tonysc

I was reading Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, and he makes the distinction between 'legislation' and what was called 'law' or, putting it into the bigger framework, the 'Rule of Law.'

When you really read what he's saying, the problem we have today and what the quote above talks about, is that what the Rule of Law refers to is not the regime of arbitrary and capricious 'legislation', legislation that some group of people pass to do or force you to do something but that has little to do with the concept of the concept called 'Law'.

In fact, he makes the point that what we have today is nothing like the old meanings of what the Rule of Law is. In other words, it looks like we may need to go back to first principles and get some better understand and agreement around what Law and the Rule of Law is or... we're just talking past each other.

aramandai

A simple example would be whether speed limits are being used for our protection or as a voluntary tax to finance the state. Since my vehicle does not have a limiter preventing it from going over 100 mph then I would present that speed limits are to generate taxes. The way the law is enforced also makes it obvious.

tonysc

IIRC, he and the original discussions around the Rule of Law, viewed Law as the limiting of freedom and, according to what the Rule of Law meant. His argument would have been more around the general principles around even setting the speed limit and limiting our freedoms in the first place, what the car could or couldn't do was irrelevant.

The Rule of Law was about the balancing of the inherent freedom man has with the needs of society. The making of arbitrary rules of law that ignore the need to maintain freedoms he considers legislation and it has no relation to the Rule of Law.

A few years ago the State of Michigan's legislature got tired of municipalities using the setting of arbitrary speed limits so they could not just raise revenue but generally control people. So, they passed a state law that mandated that all of the rules making around WHAT the speed limit should be MUST be preceded by a traffic study. A lot of municipalities didn't like that and, as a result, when a citizen decided to fight the tickets, the courts were throwing out the speeding tickets because the cities didn't follow state law.

Hayek would have argued that a speed limit based on a general rule like "We must somehow slow the upper 2% of the speeds that we see" was real Law but the setting of the speed limit to 25, in violation of the general rule, in open desert on a straight-away with 4 lanes because someone wanted to raise revenue... this does not conform to the Rule of Law but to the Rule of Legislative Acts.

We conservatives really need to not let the left convince us that the latter is the former and then enlist the tendency of the right to be law abiding, especially when it's being used as a tool to restrict our freedoms.

The outcome of Brnovich — if the Arizona statutes are upheld as not violating Section 2 — will provide the “go-ahead” to conservative state legislatures to adopt “ballot integrity” legislation prior to 2022 and 2024 with confidence that the Supreme Court will sustain such legislation so long as the statutes are race-neutral even if they have what some consider a disproportionate impact on minority voters.

The Supreme Court’s role in the judiciary is to chart the course or lower courts to follow — not to step into an electoral maelstrom and attempt to sort out the claims of the competing parties on incomplete and contradictory factual records.

Potentially the two biggest issues that will be directly implicated by the outcome of today’s case will be the degree to which states are going to be allowed to require voter identification and engage in signature matching on absentee ballots without worrying about Democrat lawyers like Marc Elias trying to tie up the election process in court proceedings raising due process and Voting Rights Act claims.

As she regained her composure, Perino noted to Gallagher: “And I understand that there is concern that cash bail has hurt segments of the population, that minorities are hurt more, but we also have to think about these victims.”

Incidentally, therein lies one of many fundamental differences between the right and the left. The left views those who commit crimes as victims — of racism, oppression, police brutality, whatever — while the right and other sane people view victims as victims.

The debate over cashless bail, while having gone on for years, was brought to national attention during the “peaceful protests” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in May 2020, while in the custody of Minneapolis Police officers. //

According to Fox News, Tanner met with Illinois Democrat Governor J. B. Pritzker and told him that in order for situations like hers to never occur again, the state needs “stronger,” not weaker bond conditions, and needs to elevate the voices of domestic violence survivors.

But instead? Gov. Pritzker on Tuesday signed legislation making Illinois the first state in the nation to end cash bail.

“He absolutely let me down,” Tanner said. “I made a plea to him prior to him signing this bill and to hold off and to actually think about victims.” Ah, “the victims.”

As I said earlier, the left disagrees with you, Cassandra. Just ask Kamala Harris, 13 members of Biden’s presidential campaign staff, and the majority of the Democrat Party.

