Political Pistachio
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Good guys see guns as a tool, and bad guys see guns as a weapon. Good guys use guns for hunting, protection, and as a defense against tyranny. Bad guys use guns for attacking other people, aggression, and to commit crime. So, knowing that, why would any government system seek to take away guns from good guys, and ignore the fact that regardless of laws the bad guys will always find a way to obtain firearms?
In 1996, Australia tightened down their gun control laws, making owning a firearm very difficult, though not impossible. Shootings in the United States occur primarily at gun-free zones and locations with the strictest gun laws. Yet, when we have shootings in the U.S., and in light of the attack on a Jewish celebration of Hanukkah in Australia, the response has been that the laws don’t go far enough. In Britain, when they cracked down with highly restrictive gun control laws, like their leftist colleagues in Australia and the U.S., they claimed they worked just fine until there is a shooting, then claim they didn’t go far enough.
For decades, Democrats have held up Australia as the shining example, the gold standard in a manner of speaking, of the model America should follow on gun control. But after the Bondi Beach terror attack, the narrative they built is collapsing under its own weight.”
For years, prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, have praised Australia’s 1996 mandatory gun buyback and confiscation program as the ideal blueprint for America.
And right on cue, after the Bondi Beach massacre, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese doubled down, calling the 1996 reforms a “proud moment of reform” and insisting they reduced firearm homicides and suicides.
But here’s the problem: The data doesn’t match the mythology.
Firearm homicides and suicides in Australia had already been declining for 15 years before the 1996 law. The downward trend was long‑established, and after the law passed, the rate of decline actually slowed, not accelerated.
Australia confiscated nearly 650,000–1,000,000 firearms, depending on the estimate. Yet today, private gun ownership has increased, rising to roughly 4 million firearms, nearly 30% higher than before the reforms.
Gun ownership grew three times faster than the population.
So the promised patterns, the dramatic drops, the permanent safety, simply never materialized.
Meanwhile:
• Non‑firearm homicides and suicides rose by roughly 20%.
• Armed robbery spiked immediately after the buyback before eventually declining.
The story is far more complicated than the political slogans.
Australia bans virtually every firearm Democrats call an “assault weapon.”
They have licensing, registration, mandatory storage laws, and some of the toughest restrictions in the world.
And yet, at Bondi Beach, a father‑and‑son Islamic terror team opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 people and injuring more than 40 people.
This was one of the deadliest mass shootings in Australia in nearly 30 years.
And what was the political response?
Not a moment of reflection.
Not a reconsideration of whether disarming the public creates soft targets.
Instead: “We need even stricter gun laws.”
Albanese and his legislature immediately proposed new limits on how many guns a person can own and a national review of all licenses.
The same policies that failed are now being doubled down on.
Australia isn’t alone.
Many European nations have gun laws even stricter than Australia’s, yet their mass‑shooting rates are comparable to or higher than those in the United States.
The idea that gun control alone prevents mass violence simply isn’t supported by global data.
From 2014 to 2024, using the FBI’s own definition of “active shooter,” armed civilians stopped 199 of 652 incidents — 35.4%.
In places where carry is allowed, that number jumps to 52.5%.
Police stopped 29.7%.
The numbers are clear: Armed civilians stop more attacks than police do. And that makes sense. They’re already on the scene.
Guns are tools. Criminals will always find them. Disarming the innocent doesn’t stop evil, it empowers it. Would restricting the licenses of sober drivers to stop drunk driving make sense?
Australia’s tragedy at Bondi Beach wasn’t a failure of gun ownership. It was a failure of the belief that laws against legal gun owners can stop determined killers. If Australia truly wants to prevent future attacks, the answer isn’t more restrictions on the law‑abiding. It’s allowing citizens the right, and the ability, to defend themselves. And then, working on the culture. Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as Benjamin Franklin so wisely told us.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
JBS Foods, the leading producer of beef in the United States, is closing their Riverside processing plant in Southern California, located about fifty-five miles east of Los Angeles. The plant’s closure on February 2, 2026 will affect 374 employees, and place pressure on a beef market that has already been struggling with high prices. The plant is not a slaughterhouse, but a packaging plant that prepares beef for grocery stores. The operations of the plant that is closing will be distributed and consolidated at other facilities in the United States, so countrywide it will have a minimal impact of beef prices.
Beef prices in California, however, are destined to rise higher as the rest of the country enjoys a reduction in price. The closure is likely to push prices higher in the Golden State due to regional supply chain issues. California relies heavily on local case-ready facilities like the one closing in Riverside, meaning that beef will now need to be shipped from farther away, increasing transportation and logistics costs. California’s strict labor, environmental, and trucking regulations amplify the cost of moving perishable goods.
