THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- The march for more gun laws in New York continues with on another assault on the rights of the citizens in what is truly becoming the Empire State. The latest is sponsored by state Senator James Sanders Jr. of the 10th Senate District which low and behold is over seventy-five percent Democrat and is in southeast Queens, some of the more crime-ridden parts of New York City.
The bill (S7065) (A01589) would make it mandatory that every gun owner in the state of New York get a mental health evaluation before they could purchase a firearm. This wouldn’t be a one-time thing, this would be for everygun and of course, these evaluations would have to be held at a location of the state of New York’s choosing and would be at the expense of the person looking to purchase the gun. This new assault on the rights of gun owners comes in the face of the ever progressive agenda of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s regime making it more than well known that gun owners in New York State are not only not wanted, they are on his list of targets and as he has said in the past if people don’t like his rules, then they are free to leave. The way things are going in New York, that’s getting to be the only thing they are free to do.
So, each time a gun owner wants to buy a gun, no matter what, they will have to seek out an approved mental health professional to have an evaluation performed.
For rural gun owners, where most people who own guns in the state happen to live, it would involve a drive to probably your nearest hospital. In my locale, that’s at least forty-five miles in one direction. Then there’s the cost of the expense to the price of the gun, which no one knows since it will be at the discretion of the doctor, and if the gun owner has health insurance if it will even be covered, etc.
NY Democrat State Senator James Sanders Jr.
Once the potential gun owner has the proof, he or she passed their mental health evaluation then they have to take that to the gun store and still fill out the paperwork. So, you can imagine this would be the death knell for all gun shows in the state because there would be no one walking out of one with a firearm purchased at all since the NICS check won’t even be able to be performed until the mental health screening is done. In fact, since most doctors don’t have weekend office hours, gun shops might as well close up because they won’t be doing much in the way of selling.
As usual, this new law would do absolutely nothing to keep criminals but it would another hurdle in a long line of infringements to law-abiding gun owners in a state where the ruling party with its new no cash bail law has dumped criminals back out on the streets to re-offend while law-abiding citizens are pleading with police and what few lawmakers are listening to reign in the lawlessness that is now just beginning to be realized.
There is also a larger and much more sinister motive to think about here. New York passed its own version of a Red Flag law last year, and unlike other states, it allows schools and just about anyone else to petition the courts to get an ERPO and have someone’s firearms taken away. Now can you imagine every gun owner now having to be subjected to a mental health exam, over and over again, where one wrong question, one misconstrued answer or even the bias of the doctor could not only prevent someone from legally buying the gun they were looking to get, but also lead to the police coming to the house and taking the rest and with a doctor’s word versus the citizen’s in court, the gun owner, soon to become the former gun owner, wouldn’t stand a chance legally.
This is just the ongoing pattern of gun control laws not only sweeping New York, and now Virginia and other states, but are just the tip of the spear of what the left really wants, to take guns by any means necessary. What these lawmakers couldn’t do one way is now being done another. I urge any gun owner in the state of New York to oppose this legislation, we can’t play the “it won’t happen here” game anymore, because when that gets said enough times, it does happen here, and it will happen here. This is an election year for all of the lawmakers in New York, and the cash bail law is proving to be so unpopular that it could cost a few Democrats their Senate and Assembly seats, perhaps enough to gain back some power, enough to keep Andrew Cuomo in check. Call your elected officials, write them, email them, and make sure they know where you stand, we are on our own here, we cannot rely on the NRA in New York which has sadly all but vanished.
The Founding Fathers never had a lobby group, they were on their own too, and New York was once part of the bastions of freedom from tyranny, I believe it can be done once again.
The Battle of Long Island was one of the pivotal battles during the American Revolution and was fought in New York.Without the defeat of the British at the Battle of Saratoga it's likely the Revolutionary War would have had a different outcome. New York was founded with the blood of patriots.
About David LaPell
David LaPell has been a Corrections Officer with the local Sheriff's Department for thirteen years. A collector of antique and vintage firearms for over twenty years and an avid hunter. David has been writing articles about firearms, hunting, and western history for ten years. In addition to having a passion for vintage guns, he is also a fan of old trucks and has written articles on those as well.
