The Chiappa Firearms X -Caliber® is designed for use in any condition and with any ammunition available. Originally designed with two calibers, a rifled .22 LR and a smooth bore .12 GA -, this rifle can fire up to 12 different calibers thanks to the 8 steel adapters supplied. In addition to the two original gauges, adapters allow you to shoot 8 pistol calibers ( .380 , 9 mm , .357Mag/.38SP , .40 S & W, .44 Mag, .45 ACP , .410/.45colt ) and two shotgun calibers (410 ga, 20ga), combining the flexibility of a shotgun and the power of a rifled gun.

Finally consumers are getting a break with lower prices at the pump. As it stands federal gas tax revenues have risen 6.1% per year since 1982. Let consumers keep more of what they make and not give it to a wasteful government. My friend Chris Edwards from Cato explains:

Gas tax supporters say that it is time to raise the tax because it has not been raised in two decades. What they leave out of the story is that the gas tax rate more than quadrupled between 1982 and 1994 from 4 cents per gallon to 18.4 cents, as shown in the chart below the jump. Thus, looking at the whole period since 1982, federal gas tax revenues have risen at a robust annual average rate of 6.1 percent (based on Tax Foundation data ). So, again, we have a spending crisis, not a funding crisis.

Remember Salman Rushdie? He wrote Satanic Verses, a book critical of Islam. Because of Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1980s sentenced Rushdie to death. Iran’s supreme leader spoke to his people: “I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the ‘Satanic Verses’ book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all the Muslims to execute them wherever they find them.”

Peggy Noonan explains here in the WSJ why Rushdie was the canary in the coal mine. Five years after Rushdie went into hiding, Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker and writer, was shot to death and nearly decapitated. His crime? Making a short film about women and Islam. Somelia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Gogh’s associate, received death threats also and eventually fled to the U.S. Today, she is the outspoken voice for women’s rights all over the world.

Not long after Mr. Gogh’s disturbing assassination, another Dane, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew a cartoon picturing Muhammad with a bomb hidden in his turban, was a target of two assassination attempts and was forced into hiding.

When asked about the massacre at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Kurt Westergaard stressed the importance for the media to not be afraid and to not surrender free speech He called the murderers “fanatics,” adding that he hopes for “a reaction from moderate majority of Muslims against this attack.”

As Peggy Noonan notes, “A singular feature of extremist Islamists is that they are not at all interested in persuasion. They don’t care about winning you over, only about making you submit. They want to menace and threaten. They want to frighten. They enjoy posing with the severed head.”

Ms. Noonan continues, “Here (America) freedom of expression is called free speech, and it is protected in the first of the Constitution’s amendments because it is the most important of our rights. It is the West’s job not to be overcome by fear, not to give an inch.”

Courtesy of Cato Institute’s Downsizinggovernment.org.

In a proposal for a new federal entitlement, President Obama is pushing for a “free community college” plan. Along with taking regulatory control from states, this proposal would add tens of billions in taxpayer obligations. Furthermore, it does not address the fact that the rate at which C.C. students finish two years with useful credentials is dismal. Also not being addressed is that increasing graduation rates does not automatically add more skilled labor to the workforce. K-thru-12 education in the U.S. is an unmitigated failed system. Why would anyone want a federal bureaucratic monster involved in more useless educational years for young adults? And as Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute points out, “As long as taxpayers pick up much of the college tab instead of the students consuming the education, waste will be rife.”

A public policy question worth asking is, how can businesses and the public shift away from the mindset of a college degree and instead emphasize the need for competency-based programs and micro-certifications that make students eager to learn and businesses eager to hire? According to the WSJ, companies like Google, AT&T and Facebook are at the forefront of seeking young talent from alternative skill-based programs.

Noting that the root of the problem of higher education is government subsidies, Mr. McCluskey explains here why President Obama’s plan to offer free community college to any “responsible” student is a bad idea.

Related audio:

Former CIA bin Laden unit chief Michael Scheuer writes, “I think that seldom in American history has it been more important for every American to be armed, and armed with as deadly a weapon (or weapons) as possible.”

Obama, in particular, is likely to take advantage of the Paris attacks to further savage the 1^st and 4^th Amendments of the Constitution. And it will not be long before Obama and his pro-tyranny sidekicks in both parties undertake a renewed campaign to gut the 2^nd Amendment, probably claiming that the national government needs to control all arms so that domestic Islamists—or those who come in across the open southern border—cannot assemble an arsenal to use in attacks.

American citizens need weapons to provide the protection against domestic Islamists for themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods that the national government deems unimportant. Second, if Obama sends his Islam-loving multicultural thugs to unconstitutionally do an inventory of privately held weapons or even to take the guns of law-abiding Americans they merit a heartily discouraging welcome from well armed Americans.

A while ago, Debbie and I took the excellent NRA handgun safety course as a requirement for obtaining our Florida concealed weapons license. As a prelude to dealing with firearms, I rate the NRA (Debbie and I are life members) course as mandatory. Gun pros like the military and your local law enforcement team have the expertise to deal with high powered weapons. You most likely will fall a little below this level of capability, but nonetheless, can be well prepared to provide your family with all the personal defense capabilities required. To get you up and running I’m including here a couple of my previous posts. I will have more assistance for you in part two of this special Michael Scheuer series. Read: Get Your Guns and Your Training—NOW, and U.S. Survival AR-7.

Related video:

Timothy Stanley, in the American Conservative, writes, “To meet him (UKIP’s party leader Nigel Farage) is to instantly like him—if you like that sort of thing. To centrist politicians raised on a puritan diet of political correctness, he is like some horror from the mummy’s tomb. But to those who wear a hangover with pride, Farage is a tonic to politics as usual. “

UKIP’s populist strategy, according to Stanley, is built on a platform that offers lower taxes, withdrawal from the EU, and, crucially, a new emphasis on reducing European immigration, ending the bias toward unskilled European immigration and welcoming skilled workers from the rest of the world.

Related video:

Take a look at this map of Islam in Europe from The Economist.

As Jacob Heilbrunn notes, Le Pen, leader Front National said in a post-Paris attack address, “The absolute rejection of Islamic fundamentalism must be proclaimed loudly and clearly.” Le Pen called on French president Francois Hollande to suspend the Schengen Accords that allow for visa-free movement inside Europe.

Heilbrunn writes, “Le Pen is at the forefront of a European-wide nationalist resurgence—one that wants to evict from their homelands people they view as Muslim subversives… And he notes that the new nationalist movement is that the individual countries of Europe must safeguard their traditional values by rejecting the liberal chimera of a single, united Europe with open borders.”

Heilbrunn continues:

Le Pen is at the forefront of a European-wide nationalist resurgence — one that wants to evict from their homelands people they view as Muslim subversives. She and other far-right nationalists are seizing on some legitimate worries about Islamic militancy — 10,000 soldiers are now deployed in France as a safety measure — in order to label all Muslims as hostile to traditional European cultural and religious values. Le Pen herself has likened their presence to the Nazi occupation of France.

Le Pen herself espouses an authoritarian program that calls for a moratorium on immigration, a restoration of the death penalty and a “French first” policy on welfare benefits and employment.