Unlike other parts of the country, California does not have a dense cluster of beef plants, and the Riverside closure reduces local processing capacity, creating a regional supply pinch. However, California has among the largest populations in the U.S. with a strong demand for beef. Even modest supply disruptions can translate to noticeable price hikes at the grocery store. Because California is geographically distant from the Midwest cattle heartland, it is more exposed to regional shocks in processing and distribution. If the trend of facilities attached to the beef industry closing continues in California it would force a condition of sustained higher beef prices in the State as opposed to the dropping national average.
Operating in California is notoriously expensive due to labor, regulatory, and logistics costs. JBS is consolidating away from high-cost regions like California to improve efficiency, especially considering the tension regarding beef prices in recent years. While there has been concerns about cattle availability since that number of domestic cattle is lower than it has been nationally in many decades, the closure of the Riverside plant is not about how many cattle are available for production and is more about streamlining distribution and cutting costs. Tyson recently closed a Nebraska beef plant and scaled back operations in Texas, which suggests that JBS’s move is a part of a broader industry trend of consolidating facilities to cope with high costs and tighter supplies.
Various factors have beef prices nationally slowly coming down during the next year, but California, with fewer local processing facilities, will likely see higher beef prices. As the meatpacking landscape faces reshaping in the current environment, choosing to take advantage of the falling cost of doing business in places like The South is becoming increasingly popular. As long as places like California continue to practice high regulations, push high fees and taxes, push restrictive environmental regulations, and create governmental obstacles to doing business in those regions, the natural consequence will be higher prices, a reduced supply availability, and an exodus of businesses to places that are more affordable.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
The current administration has taken decisive steps to dismantle President Biden’s unconstitutional and misguided policy of student loan forgiveness. While a college education can be a wonderful pursuit, it is not as essential as a high school education, nor should it be treated as a universal requirement. The progressive push to funnel every young American into a four-year degree has produced disastrous results. Much like currency, bachelor’s degrees lose their value when they are overproduced. What was once a mark of distinction has become diluted, leaving graduates with diminished prospects and a mountain of debt.
The consequences of this policy experiment are plain to see. The job market can only absorb so many degree-holders, yet millions of graduates are competing for a limited pool of positions, burdened with loans they may never repay. At the same time, the nation faces a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers; men and women trained in trades who often earn more than their college-educated peers and do so without the crushing weight of student debt. The imbalance reveals a painful truth: the government’s obsession with college-for-all has left America weaker, not stronger.
We know why the Democrats insist on pushing a college degree, and hammer you as uneducated if you don’t give in. It has little to do with genuine education and everything to do with indoctrination. By saddling young Americans with crushing debt tied to degrees that often hold little practical value, they destroy ambition and erode independence. The result is a generation conditioned to look to government for relief, trained to believe that the same politicians who created their misery are the ones who can rescue them. It is not about opportunity—it is about control.
The Trump administration recognizes the truth about the whole college indoctrination machine, and how the Biden administration established a federal student loan repayment plan known as SAVE pushing for sweeping debt relief. The U.S. Department of Education announced a proposed settlement with Missouri and six other Republican-led states that had sued to block the program. The agreement, which still requires approval from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, would effectively end SAVE.
The states rightly argued that the Biden administration exceeded its constitutional authority when it created the program in 2023. SAVE offered millions of borrowers lower monthly payments and an accelerated path to debt erasure, but it was an unconstitutional expansion of not only executive power, but of any federal power. The settlement marks a significant step in rolling back Biden’s student loan agenda, underscoring the new administration’s commitment to restoring fiscal restraint and the rule of law.
Under the proposed Dec. 9 settlement, the Education Department would stop enrolling any new borrowers into SAVE, reject all pending SAVE applications, and move all current SAVE borrowers into legally authorized repayment plans.
If the court approves the terms of the settlement, roughly seven million borrowers will be given a limited window to choose a different repayment plan and resume payments. This marks a dramatic shift away from the Biden-era promise of sweeping loan forgiveness, replacing it with a return to fiscal responsibility and personal accountability.
The Department of Education itself hailed the settlement, declaring it a “definitive end” to the Biden administration’s student loan relief agenda. In other words, the experiment in mass debt cancellation is over. What remains is a clear signal that the federal government will no longer serve as a perpetual bailout machine for failed progressive policies, but instead will restore balance to a system that has long been tilted against taxpayers and working-class Americans.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Constitution is often referred to as a “living and breathing document.” My friend and constitutional colleague Alan Myers, who co-hosts with me on Constitution Radio each Saturday, likes to quip: “Of course it is living and breathing. It isn’t dead.” While I appreciate his attitude, that is not what the purveyors of the phrase mean.
