How It’s Done Dept.

     In this installment of the “How It’s Done” series, Liberty’s Torch presents some examples not of “how it’s done by you,” but of “how it’s done to you.”

     First, a brief video by John Stossel about his attempt to get a concealed-carry permit...in New York City:

     Please watch it in its entirety before proceeding to the next segment, especially if you don’t live in the Big Apple or another large city with draconian anti-gun laws.

---

     If you did as I asked above, you’re now familiar with one large American city’s method for overruling, de facto, the Heller and McDonald decisions that established as a matter of Constitutional law the individual’s right to keep and bear arms. Other firearms-hostile districts use other techniques, but the intent is always the same: to erect as high a barrier as possible between the law-abiding citizen and his rights. Note that criminals don’t bother their heads about the legalities of firearms ownership – and that all such districts are dominated by Democrat regimes.

     Now let’s proceed to the great state of Michigan, one of the few where the residents are fairly easygoing about firearms...or were:

     School officials at KRESA West Campus in Kalamazoo, MI locked the campus down when a 4-year-old student’s father legally open carried his gun on campus. But when classes resumed, officials continued to lock down the daughter of the law-abiding gun owner, transferring the rest of the students to another class on a different campus – leaving her alone.

     The little girl’s mother says her husband just wants to protect their daughter, and neither he nor she should be punished for that since he was acting within the law.

     WWMT reports:

     Jamie Warren’s 4-year-old daughter looks forward to a music class at KRESA’s West Campus–a class parents are required to attend.

     Warren’s husband sat in on the class.

     “I think he attended two or three sessions before anyone noticed that he was carrying a gun,” she said.

     By law, Warren’s husband can open carry his gun.

     He didn’t want to go on camera, but Warren says its for the protection of their little girl.

     Charming, eh? The “authorities” couldn’t pressure the father out of exercising his rights, so they shifted their focus to his defenseless daughter. Wisely, her parents pulled her out of that snake pit. But sadly, most “educational institutions” – why yes, I do have a key labeled “sneer quotes!” – have the same attitude toward firearms. They’ll do whatever they can to discourage them...even if that involves tormenting a defenseless four-year-old girl.

     That’s not all, Gentle Reader. We’re just warming up.

---

     An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy. – Daniel Webster

     If you think New York City’s $430 exaction for a carry permit is severe, wait until you read what exercising your rights will cost you in the Mariana Islands:

     The Mariana Islands are a US controlled territory often forgotten, but now they have everyone’s attention. This small set of islands far off in the Pacific ocean passed a Senate Bill which is drawing a lot of criticism. As of April 11th, all new handgun sales are subject to a $1,000.00 tax. The governor of the islands, Ralph Torres, has since defended his position on passing the bill, and even suggested that this could be a model for others (referring to states in the U.S.)....

     An immediate thought is that this is an act of gun control. This is not far from the truth. Governor Torres is essentially trying to legislate what economic classes can purchase handguns under the veil of creating “safer communities.” Sadly, disarming law abiding citizens has never slowed criminals, but only gives them free range knowing people have less means to defend themselves.

     Where, in such a place, is the settled principle of American law that a tax or fee must have revenue as its primary purpose – that it may not be used as a backdoor prohibition of something that’s entirely legal?

     A brilliant friend of mine once propounded the following scenario: “Imagine that the police have come to your house. Though they have neither a warrant nor “probable cause,” they intend to perform a search of your home for unspecified items. You protest this invasion of your rights, whereupon the detachment commander says ‘Just give us $100.00 and we’ll let you be.’”

     If the police could do that, would Americans possess a true right to “be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects?” Or would it be something the “authorities” could arbitrarily grant or withhold on payment of a “fee?”

---

     Now that we’ve seen the lengths to which the “authorities” will go to keep you from bearing arms, let’s have a quick look at what the “public” bearers of arms are allowed to do:

     Eh Wah had been on the road for 12 hours when he saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror.

     The 40-year-old Texas man, a refugee from Myanmar who became a US citizen more than a decade ago, was heading home to Dallas to check on his family.

     He was on a break from touring the country for months as a volunteer manager for the Klo & Kweh Music Team, a Christian rock ensemble from Myanmar. The group was touring the US to raise funds for a Christian college in Myanmar and an orphanage in Thailand.

