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Posts tagged ‘Guns’

No, Gun Violence Isn’t the Leading Cause of Death Among Children

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 26, 2023

I recently wrote about an extraordinarily misleading Kaiser Family study that claimed “1 in 5” Americans have a family member who has been killed by a gun. Kaiser’s inflated findings were based on a small sample size of self-reported answers to questions that offered no useful limiting parameters. In many ways, another endlessly repeated contention of gun controllers suffers from the same problem: Gun violence is the number one cause of death of children in America. Virtually every media outlet and Democrat repeats this contention — including, recently, the vice president. The claim is meant to conjure up distressing images of frolicking kids in parks and schools being gunned down by assault weapons.

And horrific events certainly happen in the country. We need not gloss over the evil of mass school shootings, even if they’re rarer than gun-control types would have you believe. But that does not give people license to make things up.

We don’t really know which study Harris based her comments on, if any. And different sources come to different conclusions. None of them, however, are grounded in our familiar understanding of “children.” These studies count adults who are 18 and 19, and sometimes up to 25, years of age. Americans under 18 can’t purchase guns legally. That age seems, at the very least, the most obvious divide between adults and children. Because when you take 18- and 19-year-old adults out of the equation, the number of gun-related deaths among kids plummets considerably.

According to the CDC, the number one killer of children between 1-14 are accidents — vehicular, suffocation, and drowning. Twice as many kids under 12 died in cars than from guns. Also, if these studies began at birth rather than starting at one, the leading killer of all children would be diseases and genetic abnormalities. Surely a one-year-old is as much a “kid” as a 19-year-old. (And if you begin at fetal viability, by far the leading killer of young people would be late-term abortions — more than 8,000 viable unborn, and probably more than 50,000 performed after 15 weeks.)

No doubt, after many years of decline, there has been a rise in juvenile criminality. And 19 and 18-year-olds are far more likely to engage in criminality than 14 and 15-year-olds. There has also been a rise in juvenile suicides over the last several years. It’s a mental-health crisis. None of the “reasonable gun safety laws” Harris is pushing address those problems.

Perhaps one day, with the advances in car safety technology and medicine, her claim about guns and kids will be true. Today it’s not.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Tucker Carlson: ‘Information Control’ Via Internet Censorship Is A Huge Problem For Democracy

BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 24, 2023

Tucker Carlson speaks at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th celebration

Tucker Carlson told attendees at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th-anniversary gala that the biggest variable changing everyday Americans’ lives in recent years is the ruling class’ monopoly on information.

“What do you think over the last 10 or 20 years — whatever timeline you think is appropriate —has changed the most?” Roberts asked. “I mean that socially and culturally, I don’t mean that politically, although you can go there if you want, that has affected everyday Americans’ lives?”

“The lack of information,” Carlson quickly replied.

Despite living in a digital world where data and details are available to everyone with access to the internet, Carlson said normal Americans’ access to the information pipeline is significantly hampered.

“The core promise of the internet was as much information as we’ve ever had at your fingertips, and the result has been a centralization of information. This is deliberate, needless to say, but unnoticed by most people. That results in more controlled information than we could even have imagined more than 20 years ago,” he said. “A lot of information just is not available because it’s digital and it’s controlled by a small number of companies.”

Carlson said “hundreds of millions” of Americans “have no idea what’s going on” because the ruling class does not want them to know the facts.

“It’s not just because they’re dumb or they’re distracted on their iPhones. The whole point of the iPhone was to inform you, and the net effect has been to make people completely ignorant of the core, the actual facts, like the non-disputed facts about a lot of different things. And you saw this, certainly, during covid,” Carlson remarked.

Keeping Americans clueless, Carlson said, is advantageous to those who control information pipelines because it “challenges the idea of democracy, which rests on the notion of an informed voting public, of a citizenry.”

“We don’t have that, and that really, I never would have expected that at all,” Carlson said.

Next, Carlson warned listeners not to throw away hardcopy books and to consider buying “gold and ammo.”

“Definitely don’t throw away your books because they can’t be disappeared, because they exist physically,” Carlson repeated.

Similarly, Carlson said Americans should be keen not to throw away “relationships with other people because they can’t be disappeared either.”

“The material, the physical, things that you can smell, those are the things that you can trust,” Carlson said between a smattering of applause. “Your spouse, your dogs, your children, especially your dogs, but your actual friendships, your college roommates, people in person. As the world becomes more digitized and people live in this kind of this realm that’s disconnected from physical reality, I think the only way to stay sane is to cling more tightly to the things that you can smell.”

Carlson said that he’s “gotten to the point where if I can’t smell it, I’m not dealing with it.”

“Books, relationships, and ammo: Tucker Carlson’s guide to the universe,” Roberts remarked.

“Yes!” Tucker replied.

During the more lighthearted portion of the q-and-a session, Roberts joked that “if things go south for you at Fox News, there’s always a job for your Heritage.”

Mere days after the event and Roberts’ teasing, Fox News abruptly announced that it “mutually agreed to part ways” with the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which is consistently ranked the highest-rated cable news show. Carlson has yet to announce his plans for the future.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Bill Lee’s Red Flag Proposal Is an Unconstitutional Travesty

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 20, 2023

Gov. Bill Lee — The Tennessee governor confuses do-something-ism with bravery.

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is asking lawmakers to support “new legislation that would temporarily block someone who is deemed a threat to themselves or to others from having guns,” writes Axios.

That’s one way of putting it.

Another, more precise, way would be to say Lee supports a law that forces people accused of a precrime to sit down with state-appointed psychiatrists and lawyers and prove their innocence before the government decides if they can keep their guns. If that person says the wrong things, cops can show up at his home, search it, demand the accused hand over his property — not just any property, but property explicitly protected by the Constitution — without offering any evidence that he’s committed, or ever planned to commit, a crime.

In selling his bill, Lee claims that guns can be taken from those accused of having a “psychiatric disorder, alcohol dependence, or drug dependence.” But federal law already prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who “has been adjudicated as a mental defective.” And most people who drink or take drugs don’t have a propensity towards violence. Excessive drinking might be bad for you, but it’s legal. As is grumbling about chemtrails, pondering how to overthrow the government, and hating your neighbors.

Incidentally, if an alcoholic is found guilty of a precrime, Lee’s bill only affords him a single hearing to rectify the situation for each act of suspension, which can be in effect for up to 180 days — even if he pulls his life together, repents, and becomes a devout Seventh-Day Adventist. The state can keep asking for extensions in perpetuity.

Of course, even those with persistent depression, an emotional disorder, aren’t often would-be killers. One in eight Americans takes antidepressants. Yet, one suspects laws like this will only stigmatize depression and make gun owners less inclined to seek help.

More importantly, though, Lee fails to mention in his factsheets that the bill allows the state to take firearms on the basis of a “serious behavioral condition,” which includes “functional impairment that substantially interferes with or limits the person’s role or functioning in family, school, occupational, or community activities.” The incredulous italics are mine, because Lee’s standard, despite his contention that there is a high burden of proof, could include basically anyone who’s met the psychiatric diagnostic criteria for depression and stopped going to a weekly softball game.

Sure, the law includes penalties for false and bad-faith statements by cops and third parties, but those would be all but impossible to prove or prosecute because the basis for the state issuing a “temporary mental health order of protection” is extraordinarily broad.

If someone is threatening others with violence, Tennessee already has numerous laws on the books that allow for arrest. It already has a law that allows for the immediate detention of people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Every state does. And yet, in numerous recent mass shootings, the perpetrator has been known to the police, and they did nothing.

The Covenant School shooting, Lee maintains, makes it impossible not to act. But it’s important to remember that, as far as we know, nothing in Lee’s proposal would have stopped that shooter. The mother, who never appears to have reported her daughter for mental illness, probably wasn’t even aware that her adult child still owned guns. As far as we know, the killer never threatened anyone publicly before the shooting, nor did she pose a danger to herself. For all we know, the shooting was an act of terrorism or conducted over some personal grudge. We won’t know until, or if, the sheriff in Nashville releases her manifesto.

One suspects that gun controllers will soon cook up studies to tell us red flag laws are amazing, but to this point no major study — including a meta-analysis conducted by RAND Corporation — has conclusively found them to be effective. Many of these state laws are even worse than Lee’s proposal as they are permitted ex parte orders. But even if these laws were useful on the margins, they are a serious attack on the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Red flag laws just give authorities power to work around normal evidentiary standards. Perhaps we should try upholding the tens of thousands of laws that already govern gun ownership before passing new ones.

In his platitude-laden Twitter video, Lee frames himself as a courageous nonpartisan, accusing anyone who opposes his proposal of being blinded by politics. The truth is, the governor’s do-something-ism is about the laziest, most politically motivated breed of leadership imaginable.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Child Sacrifice

A.F. BRANCO | on April 12, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-child-sacrifice/

If Democrats really wanted to save kids they would secure the schools but dead kids are how they sell gun control.

Ban Guns For the Children — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden

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Whistleblower: FBI’s D.C. Office Tried To Sic Local Agents On Innocents After Bank Of America Volunteered Gun Records

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MARCH 06, 2023

Bank of America building — ‘Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,’ whistleblower George Hill told the House Judiciary Committee.

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An FBI whistleblower told congressional investigators that the D.C. field office pushed local offices to open criminal investigations into Americans based solely on financial transactions Bank of America tracked and voluntarily provided to the bureau, according to testimony reviewed by The Federalist.

“Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,” whistleblower and recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill told investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Hill’s testimony.

Hill had identified himself last month as one of the whistleblowers cooperating with congressional investigators when speaking with Just the News’ John Solomon about the disclosures he made to the House Judiciary Committee during a transcribed deposition. A review of Hill’s testimony confirms the details the military veteran and former longtime FBI and NSA analyst told Solomon. It also reveals more troubling details.

According to the material reviewed, Hill testified that on either Jan. 7 or 8, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI’s D.C. field office a “huge list” of individuals who used Bank of America credit or debit cards in D.C., or the surrounding Maryland and Virginia areas, on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021. Bank of America then elevated to the top of the list anyone who had ever (through Jan. 6, 2021) used a Bank of America product to purchase a firearm.

There was no geographic or date-range limit to the search for firearm purchases, Hill stressed, meaning the individual would be flagged at the top of the list had he “purchased a shotgun in 1999” in Iowa, and used a Bank of America credit card to check out of a hotel on Jan. 5, 2021, in the Northern Virginia area, following a trip that could be completely unrelated to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

The D.C. field office, which oversaw the Jan. 6 investigation, distributed the Bank of America list internally to field offices throughout the country, Hill testified in his deposition. Hill further explained that his supervisor at the Boston field office refused to open an investigation on the individuals flagged on the list because there was “no predication.” “There’s no crime that was committed by using a [Bank of America] product in the District or around the District,” Hill testified, explaining his supervisor’s reasoning for why no “further action” was required.

But the D.C. field office pushed back, according to Hill. The D.C. field office told Boston’s supervisory special agent, or SSA, he needed to open up the cases. When the local office’s SSA refused, the D.C. field office threatened to call the assistant special agent in charge, or ASAC, of the local office, Hill told the congressional committee. The SSA stood firm in his refusal, as did the local ASAC, Hill said, even though the D.C. field office then threatened the ASAC that it would escalate the matter to the office’s special agent in charge, or SAC.

The D.C. field office then pushed the office’s SAC to open investigations into the targeted Americans. But to the SAC’s credit, he refused, Hill noted, saying the Boston SAC countered, “No, we’re not going to open up cases based on credit card or debit card activity that took place.”

While Boston’s FBI office refused to open the requested cases, Hill stressed that “what I don’t know and could not give accurate testimony to,” was whether the D.C. field office “took it upon themselves to open cases.”

Hill’s deposition testimony raises another troubling possibility: that one or more of the other 54 local FBI field offices either complied with the D.C. field office’s initial request to open investigations into innocent Americans, or later capitulated when the D.C. office escalated the request up the chain of command to the ASAC and then the SAC.

The only reason the Boston FBI office did not launch investigations into the Bank of America customers flagged by the D.C. field office is that the Boston office’s leadership stood firm against the pressure. And the only reason we know about the D.C. field office’s attempt to target innocent Americans based on Bank of America’s data mining gun owners who happened to be in the greater D.C. area on Jan. 5, 6, or 7, 2021, is that a whistleblower came forward.

What the FBI’s other 54 field offices did in response to the D.C. field office’s pressure is unknown. According to a person familiar with Hill’s testimony, Hill had no information on that question either. Also unknown is whether any other private businesses mined the financial information of their customers, as Bank of America had, and then handed that private information over to the feds.

Congressional investigations and more whistleblowers will be needed to uncover the extent of the FBI’s political targeting of innocent Americans.

Bank of America did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.

Mollie Hemingway contributed to this report.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Get Ready for Another Cynical, Useless, Gun-Control Push by Democrats

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JANUARY 26, 2023

Gavin Newsom talking with train in the background — **They don’t care about the effectiveness or constitutionality of gun laws. They just want something ‘done.’**

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The first question any reasonable person asks after a horrible crime is, “What could have been done to stop it?” Yet after every mass shooting, gun controllers suggest unworkable, unconstitutional, completely ineffectual ideas that target people who will never commit a crime.

After the twin mass shootings in California last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom (flanked by armed guards) told CBS News that it was long past time to institute more gun-control laws because the Second Amendment is “becoming a suicide pact.” What he didn’t mention was that California has no functioning Second Amendment. It has passed not only every law Senate Democrats are proposing in Washington, but a slew of others. Anti-gun group Giffords gives California an “A” rating, noting that the state has the “strongest gun safety laws in the nation and has been a trailblazer for gun safety reform for the past 30 years.”

California already has “universal” background checks. California has a 10-day waiting period limit for handgun purchases, a microstamping system, a personal safety test, the ability to sue gun manufacturers even if they haven’t broken any law, an age hike on the purchase of certain firearms including rifles from 18 to 21, “red flag” laws that allow police to confiscate guns without genuine due process, a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds (and legislation held up in courts to confiscate those magazines), among many other restrictions. Short of letting cops smash down the doors of gun owners and take their weapons, California has a law for it. And all it’s done is leave people attending dance halls defenseless.

The day of the Monterey Park shooting, President Biden again called on Congress to pass a federal “assault weapons” ban. So-called assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989. Last year, the state passed another bill making them super-duper illegal: SB 1327. From 1989 until today, gun trends in California mirror those of the nation at large. Which is unsurprising. The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, despite Biden constantly claiming otherwise, did nothing to alter gun violence trends. Homicide rates began to ebb nationally before the ban was instituted. When the ban expired in 2004, and the AR-15 became the most popular rifle in the country, gun violence continued to precipitously fall — by 2014, gun homicides were the same as they were in 1963 — until the appearance of Covid.

Now, America’s gun death rates have reached a 28-year high as of 2021 “after sharp increases in homicides of Black men and suicides among white men, an analysis of federal data showed,” according to The Wall Street Journal. There are likely numerous societal reasons for this change — since about 45 percent of American households had guns 10 years ago and the number is the same today — but Democrats are busy worrying about stopping gun owners from having barrel shrouds.

Not that it matters to Democrats, but the shooter at Monterey Park didn’t use an assault weapon. He used a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic gun — “one of the most useless handguns in existence” — which some reporters referred to as an “assault pistol.” It’s a scary looking, if antiquated gun (out of production since 1990) that, in this iteration, fires one cartridge with a single trigger squeeze like almost every other gun owned by civilians — including AR-15s. The gun was already illegal in California. As is carrying any gun into a no-gun zone. As is murder.

After the killers of Monterey Park (72 years old) and Half Moon Bay (67) struck, Biden, naturally, called on Congress to pass legislation to raise the minimum purchase age for “assault weapons” to 21. Many mass shooters are young men, but the average age of mass shooters is 35. The number of ARs used in the commission of murder in the hands of a person under 21 is a fraction of 1 percent. Like all things Democrats are pushing these days, it’s another incremental way of eliminating gun ownership that has only a tenuous connection to the events that supposedly precipitated the action.

All mass shooters obtain guns illegally, or legally before having any criminal record (or because of a mistake by the police, as was the case in Charleston and elsewhere). Most incidents are perpetrated by young men who have exhibited serious anti-social behavior. In many, if not most, cases, the shooter is already on the cops’ radar because he has threatened others, as was the case from the Parkland shooter to the Highlands Park shooter to the Half Moon shooter and many, many others. In a study of mass shootings from 2008 to 2017, the Secret Service found that “100 percent of perpetrators showed concerning behaviors, and in 77 percent of shootings, at least one person — most often a peer — knew about their plan.” The best thing we can do is uphold laws that already exist.

None of this is to argue that simply because some people ignore laws, they are unnecessary or useless. It’s to argue that laws which

almost exclusively target innocent people from practicing a constitutional right, and do nothing to stop criminals, are unnecessary and useless. The central problem in this debate is that Democrats believe civilian gun ownership itself is a plague on the nation, so it doesn’t really matter to them what gun is being banned or what law is being passed, as long as something is being “done.” Only this past summer, Congress supposedly passed the most vital gun bill in history, yet Democrats are back to acting like nothing has been done.

