Texas Creating Critical Race Theory Office?

June 29th, 2021

This is thoroughly infuriating news:

The Texas Department of State Health Services is using close to $45 million to create the Office of Health Equity Policy and Performance. Purportedly, the office will work with state and local public health entities to address disparities in health outcomes in various demographics.

“Equity” is the CRTspeak tipoff here, because equality and color-bind policies don’t give the hard left enough opportunities to stick their noses into other people’s business to promote their racist theories.

If this sounds familiar, it is because Democrat State Rep. Garnet Coleman (Houston) authored a bill during the 87th Legislative Session that would have created the Office of Health Equity within the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, which is an entity of the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The bill was included in the healthcare legislative priorities of Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan as a part of his “Healthy Families, Healthy Texas” legislative package announced in early April.

The bill passed the Texas House of Representatives on May 5 by a vote of 77-51 and included 16 Republicans.

Those Republicans were State Reps. Steve Allison (San Antonio), Brad Buckley (Salado), Gary Gates (Rosenberg), Dan Huberty (Humble), Todd Hunter (Corpus Christi), Kyle Kacal (College Station), Ken King (Canadian), Stephanie Klick (Ft. Worth), John Kuempel (Seguin), Stan Lambert (Abilene), Morgan Meyer (Dallas), Geanie Morrison (Victoria), Chris Paddie (Marshall), Four Price (Amarillo), John Raney (Bryan), and Jim Murphy (Houston).

Murphy is also the House Republican Caucus chairman.

When the bill arrived in the Texas Senate, it was never even referred to a committee and granted a hearing, sealing its fate—or so you would have thought.

Snip.

When the news broke that the Texas Department of State Health Services was creating this office of its own accord, former State Rep. Matt Rinaldi, a current candidate for the Republican Party of Texas chairman, took to Twitter to ask, “Why is the Texas executive branch using $45 million of taxpayer money to create an agency that will implement critical race theory in health policy after the Legislature defunded the agency in 2017 and the [S]enate blocked its implementation this year?

When Coleman’s bill was being deliberated in the House of Representatives, State Rep. Jeff Cason (R–Bedford) spoke out against the bill on the House floor and said, “Today, we gather here voting on legislation that assumes our healthcare system is institutionally racist and that certain people are oppressed when receiving health care due to their gender or color of their skin.” He continued, “No one in America is turned away from a hospital. Healthcare has been open to all who seek it.”

Absolutely nothing good can come of catering to radical Critical Race Theory proponents, no matter how much proponents might swear up and down that their version of “Equity” somehow won’t be used to carry water for the radical left. You can’t let the camel’s nose in the tent.

Governor Abbott should put a stop to this nonsense, or explain to Republican voters why he won’t.

Hunter Biden’s Investment In Flu Manchu

June 28th, 2021

This seems like news:

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners – an investment firm led by Hunter Biden – was a lead financial backer of Metabiota, a pandemic tracking and response firm that has partnered with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, an investment fund founded by Biden and John Kerry’s stepson in 2009, that counted Biden as a Managing Director.

Among the companies listed on archived versions of the firm’s portfolio is Metabiota, a San Francisco-based company that purports to detect, track, and analyze emerging infectious diseases, The National Pulse can reveal.

Financial reports reveal that RSTP led the company’s first round of funding, which amounted to $30 million. Former Managing Director and co-founder of RSTP Neil Callahan – a name that appears many times on Hunter Biden’s hard drive – also sits on Metabiota’s Board of Advisors.

Since 2014, Metabiota has been a partner of EcoHealth Alliance as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) “PREDICT” project, which seeks to “predict and prevent global emerging disease threats.”

As part of this effort, researchers from Metabiota, EcoHealth Alliance, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated on a study relating to bat infectious diseases in China. “Sensitive and broadly reactive RT-PCR assays were performed at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,” the paper notes.

So Hunter Biden’s company helped fund Flu Manchu.

What are the odds?

Open Borders And Critical Race Theory Are Deeply Unpopular

June 27th, 2021

You know what Americans hate? Open borders and critical race theory:

The Biden administration is failing big time with its inability to control illegal immigration, adding it to one of several issues that could doom Democrats if left unchecked.