Constitutionally, while federal courts only have the power to hear a “case or controversy,” meaning the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to hear “moot” cases, here there is a well-established exception to the mootness doctrine: the capable-of-repetition-but-evading-review exception.

This exception to the mootness doctrine provides that federal courts hold authority to resolve cases where “the challenged action is in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to cessation or expiration” and where “there is a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party will be subject to the same action again.”

Both criteria exist here, Justice Thomas wrote, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision came a mere six weeks before the election, and the petitioners in the cases—the state Republican party and state legislators—are likely to “again confront nonlegislative officials altering election rules.”

In his separate dissent, Justice Alito also concluded that certiorari should be granted because the cases “present an important and recurring constitutional question.” His dissent, joined by Justice Gorsuch, focused mainly on the mootness question. //

Maybe the six justices who voted against certiorari believe the country will be better off without relitigating the election. The denial, however, will not heal a country that witnessed state officials and courts change the rules mid-vote—not just in Pennsylvania, but in Wisconsin and Michigan too. Then her citizens saw the Supreme Court seemingly ignore those violations of the Electors Clause when Texas sought relief in the Supreme Court.

Worse yet will be the damage done to our republic when the bending and breaking of election laws repeats in the future. For now, as Justice Thomas concluded, “by doing nothing,” the Supreme Court invites “erosion of voter confidence.” We “citizens deserve better and expect more.”

In my view, Thomas is completely correct here. This was a case that was punted due to technical reasons, not an honest look at the law. Further, if before an election is not the time to allow this suit to go forward, and after the election it can’t go forward because it’s moot, exactly when can it go forward? All this sets up is for the country (and Pennsylvania in particular) to be dealing with these same issues again in two years.

Keep in mind, this was not a question of election fraud (i.e. falsifying votes) or some other radioactive topic. It was simply a question of whether unelected judges in a state can override said state’s constitution, blatantly violating election law while doing so. That seems like a precedent that should absolutely not be set and should instead be slapped down with prejudice. This is what the Supreme Court exists for, and once again, several members of the conservative wing chose cowardice over dealing with tough issues.

In the end, all this does is make sure that a huge contingent of Americans don’t trust our election system. And why should they if the courts can’t even be counted on to settle such obvious issues as what occurred in Pennsylvania? This is also a disappointing showing for Kavanaugh and Barrett, two judges that conservatives absolutely went to the mat for. No one is asking them to bias their judgements, but there was no logical reason to not vote to take up this case.

As per our usual agreement, everything that’s old will be new again, and that includes fighting these election fights in the coming years because our institutions refuse to fix the system.

One argument in particular Turley found to be "breathtaking" and "chilling" - when lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (MD) suggested that Trump was guilty because he refused to show up and testify. ///

So 5th amendment doesn't apply to Trump impeachment...

Van der Veen stressed—when addressing the issue of what Trump did or didn’t do while the riot was occurring—that the House’s single article of impeachment is for incitement and not for anything else.

“To claim that the president in any way wished, desired, or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie,” van der Veen said. “In fact, the first two messages the president sent via Twitter once the incursion of the Capitol began were ‘Stay peaceful’ and ‘No violence because we are the party of law and order.’ The gathering on Jan. 6 was supposed to be a peaceful event. Make no mistake about that.” //

Schoen complained about a lack of due process for Trump, including the House’s impeachment and the Senate’s trial.

“The hatred that the House managers and others on the left have for President Trump has driven them to skip the basic elements of due process and fairness,” Schoen said.

A bigger problem was the lack of opportunity for Trump’s lawyers to review the integrity of the evidence, he said:

On Wednesday of this week, countless news outlets repeated the Democrat talking point about the power of ‘never-before-seen’ footage. Let me ask you this: Why was this footage never seen before? Should the subject of an impeachment trial, this impeachment trial, President Trump, have the right to see the so-called new evidence against him?

More importantly, the riot and the attack on this very building was a major event that shocked and impacted all Americans. Shouldn’t the American people have seen this footage as soon as it was available? For what possible reason did the House managers withhold it from the American people and President Trump’s lawyers? For political gain? How did they get it? How are they the ones releasing it?