The other side believes that being able to protect themselves, their families, their property, and their community from criminality — and, should it descend into tyranny, the government — is a societal good. They see gun bans as autocratic and unconstitutional, and, also, largely unfeasible. And they’re right.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Why Is the Government Arming More Federal Bureaucrats Than US Marines?

BY: MARK HEMINGWAY | NOVEMBER 18, 2022

DSS Miami Field Office (MFO) hosts instructors from the Firearms Training Unit (FTU) to conduct the High Risk Environment Firearms Course – Pistol (HREFC-P) at the Homestead Training Center located at Homestead, — **The idea that agencies are empowered to effectively create their own laws and go out and enforce them with armed federal agents should be alarming.**

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When Congress authorized $80 billion this year to beef up Internal Revenue Service enforcement and staffing, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned that “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.” A video quickly went viral racking up millions of views, purporting to show a bunch of clumsy bureaucrats receiving firearms training, prompting alarm that the IRS would be engaged in military-style raids of taxpayers. The GOP claims were widely attacked as exaggerations — since the video, though from the IRS, didn’t show official agent training — but the criticism has shed light on a growing trend: the rapid arming of the federal government.

A report issued last year by the watchdog group Open The Books, “The Militarization of The U.S. Executive Agencies,” found that more than 200,000 federal bureaucrats now have been granted the authority to carry guns and make arrests — more than the 186,000 Americans serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. “One hundred three executive agencies outside of the Department of Defense spent $2.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019 (inflation adjusted),” notes the report. “Nearly $1 billion ($944.9 million) was spent between fiscal years 2015 and 2019 alone.”

The watchdog reports that the Department of Health and Human Services has 1,300 guns including one shotgun, five submachine guns, and 189 automatic firearms. NASA has its own fully outfitted SWAT team, with all the attendant weaponry, including armored vehicles, submachine guns, and breeching shotguns. The Environmental Protection Agency has purchased drones, GPS trackers, radar equipment, and night vision goggles, and stockpiled firearms.

A 2018 Government Accountability Office report noted that the IRS had 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition in inventory at the end of 2017 — before the enforcement funding boost this year. The IRS did not respond to requests for information, though the IRS’s Criminal Investigation division does put out an annual report detailing basic information such as how many warrants the agency is executing in a given year.

More than a hundred executive agencies have armed investigators, and apparently no independent authority is monitoring or tracking the use of force across the federal government. Agencies contacted by RealClearInvestigations from HHS to EPA declined to provide, or said they did not have, comprehensive statistics on how often their firearms are used, or details on how they conduct armed operations.

“I would be amazed if that data exists in any way,” said Trevor Burrus, a research fellow in constitutional and criminal law at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Over the years of working on this, it’s quite shocking how much they try to not have their stuff tracked on any level.”

All this weaponry raises questions about whether the 200,000 armed federal agents are getting adequate weapons and safety training. HHS did not respond to a request for comment on the $14 million in guns, ammunition, and military equipment it purchased between 2015 and 2019 or its new National Training Operations Center within the Washington, D.C. Beltway. Another government agency — Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers — also declined to speak with RCI for this article.

According to Burrus, recent history helps explain the militarization of the federal government. “This is 20 years of the war on terror, with the production of an excessive amount of access to weaponry,” he says.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 extended law enforcement authority to special agents of 24 Offices of Inspectors General in agencies throughout the government, with provisions to enable other OIGs to qualify for law enforcement authority. As a result, even obscure agencies such as the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board’s Office of Inspector General now have armed federal agents. This summer, before the expansion of the IRS was approved by Congress, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz singled out the RRB as an example of the excesses of an armed bureaucracy. He introduced a bill to stop federal agencies from stockpiling ammunition.

Federal agencies doing their own criminal investigations raises important constitutional and civil rights questions. Last year, the EPA raided a number of small auto shops across the country for allegedly selling equipment that helped car owners circumvent emissions regulations.

“It was 12 armed federal agents, and they had little EPA badges on and everything,” John Lund, the owner of Lund Racing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

While it’s hardly a new complaint that federal bureaucracies are overstepping their rulemaking authority, the idea that executive agencies are broadly empowered to effectively create their own laws and go out and enforce them with armed federal agents is another matter.

“So many of the regulations that can be enforced at the point of a gun have almost nothing to do with what people would normally call dangerous crime, that would be the kind of thing where you might want armed agents there,” said Burrus. “And especially coming from agencies such as the EPA and other agencies that are more quality-of-life agencies dealing with regulatory infractions, rather than involved in solving real crimes.”

This article was adapted from a RealClearInvestigations article published Oct. 6.

Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator

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DCNF Reporter Details FBI Pressuring Americans To Sign Away Gun Rights

By HAROLD HUTCHISON, REPORTER | September 08, 2022

DCNF - Kaminsky FBI RAV Guns - Featured — **Screenshot/Rumble/Real America’s Voice**

A Daily Caller News Foundation reporter described how the FBI pressured Americans to sign away their gun rights during a Wednesday appearance on Real America’s Voice.

“The FBI opened various investigations into online threats made online, things like people … making controversial remarks on social media, potentially people tipping other people off, maybe saying things on things like planes, and the FBI received these tips, open investigations and after that, they use these investigations as an impetus to show up at people’s homes or in other redacted locations,” DCNF investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky said on “The Water Cooler.” (RELATED: ‘A Certain Irony’: Rand Paul Rips FBI After Bombshell DCNF Report)

WATCH:

At least 15 people signed forms relinquishing their Second Amendment rights after the FBI presented them, Kaminsky reported. Gun Owners of America obtained the forms through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided them to the DCNF.

“Obviously, we spoke to a lot of legal experts and a lot of gun experts, including people at Gun Owners of America and lawyers who have worked lot with these groups and are very familiar with these groups, who were unsure of the legality of how this bodes for not only the Second Amendment, but other statutes of U.S. code,” Kaminsky said.

One of the statutes in question discusses handling those who are mentally incompetent.

“The glaring discrepancy here is that the Gun Control Act of 1968 rules that the only way people can be barred, or one way people can be barred from possessing guns is if they are ruled mentally defective or adjudicated as mentally defective or adjudicated as being in a mental facility, and so these people are not going through that legal process,” Kaminsky said.

Our reporter @gekaminsky went on @RealAmVoice to talk about how the FBI was trying to get Americans to give up their second amendment rights. pic.twitter.com/8wejg2Y1aN

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 8, 2022

The House of Representatives voted in 2017 to overturn an Obama-era regulation allowing the Social Security Administration to share information about those with mental illness with the FBI, which operates the National Instant Background Check System (NICS).

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

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COMMENTARY

Watch: Police Put in Horrifying Situation as 4-Year-Old Opens Fire While Dad Is Being Arrested

By Richard Bledsoe | July 22, 2022

Police are often placed in situations where they have to make life-or-death decisions in an instant.

Thanks to the attitudes of the establishment media, the results of those consequential choices usually only get publicized if police can be blamed for making the wrong call.

However, now dramatic body cam footage was released where police successfully handled a dangerous situation in which a 4-year-old boy used his father’s gun to open fire on the officers. They were able to disarm the child before anyone got hurt.

Multiple versions of the body cam recordings were shared in a YouTube video. Watch:

ABC4 in Utah linked highlights from the videos and summarized the events that took place on February 21. The police were summoned when “employees reported that a man brandished a gun in the drive-thru after his order was incorrect.”

Sadaat Johnson, 27, was in the McDonald’s drive-thru with two children in the car, a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old.

Johnson did not comply with police instructions, and the situation escalated until officers were forced to pull Johnson from the vehicle.

The video does not show what happened next in the car. While the police were making the arrest of Johnson, the 4-year-old boy picked up the gun. An officer saw the weapon and shouted “Gun!”

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ABC4 reported, “The officer used his hand to sweep the gun away and the gun went off, hitting the upper part of the McDonald’s building. The officer then yelled at the person inside of the car to drop the gun, and after looking inside the car, realized that it was a small child.”

The children can be heard crying as they exit the car. The officers ask “Are you all right, kid?” and try to reassure them: “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

The discharge may have been accidental. However as reported in the New York Post, “The investigation showed that Johnson then ‘told the child to shoot at the police,’ authorities said. It was not clear exactly when he gave the order and it was not caught in the bodycam clip.”

“The boy — who was taken into protective custody — said he shot at the cops because ‘he wanted his daddy back,’ according to court records obtained by ABC4.”

Johnson also explained to the authorities “this wasn’t the first time his 4-year-old child had gotten his hands on a gun.”

Johnson ended up pleading guilty to two third-degree felonies, child abuse or neglect and aggravated assault. Johnson was sentenced to 120 days in jail, three years of probation and courses on anger management and parenting. He can no longer own guns.

A huge contributing factor to this near-disaster was Johnson’s disrespect and disregard for the police. This attitude leads to more danger in police interactions, despite the absurd progressive activist campaign to defund the police based on claims that it’s police presence that starts the problems.

This is not to say law enforcement does not need some reform. But it needs to be reform that puts police back into serving and protecting communities, rather than abusing citizens on behalf of the political class.

Police should also question even their own self-serving agendas. The Utah body cam footage was in stark contrast to footage from the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, the cams caught almost 400 law enforcement personnel unable to handle a lone shooter for almost an hour, while kids died.

In the Utah case though, it is a testament to God’s mercy and the police that no one was killed or injured through the careless abuse of firearms. There could have been causalities of officers, kids or both.

The trouble was caused due to a series of bad decisions and actions by Sadaat Johnson, as much as some want to blame the gun or the cops instead.

Richard Bledsoe

Contributor, Commentary

Richard Bledsoe is an author and internationally exhibiting artist. His writings on culture and politics have been featured in The Masculinist, Instapundit and American Thinker. You can view more of his work at Remodernamerica.com.

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A Would-Be School Invader In Alabama Failed When The Doors Were Locked And Police Weren’t Cowards

REPORTED BY: KYLEE ZEMPEL | JUNE 10, 2022

Turns out we don’t need celebrity lectures and gun control to keep kids safe. We just need locked doors and adults who do their dang jobs.

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While Democrats continue exploiting the Uvalde shooting victims to prattle on about “assault weapons” and so-called “common-sense gun control,” another school was attacked on Thursday, but it won’t make the headlines. That’s because this school — Walnut Park Elementary School in Gadsden, Alabama — didn’t have any victims except the would-be invader, who was shot dead by police after he tried and failed to bust into the building. Here’s how it all reportedly went down.

A passerby saw a man “aggressively” trying to get into the school building. When the man was unsuccessful, he tried several other doors, all of which were locked. The responsible observer called to report the man, the school principal put the building on lockdown and called in a police officer who doubles as the school resource officer, and that officer called for backup. If the reports are correct, the chain of command worked smoothly thanks to decisive action and quickly followed protocols. The resource officer reportedly engaged the would-be invader, who then also allegedly attempted to forcefully enter a marked police vehicle and to take the officer’s gun. More police officers rushed to the scene to help, and the assailant was shot and killed. According to the city’s school superintendent, the schoolchildren who were there “seemed to be unaware the incident occurred.”

In other words, a man who “aggressively” tried to break into a school and take the firearm of a police officer was stopped because doors were properly locked and police officers acted bravely and urgently.

Hmm. That’s interesting. Because according to President Joe Biden, failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, rom-com celebrity Matthew McConaughey, and late-night political scold Jimmy Kimmel, the only way to end the “carnage” of schoolchildren being murdered is to pass anti-gun laws or issue executive orders that radically infringe on the Second Amendment but are slapped with an innocuous “common-sense” qualifier so they don’t sound so bad.

Nothing else would do the trick, such people say — despite the fact that the Uvalde killer had no problem passing a background check, entered through an unlocked door, and faced little resistance from law enforcement for a disgustingly long time.

When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to the Uvalde murder with calls for better school security in the form of locked doors and single-point entry, which could have prevented that killing, leftists and the corporate press ridiculed him for focusing on doors. “[S]enator Ted Cruz comes out bravely against doors,” scoffed The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast on Twitter. “Are they really gonna make it about ‘too many doors on the school’? They are, aren’t they?” chimed in woke comedian Patton Oswalt.

Meanwhile, nobody on the left wants to talk about the criminal failures of the Uvalde police and the Department of Public Safety. That’s in part because if they had done their jobs rather than standing outside like cowards for the better part of an hour, lives undoubtedly would have been spared. It’s also because the implication of Democrats disarming responsible citizens is that the only remaining defense will be armed government employees, who may or may not have the courage to actually help anyone.

Thankfully, in Alabama on Thursday, police did have that courage, and lives were saved because of it. But Democrats and their media lapdogs won’t speak a word of Walnut Park Elementary because it obliterates their gun “do somethingism.”

It turns out we don’t need celebrity lectures and sweeping gun control to keep schoolchildren safe. We just need locked doors and adults who do their dang jobs.

Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Democrats Think Teens Can Kill Babies And Sterilize Themselves But 18 Is Too Young For Self Defense

REPORTED BY: ELLE REYNOLDS | JUNE 09, 2022

Unlike committing an abortion or pumping your child full of hormones, the legal purchase or ownership of a gun does not cause anyone harm.

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The same party that wants to raise the legal age for rifle purchases to 21 is also pushing to let minors kill preborn babies and mutilate their own genitals. American adults aged 18-20 already aren’t allowed to purchase handguns (and many states don’t allow them to obtain a concealed carry permit), more or less blocking them from practicing the basic self-defense precaution of stowing a defensive weapon to stop a bad guy with a gun. Now, Second Amendment deniers also want to bar these Americans from owning a rifle, a popular choice for home defense.

But while Democrats want to punish millions of law-abiding, prospective young gun owners for the evil, disturbed actions of a few of their peers, they’re also demanding that kids far younger be allowed to commit infanticide and mutilate their own bodies.

Letting Teens Commit Baby Murder

The radical abortion bill that Democrats renewed after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade sought to virtually eliminate any restrictions on abortion up to the point of birth. Minors are already allowed to obtain abortions, but the legislation would also nuke state laws mandating parental notification for such young girls. Lest you think this is an incidental inclusion, Democrats have specifically attacked state parental notification laws.

Planned Parenthood’s website doesn’t even try not to sound like a pervert offering kids candy: “If you’re under 18, you may or may not have to tell a parent in order to get an abortion,” it teases.

The ACLU estimates that 350,000 girls younger than 18 get pregnant in America every year, and that 31 percent (or roughly 108,500) of them choose to terminate their babies’ lives. There were 652,639 abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control in 2014; in the same year, the Guttmacher Institute found that 0.2 percent of abortions — or roughly 1,300 — were executed on girls 14 years old or younger.

Fighting for these young, impressionable girls to get abortions doesn’t just push them into the commission of murder, with the likely accompaniment of lifelong guilt, it also subjects them to trauma themselves. Sarah Eubanks, a former abortion facility employee, described one 12-year-old girl whose grandmother brought her in for an abortion:

I remember that look on her face that she just didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t want to be there. She started moving around and the doctor said, ‘You need to hold her down.’ I did put my hands on her and said ‘You have to settle down, you gotta be still, you’re gonna hurt yourself. You have to be still.’ And within an instant, she pushed her feet out of the stirrups and started running down the hall with the speculum in her vagina with blood running down her legs. The doctor said, ‘I’m not touching this.’ She was that upset. She just didn’t want to be there. She was screaming.

The hundreds of thousands of preborn babies’ lives lost to the abortionist’s scalpel every year haven’t dampened Democrats’ desires to let adolescent girls (or any women) make the decision to take a human life. But at the same time, the left will throw gun death numbers in your face to push their anti-gun agenda, even when firearm-related homicides are a fraction of abortion numbers, and are far outpaced by defensive gun use. Pew reported 19,384 murders involving a firearm in 2020, compared to up to 3 million “defensive gun uses by victims” per year, according to a CDC study.

Not only do Democrats want to let children kill their babies, they want to let children make damaging and irreversible changes to their own bodies.

Letting Children Sterilize Themselves

A report from Florida Medicaid found that “Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical intervention is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” and “the available evidence demonstrates that these treatments cause irreversible physical changes and side effects that can affect long-term health.” As a result, Florida Medicaid found that experimental procedures like cross-sex hormones or surgeries were insufficiently safe for coverage.

The report also listed the irreversible or potentially irreversible effects of cross-sex hormones, including facial and body hair growth, male pattern baldness, a deepening voice, and an enlarged clitoris for females taking male hormones, and breast growth, infertility, and sexual dysfunction for males taking female hormones. The irreversible effects of surgical interventions, such as elective mastectomies or genital amputations, are obviously far higher.

But those concerning effects didn’t stop the Biden administration’s Justice Department from sending an ominous memo to state attorneys general, threatening legal violations for states that don’t offer various damaging interventions to children.

