There has long been a provision of federal law that allows Americans to petition the U.S. Attorney General (AG) for relief from firearm disabilities on a case-by-case basis, a little-known piece of information due to the function lying dormant since 1991. You see, it’s easier to lose the right to purchase or possess firearms than one might think, and many of the offenses and the conditions surrounding them point to the fact that the prohibited individual does not pose any enhanced risk of physical harm to themselves or the public. So why, then, and how have Americans lost this fundamental access to the restoration of a Constitutionally enumerated liberty?
It began in 1991 when a Bolshevik anti-Second Amendment group, the Violence Policy Center, released a report that claimed occasions upon which some citizens who were granted relief would later go on to re-offend. It is important to note that although the AG oversees the provision, the administration process for the petitions had been handed down to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Politicians, in their ever-knee-jerking zeal to strip Americans of their right to bear arms, responded to the report in Congress by passing language in ATF funding bills that prohibited the use of any funds for this purpose.
Now, if you’re thinking that Congress is passing bills contradictory to the law and circumventing both the rights of Americans and the authority of the AG, then you are right on track, but this is nothing new. Look at all the existing gun control laws, both on the federal and state side, that already circumvent Constitutional law and the politicians and activist judges that have ushered them into existence and protected them from legal challenges. It is easy, then, to determine that all branches of the government have long since been in cahoots to some extent and that the tyrannical ship sailed on the American people years ago.
Last week, The Washington Post published an editorial in its opinion section by two law professors who argued that the government should resume funding the rights restoration provision on the grounds that categories of prohibited individuals include people who would not be demonstrably dangerous and whose Second Amendment prohibitions would likely not survive U.S. Supreme Court caselaw scrutiny. The professors also stipulate that the ability to seek relief itself may shield the overly broad categories of prohibition from further Constitutional challenges, which could perhaps lead to the Supreme Court striking down possession prohibitions entirely, two issues that I do not find mutually exclusive. However, I am not sure the High Court, even in its current perceived configuration, is capable of such Constitutional reverence.
The issue of rights restoration recently reemerged as the Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Trump has started reviewing petitions through the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a very clever workaround to the illegal ATF funding rider issued by the Politburo, AKA Congress, which deprives Americans of not only their Second Amendment liberty but also their right to due process. Legal precedent requires the government to carry the burden of proof that an individual poses an enhanced risk of harm to self or others before prohibiting them from purchasing or possessing firearms.
Those of us who live in reality understand that criminals intent on violent crime and murder do not give pause to their actions in order to follow legal protocol and procedure when obtaining firearms. Instead, they see those laws as a means to make law-abiding citizens more vulnerable to their objectives and, in that sense, make great partners to the left and any lawmakers who follow the subversive path of the gun control agenda. Leaving Americans unprotected in this manner invites violence, which creates the oppertunity for further infringements upon our rights under the guise of protecting our safety, and that cycle is designed to continue until all freedom is lost. Guess what happens next.
When I hear remarks about America being a beacon of freedom, I think to myself, sure, maybe relatively speaking, depending on what state you live in, but not in any general understanding. I’m sure it was at one time, long before I was a twinkle in the eyes of my parents. I wish I could have seen it back then. But individual liberty has not survived the scrutiny of disingenuous agendas and their narratives that claim to know better what Americans need than Americans themselves. The idea that politicians and the government need to strip our freedoms to protect us is insulting and is not even original, as the same tired scheme has been used ad nauseam historically to subjugate populations around the world.
“The idea that politicians and the government need to strip our freedoms to protect us is insulting and is not even original, as the same tired scheme has been used ad nauseam historically to subjugate populations around the world.”
Something comes to mind … something along the lines of, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
While we are tired of the above scheme, governments enthusiastically keep applying it because it keeps working.
If we want our government to abandon that scheme, then we have to convince them that it will not work. Suggestions? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
If we want our government to abandon that scheme, then we have to convince them that it will not work. Suggestions? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
OoOo, OK. I’ll answer like it’s 2017 again. In long form that, IRL, is still condensed more than you want to think about.
Well, the first thing that has to happen is that virtually everyone needs to have most of their sacred cows slain and publicly defiled then lit on fire and left on public display.