When advocates call the Constitution “living and breathing,” they liken it to a living organism. They argue that, like us, it grows, expands, and evolves with time. As a living being learns, adapts, and changes with its surroundings, so too, they claim, should the Constitution. But this metaphor is misleading. The Constitution is not a living organism, nor was it ever meant to be. In fact, the Founding Fathers deliberately rejected that very idea.
The Founding Father sought to escaping the fluidity of English Common Law, which was considered to be living and breathing. English Common Law was not written down but understood by the people, shaped by cultural shifts, parliamentary acts, and judicial rulings. The British Constitution adjusted itself like an organism, bending to the whims of society and politics. The Founders saw this fluidity as a flaw. If the supreme law of the land could be altered by politicians, judges, or popular sentiment, it could be manipulated into tyranny.
Thus, the American Constitution was written on parchment for all to be able to read. Fixed in text. Agreed upon by the States. Changeable only through amendment. And the amendment process itself was not designed to be a casual process. It requires the approval of three-quarters of the States, ensuring that change reflects broad consensus among the parties who wrote and ratified the Constitution in the first place, rather than changes being made based on fleeting passions.
The Constitution is a compact between the States, creating a federal government designed to serve both the people and the States. Its powers were intentionally limited, checked and balanced to prevent tyranny.
The States were originally deeply involved in its operations. Senators were appointed by state legislatures, ensuring that the federal government could not act without the States’ consent. Treaties, appointments, and other federal actions requires Senate approval, and in the beginning those Senators served the voice of the states. Even the President was not chosen by direct democracy. Citizens voted for electors, some of whom were appointed by state legislatures, and those electors selected the President. This system kept the States engaged while restraining the dangers of pure democracy.
The Founders understood that democracy, unchecked, can be dangerous. America was established as a republic, using democracy sparingly and always within a framework of checks and balances. At the federal level, most of those checks were managed by the States.
If the Constitution were truly “living and breathing,” its meaning would be defined by politicians and judges. Sadly, over the last century, that is precisely what has happened. But this was never the original intent. The Constitution was meant to be a written, stable foundation, anchored against the tides of whim, preserving liberty by limiting power, and maintained by a powerful presence of the voice of the States… a presence over the last century and a half eroded by those screaming that we must save our democracy, which is the very thing that will destroy the republic if we don’t stop its advance.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Governor J.B. Pritzker’s new Illinois law shielding illegal aliens from federal immigration enforcement has triggered constitutional alarm bells, with DHS warning it violates the Supremacy Clause of Article VI in the U.S. Constitution.
Governor Pritzker’s signing of HB 1312, a bill barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from making arrests in or near courthouses, hospitals, daycares, and university campuses, has ignited a firestorm of legal and constitutional criticism. The law also allows residents to sue federal agents for alleged civil rights violations, a move critics say is designed to obstruct lawful federal immigration enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has responded forcefully, warning that the law directly contradicts federal immigration statutes and violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Article VI, Paragraph 2 states, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme Law of the Land…any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
This clause makes clear that constitutionally authorized federal law supersedes state law. Immigration law, being a federal prerogative authorized by Article I, Section 8 and Article I, Section 9 cannot be nullified or obstructed by state legislation. Article II instructs the President of the United States to “faithfully execute the laws of the Union,” and Article I, Section 8 grants the use of the militia (National Guard) to execute the laws of the United States. Therefore, the State of Illinois has no constitutional allowance to legislate against federal immigration law, nor the execution of immigration law. As a result, DHS officials have accused Pritzker of violating his oath of office, which requires him to support the Constitution of the United States – which includes the Supremacy Clause.
Pritzker’s rhetoric at the bill signing ceremony was equally provocative, framing the law as a moral stand against President Trump, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Border Chief Gregory Bovino. “The best of us are standing up to the worst of them,” Pritzker declared, casting federal immigration enforcement as a threat to compassion and justice.
But critics argue that this is not about compassion. It’s about their partisan battle against President Trump, and desire to dismantle American sovereignty. Instead, progressives favor a vision of global governance with porous borders and diminished national identity. This worldview echoes the ideological aims of communism and the utopian borderless society imagined in John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
The constitutional implications are profound. If states can selectively nullify federal law based on ideological disagreement, the rule of law collapses into a patchwork of partisan defiance. Sanctuary policies, like Illinois’ new law, do not merely challenge immigration enforcement, they challenge the very structure of federalism.
Regardless of partisan political party viewpoints, the U.S. Constitution has the final say over political meanderings. The Supremacy Clause exists to prevent precisely this kind of fragmentation, ensuring that constitutional federal law remains the backbone of preserving and protecting the union. There is, after all, a separation of powers between federal and state constitutional authorities. When state leaders defy that line in the sand, they not only undermine immigration enforcement, they undermine the Republic itself and the importance of the role of the federal government as well.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary