Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Bring.It.On.

All over the news today is rumor of a major power-grab by President Obama. Not rumor actually, he's being goaded into it by the Left Wing of his party.

The power-grab is in two parts, concerning the President bypassing the House on raising the debt ceiling, and the President bypassing the entire Congress to create new gun control laws.

Note that the latter item has been discussed in these pages for about 2.5 years, including the recent issuance of Dire Warnings by your blogger...

Taken together, Nancy Pelosi's call for the President to ignore the Constitution and assign himself the power to create debt in the name of the United States, and Joe Biden's call for the President to consider enacting his Panel's gun control laws by Executive Order, taken together, WILL precipitate a Constitutional Crisis.

As Newt Gingrich said on Fox News tonight, the Constitution has a general rule for Executive Orders: the President may use an Executive Order to direct the implementation of an existing Federal law. The President may not use an Executive Order to create law where none had existed before.

For the Debt Ceiling, there is NO law authorizing the President to raise the debt ceiling. The Fourteenth Amendment was NOT about that, it was about refusing to use the Good Faith and Credit of the Federal Government to stand behind war debt incurred by the Confederacy. To try to stretch that into blanket permission for the President to have the power to control ALL Federal debt simply ignores Article One, Sections Seven and Eight. To "parse" the Fourteenth Amendment on it's applicability where it conflicts with the basic Articles of the Constitution itself is simply wrong, and illegal.

For the Gun Control legislation the Biden Gang is about to come up with, there is a direct conflict with the Second Amendment and Tenth Amendment. The laws that Biden wants to come up with do not exist (the "Assault Weapons Ban" used to exist, but it expired and was not renewed by Congress, so it is not law). Likewise, no law exists to ban High Capacity Ammunition Feeding Devices or Private Sales of firearms by Federal law. Some hi-cap magazines and some such un-registered sales are already banned by State Edicts, so the Tenth Amendment is already in force on this issue, and for an Executive Order to be signed banning private sales, the idea that the Tenth Amendment already controls such law would have to be rejected, presumably by the Supreme Court of the United States.

When asked what would be the appropriate remedy for the President performing these Executive over-reaches, Newt Gingrich simply said, "Zero out the budgets of the agencies tasked with implementing the illegal Executive Orders."

Well, it might be difficult on the Nation to zero the budget of the Treasury Department, but the world would NOT stand still if the FBATFE's budget were zeroed, or the EffBeeEye's, either.

All that is not necessary, however. The House of Representatives has adequate legal counsel, and if such counsel were to opine that the Executive Orders were un-constitutional, the Speaker would simply memorialize the President to rescind them, and if the President failed to do so, he could be charged with Treason, a "High Crime", and impeached in the House. The Bill of Impeachment would then move to the Senate for trial, and I would have a hard time believing that there aren't six Democratic Senators who would not vote for conviction.

Then we get President Joe Biden. Something tells me that Uncle Joe is not so keen on ripping up the Constitution as his boss is, and he would likely rescind the EOs of Obama when reminded to do so by the House.

Here's the thing about Impeachment. Were a Bill of Impeachment to be filed, every one of the hundreds of Executive orders Obama has signed, some having great effect on commerce (e.g. the "war on coal"), would be looked at. Chances are, the Bill of Impeachment would demand such a review. Chances are, that the Bill of Impeachment would have a clause that said, upon a vote of Impeachment, that the House of Representative considers every action implemented by an Obama Executive Order to be improper, and thereby orders it's members not to appropriate any funds for the implementation of any of them.

My friends, there's a name for that.

It's called the Un-Do.

If Obama wants to precipitate the Un-Do of everything he has done since 1/20/09, including ObamaCare (many parts of which were done by Executive Order/Fiat), he should just go ahead and issue those Executive Orders. If he wants to keep his Office, he needs to ignore Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.

During his first term, the Third Debate and again right after Newtown, Obama DID say that he would leave gun control up to Congress and the normal political process. It's time he re-read his own speeches.

Thursday Thuds, post-Holiday edition

Thud the First: Heard on Fox News yesterday morning at about 10:34 PST: "Survival is the new Prosperity"...referring to the state of small business in the good-ole US of A. Word!