“A ban on gender-affirming procedures, therapy, or medication may be a form of discrimination against transgender persons,” the memo stated. It also had the arrogance to claim that “it is well established within the medical community that gender-affirming care for transgender youth is not only appropriate but often necessary for their physical and mental health.”

The Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs further spelled out just what is meant by “gender-affirming care,” including social treatment of a child as the opposite sex, puberty blockers, artificial pumps of hormones like testosterone or estrogen, or surgeries like elective mastectomies and amputation of reproductive body parts. OPA recommends “social affirmation” for “any age,” puberty blockers at any time during puberty, hormones beginning in early adolescence, and surgeries for adults or “case-by-case in adolescence.” Some parents try to claim their children “came out as trans” as toddlers.

But No Guns for Law-Abiding Young Adults!

These procedures threaten lifelong damage to children who undergo them, yet the Biden administration and other Democrats want unfettered access to them and punishments for health professionals and parents who question them. They also celebrate the idea of teenage girls taking the lives of their preborn babies, with no parental consent and with no consideration of whether a child has the mental maturity to make such a decision — never mind the fact that it’s an act of murder.

But Democrats are all too happy to further erode Americans’ Second Amendment rights by arbitrarily raising the minimum purchase age for a rifle from one adult age to another. Unlike committing an abortion or pumping your child full of hormones, the legal purchase or ownership of a gun does not cause anyone harm. On the contrary, it often protects against it.

Yet Democrats support letting pubescent children abuse themselves and adolescents kill their children, while insisting that an 18-year-old who passes a federal background check can be denied the constitutional right to self-defense. Are 18-year-olds too immature for constitutional rights? Are children and teenagers old enough for a concocted right to harm themselves and others? I would argue it’s neither — but it can’t be both.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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Democrats Yell ‘Do Something!’ On Guns While Their Prosecutors and Policies Create Our Culture of Crime

REPORTED BY: KYLEE ZEMPEL | JUNE 08, 2022

crime at Robb Elementary School, Joe Biden visits after Uvalde shooting

Just as the humanitarian crisis at the border is the predictable result of the left’s open-borders policies, so our crime wave is a consequence of their anti-punitive philosophy of criminal justice.

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Since a spate of recent shootings, Democrats led by President Joe Biden have been busy exploiting the tragedies to call for more gun control, go after the “gun lobby” bogeyman, and yell that we must “do something!” about firearm-related crime. They’ve been clear that they aren’t interested in talking about effective solutions that don’t involve gun-grabbing, so they probably also don’t want to talk about who’s responsible for America’s unsettling crime wave: the left.

Meanwhile, as of late Tuesday night, the Associated Press projected that San Francisco voters had handily recalled left-wing District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose soft-on-crime policies wreaked havoc on the California city.

While a prosecutor recall might seem disconnected from an uptick in mass shootings and subsequent gun-control chatter, the two are intertwined. Just as the humanitarian crisis at the border is the predictable result of the left’s open-borders policies, our crime wave is the inevitable result of their anti-punitive philosophy of criminal justice. And the biggest culprits are progressive prosecutors like Boudin who champion Democrats’ policies and have been installed across the country after being bankrolled by left-wing radicals like George Soros and other groups.

Prosecutors Who Don’t Prosecute

According to a new report out from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), Soros alone has poured a staggering $40 million into prosecutor races to help elect 75 leftists that have contributed to the crime wave, and he’s just one of many billionaires working to destroy law and order, influence elections, control the media, and otherwise destroy the country.

The left and its skeptics continue to use guns as a scapegoat and say there’s no direct correlation between left-wing prosecutorial philosophies and crime, but the evidence suggests otherwise. According to the LELDF report, more than 40 percent of the roughly 22,500 homicides in 2021 — so more than 9,000 — happened in these 75 district attorneys’ jurisdictions, which accounted for more than one-third of last year’s violent crimes and property crime.

These DAs’ decisions produce consequences even in the areas they don’t oversee, however, since there’s nothing keeping released offenders in the prosecutors’ jurisdictions. Light sentences, low cash bail, and other slaps on the wrist send criminals right back onto their streets and those of their neighbors.

“These radical activists now preside over 72 million Americans and 40% of US homicides,” said LELDF President Jason Johnson, noting that Soros has already spent another $1 million to date this year to boost his preferred prosecutors. “Soros is using that campaign money and the hundreds of millions more for supporting organizations to quietly transform the criminal justice system for the worse, promoting dangerous policies and anti-police narratives to advance his radical agenda.”

The country saw the effects of progressive prosecutors up close over the last holiday season. The Waukesha parade murderer didn’t need a firearm. To kill six people and injure 62 more, he needed only a vehicle, a soft-on-crime district attorney’s office that let him out on a pittance of bail, and leftist policies that “guaranteed” offenders would kill people. It’s evil like that, enabled by leftist policy failures, that expose America’s crime problem as being so much bigger than a few psychopaths with guns.

Democrats’ Progressive Dream

But the rise in crime is much bigger than Soros and 75 district attorneys too. More fundamentally, it’s the predictable result of a long list of so-called leftist policy goals and beliefs that are prevalent not only among the radicals of the left, but also among the mainstream Democrat Party.

For a particularly grotesque example, look at cities in blue bastion California — particularly Boudin’s San Francisco, where the sidewalks are littered with used needles, passed-out junkies, and homeless encampments, and street sightings of human feces number in the tens of thousands each year. Facing an explosion in shoplifting, retailers in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco were helpless to do anything but reduce store hours. As a Wall Street Journal article noted in October 2021, “Walgreens has closed 22 stores in [San Francisco], where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized.”

That little $950 tidbit is courtesy of Democrats’ woke Proposition 47, which more than doubled the amount a person could steal before facing a felony. In other words, Prop 47 reclassified felonies as no-biggie misdemeanors. Crime in the Bay Area has gotten so bad that even Democrat Mayor London Breed was forced to admit that the left’s soft-on-crime approach has led to “all the bullsh-t that has destroyed” San Francisco.

Meanwhile, in 2021, Los Angeles experienced its highest number of homicides in 15 years, and looters ran rampant on that area’s train tracks, with some railroad companies reporting a “160% increase in criminal rail theft,” and “approximately $5 million in claims, losses and damages” to the train companies alone.

The Left’s Culture of Crime

The crime wave isn’t confined to California, though. It’s swept through Democrats’ strongholds across the rest of the country too. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd wrote in January, “New York, D.C., and Chicago all saw ‘record-high‘ murders in 2021 while Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; Louisville, Kentucky; and Albuquerque, New Mexico, ‘had their deadliest years on record.’”

And let’s not forget the scores of rioters, looters, and vandals who went unpunished after the 2020 summer of rage that resulted in billions of dollars in damages. In fact, rather than condemn them, prominent Democrats including our very own Vice President Kamala Harris helped bail out of jail those who were caught. It was Minneapolis Democrats who voted to dismantle its police department in 2020, enabling a crime wave there. And Democrat lawmakers joined the chorus of those calling to “defund the police,” only stopping when they realized that abhorrent position could hurt them politically.

This approach to law and order is to say nothing of the left’s other principles that cultivate a culture of death, such as the celebration of snuffing out human life in the womb and exploiting children as sex objects.

It’s hard to take Democrats’ tired calls for gun control seriously anyway, given their debunked talking points and faulty logic. But it’s especially disqualifying for the left when you take into account all the lawlessness and violence they enable as hallmarks of their criminal justice platforms. If voters in far-left San Francisco can see it, it’s a safe bet the rest of the country can too. America’s culture of crime belongs to Democrats, and no amount of gun control can fix it.

Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Samuel Sey Op-ed: Absentee fathers, not guns, are the problem

Commentary By Samuel Sey, Op-ed contributor | Thursday, June 02, 2022

The father of the teenager who murdered 19 children and 2 adults in Uvalde, Texas said:

“He probably would have shot me too, because he would always say I didn’t love him.”

The father is also a criminal. He has an apparently lengthy criminal record. His most deadly crime, however, isn’t on his record. His most deadly crime is that he is an absentee father.

A father who doesn’t value his child’s life is teaching his child a person’s life isn’t valuable.

Sixty-three percent of teenagers who commit suicide are fatherless.
Seventy-two percent of adolescent murderers are fatherless.
Seventy-five percent of adolescents in rehab centers for drug abuse are fatherless.
Sixty percent of rapists are fatherless.
Eighty-five percent of teenagers in prison are fatherless.
And especially, 75% of the most-cited school shooters in America are fatherless — just like the teenager who walked into Robb Elementary School to murder 21 people.

Of course, most fatherless people value life. Fatherlessness doesn’t make a person a mass murderer or a criminal. However, fatherless children are significantly more likely to commit crimes. For instance, a 2012 study on juvenile male inmates found that fatherless boys are 279% more likely to carry guns for criminal behavior.

Absentee fathers discourage their children and they provoke them to anger (Colossians 3:21, Ephesians 6:4). I know that too well. Eighty-five percent of children with behavioral problems are fatherless — that describes my childhood.

I was involved in over 20 fights before I was 18 years old. Most of these fights happened when I was between 4-10 years old, especially when other children made fun of me for being fatherless. I didn’t know how to maintain my composure when other children blamed me for my father’s absence. After all, it was hard to refute them. My father, indeed, didn’t love me. He left my mom and our family after my mom became pregnant with me. Therefore, I lacked discipline and self-control. I didn’t know how to respond to insults without anger and violence. By the grace of God, my extraordinary mother, and especially the Gospel, changed me.

Nevertheless, I know fatherlessness is one of the most damaging things children can experience. I know the potentially deadly consequences of absentee fathers.

I know that if the school shooter’s father valued his son’s life — his son would have been more likely to value other people’s lives too. But many of us are unwilling to consider that. After all, Black Lives Matter maintains strong support from our society despite its feminist agenda to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

It’s horrific to imagine what the school shooter’s big gun did to the children’s little bodies. It’s horrific to think about the gunshots silencing the children’s screams. It’s painful to think about. Blaming the school shooting on gun rights, however, isn’t helpful. We have a habit of prescribing the wrong solutions to deadly issues. Guns are not the problem. Gun control isn’t the solution.

Originally published at Slow to Write.

Samuel Sey is a Ghanaian-Canadian who lives in Brampton, a city just outside of Toronto. He is committed to addressing racial, cultural, and political issues with biblical theology, and always attempts to be quick to listen and slow to speak.

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Seconds After Being Shot by Alec Baldwin, Here’s What Halyna Hutchins Told Someone Nearby

Posted By C. Douglas Golden November 2, 2021

They may not have been the first publication to publish such an opinion piece, but the first place I saw one — fittingly — was in the U.K. Guardian. The Guardian — a left-wing, British-favored rag written by the kind of Labour Party die hard that still doesn’t get what was so extreme about Jeremy Corbyn — published the piece Friday. Headline: “Rust shooting sparks fresh debate over gun violence on screen: Firearms remain commonplace in major blockbusters but industry figures say Hollywood is led by audience demand.”

Never mind that this “fresh debate” was mostly happening in the pages of the Guardian. The header image for the article was Keanu Reeves carrying what appears to be a silenced pistol in the 2014 movie “John Wick.”

This is important because, while I was unable to find reliable data on the first film, MovieWeb reported in 2019 that the eponymous character fired 302 shots in the second film, hitting his targets 242 times. Of these hits, 104 were head shots, with a further 90 hitting the target in the chest. One shot even hit someone in the foot.

There’s no count of shots fired by the baddies in “John Wick: Chapter 2,” but given that they appear to be intergalactic descendants of the Imperial Stormtroopers in the “Star Wars” universe — at least when it comes to a genetic predisposition to itchy trigger fingers and terrible eyesight — there were a lot of fake gunshots fired.

According to New Zealand’s NewsHub, through three movies, the fictional Mr. Wick has killed 299 people. Here is the number of people who have been killed in actuality on the set of those three movies: Zero.

Those who might be persuaded by the Guardian’s hot take on guns and cinema in the wake of the “Rust” tragedy, keep those numbers in mind. Keep in mind, too, the reported last words of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins seconds after being shot by Alec Baldwin during the filming of the Western in New Mexico last week.

A report in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times detailed the events of the day of the shooting, including what happened in the moments leading up to Hutchins’ mortal wounding. The Times reported that Baldwin “had been preparing to film a scene in which he, as a grizzled 1880s Kansas outlaw, becomes involved in a shootout in a church. He was just going through the motions, giving the camera crew a chance to line up their angles.”

Those on set say the final moments began as Baldwin put his hand on a holstered Colt .45 revolver, which was supposed to be loaded with a dummy round with no gunpowder. “I guess I’m gonna take this out, pull it, and go, ‘Bang!’” he said.

Baldwin had been assured the Colt .45 was a “cold gun” — as in, no live ammunition was loaded. As he demonstrated what he was supposed to be doing when filming commenced, however, he shot both Halyna Hutchins and director Joel Souza.

“What the f*** was that? That burns!” Souza screamed after he was shot.
“What the f*** just happened?” Baldwin yelled; the Times reported he “put the gun down on a church pew” and “looked down in horror at his two injured colleagues, repeating his initial question like a mantra.”
Crew members gathered around Hutchins, with a boom operator saying, “Oh, that was no good.”
“No,” Hutchins said. “That was no good. That was no good at all.”

Those were her last recorded words, and, in a few hours, she would be pronounced dead.

The problem with those using “Rust” as part of a wider debate around gun violence in Hollywood is that very basic firearm safety measures — both in the entertainment industry and in real life — would have precluded this from ever happening.

Plenty has been made about the entertainment industry’s best practices for firearm safety. First and foremost, no live ammunition should be present on set. According to NBC News, attorneys for armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed said she had “no idea” how the live rounds got there and the “set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced.”

“Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer,” the statement read.
“She fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department. The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings.”

“Rust” assistant director David Halls — another focus of the investigation — reportedly admitted to authorities he should have checked the gun he handed Baldwin more thoroughly before it was handed off.

“David advised when Hannah showed him the firearm before continue rehearsal, he could only remember seeing three rounds,” a search warrant affidavit read, according to NBC News. “He advised he should’ve checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum.”

Furthermore, Baldwin violated basic rules of gun safety. The California Department of Justice, in their Firearm Safety Certificate study guide, lists six of them. Of the first three, Baldwin violated at least two and arguably a third.

The first rule, inculcated in every gun user (and plenty of people who aren’t) from the day they’re around firearms: “Treat all guns as if they are loaded.”
Rule number two: “Keep the gun pointed in the safest possible direction.”
Rule number three: “Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.”

First, yes, live ammunition isn’t supposed to be present on a production set. Even still, if Baldwin treated the gun as if it were loaded, we wouldn’t be talking about this.
Second, the demonstration could have been done in a way where the gun was pointed away from people. Also, while we don’t know where Baldwin’s finger was, what we do know is that it somehow found its way to the trigger — and he was not ready to shoot, either on camera or in real life.

You may find it either surprising or predictable that Baldwin, a staunch gun-control advocate, either didn’t know or exercise these basic gun safety rules. The failure, however, cannot be blamed on firearms — not when this accident happened in one of America’s most liberal industries and to a man who once said the “Second Amendment is not a moral credit card that buys you all the guns you want.” Corners were cut and rules were broken.

The Guardian, however, looks at the firearm first, which shouldn’t shock anyone. First, a Hollywood workplace safety incident puts the blame on the people it usually lionizes within its pages. Second, noting the fact three John Wick films can pass without a single major firearms injury while a low-budget Alec Baldwin Western claimed one life would open up too many unsettling ideological doors for them. After all, if those on the left admit the firearm wasn’t the problem here, imagine how much else about gun violence they would have to re-examine.

C. Douglas Golden, Contributor

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.

@CillianZeal

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One Month Before Baldwin Movie Shooting, Crew Armorer Made Chilling Admission

Reported By Jack Davis October 23, 2021

The woman responsible for the weapon used by Alec Baldwin in a tragic film set accident this week had said she was “really nervous” about her ability to work with prop guns.

Baldwin’s prop firearm discharged during the filming of the movie “Rust” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Thursday. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, was killed. Director Joe Souza, 48, was injured and taken to a nearby hospital.

Hannah Reed, the film crew’s armorer, last month admitted that she was unsure of her ability to do her job.

“You know, I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready. But doing it, like, it went really smoothly,” Reed said on the “Voices of the West” podcast on Sept. 11.

Reed was then working on a movie called “The Old Way.” She said it was her first time as a head armorer. Loading blanks was the “scariest” part of the job, Reed said. She said her father, fellow Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, helped show her the ropes.

According to CNN, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department has issued a search warrant for the property where “Rust” was being filmed.

Steve Wolf, a theatrical firearms safety expert, said “there is no excuse for something like this to happen.”

“The physics of how bullets enter people has been known for about 5,000 years,” he added.

Armorers should always look inside the cylinder of a weapon to ensure “there is nothing in the gun that could come out,” Wolf said.