In a new Harvard/Harris poll, an overwhelming 80% said that illegal immigration is a serious issue and one that needs more attention than what President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris are giving.

What’s more, 68% said that signals from Biden’s White House are encouraging illegal immigration, and 55% believe that former President Donald Trump’s border closing policies should have been left in place.

The fears of illegal immigration were a key part of Penn’s analysis of his June poll for Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll.

He wrote: “Sixty-four percent of registered voters want the Biden administration to issue new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people across the border. Only 7% of voters could accurately call out the amount of monthly illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. with 84% underestimate the number, suggesting we should expect stronger voter reactions if the crisis evolves further. Overall, 74% of voters view the current surge in illegal immigrants as a crisis that needs to be addressed immediately, and 56% do not view climate change, racism, and sexism as root causes of migration from South and Central America.”

Nor are Americans any more enamored of Critical Race Theory:

And despite liberal media efforts to dismiss the debates in school districts around the country over the teaching of critical race theory, the poll found that it too was a hot issue.

“On schooling and education, another sleeper issue, 61% do not believe students should be taught that America is structurally racist and is dominated by white supremacy,” said Penn in his email.

Americans oppose critical race theory because it’s racism, and they’re not racist.

Will the Biden Administration change directions in the face of these findings? Almost certainly not. Democrats view both Critical Race Theory and amnestying illegal aliens as tickets to permanent electoral majorities. DNC leadership no doubt views all the House Democrats who will lose races in 2022 as acceptable collateral damage to avoid changing course…

J.P. Sears Teaches Critical Race Theory

June 26th, 2021

It’s one of those pop quizzes where the answer is always C): Racism.

Plus: Hitler!

There Is No LinkSwarm, Only Zuul

June 25th, 2021

A few days ago, I found it strange that my MacBookPro lid wouldn’t close properly. Then it seemed to spontaneously reboot. Then yesterday I noticed this:

That, dear reader, is the bottom of my Mac bowed outward due to the swollen battery issue. A trip to the Apple store ensued. They’re going to replace the battery, and possibly the bottom of the case, due to the issue, free of charge, despite it being out of warranty. Plus the Mac was still working, so I was able to back everything up just in case they need to swap out the drive. And I have a backup MacBookPro, a lovely parting gift from my previous employer, so I’m not dead in the water. So all I lost was two hours.

But let me tell you: two hours is a lot when you’re constantly running the needle into the red. This week I’m finishing up cranking on a project at work that ships today, I have to get started on a new Lame Excuse Books catalog that’s already more than a month later than I usually send it out, I’m trying to get up to full speed on my summer exercise regime, etc. Frankly, I need a break. So I’m using the repair time to enjoy a blogging semi-hiatus for a week or so.

But a semi-hiatus for me is going to look like a lesser mortal’s blog at full tilt. I think I’ve managed to put up something here every day for probably over 700 days (maybe 1,000 or more), and I want to keep that streak alive, but expect something more like a single video or tweet each day rather than full-blown posts. Just don’t expect long, detailed posts for a bit.

I need to use the time to get some work done around the house, and clean up in advance of a July 4th gathering.

Next week: Maybe two LinkSwarms. We’ll see how it goes…

Tomahawk Block V Arrives

June 24th, 2021

The Navy has taken delivery of new Block V Tomahawk missiles:

Raytheon has delivered the US Navy’s first Block V configured Tomahawk missile, marking a major milestone for the capability modernisation programme.

The latest delivery creates a path to provide the fleet with an ‘upgraded warfighting capability’.

Tomahawk is a long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missile in service with the US and the British Royal Navy’s surface ships and submarines.

In a press statement, US Naval Air Systems Command said that these first Block V missiles are from the existing Tomahawk Block IV inventory.

The first Block V missiles have been recertified and modernised for fleet use.

Tomahawk Weapons System programme (PMA-280) programme manager captain Vernon ‘John’ Red said: “This is the next big advancement in Tomahawk capability and a major achievement for the programme.

“We’re focused now on delivering advanced capability to the fleet by recertifying and modernising our Block IV inventory, and by contracting production Block V missiles.”

