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Author: Jose Nino

Pro-Gun Control Politicians Want to Slap On Health Warnings for Prospective Gun Owners

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Gun Rights. No Comments on Pro-Gun Control Politicians Want to Slap On Health Warnings for Prospective Gun Owners

Illinois is cementing its status as one of the most anti-gun states in the country. Democratic Representative Kathleen Willis introduced House Amendment 1 to House Bill 96, which would place a health warning for prospective gun owners. According to the NRA-ILA, this amendment “would criminalize private transfers, require local law enforcement to obtain warrants to seize firearms from holders of revoked Firearm Owner’s Identification Cards (FOID), and make the process to apply for a FOID card more expensive and cumbersome by requiring applications be made in person with Illinois State Police (ISP).” Now, there are new reports about how this bill will make FOID applicants receive a Surgeon General-style warning about the potential dangers that come with firearms ownership. The warning specifically says:
Warning: The presence of a firearm in the home has been associated with an increased risk of death to self and others, including increased risk of suicide, death during domestic violence incidents, and unintentional deaths to children and others.
Illinois is a logical starting point for this type of gun control bill. It was one of the states most affected by the gun control tsunami of 2018 that followed the Parkland shooting. According to Guns & Ammo magazine, Illinois is the 41st best state for gun owners. For a state like Illinois, this kind of a gun control proposal does not seem far-fetched. HB 96’s emphasis on firearms posing a “public health” problem is one of the latest strategies that anti-gun advocates have used to advance gun control. The American Medical Association declared on June 12, 2018, that gun violence is a “public health crisis”, thus necessitating more gun control. Another derivative of this strategy is the use of mental health to justify the passage of the so-called “red flag” gun confiscation orders and other forms of gun control. This assumption seems reasonable at first glance, but evidence from a study Mental illness and reduction of gun violence and suicide found that around 4 percent of violence is connected to mental illness. Indeed, the evidence of mental illness playing a role behind gun violence is dubious at best. However, there’s something stronger at play. The appeals to health are tactics that date back all the way to the Soviet Union. Soviet Union authorities gained notoriety for using psychiatry to imprison their opponents. Those who held views outside the party line would be considered “crazy” and subject to brutal “re-education” programs. The Soviet Union collapsed but the specter of its tyrannical tactics haunts the halls of legislatures nationwide. Attempts to associate mental health with gun violence will likely grow as our political climate becomes more polarized and people to continue to accept the state as the micromanager in human affairs. What’s truly sad is how the plight of the mentally ill, who deserve our sympathy and support, is used as a political football to move statist causes. But anything goes in the free-for-all that is politics.

Eric “Nuke Em” Swalwell’s Gun Control Program is Ineffective and Tyrannical

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Gun Rights. 1 Comment on Eric “Nuke Em” Swalwell’s Gun Control Program is Ineffective and Tyrannical

