2016: NWO "Commies" Really Want Your Guns
Obama says gun control to be top issue of final year
President Obama hopes to make gun control the top issue of his final year in office, saying Americans aren’t more violent than other people but they “have more deadly weapons to act out their rage.”
In an interview published Tuesday in GQ magazine, Mr. Obama said easy access to guns is “the only variable” between the U.S. and other developed countries.
“The main thing that I’ve been trying to communicate over the last several of these horrific episodes is that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are not more violent than people in other developed countries,” Mr. Obama said. “But they have more deadly weapons to act out their rage.”
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Asked by interviewer Bill Simmons of HBO if gun control will be the “dominant” issue on his agenda next year, Mr. Obama replied, “I hope so.”
“We have this weird habit in this culture of mourning and, you know, 48, 72 hours of wall-to-wall coverage, and then … suddenly we move on,” Mr. Obama said. “And I will do everything I can to make sure that there’s a sustained attention paid to this thing.”
The president has begun to speak out about gun regulations more forcefully in recent months, following mass shootings at a church in South Carolina and a community college in Oregon. He said in the magazine article that the aftermath of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in December 2012 was “the worst few days of my presidency.”
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Following that shooting, the administration pushed Congress to enact tighter background checks on gun purchases, but the effort failed in the Senate.
“We knew it was a stretch, just because of the politics of Congress and the NRA. But we had to try,” Mr. Obama said. “In the absence of a movement politically in which people say, ‘Enough is enough,’ we’re going to continue to see, unfortunately, these tragedies take place.”
The interview was conducted in the White House, apparently sometime in October. Mr. Obama said in his seventh year in office, he feels “looser” and more confident.
“There’s no doubt that the longer I’m in this job, the more confident I am about the decisions I’m making and more knowledgeable about the responses I can expect,” he said. “And as a consequence, you end up being looser. There’s not much I have not seen at this point, and I know what to expect, and I can anticipate more than I did before.”
He said when he leaves office, he doesn’t want an appointment to the Supreme Court, but would be interested in becoming part owner of an NBA team or the league commissioner.
“Supreme Court justices, obviously, are hugely important,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t have the temperament to sit in relative solitude and just opine and write from the bench. I want to be in the action a little bit more.”
The president revealed he has a virtual driving range in the White House to practice his golf swing, and said he hasn’t smoked a cigarette in five years.
“I made a promise that once health care passed, I would never have a cigarette again. And I have not,” he said.
U.S. Government Moves To Exploit Paris Terror Attacks To Ban Privacy
Last week, the British Prime Minister told Parliament that he wants to “ensure that terrorists do not have a safe space in which to communicate.”You didn’t think the surveillance state would give up that easily did you? Of course not.
Strong encryption refers to the act of scrambling data in such a way that it cannot be understood by anyone without the correct key or password — even law enforcement with a warrant, or the software manufacturer itself. It’s used in some of the most popular tech products in the world, including the iPhone, WhatsApp messenger, and Facebook.
A highly respected cryptographer and security expert is warning that David Cameron’s proposed ban on strong encryption threatens to “destroy the internet.”
– From the post: Top Computer Security Expert Warns – David Cameron’s Plan to Ban Encryption Would “Destroy the Internet”
Unsurprisingly, fresh off the heels of the Paris terror attacks, the usual authoritarian suspects in the U.S. government are running around exploiting the tragedy in a bid to further erode privacy and civil liberties.
Bloomberg reports:
The bloodshed in Paris led U.S. officials Monday to renew calls for limits on technology that prevents governments from spying on phone conversations, text messages and e-mails.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said she asked Silicon Valley companies to help law enforcement and intelligence agencies access communications that have been encrypted — or scrambled to evade surveillance — if terrorists are using the tools to plan attacks.
“I have asked for help. And I haven’t gotten any help,” Feinstein said Monday in an interview with MSNBC. “If you create a product that allows evil monsters to communicate in this way, to behead children, to strike innocents, whether it’s at a game in a stadium, in a small restaurant in Paris, take down an airliner, that’s a big problem.”
This woman has absolutely no shame whatsoever.
Brennan said he hopes the Paris attacks will serve as “a wake-up call” for European governments who have been critical of spy programs.Yes, wake up and give up your freedoms before the terrorists have a chance to take them. That’ll show ’em.
Investigators in France are still piecing together how three coordinated teams of gunmen and suicide bombers managed to create carnage in one of Europe’s most heavily policed cities. So far, five of the seven assailants who died have been identified — four of them French citizens, and one believed to be a Syrian who entered Europe as an asylum-seeker.So people are spraying messages to each other in video games, and we’re supposed to believe the threat can be countered by getting access to everyone’s What’s App messages.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has said that terrorists are using encryption to communicate — on everything from apps to gaming systems. Last week, Belgium’s deputy prime minister said that “the most difficult communication between these terrorists is via PlayStation 4.”
Players using Sony’s popular gaming system can communicate via direct messages or by voice. A Buzzfeed story said that players, who can be located anywhere in the world, have found even more elaborate ways to communicate, including using “weapons during a game to send a spray of bullets onto a wall, spelling out whole sentences to each other.”