Here’s a video that covers the enhanced capabilities:

The navy’s VLS has proven pretty flexible, being able to accommodate both the Tomahawk and the new Naval Strike Missile, and presumably some in-development hypersonic missiles. Lots of countries have cruise missiles, and supposedly Russia, the UK and France all used cruise missiles at some phase of the Syrian conflict, but none has the demonstrated battlefield record of the Tomahawk.

Bosch’s New Fab And The State of European Semiconductors

June 23rd, 2021

This is interesting for what it says about the state of European semiconductor manufacturing:

German tech giant Bosch has opened the doors to a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Dresden, which it hopes will plug the significant hole currently plaguing automotive supply chains.

The site – which was estimated to cost the company in excess of €1 billion (AU$1.57 billion) to build – will reportedly begin producing much-needed chips for vehicles by early September this year. It is so far unclear how the product will be distributed, and if German manufacturers – including Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz – will be given priority in the queue.

“The new [factory] is the single largest investment in the company’s history. This cannot be stressed too much. Its size and additional production capacity alone are impressive. The very latest methods of data-driven continuous improvement in production make the Dresden plant a smart factory,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“To put it another way: in this plant, natural and artificial intelligence have joined forces with the internet of things to form a productive symbiosis.”

Here Alte Jungfer Merkel is no doubt repeating some generic technomarketingspeak handed to her by an aide, as I suspect Merkel is as ignorant of current developments in artificial intelligence as I am of the songs she sang in the Freie Deutsche Jugend.

Here’s a Deutsche Weil English video segment on the fab, for which the headline says “Europe aims for independence from Asia”:

How cutting edge will the Bosch fab be?

The 300mm fab has been under construction since June 2018 and as recently as October 2019 it was stated that the Dresden wafer fab was expected to start operations in spring 2020…

The fab makes use of 5G communications and artificial intelligence [there’s that phrase again -LP] for extensive automation and will be used for the manufacture of power semiconductors and ASICs for automotive applications down to a minimum geometry of 65nm, according to a company spokesperson.

(record scratch)

300mm is industry standard, and Dresden makes sense, as Infineon, Global Foundries and X-FAB already have fabs there, so there’s a skilled labor pool to draw on. The strange thing here is spending $1.2 building a new 65nm fab, since that’s about seven process node generations behind the cutting edge. 65nm was cutting edge way back in 2005.

You don’t need cutting edge process technology to build automotive integrated circuits, which tend to use older process nodes, but 65nm doesn’t give you much headroom for the long haul. It also doesn’t really do much to “compete with Asia,” since it’s hopelessly behind not only leaders TSMC and Samsung, but also about half the fabs run by Chinese companies SMIC and Unigroup. It’s hard to see investing $1 billion in building a older technology fab as opposed to contracting out production to foundries. (Of course, foundry capacity is highly constrained right now, and maybe Bosch leadership was able to see that coming when they broke ground in 2018.)

Could it still turn out to be a decent investment? Possibly. In the short haul it will relieve the current capacity crunch and let Bosch gain share from competitors who can’t book foundry production. Plus semiconductor manufacturing seems like the sort of thing European governments like to subsidize. And indeed, the DW piece notes that “The German government also invested in the plant.” (It also wouldn’t surprise me to find out that various inscrutable, multi-acronym EU agencies unknown to voters in Barcelona and Gdansk are also kicking in money.) Fueled by taxpayer money, building a 65nm fab could still be a profitable proposition for Bosch.

But fabs close all the time, even 300mm fabs. Building a fab dedicated to such an old process node makes profitability a much more challenging proposition, especially given the next (inevitable) industry downturn. You only have so many years before everything is obsolete. Bosch has given themselves a very short runway to profitability for this investment.

Back in the 1990s, Europe was competitive with American and Japanese semiconductor companies, with fabs built in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and even Italy. Today, of those countries, only Ireland (Intel) and Germany have any 300mm fabs at all, despite having a highly educated workforce and modern technological infrastructure. (Russia evidently has one as well, owned by Crocus Nano Electronics (about which I know next to nothing), also running 65nm, that started production in 2015.) Europe’s semiconductor industry has been passed not only by Taiwan and South Korea, but also by China.