“If you put a blank in there, you make sure there is a blank, no bullet on the end of it.”

Baldwin tweeted his condolences to Hutchins’ family and friends after the accident.

“There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours,” Baldwin wrote. “I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family.‘
“My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”

Jack Davis, Contributor

Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.

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Society

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Suspected Texas School Shooter Released from Jail as Family Claims He’s ‘No Bad Kid’

Reported By Jack Davis October 8, 2021

A Texas teenager who allegedly shot a classmate and a teacher on Wednesday was freed on bail Thursday as his family members tried to paint the suspected shooter, Timothy Simpkins, as the victim of bullying. In the shooting, which followed a fight, Simpkins, 18, has been accused of wounding a 15-year-old boy multiple times at Timberview High School in Arlington, Texas, according to The Dallas Morning News. Teacher Calvin Pettitt was injured when he was shot in the back while trying to break up the fight. Two other people were injured in the incident. One student was grazed on the arm by a bullet, and a teacher fell in the confusion of the fight and its aftermath.Advertisement – story continues below

Cint Wheat, a cousin of Simpkins, posted on Facebook that “At the end of the day my lil cousin was bullied I don’t know to feel about this he not no bad kid.”

Carol Harrison Lafayette, who identified herself as a family member and said she would speak for the family, said Simpkins had been robbed at the school in the past, according to the Morning News.

“He was robbed,” she said. “It was recorded. It happened not just once, it happened twice. He was scared, he was afraid.”
“There is no justification of anybody … being hurt,” she said.

“We have to take a look at the fact that bullying is real. And it takes us all. And I do apologize. We ask as a family for forgiveness of any type of hurt.”

Simpkins lives in a $400,000 home with his grandmother and drives a $35,000 Dodge Challenger, according to the Daily Mail.

“He was able to get things that other teenagers cannot have; because he wore nice clothes, because he drove nice cars, he was like a target,” Lafayette told the outlet.

Simpkins had been held by police on a $75,000 bond on three charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, but Thursday, the bond was posted, and he left Tarrant County Jail, the Daily Mail reported.

Timothy Simpkins released on bail less than one day after his school shooting.

Four people were hurt in the shooting including two teachers and two students. One 15-year-old boy was critically injured.

pic.twitter.com/hx2IrWFqeD
— Tomas Morales 🇺🇸 (@TomasMorales_iv) October 7, 2021

One Twitter poster who said her brother was a victim was outraged that Simpkins was freed.

The Daily Mail reported that Pettitt was still hospitalized with a wound that narrowly missed his aorta, and the 15-year-old Simpkins allegedly was fighting with was in critical condition.

This is how the Shooting started, a fight broke out and Timothy George Simpkins Started shooting. He is currently missing, Arlington Police say he may be driving a 2018 Silver Dodge Charger LP: PYF6260 pic.twitter.com/p9lvR8tJo6
— FortWorthTX TV (@FortWorthTXTV) October 6, 2021

A police report outlines what allegedly took place, according to the Daily Mail: “Multiple teachers and coaches were working to break up the altercation between Simpkins and the juvenile victim. Once the fight was broken up, the juvenile witness observed Simpkins go to an orange backpack and retrieve a black firearm.

“The witness observed Simpkins point the firearm at the juvenile victim and sees Simpkins shoot, from her account, seven to eight times. The witness then observed the juvenile victim fall to the ground.’

Jack Davis, Contributor

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Law

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Walmart Pulls Guns and Ammo from Sales Floor Over Fears of Civil Unrest

Reported By Jared Harris | Published October 30, 2020 at 7:15am

The world’s largest retailer is pulling firearms and ammunition from sales floors across the United States, a move that is intended to keep the deadly weapons from falling into criminals’ hands.

Walmart advised store managers to begin making the shift Wednesday, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Customers interested in buying firearms or ammunition can still make purchases, but an authorized employee will have to retrieve the goods.

“We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers,” a company spokesman told The Journal.

Although Walmart stopped selling so-called assault rifles in 2015, the firearms that remain on store shelves are plenty deadly enough to do damage in the hands of a motivated criminal or an inexperienced looter.

The Arkansas-based company also banned open carry within its stores and stopped carrying certain kinds of ammunition after several of its locations were targeted by shooters.

It’s unclear how long Walmart’s latest decision will stand.

The move comes amid a surging demand for firearms and growing civil unrest in several places across America, a trend that is anticipated to increase as a hotly contested election approaches.

Most notably, a Walmart was ransacked Tuesday night in Philadelphia by looters running wild.

Video from the scene is surreal, showing rioters swarming the store and making off with cars full of ill-gotten things.

READ THE REST OF THIS REPORT AT https://www.westernjournal.com/walmart-pulls-guns-ammo-sales-floor-fears-civil-unrest/

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Business

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Black Florida Sheriff Vows To Deputize Gun Owners If Rioters Come to His County

Reported By Elise Ehrhard | Published July 2, 2020 at 12:50pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/black-florida-sheriff-vows-deputize-gun-owners-rioters-come-county/

Sheriff Darryl Daniels of Clay County, Florida, released a 3-minute video Tuesday declaring he will deputize the county’s gun owners if protesters decide to visit the jurisdiction southwest of Jacksonville and turn into rioters.

As he stood with 18 deputies behind him, Daniels declared, “Don’t fall victim to subjecting yourself to this conversation that law enforcement is bad, that law enforcement is the enemy of the citizens that we’re sworn to protect and serve.

“We swore an oath, and in that oath, we swore to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the government, and that we’re duly qualified under the state’s Constitution to hold office. That is for me as a sheriff and these men and women as deputy sheriffs. And we end that with, ‘So help me God.’

“But God is absent from the media’s message or Black Lives Matter or any other group out there that’s making themselves a spectacle disrupting what we know to be our quality of life in this country.”

Daniels, Clay County’s first black sheriff, spoke about the breakdown of law-and-order occurring in many parts of the country in recent weeks.

“Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in this country. Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in Clay County,” he said. “And if you threaten to come to Clay County and think for one second that we’ll bend our backs for you, you’re sadly mistaken. …

“Tearing up Clay County, that’s not going to be acceptable. And if we can’t handle you, you know what I’ll do? I will exercise the power and authority of the sheriff and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county. And I’ll deputize them for this one purpose: to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility.

“That’s what we’re sworn to do, and that’s what we’re going to do. You’ve been warned.”

Daniels is himself under investigation over allegations that an affair with a fellow officer led to her wrongful arrest. Since he is battling a scandal in the midst of a tough re-election campaign, this video could be Daniels’ attempt to win over voters by appealing to the need for law-and-order and the right to bear arms. If so, the sheriff is correctly “reading the room,” as they say. Over the past few months, gun sales have surged across the United States.

“During the last week of May, firearm sales were up 78% over 2019, according to an analysis by the small business software firm Womply,” USA Today reported last month.

Americans have seen police departments become overwhelmed during protests and riots across the country. In Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” zone, six city blocks were taken over and a police station was abandoned. In Minneapolis, a precinct was burned to the ground.

The National Guard has been called into multiple places. All the while, exhausted police departments are being defunded by Democratic mayors and city councils.

Right now, Americans can feel grateful for our Second Amendment rights. In some chaotic areas, they are the one thing standing between us and the violent left-wing mob.

Daniels acknowledged the protesters’ rights during his speech.

“Yes, we’ll protect your constitutional rights as long as you remain under the umbrella of peaceful protest or peaceful march. But the second that you step out from up under the protection of the Constitution, we’ll be waiting on you and we’ll give you everything you want,” he said.

Daniels is not the first sheriff to suggest deputizing law-abiding gun owners in his county. Last year, Scott Jenkins, the sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia, vowed to deputize thousands in his county if the state’s Democratic leaders passed extreme gun control measures. His county’s Board of Supervisors had unanimously agreed to declare the county a Second Amendment Constitutional County.

Law-abiding Americans have been viciously attacked during the violence sweeping the country. More and more of them could very well be open to being deputized so they can help protect their communities.

The Clay County sheriff may be facing an investigation, but his video message is on point.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elise Ehrhard

Elise Ehrhard has been a freelance writer for over 20 years and a homeschool mom for seven. Her articles have appeared in countless conservative publications, including The Washington Times, Washington Examiner and American Thinker. She blogs about television and culture for the Media Research Center/Newsbusters.

@EhrhardElise

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EPIC! Polk County Sheriff Warns Rioters: ‘If You Try to Break Into People’s Homes, I’m Highly Recommending They Blow you Out of the House with Their Guns’ (VIDEO)

Reported By Cristina Laila | Published June 1, 2020 at 7:04pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/epic-polk-county-sheriff-warns-rioters-try-break-peoples-homes-highly-recommending-blow-house-guns-video/

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd

Florida – Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd did not mince words during his presser on Monday when he gave a very stern warning to looters.

Sheriff Judd said there were rumors on social media that rioters were planning to invade and loot homes in neighborhoods in Polk County.

So he fired a warning shot to the violent left-wing rioters.

“I would tell the [criminals] that if you value your life you probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County,” Sheriff Judd said.

He continued, “The people in Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded. And if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns.”

“So leave the community alone,” he added.

Bravo, Sheriff!

WATCH:

"The people in Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns… And if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I'm highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns." STORY: https://t.co/NjG4Frlphy pic.twitter.com/KH0g3X0POC

— FOX 13 Tampa Bay (@FOX13News) June 1, 2020

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cristina Laila

Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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As COVID Lockdowns Continue To Threaten Freedoms, April Gun Sales Surge

Reported By Johnathan Jones | Published May 5, 2020 at 3:42pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/covid-lockdowns-continue-threaten-freedoms-april-gun-sales-surge/

Eva Hambach / AFP via Getty ImagesVarious rifles are on display at Clark Brothers gun store in Warrenton, Virginia, on Jan. 16, 2020. (Eva Hambach / AFP via Getty Images)

As local and state governments across the country have restricted the liberties of their citizens since the coronavirus began its spread, many Americans have found themselves quietly exercising their rights by buying guns in record numbers. Purchases of firearms continued to break records last month during the nation’s health and economic crises. Gun sales, which reached all-time highs in March, continued their surge in April amid uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus and the government’s response to it.

Americans bought almost 1.8 million guns in April, according to estimates from Small Arms Analytics, which tracks the sales of firearms. While fewer people bought guns in April than they did in March, when 2.5 million firearms were purchased, the number of arms purchased in April was an increase of 71 percent compared to sales estimates for the same timeframe in 2019. Small Arms Analytics noted that more handguns have been sold than rifles or shotguns.

Additionally, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System reported it conducted more than 2.9 million firearm background checks in April.

NICS ran more than 3.7 million checks in the month of March.

The news is certainly welcome for the gun industry, but it should be celebrated that so many Americans are exercising their Constitutional rights during such an unprecedented time in the country’s history. Governments across the country have released potentially dangerous criminals back onto the streets as a way to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in jails and prisons. With the influx of so many possibly dangerous people now among us, people are reminded that they are the first responders to emergent situations, and are taking steps to ensure they can protect themselves and their families.

Far-left politicians, such as former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, have also promised to go after Americans’ firearms if elected in November, which could be contributing to the spike in sales and background checks. But whether the increase in sales is due to fears of government overreach, talk of gun control or a reaction to other factors, the country’s current predicament is evidence of just how essential the Second Amendment is, and Americans are recognizing that.

Last month, the proprietor of a gun store and shooting range in deep blue Southern California described the unprecedented demand for firearms in Orange County. Gregg Bouslog, the proprietor of On-Target Indoor Shooting Range in Laguna Niguel, explained his shock at the influx in gun sales.

“As the owner of an indoor shooting range and gun store here in California these past 14 years we have never experienced such a huge demand for firearms and ammunition — even higher than the famous Obama rush of 2012/2013,” Bouslog told Red State.

Bouslog added he believed a great number of his new customers were first-time gun buyers.

While toilet paper shortages grabbed headlines in the early weeks of the crisis, and others warn of potential meat shortages coming, the one industry having the most difficulty staying ahead of demand is the gun industry. In the last month, I have personally visited multiple gun retailers, multiple times, seeking to purchase ammunition and to browse for firearms. In what is both inspiring and frustrating, I have found the shelves and walls of gun stores in Oklahoma to be mostly barren, as sellers attempt to keep up with demand.

As the firearms industry is considered essential by the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the NRA, gun sellers are mostly open for business, and some are having a difficult time keeping their inventory replenished — and there is something significant to be taken from that. Americans are sending a clear message: Constitutional liberties will not be suspended or surrendered in the face of a national emergency or by government decree, and people are taking measures to protect themselves from all potential threats to their rights.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Johnathan Jones

Johnathan has authored thousands of news articles throughout his career. He has also worked as an editor and producer in radio and television. He is a proud husband and father.

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America Needs To Hear Judge’s Words in Pro-High Capacity Magazine Decision

Reported By Ben Marquis | Published April 4, 2019 at 3:51pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/america-needs-hear-judges-words-pro-high-capacity-magazine-decision/

A federal district judge in California recently knocked down that state’s ban on firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition as being an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment. The liberal media hasn’t really said too much about the ramifications of this ruling, and for good reason, as it undermines a major argument put forward by the anti-gun crowd in support of their confiscatory gun control schemes.

NBC News reported U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez struck down the ban on possession of “large capacity magazines” that hold more than 10 rounds, in large part due to the commonality of such ammunition feeding devices. Benitez also slammed the lawmakers who think they know what citizens need to defend themselves and their families or protect their homes and property from common armed criminals.

The judge’s 86-page ruling began by declaring “Individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts,” and compared three stories of home invasions in which a woman used a firearm to defend against her assailants. In two of those cases, the victim ran out of ammunition prior to the end of the criminal assault against them, while in the third case, a woman dressed in only pajamas with a large capacity magazine managed to fend off three attackers because she had the extra ammunition in the large capacity magazine.

Benitez wrote that the woman “held a phone in one hand and took up her pistol in the other and began shooting. She fired numerous shots. She had no place to carry an extra magazine and no way to reload because her left hand held the phone with which she was still trying to call 911. After the shooting was over and two of the armed suspects got away and one lay dead, she did get through to the police.”

California first instituted a ban on so-called large capacity magazines in 2000 but allowed those who already possessed such magazines to keep them. However, the law was changed in 2016 to no longer grandfather those previously possessed magazines. Benitez had issued an injunction in 2017 to block the implementation of that law, which would have required all such magazines be turned in or else risk a felony charge for unlawful possession. The reasoning behind the added confiscation and penalties for possession was to reduce death counts in mass shootings. However, Benitez noted that while incredibly tragic, mass shootings were also “extremely rare,” and the law-abiding citizenry shouldn’t be infringed upon with a “solution” to a relatively small problem.

Citing the prevalence of common crimes versus mass shootings — and the fact that it wholly depends on each individual incident to know how many rounds will be needed to defend oneself — the judge decried the limit of 10 rounds to be a significant burden on the Second Amendment-protected right of all law-abiding Americans to possess “arms” necessary for self-defense. The ruling cited the Supreme Court’s monumental District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008, as well as other cases similarly couched on that precedent, which guaranteed the right of Americans to possess “common” arms. Benitez ruled that standard magazines that hold more than 10 rounds fell into the category of being arms in common use. He also gave a nod to the “militia” clause in the Second Amendment later in the ruling by noting that, in the unlikely but still possible event a citizen militia would need to defend the country in the future, they would likely have to do so with firearms and magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

“Constitutional rights stand through time holding fast through the ebb and flow of current controversy. Needing a solution to a current law enforcement difficulty cannot be justification for ignoring the Bill of Rights as bad policy. Bad political ideas cannot be stopped by criminalizing bad political speech,” Benitez wrote.

“Crime waves cannot be broken with warrantless searches and unreasonable seizures. Neither can the government response to a few mad men with guns and ammunition be a law that turns millions of responsible, law-abiding people trying to protect themselves into criminals. Yet, this is the effect of California’s large-capacity magazine law,”he added.

The judge also took on the leftist trope that firearms holding more than 10 rounds were “too lethal” for the average citizen to possess. After noting that all firearms of any capacity are “dangerous” and “lethal,” he followed the faulty logic to conclude that, if the 10-round limit were allowed to stand, it could eventually be reduced by the state to as few as one allowable round — a ridiculous notion that would completely undermine the entire premise of armed self-defense.

Judge Benitez concluded that California’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds could not survive any level of legal scrutiny, nor was it historically acceptable prohibition, and thus was unconstitutional as it placed an unfair and severe burden on law-abiding citizens.

This judge is exactly right. Nobody knows how many rounds will be necessary to defend against an unknown number of assailants, and arbitrary limits imposed by the state — with criminal liability for non-compliance — only serve to burden law-abiding citizens while having no effect on criminals who are already violating existing laws.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ben Marquis

Contributor, Commentary

Summary

The Left Wants to Ban Guns Rather Than Deport Illegals!

