Category: Anti Civil Rights ideas & “Friends”
Canada’s government is forcing licensed and law-abiding firearm owners to surrender, export or permanently “deactivate” thousands of prohibited firearm models. Meanwhile, a criminal investigation involving former Member of Parliament (MP) Inky Mark shows Canadian authorities already possess extensive laws to pursue actual firearm trafficking and other illegal criminal conduct.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested former MP Mark, 79, after executing search warrants on July 7, 2026, at his Dauphin, Manitoba, residence. Investigators reported seizing 439 firearms, ammunition, an antique cannon and more than C$300,000 in cash, which Mark claims is from the sale of Manitoba properties. Former MP Mark faces 12 Criminal Code charges, including firearm trafficking and possession of property obtained by crime.
He has been released from custody. Mark denies the charges but did tell the Canadian Broadcast Corporation that “he did something stupid” and admitted he transferred firearms to an individual he has known for 30 years.
Mark, also the former mayor of Dauphin, is outspoken and critical against Canada’s Liberal Party, which dominates politics north of the border. Mark wasn’t in Canada’s Parliament when the gun confiscation bill was voted upon.
Criminal Conduct Is Already Illegal
RCMP officials said investigators believe at least three of the seized firearms were illegally trafficked and one had an altered serial number. The investigation reportedly began after another Dauphin resident was charged with firearm offenses in the United States.
Those allegations are serious. But they do not expose some previously unknown gap in Canada’s gun laws.
Firearm trafficking, altering serial numbers, unauthorized possession and violating secure storage laws are already criminal offenses. RCMP officials acknowledged that Canadians may lawfully possess large firearm collections. The legal line is crossed by criminal conduct, not by the number of firearms a licensed citizen owns.
That distinction should guide public policy.
Confiscation Moves Forward
In the meantime, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is pressing ahead with the so-called “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program” covering more than 2,500 makes and models prohibited since May 2020. The entire scheme, begun under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has been a fiasco from the get-go.
The declaration period for law-abiding gun owners ended March 31. Collection, destruction, deactivation and compensation are already underway and are expected to continue through early fall. As of June 8, owners had declared just 68,717 firearms, including 2,520 in Manitoba.
Participation in the compensation program was technically voluntary. But compliance with the prohibitions is not. Owners who decline compensation must ultimately surrender their affected firearms without payment, export them or pay to have them permanently deactivated.
Facing measly compliance rates, the Canadian government extended its amnesty orders after the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear a challenge to the 2020 prohibitions. The amnesty will now expire 90 days after the court issues its decision, expected in 2027. The confiscation program, however, continues.
Target Criminals, Not Lawful Owners
Nothing alleged against former MP Mark suggests Canada needed to prohibit thousands of additional firearm models or confiscate lawfully acquired property to investigate him.
Police used existing laws directed at trafficking, unauthorized possession and altered serial numbers. That is precisely where enforcement belongs.
The courts will determine whether former MP Mark committed the offenses alleged against him.
The United States had their own brush with a state lawmaker convicted of trafficking firearms. California Democratic state Sen. Leland Yee was a “known champion of open government and gun control” according to an NPR report. The Brady Campaign named him to its Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll for his bill to require unworkable microstamping. He was also part of the effort to require California’s “bullet button.”
Except he was an illegal firearm trafficker. Yee accepted over $42,000 from undercover FBI agents to provide up to $2.5 million in firearms from Muslim terrorists in The Philippines and smuggle them into the United States.
The disgraced state senator was convicted of felony racketeering charges for money laundering, political corruption, arms trafficking and bribery. He spent five years in prison.
Canada’s Mark faces his own day in court but policymakers there should nevertheless recognize the larger lesson already staring them in the face.
Public safety is not advanced by disarming hunters, recreational shooters and other licensed citizens who obey the law. It is advanced by identifying criminal conduct, prosecuting those responsible and leaving lawful firearm owners alone.
by Lee Williams
It’s hard not to smile or even giggle a little bit when you see how badly President Donald Trump is scaring the country’s paid anti-gun community, especially when you combine the President’s efforts with those of the United States Supreme Court.
No one is feeling this pro-gun heat more than the youngsters working at the Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control empire, who want the public to believe it’s an actual newsroom comprised of actual journalists—a fiction they’ll go to great lengths to maintain.
The Trace kids are extremely busy trying to stop this Second Amendment tidal wave that’s washing across the entire country. They realize that they’re losing, so they’re rabidly coming up with new ideas to counter our coming freedom—and some of their ideas are absolutely crazy.
Two Tracers just released this tome: “New Jersey Just Lost Its Assault Weapons Ban. Here’s Why That Matters for the Rest of the Country.”
