Category Archives: 10th Amendment

A paradigm shift?

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I didn’t watch Obama last night. I wasn’t interested in listening to his pontifications and lies. Listening to the top-of-the-hour news this morning, I was vindicated in skipping Obama’s brag fest.

Instead, I went to a small meeting to listen to a friend who is a political activist and heads a state-wide organization. I’d rather listen to him than Obama.

I’ve heard my friend speak before. He’s always been knowledgeable and has numerous inside contacts in Jeff City. He original topic was the upcoming legislative session in Jefferson City. I was particularly interested in HB 188, a bill designed to attack grassroots organizations, like the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance, by forcing them to disclose their membership lists and donors.

That was his intent. And…he did cover a few of the items coming forth in Jeff City. We were a small group last night. Many of the usual members didn’t come. Some are snowbirds and were out-of-state in more warmer climes. When questions started from the floor how we, as individuals, could be more effective lobbying in Jeff City, his planned talk went out the window.

In retrospect, the diversion was good. He explained the legislative process that many did not understand. How opinions of legislators can be changed. He cited the successful veto-override effort for SB 523 in the last session. We discussed various techniques how individuals can influence legislators…and how some tactics, yelling at staffers over the phone, can back-fire.

The discussion spread far and wide and as I listened I began to hear an underlying concept, something I’d heard from others outside Missouri…the federal government is becoming irrelevant. Every new tyranny from Washington has an opposite and equal reaction within the states. The result of the reaction is more ‘nullification’ bills being filed in state legislatures. More states joining the Convention of States movement. More states resisting, and in many cases, succeeding, edicts being issued from Washington.

Prior to the Civil War, an individual’s primary loyalty was to his state. After that war, a person’s loyalty, supported strongly by the triumphant North, was to the country as a whole and to the central government. That viewpoint has continued until Obama was elected. (For some, it was earlier but I’ll not argue the point.)

What I am hearing from many across the country is a return to the primacy of state loyalty. The growing view that it must now be the states who defend their citizens from the tyrannical acts of the central government. It matters not the issue, be it education and common core, the EPA and water-rights, Obamacare and the forced expansion of medicaid, or the failure to secure our borders. Here, there, people’s loyalties are shifting and I don’t yet think the liberals have noticed. Yet.

I’m of two minds on this paradigm shift. I was born, as was my wife, in Illinois. I have relatives who live in the oppressive state, still. But, I’m glad my wife and I left over forty-five years ago. Missouri is now my state, my home, and I’m proud of it and our ‘Pub controlled legislature.But I’m still loyal to the nation as a whole—not the FedGov, but to the United States. I once swore an oath to defend the nation and the Constitution. I’ve not recanted that oath. But the Constitution no longer rules the federal government. Loyalty to the Constitution is not loyalty to the FedGov.

Note above, I said ‘Pub controlled state legislature, not conservative controlled. Not all of the ‘Pubs in Jefferson City are conservatives. It’s a work-in-progress to change them to conservatives…or replace them with conservatives.

I’m sure the libs will call those who have shifted their primary loyalty to their states racists, fascists, Nazis, the usual liberal diatribe. They overlook one central fact: conservatives can live quite well without the federal government in their lives. The liberals and social parasites, cannot. That, perhaps, may be the real divide within this nation.

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Acts of Defiance

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de·fi·ance
diˈfīəns/
noun
noun: defiance
1.
open resistance; bold disobedience.
“the demonstration was held in defiance of official warnings”

synonyms:

resistance, opposition, noncompliance, disobedience, insubordination, dissent, recalcitrance, subversion, rebellion

The country has been watching an act of defiance in Nevada for the last week. That confrontation between citizens and members of the federal government has subsided…for now. There was another act of defiance occurring in New York. That one received little attention from the media.

The state of New York requires gun owners to register certain firearms. Compliance to that law, known as the SAFE Act, has been low. Protesters to that law met outside the office of State Senator Mark Grisanti to protest the act.