Authored by Tami Jackson | on April 24, 2018 at 2:16 pm

URL of the original posting site: https://comicallyincorrect.com/left-wants-ban-guns-rather-deport-illegals/

Any American patriot who has a modicum of knowledge of United States history, of our founding documents — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution — understands that firearms played a big part in our independence. The British — King George III and his agents in America — sought to seize the Colonials’ rifles, muskets, ball, and powder, and thereby control the settlers and further cripple them with taxes.

The Second Amendment was added in spite of some who protested: many in the New World thought it nonsensical to add a right to keep and bear arms. After all, they had recently secured their independence from the tyranny of King George due in large part to the colonials being armed. Surely no one would ever seek to disarm Americans?

The proponents of the Second won the day, thank goodness, because now the Progressives (aka Socialists) would love nothing more than to disarm the “lowly, unenlightened masses.”

The Left — Feinstein and Bloomberg and Pelosi et al — don’t care about the citizens’ health and well-being — they care about CONTROL! Period.

Think of gun-free Chicago with its astronomical murder rate. Gun-grabbers hate that topic. Bring up The Windy City and you get a chorus of Lefties, fingers in ears, shouting, “LA LA LA I can’t HEAR you!!!”

Another Leftist stroke-inducing topic? Illegal alien criminality. Whoah boy! The radical left call them undocumented and paint a picture of peaceful, law-abiding (uh…didn’t the break the law to get here?) people who just want to be Americans. Except they don’t. These illegals don’t want to become Americans. They do NOT want to assimilate and learn English and be good citizens.

Hint: good citizens do not break the law.

What these illegals do want to do is become recipients of American healthcare, food, housing, schools, etc., all on the taxpayer dime. Oh you can be sure the Socialists call it free. But it is not. Might be free to those who sneak across our border then scurry quick-like to the nearest bleeding heart Democrat to sign up for free stuff. But the so-called “free stuff” is expensive to Americans.

Especially Americans like Kate Steinle. Or like Deputy Sheriff Danny Oliver or Placer County Sheriff’s Detective Michael Davis Jr..

Kate was the daughter of Jim and Liz. Danny had a wife and two daughters. Michael Davis left behind a wife and four children.

Oliver and Davis’ killer, Luis Bracamontes, was “a Mexican citizen who had been deported repeatedly and had a felony drug and weapons history.”

Those are but three examples out of hundreds across this land.

**Let’s get something straight: anyone who sneaks into the United States of America unlawfully is already a lawbreaker. If someone is in this country illegally, they should leave. Period.**

So if the Lefties really want to protect Americans, they will get on board with building the wall and securing our border AND deporting illegal aliens.

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Gloria Steinem and the Other Radical Feminists Have Zero Logic

Authored by Tami Jackson | on April 18, 2018 at 3:14 pm

URL of the original posting site: https://comicallyincorrect.com/gloria-steinem-radical-feminists-zero-logic/

Radical feminists –some call them “feminazis” — worked hard over the last half century to do what Barry “I have a pen and phone” Obama sought to do in his two interminable terms: fundamentally transform (i.e. destroy) America. Gloria Steinem was the godmother of radical feminism and the sexual revolution.

As I wrote last December:

If Cosmopolitan magazine was the “bible” of free love, sex and orgasm for the single girl, Gloria Steinem was the prophetess of the sexual revolution.

Steinem founded Ms. magazine in 1969, which happily harmonized with Cosmo, further disseminating the dogma of free love and sex without the tedious tether of marriage.

The devotees of [Helen Gurley] Brown and Steinem–who were once college radicals burning bras, protesting the Vietnam War, rebelling against parental authority, and belittling the institution of marriage–are now ensconced in America’s halls of academia teaching malleable young minds.

We now know what happens when you teach a nation that people have no intrinsic value, that women are mere means to pleasure, that women should want unfettered sex whenever and however, and that humans in utero are disposable. Good ole Gloria started her illustrious career as a Playboy Bunny in the New York City Playboy Club. Now there’s a sure-fire foot-in-the-door for a wannabe radical feminist.

Ms. Steinem made no secret of her abortion at age 22 and writes openly:

I didn’t begin my life as an active feminist until that day. It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could!

There you go.

Nothing like killing your own child to inspire one toward a brave and brazen job move!

Sexual Revolution Kick-Starter Steinem has been opposed to pretty much any and every conservative principle and belief. Although, she was married for a brief time from the age of 66 until her husband, David Bale (father of actor Christian Bale), died. That was one spark of normalcy in her otherwise abhorrent life.

Gloria has been pushing abortion for over 50 years. What a legacy. And her latest hobby? Banning guns!

Yessiree! Ms. Steinem really wants to save the children of America…uh…the ones that have actually survived the abortionists’ killing zones.

Anyone else aghast at this meme and it’s import?

Hmmm…

Let’s think about it. According to Feminist Gloria, killing a baby in the womb — or on its way out of the womb — is A-Okay. Killing anyone with a gun? Not so much.

Yea. You radical feminists really have a heart. Babies in America take note. And Ms. G? Hope you like really hot places because, barring a big-time come to Jesus, Paul on the road to Damascus moment, you have a one-way ticket to a very hot, very dark place.

#SorryNoIceWater

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Iowa Legislators Move to Protect Gun Owners by Amending State Constitution

Reported By Chris Agee | March 27, 2018 at 1:43pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/iowa-legislators-move-to-protect-gun-owners-by-amending-state-constitution/

While last month’s school shooting in Florida led to new gun laws in that state and a renewed nationwide push for gun control, lawmakers in another state recently took the opposite approach.

According to the Des Moines Register, Iowa state legislators pushed through a resolution earlier this month that supporters hope will result in a ballot measure allowing citizens to vote for a “right to bear arms” to be added to the Iowa Constitution.

Lawmakers in the state House and Senate voiced their opinions on the resolution during periods of intense debate prior to votes by both chambers to advance the legislation. According to the language included in the resolution, the state “affirms and recognizes” the constitutional right to bear arms.

A GOP backer in the Senate, however, said it is up to the voters to determine if the amendment goes too far.

“I trust the Iowa voter,” said state Sen. Brad Zaun. “They are going to tell us if they don’t like the language in front of us. They are going to tell us how important their Second Amendment rights are.”

As Democrat state Sen. Tony Bisignano said, the fear among some opponents is that supporters are looking at the Second Amendment in absolute terms and without critical context.

“Can you envision what arms will look like in 150 years?” he asked. “What we have today for arms is beyond their imagination.”

One Democrat critic called his Republican colleagues “tone deaf” in pushing a resolution he said made it seem as though they were preparing for a “zombie apocalypse.”

State Sen. Matt McCoy said that lawmakers “haven’t even figured out how to secure our school buildings yet” and should not be pursuing constitutional amendments further expanding gun rights.

A Republican counterpart, however, seemed to link demographics to gun violence rather than access to firearms.

“In the big majority of counties around the United States, there are no murders, or maybe one in a given year,” said state Sen. Julian Garrett. “It is only in concentrated areas where we have these murders.”

In the case multiple school shootings, however, including the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland County, killers have attacked in typically safe communities.

A joint resolution to advance the amendment process passed by a vote of 54 to 42 in the House before advancing to the Senate, where it passed 34 to 15.

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Anti-Gunner Students Allowed To Edit US Paper, End Up Humiliating Themselves

Authored By Cillian Zeal | March 26, 2018 at 2:19pm

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/anti-gunner-students-paper/

Publications have editors. Real ones. As in, those whose experience is commensurate with the paper, magazine or website they’re working for. They’re not just there to make sure their staff don’t “wreite like” th1s. Their function is edit for style, to check facts, to see if arguments cohere. For this, they’re paid handsomely. (Well, by the standards of the industry, anyhow.)

I mention this all because on Friday, the U.S. edition of The Guardian allowed the staff of the Eagle Eye — the official newspaper of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, site of one of the most horrific acts of evil we’ve witnessed on school grounds in many a year — essentially to write and edit their own piece detailing their recommendations to “halt mass shootings.”

It’s worth noting that the paper’s parent publication, the London Guardian, is easily the most liberal mainstream publication in Great Britain. That certainly explains why they would engage in an experiment like this.

And, common sense unfortunately dictated exactly how the experiment went. The piece — which I’m sure did very well in terms of readership, given the quasi-celebrity nature of the authors and the fact that it was published a day before the March for Our Lives — is a farrago of unresearched errors, logical fallacies and appeals to emotion so threadbare and maudlin you wish that a real editor would have saved them from themselves.

Here are a few “highlights” from the piece, titled “Our manifesto to fix America’s gun laws.”

“We have a unique platform not only as student journalists, but also as survivors of a mass shooting. We are firsthand witnesses to the kind of devastation that gross incompetence and political inaction can produce.”

This is in the introduction and it sets the tone for what’s to come. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: neither surviving a mass shooting nor being a student journalist makes you an expert on either firearms or public policy.

In the latter department, it shows in this very sentence: the movement they are supporting (and the manifesto they wrote) wishes to place more — not less — power in the hands of those whose gross incompetence and political inaction caused the Parkland shooting in the first place.

“Ban semi-automatic weapons that fire high-velocity rounds: Civilians shouldn’t have access to the same weapons that soldiers do. That’s a gross misuse of the second amendment. (sic) These weapons were designed for dealing death: not to animals or targets, but to other human beings. The fact that they can be bought by the public does not promote domestic tranquility. Rather, their availability puts us into the kind of danger faced by men and women trapped in war zones.

“This situation reflects a failure of our government. It must be corrected to ensure the safety of those guaranteed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is the kind of misinformation from which an actual editor — one who works for The Guardian as opposed to the Eagle Eye — would have saved these individuals. Hunting rounds available to the general public already fire at higher velocity than some ammunition used in military rifles, because hunters often shoot at moving targets.

So, in fact, they were mostly designed for “dealing death” to animals. They’re often for varmint control. However, in a mass shooting situation, they would actually have little practical advantage over most other guns (but more about this later).

While there may be the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence, there is also the right to bear arms (which “shall not be infringed upon”) in the Constitution. Nowhere in these documents, it must be noted, is the promotion of “domestic tranquility” (again: this kind of clubfooted phraseology is why you let professionals edit your work) guaranteed.

The most sadly laughable line, however, is the part about “a failure of our government.” The government has failed in so many ways in Parkland, but in ways where handing more power over to them would only exacerbate the problem. I know these students write and edit a newspaper; perhaps they should read a few, as well.

“Ban accessories that simulate automatic weapons: High-capacity magazines played a huge role in the shooting at our school. In only 10 minutes, 17 people were killed, and 17 others were injured. This is unacceptable.

“That’s why we believe that bump stocks, high-capacity magazines and similar accessories that simulate the effect of military-grade automatic weapons should be banned.

“In the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas, 58 people were killed and 851 others were injured. The gunman’s use of bump stocks enabled vast numbers of people to be hurt while gathered in one of the most iconic cities in America. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. That’s why action must be taken to take these accessories off the market.”

Let’s start here with the idea that bump stocks “simulate automatic weapons.” They allow weapons to fire more rapidly — and very inaccurately. In the case of Las Vegas, it was a unique situation where accuracy didn’t matter to the gunman because of the press of the crowd into which he was firing. In most mass shootings, bump stocks would be useless. They also do not “simulate the effect of military-grade automatic weapons.”

As for the high-capacity magazines, this is again something that anyone familiar with guns would know to be useless. In a soft-target situation like a school where security either cannot or refuses to engage a shooter, a handgun with a regular magazine would be more than enough to inflict the kind of damage the shooter did, irrespective of the size of the magazine. And, if targets were hardened, the size of the magazine wouldn’t matter; a student would likely be either stopped or deterred before it made a significant difference.

Nowhere is evidence provided for any of their claims in this department, likely because none exists.

Oh, and speaking of security:

“Increase funding for school security: We believe that schools should be given sufficient funds for school security and resource officers to protect and secure the entire campus. As a school of over 3,000 students, teachers and faculty, Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school (sic) was only supplied funds to hire one on-campus armed resource officer by the state.

“Without backup, this officer’s hesitation proved to be disastrous and allowed for the senseless deaths of people who were killed on the third floor of the 1200 building. Though this idea has been proposed in the past, these funds should not be appropriated from the already scarce funding for public education. Governments should find resources to secure the millions of children that attend public schools without taking away from the quality of education that is offered at these institutions.”

Given the scarce resources, you mean a plan like, I don’t know, training and arming already-extant faculty members at your institution to back up armed resource officers? Like the president proposed? Probably not, given that one of the soi disant leaders of Stoneman Douglas gun control posse (who, in fairness, is not an editorial member of the Eagle Eye) has called that idea “stupid.”

“Allow the CDC to make recommendations for gun reform: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be allowed to conduct research on the dangers of gun violence. The fact that they are currently prohibited from doing so undermines the first amendment.(sic) It also violates the rights of the American people.

“It is hypocritical to rally people to protect the second amendment, (sic) while remaining silent on the ways that blocking research violates one of our most basic constitutional freedoms.”

At least someone from The Guardian should have had the basic kindness to explain how incoherent this would sound. The Centers for Disease Control is a government organization. If it is commissioned by the government to provide gun death research — and the omnibus bill authorizes that — it can conduct said research. It would then present its findings.

Nowhere is a taxpayer-funded organization granted the right to officially opine on any issue without legislation or regulations that prompt it, under the First Amendment. This would be patently absurd — and, by the way, since the CDC is currently headed up by an appointee of the Trump administration, I seriously doubt the editorial members of the Eagle Eye would exactly be in favor of the CDC somehow utilizing the First Amendment to remark on how they feel about the Second Amendment.

Other arguments that you may have heard before that are included in the piece are the proposal to raise the minimum age for firearm purchases from 18 to 21, greater sharing of mental health information between mental health care providers and law enforcement, the “gun show loophole” argument and calls for more stringent background checks.

No particularly new points were contributed to the discussion and none of the arguments were rendered more astutely than they have heretofore been. There is no unique perspective brought to anything (aside from the idea that government agencies ought to have autonomous First Amendment rights to speak however they want), and certainly no particular view expressed in the article is unique to an individual who has survived a mass shooting.

Instead, it is an exploitative document (on the part of The Guardian) riddled with poor reasoning and nonexistent research (on the part of the students) which only exists in mass media circulation because of who wrote it.

You may feel that I am being inordinately cruel and unjust by attacking what these students have written. They are, after all, survivors of an unspeakable tragedy. They are also public figures and have made themselves so by their decision to lecture Americans on what constitutional and legal rights they should and should not have. The expectation that those they have chosen to lecture ought to sit down and stay silent ignore the fact that the media is using these teenagers as cultural satraps to weave a proxy narrative of their own.

If the media is going to engage in such puppetry, the very least they could do is give these kids a decent editor.

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MSM Won’t Push SC Mass Killing Story Because It’s So Destructive to Their Narrative

Reported By Ben Marquis | March 18, 2018 at 1:04pm

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/msm-sc-mass-killing-narrative/

Whenever there is a shooting in which three or more people are murdered, the mainstream media devotes ample coverage to the horrific crime in order to perpetuate the liberal agenda and push a narrative that guns are evil and must be strictly regulated, if not totally confiscated. However, when an equally heinous mass murder occurs with a weapon other than a firearm, the media stays stunningly silent, largely because wall-to-wall coverage of the incident does nothing to further the gun control narrative, and may even work against it by revealing how a gun in the hands of a victim could have changed the terrible outcome.

Such is the case with a recent mass murder in South Carolina, in which WCSC reported that 22-year-old Lovequawn Scott has been charged with four counts of murder for the deaths of four family members in their home. Astonishingly, police caught him attempting to flee the scene covered in blood when they arrived to check out a report from another concerned family member of a suspicious death.

The victims, who according to the county coroner all died of blunt force trauma, were identified as 72-year-old Joseph Manigault, 69-year-old Rose Manigault, 42-year-old Kenya Manigault and 15-year-old Faith Manigault. The weapon believed to be used to slaughter them was not an “assault rifle” or shotgun or even a handgun, but a pair of dumbbells, which the suspect allegedly used to beat the four members of his family to death.

Nor is this the first time that the quadruple murder suspect has been in trouble with the law, as WMBF reported that Scott, who had been enrolled at Coastal Carolina University, was arrested by campus police in 2017 and charged with trespassing, possession of marijuana, unlawful possession of a handgun and carrying a weapon on school property.

But Scott’s rap sheet didn’t begin there, either. WPDE reported in Nov. 2016 that Scott had been arrested on a golf course and charged with a litany of crimes after an altercation with police. In that incident, the burgeoning career criminal was charged with possession of Schedule IV drugs — Xanax pills, MDMA powder and marijuana — other drug offenses, four counts of receiving stolen goods, resisting arrest with a deadly weapon, breaking into a vehicle and the unlawful sale, delivery or possession of a handgun by a prohibited person.