On April 16, 2019, Fox News host Tucker Carlson found himself in a heated exchange with The Collective PAC founder Quentin James. The debate centered around the controversial California Congressman Eric Swalwell’s gun control proposals. Swalwell gained notoriety for his comments that implied the government would nuke gun owners in a Civil War scenario. Despite receiving tremendous backlash for his comments, Swalwell announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential elections on April 8, 2019. Swalwell’s campaign will be centered around gun control. Nearly a year ago, Swalwell advocated for a forced buyback for “military-style” weapons. This became the centerpiece of the Tucker Carlson vs. Quentin James debate as Swalwell has continued to advocate for assault weapons bans in the wake of the New Zealand shootings. James defended the Congressman, claiming that Carlson, “had it a little wrong.” He clarified that “Congressman Eric Swalwell did say he wants to ban military-style assault rifles. He also said that folks who want to keep them would be able to do so at a gun club or a hunter’s range in a locker, so it’s not taking them by force. It would be a buyback program.” However, Tucker rebutted this claim by pointing out that Swalwell’s program is “not a buyback program, that’s a gun confiscation by force,” because law-abiding gun owners who refuse to turn in their guns would be thrown in jail under Swalwell’s gun control scheme. This type of buyback program is inspired by Australia’s program in the 1990s where more than 650,000 “assault weapons” were handed to national officials. Although this program was able to reduce the supply of firearms from 3.2 million to 2.2 million, there was no dramatic decline in homicide or suicide rates that many gun control proponents expected. Interestingly, this buyback did not reduce overall gun ownership in the long-term. From 1997 up until the present, the number of guns in circulation went from 2.5 million to 5.8 million. In the 1990s, gun controllers achieved a major victory through the enactment of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). However, the claim that assault weapons were behind the majority of mass shootings is misguided at best. According to Gary Kleck’s study Targeting Guns, so-called “assault weapons” were used in 1.4 percent of crimes involving firearms before the passage of federal AWB. Currently, the AR-15 is the whipping boy for gun control advocates despite evidence showing that they are rarely used during homicides. Being Classically Liberal exposes this myth in an article for the Foundation for Economic Education: With an average of 13,657 homicides per year during the 2007-2017 timeframe, about one-tenth of one percent of homicides were produced by mass shootings involving AR-15s. The Parkland shooting of 2018 was a Rubicon moment for gun control nationwide. Blue states immediately passed all sorts of gun control from raising the age to buy firearms to bump stock bans. The Christchurch shooting of 2019 has further galvanized prominent Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to support radical gun control schemes. Swalwell’s 2020 campaign is an extension of this trend. In all likelihood, Swalwell will not win the Democratic nomination. However, his presidential run like Andrew Yang’s serves as an issue focused campaign that makes an effort to shift the public’s opinion on misguided policies. From 1993 to 2013, gun ownership per capita increased by 56 percent while gun violence dropped by 49 percent at the same time. All of this progress on gun rights could go to waste should the current gun control proposals that Swalwell and company are putting forward become law. As the years go by, gun owners appear to have fewer friends left in Congress.

Conservatism’s Weak Defense of Gun Rights

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Gun Rights, Personal Liberty. No Comments on Conservatism’s Weak Defense of Gun Rights

In today’s climate of polarized politics, we often get the impression that the modern-day Left is beyond reproach. This fear is not off base considering that certain figures like Senator Bernie Sanders and Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez have engaged in the radicalism of their own on issues such as gun control and socialism respectively. However, recent events should make libertarian reconsider aligning with mainstream Right as a default option. As Executive Director of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk has made a laudable career of defending conservative and libertarian activists from radical leftist bullies on campus. However, recent events show that he may be falling into a similar trap that plagues the modern-day conservative movement. On April 11, 2019, Kirk gave a warm endorsement of the federal government’s gun control policy. Specifically, he supported the National Instant Background Check System (NICS). In an attempt to equate gun policy with voting and illegal immigration, Kirk revealed that he has “no problem with existing laws for background checks when it comes to firearms.” Apart from the flawed analogy, background checks, be they the default NICS system or the newly minted universal background check systems in various states, should be categorically rejected by anyone who believes in limited government. The NICS system is an unconstitutional infringement on the right to self-defense. In addition, it produces dubious crime prevention results. In fact, like most government programs, regular background checks are laden with unintended consequences. According to research from John Lott, NICS creates a surprising amount of false positives in NICS denials.  False positives are when law-abiding individuals’ information is erroneously matched with that of a criminal. As a result, they are stripped of their gun rights without due process. Approximately 95 percent of NICS denials turn out to be false positives. Congressman Thomas Massie also stated that these false positives also hurt minorities disproportionately. In an interview with Conservative Review, Massie revealed: If you look at the percentage of young black males who are locked up and have similar names to those who are not locked up, you can anticipate that a lot of them would be denied if they do try to buy a firearm, based on the failures that we see every day there. Many justify NICS’s existence on the grounds that it prevents crimes. However, the evidence is not very clear of much impact it has had in that regard. In More Guns, Less Crime, Lott’s research found that crime rates began to fall in 1991 well before the federal NICS system started operating in 1998. Apart from the policy implications of background checks, supporting this concept is a dangerous strategy. Once lukewarm forms of state intervention are accepted, subsequent interventions are much easier to sell to the public. Establishment conservatism has played a pivotal role in this process by doing the heavy lifting for the Progressive Left. For this reason, political commentator Michael Malice says that “Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.” In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, Gun Owners of America founder Larry Pratt understood the dangers of accepting small degrees of gun control. Pratt sees these moves as playing into the hands of radical anti-gun advocates, who will increase their demands with each small concession that takes place. Sadly, the Trump Administration’s enactment of the bump stock ban via bureaucratic decree has only reinforced this trend. Although he was talking about economic intervention in his book Socialism, Ludwig von Mises was correct in his view that “It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process”. For the sake of restoring our rights gun rights which have gradually decreased since the New Deal, it would behoove conservatives to start taking the Second Amendment seriously. Paying lip service to later negotiate gun rights away is no winning strategy. If conservatives were truly pro-gun, they would not be letting their enemies continue to gain ground on the issue.