Thud the Second: The New Yawk Stock Exchange soared yestiddy, presumably because of the dreaded "Cliff" being in the rear-view mirror, but, guess what? So did the Gold price (fell back some today, though). Verrrrry interesting. Institutions are still buying gold despite all the supposed bully news from DeeCee? Something does not compute, and my guess is that the Street is very wary of the "fiscal solutions" involved. Also, TCWIC (Tax Cheat What's In Charge) Timmy Geithner now says we've reached the statutory borrowing limit, but, hey, that's okay because he can cook the books for at least two months to keep the downgrade wolf at bay. Of course, if any of us ran the books of any corporation the way he runs the books of the Federal Government, we'd all be in jail...

Thud the Third: The Grand Old Party continues it's collapse into political futility. The best available economic minds (Simpson-Bowles Commission) recommended a Fiscal Cliff solution with a ratio of Revenue enhancement (tax increases) to Spending increase of 1:2.6. The GOP just signed off on a plan with a ratio of 1:41  I forgot how to do mathematical proportion calculations or I would tell you what factor of excess past Simson-Bowles that number is, but it seems to be at least an 800% departure. The GOPes approved of that? Now we all go over a different cliff, and it is such a tall cliff, we will have a LOT of time to consider the error of our ways before we impact the base of that cliff at terminal velocity. The GOPes seem split, but in the entire House, there are only 25 or so true fiscal conservatives, so it's not likely that anything will change with the Speakership of John Boehner (just in: Boehner retained his seat). The TEA party types seem inclined to try to replace all the GOP fiscal wimps with conservative who have spines, but can the TEA party folks get it together again in 2014 like they did in 2010? I'm not putting any money on that outcome.

Thud the Fourth: Last night, Leno tried a zinger on prospective Secretary of State John Effing Kerry. Leno noted that Kerry's face is shaped more like a horse than a human, so he sould be called "Secretariat Kerry". Few laughed, and it immediately occurred to me that Leno missed an opportunity because he was looking at the wrong end of the horse...

Thud the Fifth: As I indicated here, Mad Mayor Bloomberg of New Jack City seems to be trying to seize control of the entire gun-control movement. He made another move in that direction by sitting down with various Civil Rights Deniers and Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. My guess is that he is actively recruiting her to be the new poster-girl for gun control. She would, of course, replace Sarah Brady in that role (no links to enemies!).

What the Man said...

...is so simple, so elegant, so revealing.

Commit this to memory, there WILL be a test:

"You'd think they would know their American history. Taxes started the debate, going to take the Colonials' guns started the war."

quote by Gerry in comments, on this post at Joe's place.

THAT is Word.

Defining a "crazy" person.

I just had my breakfast, a fine Seafood Medley Quiche that the gudwife whipped up. While gobbling two servings of the delicious dish, Fox News was droning in the background, and the morning show hostess Megan Kelly was blathering on about the CT shooter's mental state. Autism and Asperger's kept coming up.

Two things:

We can only infer his mental state, we can't actually test it or quantify it.

We are entering onto a slippery slope here, and one that historically has led to implementation of dictatorship.

Josef Stalin, the worst dictator the planet has ever had to suffer, developed "Mental Health" in the USSR to mean adherence to his rule. "Mental health standards" were then enforced on the population of Russia and it's immediate neighbors. According to those "Mental Health Standards", everything from going on a local watch list to death at hard labor were sanctions for not being "Mentally Healthy".

We are but a short step away from Stalin's system.

Yes, we need better methods of delineating dangerous crazies, getting them help, seeing that they take the help offered, and keeping guns from them until they are well again. I think we all can accept that.

What we can't accept is any form of political control in the disguise of a "Mental Health" initiative. The Administration has already done that, defining PTSD as "crazy" after the Virginia Tech mass murder. The military, under orders of the Commander in Chief, then developed a system of assuming that everyone who has seen combat has PTSD until proven free of it. That's wrong, but after the horror of Virginia State, even the NRA was schmoozed into buying off on it. Now we prepare to do the same with various mental states, the majority of which are very minor, and which cause few problems in the perople who have these conditions. You may yell "Whoopee" as you slide your tobaggan down this slippery slope, President Obama, but those of us with historical perspective, and especially those of us with some Russian blood, are convinced that there is more likely to be dictatorship than salvation in this onrushing system.

Got that, Mister President?

I knew you would understand it. Dictatorship in any form is unacceptable in the USA, and it matters not whether the dictator's men wear soldier's coats or white coats. Ignore this, and soon we will be pining for the relatively-peaceful days of Columbine, Virginia Tech and Newtown.