Shredding SAFE Act Registration Forms In New York

By: Caleb Howe (Diary)  |  April 15th, 2014 at 05:10 PM

On Tuesday in upstate New York, outside the office of State Senator Mark Grisanti, gun owners gathered in protest. Together they shredded their SAFE Act registration cards to signify their non-compliance with the controversial new law. Grisanti is a Republican who helped to pass the SAFE Act, including by offering up changes to the bill to make it bipartisan.

Human Events wrote last week about a recent SAFE Act protest that had a huge turnout, and involved many of the same people and groups as the rally on Tuesday, where gun owners intend to shred their registration forms as a form of protest. One of the organizers, Rus Thompson of TEA New York, was recently interviewed about this event, and discussed in depth the reasoning behind the shredding.

Gun owners across the state have been speaking out and protesting the SAFE Act from the beginning. As Bearing Arms reported yesterday, as many as one million are refusing to register their weapons.

Non-compliance of the ban is expected to be between 90%-99%, but a provision in the NY SAFE Act prevents registration data from being shared with the public.

Non-compliance in the neighboring state of Connecticut is thought to be in excess of 85%, with an estimated 80,000-100,000 gun owners refusing to register their firearms. Connecticut State Police have made no move to enforce their law four months after their registration deadline, fearing possible armed resistance.

Conservative estimates are that at least 300,000 and as many as one million New Yorkers will likewise practice civil disobedience and refuse to comply with the registration requirement.

The Shredding Registration event has a Facebook page here, and was covered live by a local Buffalo talk radio station here.

The defiance in New York isn’t limited to gun owners. Some officials—county Sheriffs, have declared they won’t enforce the law, either.

Despite deadline, protesters ‘will not comply’ with SAFE Act

Registration deadline for law was Tuesday

By Lou Michel | News Staff Reporter , T.J. Pignataro | News Staff Reporter | @TJPignataro | Google+, on April 15, 2014 – 8:30 PM, updated April 16, 2014 at 2:04 AM

Rus Thompson, a tea party activist, shreds the state assault weapon registration form during a rally Tuesday outside the Mahoney State Building.

Rus Thompson, a tea party activist, shreds the state assault weapon registration form during a rally Tuesday outside the Mahoney State Building. Harry Scull Jr. /Buffalo News

Owners of assault-style weapons were supposed to have registered their guns by Tuesday.

But there is no way of knowing exactly how many of these weapons there are in the state and how many were registered under the NY SAFE Act.

The state refuses to say how many were registered, claiming it is confidential information protected by the law.

Gun-rights advocates estimate compliance will be less than 10 percent.

And in Erie County, the sheriff says he will not force his deputies to enforce registration.

“Theoretically, any law enforcement officer who encounters anyone with this type of gun at a minimum is supposed to record the serial number and the individual’s identity and report it to Albany,” Sheriff Timothy B. Howard said.

But will his deputies do that?

“I don’t know. I am not encouraging them to do it. At the same time, their own consciences should be their guide. I am not forcing my conscience on them. That is a decision they should make,” Howard said.

The sheriff’s opposition sits well with roughly 70 opponents of the law who gathered outside the Walter J. Mahoney State Office Building in downtown Buffalo late Tuesday afternoon to shred State Police registration forms for assault weapons.

It was seen as a form of civil disobedience to a law that opponents say was hastily drafted some 16 months ago in response to the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., where 20 elementary school children and six adults were slain by a heavily armed gunman.

But rather than make the public safer, opponents contend the law’s main accomplishment has been to create a new classification of criminals – individuals who out of conscience refuse to register their assault weapons because they believe the law overstepped their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The column continues at the website. The Erie County Sheriff echoes the sentiments of many law enforcement officials across the country. “Will…shall I comply with a law that is clearly unenforceable and does nothing more than make criminals out of formerly law-abiding citizens?”

The New York Sheriffs Organization has examined the SAFE Act and has found a number of flaws and inconsistencies. They noted these flaws on their website and point out that a number of the Act’s provisions are unenforceable and produce undue burden of their offices and other agencies and institutions.