States Need to Stop Taxing Marijuana

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Business and Economy, Drugs, Uncategorized. No Comments on States Need to Stop Taxing Marijuana

The legalization of marijuana in states like California, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington has been a boon for the marijuana industry. A report from the Statista claims the marijuana sector created approximately 300,000 direct and indirect jobs in states where it has been legalized for recreational use. Another benefit of legalization has been increased tax revenue. Seven out of the ten states where marijuana is legal already tax and regulate stores generating revenue off of marijuana sales. ZeroHedge reports these taxes are typically 10 to 37 percent higher than the local sales tax. Marijuana legalization is great news for opponents of the Drug War. This failed government program has resulted in mass incarceration, infringed upon the civil liberties of countless Americans, and cost Americans nearly $1 trillion since its initiation in the 1970s. Although political realities do limit our expectations for real liberalization measures, principled adherents of drug liberalization should have long-term plans of limiting taxation on substances like marijuana. Sin taxes have often failed to reduce the consumption of said activity. But overzealous politicians could make taxes so draconian that de facto prohibition conditions emerge. In these prohibitionist circumstances, black market alternatives then arise which are often of questionable quality and more dangerous for consumers. These kinds of tax increases also encourage politicians to maintain their reckless spending habits. In turn, taxes will be used as a political football to placate certain interest groups and grow the size of government. Some of the services where the tax money goes to are laudable, such as school construction, drug abuse programs, and medical research. However, we need to start thinking beyond feel-good projects in the short-term. These kinds of services can be provided on the free market without coercive taxation. David Boaz of the Cato Institute is correct in pointing out that the emphasis on marijuana regulation often goes overboard. He fundamentally understands regulation is designed to price out competition and to “serve to concentrate an industry and thus concentrate wealth.” Long-term, states should be looking to grow drug freedom, not the government.

Homeownership Out of Reach for Most Americans

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Business and Economy, Economics. No Comments on Homeownership Out of Reach for Most Americans

In most of the country, Americans can’t afford to be homeowners. CBS reported that Americans don’t have the resources to buy a home in more than 70% of the country. Out of the 473 counties studied in this report, 335 of the counties had median home prices above what the average wage earner could afford. ATTOM Data Solutions found the same trend in counties like Los Angeles and San Diego in California and Maricopa County in Arizona. In New York City, wage earners need to provide the highest percentage of their income to buy a home. On average, salaried Americans needed to spend about 33% of their income to buy a home, those living in Brooklyn and Manhattan needed to drop more than 115% of their income. In San Francisco, wage earners would have to spend 103% of the income to buy a house. On the other hand, ZeroHedge reports that urban centers like Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia tended to be the most affordable. Housing affordability is an interesting topic. Some of the more affordable housing markets tend to lie in the Sunbelt, which makes sense. These areas have not replicated the federal government’s anti-growth policies like income taxation, massive bureaucracies, and restrictive unionization. However, the key factor in this equation is the housing supply, which restrictive land-use regulations constrain. As a result, many housing markets are simply out of reach for the average American. Sadly, the current political climate favors solutions like rent control and universal basic income. While well-intentioned, these solutions create another host of unintended consequences, and frankly, don’t address the underlying problem of housing affordability. If Americans want more affordable housing, they must be willing to confront the land-use regulation beast head on.