When confronted by police in that incident, he attempted to flee the scene, then attempted to pull a loaded handgun on the arresting officer in the scuffle. He was later found to be in possession of stolen goods believed to have come from at least eight separate breaking and entering of vehicles.

With regard to the murders, Bearing Arms took note of the lack of national coverage of this tragic and brutal crime. Writer Tom Knighton pointed out that the media was most likely avoiding this story because it decisively runs counter to their standard anti-gun narrative.

Indeed, a semi-automatic rifle, shotgun or handgun in the possession of any of the four victims — whether the elderly grandparents, the suspect’s aunt or his young niece — could have saved some or all of the victims from their horrific fate at the hands of the much stronger career criminal who bludgeoned them all to death at his leisure. Moreover, it proves that mass murder occurs whether or not the murder possesses or has access to a firearm.

Had the perpetrator of this atrocity used a gun in the murders, the media likely would have been all over it — though they probably would just as quickly have dropped it once the suspect’s lengthy rap sheet entered the conversation. However, since he didn’t use a gun and doesn’t fit the profile of an angry National Rifle Association member, they have avoided it at all costs.

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CNN Forced to Admit Town Requiring Guns Has Stunning Crime Stats

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/cnn-admit-town-guns-crime-stats/

As has become typical, the debate over the Second Amendment and gun control reached a fever pitch following the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Even as some liberals chastise gun owners and condescendingly declare, “Nobody wants to take away your guns,” other Democrats put forward legislation that would ban most common semi-automatic firearms and others even suggested Australia-style confiscation laws.

It should go without saying that the mainstream media is fully supportive of such proposals, chief among them CNN, as evidenced by its incessantly favorable coverage for the anti-gun side and staunch opposition to the point of denigration for those who advocate for the Second Amendment.

However, there is a small town in Georgia that went an entirely different route in regard to guns and gun ownership nearly four decades ago. Breitbart noted that even CNN had to admit that a law mandating gun ownership for those Georgia residents has had an effect on gun violence in the area.

That town would be Kennesaw, Georgia, and they passed a local ordinance into law in 1982 that required the head of every single household in their jurisdiction to keep a firearm in their home for the purpose of home defense. According to a piece from CNN, the town of about 33,000 people has suffered only one murder in the past six years, and has a crime rate of less than 2 percent. In other words, as economist John Lott has long noted, “More guns, less crime.”

The decidedly anti-gun media outlet made certain to mention that the law is generally unenforced by local police — meaning some households may not actually have the mandated firearm — and were also sure to point out that there could be other factors at play in regard to the exceptionally low crime rate aside from the mandatory gun ownership.

But even if the law isn’t strictly enforced, it undoubtedly has an effect, as Kennesaw Police Department Lt. Craig Graydon stated, “It was meant to be kind of a crime deterrent.”

Since the law has been around for so long, Kennesaw has received attention from all over the country — and even other nations around the world — in regard to the ordinance as various locales consider whether something similar might be right for their own communities.

“We get a lot of calls, conversation, and it seems to keep crime control, gun safety, things like that on the minds of many of the residents, because people are constantly talking about the gun law,” Lt. Graydon said. “So that’s been somewhat of a benefit to us.”

That appears to be how Mayor Derek Easterling views the law as well. “If you’re going to commit a crime in Kennesaw and you’re the criminal — are you going to take a chance that that homeowner is a law-abiding citizen” he said.

“The first thing that most people say when they meet us, you know as a community is ‘oh, it’s not what I expected,’” explained Easterling of the attention his town has received. “I don’t know what they expect of people who arm themselves with guns at home, or what they’re looking for, but really we’re not that.”

One resident of the town who has willingly obeyed the ordinance is Wayne Arnold. He told CNN that in addition to several handguns, he also keeps one of the incredibly common AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles chambered in .223 caliber handy, just in case.

“It gives me the ability to protect myself as opposed to being somewhere where you weren’t allowed to have a firearm or it was frowned upon,” Arnold said.

“People kind of get the image that it’s the Wild West, where everybody walks around with a firearm strapped to their side, and it’s not like that,” he added. “It’s strictly a home defense system type of deal. There’s no shootouts down the street.”

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University OKs Guns on Campus… 6 Months Later the Results Are Breathtaking

Authored By Randy DeSoto | March 5, 2018 at 10:51am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/university-oks-guns-campus-6-months-later-results-breathtaking/

Six months after adopting concealed carry of firearms on campus, the University of Kansas found that the crime rate dropped and there have been zero weapons violations. The Lawrence Journal-World reported that “crime decreased 13 percent, with 671 criminal offenses reported to KU police in 2017 compared to 770 incidents in 2016, according to a news release from the KU Office of Public Safety.”

The newspaper added there have been no weapons’ violations on campus in 2017, while there had been 14 reported since 2008 up to that point.

KU prepared for the addition of campus carry being implemented last July by adding three additional security officers to patrol busy areas on campus, as well as portable metal detectors.

Kansas state law only allows those who are 21 or older to concealed carry. On its website, the university notes that 59 percent of students are younger than 21.

Dudley Brown, president of the National Association of Gun Rights, believes there is a causal relationship between the drop in crime rate and permitting concealed carry on campus.

“There’s no doubt that allowing citizens — especially women — to carry the tools for self-defense makes criminals think twice,” he told The Western Journal.

Campus carry advocate Antonia Okafor shares that view, tweeting that KU is “showing the world how #campuscarry is done.”

According to the National Conference on State Legislatures, as of July 2017, eight states allow concealed carry weapons on college campuses. Meanwhile, 23 states leave the decision up to the individual universities, and 16 states outright ban guns on campuses.

The number of concealed carry permits in the United States rose significantly during the last decade, while the murder rate declined.

Citing statistics from the Crime Prevention Research Center, the National Rifle Association tweeted that between 2007 and 2015, the number of concealed carry permit holders increased by 215 percent, while the murder rate dropped 14 percent and the violent crime rate fell 21 percent.

Fox News reported that the number of concealed carry permit holders topped 15 million in 2017, which represented an increase of more than a million people: 14.5 million in July 2016 to 15.7 million in May 2017. That spike represented the largest increase in the number of concealed carry owners in the nation’s history.

Regarding the prevalence of privately owned firearms in the U.S., Daily Wire Editor in Chief Ben Shapiro tweeted a chart following the Las Vegas shooting last October showing that the murder rate has been trending down for decades in the U.S., despite gun ownership increasing significantly.

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Man Goes Viral After “Destroying” AR-15, But Gun Expert Notices Something

Authored By Cillian Zeal | February 20, 2018 at 1:53pm

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/man-goes-viral-ar-15/

If there’s a shooting involving an AR-15, or a gun like the AR-15, or even a gun with the letters “A” and “R” somewhere in its name, you can bet that the media is looking to use it to demonize the AR-15. After the shooting at the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last week, the AR-15 again came under scrutiny.

That’s not because it’s more deadly than other guns if school shooters have free rein — the Virginia Tech shooting, which claimed far more lives, was committed with simple handguns — but it’s become almost a symbol to both shooters and gun-grabbers alike.

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, one AR-15 owner went massively viral by “destroying” his gun in response. However, our gun expert looked at what he did to it and noticed something the media should have looked at before reporting the story.

“Scott Pappalardo owned his AR-15 rifle for more than 30 years,” ABC News reported on its Facebook page. “He even has a Second Amendment tattoo on his arm.

“This weekend, he destroyed his gun ‘to make sure this weapon will never be able to take a life.’” Thus, he cut it in half:

That video has gotten over 2.3 million views on ABC News’ Facebook account alone in just one day. However, did you notice the one thing about his “destruction” of the gun that seems a bit suspicious?

Jared Harris, our resident gun expert here at Conservative Tribune, certainly did.

Harris, a former infantryman who has extensive experience in weapons, says that if Pappalardo thought he was really destroying the weapon, he did it so ineptly one could argue he probably shouldn’t have owned it in the first place.

“He only sliced the barrel,” Harris said. “Those are less than $100 and literally screw into the upper part of the receiver.”

To put that into context, low-end AR rifles start at $500 minimum and can go up to several thousand dollars.

“It’s like throwing a tire into the garbage and declaring that you’ve destroyed an entire car.”

If Pappalardo truly thinks he’s destroyed the weapon, in other words, he’s actually made it more dangerous by thinking it’s destroyed and therefore harmless. If one thinks a gun is harmless, one is more likely to let it fall into the wrong hands — and that makes the gun way more dangerous than it was before it was “destroyed.”

Of course, this could be a stunt, or Pappalardo might just be trolling the heck out of the news media. Maybe he went on and ran over the gun 20 times with his truck before blowing it up in his backyard. All of these are options.

However, when the media uncritically reports that this man has “destroyed” an AR-15, it shows they know nothing about a gun they’re so eager to villainize.

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Watch: Off-Duty Cop Drops Thug in Costco, Stops America’s Next Mass Killing

We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep on saying it: A good guy with a gun is the best way to counter a bad guy with a gun.

Capt. Michael Howell of the Kansas City (Kansas) Police Department proved that yet again when he dropped a thug in a Costco who could have been America’s next mass shooter. The incident happened last month but the video was just released last week, according to the Kansas City Star. It shows how Howell managed to kill Ronald O. Hunt.

It happened on Nov. 26 in a Costco in Lenexa, Kansas. According to Howell, he was in the store when he heard Hunt say, “I’m an off-duty U.S. Marshal, I’m here to kill people.”

“I knew that there was a threat that had to be stopped,” Howell said during a Friday news conference.

As Hunt moved through the aisles in what was described as a methodical fashion, Howell tracked the potential killer and then surprised him with his weapon.

“’Police, drop the gun. Don’t move,’” Howell recalls commanding Hunt.

After Howell repeated his command, Hunt turned on the off-duty cop with his weapon.

“That is when I fired at him,” Howell said. “And he went down.”

Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said that Howell “acted with extreme courage, and saved an unknown amount of innocent lives” and that he wouldn’t face charges over the shooting.

Howell said he just did what had to be done.

“My greatest fear was we had kids with their moms, with their grandmas, with their dads,” Howell said.

“It was little kids running and screaming. And seeing the fear in their faces and knowing whatever it took, I had to do whatever necessary to end this threat so they wouldn’t get hurt.”

Thankfully, as Hunt went through the store with a pistol and a shopping cart, most of the customers fled out the emergency exit.

Meanwhile, Howell should really never have been in the store that day. He had originally planned to go to the Kansas City Chiefs game, but decided to stay at home and get some rest, instead. He had gone to Costco to get an electric fireplace.

As for claims that he was a hero, Howell downplayed the idea.

“I’m just a cop doing my job,” Howell said.

Of course, you won’t hear much in the mainstream media about this off-duty cop doing his job, and how he managed to stop a potential mass murderer before the wannabe killer could injure a single person. That’s because the idea of a good guy with a gun trumping a bad guy with a gun is anathema to the media’s narrative. Nevertheless, we salute Capt. Michael Howell. His quick thinking and bravery saved lives. That makes him a hero — and one more Americans should know about.

H/T Independent Journal Review

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Alert: Democrat Requests UN Troops Be Deployed to US Soil to Deal With Guns

Reported By V Saxena | December 16, 2017 at 8:20am

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/democrat-requests-un-troops/

Instead of looking to President Donald Trump for assistance with Chicago’s never-ending gun violence, Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin, a Democrat, has reportedly expressed interest in teaming up with the United Nations.

“I’m hoping to appeal to the U.N. to actually come to Chicago and meet with victims of violence, and maybe even possibly help out in terms of peacekeeping efforts, because I think it’s so critical for us to make sure that these neighborhoods are safe,” he said Thursday, according to local station WBBM.

He reportedly made the remarks from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport en route to New York to meet with Oscar Fernandez-Taranco of Argentina, the U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Support. Boykin continued by bemoaning the “quiet genocide taking place in too many of our communities” and rightly noting that most victims of Chicago’s gun violence are blacks who have been “killed at the hands of another African American.”

“So we must protect these population groups, and that’s what the United Nations does,” he added. “They’re a peacekeeping force. They know all about keeping the peace, and so we’re hopeful that they’ll hear our appeal.”

I appreciate his desire to help the black community in Chicago, but why seek help from the U.N. when Trump has already reportedly sent “an additional 20 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives … to Chicago to help in the effort at cracking down on gun crime and the repeat criminals who routinely commit such crimes”? The president has also proposed sending in the National Guard, though the city’s left-wing mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, rudely rejected this offer in January.

“We’re going through a process of reinvigorating community policing, building trust between relationships in the community and law enforcement,” he said, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. “(The National Guard) is antithetical to the spirit of what community policing is.”

But the power-hungry U.N. is not?

Let’s be clear here: The U.N. is an anti-democratic organization that is “hostile to the private ownership of firearms,” as noted five years ago by Ted R. Bromund, Ph.D., a Margaret Thatcher senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in a column for The Daily Signal.

Moreover, the U.N. poses enough of a threat to the U.S. that the National Rifle Association sought to be recognized by it as a Non-Governmental Organization in 1996 just to monitor its activities and stop it from affecting our gun rights.

“NRA has been engaged at the United Nations and elsewhere internationally in response to overreaching small arms initiatives for two decades,” the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action notes. “During this time, we have been actively opposing transnational efforts that would limit Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms.”

Again, why would Boykin or any other political leader in Chicago be interested in teaming up with this anti-democratic organization when they already have a president ready and willing to help? I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Nor do I like or appreciate the city’s leaders constantly disparaging our president, a man who clearly wants to help.

Speaking on CBS’ “The Late Show” this week, Emanuel proudly declared Chicago a “Trump-free zone” and joked that it’s new motto is “A city he’ll never sleep in.”

Gee, guy, how about making Chicago a violence-free zone with a motto of “A city where little black children can sleep peacefully,” you jerk?

My sincere guess is Emanuel doesn’t really care about Chicago’s gun violence. As for Boykin, I believe he cares but it simply misguided. I just hope somebody warns him about the U.N. before it’s too late.

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Liberal Gun Control Arguments SHUT DOWN With 1 EPIC Meme

By: Wilmot Proviso on June 23, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://conservativetribune.com/gun-control-shut-down/

In the social media gun control wars of 2016, the great liberal argument has been that the Second Amendment was designed by founding fathers who simply couldn’t foresee a gun like the AR-15 being invented.

Never mind, of course, that the AR-15 wasn’t used in the Orlando terrorist shooting, or the fact that Democrats and liberals know so little about guns that they can barely talk about them without making a serious mistake.

There’s also the fact that they’re discounting that the founding fathers didn’t put it that way when they wrote the Second Amendment, as a new meme pointed out.

Exactly:

musket meme eric

The Second Amendment does not read, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, unless the gun looks really scary and fires bullets that aren’t musket balls, and you can load more than one bullet at a time, and — really, why do you need a gun? Let’s pass some gun control laws.”

The Second Amendment wasn’t just an afterthought for the founding fathers. It was one of the cornerstones of the Bill of Rights — the one amendment that would make sure all of the others weren’t violated.

The founders weren’t ignorant men, either. They studied military history and knew the pace of progress. They knew that more advanced firearms were coming, and they hoped that they were writing a document for a nation that would survive hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

To say that they hadn’t seen weapons like the AR-15 coming is to dramatically underestimate their foresight.

And yet, nobody challenges the Bill of Rights on any of the other counts. Free speech is so much freer in 2016 than it was in the 1700s, but most of us don’t believe it’s time to do away with the First Amendment.

So, as this meme demonstrates — if you want to complain about the Second Amendment not being designed for modern weapons, get off the computer and write me out a letter. Or, better yet, stop complaining.

Hey Leftist true battle In God We Trust freedom combo 2

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There Are Now More Bureaucrats With Guns Than U.S. Marines

BY: Elizabeth Harrington June 22, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://freebeacon.com/issues/now-bureaucrats-guns-u-s-marines/

Police officers from the IRS Criminal Investigation Division / AP

Open the Books, a taxpayer watchdog group, released a study Wednesday that finds domestic government agencies continue to grow their stockpiles of military-style weapons, as Democrats sat on the House floor calling for more restrictions on what guns American citizens can buy. Comming Soon 02

The “Militarization of America” report found civilian agencies spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between 2006 and 2014. Examples include IRS agents with AR-15s, and EPA bureaucrats wearing camouflage.

“Regulatory enforcement within administrative agencies now carries the might of military-style equipment and weapons,” Open the Books said. “For example, the Food and Drug Administration includes 183 armed ‘special agents,’ a 50 percent increase over the ten years from 1998-2008. At Health and Human Services (HHS), ‘Special Office of Inspector General Agents’ are now trained with sophisticated weaponry by the same contractors who train our military special forces troops.”

Open the Books found there are now over 200,000 non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority, surpassing the 182,100 personnel who are actively serving in the U.S. Marines Corps.

The IRS spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment for its 2,316 special agents. The tax collecting agency has billed taxpayers for pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns, semi-automatic Smith & Wesson M&P15s, and Heckler & Koch H&K 416 rifles, which can be loaded with 30-round magazines.