Early in my career as a prosecutor, I learned a valuable lesson from a seasoned and highly regarded criminal defense attorney.

The best defense in a trial before a jury is to attack the case that the prosecution doesn’t make. Fight on the ground that the prosecution has looked past or ignored. If the prosecution tries to “circle back” and cover that ground, the defense becomes about what the prosecution missed — or better yet, what didn’t they want the jury to know when they chose to ignore it in the first instance. //

When the prosecutor calls a young agent to the stand — and there is almost always at least one youngster involved in order to get the experience — that agent is going to spend a long time answering questions from me about all the things he/she did not do during the course of the investigation. That sets in the jurors’ minds the idea that I know more about how the investigation should have been handled than the investigators do, and that the investigators took shortcuts and ignored evidence. It’s not necessarily evidence of “innocence”, just the fact of ignoring evidence calls into question the completeness of what they did and their competence doing so.

That’s what Lindsey Graham did today — likely aided by Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and a couple of other GOP Senators with trial experience in a courtroom. I’m not sure there is a single good trial lawyer among the Democrats in the Senate.

First of all, the headline itself is completely misleading, as there was nothing “skewed” whatsoever in the Droz team spreadsheet. Indeed, the AP article completely failed to prove that the data was skewed or that their assessment was correct.

Second, the fact-checker included ad hominem against Droz by imputing that his long-time activism “rejecting the science of climate change” somehow discredits his team’s analysis of 2020 election lawsuits. That’s yellow journalism – and, by the way, there is no proven “science of climate change” in any event. Indeed, the fact-checker’s inclusion of that phrase is additional confirmation of leftwing bias.

Third, the ad hominem attack used the phrase “self-described physicist” as a kind of grammatical pejorative. One would have thought that the fact-checker could have discovered that Droz holds physics degrees from Boston College and Syracuse University.

Fourth, the article concludes that information in the spreadsheet has been “misinterpreted” by readers of at least one blogsite (LifeSiteNews) to conclude that President Trump “could still overturn the election results.” This is a classic strawman argument, as the lawsuit list in the Droz team spreadsheet has nothing to do with that claim.

Fifth, the AP article identified a single database as the source for the Droz team spreadsheet and analysis. This is misleading, as the spreadsheet itself lists eight (8) separate sources for the information compiled.

Sixth, the AP article uses a cited example (Ritchie v. Polis) to “prove” that “some of the cases in the report are also wrongly coded as wins for Trump when they didn’t directly deal with the presidential election.” In fact, Ritchie v. Polis was not just about “petition-signing,” as the AP article states, but rather addressed the much broader situation of whether a governor has the authority to override a state legislature concerning election laws and regulations (the court ruled that the governor does NOT have that authority). Droz has subsequently confirmed that the fact-checker knew the truth about this lawsuit she cited, but chose to ignore it to maintain the false narrative of the article.

Chris2
31 minutes ago
To me, the fact that the courts largely rejected Trump's allegations is the best evidence that he was telling the truth. Let's remember what our courts have also held: the unborn can be murdered, Black people have no rights that white people must respect, the government can intern people based on race, the government can sterilize people it deems unfit, the government can ban homosexuality, oops the government can't discriminate against gays, the 14th Amendment doesn't prohibit segregation by race, oops - it does, but take your time doing anything about it, Obamacare is a tax & it's still okay w/o the tax part, and on and on and on. The courts are the friends of the status quo (aka the rich and powerful); the courts do NOT protect individual rights. Fools point to a few "correct" decisions & ignore all the errors. Remember the "good" decisions are merely PARTIAL fixes to the bad ones. Congress banned discrimination on race in the 1870s; the courts rejected those statutes until they slowly began changing the law & - even then - they made enforcement difficult. The courts aren't the friends of liberty; they wanted to defeat Trump & they invented legal excuses to do so - they did not even pretend to be interested in justice or law. I read those decisions, briefs etc - it was all a joke. The powers-that-be wanted Biden, and the courts obliged, as they always do. Eventually, they'll get around to fixing the election laws & then we'll hear how great they are. Courts have good press, but they're terrible for human rights. Don't believe me? Ask all the slaves they freed (none); ask all the people they sentenced to segregation for decades; ask all the unborn they sent to the slaughterhouses. Courts protect the rich and powerful; they function like a House of Lords to ensure that change happens slowly & w/ the elite's approval - and you'd know that if you judged by the facts & not the hype.