While Europe was integrating, its semiconductor manufacturing capacity was stagnating. Highly integrated, yes, but also highly regulated and highly unionized.

As I’ve said before, building cutting edge fabs is a very expensive game to play. Collectively, the world has decided that Europe is not a suitable location for one.

Supreme Court Rumbles NCAA Scam

June 22nd, 2021

I used to follow some college athletics. Now I don’t. At the same time universities were getting more and more expensive, they were also getting more and more woke. College sports used to be an oasis from that nonsense, but so many programs bent the knee to #BlackLivesMatter last year that I just stopped paying attention.

So I was happy to see yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that colleges couldn’t collude to avoid paying student athletes.

he U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out limits set by the major governing body for American intercollegiate sports on education-related benefits that schools can give players as a violation of antitrust law, handing a big victory to student-athletes fighting for greater financial compensation.

The 9-0 ruling put the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) further on the defensive as it struggles to preserve a business model – huge revenues generated by college sports and big salaries for executives and coaches while players remain unpaid – under assault on multiple fronts.

The NCAA’s curbs on non-cash payments to college athletes related to education – including benefits such as computers, science equipment and musical instruments – were part of what critics have called the fiction of amateurism in college sports, an enterprise that rakes in billions of dollars annually.

These limits, according to the ruling authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, are anticompetitive under a federal law called the Sherman Antitrust Act. The ruling could pave the way for challenges to other NCAA compensation rules, a prospect that Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to invite in a separate opinion agreeing with Gorsuch.

Kavanaugh wrote that those other limits on compensation for players “also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws” and suggested they likely would be struck down if lower courts follow the analysis laid out in Monday’s ruling.

“The NCAA is not above the law,” Kavanaugh added.

For years, football and basketball have been big moneymakers for some colleges and universities (and money losers for others). Why not let student athletes benefit from that? Tradition? Hell, colleges are hellbent on destroying every tradition that made them vital institutions (including freedom of speech, free inquiry and the rule of law), so why not that one as well?

I’ve long thought that traditional football power schools (Alabama, Texas, USC, Oklahoma, etc.) could make a lot more money by leaving the NCAA and forming their own competing football conference of 15 or so teams, playing a round robin schedule plus playoffs. They could pay athletes and forge a partnership deal with the NFL to provide year-round professional coaching. It would provide more entertainment than watching power schools beat up on Rice or UNT every year.

America’s entire higher education system needs a hard reboot: Shut down all colleges and universities for a year, eliminate SJW departments like Women’s Studies entirely, hand every woke professor and administrator a pink slip, and deny federal loan and contracts for any university it costs students more than 10 grand a year to attend. Right now all this is a pipe-dream, but college athletics are one of the last sources of unwarranted affection ordinary people feel toward higher education. (“College is a $120,000 hooker, and you are an idiot who fell in love with her!”) Maybe the demise of the current plantation athletic complex will help pave the way for real reform.

Here’s the text of the decision.

And here’s a South Park clip to round out the post:

Assholes And Losers

June 21st, 2021

Critical Race Theory, like a lot of social justice/victimhood identity politics creeds, clothes horrible, racist ideas in the confounding camouflage of postmodern academic jargon. That’s one reason conservatives have had a hard time fighting it. Scott Adams says that labeling “Marxist” or “anti-white” isn’t getting the job done persuasion-wise. He suggests boiling down the poison of Critical Race Theory into something far more readily understandable: losers and assholes:

Being accurate matters for science and for budgeting. Accuracy often requires details and nuance and context and all that stuff. But persuasion craves simplicity. Every detail you add to a clean message gives someone a reason to not accept it.

We see this problem for the critics of Critical Race Theory. They try to argue it is a Marxist worldview, and 95% of the country isn’t quite sure that is true, and isn’t quite sure why that matters, exactly. Sounds bad, but perhaps not so bad for left-leaning people. And that’s who the right needs to persuade.

Calling CRT “anti-white” might be close to the truth, but that doesn’t matter to persuasion. The “anti-white” critique sounds exactly like a Fox News talking point, and not something moderates would take se …

That’s why I am A-B testing some new persuasion approaches. In this tweet I reframe CRT as sorting children into two classes: Losers and Assholes.