The EPA spent $3.1 million on guns, ammo, and equipment, including drones, night vision, “camouflage and other deceptive equipment,” and body armor.

When asked about the spending, and EPA spokesman said the report “cherry picks information and falsely misrepresents the work of two administrations whose job is to protect public health.”

“Many purchases were mischaracterized or blown out of proportion in the report,” said spokesman Nick Conger. “EPA’s criminal enforcement program has not purchased unmanned aircraft, and the assertions that military-grade weapons are part of its work are false.”

“EPA’s criminal enforcement program investigates and prosecutes the most egregious violators of our nation’s environmental laws, and EPA criminal enforcement agents are law enforcement professionals who have undergone the same rigorous training as other federal agents,” Conger continued.

Other administration agencies that have purchased guns and ammo include the Small Business Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Education, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The report also highlighted that the Department of Health and Human Services has “special agents” with “sophisticated military-style weapons.” Open the Books also found $42 million in gun and ammunition purchases that were incorrectly coded.

“Some purchases were actually for ping-pong balls, gym equipment, bread, copiers, cotton balls, or cable television including a line item from the Coast Guard entered as ‘Cable Dude,’” the report said.

Open the Books appealed to both liberals like Bernie Sanders—who has called for demilitarizing local police departments—and conservatives in its report.

“Conservatives argue that it is hypocritical for political leaders to undermine the Second Amendment while simultaneously equipping non-military agencies with hollow-point bullets and military style equipment,” Open the Books said. “One could argue the federal government itself has become a gun show that never adjourns with dozens of agencies continually shopping for new firearms.”

Update June 23, 10:15 a.m.: Following publication of this article, Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO of Open the Books who wrote the report, pushed back against the EPA’s statement, and provided contract data to back up his claims.

“How can the EPA spokesperson deny hard facts from their own checkbook?” he said. “Alongside our oversight report, OpenTheBooks.com also released a PDF of all raw data. This line-by-line transactional record from the EPA’s own checkbook on page 113 clearly shows that in 2013 and 2014 the EPA purchased tens of thousands of dollars of ‘Unmanned Aircraft’ from Bergen RC Helicopters Inc which on a net basis amounted to approximately $34,000.”

“All of the assertions in our oversight report are the quantification of actual spending records produced and reported to us by the federal agencies themselves,” Andrzejewski said.

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HILARIOUS: You’ll Probably AGREE With This ADDITIONAL Background Check

Published on June 16, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://clashdaily.com/2016/06/hilarious-youll-probably-agree-additional-background-check/

qmeme_1466086311085_884

Do you like this extra requirement for this background check and would you gladly eat some bacon before buying a gun?

true battle In God We Trust freedom combo 2

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Armed Citizens May Be the Solution to Terrorism, Says Interpol Secretary General

Written by J.D. Tuccille |Oct. 22, 2013

Open Carry / formatted_dad / photo on flickr

What do you do when terrorists turn from attacking well-protected government buildings and transportation centers in favor of anyplace that people may congregate? Specifically, how do you address bloody scenarios like the assault on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya by the Islamist group al-Shabaab, which killed at least 61 civilians? Well, the Secretary General of Interpol, the international police-coordination organization, says you either start providing “extraordinary security” perimeters around anything that might be a target, or else let people carry the means to defend themselves. Surprisingly, he seems to lean toward empowering individuals to take responsibility for their own defense.

In an interview with ABC News, Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said:

“Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” Noble said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”

“Enclaves” translates as “any place people gather,” which could be a mall, a theater, a supermarket, a town square… That’s an awful lot of secure perimeters to set up. No doubt, plenty of police unions and politically well-connected private security companies would love to see that effort made, but are you really going to throw a cordon up every time a few people gather to chat about the weather or have a barbecue? Unusually for a government official (he was the Undersecretary for Enforcement of the United States Department of the Treasury, in charge of the Secret Service as well as the ATF), Noble obviously sees that as a bit of a daunting challenge. He adds:

“Ask yourself: If that was Denver, Col., if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?” Noble said, referring to states with pro-gun traditions. “What I’m saying is it makes police around the world question their views on gun control. It makes citizens question their views on gun control. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’ This is something that has to be discussed.”

“For me it’s a profound question,” he continued. “People are quick to say ‘gun control, people shouldn’t be armed,’ etc., etc. I think they have to ask themselves: ‘Where would you have wanted to be? In a city where there was gun control and no citizens armed if you’re in a Westgate mall, or in a place like Denver or Texas?'”

Ronald. K. Noble InterpolI’d answer that allowing people to proactively respond to threats has always been a better idea that trying to anticipate what assailants might consider to be an easy target. You can’t fortify every gathering on the planet, and each security perimeter will still have potential victims within it for the enterprising terrorist who can penetrate “extraordinary security.”

The Secretary General, by the way, also called for tighter passport controls, so his comments weren’t a totally unmixed bag for those of us favoring personal liberty and autonomy. Travel has become an increasingly bureaucratic ordeal over the past century, and that doesn’t look likely to let up soon.

Noble (pictured at right) was first appointed to oversee Interpol’s day-to-day work in 2000, and his third five-year term is up in 2015. After voicing even measured support for armed citizens in a world where governments have never much liked the idea, let’s see if he makes it to through the full gig. Disarmed Citizenry

Update: Minneapolis police officers may agree, even by accident, with Secretary General Noble. They’re objecting to an NFL policy banning off-duty cops from taking their guns into stadiums. Without their guns, they point out, they won’t be able to respond to attacks.

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Did You Know That Venezuela Banned Guns for Private Citizens Only 4 Years Ago?

Daisy Luther — May 26, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://freedomoutpost.com/did-you-know-that-venezuela-banned-guns-for-private-citizens-only-4-years-ago/

The cautionary tale that is the rather spectacular collapse of Venezuela continues. Were you aware that Venezuela banned guns for private citizens a mere four years ago, in 2012? Although the country was already in trouble, it seems like that was the beginning of the end.

Under the reign of Hugo Chavez, the government introduced a law that banned personal purchases of firearms and ammunition in an attempt to “improve security and cut crime.” The law was designed to keep guns in the hands of only police, military, and some security companies.

At the time, Chavez’s government said that “the ultimate aim is to disarm all civilians.” Shortly after the law passed, Chavez lost a battle to cancer, and bus driver Nicolas Maduro became the new president.

Maduro invested $47 million in “disarmament centers” in 2014, where citizens could turn in their firearms without fear of repercussions. This was at about the same time as the government declared that prepping was illegal and those “hoarding” could be detained on criminal charges and when the country instituted a fingerprint registry for purchasing groceries so that they could ensure people only purchased what they were allotted. gun-control-free-men-own-guns-slaves-dont

But Who Does Disarmament Really Protect?

Does a gun ban actually reduce crime? Is the reduction of crime truly the motive behind disarmament? Or is disarmament actually an effort to make it more difficult for those who object to subjugation to fight back?

It’s interesting to note that nearly all repressive regimes take away the means for the citizens to stand up for their rights. Right before the proverbial S hit the F in Venezuela, guns were taken away from the general public. It was then a slippery slope into chaos as the government failed, socialism itself failed, and the country collapsed.

However, now that the people are ready to revolt against Maduro’s government, they no longer have the means to do so. It’s suicide for unarmed people to fight the well-armed military, something that the government undoubtedly counted on when Venezuela banned guns, disarming the populace.

Meanwhile In America

There are some unnerving parallels we can draw to the disarmament of Venezuela and the plans for America. gunconfiscation

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is adamantly anti-gun. Her own website has a long list of the anti-gun measures she has supported. Make no mistake, if she gets the magical president’s pen, there will be anti-gun Executive Orders. She could also be the person responsible for choosing Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s empty seat, which will not bode well for the next challenge to the Second Amendment heard by the highest court in the land.

If you’re wondering how this relates to Venezuela, it’s simple. Our ship here in the US is sinking.

Our economy is in the toilet. We may be watching a premonition of our future down there in South America, with riots at the grocery store. With abject poverty. With the third world medical care.

And if the wrong person is making Executive Orders and appointing Supreme Court Justices, gun owners could be targeted. gun-infringers

The American government doesn’t really represent the American people anymore. Do you feel that your wishes are gun-registration-now-confiscation-next-battaile-politics-1359503472 taken into consideration when corrupt politicians benefit from big corporations against the desires of their constituents? Our system is broken, and every day we lose rights, incrementally.

The Second Amendment is not in place so people can go hunting for deer. Thomas Jefferson summed it up. “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

If you’re watching Venezuela, you understand why you need to be armed.

There are many lessons you can learn from analyzing the fall of Venezuela, like what items they have run out of that you should be stocking up on. You should be buying long-term food, stocking up on medical needs, and preparing for a down-grid scenario.

But as the country descends into chaos, you must also see how it got there. An armed society is a polite society. You’re seeing via the news report what happens to a disarmed society.

There’s a distinct pattern when society breaks down, and as our society becomes more desperate, poverty-stricken, and lacking of moral compass, this trend will become more obvious. Note that the “lacking of moral compass” part doesn’t just refer to the thugs rioting and looting, but also to a certain sector of cops who think that their badges give them permission to behave like street thugs, too.

Here’s the pattern:

An outrage occurs.
Good people react and protest the outrage.
Those perpetrating the outrage try to quell the protest because they don’t think that the outrage was actually outrageous. (And whether it was or not can fluctuate – in some cases, force is necessitated, but in more and more cases, it is flagrantly gratuitous.)
Others react to the quelling and join the protest.
A mob mentality erupts. Thugs say, “Hey, it’s a free for all. I’m gonna get some Doritos and while I’m at it, beat the crap out of some folks for fun.”
All hell breaks loose.
The military gets called in.
Cities burn, neighborhoods get destroyed, and no one in the area is safe.
Cops act preemptively, out of fear, and for a time, there is no rule of law.
If you happen to be stuck there, know this: you’re completely on your own.

Tess Pennington wrote about societal breakdowns in more detail – read her excellent article for more information on these predictable scenarios. In an event like this, you can try to call 911, but most likely, the police aren’t going to be coming to save you.You will be completely on your own. Will you be an unarmed, yet law-abiding citizen, hoping to somehow fend off the criminals who must have missed the memo to turn in their firearms? Good luck with that.

Here are 3 reasons why preppers need to be armed.

The thing that I believe it’s important to remember here is that if you have stacked your supplies to the rafters but refused to plan for defending your home and family, you’ve basically just made them bait should a desperate situation arise.

Just in case you think that chaos and violence only happen in places like Venezuela, where they’re undergoing a full-on collapse, the following examples are all from America.

Reason #1: Those who are desperate, unprepared, and feel entitled to be cared for

Remember Black Friday? People climbed all over each other for cheap electronics. Fist fights erupted over vegetable steamers. People were ready to throw down and do battle for sale items.

I’d hazard a guess that folks who spend time and money fighting over electronics are not the kind of people who prep. That means that these are the people who will be hungry in a long-term disaster. Look at those people, stampeding to get to a sale on things that they don’t actually need to survive. Their inhibitions are loosened because those around them are behaving in the same way.

You have to look at the psychology of this. People can justify pretty much anything when they or their children are starving. And I can understand that to a large degree – who could stand to watch their babies suffering? But if someone can devolve to the above degree just to because everyone else is doing it, the chaos we saw above is only a tiny sample of what could come if people were truly hungry.

Do you really feel like you could prepare them one meal and they’d go away politely? Do you really think that reason and a polite but firm conversation will be sufficient to make them go away? It only takes one person to start the charge against you in a tense scenario, and when that happens, unless you take swift and shocking action, the others will follow, and your retreat will be overcome. Sort of like when the walkers overtook the prison after the fence got knocked down on The Walking Dead.

Reason #2: Those who are planning to take the supplies of others

But wait, there’s something even worse out there than the hungry unprepared. There are the folks who have built an entire preparedness plan around taking the things that other preppers have stored. Remember this guy from another episode of Doomsday Preppers?

If you aren’t ready for people like this, your survival retreat is a soft, easy target. These people are not nice, but desperate. Their entire survival plan hinges on taking what someone else has amassed using superior force. This yahoo (who was subsequently arrested after his appearance on Doomsday Preppers) blatantly explains his plan, and I can guarantee that he is not alone. He’s just the one dumb enough to announce it on national television.

These are the types of people who are only careful about breaking the law because they don’t want to be caught. If a situation arises in which being caught and thrown in prison is unlikely, it will be a free-for-all. Morals and ethics won’t stop them, because they don’t have any. The only thing capable of stopping people like that is people who are able and ready to defend their homes

Reason #3: Those who loot and pillage because, doggone it, they like it

Finally, there are those who simply enjoy mayhem. Some people are just waiting for the opportunity to behave in this fashion. They enjoy destroying things and venting their anger on any person who has “more” than they do. They’d love to act like that every single day, but they don’t want to spend the rest of their lives in jail. But when a verdict gets rolled out, when a storm takes out the power, when a disaster strikes, they delight in the chance to rob, pillage, loot, and burn. Who can forget the day before Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast, when thugs were coordinating looting rampages via Twitter?

Here was the scene in Ferguson, Missouri. These are definitely not folks out fulfilling needs.

I remember learning about “sublimation” in a high school psychology class.

Sublimation is a defense mechanism that allows us to act out unacceptable impulses by converting these behaviors Armed into a more acceptable form. For example, a person experiencing extreme anger might take up kickboxing as a means of venting frustration. Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity that allows people to function normally in socially acceptable ways. (source)

If you believe Freud’s theory, then it’s easy to see that many people look for an excuse to revert to their true natures. In a situation where “everyone” is doing something, they are able to cast off their normal control of their impulses without much fear of reprisal. The number of looters and thugs far outstrips the number of arrests going on in Baltimore, so there’s a very good chance that someone swept up in that mentality can go burn somebody else’s home or business and completely get away with it.

These are the people who burned down their own neighborhoods after the verdict in Ferguson. And what businesses were left untouched? The ones for which the owners stood out front, armed, to defend their property.

You owe it to your family to be ready to protect them.

What if the world as we know it ended? What if there wasn’t food in the grocery stores? What if there was no longer any such thing as EBT, for those who have made a career out of milking the system? What if the police and military finally threw their hands up in the air, gave up, and went home to protect their own families? What if the scenes on social media from Venezuela become the scenes from America? Who’s going to keep your family safe then?

You are!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

You have to realize that at any point in time, you could find yourself on your own, without backup from 911.

Whether civil unrest is right outside your door.

Whether a group of thugs decides to invade your home to rob and/or terrorize you.

Whether the world we know goes down, via an EMP that takes out the grid, civil war, economic collapse, or a breakdown in the national transportation network.

The only person you can rely on to protect your family is yourself.

You can stockpile until you have a decade of supplies put back, but if you can’t defend it, you don’t actually own it. You only have it because no one has bothered taking it away from you yet. You have what you have based on the goodwill of others, who are stronger, greater in number, and better armed.

Take a long hard look at the threats you face during civil unrest, and develop a plan for protecting your 50fb5a093ec87_image_ retreat. Wherever you live, whatever your situation, you need to plan as though 911 does not exist. Whether riots are occurring in the streets or not, in the seconds during which the lives of your family hang in the balance, you are completely on your own. In some situations, it won’t stop with the destruction of your property. You may have to defend your home. And for this, you MUST BE ARMED.

I’m sure I’ll receive another barrage of email wishing me and my children dead by our own guns. (It always amazes me how people who swear vehemently that they’re against violence can send me those letters that fervently hope for bloody and terrifying deaths for us.) Some people are so terrified of self-defense tools that the very idea of using one causes veritable spasms of cognitive dissonance and denial.

Those very same people will tell you that they’ve survived riots or unrest and never had to have a gun or shoot anyone.

And do you know what? Chances are, you won’t have to unholster your weapon. But this is a plan based on pure luck and the goodwill of others. Survival favors the prepared. I do not base my preparations for my family on the hope for good luck and nice people.

Firearms are an equalizer. A small woman can defend herself from multiple large intruders with a firearm if she’s had some training and knows how to use it properly. But put a kitchen knife in her hand against those same intruders, and her odds decrease exponentially. federal-gun-confiscation-units

You are your own first responder.

If the situation does escalate and the lives of you and your loved ones are in danger, there is no substitute for meeting force with force. You may not wish to engage, but sometimes there’s no time to escape. Sometimes there’s no place to escape to. In these situations, you won’t be able to talk your way out of it, hide from it, or throw dishes at the intruders to fight them off.

When you need help in seconds, the police are only minutes away. By the time they arrive during a collapse scenario, your family will be dead, raped, or kidnapped, and your supplies will be long gone.

If you plan to survive a scenario of civil unrest or a Mad Max society meltdown, you are going to have to accept that preppers need guns. This doesn’t mean that you want to hurt someone. It means that you intend to keep your loved ones safe by any means necessary.

Here are a few tips to prepare a home defense plan.