_____________________________________________________________ SEE ALSO: https://www.secondamendmentdaily.com/2020/01/new-york-bill-requires-mental-health-checks-before-any-firearms-purchase/ EXCERPTS: "This sort of posturing by Senator James Sanders is especially rich. Mr. Law-and-Order wants to require mental health evaluations for gun owners but New York voters remember that in 2016, he was personally investigated by the FBI for corruption. Apparently he was offering to approve funding to certain projects in exchange for huge financial kickbacks. The investigation ranged to wire fraud, and more–all the way back to his campaigning for City Council." "Because while these same extreme leftist politicians are crying about gun violence, they’re voting to release hundreds of violent felons!" "As of January 1st, a bill that Governor Cuomo and his radical left friends passed now allows violent felons to walk free until their trail–without even posting a bond. Arsonists, burglars, those who assault a child, manslaughter suspects, drug dealers–even those who sell to children, sex perverts who make and distribute child porn, and hundreds more….all go free under Cuomo’s new bail reform law!"
"A Chronicle source has confirmed that the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharaha, left, is investigating how state Sen. James Sanders Jr. allocated money to community nonprofits when he was a city councilman. At the same time, Sanders is vehemently denying a complaint that he sought a kickback from a Rockaway organization seeking city funding in 2012."
"But its larger story was based on allegations by Malisa Rivera and Marion Moses that Sanders in 2012 offered to fund their group to the tune of $1.7 million, allegedly in return for a kickback of $250,000."
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
When the freedom of speech is entirely a dead letter, those who were supposed to be its guardians will congratulate themselves for never having been “racist.”
“Deplatformed: How Big Tech Companies & Corporate America Subvert the Second Amendment,” by Sam Jacobs, Ammo.com, January 26, 2020:
…Big Tech’s War on Free Speech
There is a war against free speech and Big Tech is the one waging it. Congress has looked into this, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas leading the charge, not allowing Facebook and other Big Tech companies to weasel out of answering hard questions that the public has about censorship on the Internet.
It’s less true to say that Facebook, Google and other Big Tech platforms “lean left” than it is to say that they push a globalist, neoliberal, corporatist line that eschews any sort of values or ethics other than growth. Edward Abbey has said that the philosophy of growth for the sake of growth is also the philosophy of the cancer cell.
The Big Tech war against free speech is nothing new and there have been canaries in the coal mine for years. Everyone remembers MILO being shown the door on Twitter for a dubious accusation that he led a mob against actress Leslie Jones. But the real test case was not him, it was hacker and troll Andrew Auernheimer, commonly known by his handle “weev.”
weev (always lowercase) is difficult to defend because he has unpopular viewpoints. To wit, he has a large swastika tattooed on his chest. However, proponents of the First Amendment and free speech shouldn’t be concerned with what weev thinks or says, because what he thinks or says is irrelevant to whether or not he has the right to think it and say it. But Twitter and other Big Tech platforms were smart in choosing such an ideological pariah to test the waters.
There is a direct line to be drawn from the deplatforming of weev on Twitter to the unpersoning of Alex Jones to the shadow banning and outright deplatforming of conservative voices all across the web. Mainstream, establishment conservatives have done themselves a disservice by attempting to defend themselves against deplatforming on the basis that “I’m not a Nazi” for two reasons.
First, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Nazi or not. All legal speech should be allowed on social media, or else Big Tech is an editorial content curator, which makes it liable for anything that is posted on there. This means that your ex-spouse lying about how you missed Little Timmy’s baseball game on Facebook can be construed as defamation, for which Facebook is liable because they didn’t remove the status update. Facebook’s pretense that it is a content-neutral platform, a claim that is patently false, is what protects it from being sued every time someone lies about someone else on the platform or from being hauled into court every time that ISIS uses WhatsApp to coordinate an attack.
But the other reason is that for many on the left, there is not a tangible difference between weev, MILO, Alex Jones, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Wayne LaPierre, Ted Cruz, Ben Sharpiro or the President of the United States. Anyone to the right of John McCain is seen as either a literal fascist, a fascist apologist, or a gatekeeper who opens the door to fascist ideology.
