Montana Governor Blocks Right to Bear Arms

By  John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent NewsMontana Governor Steve Bullock (D) vetoed legislation that would have made the state a “Constitutional carry” state. That is, individuals would be permitted to exercise their right to bear arms as defined in the US Constitution's Second Amendment without having to obtain state or local government permission to do so.In his veto message, Bullock declared that “the idea that an individual is qualified to determine whether he needs to carry a firearm is absurd. Selfish concern for self-preservation at the expense of broader social goals must not derail sensible gun control. Right now, far too many people have guns. We ought to be culling the herd of individuals who the state decides do not need these weapons.”“The police have enough weapons to protect the people who are essential members of society,” the Governor asserted. “If more private individuals start carrying it would dilute the government's ability to focus the use of deadly force in a more socially just and effective manner.”“As for the tired argument that individuals might need these weapons to defend their lives and property, I say nonsense,” Bullock said. “First, no one has the right to shoot another person over a piece of property. Just because a person possesses that property doesn't refute someone else's claim to it. Those dispossessed by an unjust society may be more entitled to it than the person they are supposedly 'robbing.' If both parties are armed the violence would be escalated. Granted, it would be preferable for the dispossessed to wait for government to effect the transfer, but I blame archaic laws for their impatience.”Trump Rescinds Obama Edict on BathroomsPresident Trump's Executive Order rescinding President Obama's Executive Order commanding federally funded institutions to permit individuals to use the bathrooms of the sex they imagine themselves to be sparked outrage from the gender-confused and their advocates.Illinois Democratic gubernatorial aspirant J.B. Pritzker used Trump's action to solidify his credentials to the deranged base of the Party by advocating that “everyone should use the other gender's bathroom as a protest against Trump's tyranny.”Pritzker's ploy was criticized by Illinois State Rep. Will Guzzardi (D-Chicago) as “missing the point of the Obama edict. Knowingly using the bathroom of the 'other gender' contradicts the intent of the directive. Urging a man who believes he is a woman to use the bathroom of the 'other gender' would guide him to the men's room. This exacerbates the biological injustice already inflicted on that person.”Olympic champion transgender Caitlyn Jenner called Trump's move “devastating. The option of entering restrooms or locker rooms of the gender to which a person may contemplate switching is an important way of gathering data that could help determine whether to make the switch or not. Finding out whether you would be comfortable within previously off-limits environments seems to me to be a necessary step in identifying one's own sexual orientation.”CNN talking head Chris Cuomo characterized Trump's approach as “a return to bigotry. The right would like to emphasize a 'worst case' scenario where perverts feign transgenderism in order to gawk at or molest young girls. These girls and their over-protective fathers need to get over their prejudices against showering with people they think are men just because they have a man's anatomy. Those trapped in the wrong body are the most oppressed members of society. The government needs to do everything it can to lift them out of their misery. By negating President Obama's grant of protective status for them Trump is on the wrong side of history.”Presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer ridiculed the hyperventilation over the issue saying that “all the President did was rescind his predecessor's illegal imposition of a rule for which there is no legal authority. The US Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to decree who may use which bathroom. The 9^th and 10^th Amendments clearly reserve this power to the people and the states. We are merely removing a turd left behind by a usurpation that ought never to have occurred.”Mexico Has Plan to Counter Trump's WallAngry that US President Trump has deviated from twenty years of “benign neglect” in response to illegal immigration, the Mexican government bragged that it has “an inexpensive countermeasure that will completely neutralize Mr. Trump's highly touted wall.”Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray maintained that “simple economics will defeat all of his attempts to stop our people from reclaiming what is rightfully ours. There is no way Mr. Trump can neutralize the prosperity in America that gives virtually every Mexican the incentive to go to America. As long as my country can continue policies that assure the wealth gap will remain, the flow northward will be unending.”