As I’ve said many times: The problem is us. What I mean by that is that, generally, we’re lazy, easily distracted, ignorant, overly emotional and willing to give up freedoms for promises convenience, safety, both or the illusion (lies, that is) of one, the other or both. We’re also mostly brainwashed in many directions at the same time.
I’ve also noted the effects of what I call “Generational Warfare” starting around 2012. I’ve gone into some detail, though not full detail, on that for a very specific reason: It’s a divide and conquer technique that works exceedingly well because people don’t question the veracity of claims they see all the time and therefore don’t question if they’re being fed a narrative.
The goal of all divide & conquer is to get groups of people to distrust/dislike each other enough that they cannot come together against a common enemy/threat. It also makes the other games being played more effective via either an additive or multiplicative effect (I’m not really sure how to quantify this so I can’t tell which operation applies.) Like it or not, this has been done to the US public and a huge percentage of Conservatives and POTG have fallen for various aspects of it hook, line and sinker because carefully crafted narratives played to their preconceived notions and emotional disregulation. Sorry, facts.
Now other games, like controlling both tines of a fork, holding a false Sword of Damocles over a group or creating a Decision Dilemma are that much more effective because people who would normally be able to have a rational discussion no longer can. With regards to a Decision Dilemma, once shown the plot often gets lost to those screaming “So, you mean we shouldn’t do anything!?” which is not something that was ever suggested. Now nothing will get done because those people suck the oxygen out of the room. Nifty triple trick, eh?
And as long as you play their game, you’ll continue to lose. Like gambling, this isn’t meant for you to lose every hand. It’s meant to let you win just enough to think you’ve got a shot and then take you for another round of massive losses over time.
That’s exactly where we are on civil rights, war, debt, deficits, medical interventions, drugs, immigration etc etc etc etc…. etc etc… You get the point.
You think it’s hard to talk to antigun people or middle aged wine moms but often don’t see that the exact same division exists elsewhere. Anyone under 50 at this point feels exactly the same way trying to discuss Social Security with older people because the older people have been socially programmed to kneejerk emo reactions on this topic which is evident if you look at their responses and think for two seconds. Running in the reverse direction, older people trying to talk to the <50's about "responsibility" or "hard work" runs into exactly the same problem.
The issue is not that Boomers are utter narcissists who don't GAF about anyone but themselves nor is that everyone under 50 or 40 is a brainwashed Leftist with no personal responsibility and a strange predilection for dying their hair outrageous colors.
The issue is that the entire system has curated a show for both sides that has essentially brainwashed both sides into an ideological position that has solid points AND serious holes. Each side only looks at the valid points their making and the other side's holes. Both are blind to the holes in their own argument and the valid points the other side makes. As others have said, we're watching the same screen but not seeing the same movie. In large regard, that's no accident.
Which is to say that, as a society, we took the bait.
Some of this is planned, some of it is emergent behavior that is merely profitable in the short term at a long term cost of degrading society to the point that the country is at risk of ceasing to function or slipping into an outright civil war. Both are toxic.
Consider Lolbertarians and many Cons for a moment and their religious adherence to the concept of a Free Market. You know, that thing Adam Smith talked about. Great, right? A thing to aspire to, surely!
Yeah, that's thing he also said never has and never will actually exist other than as a theoretical construct because it's not actually possible to achieve. Most people didn't get that last bit because they never actually read the book, they incorporated a mythology about the book in school.
However, breaking people out of this is very hard because as I've said more times than I can recall, the whole point of a lot of this was to build a prison in the mind which the prisoner will defend believing it to be a castle.
If you want to break all of this, you have to understand how it works and show it to other people. That will be decidedly uncomfortable for you and for them, and if you revert to the mean we've had since the 1950's, you will fail because that's the training you will fall back on.
You want to fight this battle and win? It's going to take serious work. You need to look at it like you're going to try something like the Q course and dedicate yourself to preparing for it knowing full well that the real job starts after you pass that test and that this is a system of pure equality and there are ZERO excuses. You either pass or you don't. Passing will require enormous effort on your part over time and will require you to fundamentally alter who you are in some regards.