Oh, by the way, Mister President, Scotland had a school massacre a while back, resulting in even stronger gun regulation in that already disarmed part of England. Gun crime has shot up since then, It has likewise shot up in Australia, Mister President.

As I said right after Newtown, this isn't going to be about gun control unless it's just a pretext for that. The discussion needs to be about Crazy control, but there is just as much danger to the USA's freedom there. We tread very carefully now, or we lose it all.

Cry. Cry for your country

It's time to cry, to weep openly. I did this morning while shopping. Right in public, and I was wearing my Retired cop jacket, too. I cried my way out of the store. As I tried to see my way carefully in the crowds, looking through the tears, I went past a Salvation Army bellringer standing by his kettle. I cried as I fumbled out my billfold and put a $20 bill in the kettle. The bellringer thanked me warmly. I interrupted him and said, "no Sir, thank YOU for your ministry, we really need it now". I drove home in tears and helped put the groceries away. I'm still weeping, not sure why, because I've always told myself that grief was for the wusses, those who couldn't stand up, teared up.

Well, Pilgrims, we can't stand up. We are ALL beaten to our knees right now.

Solace in logic? No logic, no solace.

Disarm ourselves? It won't work, it's a proven failure. It will only guarantee more victims. It's illegal.

Arm up more intensely? Just being armed doesn't protect you from cunning, conniving crazies. If you're armed, you can only do any good if you are there when the shooter starts his mayhem.

Turn the schools into fortresses? We might, but then the malls are bereft of protection, and the transit, and all the other places where lots of people have to gather. The thin blue line is very thin.

So, Rivrdog, what you are telling us is that there is no solution? No, I didn't say that. There IS a solution, somewhere. We didn't have many of these examples of mayhem 60 years ago, so what was different then?

• We had a moral compass then, and we followed it. We have to find it and start using it again.
• If you were crazy then, your family took it on themselves to see you didn't cause harm to the community. I know this, I had a crazy sibling. My father had him locked up when he became a danger to the community. He killed himself eventually, and only God knows why he didn't take anyone with him as these shooters have done.
• If you were crazy, one doctor and one parent or family member could certify that and you got locked up. The insane asylums were hell-holes, but those whackos were inside those walls. Displaying whacko behavior was not tolerated in the communities, and it is now.
• There weren't as many whackos. It was not fashionable then to be whacko. It IS fashionable now, all sorts of craziness is tolerated under the mistaken notion that in this country, we are free to be crazy, it's our right.
• We had some gory wars then as now, but war wasn't glorified much in those days, most moral folks abhorred it, and only tolerated it when huge moral insult was forthcoming and had to be beaten back. War's violence is tolerated now. It's been turned into games. Dollar to a donut says that this CT shooter, just like his crazy counterpart here in my City this week, was a video-game player. We know the story about these games: they inure the participants to violence, make abject violence seem normal to those players. It's but a short step from being a practiced shooter in Call of Duty to being a practiced shooter in a room full of kindergarten kids. How many will take that short step? Can we ever know?

What hasn't changed from 60 years ago?

• Guns haven't changed much. High capacity autoloading pistols were available then, see the Browning Hi-Power. Autoloading rifles were available, see the Garand, the M-1 carbine. An individual could even buy explosives then just with a signature, can't do that now. Col. Thompson sold thousands of submachine guns to ordinary folks before 1934. No, it isn't the tools of the crazies or their violence that has changed, lo these six decades I've been observing life, it's the tolerance for the crazies that has changed.
• The churches haven't changed. Maybe not as many people go to church as used to, but the churches are still there, and still provide a calibration point for one's moral compass.

This horrific behavior, which will get worse before it gets better, shouldn't have taken us by surprise. There have been signs. Presidents who couldn't keep their peckers in their pants, at least two of them in the past 60 years. Did we fire their sorry asses for failing to have the highest-caliber morals to be our chosen leader? No, and in Clinton's case, we idolize the man to this day as if he had never shown his ugly side.

We idolize all manner of morally-deficient celebrities, both male and female. We have "reality" TV shows about stupid, immoral and illegal behaviors. We make movies about stupid people behaving badly; the movies are well-attended, and invariably, some idiot or crazy tries to emulate the behavior seen on-screen. Behavior that belongs in the bedroom now is seen in public, and even encouraged.