Trump Administration Declares Elite Branch of Iranian Military Terrorist Organization

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Foreign Policy. 1 Comment on Trump Administration Declares Elite Branch of Iranian Military Terrorist Organization

Despite campaign promises of pursuing a more restrained foreign policy, Trump maintains the same neoconservative hard line with Iran. The Trump administration dialed up the pressure on April 9, 2019, when the U.S. State Department declared the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist group. With multiple decades of ill-will between Iran and America, this move will only exacerbate the tension between the two countries. In an interview with CNBC, Emily Hawthorne, a Middle Eastern foreign policy analyst, was correct in her assessment that this move will make the negotiating process between Iran and the U.S. more difficult. Hawthorne also notes that in the off chance that negotiations do occur, the U.S. will be “technically negotiating with a terrorist organization.” In Hawthorne’s view, the U.S. “The future U.S. government, if they want to negotiate with Iran or negotiate with the Iranian military in any way, they’re going to have to take the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) off of this list.” The IRGC was established in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and has served as an elite wing of the Iranian military. Their designation as a terrorist organization is the first time that the State Department has declared a branch of a country’s military a terrorist organization. This news is a rather unfortunate event and another sign of President Trump deviating from his “America First” foreign policy. Indeed, the Islamic Republic of Iran is an illiberal regime with a vast track record of human rights abuses. However, in the words of John Quincy Adams, the U.S. should not go “abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”. Although the current government of Iran is no ally of freedom, the U.S. would be better off taking a hands-off approach to the Middle East and shoring up its own defenses. Just like sound economic policy should not involve picking winners and losers, foreign policy should not consist of picking countries to prop up and other countries to destabilize. The U.S. has meddled too much in the Middle East, and it’s time for it to correct the previous foreign policy errors of the 20th century. If individuals want to change the politics of a repressive country they are free to do so in their own private capacity, through NGOs, direct partnerships with natives, and even private defense initiatives. The current military-industrial complex model is arguably one of the largest impediments to the emergence of private defense. Thanks to the state’s near monopoly over defense services, private defense alternatives have been crowded out. All in all, a pragmatic first step is to open up a dialogue with countries like Iran, which Trump has indicated in the past that he would be willing to do without preconditions. This same approach has yielded some progress with North Korea. To move forward, America will need to leave its divisive foreign policy of interventionism back where it belongs—in the 20th century. Donald Trump can still reverse course and at least normalize certain aspects of foreign relations with Iran. But first, he needs to stop listening to the neoconservative devil on his shoulder.
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AOC Embraces Gun Control Hysteria

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Elections and Politics, Gun Rights, Liberalism, Personal Liberty. No Comments on AOC Embraces Gun Control Hysteria