Can you handle that level of challenge or are you going to tell me about your day job taking up a lot of your time? I'm not trying to be antagonistic with that question, it's a serious question. A screening tool, if you will.
Maybe you care enough about this and the future of your country to really buckle down and get to work knowing its an uphill battle that will only get harder for the foreseeable future and that the only guarantee is that if you put in the work, you will stand shoulder to shoulder with people like yourself. Straight talk; this isn't fun and can literally get you killed.
Or, maybe this ain't for you. There's no real shame in that, some people just aren't cut from the right cloth for this particular job and are better placed elsewhere.
As I've said before, its some Judges 7 shit because for all the nonsense post-Trump's win, the waters we are in, and have been in for some time, are deep and here there be real monsters. Monsters which we've only seen the tips of the tentacles of. Monsters who've been content to lay well below the surface for decades but have now taken note of us because we've become a threat because we noticed some of those tentacle tips.
Oh, and they're also organized, well funded with your currency as well as that which they print, highly intelligent and the product of an evolutionary process that has stripped them of many things that don't work and kept the things that do and they have stupid amounts of power and control over most things world wide.
So… you wanna, like… grab a harpoon or are you, you know… like, busy?
^^^ True story!
strych9,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
I am pretty sure that I am already seeing the world around me in a very different way from the masses. Helping that: I have always been a sharp cookie and gravitated toward doing things differently.
The really interesting question is whether or not I am at a “season” in my life which allows for such difficult expenditure of energy to tackle–head-on–the evil that is burgeoning all around us. I have been literally busting my ass since fourth grade, both in terms of working hard and dealing with ludicrous amounts of adversity in pretty much every possible arena in my life.
I have recently been considering throttling back for a spell, maybe two or three years, to recharge and reinvigorate. Meanwhile, feel free to, “lay it on me.”
As per usual, I’m using “you” in the general sense of “you the reader”, not “you uncommon_sense and only uncommon_sense”.
Though, yes, it does apply to you specifically as you read the comment as it’s meant to be somewhat of a prompt for self-reflection.
More generally, it’s a slightly more personal way of addressing someone who reads what’s written and it’s a ton less typing than correctly inserting the 2nd and 3rd person pronouns to cover every possibility like some sort of godawful HR letter.
===
That said, there’s nothing wrong with your position. Left unstated, but I would think it to be reasonably obvious, you can jump in and out of this as your life permits. I don’t make every scheduled BJJ class, even those I’m supposed to teach because life happens. I also sometimes skip the gym for the same reason (gasp!).
Provided that you spend a bit of time on a regular basis keeping up to speed on the current situation, you can come and go as you please from such work without much disconnection. That’s why I’ve gone out of my way to post the basics of stuff in a way that people can reference back to the comment (or be like Geoff and copy it into a text file).
Once you know that stuff, you can get back up to speed in the future damn fast. Or, if you’re a go-getter, you can spend a couple hours a month staying up to date. If you’re a go-getter and lazy you can set up an X account that will basically act as an RSS feed for you and at any point in time you can get up to speed in <30 minutes even if you've been gone for months.
The people who drive me nuts are the people who try to convince me that they're so busy that they couldn't squeeze in a single school board meeting for 30 years or more. I'm sorry, that's not true and, frankly, it's outright lazy and entitled bullshit.
Restoration of rights?
I’m still trying to get my rights to carry in 18 states.
Trump can carry a brace of black powder pistols
senseless….You should have focused on the word Historically then inform big government Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is an agenda History Confirms is Rooted in Racism and Genocide…Your Failures to comprehend the quote and proceed to Define Gun Control by its Historical History provides standing for Gun Control…Try thinking outside the box you and your pals reside in.
“While we are tired of the above scheme, governments enthusiastically keep applying it because it keeps working.”
It doesn’t work, except for them to keep getting elected and continue doing it to law abiding people. They already know it doesn’t work to control the criminal element because the criminal element keeps right on being crimnal’y and growing, so they use ‘rights removal and infringement’ as the excuse to ‘protect us’ to control the law abiding because they can’t control unless they have a population to control.