The Senate impeachment trial farce once again reminds us that the political class has elevated itself above regular Americans, and that there are only two classes of people in the US: the “elites” and everybody else. They are also reminding us that blatant hypocrisy, double-standards, fairness, equal justice under the law, and even common decency are irrelevant when the political class is on the warpath against someone like President Trump.

We citizens have allowed the political class to become:

• Unconstrained in their appetites; say anything, do anything without consequences (e.g., a sitting US president and his family thoroughly corrupted by Communist China with zero accountability)
• Protected by DoJ and what passes for law enforcements standards – double-standards, in reality (e.g., Obama-era apparatchiks and Democrat congressmen guilty of perjury and remain unprosecuted)
• Flush with money from the oligarchs on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley (e.g., the US Chamber of Commerce owns Establishment Republicans)
• Unaccountable to their constituents (e.g., election fraud is now the law in many swing states; the grossly misnamed HR 1 – “For the People Act of 2021” – will cement mail-in balloting and other fraud nationwide if/when passed into law)
• Blatant in their corruption, crimes, and hypocrisies (e.g., Marjorie Taylor-Greene removed from her committees, but Eric Swalwell remains on the House Intelligence Committee after sleeping with a ChiCom spy)

A review of the Constitution’s text and the delegates’ deliberations at the 1787 Federal Convention raises significant questions about the case for late impeachment. //

By emphasizing the Constitution’s ambiguity (whether real or imagined), proponents of late impeachment shift the debate over the practice from what the Constitution permits based on concrete evidence to what it must allow based on their own inferences and reasoning. //

The Chief Justice must preside over that trial if the person impeached is the president.

perhaps one of the central issues is that there was no hearing in the House, no witnesses or evidence actually presented and so no record of the case from which to work. Which means that the House managers are scrambling all over the place and pulling things out of the hat which aren’t true or are at odds with their stated theory of the case presented in their Article charging “incitement” because of Trump’s Jan. 6 speech. //

according to the Deseret News, what Lee actually said and what was left out from the Democratic presentation was that “Lee said when he later asked Tuberville about the conversation, he got the impression that Trump didn’t know about the chaos going on in the Senate chamber.”

The House managers left out that part, which directly contradicts its narrative that Trump knew about the riot and was relishing it as he was calling to further delay the electoral certification. If true, the House’s timeline argument would lose coherence, if not collapse entirely.

The House repeatedly argued that Trump wanted the riot and then used it to delay the proceedings. Yet, this call occurred “shortly after 2 p.m.” and, according to Lee, Trump did not appear to the senator to be aware of the extent of the chaos. A few minutes later, at 2:38, Trump tweets, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

“What is lacking here? All the talk and video, what’s lacking? Evidence.

“Where is the evidence that Trump worked with a single individual or single one of the groups? There is no evidence.

“Where is the evidence that anything he said in that speech resulted in the attack on that capitol? Lindsey Graham has said it. It was in “The New York Times” of all places. This was all preplanned.

“The FBI knew it might be coming. They were tipped off about it. There are many questions. What the hell did the FBI know and when did it know it?

“We know the sergeant of arms of the house was told by the former chief of the capitol police, you better get national guardsmen here and more help. What did he do? Nothing. Did he tell Nancy Pelosi? That would be a good question.

“Not only that, the sergeant of arms of the Senate was told. Who does that person report to? Reported to McConnell. What did McConnell know? What did they do?”

xoaArs Tribunus Angusticlaviuset Subscriptorreply2 days agoReader Favignore user
Wheels Of Confusion wrote:
Break Up Google.