Count Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the next loyal spokesperson for gun control. From being a fierce advocate of the Green New Deal to declaring capitalism “irredeemable,” Ocasio-Cortez has already proven her devotion to socialist economics.
green new deal alexandria ocasio-cortez green new deal epic fail
Photo credit: Dimitri Rodriguez (https://www.flickr.com/photos/98346767@N04/32087493347)
Now a recent post on Twitter has solidified her political credentials as an anti-gunner. The massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand has united the Democratic Party around gun control, from former presidential candidates  Hillary Clinton down to Bernie Sanders endorsing radical variants of these policies. With Ocasio-Cortez joining her colleagues in the push for more restrictions on gun ownership, gun control now has a young, new face. Let’s take a look at what she called for on Twitter: Pass Universal Background checks (#HR8!) First up, are universal background checks. This legislation is already on the books in 11 states and Washington D.C. The U.S. House just passed its own version on February 26, 2019. It’s very likely going to die in the U.S. Senate because of the Republican control. However, this policy will simply not disappear, and because of that, it must still be soundly refuted in policy debates. Although gun control proponents consider universal background checks as a “common-sense” policy to tackle crime, dissenters like John Lott argue that these policies are not as great as advertised. In his book, The War on Guns, John Lott argues that states who implemented UBCs have not seen any marked improvements in crime reduction compared to states without UBCs and laxer gun laws, in general. Due to the expansive and restrictive nature of UBCs, which require that all firearms transactions go through a background check, many vulnerable groups such as minorities could be priced out of the gun market. Ironically, these are the same minority groups Ocasio-Cortez supposedly defends. Disarm domestic abusers This point actually sounds reasonable. However, Ocasio-Cortez fails to mention that the Lautenberg Gun Ban of 1996 allegedly bars domestic abusers from owning firearms. Like all government laws, especially those concocted in far off jurisdictions like Washington DC, they do come with certain unintended consequences such as overreach and unjust enforcement. The issue of domestic violence is something that should be handled by state and local governments. Civil society and prison reformers should also play a substantial role in making sure that genuinely dangerous people are locked up and kept away from the rest of society. However, the topic of domestic abuse should not fall under the federal government’s purview. Mandate Safe Storage Mandatory safe storage laws make sense on paper but come with their own set of unintended consequences. In a 2001 study, Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime, John Lott and John E. Whitley found several interesting data points regarding safe-storage laws implemented in 15 states from 1996 to 2001:
“The only consistent impact of safe-storage laws is to raise rape, robbery, and burglary rates, and the effects are very large. Our most conservative estimates show that safe-storage laws resulted in 3,738 more rapes, 21,000 more robberies, and 49,733 more burglaries annually in just the 15 states with these laws. More realistic estimates indicate across-the-board increases in violent and property crimes. During the 5 full years after the passage of the safe-storage laws, the 15 states faced an annual average increase of 309 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults.”
These findings make sense. Criminals hell-bent on breaking the law don’t care about following existing gun laws, whereas their victims are more likely to abide by gun control regulations no matter how detrimental they are. In any potential encounter with a criminal, seconds count. Safe-storage laws inhibit citizens’ abilities to defend themselves when confronting criminal threats. Ban bump stocks, semiautos, & high cap mags designed to “kill people.” Since the Las Vegas shooting, firearms accessories have received considerable ire from the political class. One particular whipping boy has been the bump stock, an accessory that uses the recoil of semi-automatic weapons to fire more rapidly. Many argue that the bump stock ban helped facilitate the Las Vegas shooting. However, Thomas Massie pointed out in an interview with Reason that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings have never featured the use of bump stocks and that from his experience, bump fire tends to be inaccurate. Nevertheless, many states have fallen for the anti-gun hysteria and passed bump stock bans of their own. The real question at hand is whether the government should tell people what kind of firearms accessories they can possess? The answer is a firm “No.” Busybody politicians should keep their paws of people’s everyday lifestyle choices. Crime rates have continued to drop even when states have liberalized gun restrictions across the board. So the sky’s not falling whenever we see gun rights expanded. At the end of the day, these kinds of issues should be handled at the local and state level. The obsession with the federal government having to solve every problem under the sun has become pathological at this point. Unfortunately, Ocasio-Cortez just like many of her counterparts sees the federal government as the entity that should be in charge of managing every facet of our lives. Her support for gun control puts her right in line with the control freaks in D.C. Given her young age and already strong support on social media, she will continue to gain more clout and become an influencer for future generations to come. That should leave any liberty-lover worried.

Another American City Hops on the Universal Basic Income Bandwagon

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Business and Economy, Economic Liberty, Economics. No Comments on Another American City Hops on the Universal Basic Income Bandwagon