I want Jay Leno do do some Special Editions of "Jaywalking". I want him to put a person in priest's garb and do some sidewalk interviews about morals. There will probably be some priests volunteer for this duty. It may not be comedy, but it WILL be instructive.

I want David Letterman to quit having Hollywood bad boys on his show for an entire month, but instead, have some real people, with working moral compasses, talk about their chosen lifestyles.

I want the program, "Moonshiners" to end, now.

I want the program, "16 and pregnant" to go away and never be seen again.

I don't ever want to see another ad for a shooter video game. The sports games are interesting and challenging enough.

I want to stop crying for my beloved, lost country. I don't know when or how I'll stop crying.

I just don't know.

My GOD, I am so sorry, because I know that somehow, I too, have failed my country. I am so sorry..................

Pearl Harbor Day

We "lost the day", as football coaches are wont to say nowadays, but we won the season.

Part of me says it's pointless to highlight this day, "the Day that shall live in Infamy", as FDR so eloquently put it. Historical revisionism is a booming industry now, and the revisionists, who have a single purpose in mind with all their work*, have gotten to the point where perfunctory mention of the attack which began WW2 for the USA will be the only mention made. For a calmer look at the day, go here.

Part of me says to drag out my soapbox (which hides my cartridge box), mount the soapbox, and scream at the revisionists. Calm suasion does not work with that bunch. Scholarly reference to historical fact doesn't work with that bunch. Screaming gets their attention, they turn towards you, and then you memorize their faces...

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* The revisionists work towards suppressing any institutional memory of the times when Americans were self-sufficient individuals first, and a collective only when needed. Socialism, of course, does not work within a population of individualists, only within a population of collectivists.

End foreign aid to Egypt

We spend $1.55 billion per year on foreign aid to Egypt, they now have a self-proclaimed strongman, who started out as a duly-elected President*, and now one of their Courts just sentenced the motor-mouth Florida Christian pastor Terry Jones to death in absentia for blasphemy against Islam. Seven others, all citizens or legal resident aliens of the USA (one also resides part of the time in Canada), all former Egyptians and all Coptic Christians, were also sentenced.

Look, it shouldn't be US Policy to tell other countries what to do with their internal rule, but likewise, all money we give other countries for support of their governments ought to have a few strings attached. One of those strings must be basic human rights. It is NOT okay, in our country where religious freedom is the rule of our law, to fork dollars over to another country which orders the killing of people in the name of their officially-established religion, for offenses which are strictly religious and NOT recognized as any other level of crime by any other form of court.

In case you don't know, Dear Readers, Egypt is the largest recipient of US foreign aid after Israel. Politically, we've been giving Egypt all those dollars to artificially support them in a style they oughtn't be used to, but primarily, we gave them money to have them as a bulwark against radical Islam in the region (80% of the money went to the Egypt Army). Now that there has been regime change there (including in the Army), and they have evidently adopted radical Islam as their State Religion, it's time to end the foreign aid, entirely, or at least, reduce it to say, the level of aid we give Yemen.

I have an idea. Let's tell the government of Mohammed Morsi that they have ten calendar days to produce an official document over Morsi's now-all-powerful signature telling us and the world that their kangaroo court proceeding against our citizens/protected aliens is symbolic only, means nothing more than, say, Catholic Ex-Communication would, and would never be physically enforced even if any of the affected people showed up in Egypt (a possibility due to bounty-kidnapping), or, if Egypt fails to so state, we not only cut off all the foreign aid, but we immediately give it to Israel, for direct military support.

If that document is not forthcoming, and it won't be, we not only end the aid and increase Israel's, we put Egypt on the list of nations our citizens may not visit under penalty of having their passports suspended. IIRC, tourism is Egypt's biggest producer of foreign currency, ironic since people don't go there to see the current culture, only an ancient one long gone. We next make an extreme effort to persuade the European Union to do the same. We might or might not succeed with Europe, it all depends on how we sweeten the price in Brussels, but just making the effort will scare the Izar off of Morsi.

President Obama has been frittering away our global power, some say by design. We still have one global power-arrow left in our quiver, though, and that is the Almighty Dollar.

It's time to use the Dollar as the persuasive tool it always is.

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* ...as some, including this writer, have suggested that our President might also try out as his path to glory.

The Left won again

Let's make that win the final time.

