And for Mexico, let them control their own borders – it’s long overdue.

I post the link above because the commentary below does not include the links:

From a gun show in Bloomington, IL, we receive news that gun and ammunition sales are through the roof.

This is one of those annual gun shows. In the past, attendance has been variable, sometimes even weak.

Our correspondent went there yesterday and stood in line five minutes just to get in. The show was packed with people eager to purchase guns and ammo, and we aren’t talking about the gun magazine.

Gun prices were reportedly high, and it didn’t matter what make, model, caliber, or design was being offered. Any gun would do. The most inflated, price-wise, and the most difficult to find, were those that were ‘black and plastic’. The cheapest plain-Jane AR-15, not a Colt or Bushmaster, was $1400. This is at least double last year’s price for the same firearm. There were no Colts or Bushmasters to be had. Bushmaster reportedly has a 100,000 gun backlog.

Ammunition was available but very pricey. 7.62 x 39 ammo was $440 for 1260 rounds of imported military surplus packed in tins. While ammo was available, it was in lesser quantities than a year ago. Prices were double, maybe more.

It was all selling.

Dealers were wishing they had the guns they had sold just six months ago, as they could now get prices double or even triple what they got back then. One fellow asked a dealer if he could get him “a cheap AK”. The dealer replied, “I can’t even get you an expensive AK.”

Last weekend there was the gun show in New Berlin, Il. In years past, it had a good gun show, but over the last few years it had really gone downhill. A lot of junk, trashy knives and fake swords, trinkets and doodads…like a lot of gun shows around here. But last weekend it too was packed, so full you could hardly get down the aisles. Over in Princeton, Il, and Peoria, Il before that, it was more of the same. One dealer reported that if he had a gun or ammo on his table, it was going to sell.

A quote:

I guess The Messiah’s economic stimulus package really is working. He just needs to send more money to Winchester, Federal, Remington, Speer, Bushmaster, Colt, RRA, S&W, etc so they ramp up production, get people spending their money, and get this economy turned around.

Another dealer said he hasn’t seen sales this good since Clinton was in office.

And here’s the thing:

“One dealer said that had he known Obama would have been so good for gun sales even he would have voted for Obama.”

Would Obama appreciate being such a force of improvement in the free market? It would appear that Obamanomics are indeed having a positive effect.

Last week Attorney General Eric Holder gave his ‘gun-grabbing’ speech, wherein he said we have to reinstitute the so-called “assault weapons ban”. What is interesting is what he and apparently the Obama administration see as the necessity for that action.

It’s to protect the Mexican government.

They can’t claim that these firearms are being used in crimes against American citizens. Holder’s own FBI statistics don’t support that they are. And murders nationwide are down, from a peak in the nineties during the Clinton era…and they have dropped despite the sunsetting of the Clinton ban. That statement is supported by Holder’s own FBI statistics. I wonder if Holder is one of those characters like over in the Congressional Circus or the White House, who is not confused by fact. See this interesting article for more on that. They really can’t claim that these firearms are being used against the Mexican government, since the stuff the Mexicans are dealing with are selective fire military weapons, not semi-auto stuff for the civilian market. But like everything else, the Obamamanians don’t want you confused with fact, and the weapon shown in the preceding linked article is simply not available to the public here in the US. That is a machine gun, and purchase of that item is very sharply restricted or even outright banned. Tom, Dick, and Harriet simply cannot purchase those guns.

From Holder’s speech:

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

So now it’s our fault that Mexicans are buying high end weapons. You don’t suppose it might be due to the fact that the Mexican government is so corrupt that even Chicago politicians are embarrassed by it? You don’t suppose it is due to the fact that the Mexican government cannot control crime within Mexico, and cannot protect its own citizens from violent criminals?

Does Holder really think that an ‘assault weapons ban’ in this country is going to solve Mexican criminal violence, and by extension, win the drug war we have been so futilely fighting for so many years?

And do Holder and Obama really think that all these people buying all these guns here at home are really going to give them up because the Democrats say so?

Really?