Newark, New Jersey is embracing the Universal Basic Income craze that’s blazing across the nation. Since Andrew Yang threw his hat in the presidential ring, the UBI has become the topic of discussion of the 2020 elections. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced the establishment of a “task force” and pilot program to test this program. By carrying out this experiment, Newark will be the largest American city to test out the UBI to date. Under this UBI scheme, the city of Newark will likely hand out stipends to all citizens irrespective of their employment status. Mayor Baraka asserts that one-third of Newark residents live in poverty, thus necessitating that the government take bold action. Baraka said, “We believe in Universal Basic Income, especially in a time where studies have shown that families that have a crisis of just $400 a month may experience a setback that may be difficult, even impossible to recover from.” Despite the upbeat nature of this UBI rollout, no specifics on how this program would be carried out were provided. So far, the UBI has generated mixed results in places where it has been tested. The most notable example was Finland’s UBI experiment in 2017. The Finnish government conducted its UBI trial by randomly selecting 2,000 Finns and giving them a monthly stipend of roughly $634. What could possibly go wrong? Two years after the program was launched, the Finnish government decided to axe the project. Certain reports form the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) vindicate the Finnish government’s course of action. According to the OECD, Finland would have to implement 30 percent tax hikes just to finance this program. Further, the OECD’s research found that the Finnish UBI scheme could have potentially increased the poverty rate in Finland from 11.4 percent to 14.1 percent. Ontario, Canada also ran its own UBI pilot program and ended up scrapping it, arguing that it was “not sustainable” and “expensive.” As more UBI experiments are conducted, we will get to see how these programs play out. However, free market fears of UBIs appear to be well placed based on the limited examples we have seen so far. When we look at how wealth is truly created, we can see why UBIs don’t make sense. Economic redistribution makes for a lousy driver of economic, as witnessed with America’s current tax code. Adding another redistribution scheme like the UBI, which will very likely require another layer of taxation. Poverty reduction is largely the product of increased worker productivity. Economist Ludwig von Mises observed in The Anti-Capitalist Mentality that the “increase in what is called the productivity of labor is due to the employment of better tools and machines.” The tools and machines Mises refer to are the capital goods necessary for productivity to be boosted. This in turn, leads to increased prosperity. The common denominator in this equation is capital accumulation, not wealth redistribution. Apart from the direct economic impacts of UBIs, these policies come with potential social baggage. Economist Dan Mitchell argues that jobs have a form of social utility. In his view, “Having a job, earning a paycheck, and being self-sufficient are valuable forms of societal or cultural capital.” Mitchell also contends that the welfare state is not going away anytime soon, despite UBI proponents’ claims that UBIs would phase out the current welfare state model. Mitchell does not “trust that the rest of the welfare state would be abolished.” The economist finally concludes that “universal handouts would erode the work ethic and exacerbate the dependency problem.” Local jurisdictions have every right to experiment with these proposals, but nationalizing them would create a host of unintended consequences that America can’t afford to withstand. With America’s already cumbersome welfare state, it’s best to consider alternatives that decentralize welfare services and let smaller jurisdictions experiment with their own welfare programs.

Italy Continues Pro-Gun Reforms

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Gun Rights, Personal Liberty. No Comments on Italy Continues Pro-Gun Reforms

Italy’s coalition government just passed a “legitimate defense” bill forward which lowers the penalties for Italians using their firearms in cases of self-defense. Since Matteo Salvini became the Italian Minister of the Interior in 2018, Italian politics have taken an interesting turn. The rise of Salvini’s La Lega party has brought new policies such as gun ownership liberalization into the current political discussion. In fact, the coalition was able to pass previous legislation that increased the number of firearms that Italians could own and even relaxed the limits on magazine size capacity.  So it seems that Italy is experiencing a positive trend in gun rights. This new law is slightly based off of American stand your ground laws which allow individuals to use lethal force when confronting imminent threats to their person or property. Despite hand-wringing from anti-gun activists, gun researcher John Lott has found that stand your ground laws “make it easier for would-be victims to protect themselves when the police can’t arrive fast enough.” Indeed, politics has many harsh realities that people have to cope with. The mass migration and welfare state cocktail have generated toxic social outcomes that Europeans must now deal with on a daily basis. These circumstances have made governments not only reconsider immigration policies but also their security policies. The sense of insecurity that the current refugee dilemma has fostered compelled the Czech Republic to liberalize its gun laws in 2017 in order to promote national security. These types of policy changes are a big win for Europe. More often than not, policy experts will reflexively turn to the state for more “solutions” that the state ironically created in the first place. Restoring liberty sometimes involves muddling through otherwise troublesome circumstances. Nevertheless, any kind of expansion of freedom should be celebrated regardless of the context. Post-world War II Europe has been marked by strong acceptance of welfare statism and top-down policymaking. Liberalizing gun laws is a breath of fresh air for a region that has routinely embraced interventionism. With Italy leading the way in passing pro-gun legislation, now countries like Spain are starting to open up discussions on reforming their gun laws. With Italy’s legitimate defense bill now law, Italy could be at the forefront of a growing gun rights movement in Europe.