The story’s last line is bedeviling. It’s not a quote or taken from any report. It’s completely attributable to the story’s two anti-gun authors:
“If the Supreme Court strikes down assault weapons bans nationwide next year, states could try other strategies, including putting semiautomatic rifles behind a permitting process,” they actually wrote.
Can you actually imagine that?
The highest court in the country says you can legally possess ARs in every state and U.S. Territory, but then some blue state suddenly requires you to obtain a state permit—regardless of the Supreme Court decision?
Do they think that might actually work?
It’s a Second Amendment right, right?
It would be like requiring state permits before allowing someone to read a book or scour the internet, which are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The Trace is redefining desperation.
I’m picturing five-gallon pails of Zoloft, Prozac and Xanax scattered throughout their newsroom, each with a “help yourself” label.
It actually gets even worse. They’ve actually run out of legitimate sources.
The two authors wrote this:
“It’s unclear whether rescinding the bans will cause an increase in gun violence — or mass shootings in particular. Assault weapons have been used in most of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, and studies have found that assault weapons, combined with high-capacity magazines, may increase the death count in mass shootings,” the story claims.
The link takes you to another hilarious medical study, which falsely claimed that “state assault weapons bans are associated with fewer fatalities.” The study based its findings on one particular source: “Data were abstracted from the Gun Violence Archive, an independent online database of US gun violence incidents.”
We’ve nearly written volumes about the faulty data from the Gun Violence Archive—so much so that it’s hard not to laugh every time some academic clod uses it in their “research.” Suffice it to say, the GVA said there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses actual data and doesn’t make stuff up.
The two authors actually supported using the GVA’s faulty numbers.
“The Trace uses the Gun Violence Archive’s definition of mass shooting, which includes shootings resulting in four or more injuries or deaths, excluding the shooter,” they wrote.
Trace history
The Trace calls itself “The only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence.” Its staff refer to themselves as journalists, rather than anti-gun activists who are paid by Bloomberg to write propaganda.
Since the Trace was founded about a decade ago, scores of newspapers, websites and other legacy media outlets have fallen victim to this ruse. What’s left of Gannett’s flagship newspaper, USA Today, has collaborated with the Trace multiple times, and has even allowed Trace activists to produce and edit content, which appeared in the newspaper under a joint byline.
“We have partnered with more than 170 national and local media organizations,” the Trace boasts on its website. “We’re always looking to start new partnerships.”
The Trace is nothing more than the propaganda arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, which is also funded by Bloomberg.
Both nonprofits share the same president, John Feinblatt. In fact, Feinblatt is also listed as the two nonprofits’ principal officer. Federal tax documents show that the Trace and Everytown also use the same phone number, 646-324-8250.
Both nonprofits were incorporated in Delaware, which is known for its stringent corporate privacy laws.
Takeaways
Now that New Jersey-compliant ARs are a thing of the past, and California-compliant ARs may soon follow, we should take a minute to relax, but only one minute, no more.
The Trace and its followers will certainly come up with more whacky ideas, but they live in states whose judges support whacky behavior, especially if it harms the Second Amendment.
We remain in a constant battle for our civil rights, and anything can still go wrong at any time, according to Murphy’s Law.
“I learned that Murphy is alive and well. He’s in every drawer, under every rock and on top of every hill.”
Col. Charlie Beckwith said that. He should certainly know.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project wouldn’t be possible without you. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support pro-gun stories like this.
Texas has a proud heritage of gun ownership and Second Amendment support, so the likelihood of a vehement anti-gun candidate getting elected on a statewide basis for nearly any public office isn’t great.
Look no further than three-time loser Beto O’Rourke for proof. Running on a solidly anti-gun platform of banning AR and AK style rifles, O’Rourke lost the election for the U.S. Senate to pro-gun Sen. Ted Cruz, then failed to make it out of the primaries before the 2020 election. Finally, he lost the governor’s race to pro-gun candidate Greg Abbott in a lopsided 52% to 43% vote.
Enter Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a “pastor” who has proclaimed that God is “non-binary” and that there are really “six different genders.” While those views won’t sit well with many Texans, his views on guns and gun ownership seem to be even worse.
Talarico is vying for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And Talarico’s thoughts on the Second Amendment should ensure that gun-rights proponents vote against Talarico this November.
In a town hall meeting in 2020, Talarico explained his reasoning on why passing more and more restrictive gun control laws is appropriate and constitutional.
“A lot of politicians like to talk about the Second Amendment,” Rep. Talarico said in the video town hall. “Very few have actually read the Second Amendment because, if they did, they would know that the words ‘well regulated’ are right there in the text of the amendment itself.”
As the National Shooting Sports Foundation pointed out in a recent news alert chronicling Talerico’s stance,
“Rep. Talarico’s suggestion that ‘well regulated’ meant that the Founders believed all along that gun rights were supposed to be heavily restricted or conditioned is as laughable as it should be disqualifying,” Larry Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in the alert.
