Illinois Democrat calls for national Firearms Owner ID card

What was it I was just saying about Illinois politicians targeting legal gun owners while ignoring career criminals? I hadn’t run across Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s latest gun control demands when I wrote my that post, but her remarks are yet another example of the phenomenon of Democrats pretending that cracking down on law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutionally-protected rights is the best way to reduce violent crime.

Duckworth not only wants to slap a new federal ban on so-called assault weapons onto the books; she wants to establish a federal permit that would be required before you could even keep a gun in your home.

“A big portion of what’s happening is assault weapons, which are weapons of war, and the high capacity magazines that are used,” she said. “They just simply don’t belong on the streets of this of this country. And I’m gonna work to suspend, and to abandon them.”

Duckworth said she’s glad to see expanded mental health services, law enforcement information sharing, and school safety funding come from the bipartisan legislation. But she’s hopeful it’s the start of a broader legislative effort.

“I’d like to see a national FOID card. You know, in Illinois, we have a FOID card. It doesn’t stop people from being able to purchase weapons. But I think it’s important that everyone should have a background check,” she said. “You shouldn’t just be able to walk into a gun show and buy a gun without a background check. I think we need to significantly close that loophole.”

Duckworth is ignoring the fact that state courts have repeatedly found that the state’s FOID card requirement violates the constitutional rights of residents; decisions that have been overturned by a state Supreme Court that seems desperate to avoid issuing a ruling on the actual merits of the legal challenges.

Despite the Illinois Supreme Court’s reluctance to address the issues with the state’s FOID card system, the constitutional concerns are clear. The Supreme Court has recognized that we the people have a right to both keep and bear arms for self-defense; a right that can be lost through things like felony convictions or an adjudication of mental defectiveness, but one that each of us possess unless we do something to forfeit it.

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House Democrats Targeting at Least 40 Specific AR-15 Rifles in New ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

The House Judiciary Committee will be proposing legislation next week that would ban certain “assault weapons,” according to an announcement on Friday.

The committee will meet next Wednesday, July 20, to debate the bill that “would ban the sale, import, manufacture or transfer of certain semi-automatic weapons,” the panel said. 

Should the committee pass the bill, House Democratic leaders would likely bring it to a floor for a full vote, which would likely pass as Democrats control the chamber, and would send it to the Senate, where it would need to garner 10 votes from Republican senators. The Senate, currently split 50-50, would likely stop the bill due to the filibuster.

The bill would allow the sale of weapons that are already privately owned and wouldn’t apply to antique, manually operated or certain hunting and sporting firearms, the House panel stated.

The text of the bill states that it would ban at least 40 specific AR-15-style rifles, including the “Bushmaster ACR, Bushmaster Carbon 15, Bushmaster MOE series, Bushmaster XM15, Chiappa Firearms MFour rifles, Colt Match Target rifles, CORE Rifle Systems CORE15 rifles, Daniel Defense M4A1 rifles, Devil Dog Arms 15 Series rifles” and more.

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House Judiciary Committee Dems Vote Unanimously to Block Measure That Would Have Increased Penalties For Child Sex Traffickers

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee blocked a measure that would have increased the criminal punishment for child sex traffickers.

The amendment, which was introduced this month by Texas Rep. Chip Roy (R), would have lengthened the minimum sentencing for those who have been convicted of “trafficking children by force, fraud, or coercion” – raising the minimum punishment from 10-15 years to a minimum of 15-20 years, depending on the offense. The measure also would have increased the maximum penalties for the heinous crime by an additional 5 years.

However, thanks to the House Judiciary Democrats, who voted unanimously to shoot down the legislation, sex traffickers will continue to get lesser punishment than they rightfully deserve – something the radical left seems to be overwhelmingly in favor of, especially among the leadership. Just ask Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest member of the US Supreme Court, who routinely let child sex offenders and child pornographers off the hook with severely reduced sentences throughout her career as a US District Court Judge.

In one case she presided over, she literally apologized for giving a 3 month ‘slap on the wrist’ sentence to a pervert convicted of possessing hundreds of files of child porn – Now, she resides on the highest court in the land.

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Democrats Love Saying That AR-15s Should Only Be Used On Foreigners

Every time there’s a mass shooting in America with an AR-15, high-level Democrats line up to proclaim that those weapons should only ever be used to kill impoverished foreigners.

The latest example of this ongoing phenomenon was Illinois Senator and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth telling the press that a recording from the July 4th Highland Park shooting which killed seven people and wounded dozens more reminded her of her combat experience overseas, saying the US needs to do better within its own borders.

“I just listened to the sound of that gunfire from one of the videos that was captured,” Duckworth said. “And let me tell you that the last time I heard a weapon with that capacity firing that rapidly on a Fourth of July was Iraq, it was not the United States of America. We can and we should and we will do better.”

This was not the first time Duckworth has repeated this demented Democratic Party refrain. Last month during the controversy which followed the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Duckworth tweeted, “I carried an M16 and M4 in the military, so let me be clear: High-powered rifles designed for our troops to engage an enemy with accurate, lethal fire at a velocity of 3,000 feet per second have no place on our streets. I fully support an assault weapons ban.”