No, this is stupid. The antitrust sledgehammer is a very bad choice vs actual decent consumer protection regulation. Merely having companies be smaller doesn't actually solve anything, lots of small companies are plenty nasty and that somebody can go elsewhere in theory doesn't necessarily make it any easier. In fact the "break them up so easy lol" meme is so dumb that it honestly has had me wondering if it got started as a false-flag by those opposed to any regulation at all, since it short circuits everything else. There are a lot of scalpels to try first that would be really valuable. Amongst them in no particular order (and not apply at all just to Google either):
Require read-only data access/export for a period of time. Services need to and should be able to refuse to do further business with somebody (and at scale given abuse, this necessarily requires some level of automation). But banning someone should not mean they lose any of their data, and it shouldn't require them to do any work in advance either. Unless it's due to a court order wrt illegal material, companies should be required to have a 6 month window say following a ban to allow someone to get everything. Making sure someone can get everything out would go a long way towards fixing effects and incentives.
Require paid access to a person with review powers. Human review is expensive, but if someone is willing to pay for it they should be able to get it.
Require purchase-time choice for hardware buyers to add their own certs to hardware and/or software roots. There are good reasons for App Stores and certified hardware chains and people should be able to roll with those if they want. But there are real risks too, and a legal requirement for an opt-out would be an easy requirement as a release valve.
Enshrine the notion of software ownership. Account bans and DRM should never result in the loss of purchased software, simple as that. Ongoing use of services sure, but only going forward.
No tying free OS/security updates to accounts. Doesn't need any explanation, no account should be required to receive free updates that are required for continuing functionality.
Basic warranties that match buyer expectations. The "lol 1 year but you can buy more" thing is bad. People have a rough expectation of "how long something should last" in proportion to its cost, and the price should internalize the failure rate and repair cost rather than externalize it onto an unlucky few. Maybe 1 month warranty per $20 retail up to 5 years, maybe some other formula, but while it should be up to manufacturers to figure out how to meet the goal of basic reliability, meet it they should. Lots of other issues are covered by this ("right to repair" which is a bad way). Extended warranties should only be for things like premium turnaround, enterprise level beyond EOL coverage, etc.
Spell out SLAs in standardized way, even for consumer level. Maybe the paid pro version has a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 12-hour response time etc, while in practice the consumer version only promises 95% and "here's our FAQ, or you can pay $200 per incident to talk to someone", but the latter should still be something people can understand upfront before committing.
And more, but these would be good starts. Big Companies and Big Tech in particular provide major, major benefits. They are also convenient, concentrated targets for careful, focused experiments in regulation. There is no reason we can't try to have the best of both worlds. "Break them up" is not just short sighted but lazy. We should try to make things better for everyone.

if Biden issues an executive order, the state’s attorney general may review the order to determine if it complies with the Constitution. From there, the state will determine if they should seek exemption from the order or challenge the order on constitutional grounds.

The bill goes on to state specifics when it comes to the orders it will “nullify” in the event of constitutional breaches, such as “pandemics or other health emergencies,” regulation of North Dakota’s agriculture industry, any financial orders that relate to environmental or social standards, and “the regulation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” //

These bills will likely be challenged on constitutional grounds themselves, with critics citing the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause which states that federal law will be the supreme law of the land. RedState will follow the life of these bills.

Companies, particularly those in the financial and retail sector, are the sinews of capitalism. Corporations lining up to form an ideological test for usership is a counterintuitive way to run a free market. //

We’re talking about digital-era monopolies that, in their market power and influence, rival the Gilded Age trusts and cartels that once exercised exclusive control over vast swaths of American industry. Instead of dithering over whether to tweak Section 230, we need to ask ourselves whether Amazon should be allowed to own AWS?

Should Facebook be allowed to own Instagram and WhatsApp and scores of other digital companies? Should Google be allowed to own YouTube and Android and DoubleClick? At what point do we say that these companies simply have too much power and that they represent combinations and trusts that must, like their 19th-century forebears, be broken up? //

As Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a member of the Senate’s Antitrust Subcommittee and a brilliant attorney, tweeted recently, “the consumer welfare standard is . . . not a narrow concern with prices. As Judge Bork wrote, it encompasses ‘innovation, choice among differing products’ and quality.” Markets, he noted, must “work for consumers, not just monopolists.” //

It’s time to de-prioritize and end the billions in state, local, and federal subsidies fed to Big Tech companies. Both Google and Amazon enjoy substantial federal contracts with the government – AWS provides cloud computing for the CIA, for example. Those should be leveraged for better behavior.

