With a Hillary Clinton victory all but assured thanks to her long-time Republican assistant, America should brace for another four eight years of gun control speeches. The Czar doesn’t expect that President Hillary Clinton will be more obnoxious and ill-informed than Barack Obama on firearms, but it will be pretty miserable for a while.

The Czar understands that about two-thirds of Americans appear to be pro-gun or even gun owners themselves, and therefore many of the traditional gun control arguments no longer work in the media. Americans now seem to understand the difference between automatic and semi-automatic, between “shall issue” and “may issue,” and between an AR-15 and a stapler. Democrats, in their eternal quest to convince people to disarm themselves since clearly no one is going to molōn their labe, need some new ammunition talking points to use.

They’ve tried the whole bit about America becoming a wild west town if concealed carry ever passed, but now that all 50 states have some form of legal carry, that hasn’t happened. They’ve tried to convince the public that no private individual with a weapon has ever stopped a crime, although the NRA’s monthly aggregator shows it happens pretty much every couple of days. Chicago is proof that gun control escalates armed attacks, and the Czar will have more to say on that in a moment.

Here are three ideas the Democrats can try:

1. Firearms are poor investments. Think about it: your granddad would buy a nice war relic from some shell-shocked Nazi for $3, and your dad handed it down to you a few years ago. Once, you could count on that being worth $800 today. But now, with the vast proliferation of legal weapons on the open market, guns aren’t as rare as they used to be. After all, with so much supply and demand, there’s little chance that your $600 Glock will be worth a million bucks in 100 years. You know what would increase firearm values? Fewer of them.
2. Guns have become overly reliable. As a result, there’s less failure of components and way too many options to customize them over time. This is bad, because if you buy a handgun today, you can expect it to be fully operational in 30 years. This puts gun company employees out of work, because reliable guns last a couple lifetimes. If guns were less well-made, you’d replace them sooner and keep those workers happily employed.
3. No? Okay, how about this: too many people own multiple guns, and that’s just bad for the environment. Instead of buying the latest trendy gun, how about you stick with one or maybe just two guns you really like? Do you really need three different calibered rifles? Maybe just pick one and keep it well-maintained, with frequent oil changes or whatever you do to keep guns working. My cousin likes to drive, but he doesn’t own ten different cars.

These arguments seem so much more new than the same old ones.

Having said all that, there is another piece of advice the Czar can share. The Czar has a very good friend in Chicago who works in corrections. The Czar isn’t sure, but this friend probably votes for Democrats because—let’s face it—Democrats are really good for the corrections business; they generate lots of demand. As long as Democrats are in city business, the Czar’s friend will have a job.

The Czar will omit, for privacy’s sake, what his friend does for corrections, but he’s not a guard; he does however come into constant contact with prisoners and guards, both in a professional (not administrative) capacity. As a result, he hears what his politician bosses say privately, what the prisoners openly admit, what Chicago police and Cook County deputies insist, and what the guards secretly believe. And he says there is only one way to curb the violence in Chicago—concealed carry.

Everybody knows it, but nobody wants to admit it in public. Suffice to say, the prisoners—who range from overnight misdemeanors to long-time mutliple felonies—are scared to death of an armed populace. If Chicago allowed its residents to shoot first, they say, the bad guys would stop preying on them.

The Czar’s friend is very insistent on this point. And he’s right when he adds that Chicago has tried every pop psychology or sociological solution to reducing crime, all to no avail. The key differentiator in Cook County is the politicians’ stubborn refusal to let home owners have concealed weapons out of the house. Yes, of course, these politicians are armed: for example, aldermen in Chicago are allowed to carry whatever they want.

Gun control, of course, is always reduced to one sentiment: whoever has the gun is in control.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.