Obviously American weapons of war kill far more people overseas than they do domestically, and those killings are done in wars of aggression for power and profit which are sold to the public with lies and propaganda, so they’ve got no higher moral standing than the killings of any mass shooter. But because the Democratic Party exists only to kill leftward movement in the United States and ensure the continual functioning of a globe-spanning empire, gun violence is seen at its highest echelons not as a moral issue which should be opposed everywhere but as a wedge issue which should be exploited for campaign donations.

We saw this illustrated in a notorious 2017 tweet from now-US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig which said, “I did not carry an assault weapon around a foreign country so I could come home and see them used to massacre my countrymen.”

Silly Republicans! Assault weapons are for killing foreign kids!

Another classic came from Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019: “Weapons of war, specifically designed to kill human beings en masse, should not be available for purchase.”

Cool beans, AOC. Leave the killing en masse to the American stormtroopers exterminating brown-skinned poor people for resource control.

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DeSantis 2018 Opponent Andrew Gillum Arrested For Conspiracy, Wire Fraud, False Statements – Faces Up to 45 Years in Prison

Former Ron DeSantis opponent Andrew Gillum, once celebrated as “The Woke Obama” and “The Next Obama” by progressives and the mainstream media, has now been indicted by the Biden Department of Justice on NINETEEN counts of wire fraud and making false statements to the FBI, according to the United States Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Florida.

If convicted, Gillum faces up to 45 years in prison.

The maximum terms of imprisonment for the offenses are as follows:

5 years: Making False Statements
20 years: Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud
20 years: Wire Fraud

A federal grand jury has returned a twenty-one count indictment against Andrew Demetric Gillum, 42, and Sharon Janet Lettman-Hicks, 53, both of Tallahassee, Florida. The indictment was announced by Jason R. Coody, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida.

The Indictment alleges that between 2016 and 2019, defendants Gillum and Lettman-Hicks conspired to commit wire fraud, by unlawfully soliciting and obtaining funds from various entities and individuals through false and fraudulent promises and representations that the funds would be used for a legitimate purpose. The Indictment further alleges the defendants used third parties to divert a portion of those funds to a company owned by Lettman-Hicks, who then fraudulently provided the funds, disguised as payroll payments, to Gillum for his personal use. Both defendants are charged with 19 counts of wire fraud. Gillum is also charged with making false statements to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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When Democrats Keep Choosing Name-Calling Over Debate, Violence Becomes Inevitable

If the recent assassination attempt targeting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh weren’t sufficient proof that a divided America is tiptoeing toward violent conflict, a research firm released a “disturbing poll” showing that nearly half of male Democrats under the age of 50 believe it acceptable to assassinate a politician “who is harming the country or our democracy.” Given that James Hodgkinson nearly succeeded in assassinating an entire baseball field of Republican members of Congress just a few years ago, the appetite for continued political violence shows no sign of abating. 

Sen. Rand Paul, who has suffered two violent, politically motivated attacks in recent years, called out the White House and congressional Democrats for “ginning up and encouraging” violence. However, in a country that increasingly eschews rational debate and embraces the vituperative soundbites of reality TV, it can be no surprise that the political stakes in America are tending toward bloodshed.

It was once widely understood in the United States that vociferous debate and vigorous policy disagreement were features of a healthy American society. Hashing out arguments over contested issues in the public square had two immediate salubrious effects: it allowed the average American to appreciate the “pros” and “cons” of consequential policy decisions, and it provided those whose viewpoints did not win the day to nonetheless speak their minds.

As a testament to how vital debate and disagreement are to the process of creating good public policy, it has often been the case throughout American history that the well-articulated arguments of the “losing side” eventually rise to guide future generations. 

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‘Squad’ Dems spend thousands on airfare while demanding others go ‘green’

Democratic members of the House who pushed “Green New Deal” reforms to overhaul the energy sector spent roughly $13,000 in tax dollars combined on airfare, according to the latest House disbursement records reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Cori Bush of Missouri expensed the “airfare commercial transport” charges between October 2021 and March 2022, according to the records. The new disbursements are intended to be for the months of January and March 2022, and one ethics expert familiar with the situation said lawmakers often report transactions late.

These same members, who are often referred to as the “Squad,” have emphasized that “climate change” is an “existential” or “emergency” crisis.

The “Squad” members notably co-sponsored a bill introduced by Ocasio-Cortez in 2021 calling for the creation of a “Green New Deal.” The bill, which was roundly opposed by Republicans and many Democrats, allocated $8.1 billion to a “climate corps,” among other proposals.

Carbon dioxide emissions from flying are said to increase pollution, according to a study by the left-wing think tank Brookings Institution. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution in 2019 sought to overhaul “transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and 19 greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible.”

“The hypocrisy of the Green New Deal crowd is endless,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told TheDCNF. “They seem to view themselves as part of an elite that is exempt from the energy poverty policies they pursue.”

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