New Mexico’s Governor is Not an Outlier, Raskin is Worse :: 09/19/2023

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s outrageous executive order suspending the right to arms in the name of a “Health Emergency” is just the latest and most blatant example of how far off the rails Democrats have gone on the issues of gun control, the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, and the Constitution in general.

It is important to recognize that Governor Grisham’s overreach did not happen in a vacuum. In fact, though her Executive Order pushed a little farther and harder than they were quite ready for, it is right in line with mainstream Democratic Party policy and fully supported by their media allies.

Another example: Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) claims to be a constitutional scholar. He taught constitutional law for 25 years before being elected to Congress. Yet, he recently presented a speech “debunking” the “right-wing myth” of a “right to insurrection” hidden in the Second Amendment and the Constitution. Rep. Raskin built a straw man argument from the pro-Second Amendment side so he could easily knock it down by citing the Constitution.

But Raskin’s entire thesis and flawed foundation can be summed up in his assertion that the founding fathers did not believe that the people had a right to overthrow the government when they wrote the Constitution.

Apparently, Rep. Raskin – despite his status as a “constitutional scholar” – never bothered to read the Declaration of Independence or to look at the history of events leading up to and following it.

Of course, the Constitution was needed in the first place because those same men who were writing it had just successfully overthrown the previous government using guns and established a new one.

Suggesting that they didn’t believe in a people’s right to overthrow the government is one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever heard.

The Democrats are actively engaged in developing “Newspeak.” British author George Orwell coined the term in his seminal novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Newspeak was a modernization of standard English (“Oldspeak”), which was created by an authoritarian regime in order to trim, limit, and simplify language and vocabulary to promote the regime’s agenda and thereby limit people’s ability to debate or even think critically, particularly about political topics. By changing language and definitions to eliminate the words upon which critical thought relies, questioning or challenging government authority would become literally unthinkable. The thoughts would become impossible without the words (and definitions) needed to express such thoughts.

Governor Grisham and Rep. Raskin are glowing examples of “Newspeak” in action. By redefining terms, restructuring language, and selectively rewriting history and our founding documents, they are able to argue that freedom is slavery and authoritarian control is liberty. California Governor Gavin Newsome stated almost this principle in a recent interview. In response to a question about his aggressive and draconian response to the COVID virus, Newsome first admitted that “we” got it wrong, then stated that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was a “threat to democracy,” due to his “authoritarian tendencies.” Lockdowns are freedom, and liberty is tyranny.

They are aided and encouraged in these backward and destructive concepts by the entire apparatus of the Democratic Party and the legacy media, along with big tech and special interest groups like unions and the “social justice” movement. This authoritarian cabal has been inundating the public with lies and distortions for decades. The same cabal then uses the public’s belief in the lies as proof that the lies are true. When we refute the lies with verifiable, incontrovertible facts, they accuse us of rewriting history and distorting the intentions of the founders. They make baseless claims about the efficacy of gun control laws while accusing us of empowering murderers and suggesting that we have “blood on our hands” because we oppose restrictions on our right to arms, when in fact, their gun control proposals – which they avoid calling “gun control” – don’t save lives, don’t reduce crime, and only impact people who value and protect the innocent.

Governor Grisham made the mistake of believing the lies she’s been told and been repeating. Whoops.

In that mistaken belief, she got slightly ahead of her peers in advancing the agenda, like an overzealous ground commander who leads a bayonet charge against an entrenched enemy and gets too far out in front of his own troops, only to be cut down before he reaches the line. The troops halt their advance, racing back to the safety of their trench, and the other ground commanders, who were also poised for a charge, step back and shake their heads. It doesn’t mean the war is over or even that another charge isn’t being prepared. It just means that they will hold back and build their forces a while longer before trying the maneuver again.

Governor Grisham’s mistake merely informed her fellow Democrats that the people aren’t yet indoctrinated enough for that level of government overreach, so they’ll work harder to indoctrinate folks into their “Newspeak” delusions.

For almost thirty years, all violent crime, including crime involving firearms, fell while gun laws were being liberalized around the country, and gun sales were going through the roof. During that dramatic decline, gun control proponents talked about a “gun violence crisis” despite the data showing steady improvement. The media turned murderous rampage killers into celebrities, generating box scores and daring the next lunatic to try and beat that of the previous one’s record to become the new champion. They blamed it all on you and me.

Still, murder and assault using firearms kept falling, so the media and “experts” began padding the numbers by counting suicides and justified self-defense as victims of “gun violence.” They began shifting other definitions as well. Terms like “school shooting” shifted from incidents of a rampage killer attacking children at school to now include gang violence near schools, unintentional discharges in college dorm rooms, and muggings in parks near schools. A “mass shooting” became not just a rampage killer attacking innocents at a shopping mall or workplace but now includes shootouts between drug dealers and street gangs. And “children” now include career criminals up to 21 years or older.

All of this redefining of terms was progressing through the years to keep “gun violence” numbers as high and scary as possible, even though murders and assaults involving firearms kept going down. Without this sort of data manipulation, it was clear that firearms-related violent crime was often falling faster in areas with the most open gun laws, while it fell slower in areas where draconian gun control measures were enacted. Yet the message of the gun control zealots was so pervasive that most Americans believed “gun crime” was constantly going up. Gun control became an article of faith in the Democratic Party, spreading from violence-ridden big cities out into the hinterlands where murder and assault were almost unheard of. This resulted in pushes for gun control in states like Washington, Oregon, New Hampshire, and even Vermont, where “gun crime” was rare.

During the pandemic and the “social justice” stupidity that went along with and followed the George Floyd “Summer of Love,” there was a dramatic upswing in violent crime. Nowhere did it get back up to the levels of the early ‘90s, but rates of violence went up significantly from their pre-pandemic lows, prompting even louder cries for more gun control – often including calls for “new” laws that have been in place for decades. Most of those efforts were thwarted, but violent crime involving firearms has begun to go down anyway.

That’s the real “crisis” that has spurred such a flurry of demand for more gun control lately. Democrats and their media allies are desperate to push through more restrictions before the public realizes that the “crisis” of “gun crime” is false.

Governor Grisham should be arrested and prosecuted for her attempt to deny constitutional rights under the color of law. Gun control propagandists like Rep. Jamie Raskin should be ousted from office and replaced by people who actually respect our founding documents and the rule of law. In broad strokes, that means defeating Democrats across the board and replacing them with Republicans. Unfortunately, Republican politicians, as a group, are only marginally better than the Democrats. But “marginally better” is the only way we’re going to get back to sanity.

GunVoters’ best opportunity to make a difference is in the Republican primaries. Get out and Vote for solid pro-rights candidates so we have people worth voting for in the general election.

https://www.ammoland.com/2023/09/new-mexicos-governor-not-an-outlier-raskin-worse/#axzz8DoVm2LHc