New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton on Monday called on technology companies to help investigators, although he didn’t specify exactly how. Technology has been “purposefully designed by our manufactures so that even they claim they cannot get into their own devices after they’ve built them,” Bratton said on MSNBC.
“They need to work with us right now,” Bratton said. “In many respects, they’re working against us.”
So the guy clearly has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s talking about it anyway.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on MSNBC Monday that “it’s time we had another key that would be kept safe and only revealed by means of a court order.”Indeed, and we seem intent on continuing to hurt ourselves as much as we possibly can.
Privacy advocates pushed back against the arguments, saying restrictions wouldn’t make Americans safer.
“Any attempt to mandate back doors or prohibit the technology altogether would basically amount to trying to outlaw math, and any attempt to do so will fail to make us safer against terrorism, while making us all much less safe online and also threatening our digital economy,” said Kevin Bankston, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, in an e-mail.
“In the end, we can hurt ourselves much more than the terrorists can hurt us,” Bankston said. “Indeed, that’s their entire strategy — to make us injure ourselves, our political values, our economies, our security — in our attempt to injure them.”
The Crackdown Begins: Europe Just Passed "Strict Controls To Make It Difficult To Acquire Firearms"
Back on September 11, Zero Hedge predicted the events which unfolded in Paris last Friday (and the resulting aftermath) with uncanny accuracy. Specifically, we said that "as the need to ratchet up the fear factor grows, expect more such reports of asylum seekers who have penetrated deep inside Europe, and whose intentions are to terrorize the public. Expect a few explosions thrown in for good effect" and we added that "since everyone knows by now "not to let a crisis go to waste" the one thing Europe needs is a visceral, tangible crisis, ideally with chilling explosions and innocent casualties. We expect one will be provided on short notice."
It was two months later.
But it was the "fine print" forecast that was most troubling.
And while we are awaiting for a full blown European version of the Patriot Act, we can say that the second part of the forecast just came true, because this morning The European Commission announced it had adopted a package of measures to strengthen control of firearms across the European Union and meant simply to make it "difficult to acquire firearms."... the second key role of ISIS is also starting to emerge: the terrorist bogeyman that ravages Europe and scares the living daylight out of people who beg the government to implement an even more strict government apparatus in order to protect them from refugees ISIS terrorists.
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Certainly expect a version of Europe'a Patriot Act to emerge over the next year, when the old continent has its own "September 11" moment, one which will provide the unelected Brussels bureaucrats with even more authoritarian power.
The package was adopted under the title "European Commission strengthens control of firearms across the EU."
President Juncker said: "The recent terrorist attacks on Europe's people and values were coordinated across borders, showing that we must work together to resist these threats. Today's proposal, prepared jointly by Commissioners El?bieta Bie?kowska and Dimitris Avramopoulos, will help us tackle the threat of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. We are proposing stricter controls on sale and registration of firearms, and stronger rules to irrevocably deactivate weapons. We will also come forward with an Action Plan in the near future to tackle illicit arms trafficking. Organised criminals accessing and trading military grade firearms in Europe cannot and will not be tolerated."
Internal Market and Industry Commissioner El?bieta Bie?kowska and Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos added: "The adoption of the firearms package today is proof of the Commission's determination to address the new reality we are confronted with. We need to remove regulatory divergences across the EU by imposing stricter, harmonised EU standards for firearms and ensuring efficient exchange of information between Member States."
As Xinhua summarizes, the measures will help prevent terrorists from accessing weapons in the EU, better track legally held firearms and increase cooperation between member states, it said in a statement. The package of measures includes a revision of the firearms directive to tighten controls on the acquisition and possession of firearms, which need to be approved by the European Parliament and European Council.
An implementing regulation on common minimum standards for deactivation of firearms is included in the package, which sets out common and strict criteria on the way member states must deactivate weapons.
This regulation will be published immediately in the official journal and will enter into force after three months.
Putting this in perspective, the Patriot Act took months - the Commission's crack down on weapons was completed in under 5 days.
And while on average European citizens are less weaponized than the US (except of course for the safest people in Europe, the Swiss, where 30% own guns ), just like that what little armaments can be obtained legally has been drastically reduced. As for whether this "Crack down" by Brussels bureaucrats will put even the tiniest dent in the procurement of weapons by ISIS, we have just one word: Chicago.
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And here is the fact sheet released by the Commission to explain the prompt appearance of this proposal.
What changes to the Firearms Directive is the Commission proposing today?
On 18 November 2015, the Commission tabled proposals to amend the EU Firearms Directive (Directive 91/477/EEC as amended by Directive 2008/51/EC), the main objectives of which are:
To make it more difficult to acquire firearms, including deactivated firearms
- Stricter conditions for the online acquisition of firearms, to avoid the acquisition of firearms, pieces thereof or munition through the Internet;
- Stricter rules to ban certain semi-automatic firearms, which move from Category B to Category A and will not, under any circumstances, be allowed to be held by private persons, even if they have been permanently deactivated;
- The inclusion of blank-firing weapons (e.g. alarm, signaling, life-saving weapons) in the scope of the Directive, because of their potential to be transformed into firearms.
