The Need for Single Issue Bills (and Cutting Pork)

Well... It looks like congress has passed yet another $1.7T, 4,155-page monstrosity of an "Omnibus" bill with enough pork in it to feed a nation.  The Michelle Obama Trail in Chicago.  "Ukraine Independence Park" in Washington, DC.  Naming a federal building in San Francisco building after Nancy Pelosi.  Only a mere $1.5M for securing our border.   

As quoted from an article by the Independent Sentinel, here are the most egregious of the out-of-control line items included in this bill:

$410 million towards border security for Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman.

$1,438,000,000 for membership in global multilateral organizations, including the UN.

$65 million for salmon.

$3 million for bee-friendly highways, & another $5 million for the salmon.

$65.7 million for international fisheries commissions.

$575 million for “family planning” in areas where population growth “threatens biodiversity.”

$3.6 million for the “Michelle Obama Trail.”

$477k for “antiracist” training from the Equity Institute.

$3 million for the LGBTQ+ museum in NYC.

$1.2 million in “services for DACA recipients.”

$11.33 billion for the FBI.

$1.75 billion for the ATF.

$2.63 billion for US Attorneys, emphasizing J6 prosecutions and domestic terrorism cases.

$26 million for the House of Representatives Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

$286 million in Title X funding, which funds Planned Parenthood.

$400k for the “Racial Justice Improvement Project.”

We've been demanding single issue bills for decades! NO bill should be more than a few pages long. This over 4,000 page bill represents all that is broken with our legislative process.  Who knows what other woke agenda items are hidden in this bill.  

The whole idea of "you've gotta pass the bill to find out what's in it" is absolute hogwash!  This bill puts us up to $31 TRILLION in national debt!  This is absolutely insane.

State (Firearms) Preemption Laws

I'm not sure that enough firearms owners are really aware of just how important a state's firearms preemption laws are.  More and more states with democrat legislative majorities are now targeting them to get rid of them.  Do these liberal legislative bodies know something that we don't know?  The answer to that is a firm YES!  They know how to get gun control by any and every means necessary.  

Some background: If a state has a firearms preemption law in place, it basically means that all the cities and towns within the state cannot just make up laws of their own if they are contrary to a state law, and thus creating an impossible to navigate "patchwork" of firearms laws throughout the state.  So, for example, if Colorado has a law stating that concealed carry permits SHALL be issued to anyone who passes the requirements to get the permit, then a city or town cannot make a law to ban concealed carry.  Another example, the state does not ban a certain type of firearm by law, and a city passes a ban on that type of firearm.  Anyone driving through that city by necessity (i.e. the Interstate runs through that city) and they are traveling somewhere else with no intent of stopping in that city, they cannot be arrested for being in possession of that firearm even though the city bans it.  Plus, it makes it easier to fight such a law on grounds of unconstitutionality.  

But without a preemption law in place, the cities can do whatever they want.  Again, I use Colorado as the example here because that's where I used to live.  Colorado recently passed a law to repeal the state preemption law, and now the various cities and towns are doing a full court press to create laws of their own to indeed create this impossible patchwork of firearms laws.  Before the preemption law was repealed, the City of Denver was unable to create a law banning concealed carry because the state law stated that a concealed carry permit SHALL be issued if the individual met all the requirements.  Now that the preemption law is repealed, Denver is most assuredly passing the law to ban concealed carry.  So even though someone has a state valid concealed carry permit in their possession, they can still be arrested for carrying a concealed firearm within the Denver city limits.  Before the repeal of the preemption law, the City of Boulder tried to create a law banning a certain type of firearm, but it was held up because their law was unconstitutional. (Don't ask me how Denver got away with it before this).  Now that the preemption law is repealed, Boulder can pass the law with virtually no impedance.

In Colorado, cities and towns like Boulder, Fort Collins, Denver, and even some of the smaller towns are now moving full steam ahead with banning types of firearms, banning concealed carry, and making it impossible to move throughout the state without violating a ridiculous patchwork of dissimilar and random laws.  I predict that before long, the once freedom-loving state of Colorado will be as un-second amendment friendly as California is now.

After Colorado repealed the preemption law, I decided that I had about had enough and moved to South Dakota where we do have a preemption law that states that cities who try to pass their own firearms laws that are contrary to the state's laws, the law will be null and void, and they will be the target of injunctive relief if they do not cease and desist!  I Remember recently, in our small town here in South Dakota, and this was right after a shooting in another state where someone used an AR-15 rifle, a poor frightened lady stood before our city council and asked them to make a declaration or pass a law outlawing AR-15s in our town.  No one on the council said a word.  Evidently, they didn't have the heart to tell this poor frightened soul that if they created such a law, the State Attorney General would be taking action against our town.  And THAT is exactly the type of protection from these random and useless laws that I want!  I feel sorry for her, but her fear does not trump my rights! 

Wake up, people!  If your state is trying to do away with your preemption law, you need to speak up!  Once your preemption law is gone, your towns can do whatever they want to take away your gun rights, and you now have one less thing to offer you protection. 