The “losers” would be any non-white kids born into this oppressive racist system. The assholes are the white kids who allegedly benefit from the system and perhaps are not keen to change what works for them.

That framing might well get the job done, though just asking parents “So, is your kid a loser or an asshole?” might bring sub-optimal results…

(I have a lot of links on fighting Critical Race Theory building up in the virtual hopper, though there are other topic posts I need to finish first.)

The Long Road To Texas Constitutional Carry

June 20th, 2021

Though the 87th legislative regular session was a very mixed bag, among the good bills to actually make it to the end of the sausage factory was constitutional carry, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed that and a host of other Second Amendment bills this week:

Gov. Greg Abbott signed a number of pro-Second Amendment bills that were approved by the state legislature earlier this year at a press conference at the Alamo on Thursday.

“We gathered today at what truly is considered to be the cradle of liberty in the Lone Star State,” said Abbott.

The governor said they were holding the press conference “where men and women put their lives on the line, and they lost their lives, for the ultimate cause of freedom.”

“They fought for freedom. They fought for liberty, and that includes the freedom to be able to carry a weapon.”

Legislation that the governor signed, which will all go into effect on September 1, includes:

  • Senate Bill (SB) 19: prohibits state agencies and political subdivisions from contracting with any business that discriminates against firearm businesses or organizations.
  • SB 20: requires hotels to allow guests to store their firearms in their rooms.
  • SB 550: removes the specific language in state code that handguns must be worn in a “shoulder or belt” holster, allowing individuals to utilize any type of holster.
  • House Bill (HB) 957: exempts Texas-made suppressors from federal regulations surrounding the noise-reducing accessories.
  • HB 1500: removes the governor’s ability in state code to regulate firearms during a disaster declaration.
  • HB 1927: the “constitutional carry” bill that allows nearly all Texans over the age of 21 who can legally possess a handgun to legally carry it in public without a special permit.
  • HB 2622: the “Second Amendment sanctuary” bill that prohibits state and local government entities from enforcing certain types of potential federal firearm regulations that are not included in state code.

“[The Alamo defenders] knew the reason why somebody needed to carry a weapon was far more than just to use it to kill game that they would eat. They knew as much as anybody the necessity of being able to carry a weapon for the purpose of defending yourself against attacks by others,” said Abbott.

The governor pointed to the ongoing border crisis as a reason for Texans needing to be armed to defend themselves “against cartels and gangs and other very dangerous people.”

HB 1927, the Firearm Carry Act of 2021, takes effect September 1, so idiots blaming the Sixth Street shooting on it are talking out their ass.

In an email, Gun Owners of America Texas Director Rachel Malone notes that it took a decade to reach this point:

For me, the journey began ten years ago, in 2011. I became aware of the licensed open carry bill that the Texas Legislature was considering, and I figured that all the politically-involved people would do the work to pass it. How hard could that be? This is Texas, after all.

I was shocked when I heard that the bill had died without even receiving a vote….

When I showed up in 2013 for the legislative session, there were about half a dozen dedicated grassroots Texans who spoke up with me to end the permit requirement. That year, our words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

However, when all the significant gun bills in 2013 died, many more Texans came to the same conclusion that I had in 2011: you shouldn’t take it for granted that someone else will do the work to protect your rights.

During the next several legislative sessions, in 2015, 2017, and 2019, increasing numbers of Texans began showing up when it mattered — not merely at protests or rallies, but actually beginning to do the work inside the Capitol.

It was a long, uphill battle that not only took a lot of work and effort, but one that was ignored or fought by state congressional leadership along the way:

Constitutional carry has been a top priority for the Republican Party of Texas and gun owners across the Lone Star State for a long time.

In fact, constitutional carry was the first “legislative priority” approved by the delegates to the Texas GOP’s convention a decade ago.

Even as the list of party priorities expanded to eight over the years, constitutional carry has remained one of the party’s top goals for the legislature, as 20 other states—including Vermont—enjoy some form of permitless carry.

Despite this fact, however, the bill had not received much traction in the Texas Legislature in recent sessions. In 2019, for example, the bill was sent by then-House Speaker Dennis Bonnen to a committee led by Democrat State Rep. Poncho Nevarez (Eagle Pass), where it was not even given a hearing. Bonnen himself even referred to supporters of the legislation as “fringe gun activists.”

