.”
He also expressed the hope that he would see Riggleman at an upcoming fundraiser, which will also be attended by Robert Hurt, the executive director of Liberty University’s Center for Law and Government. Riggleman had been invited to Liberty University in March by student groups such as Young Americans for Liberty, College Republicans and Students at Liberty for Gun Rights.
Reports outline that on July 14, Riggleman officiated the “wedding” of campaign volunteers Alex Pisciarino and Anthony LeCounte, and expressed that he was “proud” to do so.
“My real belief is that government shouldn’t be involved in marriage at all, but if it is, everybody has to be treated equally before the law,” the congressman told the Washington Post. “And that is part of our Republican creed. And it also comes down to love is love. I’m happy to join two people together who obviously love each other.”
However, Riggleman also opposes the proposed Equality Act because of concerns about infringing parental rights, and he believes that the matter of transgenders serving the military needs additional study.
Because of his participation the ceremony, Wendell Johnson of the Fifth Congressional District Republican Committee presented a motion to formally rebuke Riggleman.
“I move that the committee censure Denver Riggleman for failing to uphold the Republican Party platform, [which] states ‘marriage is between one man and one woman,'” he said, according to Newsweek.
While his initial effort was not successful, member Diana Shore put forward a vote of no confidence with the Cumberland County Republican Committee, which she chairs. It passed unanimously.
“I make this motion of no confidence in Congressman Denver Riggleman for his recent act in officiating a homosexual marriage and his lack of support for stronger border security and immigration policies,” it read.
Riggleman’s campaign responded to the vote by stating that the congressman was happy to officiate “and he is proud of these two young people who found their life partner.”
As previously reported, Falwell has been an ardent supporter of President Trump, repeatedly asserting throughout Trump’s presidential campaign that the then-candidate bears the fruit of one being born again because of his characteristic good deeds.
“I’ve seen his generosity to strangers, to his employees, his warm relationship with his children,” he said on CNN’s “Legal View With Ashleigh Banfield” in February 2016. “I’m convinced he’s a Christian. I believe he has faith in Jesus Christ.”
Falwell asserted that those who expressed concerns about Trump’s behavior were violating the “judge not” clause in Matthew 7:1.
“Jesus said, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged. Let’s stop trying to choose the political leaders who we believe are the most godly because, in reality, only God knows people’s hearts. You and I don’t, and we are all sinners,” he said in an interview with the Liberty University newspaper that same year.
He also told the Washington Post earlier this year that he doesn’t believe that the teachings of Christ were meant to be used for public policy, but that the government should rather be “free of religious association.”
“Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome,” Falwell told the Washington Post. “He went out of His way to say that’s the earthly kingdom, I’m about the heavenly kingdom. And I’m here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
“You almost have to believe that this is a theocracy to think that way — to think that public policy should be dictated by the teachings of Jesus.”
In 2014, concerns were raised after Liberty University university minimized objections to the utilization of a homosexual advocate to teach students choreography in its presentation of “Mary Poppins.” Many also expressed disagreement when Brandon Ambrosino, a Liberty student who came out as an open homosexual on campus, was allowed to enroll as a graduate student in Liberty’s seminary program.
_____________________________________________________________

Jerry Falwell Endorses Candidate Who Officiated Gay Wedding, Calls Him Socially Conservative

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Rep. Denver Riggleman is a Republican congressman in Virginia who recently presided over a same-sex wedding. Arguing that he is a congressman who “represents everyone,” he insists that he is still a conservative despite his defense of gay marriage. Of course, no conservative in his right mind would support gay marriage — let alone, officiate one.
Southern Baptist Jerry Falwell, president of Liberty University, recently penned a letter calling on Republicans to unite under the altar of the “big tent.” While the congressman received a vote of “no confidence” recently by the local GOP in Virginia, Falwell says he’s going to support him.
Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), center in dark suit, presides over the wedding of Alex Pisciarino, left, and Anthony LeCounte at King Family Vineyards in Crozet, Va., on Sunday. (Christine Riggleman)
Citing gay marriage laws, Falwell argues that there is nothing we can do to “change the law” unless the Supreme Court overturns it, therefore, we must accept Riggleman’s decision to officiate a gay wedding. Of course, Falwell is correct that we cannot change the law, but the law does not force anyone to officiate gay weddings — at least not yet.
Falwell insists that despite Riggleman officiating a gay wedding, Riggleman is still socially conservative. Nah-dah. Officiating a gay wedding, by very definition, makes you NOT a social conservative by any discernible standard. Definitely not by biblical standards.
While I’ve appreciated a lot of what Falwell has stood for in his fight against the social justice progressive movement sweeping Evangelicalism, I cannot appreciate the far religious right movement from men like Falwell who, by their actions and endorsements, have made a religion out of right-wing politics while The Gospel Coalition, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and the Southern Baptist Convention have largely made a religion out of leftist politics. They are simply two sides of the idolatry coin.
________________________________________________________________