     Eh Wah managed the band's finances, holding on to the cash proceeds it raised from ticket and merchandise sales at concerts. By the time he was stopped in Oklahoma, the band had held concerts in 19 cities across the United States, raising money via tickets that sold for US$10 to US$20 each.

     The sheriff's deputies in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, pulled Eh Wah over for a broken tail light about 6.30pm on Feb 27. The deputies started asking questions – a lot of them. And at some point, they brought out a drug-sniffing dog.

     That's when they found the cash, according to the deputy's affidavit.

     Eh Wah was carrying $53,000 in proceeds from his fundraising tour. You can probably guess what happened next:

     The officers ended up taking all of the money – all US$53,249 of it. "Possession of drug proceeds," the property receipt reads.

     But they let Eh Wah go. They didn't charge him with a crime that night, instead sending him back on the road about 12.30am, with the broken tail light.

     The article – yes, it’s from a New Zealand publication. Strange that you’re reading about it for the first time, isn’t it? – says that “the officers didn't like Eh Wah's explanation for how he got the cash.” I rather doubt that. I doubt, once they found the money, that any explanation would have satisfied them. $53,000 is what our less savory citizens call “a nice haul”...and you may be sure that the Muskogee County police will do everything short of mass murder to keep it.

     Plainly, men with badges and guns have “rights” that a peaceable private citizen does not.

---

     “Liberals” don’t really believe in rights. No, not even the right to free expression. Hillary Clinton wants to rewrite the First Amendment, basically gutting it of its protections. Others on the Left might not want to wait that long:

     Americans who value freedom should find the prospects of a Clinton and a Perez presidency equally chilling. Clinton and [Secretary of Labor Tom] Perez have a shared distaste for freedom of speech: Hillary’s implicit but unmistakable opposition has been abundantly documented, whereas Perez’s distaste for the First Amendment seems even starker. In July 2012, Perez -- then the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, was asked by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ):

     Will you tell us here today that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?

     Perez could have simply answered yes, and maybe even cited the First Amendment. Instead, Perez refused to answer the question directly. Franks persisted, ultimately asking it four times.

     Perez at one point responded that it was a “hard question.” He simply refused to affirm that the Obama Justice Department would not attempt to criminalize criticism of Islam.

     As it turned out, the DOJ didn’t need to -- due to Hillary Clinton’s advice. Clinton called for Americans to embrace “old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.”

     The mainstream media now marches in lockstep on this issue. Most Americans are too cowed to speak out against the advancing jihad and the accommodation of Sharia principles that are inimical to American freedoms, as they are afraid of being branded as “racists,” “bigots,” and “Islamophobes.” A Clinton-inspired culture of “peer pressure and shaming” is working beautifully to intimidate Americans. Many simply have adopted her values, now believing it’s morally unacceptable to oppose jihad terror and to speak honestly about its ideological wellsprings.

     President Hillary Clinton -- or President Thomas Perez -- would only continue this trend, working to restrict the freedom of speech even further. Perhaps they would do away with their equivocating over the First Amendment and actually attempt to enshrine in law that disturbing yet increasingly popular slogan: “Hate speech is not free speech.”

     The authority given the power to determine what constitutes hate speech would wield tyrannical control over the rest of us, able to work its will unopposed by criminalizing dissent.

     Don’t imagine for a moment that “the power to determine what constitutes hate speech” would be any safer in the hands of conservatives.

---

     A lot of people in the Right have been talking about sitting out the presidential election. I can understand the impulse; if it should be Trump against Clinton in November, I’d be parroting David Letterman’s bon mot from a few years back: “What a pity it is that both these fine candidates can’t lose.” But there would be severe consequences to a Clinton regime. Think about the prospect of three Clinton appointees to the Supreme Court, for starters.

     There’s no hope in a third party. There’s no hope in state-by-state “nullification.” There’s no hope in protest movements. Should the Left prolong its grip on Washington, there would be no hope other than a successful violent revolution that, miraculously and against all precedent, succeeds in restoring the Constitutional constraints on government. The odds...well, let’s just say I’d rather squander my savings on lottery tickets.

     To preserve even the slightest chance of retaining even the shreds of our traditional rights, we must stay engaged. Indeed, precipitating as many of us as they can into disengagement is another example of “how it’s done to us.” The tyrants, the intolerant, and the tax-suckers never, ever disengage. They gain power to the extent that decent people do so.

     I plan to start practicing “holding my nose.” I do plan to continue breathing...until Election Day is behind us, at least. Your decisions are for you to make – and to live with.