That same year, the legislation was not even filed in the Texas Senate.

So entering the legislative session at the beginning of 2021, the fight to pass the bill looked like an uphill battle. As the session began, numerous bills were filed in the House to remove the permit requirement to carry handguns, while State Sen. Drew Springer (R–Muenster) filed similar legislation in the Senate.

When committee assignments were announced in early February in the Texas House, new hope appeared for passing the bill.

Instead of appointing a Democrat to chair the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee that has traditionally blocked constitutional carry legislation in the past, House Speaker Dade Phelan appointed Republican State Rep. James White (Hillister).

White, a known supporter of constitutional carry who had previously filed a bill to implement it in a previous session, was joined on the committee by four Republicans who had been endorsed by Gun Owners of America, an organization that has heavily advocated for constitutional carry, including State Reps. Cole Hefner (Mt. Pleasant), Matt Schaefer (Tyler), Jared Patterson (Frisco), and Tony Tinderholt (Arlington).

Ultimately it was Schaefer’s House Bill 1927 that made its way out of the committee and onto the House floor.

On Thursday, April 15, after several hours of debate and attempts by opponents to derail the legislation, the bill passed the House by a vote of 84 in support and 56 in opposition.

While most Democrat efforts to amend the bill were rebuffed, so too were some efforts by Republicans to strengthen the bill. One amendment that would have lowered the age from 21 to 18, for example, was strongly rebuked.

Notably, the lone Republican to vote against the bill was State Rep. Morgan Meyer (R–Dallas), while some Democrats like State Rep. Leo Pacheco (San Antonio) and Terry Canales (Edinburg) joined Republicans in support of the legislation

With the bill having passed its first major hurdle, attention quickly turned to the other chamber.

Just a few days after the bill’s passage in the House, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the issue did not have enough votes to pass the Senate.

Almost instantly, activists began to light up Senators’ phone lines, demanding to know which Republicans were secretly blocking the bill behind the scenes.

Then, the Senate began to act.

First State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R–Georgetown) filed a new bill on the subject that was almost immediately referred to the Senate Administration Committee, chaired by Schwertner himself.

Then, seemingly overnight, Patrick created a new committee called the Senate Special Committee on Constitutional Issues. The only bill referred to the committee? HB 1927, the constitutional carry bill that passed the House the week prior.

Patrick then promised a vote on the issue in the Senate, even if it didn’t have the votes to pass, a move that would be considered highly unusual in the chamber, where normally authors must show they have the votes to pass their bill before it is brought up for consideration.

On May 5, the bill finally passed on an 18-31 party-line vote in the Senate. Due to amendments added in the Senate, the bill was sent to a conference committee, where members from House and Senate work to come to an agreement on which version of the bill will ultimately be sent to the governor.

On May 24, with just a week left in the session, the bill received final approval by both chambers.

Texas is actually fairly late to the game in passing Constitutional Carry:

35 years ago, it was illegal in 16 states (including Texas) for a civilian to carry a concealed weapon. Only Vermont did not require a pistol permit.

Working through the slow process of going state to state to change the law, the revolution happened.

First came the switch from no permit to may permit. That placed the decision on issuing permits in the hands of elected sheriffs, which explains why California and New York have not budged. Democrat sheriffs pocket a lot of money from patrons who want to carry.

Then came shall permit. This put the onus on law enforcement to show why a person should not carry a concealed weapon.

Finally, came freedom. 19 states no longer require the state’s permission to carry a concealed weapon.

What happens next? Well, as with open carry and campus carry, expect the gun grabbing crowd to predict horrific bloodshed from constitutional carry that never materializes, because it hasn’t happened in any other state that passed constitutional carry. Indeed, the three safest states in the union (Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire) are all Constitutional Carry states.

It’s been a long, hard road to get to this point, but it shows that dedicated activists can overcome establishment opposition and inertia to pass pro-freedom laws. And every pro-freedom law passed makes it that much harder for the leviathan state to take away those rights in the future.

There are no lost causes in American history because there are no won causes, and the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.