“We have a summer reading list for Rep. Talarico, and it begins with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Heller.”
As Keane further pointed out, in the early days of our country, “well regulated” referred to “well trained,” “well organized” or “well exercised.” Basically, the militia (of “the People”) is trained and ready to go should it be called up for duty.
Of course, that’s not Talarico’s only objectionable stance when it comes to gun owners’ rights. On a progressive podcast, he called for passage of “safe storage” laws that would mandate how citizens store their privately owned firearms—a position in direct opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller.
On that podcast, he equated gun control laws to the requirement for people to apply for city permits in order to hold protests and rallies on city property—a ludicrous comparison, indeed.
It was even revealed recently that Talarico employed the former head of an extremist gun control protest movement as his legislative aide in the Texas House of Representatives.
As Keane wrote, while November might seem far off, the election just a little more than 100 days away.
“As Rep. Talarico continues to try to sell his anti-gun platform to voters in Texas, more of them will learn just how extreme that platform is and will reject it,” Keane concluded. “NSSF will be there to help spread the word.”
Ultimately, while there are some decidedly liberal cities in Texas—like Austin, Houston and Dallas (think failed congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who lost to Talarico in the Democratic Senate primary)—rank-and-file Texans are believers in the protections afforded by the Second Amendment and cast their votes accordingly. Hopefully, the vast majority will do so again and keep Talarico as far away from Washington, D.C., as possible.
IN HER role as editor of TCW, Kathy Gyngell did what British journalism has fought to do since John Wilkes and the North Briton; with leonine grit and courage she upheld freedom.
For 12 years, seven days a week, she made sure dissent was heard. She built TCW into one of the few places in Britain where the official story could still be challenged without apology. Lockdown. Vaccines. The BBC. Mass immigration. Net Zero. The degradation of childhood. The assault on the family. The collapse of policing. The cowardice of the Conservative and Labour parties. The long march of the managerial state. TCW took them on when most of the press was either asleep, captured or afraid.
That is why it had to be killed.
No minister announced the closure of TCW. No censor put a seal on Kathy’s office door. The British state is too slippery for that. It does not usually ban dissent outright. It smothers it through the pipes: advertising, mobile access, social media, search, platform rules, ‘brand safety’, ‘online safety’, ‘media literacy’ and the ever-ready smear of ‘misinformation’.
This is the new censorship. It does not argue. It obstructs. It does not defeat you in public or by debate. It makes you harder to find, harder to fund, harder to share and harder to trust. That is what happened to TCW.
The site was banned by online ad agencies. It was hit by Facebook during lockdown. Kathy was thrown off Twitter, along with vaccine-injured people whose testimony threatened the official covid narrative. The site was blocked on mobile phones for months after being caught by the British Board of Film Classification’s filtering regime. Readers trying to reach a lawful conservative website were obstructed as though they were looking for filth.
A serious daily website needs oxygen. It needs readers, advertisers, links, shares, search, mobile access, payment routes, donors and confidence. Break those routes and the publication bleeds. The state does not need to prosecute it. The platforms do not need to admit censorship. The advertisers do not need to explain themselves. Everyone hides behind process. Everyone says they are enforcing rules. Everyone claims clean hands.
Then the site dies, and the same people say, ‘Nothing to do with us.’ That is a lie.
TCW is closing as a daily site because the British state and its allies have made honest dissent increasingly impossible to sustain. The cowardice began under a Conservative government.
During covid, lawful doubt was treated as a public danger. Citizens who questioned lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates, school closures and the destruction of livelihoods were smeared as cranks or extremists. Platforms were encouraged to police opinion. The MSM supinely obeyed.
The BBC was, as usual, complicit. Conservative ministers talked about liberty while presiding over one of the greatest assaults on free speech in modern British history.
Then the Tories put the machinery on the statute book.
The Online Safety Act was driven through under a Conservative government and received Royal Assent in October 2023. The Act passed into law on October 26, 2023, and made Ofcom responsible for implementing the new online safety regime.
It was sold as ‘protection for children’. In reality, it created a vast regulatory structure for online speech and made Ofcom the policeman of the internet. Platforms were pushed into permanent risk-avoidance. Lawful speech became a compliance problem. ‘Safety’ became the master word. Once that word rules, freedom withers. Free speech has never been ‘safe’.
This was one of the great betrayals of modern Conservatism. The party that should have defended liberty built the legal runway for censorship. It handed power to Ofcom, trained platforms to fear liability, and wrapped the whole operation in the language of harm prevention.
The result was predictable. Companies do not defend free speech when regulators are watching. They protect themselves. They over-remove, over-block, over-filter and over-comply.
That is how dissent gets buried.
The same Act reinforced Ofcom’s media literacy role. That matters. Media literacy sounds harmless. It is not harmless when the regulator, the Government, public broadcasters and tech platforms are all marching in the same direction. It becomes the polite name for teaching the public which sources to trust and which to distrust.