Analyzing the win, the left won because they got their Socialist message of  "come git yo FREE shit" out better than the Romnoids got out their message of  "capitalism works, let's give it a try". This "free Shit" is the forever way that Socialism has been foisted off on nations, for the past 100 years.

The Left was better organized at the polls. As I went to bed in my Scotch fog last night, Obama had just over a 1.1 million popular vote margin, but he had over 300 electoral votes. He gamed the system and won. He got Ohio way back, three and a half years ago, by bailing out the auto industry. Free shit, he gave out government-backed auto-industry jobs for free, smiled at those auto workers and said, "remember me on November Sixth, 2012." They remembered. Romney never had a chance in Ohio.

So it went. I'm not going to sit here and moan about it. Now we have to live with the Obama agenda for the next four years.

Or do we?

Can we fight back?

Can we put some awful hurt on the Left, enough hurt to chase them back to their holes in four years?

I think we can.

Over at Say Uncle, the short but powerful post on Obama's win brought out at least one thinker, a commenter named Nevyan (at Comment #12). Nevyan proposes local action to take down the left, and he proposes how to do it legally and properly, so close those gun safes and let's follow Nevyan's system here.

After we pick a local target to "wage lawfare" on, and start gathering our information, both on suspected violations AND on the intracacies of the laws we will use, we can do one other thing.

Let's wage war on on the Left's pet system, the Green Agenda.

Instead of fighting the Green Agenda only as the left brings up new parts of it, like most of us have done, let's go offensive instead of staying defensive.

Take longer showers. Keep your lawn green in the summer, if the law allows it. Use all the water you can.

Burn all the lights in your house while you are awake on these long winter nights. Use that electricity that is there, on demand, in your wires.

We're going to deny the Left their present advantage of claiming that their conservation system works, that less is better, that composting can take the place of garbage service, etc. We're going to require them to build out the electric grid, because we are going to overload it. Rationing? Brownouts? The occasional blackout? Yep, we will have those, but who will get the blame for that? You won't. The Left will because they are in charge. Yes, it will cost you money not to conserve, but how else can you wage this kind of assymetrical war for so little money and still keep your freedom?

When the Left starts to soak up more and more of the blame for the collapsing utility infrastructure, the Government WILL be changed out, legally, properly, at the polls.

No one of us can do this alone, but in our millions, we CAN make it happen (oooooh, collectivism against the collectivists, yessss!). The Government will either yield, or they will have to become overly restrictive, and when those draconian restrictions on utility use happen, they will hurt EVERYONE, and then the Greens get blamed and get removed. At the very least, it pits the Greens against the suburban soccer moms, who also voted for the Won last night.

Take the Greens out of the fight, and conservatives have an even chance on the electoral battlefield.

The White House can be ours in 2016, but only if we wage a consistent and persistent fight. We can't win with bullets, I agree. We can win with "lawfare" (a Green tactic, BTW), and we CAN and WILL win with resistance to the Green Agenda of doing with less.

Consume your way to victory, my friends.

Thurdsay thoughts

Not thuds today, just musings from the ball of yarn that is my curmudgeonly mind...

Thought the first: City Administration Karma. Last night, I went to my first ever Neighborhood Association meeting (Kelley Creek Neighborhood Association). There were 40 or so of my neighbas there. Various items were discussed, including our sparse public transport schedule (3 buses all day long), stormwater management (which I steered into a discussion of coyote control, since they live and breed in the stormwater control project, aka, Kelley Creek), and a nice talk by the Chief of Police, to whom we directed a Standing-O, which he deserved for commanding the resolution of the recent Barista Murder case. Then some yadda-yadda about Citeh progress on, well, progressive things. Over all, it was worthwhile to go to the Middle School and sit through it, and guess what happened this ayem at first light? The Citeh swept my streets! This happens only infrequently, there IS a moderate rainstorm forecast for this weekend, and I would have had to go out to shovel bushels of heavy, wet leaves out of my 350' of street gutters, so this just saved me a bunch of work. Ta-Daaaah!