Thus: “The idea that politicians and the government need to strip our freedoms to protect us is insulting and is not even original, as the same tired scheme has been used ad nauseam historically to subjugate populations around the world.”
I’ve noted this before, though perhaps not quite so explicitly:
This kind of thing happens all over the place and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Mostly, people haven’t seen it and therefore are unaware of it. They therefore default to “what they know”, which is the story they were told. It’s not so much that they outright believe this story, it’s that they have no other frame of reference.
This is why I bang on about understanding propaganda and brain systems. Because if you don’t, you’ve pretty much already lost.
There are huge numbers of unconstitutional things going on at both the state and federal level and they tend to follow two general principles. First, there was a massive propaganda campaign to make the unconstitutional behavior popular with a large section of the public, and second, it’s difficult to fight this stuff if you’re do not possess a combination of extreme determination, wealth and standing. Even then, it’s a tossup because courts are not entirely insulated from politics and culture the way the Right would like to believe. How do you make a stalwart judge an activist? Make sure they understand that the zeitgeist puts their family at risk.
Further, the programs to popularize these .gov powergrabs have been so effective that it’s essentially impossible to discuss the topic in a rational way because people’s knee-jerk reaction will be to attack you as being either pro-“bad thing” or someone who engages in bad thing and therefore purely self-interested. [There’s an interesting side bar there about projection, but I digress.]
It has become nearly impossible to keep a conversation centered on “But is this the proper role of government?”.
One of the things that the public needs to be made keenly aware of, possibly via literally beating it into their heads, is that the “USAID story” is OLD, going back to JFK, but really before JFK. He just needed a way to finance black ops in countries bordering Vietnam and to do so with deniability. The actual systems have existed since at least 1948. As with so many of our problems, these things are not new, they’re simply more noticeable. Partly that’s a function purely of the media environment and partly because the people running this stuff have gotten a bit sloppy after decades of no one calling them out.
It’s also critical that the public understand how these things work because these people/systems are going to strike back. The current chaos “on the Left” will not hold. They’ll have their “stakeholder” meetings and they’ll form a cohesive plan to hit back in ways that most people don’t believe are *possible in America*. The tentacles went out all over the world, they’ll come back and attempt to strangle whoever steps on the head of the octopus back here in the US and they will be far more effective than you want to believe.
To butcher some John Paul Jones: Buckle up, they have not yet begun to fight back and you have no clue what’s in their arsenal.
Damn, dude, you are nailing it! 👍
Perhaps, but some tools are obvious because they are openly discussing or even using them. Mandatory digital transactions and digital ID. Seizure or freezing of personal assets and property of dissenters. A key goal is to make it so you can’t obtain food, housing or healthcare without their blessing, age old technique, just starve the people who won’t submit, along with those who simply aren’t useful.
I’ve gone into some level of detail on those before.
They’re part and parcel of the same bag of tricks. This is all part of an old game to solidify control. Both *parties* are in on it because politicians are mostly all the same, desiring power and money.
Welfare recipients, that is the those on regular welfare and retirees on Social Security/Medicare (yes, these are a form of welfare because they’re a transfer payment, been that way for decades) will be the initial targets because they’re easy to manipulate and are pre-isolated at this point. Starting there also creates both supply and demand in large quantity at the same time.
Neither group will provide much in the way of resistance, though the retirees will claim that they will right up until they fold like a lawn chair when the pressure gets put on. The data on that is clear, the path is obvious and the outcome predetermined unless we can hit a critical mass of people who actually know what they’re looking at and think critically rather than lying to themselves and claiming that they do.
And that pressure will come via the same basic manipulative tactics I’ve been talking about for years. Sure, some will be steadfast against it but they won’t have a choice because this is a statistical game that they figured out long ago and which the Right still argues doesn’t actually exist even though it’s been beating them for a century.
In the end, they’ll get both groups as their beachhead because all they need is enough of each group and those people will drag the rest along as things are implemented, as it always is. Willing participants will, sadly, outnumber resistors by a wide margin. Again, the data makes that obvious.