This is the bridge to the next phase. First the state regulates platforms in the name of safety. Then it works with broadcasters, tech companies, charities and public bodies to shape what citizens are taught to regard as reliable. Then it proposes to promote ‘trusted news’ above rival voices.
That is the censorship escalator. Labour is now riding it with enthusiasm.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s 2026-2029 Media Literacy Action Plan, A Safe, Informed Digital Nation, dresses control in the language of confidence, safety, critical thinking and resilience. Published on March 16, 2026, it sets out the steps departments across government are taking to strengthen media literacy over the next three years, including helping people ‘think critically about online content’ and ‘find trustworthy information’. The state wants to shape how citizens consume information online. It says it wants people to find trustworthy information. That sounds innocent until you ask the only question that matters: trustworthy according to whom?
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has gone further. Its Green Paper, Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media, proposes a new media literacy duty for public service media. Published on June 23, 2026, it sets out a new strategic direction for Government media policy and sits alongside plans to improve access to ‘reliable news sources’ online. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and others would not merely produce programmes. They would help train the public in how to judge information.
That means the same broadcasters whose failures TCW exposed would be enlisted as guardians of public understanding.
The Government is also considering forcing platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok to give greater prominence to ‘trusted news’ providers, including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Reuters reported on June 22, 2026, that the proposal would require social media platforms to prioritise content from trusted news providers as part of the fight against misinformation. That proposal tells us exactly where this is going. The state will bless approved sources. Platforms will push them. Rival voices will be downgraded, distrusted or buried.
Ofcom’s little-known Making Sense of Media programme fits into the same scheme. Ofcom wants media literacy to become ‘everyone’s business’. It works with broadcasters, platforms, charities, local bodies and other organisations with public reach. It presents this as education. In reality it helps build a national information network in which the state, the regulator, public broadcasters, tech companies and approved civil society all pull in the same direction.
Do not be fooled by the language. This is not about helping vulnerable people spot email scams. It is about power.
The state wants to decide which sources are trusted. It wants the BBC and other approved broadcasters to instruct the public in how to judge information. It wants platforms to promote the right voices. It wants regulators to organise the field. It wants dissent managed before it becomes politically dangerous to their interests.
‘Misinformation’ is the weapon.
During covid, that word was used to silence questions which later proved legitimate. On lockdown, vaccine harms, school closures, masks, mandates, excess deaths and the origins of the virus, dissenters were attacked before the evidence was in. The same word is now used against those who challenge Net Zero, illegal immigration, gender ideology, two-tier policing, grooming gangs, Islamism, the BBC and the failures of the British state.
Call something misinformation and the work is half done. Advertisers panic. Platforms throttle. Donors hesitate. Investors vanish. Readers are warned off. A lawful opinion becomes a reputational hazard.
TCW lived through this before the system was fully formed. It can now be seen as a test case in practical censorship. It showed how a lawful dissenting publication can be worn down without ever being formally banned.
The Conservative government built the first serious machinery. Labour is now putting a sharper blade on it. This is why TCW’s closure matters. It is not just the end of a website. It is a warning about Britain.
A country with a free press does not need the state to define trusted news. A free people do not need Ofcom, DSIT, DCMS, the BBC, Google and Meta to teach them how to think. A democracy does not protect itself by privileging approved voices and starving the rest.
Kathy Gyngell and TCW did more for public debate than half the subsidised, self-regarding, award-winning media class put together. They kept the argument alive when argument itself was being recast as harm.
For 12 years, Kathy kept open a space where writers could say what the respectable press would not say. She did not have a wealthy institution behind her. She did not enjoy the protection given to fashionable magazines of approved dissent. She did not flatter the establishment. She did not launder conservative defeat as sophistication. She did not pretend that Britain’s governing class had merely made a few mistakes. She saw the rot and published those willing to name it.
That is why readers trusted TCW. It did not ask permission. It did not trim its sails to please donors. It did not become the safe, neutered, decorative conservatism the establishment can tolerate. It published through smears, bans, blocks, abuse, financial strain and institutional contempt.
The closure of TCW as a daily site should shame every politician who claims to care about free speech. It should shame Conservative MPs who cheered or tolerated the Online Safety Act. It should shame ministers who mouthed support for liberty while online dissent was being throttled. It should shame the broadcasters who now expect to be treated as ‘trusted news’ while they helped create the climate in which dissenting outlets were cast as dangerous.
The fight will continue on Substack. The archive will remain. The network will endure. But do not soften the meaning of this moment.
A heroine of free speech has been forced to retreat from a platform she built by steely resolve and courage because Britain’s censorship state has made the cost of dissent too high.
TCW was not defeated. It was starved of oxygen by people who could not answer it.