Highlights for a recent Op-Ed by 2^nd Amendment defender John Lott.

 A June 2021 Biden Administration document that was recently declassified was titled “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.”  (SCOPE: Who can argue with the need to counter domestic terrorism?  Unless, of course, Biden’s Plan violated the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans by labelling them as terrorists – without good cause.)

 Biden’s Plan directed the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security to target “incidents of concerning non-criminal behavior.”

It also instructs federal authorities to “provide resources to state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement that cover relevant iconography, symbology, and phraseology used by many domestic terrorists.”

 (SCOPE: Biden’s Plan would appear to intentionally infringe on 1st Amendment Free Speech rights:

Iconography: conventional images or symbols associated with a subject 
Symbology: the expression of ideas by symbols. 
Phraseology: a mode of expression, especially one characteristic of a particular speaker or writer.)

 In 2022, an FBI whistleblower exposed the FBI’s “Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide” for identifying “Militia Violent Extremists.” The guide advised agents to be suspicious of symbols like “2A” and imagery referencing the Second Amendment. It also flagged historically significant emblems like the Betsy Ross Flag and Gadsden Flag as indicators of potential domestic terrorists.

Concern about domestic terrorism was used as a basis for advocating a variety of gun control policies: banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; adoption of extreme risk protection orders; a national education campaign urging people to lock up their guns; and banning homemade guns (ghost guns).

 Biden’s Plan called for expanding Obama’s Operation Chokepoint to include de-banking of “financial activity associated with domestic terrorists” and gun control. 

 In December 2023, reports revealed that the FBI categorized “certain Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists.”

 FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend testified before Congress in May 2023 that he was tasked with recording the license plate numbers of parents who attended school board meetings and expressed concerns about topics such as critical race theory and gender ideology.

Biden’s plan advocated censorship, strongly suggesting that censorship is necessary to protect both democracy and free speech. (SCOPE: Censorship protects Free Speech?)

Biden’s Plan shows that officials aimed to track “concerning non-criminal behavior.”  It followed an explicit policy of identifying people based solely on their political views. 

Biden’s Plan calls for the U.S. government joining forces with other Western countries and forming partnerships with private-industry companies to “control the spread of disinformation.”  It explicitly calls for the U.S. government to lead a global push to addressing this disinformation content.  It also calls for the U S to participate in the “Christchurch Call to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online,” which calls for using AI to censor “hate” speech.  (SCOPE: Of course, it would be the radical left Biden administration that would have defined what is disinformation and hate speech.)

 It also supports such things as “evidence-based research on information literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”  (SCOPE: Brain wash the kids.)

 Biden’s Plan raises serious civil liberties concerns. It obliterates the line between legitimate security threats and constitutionally protected speech and behavior and casts a dangerously wide net. The revelations show how far the Biden administration was willing to go to silence opposing political views.