I’ve been on this trip for 20 years since I was in high school. The story hasn’t changed, nor has your average person’s acceptance of reality. Overall, this bodes poorly.
If you have a firearm disability, does that mean that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies?
Freedom 🇺🇸🥰
Xaaaxx
Restoration of rights?
I’m still trying to get my rights to carry in 18 states.
Trump can carry a brace of black powder pistols
After Trump’s Election, Several NSF-Funded Censorship Tools Go Missing.
“The National Science Foundation incubated a host of online censorship programs starting in 2021 — funded by millions in taxpayer dollars.
…
The National Science Foundation (NSF) claims to be the place ‘where discoveries begin’ — but it funded programs where free speech ends. When The Federalist asked if it still funds anti-‘misinformation’ tools, a representative simply pointed to its public grants database, which lists censorship projects funded during the Biden administration.
…”
https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/02/after-trumps-election-several-nsf-funded-censorship-tools-go-missing/
“We claim them from a higher source – from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.
—- John Dickinson, on the source of our Rights, 1776″
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
—- Samuel Adams in writings four years before the Declaration of Independence” (In short, you don’t have intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, or property rights, or anything else – like a right to life – unless you also have the right to defend them from being taken from you.)
“The first principle of government is founded on the natural right of individuals, and in perfect equality. Locke, Vattel, Lord Somers, and Dr. Priestley, all confirm this principle.
—- Luther Martin in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, and to affirm that of Samuel Adams (above)” (and on affirming the role of government is to protect and defend rights, not control them or burden them or infringe them.)
Rights are not gifts to be given us as permissions by governments, as Thomas Paine wrote:
“An enquiry into the origin of rights will demonstrate to us that rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another.”
(and further writings from Paine)
“A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are.” (thus the added detail of what those rights are codified in the first 10 in the Bill of Rights supporting and for the defense of ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”)
And to put it best, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
The intent was clearly that government authority was to keep away from the rights of the people, not to infringe or control them and not burden the exercise of them (i.e. levy fees or ‘training and skill proficiency test requirements’ and permission from government via permit requirement and restrictions on where or how or with what they can be exercised). These are natural unalienable Rights, they do not belong to governments to control or permit or be burdened with requirement to be exercised. But at the same time Its also clear that, obviously, criminal conduct in harming others was not intended but just as clear is that its not somehow governments rights to impose upon those not in-such-criminal-conduct to burden their rights with infringe or control them and burden the exercise of them (i.e. levy fees or ‘training and skill proficiency test requirements’ and permission from government via permit requirement and restrictions on where or how or with what they can be exercised) as the excuse or means to ‘control’ such criminal conduct as the founders recognized this as what it is, a thing they called tyranny.
The philosophical debate over “natural rights” throughout the 1700’s was epic and something that every high schooler should be trained in detail on.
Too bad no high schooler ever has been. Which, IMHO, is part of why you have people on the actual Alt-Right going “post liberal” by which they do not mean post-American/Euro Liberal in the 20th century. What they mean is “I’m done with classical liberalism as formulated during the Enlightenment because it’s a disease born out of the Enlightenment”.
They then articulate a weird sort of not very cohesive thought structure that leads towards some sort of neo-Monarchist/Feudal or neo-theocratic view.
Scary as hell in several regards but interesting to watch someone like Carl Benjamin, who I might note is a damn sight better educated than most Americans, start down that road as a reaction to the current situation in Europe.
TTAG needs better tech support. There were some weird things going on with the comments yesterday.
Do they post today without a 40+ minute delay? I’m about to find out.
This new and improved site has some posting problems that keep popping up like Tulips in Springtime.
This new and improved site has some posting problems that keep popping up like Tulips in Springtime.
Hello TTAG. Is anyone listening?
The answer was “no”. My original reply took hours to post.
But it did post, so there’s that.
If it is a right, you should not be able to lose it. But then free speech was a right too, and it seems we have lost that one.
senseless….You should have focused on the word Historically then inform big government Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is an agenda History Confirms is Rooted in Racism and Genocide…Your Failures to comprehend the quote and proceed to Define Gun Control by its Historical History provides standing for Gun Control…Try thinking outside the box you and your pals reside in.