Thought the Second: The Sandy Effect. The upcoming election might have a "Sandy Effect" to it. No, not a Sandy Crowley effect, that was disgusting enough, but a Hurricane Sandy effect. Hurricane Sandy, a sometimes-Category Two blow, is headed North from Cuba right now. It's barely a hurricane after crossing the spine of the Cuban Sierra Madre, but it will re-intensify over the warm Gulf Stream. Overnight, the Eurpoean Model of weather-guessing has been verified, and the Euro Model puts Hurricane Sandy ashore, early next week, somewhere near New Jersey. It is currently forecast to track slightly inland of New Yawk Citeh, pulling the maximum storm surge it generates up the Hudson and East Rivers. There is a potential HUGE mess for the Mid-Atlantic and North East Coast from this storm, any that's not all. WAIT, THERE'S MORE! The storm will then convert to extra-tropical, be reinforced by a very strong Continental Polar air mass, and pound New England as "Perfect Storm II". It looks like the entire Eastern Seaboard from DeeCee north will be in a major hurricane/storm-recovery mode on Election Day. This means that Hurricane Sandy has a huge potential to affect the outcome of US History, even though the 'Cane will probably be no more than a Category-1 when it makes landfall. I suppose it's superfluous to remind readers that the Sandy Effect, should it happen, kills off votes in Blue States almost exclusively. Soooo...will the Won try some sort of emergency decree advancing or retarding the Election in affected states? Stay tuned, this will be interesting, verrrry interesting, as Sgt Schultz would say on Hogan's Heroes...

Thought the Third: I have decided to treat myself to a late Birthday Present. After studiously avoiding the Poodleshooter Caliber (5.56 NATO) and it's associated Stoner rifles for all these years I've been a gunny, I am now going to embrace it. but, I'm going all weird on the gunny world and I will still reject the Stoners. I'm ordering a Remington 7615P Patrol Rifle, a manually-operated (slide or pump action) carbine. It DOES take AR magazines, though. This purchase is in line with my survivalist thinking which says to have firearms chambered in the most popular calibers. I still don't think much of the .223/5.56 as a caliber with which to do battle, but I WILL be able to feed and shoot my rifle on the modern apocalyptic battlefield, should that ever happen. Also, as a non-EBR, the rifle might survive the first wave of confiscations which will hit the EBRs, should the Won get serious about disarming these younighty-states.

Thought the Fourth: The World Series. The Giant's Pablo Sandoval swats his way into the history books, only the fourth player ever to pound three home runs in a game during the Series. I watched Junior Griffey hit 5 in a game at the Kingdome in Seattle many years ago, but it wasn't the Series. Am I the only one who wonders why a guy who looks completely non-athletic could perform this feat? Did MLB think of making him take a doping test? Hmmmmm.

Thought the Fifth: Progressive Generals. When you make General or Admiral, there's politics involved. If you could ask my Dad, he'd confirm that, since he came up for Admiral after working for CNO ADM Hyman Rickover on the USS Nautilus project in the early-mid Fifties, and Rickover opposed his nomination in Congress, primarily for ego reasons ("I won't have another Admiral on my staff"). But, since politics has to be played, and the Progressives do have the majority of political power right now, there are bound to be Progressive General Officers. I do find it hard, however, to call a Progressive General officer a Republican, though, so as for YOU, General Powell, you are flying a false flag, SIR!

Bullet Tax?

After the effort to put in a bullet tax in Baltimore dragged on, and on, and on, Cook County, IL, one of the worst places for respect of the Bill of Rights, has decided to try one on.

As I said here, the Civil Rights Deniers who pick on the 2A have just discovered the fact that guns use bullets! So, with a SCOTUS in place that has affirmed the 2A, all direct attacks on guns and gun-ownership draw the immediate ire of the increasingly-effective pro-2A lawyers. The answer for the Civil Rights Deniers is to attack from the rear, by restricting ammo. That way, the idea that the bullet tax is a direct attack on the 2A gets lost in the fog of  "it's a tax, and they can levy taxes, can't they?"

Yes, they can levy taxes, but just as the Poll Taxes of the Jim Crow days were used to deny civil rights, and were tossed because they were primarily for that purpose, so it will go with Bullet Taxes, which are primarily designed to deny the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. These taxes will be tossed, unless they somehow replace the usual sales tax, so are ruled to be just another form of sales tax.

Calling the Bullet Tax a "Violence Tax" doesn't lead a judge or a layman to believe it's just another Sales Tax, though. It will go down in Tax Court, which is a fairly direct proceeding compared to Civil Courts.

H/T to Country Gal, who somehow heard about a bullet tax, from way up in the Coast Range. Probably her Secret Squirrel told her.