Polls Show 40 Percent of France Is Willing to Revolt

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Economic Liberty, Economics, Elections and Politics. No Comments on Polls Show 40 Percent of France Is Willing to Revolt

Is France on the verge of a revolution? A recent poll carried out by the polling firm IFOP, found that 39 percent of Frenchmen see revolution as a viable means of generating political change in their country. According to the French journal Atlantico, these numbers are much higher than anywhere else in Europe. In Germany, only 20 percent of citizens are in favor of revolution, while 14 percent of Austrians and Poles were receptive to revolting against their political class. David Nguyen, IFOP’s consulting director, commented on this poll’s shocking discoveries: “The first thing to say is that this is an absolutely spectacular number. Four in ten consider that a revolution would be a good solution: even if we do not know exactly what they put behind this word, it is the mark of a radical presence very present in the society.” The consulting director also points out that the support for revolution covers the entire political spectrum, from the right wing populist party Rassemblement National (National Rally) and far left France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France) seeing revolution as their go-to option. How has modern-day France reached such a state? Let’s take a look at the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests, which both of the aforementioned parties support. Originally sparked by fuel tax hikes, the gilet jaunes has turned into a broad anti-government movement. Although this movement is an ideological hodgepodge of angry French citizens, there is reason to believe that the governing model of France is on the ropes. Everyday French workers shoulder stiff tax burdens, government spending is out of control (it accounts for 56 percent of GDP), and the French labor market is shackled by over 1,500 pages of labor bureaucracy. On top of that, questionable migration policies have broken down the social cohesion of French civil society. So it’s safe to say that there’s a lot to get mad about in France. However, this kind of frustration does not always translate into positive political change. Sometimes political anger that does not have a sound philosophical basis can lead to unruly mobs, as seen in a previous stage of French history during the French Revolution. The importance of ideas cannot be overstated, because they can make or break political movements. There’s no question that free-market ideas are a tough sell in today’s political climate, especially in Europe. A more practical alternative is political decentralization. In other words, France should carry out its own “Frexit” and leave the increasingly burdensome European Union. However, it should not stop there. France should respect the will of separatist movements within its borders, in areas such as Brittany and the Basque Country, and allow them to break off from the current French nation-state. More competing jurisdictions will put pressure on states to craft policies that attract human talent and capital, as opposed to turning them into tax livestock that must be exploited by the political class. When evolutionary means of decentralization are available to us in the digital age of the 21st century, there’s no need to go through violent revolutions.
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Gun Rights Will ‘Feel the Bern’ Under a Sanders Presidency

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Elections and Politics, Gun Rights. 1 Comment on Gun Rights Will ‘Feel the Bern’ Under a Sanders Presidency

Another Democratic Party leader has hopped on the anti-gun hysteria after the Christchurch Mosque massacres. This time, it’s Bernie Sanders who joined the calls for more gun control. On March 21, 2019, Sanders celebrated New Zealand’s leaders decision to ban “military-style” rifles and semi-automatic guns in the wake of the massacre that claimed the lives of 50 people. Sanders tweeted, “This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like.” The Vermont senator believes America should follow in New Zealand’s footsteps: “We must follow New Zealand’s lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States.” Bernie Sanders socialism The Christchurch Massacre may be a tipping point as far as gun control discourse in America goes. From Nancy Pelosi to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and now Sanders, the Democratic Party has officially become the party of radical gun control. Although Republicans have left a lot to be desired under the Trump administration with the passage of Fix-NICS and the ATF’s bureaucratic bump stock ban, we’re at a point now where Democrats are pushing the Overton Window even further towards gun control. Now former Supreme Court Justices like John Paul Stevens are advocating for the repeal of the Second Amendment. Even states like Hawaii are moving to repeal the Second Amendment. In this battle, like any other political battle, ideas matter. The 2016 Sanders campaign normalized socialist ideas in American political discourse. Currently, the most popular member of the U.S. House, Ocasio-Cortez has taken up Sanders’ mantle and declared capitalism “irredeemable”. She is the youngest generation of politicians who bought into these ideas hook, line, and sinker. This has ominous implications for future generations. Sanders has a track record of praising the Soviet Union and even hiring David Sirota, a known Hugo Chavez* apologist, as his speechwriter. It’s abundantly clear that Sanders’s socialism runs deep. Although, Sanders has not been able to attain the presidency, and very likely will never do so, his socialist ideas will have a lasting impact. One overlooked aspect of socialism is its intimate connection with gun control. Bernie Sanders may not be a tyrant in the making, but successive leaders could easily advantage of the gun control apparatus to their favor. History has shown this to be the case in several instances. Weimar Germany was one of the most notable examples when the Weimar Republic passed gun registration under the justification that it would quell violence between Nazis and Communists on the streets. Little did the politicians in charge of the Weimar Republic know that their gun control schemes would later be used by the succeeding government to strip Jews of their firearms and subject them to one of the largest genocides in human history. Even present-day Venezuela, one of the most visceral failures of socialism in recent memory, fell victim to a similar dynamic. Previous social-democratic governments had implemented strict gun control, which Hugo Chavez not only took advantage of once he got into power, but expanded upon to disarm and subjugate the Venezuelan population. When the wrong political players are in power, today’s “common-sense” gun control legislation could be tomorrow’s stepping stone for gun confiscation. Modern-day politics doesn’t care for unintended consequences nor long-term policy implications of regulations. For that reason, elected officials like Bernie Sanders have such strong followings. As socialism becomes popular, other facets of human activity such as self-defense and privacy will be under the chopping block. Socialism does not operate under a vacuum and is indeed an all-inclusive package of human control. As the great economist Ludwig von Mises said best, “Great conflicts of ideas must be solved by straight and frank methods; they cannot be solved by artifices and makeshifts.” In this case, the forces of liberty cannot afford to back down.
Bernie Sanders