CDC Deletes Gun Defense Use Data

Guns are used in self-defense, or in defense of others, between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year. But the CDC, bowing down to pressure put on them by the anti-gun groups, deleted that information from their website and the studies that proved those numbers from their published data.  The CDC had commissioned a study on gun defense use, but the anti-gun groups stated that the CDC's actual findings made it more difficult for them to get gun control legislation passed. 

Dear CDC and Gun Control Groups: You can delete data and studies from your published materials all you want. But the fact of the matter is, that data STILL EXISTS!

When I went back to school to get my master's degree, one of my professors said something that still sticks with me to this day:

"Figures don't lie, but liars sure do figure."

In other words, CDC and the groups that you bow down to: You can't erase data just because it doesn't suit your agenda.!  Cancel culture doesn't work here.  Guns do save lives and are used in self-defense way more than you want to admit.  Our founders knew that, and we know it to be true today.

Thanks to Jared from Guns and Gadgets for another informative video.

His Plan is Bigger Than Ours...

Hi folks - apologies - it's been a long time since my last post.  A lot has happened in the last couple of years.  2021 was extremely busy for us as we finally completed our move from Colorado back home to South Dakota.  I "retired" from my job in Colorado, albeit a bit earlier than I had planned.  I could tell you of horror stories of a toxic workplace.  Let's just say that I, along with many of my colleagues, made a mass exodus and headed for the door.  Myself and one of my teammates simply got up and retired.  A few found other jobs.  My boss had even left by the time I retired.  When all was said and done, there were something like 35 vacancies in our department alone.  Some folks who I had known to be long-time veterans and staunchly loyal to that organization had just had enough and moved on.

 

The main motivation to retire early, however, came from the fact that I felt like God had been putting on my heart for months that He had other plans for MJ and I, and that it was time to turn the page and move into a new chapter.  The level of urgency that I felt in doing all of this was so overwhelming that I just couldn't ignore it.  Then in early 2020, the C0V1D epidemic hit, and our entire country turned upside down.  I do believe that God gives us messages in all sorts of ways.  It might be a sudden thought, or it might be in a vivid and startling dream.  And this was one of those times.  So, at the end of 2020, I said goodbye to my former profession as a Cyber Security Analyst, and our journey into the next chapter had begun.

Truth be told, I think there was more to this retirement and move than simply doing something on a whim and "hoping" it worked out ok.  Shortly after retiring, I got a part time "hobby" job as a Range Safety Officer at a local shooting range.  I had long joked with one of my buddies at work that when I retired, I was going to just be a shooting range bum, and maybe get a job as a Range Safety Officer or firearms instructor.  The thought of hanging out all day and watching people shoot, watching out for their safety, perhaps give some shooting tips, or just swapping stories about building guns or whatever really appealed to me.  I found it to be an incredibly fun and easy job.  But by this time, the cost of gas had risen significantly, however, and this job was about 15 miles from where I lived.

  

Very shortly after starting work there, and aside from the cost of getting to work getting awfully expensive, I woke up one morning in a cold sweat, having had a very startling dream in which I was told that we had to leave Colorado and move closer to MJ's family. I immediately told MJ that "we had to move back to South Dakota immediately."  Her only remark was "Well.. it's about damn time!" Colorado had turned extremely blue and progressive by that time, and we just had the feeling that things were about to get worse for liberty and gun rights than Colorado had already become.  I was as active as could be in trying to help Colorado elect good conservative candidates, but I had just found it to be a lost cause, and pretty much just gave up.  Conservatives in Colorado are now severely outnumbered.  Besides, we had family back in South Dakota, so we thought that the move back was the right thing to do.

Now mid-way through 2021, the C0V!D epidemic was in full swing, and the state of Colorado was getting even more draconian than it already was.  The lockdowns were ridiculous, and many people lost their jobs and businesses.  Definitely not the Colorado in which I grew up.  The liberal transplants from California were coming in by the thousands, presumably to escape the mess that they had created there, only to vote for the people who would give them the same failed policies which made them escape California.  Taxes went up; the cost of living went up; housing costs went up; crime went up; and more frustrating of all was that gun control was getting incredibly out of hand.  Another shooting brought in ever more knee-jerk reactions and dictates of "We gotta do SOMETHING!"  By the time we left, Colorado was successful in passing useless magazine restrictions, a poorly executed red flag law that deprived an accused of any due process whatsoever, gun storage restrictions that only hurt someone's ability to protect themselves in a home invasion scenario, and the repeal of the state's firearms preemption law.  After that, local towns and municipalities started passing any and all gun control measures that happened to catch their mood at the time.  Our own city of Fort Collins elected a mayor and city council that was full-on a clone of the city of Boulder with their progressive and anti-liberty policies. That's when he had just had enough and knew it was time to get out.