Three acts of defiance with days of one another: the Bundy Ranch vs. the BLM, gun owners of New York vs. the SAFE Act, and the NY Erie County Sheriff versus that same SAFE Act. When you add the defiance of many states against Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, the refusal of those same states to create state exchanges, a person could reasonably expect more acts of defiance to occur at any time, any where.

 

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Hypocrisy at its fullest

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Hypocrisy: the essences of the Obama Administration.

Of all the irredeemable acts of Obama’s administration, one of the worse is its selective enforcement of the law, or, in some cases, attempting to enforce federal regulations as law. We have an excellent example of the former in the latest kerfuffle. The State of Kansas has passed and Governor Brownback has signed a series of laws that upholds Kansas’ 10th Amendment rights, 2nd Amendment rights, and reaffirms the state’s sovereignty.

Eric Holder says the Kansas law is unconstitutional.

Eric Holder Tells Sam Brownback That Kansas’ New Gun Law Is Unconstitutional

Posted: 05/02/2013 7:31 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/02/2013 8:09 pm EDT

Eric Holder Sam Brownback

Kansas officials are vowing to fight United States Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that the state’s new ban on federal gun laws is unconstitutional.

Holder wrote Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in late April that the new law which would prohibit the enforcement of federal gun laws on all guns that are made and stay in Kansas violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause and that the federal government would be willing to take Kansas to court over the law, the Associated Press reported Thursday. In April, Brownback signed the law, which is being described as the most pro-Second Amendment measure in the country. It says that any federal agent who enforces a federal gun law on a “made-in-Kansas” gun would face felony charges.

“Kansas may not prevent federal employees and officials from carrying out their official responsibilities,” Holder wrote to Brownback. “And a state certainly may not criminalize the exercise of federal responsibilities.”

On the other hand, Holder has no problem with federal employees not enforcing immigration law, nor failing to support DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. Eric Holder is not the Supreme Court. He can’t decided what is or isn’t constitutional. There is a process in place to follow for that determination, not a simple fiat from the federal bureaucracy.

Governor Brownback disagrees with Holder’s statement.

Sam Brownback Brushes off Eric Holder’s Opinions on 2nd Amendment Protection Act

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Today, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback sent a letter in response to Eric Holder’s direct threat against the state for its new law, the 2nd Amendment Protection Act.  It reads, in part:

The State of Kansas is in receipt of your letter in which you place Kansas on notice regarding the view of the Obama Administration concerning the state’s Second Amendment Protection Act.

This first sentence of Brownback’s letter is the most important. Holder’s letter took the position that the new Kansas law is unconstitutional – without question. And because of Holder’s view that he is the decider of all that is constitutional or not in this country, he threatened the state – and thus the People – of Kansas.

Brownback showed quite a bit of savvy with that sentence. He absolutely brushed off Holder by pointing out that his letter only represented “the view of the Obama Administration…”

Just because Eric Holder claims that the Kansas law is unconstitutional, doesn’t make it so. And Holder’s claim that he had no idea about “fast and furious” probably doesn’t make that so either.

Sam Brownback did a great service to the People of Kansas by reminding them that Holder is just sharing his opinion.

He also noted that the Kansas nullification law comes from the source of political power to which no American government is above – the People themselves.

“The people of Kansas have clearly expressed their sovereign will.”

Eric Holder doesn’t get to tell the People what THEIR constitution means. It’s the other way around.

The entire interchange brings forth a series of questions: If the federal government chooses to enforce one set of law while choosing to not enforce another set of law, should the states recognize the authority of the federal government to enforce any set of law? Does the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the law” equate to equal enforcement of the law? Is the failure to enforce existing law a failure to support that protection?

The final question derives from the above. Is the failure of the federal government, through selective and capricious enforcement of law and federal regulation violate the contract between the central government and the states?

More and more, states are examining that last question. None, yet, have responded. A prudent choice…but at some point, if the federal government continues on its current path, the answer the states may collectively choose, is, “Yes.”

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