Shocker: Bernie Hires Speechwriter Who Praised Socialist Venezuela

Written by Jose Nino on . Posted in Economics, Elections and Politics. 1 Comment on Shocker: Bernie Hires Speechwriter Who Praised Socialist Venezuela

Bernie Sanders’ recent hiring of David Sirota as his campaign speechwriter is another sign that socialism is becoming more normalized in the United States. Most of us forget that Sirota was one of the most vocal proponents of Hugo Chavez’s socialist experiment in Venezuela. To the speechwriter, the Chavista model was an alternative that defied the international capitalist order and basic economics. As a writer for Salon, Sirota claimed Chavez’s “brand of socialism achieved real economic gains,” viewing it as an “economic miracle.” At the time, it was easy to talk about Venezuela breaking the mold when petrodollars were coming in by the billions. Bernie Sanders But once oil prices plummeted and the Venezuelan government’s interventions took their toll on the economy, the country began to unravel in 2014. Now, the Venezuela before us is the poster child of socialist collapse with hyperinflation hovering around 60,324 percent and rampant shortages of basic goods. The high oil prices of yesteryear were a facade that hid a rotting economic foundation. Still, many analysts overlook that the Venezuelan economy has been slowly declining for multiple decades largely due to socialist policies that gradually chipped away at its productive capacity. In the end, the so-called “economic miracle” was a fleeting mirage at best. Since Venezuela imploded, the left pulled a Casper the Friendly Ghost, completely dodging the issue. They either refuse to acknowledge the clear damage socialist policies have done to Venezuela by blaming corruption or by labeling it “not real socialism.” Sanders very likely won’t win the Democratic nomination, but the ideas his campaign is normalizing are toxic. In fact, ideas go beyond presidential campaigns. Progressives have learned this well over the past century, running numerous losing campaigns on issues such as welfare and income taxation, to later see their ideas politically implemented throughout the 20th century. Eventually, Sanders will be out of the political picture, but his ideas will undoubtedly live through younger elected officials such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is already saying that capitalism is “irredeemable”. In Economic Policy, Ludwig von Mises recognized the importance of ideas:
“Everything that happens in the social world in our time is the result of ideas. Good things and bad things. What is needed is to fight bad ideas. We must oppose the confiscation of property, the control of prices, inflation, and all those evils from which we suffer.”
The hiring of Sirota, a commentator who has nonchalantly talked about socialism, is to be expected from the Sanders campaign. Ever since he ran for president in 2016, Sanders has made considerable strides in making socialism appear chic to the masses. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to defeat these ideas. We can scoff at socialist ideas as crazy fantasies, but they can turn into real life nightmares if we don’t take them seriously and stop them before they take off.