Koch-Favorite GOP Congressman Officiates 

Homosexual Wedding for Media Photo Op

This is the future of conservatism if the globalists 
have their way
BY SHANE TREJO

POLICE STATE NJ’s EMBARRASSING SENATOR CORY BOOKER IGNORES THE CONSTITUTION & HISTORY

Cory Booker IMG Source NSSF OP Ed
POLICE STATE NJ’s EMBARRASSING SENATOR CORY BOOKER IGNORES THE CONSTITUTION & HISTORY 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- It’s tough to stay relevant in a twenty-way race for the Democratic presidential nomination that’s marked by provocative and far-left ideas, especially when enacting constitutionally suspect gun control.
But don’t ever say U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) doesn’t give it his best effort. His latest gun control proposal ignores basic constitutional protections of Creator-endowed rights and the racist history of the left’s favorite gun control ideas.
Recently, Sen. Booker tweeted “If you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to buy and possess a gun. Some states are doing this already — and it saves lives.”
Licensing Rights
This proposal has been echoed repeatedly by many presidential candidates so far in this cycle. That’s right. They want you to be licensed by the government to exercise a right for which the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids the federal government infringement. The first flaw in the senator’s thinking is that such an infringement on the Second Amendment is saving lives. The city of Chicago, for example, requires gun owners to license themselves via the Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card. If what Sen. Booker had said were actually true, then Chicago would not “consistently (have) more total killings than any other U.S. city” with 27 people killed in the first two weeks of August.
Booker’s statement is not only wrong, but it is also incredibly hypocritical. Earlier this month, the New Jersey senator took to Twitter again to suggest repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects the firearms industry from frivolous lawsuits that attempt to hold manufacturers liable for the criminal misuse of a lawfully sold, non-defective firearm.
Such attempts to assert liability without any basis in law are preposterous and applied to no other industry. Courts, and everyday Americans, recognize the absurdity of allowing someone who is the victim of a drunk driving accident to sue the manufacturer of the car a drunk driver was operating at the time of the crash. In other words, Sen. Booker wants to treat law-abiding gun owners like licensed drivers but at the same time hold the firearms manufacturers of America to a level of legal liability not ever considered for any other industry.
Sen. Booker clearly does not understand the difference between a constitutionally protected right and state requirements for using public roads. Bearing arms is an inalienable right in this country and a law that would require the government to license who can arm themselves and with what is a direct attack on our rights.
Gun Control’s Racist Roots
It doesn’t end there. Sen. Booker should know the racist history of the gun licensing scheme that arose in the Jim Crow-era South to ensure African-Americans wouldn’t be able to exercise and enjoy their God-given rights. In fact, Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist who challenged slavery and racism, railed against state and local infringement of gun rights for African Americans just one month after the Confederacy’s surrender. State Supreme Courts recognized many of the gun control laws that emerged and grew beyond the South were drafted with the “purpose of disarming” African Americans.
Today, co-founder of Black Guns Matter, Maj Toure, takes his message to inner cities that suffer high crime and explains the racist roots of gun control actually predate America. They were present in French colonial Louisiana. Toure said the “the first gun control rules pop off in Virginia” after Emancipation.
Condoleeza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State, recently defended gun rights on The View, reminding viewers that neither Alabama’s Gov. “Bull” Connor nor Birmingham police would protect African Americans. She explained her father and his friends would fire guns in the air when Ku Klux Klan and “night riders” would threaten their neighborhood.
“I’m sure if Bull Connor had known where those guns were, he would have rounded them up,” she said. “So I don’t favor some things like gun registration.”
Fortunately, America’s millions of law-abiding gun owners will prove at the ballot box that we cannot be swayed by illogical talking points, no matter how frequently they are parroted by out of touch politicians who ignore our constitution and our history.

National Shooting Sports FoundationAbout National Shooting Sports Foundation
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of more than 10,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen's organizations and publishers. www.nssf.org