“On a tactical level, a wall is an insufficient barrier,” Videgaray continued. “We will build ladders and catapults to carry people and drugs over it. These will cost us little compared to what the Americans will pay to build the thing. The billions they spend will be in vain.”Sweden in Throes of Islamic Crime WaveSweden has long been admired by the left as a model society. This Scandinavian “Eden” has avoided getting embroiled in foreign wars. They were even able to get along with the Nazis when so many other countries couldn't. Their socially tolerant attitudes led them to admit hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants.This past week, US President Donald Trump referenced “what's going on in Sweden” in support of his efforts to exercise greater scrutiny over who is allowed into America. The media characterized Trump's statement as “false” or “delusional” since there have been no large scale jihadi terrorist attacks in Sweden.However, large scale attacks aren't the only dangerous consequence of Sweden's generosity toward Muslim immigrants. Since allowing hundreds of thousands of them into the country crime rates have soared, the streets have become unsafe, and frequent disorder has become a mounting problem.Per Jimmie Akesson and Mattias Karlsson, leaders of the Swedish Democrats Party, sided with Trump. “The situation is worse than he portrayed in his speech,” Karlsson contended. “Police officers, firefighters and ambulance personnel are regularly attacked. Anti-Semitism has risen. Jews in are threatened, harassed and assaulted in the streets. Cars left unguarded are routinely set on fire. Muslim men comprise 2% of the population in Sweden, but commit 77% of the rapes. The government officials who brought this on with their careless immigration policies are in a state of denial about the Hell they've unleashed on our citizens.”Sweden's justice and migration minister Morgan Johansson denounced Akesson and Karlsson for spreading what he insisted was “an inaccurate and unflattering picture of our country. The damage done to tourism from these unwanted reports of immigrant unrest goes far beyond the damage done by the Muslim rioters and criminals. Millions, perhaps billions, in revenues are at stake if this view is allowed to influence people's decision to visit Sweden. I can think of no punishment too severe for what these two have done.”Of course, Sweden isn't the only European country to have suffered from excessive Muslim immigration. Germany's domestic security and intelligence agency reports that the number of radical Islamists in the country has risen by over 1500% since 2013. In Denmark, a Dane is going on trial for blasphemy because he burned a Koran. The Danish government defended the action as “essential if we hope to head off the kind of rioting that occurred after a Danish newspaper published cartoons lampooning Muhammad in 2005. It is better that one man be publicly punished for this offense than that thousands suffer another outbreak of religious violence.”California Senator Silenced for Disrespecting Tom HaydenAfter the California legislature memorialized former State Senator Tom Hayden, who died last October, Sen. Janet Nguyen (R-Garden Grove) attempted to offer another perspective on the former 1960s radical anti-war agitator. Presiding Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) ordered her to shut up and when she wouldn't, had her physically removed from the senate chamber.“I realize that many of the senators who honored the late Sen. Hayden may have been ignorant of his role in prolonging the Vietnam War and enabling the Communists to kill millions of my former countrymen,” Nguyen said. “Rather than let his misdeeds go down the memory hole I wanted a few minutes to offer a balanced account of the role he played.”Lara dismissed GOP contentions that not allowing Nguyen's remarks constituted unwarranted censorship. “Words must be worthy of being heard before they can be permitted to be spoken,” he argued. “To many in the Democratic Party Hayden was a hero. Nothing Sen. Nguyen could say would change that. Clearly, granting her leave to speak would've been a waste of our time no matter how brief her remarks may have been.”In other California news, facing a $2 billion budget deficit, Governor Jerry Brown (D) urged lawmakers to cut $115 million from the Middle Class Scholarship Program so that funding for the California Dream Act could be spared. The California Dream Act provides scholarships for students in the country illegally. “It is a question of priorities and consequences,” Brown declared. “These middle class kids already are well enough off. They don't need the help as much as the 'dreamers' do. Getting a free education is one of the key reasons why immigrants come to America. If we don't provide for them their incentive to come here will be diminished. The middle class kids will be here regardless of whether they get aid.”Feds Pooh-Pooh Concerns About Faked StudiesThe National Science Foundation (NSF) Inspector General has found 74 instances where researchers funded by the NSF engaged in plagiarism, falsifying data, stealing, wasting government money, or committing other fraud.NSF spokesman Bobbie Mixon brushed aside concerns, saying “they are of little consequence. No one reads the reports that we publish. Why should it make any difference whether the results are fake? We are providing an income for members of the academic community. The arcane and basically unreadable documents they produce are a byproduct of that greater objective. Considering the massive amount of money being squandered across a plethora of federal agencies it would be unfair to single out this one enclave of waste, fraud and abuse. After all, do we really want a cadre of unemployed university professors roaming the streets looking for trouble?A Satirical Look at Recent NewsJohn Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.