So we began planning.  Every now and then, I would sometimes just sit and contemplate what it would take to get our house in shape to sell if we ever thought we would move, and the thought of the amount of work that would have to be done was actually quite frightening.  I had even considered one day having to contact one of those "We Buy UGLY Houses" outfits because our house really needed some work. Plus, we had so much "stuff!"  We still had unopened boxes from our move back to the states from Japan decades ago, the move from California to South Dakota the first time we moved here, and from our move from South Dakota to Colorado for my job.  Some of this crap was decades old!  When all was said and done, we had to sell, give away, or simply throw away what amounted to about a third of our household clutter.  We had to do what seemed like some large-scale repairs, lots of painting, and a ton of yard work just to get the place presentable for sale.  When I counted up all the trips we had to make to the land-fill just to throw away all the trash, I had loaded up our SUV and our son's pickup truck something like twelve times!

But we had help.  It was never clearer to me that we have Someone bigger than us, with a plan that is much bigger than ours who can make the seemingly impossible and overwhelming happen.  As we started to have yard sales, we thought that this attempt to sell our no-longer-needed items would turn out a total bust like all the others we had done before.  But the people came and bought our stuff!  We put a lot of furniture up for sale, and people swooped in and took it off our hands immediately after posting the ads.  One by one, things just started falling into place.  Day-by-day, we were getting more done and making excellent progress.  Then in the summer of 2021, we both caught C0V!D.  We thought this would severely delay our plans, but we both had pretty mild cases, though, and we were back at it within a few weeks.  When it came time to finally put the house on the market, we had a sudden plumbing issue, but it was fixed in no time, and we got our house to market.  One of our neighbors across the street is a real estate agent, and she got our house sold in about a week after listing it.  Everything happened as if it was truly meant to be.

Then it came time to buy a house in South Dakota.  Right after our house in Colorado went under contract, we made a quick trip to South Dakota to meet with our real estate agent and start earnestly looking for a place to live.  To say the least, it was a challenge.  The real estate market was extremely wild, and it was really a seller's market.  What benefited us in one end (the sale) was now our biggest challenge on the buying end.  House after house on which we put an offer was swooped up by a cash offer investor.  But I am convinced again that God's plan is much bigger than ours.  During this entire time of having several offers turned down, we put an offer on a house in a small town, which also had several offers (one being a cash offer from an investor).  We had to cut our house-hunting trip short and quickly return to Colorado to avoid an approaching storm.  So we put an offer on the house we ended up buying, and even had to pull over at a rest area to sign the agreements and send them back to our real estate agent.  

Back in Colorado to continue packing and trying to look for houses online; the next thing we know, the real estate agent in South Dakota was calling us to tell us that our offer was accepted!  We weren't going to be homeless after all!  The majority of the houses that we were trying to buy were in very remote areas, but they had acreage, which is what we thought we wanted.  But in retrospect, I am glad we ended up where we did.  This house ended up being exactly where we needed to be for a multitude of reasons that I will write about later.  It's an older house, and a fixer upper.  But we love it and are extremely comfortable here.

At the end of November 2021, our house that we sold in Colorado finally closed, the movers had come to take all of our stuff, and MJ and I hit the road to make our final trip to South Dakota.  Since we had two vehicles, MJ's car, and me towing a U-Haul trailer with our immediate need items, we used walkie-talkies to communicate during the almost 700 miles drive to our final destination.  We departed very early in the morning, and I joked to MJ over the radio that "...it feels like we're sneaking out in the the middle of the night to escape a communist country..." A little exaggeration, perhaps.  But Colorado had gotten so bad that we feel like we just had to leave.  We felt like we were indeed "escaping" something.

Here it is the end of 2022, and we have been here exactly one year.  We love it here.  South Dakota has a wonderful Governor, and we absolutely love our new neighbors.  South Dakota is deep red, and very much in line with our own political ideas.  We live in an older neighborhood in a small town with a large veteran population.  The VFW and American Legion are mainstays in this community, as is avid support for the local schools and students.  We no longer live under draconian gun laws, and we live with people who clearly support our values of pro God, pro-life, pro-family, and pro liberty.  We feel like we are truly home again.

You will be hearing a lot more from me now.  Even though we are living in a deep red state (and I intend to help keep it that way), the rest of our country is still going to hell in a hand basket!  Must be bad, even the traditional Democrats are losing their own members!  The progressives have taken hold of our country and are doing unspeakable things to the values we once held dear.  I am bound and determined to speak out against these atrocities and try to help get our country back to the principles on which we were founded.

In Liberty - "The Gonz"

Epilogue:  In 2022, the U.S. economy went to crap.  Inflation rose to historical levels.  Interest rates were at a high not seen in decades.  The real estate market became a nightmare for both buyers and sellers, as it became more difficult to sell a home, and the amount of home that the average person could afford had shrunk significantly due to the higher interest rates.  I honestly believe that if God had not put the thought in my mind to retire early, we would not have decided to move back to South Dakota much earlier than we had originally planned.  Had He not planted these thoughts with us, I firmly believe we would not have been able to sell our house in Colorado or afford a mortgage even in South Dakota on my small retirement pay.  Within mere weeks of us obtaining a mortgage interest rate on our new house that was extremely affordable, the interest rates shot up and are now more than twice what they were when we made our move. But God is good all the time.  And all the time, God is good.  He had a plan for us which was much bigger than our own plan, and I passionately believe with all my heart that he put us where we needed to be.