“The Hamdi decision held that US citizens could not be held indefinitely without due process. It allowed US citizens who were detained to seek to challenge their detention through US courts. That was contrary to the Bush Administration’s position that it had plenary authority to declare any US citizens an unlawful combatant and imprison them without access to the courts.”

Yes, Bush did not get all he wanted, but as Scalia said in his dissent, all the Court really defended was its own turf, ensuring that it would play some role in whatever new system of “due process” it created, but that certainly would not include the right to an indictment or the right to a jury trial that the Bill of Rights demands.

And, as I said, the majority held that an American citizen could be held as an enemy combatant and a military tribunal could be sufficient “due process.”

The President can still declare any citizen to be an enemy combatant, and when the courts review that detention they do not ask if there has been a criminal indictment. None is required. So, if you are so held, you are already removed from the criminal law paradigm, and now you will be dealt with in a new citizen military detainee paradigm – that is what the Court accepted as being just fine, on the say so of the President alone, and then the court will review that detention within this new paradigm. And it will give the government the benefit of the doubt.

So, for that review of the designation, you get no criminal charges, no grand jury, no indictment, and no jury trial. And that review can be carried out by a military tribunal.

And then if the designation is affirmed after review, you can then be tried by military tribunal, just as if you were a foreign enemy captured on a battlefield.

I suppose that is only a “victory” if you just don’t care about those parts of the Bill of Rights.

Look, I understand why you think it was a victory. The left media spun the Hamdi decision as some sort of victory, shouting from the rooftops that it was a win for liberty, simply because they wanted to have a role for the courts (because the left loves judges as the supposed “embodiment of public reason”), and they wanted some separations of powers.

But that decision was hardly a victory for the Bill of Rights or liberty.

Read Scalia’s dissent. While Scalia screwed the pooch in Heller, with all his wishy washy qualifications of the Second Amendment, Scalia was spot on in Hamdi. Under the Constitution no citizen can be tried by military tribunal for making war against the US. That is what the Treason Clause is for. A trial for treason, in a jury trial, in a civilian court, is what is required.

And, as Scalia noted, no suspension of habeas corpus had been enacted by Congress, so detention without trial was also unconstitutional.

As Scalia said, the majority was playing “Mr. Fixit” trying to make it all come out just right.

Splitting the baby.

If you don’t think I know what I am talking about then you must also think Scalia doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Go read his dissent. Please. Then see if you don’t change your mind;

Hamdi was a disaster even worse than Heller – far worse.

Stewart Rhodes

“Stewart, I think it’s you who doesn’t know what they are talking about.”

Well then, please enlighten me. What did you mean by victory?

Do you consider the Hamdi decision a victory? If so, why?

“Did we start a civil war when Bush started locking people up in military prisons without trial or recourse to the courts? No, that was fought in the courts, and won.”

Oh really? We “won”?

Do you mean the Hamdi decision, where the majority on the Court ruled that there is nothing that prevents this country from declaring a US citizen an enemy combatant, throwing them into a military brig without indictment, and even trying them by military tribunal?

Under Hamdi, such citizens STILL don’t get a trial – not a jury trial. Just whatever the Court wants to cook up, and the majority specifically said that a military tribunal could suffice.

Is that what you mean by that issue being fought in the courts and “won”?

Or do you mean the Padilla decision in the Fourth Circuit, which was even worse, since it entirely agreed with the Bush Admin assertion that Padilla (a US citizen) “captured” in the US could be held without indictment, without charges, and without a jury trial. That is still a good precedent, since the Bush Admin ducked review at the Supreme Court.

The protection of the Bill of Rights can now be stripped from any American citizen upon the mere say-so of the President.

Are those your definitions of “victory”? Gee, you sound just like the NRA.

Gonna call for strict enforcement and application of the Military Commissions Act, including its definition of “unlawful combatant” which also applies to citizens?

Gonna help draft the “citizen combatant military detention and trial act of 2009″?

Sebastian, you really just don’t know what you are talking about on this issue.

Stewart Rhodes