Big Tech will not stop at deplatforming actual, self-avowed fascists, nor will it stop at conspiracy theorists, edgy conservatives, or even “respectable” centrist types like Dave Rubin. To throw the far right under the bus in the hopes of satisfying Big Tech’s blood lust is a strategic mistake – it legitimizes the entire process of deplatforming, which will eventually swallow up anyone who believes in the Constitution and the rule of law. Big Tech and the left either see no difference between you and a Nazi, or pretend not to because it’s politically expedient.
This is doubly important because of how many Big Tech companies are actively spying on their users. The EFF maintains an annual detailed list of who is telling the government about its users and their data, who informs users that the government is sniffing around about them, and who even bothers to disclose their data retention policies.
What this means is that if and when the federal government begins compiling a list of “potential right-wing terrorists” or “right-wing extremists” (to the extent that they do not already maintain such lists), they will have a ready-made mine of data from Big Tech, who have shown themselves to be more than willing to cooperate with the federal government, with minimal or no arm-twisting on the part of the feds. Take, for example, the Philadelphia synagogue shooter. Self-proclaimed “free speech” platform Gab was more than willing to hand over all the data they had about his account to the feds without even being asked.
Sure, no one wants to be in the position of defending a synagogue shooter. But the point is that these platforms, even the ones who allegedly have your back, have shown themselves willing to roll on their users provided enough of a fever is whipped up in the press.
Conservatives Censored on Social Media
It’s worth showing just how many mainstream, run-of-the-mill conservatives have been censored by Big Tech – it’s not just the MILOs and the weevs of the world who are being shown the door. Indeed, we believe that these types are censored not out of any actual desire to suppress so-called “hate speech,” but instead to act as a test case for setting the precedent for suppressing legal speech. Here are some examples that are worth considering:
Pastor Rich Penkoski: This pastor runs a popular Facebook page, “Warriors for Christ.” He was suspended mid-sermon for criticizing the rainbow flag. He was previously banned for calling an atheist a liar and sharing verses from the Quran that called for the killing of non-Muslims.
Over Two Dozen Catholic Pages: In July 2017, Facebook banned several Catholic pages with millions of followers. Most were based in Brazil. Facebook removed the pages without explanation.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn: Not even elected officials are immune from social media deplatforming. Facebook removed an ad for Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign that attacked pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood.
Alveda King: Facebook removed paid ads from Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King for her documentary on Roe v. Wade.
Ryan T. Anderson: Twitter refused to run several ads from Christian radio stations for an upcoming interview with Ryan T. Anderson. Anderson is a critic of transgenderism and radical gender ideology.
Robert Spencer: The head of JihadWatch.org, a website covering radical Islam, was removed from social media and even had his credit cards canceled. He also claims that Google buries him in results for searches about “jihad.”
Brian Fisher: The President of the Human Coalition notes that this anti-abortion group has had prayer apps removed from the Apple store and has had its content repeatedly removed from Twitter despite taking pains to ensure that all of it is within Twitter’s narrow, anti-First Amendment guidelines.
PragerU: PragerU is very much the picture of mainstream, run-of-the-mill, completely non-edgy conservatism on the Internet. Despite this, they repeatedly have their content removed from YouTube. Dennis Prager, head of PragerU, is suing YouTube. He notes that Delta Air Lines couldn’t say “conservatives can’t fly with us,” but YouTube, ostensibly a neutral platform, is effectively allowed to say that conservatives can’t use their services.
David Kyle Foster: David Kyle Foster is a leader in the “ex-gay” movement, a group of Christians who claim that their religion has “cured” their homosexuality. His Vimeo channel, featuring over 700 personal testimonials, was pulled from Vimeo for being “hateful.”
Even the Declaration of Independence has been removed from Facebook as “hate speech” due to their “filtering program.” Yes, really. Nor is it only conservative groups who have been targeted. Moderates and leftists who don’t toe the party line – like Andy Ngo, Tim Pool and Michael Tracey – have likewise been targeted by deplatforming and shadowbanning.
Deplatforming is not limited to social media. Chase Bank has been accused of depriving conservative voices of banking services. This returns us to the Mark of the Beast notion: What good is free speech if banks – banks – can keep you from receiving payments. And how far off are we from seeing conservative voices deprived of their ability to pay?