Your plan has to be unique to your situation. Be sure when making your plan to take into consideration things like: the layout of your property, your family, and their skill sets, your comfort with firearms, your neighbors – the list of variables goes on and on

Here are some specifics to help you begin planning.

Know how to use your firearm. Whatever your choice of weapon, practice, practice, practice. A weapon you don’t know how to use is more dangerous than having no weapon at all. You have to spend time at the range. It’s a must. During a stressful, frightening situation, you will be relying on muscle memory, so make sure the muscles are well trained. I’m not a firearms instructor, so I can’t recommend “the best gun” for preppers. The guns I chose for my rural property aren’t necessarily the same ones I’d choose if I lived in Suburbia. Every situation is different, and your firearm choice should reflect that. (Here’ssome advice from someone who knows a lot more about weapons than I do to help you with that decision.)

Make sure your children are familiar with the rules of gun safety. Of course, it should go without saying that you will have pre-emptively taught your children the rules of gun safety so that no horrifying accidents occur. In fact, it’s my fervent hope that any child old enough to do so has been taught to safely and effectively use a firearm themselves. Knowledge is safety.

Spend time making a plan unique to your situation. You need to prepare your battlespace and make plans for defending it. Those plans will be different based on your experience and that of people in your family or group. For example, a family of preppers in the suburbs would most likely have a very different plan than a group of former military guys protecting a compound.

Don’t rely on 911. If the disorder is widespread, don’t depend on a call to 911 to save you – you must be prepared to save yourself. First responders may be tied up, and in some cases, the cops are not always your friends.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some officers joined in the crime sprees, and others stomped all over the 2nd Amendment and confiscated people’s legal firearms at a time when they needed them the most.

Be armed and keep your firearm on your person. When the door of your home is breached, you can be pretty sure the people coming in are not there to make friendly conversation over a nice cup of tea. Make a plan to greet them with a deterring amount of force. Be sure to keep your firearm on your person during this type of situation, because there won’t be time to go get it from your gun safe. Don’t even go to the kitchen to get a snack without it. Home invasions go down in seconds, and you have to be constantly ready.

Have a safe room established for children or other vulnerable family members. If the worst happens and your home is breached, you need to have a room into which family members can escape.  This room needs to have a heavy exterior door instead of a regular hollow core interior door. There should be communications devices in the room so that the person can call for help, as well as a reliable weapon to be used in the unlikely event that the safe room is breached. The family members should be instructed not to come out of that room FOR ANY REASON until you give them the all clear or help has arrived. You can learn more about building a safe room HERE. Focus the tips for creating a safe room in an apartment to put it together more quickly.

Plan an escape route.  If the odds are against you, devise a way to get your family to safety. Your property is not worth your life. Be wise enough to know if you’re getting into a fight that you can’t win.

Civilization is just a veneer.

Only four short years ago, the people of Venezuela were armed. Look at how the situation has devolved since then. People are starving. They are burning muggers alive. Doctors are doing surgeries in the blood of previous patients.

The argument could be made for the chicken or the egg, but regardless, I’d certainly feel a lot better in a chaotic place like that if I was armed to the teeth.

So many times, when interviewed after a disaster, people talk about being “shocked” at the behavior of others. Their level of cognitive dissonance has lulled them into thinking that we’re safe and that we live in a civilized country. They are unwilling to accept that civilization is only a glossy veneer, even when the evidence of that is right in front of them, aiming a gun at their faces, lighting their homes on fire, or raping their daughters.

They refuse to arm themselves and prepare for an uncivilized future.

Accept it now, and you’ll be a lot better off when the SHTF.

About the Author: Daisy Luther

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

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House committee pressing DHS for answers over missing guns, badges

Published February 24, 2016, FoxNews.com

URL of the original posting site: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/02/24/house-committee-pressing-dhs-for-answers-over-missing-guns-badges.html

House Republicans are pressing the Department of Homeland Security for answers following a FoxNews.com report that hundreds of badges, cell phones and guns belonging to DHS employees were lost or stolen. House oversight committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, in a Feb. 19 letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, called it “particularly troubling … that the Department cannot account for its entire inventory of firearms.”

The letter, co-signed by Subcommittee on National Security Chairman Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., cited the FoxNews.com report and asked for documents on the lost or stolen items by next week. Inventory reports obtained by the news site Complete Colorado and shared with FoxNews.com showed that over 1,300 badges, 165 firearms and 589 cell phones were lost or stolen over the span of 31 months between 2012 and 2015. The DHS did not dispute the inventory report data.

In their letter, Chaffetz and DeSantis pointed to a 2010 inspector general report that found the DHS “did not adequately safeguard and control its firearms,” and reported 289 firearms lost between 2006 and 2008.

“The more recent news regarding the loss of an additional 165 firearms over a 31-month period shows that the Department is consistently unable to safeguard sensitive property,” the letter said.

The letter requests documents showing the inventory of lost and stolen property between fiscal 2012 and 2015, as well as the cost and procedures implemented for reporting lost or stolen property.

In an earlier statement to FoxNews.com, a DHS spokesman said they strive to be “good stewards of government resources” and have improved oversight and reduced the number of lost or stolen items over the past few years.

“If a credential holder loses or has their credentials stolen, the holder must report the incident to their supervisor and credential issuance office immediately,” spokesman Justin Greenberg said. “Once the incident has been reported, this information is entered into appropriate DHS and law enforcement databases, which disables use of the lost or stolen item.”

FoxNews.com’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report.

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Facts Don’t Work on Gun Control, so Obama Uses Emotion

Posted by David Limbaugh | Oct 06, 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2015/10/06/facts-dont-work-on-gun-control-so-obama-uses-emotion-n2061577/page/full

: Politicizer in Chief

In his speech on the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon last week, President Obama sounded more

upset about America’s gun laws than about the horrific massacre. We barely had the preliminary facts about the shooting, the shooter and the victims, and he was already lecturing the nation again on gun control.

Instead of calling the nation to prayer, he said we would learn about the victims in the coming days and then “wrap everyone who’s grieving with our prayers and our love.” Those words out of the way, he immediately pivoted to complaining that “our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel (or) prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America — next week or a couple of months from now.”

We didn’t hear much “heartache and grief” in his speech, but his anger was palpable. It wasn’t anger at the shooter, and it wasn’t sympathy for the victims. It was outrage — or apparent outrage — at America’s Second Amendment advocates.

“We are the only advanced country on earth,” said Obama, “that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months. … The United States … is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws — even in the face of repeated mass killings.” He said these events happen so often that they’ve “become routine. … We’ve become numb to this.”

He may speak for himself, of course, but I don’t know too many people, especially gun rights advocates, who are numb to such savagery. Many of us believe our society would be safer against gun violence if there weren’t so many “gun-free” zones and if we had more armed guards.

As he has so often done before the powder is dry after similar incidents, he used his bully pulpit (emphasis on “bully”) to misstate statistics as if he were trying for a record number of Pinocchios from fact-checkers.

He said: “We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work — or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens, and criminals will still get their guns — is not borne out by the evidence.”

What he conveniently omitted is that Oregon had recently strengthened its laws on gun sales and is above average among the states on gun regulation. It is one of only 18 states that require universal background checks before the sale of any firearm.

Being a proud Chicagoan, Obama is surely aware that his beloved city, which has distinguished itself in recent years for epic gun violence and death, is in a state that has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. How, then, can he claim that gun laws work? And how would implementing his idea of “common-sense gun-safety laws” make sense?

Though the United States has a high actual number of fatalities from mass shootings given its larger population, Obama ignores that other nations — such as Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel and Switzerland, which all have restrictive gun laws — have higher ratios of such shootings per capita.

The president also fails to acknowledge author John Lott’s findings as of 2010 that all the multiple-victim public shootings (where three or more were killed) in Western Europe and in the United States occurred where civilians were not allowed to carry guns.

Charles C.W. Cooke, in his “The Conservatarian Manifesto,” urges that we regularly debunk “the claim that America is in the midst of a gun-violence ‘epidemic’. … Two reports, both released in May 2013, revealed a striking drop in gun crime over the past twenty years.” Cooke writes that “during the very period that gun laws have been dramatically liberalized across the whole country, gun crime has dropped substantially.”

In his rant, Obama didn’t just distort the evidence. He effectively accused the Republican Congress of allowing these deaths by opposing gun control laws for political reasons, proving that projection is still an important weapon in his partisan arsenal. At a time when he should be using his office and his influence to urge healing and unity, Obama uses them for strident community organizing to advance his agenda.

It is instructive that Obama rages at conservatives and scapegoats the weapons themselves rather than the criminals involved or the state of the human condition that underlies their actions.

It is remarkable that he demands an unconstitutional and meaningless change in the laws purportedly to save innocent lives but vigorously opposes all laws that would protect innocent babies in the womb.

And it is disgraceful that he seeks to inflame our emotions to seduce us into ignoring the facts and suspending our critical faculties long enough to surrender our vital Second Amendment rights.

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CHART: GUN OWNERSHIP BY STATE – One State Blows All The Others Away!

June 19, 2015 By Bill Chandler

There are a lot of gun owners in America – and those gun owners own a lot of guns!
statesascountry-guns

Chart Below Reveals How Each of the 50 States Compares to Other Countries on Gun Ownership

In the United States of America, the 2nd amendment grants us the “inherent and inalienable right to keep and bear arms for our self-defense, from both criminals and tyrants.” No other nation in the world comes even close to the estimated 300 million firearms owed by civilians in the U.S.

While gun ownership figures vary and are typically underreported, you can see the entire state-by-state gun ownership estimate chart right here, and see which foreign nation most closely matches your own state on firearms ownership. This makes it clear why any aggressor would hesitate at our border. They know that in the U.S. there is:

“a rifle behind every blade of grass and poking out of every single door and window.”

Movato Real Estate compiled some interesting data that compared gun ownership in the 50 states with gun ownership in other countries as outlined below:

We started with a research group in Switzerland called Small Arms Survey and its report “Small Arms Survey 2007: Guns and the City.” Among other things, it estimated gun-ownership numbers for 178 countries, including the United States (which it estimates has about 270 million guns).

“We then took the estimate of 88.8 guns per 100 people for the U.S.—which, seven years later, is likely higher—and used it to calculate each state’s estimated gun ownership, based on state populations from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 survey. (Of course, gun-ownership density varies throughout the country, but this number gave us a easy way to come up with comparable figures for all 50 states, since actual state-to-state numbers were not available.)

“Once we had the list of state numbers, we compared each one to Small Arms Survey’s list of countries and respective gun-ownership estimates, logging the nearest match.”

The study revealed that:

California’s total of 33.08 million guns is closest to China’s 40 million
Texas’ total of 22.33 million guns is closest to Germany’s 25 million
New York’s total of 17.2 million guns is closest to Pakistan’s 18 million

state-to-country-guns-chart-1-470x449

state-to-country-guns-chart-2-470x332

state-to-country-guns-chart-3-470x333

source: thefederalistpapers.org

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Chicago ranks #1 as the deadliest Alpha world city

December 02, 2012

Ethel C. Fenig

NBC Chicago reports on some of those “Chicago values” the city’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel (Democrat, naturally) touted, justifying his alderman’s refusal to grant a license to a Chick-fil-A potential franchisee.

Chicago likes to compare itself to other world cities, so Ward Room thought it would find out how we rank in violence. It turns out no one can top us. Among what are considered Alpha world cities, Chicago has the highest murder rate — higher even than the Third World metropolises of Mexico City and Sao Paolo.

Chicago’s murder spree of 19.4 per 100,000 is more than three times that of New York’s (6 per 100,000) and more than two and a half times of Los Angeles’ (7.5 per 100,000), its closest American competitors. Caracas, Venezuela, which apparently is not an Alpha world city–thank you Hugo Chavez–has a higher murder rate of 130 per 100,000.

In the American cities mentioned, most of the murders are committed with guns. These cities all have laws against murder. They even have laws against guns; Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. But, no matter. As President Barack Obama (D)approvingly quoted from the gangster movie The Untouchables when on the campaign trail in Philadelphia four years ago,

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

Of course, this attitude was prior to Obama’s evolution on gun control.

Interestingly, Obama thought guns were a rural, small town phenomena, not part of normal life in his big city, as evidenced by comments he made at an elite fund raiser in San Francisco also four years ago.

“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Hmmm, wrong again.

Most of the murderers and murdered look like the sons Obama never had. Many of the murdered in Chicago live in the district Obama represented in the Illinois state legislature, another corrupt body representing Chicago and Illinois values. Hispanics are another group disproportionately represented in these violent American urban statistics.

And as for Emanuel’s devotion to non violent, all inclusive Chicago values, the New York Times relates what they call “the best Rahm Emanuel story.” And it has nothing to do about guns. A knife, yes; guns, no.

The best Rahm Emanuel story is not the one about the decomposing two-and-a-half-foot fish he sent to a pollster who displeased him. It is not about the time – the many times – that he hung up on political contributors in a Chicago mayor’s race, saying he was embarrassed to accept their $5,000 checks because they were $25,000 kind of guys. No, the definitive Rahm Emanuel story takes place in Little Rock, Ark., in the heady days after Bill Clinton was first elected President.

It was there that Emanuel, then Clinton’s chief fund-raiser, repaired with George Stephanopoulos, Mandy Grunwald and other aides to Doe’s, the campaign hangout. Revenge was heavy in the air as the group discussed the enemies – Democrats, Republicans, members of the press – who wronged them during the 1992 campaign. Clifford Jackson, the ex-friend of the President and peddler of the Clinton draft-dodging stories, was high on the list. So was William Donald Schaefer, then the Governor of Maryland and a Democrat who endorsed George Bush. Nathan Landow, the fund-raiser who backed the candidacy of Paul Tsongas, made it, too.

Suddenly Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remember it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table.

”Dead!” he screamed.

The group immediately joined in the cathartic release: ”Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!”

So, with this kind of Chicago leadership and its Chick-fil-A priorities it was not too surprising to read Sunday morning’s news about a typical Saturday summer night in the city, further confirmationof Chicago’s #1 violent ranking.

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Posts tagged ‘Guns’

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 26, 2023

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BY: JORDAN BOYD | APRIL 24, 2023

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 20, 2023

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Child Sacrifice

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Whistleblower: FBI’s D.C. Office Tried To Sic Local Agents On Innocents After Bank Of America Volunteered Gun Records

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JANUARY 26, 2023

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BY: MARK HEMINGWAY | NOVEMBER 18, 2022

Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator

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By HAROLD HUTCHISON, REPORTER | September 08, 2022

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Watch: Police Put in Horrifying Situation as 4-Year-Old Opens Fire While Dad Is Being Arrested

By Richard Bledsoe | July 22, 2022

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REPORTED BY: KYLEE ZEMPEL | JUNE 10, 2022

In other words, a man who “aggressively” tried to break into a school and take the firearm of a police officer was stopped because doors were properly locked and police officers acted bravely and urgently.

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REPORTED BY: ELLE REYNOLDS | JUNE 09, 2022

Letting Teens Commit Baby Murder

Letting Children Sterilize Themselves

But No Guns for Law-Abiding Young Adults!

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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REPORTED BY: KYLEE ZEMPEL | JUNE 08, 2022

Prosecutors Who Don’t Prosecute

Democrats’ Progressive Dream

The Left’s Culture of Crime

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Commentary By Samuel Sey, Op-ed contributor | Thursday, June 02, 2022

A father who doesn’t value his child’s life is teaching his child a person’s life isn’t valuable.

Nevertheless, I know fatherlessness is one of the most damaging things children can experience. I know the potentially deadly consequences of absentee fathers.

Samuel Sey is a Ghanaian-Canadian who lives in Brampton, a city just outside of Toronto. He is committed to addressing racial, cultural, and political issues with biblical theology, and always attempts to be quick to listen and slow to speak.

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Posted By C. Douglas Golden November 2, 2021

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Reported By Jack Davis October 23, 2021

Hannah Reed, the film crew’s armorer, last month admitted that she was unsure of her ability to do her job.

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Reported By Jack Davis October 8, 2021

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READ THE REST OF THIS REPORT AT https://www.westernjournal.com/walmart-pulls-guns-ammo-sales-floor-fears-civil-unrest/

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“Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in this country. Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in Clay County,” he said. “And if you threaten to come to Clay County and think for one second that we’ll bend our backs for you, you’re sadly mistaken. …

“That’s what we’re sworn to do, and that’s what we’re going to do. You’ve been warned.”

“Yes, we’ll protect your constitutional rights as long as you remain under the umbrella of peaceful protest or peaceful march. But the second that you step out from up under the protection of the Constitution, we’ll be waiting on you and we’ll give you everything you want,” he said.

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“I would tell the [criminals] that if you value your life you probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County,” Sheriff Judd said.

“So leave the community alone,” he added.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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Reported By Ben Marquis | Published April 4, 2019 at 3:51pm

**Let’s get something straight: anyone who sneaks into the United States of America unlawfully is already a lawbreaker. If someone is in this country illegally, they should leave. Period.**