- Further restrictions to the use and circulation of deactivated firearms. National registries should keep records of deactivated firearms and their owners. Under no circumstances will civilians be authorised to own any of the most dangerous firearms falling under Category A (e.g. a Kalashnikov), which is currently possible if they have been deactivated. The enforcement of the ban is a national responsibility, and Member States have all necessary tools at their disposal including the destruction of illegally held deactivated arms;
- Collectors, as defined by national law,are currently excluded from the scope of the Directive. The Commission is proposing today to change this, since collectors have been identified as a possible source of traffic of firearms. In the future, collectors will have the possibility to acquire firearms, but subject to the same authorisation/declaration requirements as private persons.
- Brokers will be brought into the scope of the Directive, since they provide services similar to those of dealers. Member States will have to introduce regulation covering the registration, licensing and/or authorisation of brokers and dealers operating within their territory.
Better traceability of firearms
Tighter rules on marking of firearms to improve the traceability of weapons by making them harder to erase (e.g. by affixing markings on the receiver), extending the obligation to imported firearms and clarifying on which components the marking should be affixed. Member States will have to keep the data until the destruction of the firearm (i.e. not only for 20 years as currently the case).
Stronger cooperation between Member States
Better exchange of information between Member States, for example on any refusal of authorisation decided by another national authority, interconnection of national registers to ensure full European cooperation, and obligations for dealers and brokers to connect their registers to national registers.
What are the common standards on deactivation?
Today's package of measures also includes an Implementing Regulation imposing stringent minimum common guidelines for the deactivation of firearms which will render reactivation much more difficult.
The Firearms Directive specifies that weapons which have been rendered unfit for use are no longer considered firearms but pieces of metal which can move freely within the internal market without authorization/declaration. However, recent experience shows that deactivated arms can be illegally reactivated by using pieces from other deactivated arms, home-made pieces or pieces acquired via the Internet. The fact that there is no harmonised way to deactivate weapons across the EU increases the security risk.
To solve this problem, the Commission has prepared a Regulation that sets out common, strict, harmonised criteria on how Member States must deactivate weapons so they are rendered unfit to use. This is complemented by the ban on the possession of Category A firearms – even when they are deactivated. The Implementing Regulation is based on the criteria for deactivation developed by the Permanent International Commission for the Proof of Small Arms (the CIP).
The Commission has been negotiating this Implementing Regulation with Member States since April 2015 in the context of the comitology procedure, with discussions intensifying in the last few weeks. The draft text sent to Member States on Friday 13 November was adopted in committee on 18 November, following which the College adopted the implementing act on the same day.
What is the Commission doing to curb illegal trafficking of weapons and explosives?
In addition to the adoption of these stricter rules and standards today, the Commission also announced new plans to develop an action plan against the illegal trafficking of weapons and explosives. Issues to be tackled in this future action plan will include:
- The illegal purchase of weapons on the black market;
- The control of illegal weapons and explosives in the internal market and especially their entry/import into the single market (especially from the Balkan countries or ex-war zones);
- The fight against organised crime.
And always remember, they are from the (unelected) governmentm, and they are not only here to help you, but make your life safer.
Americans Rush To Buy Guns In Wake Of Paris Attacks
Spike in citizens exercising Second Amendment rights
Gun sales and concealed carry permit applications in the US have spiked in the days following the terror attacks in Paris, according to gun store owners.
Americans are exercising their Second Amendment rights in droves after witnessing the harrowing footage of innocent people being murdered by gunmen in the French capital, and being warned thatthe same could happen on home soil.
Fox News San Antonio carried comments by Texas Guns owner Jerry McCall who noted that he is serving “people … in their 70s and 80s who say they have never owned a firearm before but … think [they] need one in the house now.”
Those who recently purchased their first firearm following unrest in the US are also returning to buy more, according to the store owner.
WSFA News out of Alabama reports that gun stores are struggling to keep up with the demand.
“We were busy right out of the box” said Russell Durling who owns Last Resort Guns in Madison County, after the Paris atrocities.
“The truth of it is, when America is scared, America buys guns,” he added.
Applications for concealed carry permits, as well as firearms courses are also surging.
Texas Guns said that the applications “have doubled in the last week,” Sheriffs in Alabama adding that they are witnessing the “biggest spike in permits” after the European attacks on Friday.
Meanwhile, a Democratic lawmaker has suggested that the attacks in Paris demonstrate a need for further gun control in America.
Despite the fact that France already has stringent gun laws, which have boosted the illegal firearms trade among criminals and terrorists, Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky from Illinois told SiriuxXM radio that the Paris terrorist attacks serve as a “chilling reminder” that the US needs more restrictive gun laws.
Other Democratic commentators have suggested that “It is extremely easy for terrorists to obtain a gun in the United States,” and the New York Daily News even ran a front page headline, sublimely suggesting that the NRA was to blame for the Paris attacks, and is helping terrorists in the US.