Imagine showing up at the grocery store and finding out that your money’s no good because you have a concealed carry permit. Sound far-fetched? So would have having your bank account closed for being a conservative activist….
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research
purposes:
China sometimes calls itself the Middle Kingdom, but it’s paving a way to the netherworld with a new effort: rewriting the Bible to make it compatible with socialism. Moreover, it’s doing the same with the Koran.
In fact, Beijing is instituting new religious rules, set to take effect February 1, that may essentially make the state the church. As AsiaNews.it reported, under the rules, “Every aspect of the life of religious communities — from formation, to gatherings, to annual and daily projects — is subject to approval by the government’s religious affairs department.”
“In addition to widespread control of all community activities, the new measures require religious personnel to support, promote, and implement total submission to the Chinese Communist Party among all members of their communities,” the site continued.
In accordance with this are the “reports that China is in the process of rewriting the holy books of major religions, including the Bible and Quran … [as President] Xi Jinping has declared that the ideologies of religions be interpreted according to the core values of socialism,” Vision Timesadds. “Wang Yang, Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, supervised a meeting of religious experts who attended the conference on modifying the texts.”
The irony is that the Beijing regime itself isn’t compatible with socialism. While for marketing purposes it deceitfully claims to be peddling the ideology (it can’t lose its raison d'être), it long ago instituted market reforms. Note here that under Marxist doctrine, “socialism” is what people generally think “communism” is: government ownership of the means of production. Thus was the USSR the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
But while Beijing is more like a “fascist” regime today, it’s not just that this label doesn’t have the same ring to it. It’s that neither China’s ideology nor its new “theology” has anything to do with Truth or reason — it’s about power.
As the Epoch Timeswrites after quoting Karl Marx’s religion “is the opium of the people” line, “This anti-religious philosophy on the part of the left is pervasive worldwide, and the distrust and hatred for religion are shared by all socialist regimes to one degree or another. This hatred from the left is acted out on many levels even in the United States and is ultimately based on eradicating any competition for absolute power” (video below)
Statists seek worship of the state, the little g, not the big G. If citizens honor and make primary God and His laws, then when they conflict with the government’s laws, the people will defy the latter. Thus do statists want government considered the highest power — especially when they’re pursuing an ungodly agenda.
That the Chinese government is competing with God explains its religious persecution. As an example, “A large body of photographs and detailed reporting has been smuggled out of China that shows a large complex of concentration camps, churches being burned to the ground, and many forms of pressure on individuals who don’t compromise their religious beliefs in favor of socialism,” the Times also informs.
Yet the Chinese are competing a tad more smartly than the Soviets did. Rather than try to eradicate religions, “socialists have concluded that it’s easier and more effective to create parallel religions that submit to socialism and only pretend to submit to God in order to entice the naïve,” the Times further relates.
This isn’t unprecedented. The National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany also realized the value of co-opting religion and created their own version: Positive Christianity. It taught that Jesus was a Nordic character persecuted by a Jewish establishment.
Sadly, America has its own types of designer religion, generally with a sexual devolutionary bent. Represented well by holier-than-thou presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, these rewriters of the Bible (figuratively speaking) generally claim that sex outside of authentic marriage and prenatal infanticide accord with God’s law.
But here it’s good to note advice rendered by both therapist Dr. Laura Schlessinger and nun Mother Teresa: If you’re going to claim a religion (or any other belief, I’ll add), live it. Be sincere. Don’t kid yourself.
If you don’t believe in Christianity, then come to terms with that. But don’t deceive yourself about what it actually demands.
This matters because the worst kind of deception is self-deception. Deceive others and you may lose friends or trust. Deceive yourself long and often enough — deny the Truth so intensely that you fall out of touch with it — and you may lose reality.
Speaking of lies, the Beijing regime “calls the Bible and the Quran religious classics, and they argue that the revision is justified to ensure the contents conform to the progress of the times,” the Epoch Times tells us.
This “times” argument is also heard in our nation. But anyone making it is merely worshipping fashions that too often are fallacies. The times don’t make the people; the people make the times. And knowledge of Truth and cultivation of virtue make good people — and good times.
As for our times, China should serve as a cautionary tale: When a government makes laws contrary to God’s, you know it’s on the wrong side — and must be defied.