Section 230, Big Tech’s congressionally granted legal immunity, should be reformed so tech companies are incentivized to address the exploitative and harassing content that proliferates on their platforms, and more accommodating of diverse political speech. Or, absent that, repeal it altogether. //

Our speech and communications in the public square have been fundamentally altered by the digital era, so perhaps a common carrier statutory framework should apply.

In short, stop privileging the companies who threaten pluralism and a free society, and restore the proper hierarchy of America, where the people rule — not the mob, not the corporate barons, not the bureaucrats, and not the tech titans.

late on Friday the Supreme Court handed down an order granting the application for a preliminary injunction by a California church blocking enforcement of the order by California Governor Gavin Newsom that prohibited any indoor gathering for purposes of religious services.

The order was somewhat fractured, as there were multiple parts of the California order under review, and the Court granted the application but denied them as to others. The Justices in the majority – the six conservatives – were not unanimous in their views on each part of the order, enjoining some but allowing others to remain in place. The three liberal justices would have allowed the entire order to stand. //

This is not a final decision on the merits of this case. The case has been accepted by the Supreme Court for argument and decision this spring. The decision last night only concerns the extent to which the lower court decision is allowed to remain in force pending a determination of the case by the Supreme Court on the merits.

Five justices endorsed the "most favored nation" theory of free exercise—that the presence of ANY secular exemption to a law triggers strict scrutiny when that law is applied to religious exercise. This is basically the end of Employment Division v. Smith.https://t.co/IEQd9IWM4a

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC

Jason Willick
@jawillick
A fundamental divide: conservative judges are more likely to defer to legislators; liberal judges to experts. //

Yes, conservative judges do defer to the protective confines of the constitution and not the arbitrary and unaccountable edicts of the “experts.” Every atrocity in human history has had an “expert” standing beside leadership endorsing the action about to be taken. The idea that we should hand over our governance to “experts,” making them preeminent to the actual Constitution is an idea so insane that it makes me think a national break-up might actually be a good idea. How does a country even survive with so many of its citizens holding such a position?

But really, what does the fact that all the liberal judges on the court agreed with the ban say? I think it says that we are a few Supreme Court appointments by a Democrat away from having absolutely no liberty at all. If a state can simply decide you can’t go to church, then what is left, exactly? Because they can dang sure declare an “emergency” and arbitrarily decide you don’t get to have guns either. They can certainly suppress speech under that standard for the greater good as well. //

For every Never Trumper out there who didn't think Trump's term was worth it, had he not been elected, SCOTUS would have decided last night that a state can just stop people from going to church while allowing celebrity book signings. Your decorum wasn't gonna save you. https://t.co/YSStLCWMnS

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate)

Our Second Amendment, the one that actually secures all the others and arguably written with Captain Parker at Lexington Commons in mind, is still the only one we need “permission” to exercise and is still under constant attack by the left. As A.R. Hawkins puts it, “No other rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are interpreted so as to allow the government to stand between the people and that right.” I would add to that our Supreme Court seems to foster this aberrant viewpoint by its willingness to “incorporate” almost every other Amendment in the Bill of Rights except, of course, the Second. //

Here is a very small extract from the latest proposed theft of American rights, H.R.127 – Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act

§ 932. Licensing of firearm and ammunition possession; registration of firearms
“(a) In General.—The Attorney General, through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, shall establish a system for licensing the possession of firearms or ammunition in the United States, and for the registration with the Bureau of each firearm present in the United States.

“(b) Firearm Registration System.—
“(1) REQUIRED INFORMATION.—Under the firearm registration system, the owner of a firearm shall transmit to the Bureau—
“(A) the make, model, and serial number of the firearm, the identity of the owner of the firearm, the date the firearm was acquired by the owner, and where the firearm is or will be stored; and
“(B) a notice specifying the identity of any person to whom, and any period of time during which, the firearm will be loaned to the person. //

There are further prohibitions on ammunition and standard magazines (30 round capacity, is standard ). There are also grossly expanded firearm prohibitions, including the AR-15 type. Then there is the federal database that has as its primary objective, listing every firearm owned by every American. What could possibly go wrong?