Sad, So Very Sad thumbnail

Sad, So Very Sad

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By Bruce Bialosky

You are going through your day trying to work or take care of life’s responsibilities. Then the news hits. You stare at the TV or computer feed-in crippling shock. How can such a horrible thing be happening? Why would a “human being” do such a thing? It is all too much. It is sad, so very sad.

We have confronted this before and the aftermath. We just lost ten people of a different creed and age. We are always lurching for answers and too often we are provided false ones by the voices. The voices say it is because of false gods like hatred of a certain group or some imagined philosophy. The voices tell us it is how they killed not the person who did the killing. The voices search through hundreds of pages of ramblings of a sick mind to seize on a few words that enhance their political or philosophical positions when they are simply ramblings of a sick mind. Nothing more.

This incident should give us clarity – it is sick minds, not hatred. What kind of sick mind shoots their grandmother? A grandmother. The same sick mind that can walk into a school and kill nineteen young children and two adults. Children that have barely experienced life and should have lived another eighty wonderful, joy-filled years. What kind of sick mind causes this devastation to the dead, their families, their community, and their nation? How can we be in this place?

Instead of focusing on political arguments, we must focus on root causes. It is not the guns. Guns are just a tool of choice. When Buffalo happened, some were quick to blame racism. Yet the same people who blamed the deaths on racism instead of a sick mind willfully ignore 9,900 blacks slaughtered on our streets last year principally at the hands of fellow blacks. The people in Buffalo were not killed by a rambling racist. They were murdered by a sick mind.

Why do we have these events? Why do we have blacks killing blacks daily in Chicago and Baltimore and other cities? Why are we ignoring the deaths nearing 100,000 annually of our fellow citizens from drugs they should never want to touch? Why do we have the explosion of teenage suicides? Why do we have an epidemic of people willingly living on our cities’ streets instead of being functioning people living a safe and secure life? Why have we become callous to it all?

In 2000, Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Putnam bemoaned the death of bowling leagues even though more people were bowling. The big picture is the death of the community. Those ties to the people around you. The ties that keep you grounded and sane. The bowling leagues are simply a manifestation of the collapse of the community. Whether that tie to the people around us is a church, a club, a sewing or knitting circle. Anything that brings people out of their cocoon to share time with their fellow human beings. Humanizing them.

The forces of our society have been driving us away from that. Smaller church attendance. Being a single parent. Movie watching at home instead of a theater. Meals are delivered and eaten at home alone instead of in a restaurant. Working from home. All these factors add to the isolation and mental destruction and the loneliness.

It was a joy once the mask mandates came off to suddenly see groups of eight, ten, or twelve people sharing a table at a restaurant talking, laughing, and humanizing. It was very uplifting to reverse that period of isolation that the pandemic caused and exacerbated this period of sickness.

A “person” slaughtering fellow humans is no doubt a direct cause. It is not guns. It is guns in the wrong hands. We have seen incidents of people attacking others with knives or even cars. No matter, we need to focus on the sickness itself, not how they manifest their sickness. We must focus on the root causes. We have too long told people they do not need community. We have too long told people they can raise children without a partner. We have too long told men they are unimportant in children’s lives. They don’t need to settle down with a family. We have too long looked for answers from the government when the answers will never be there. It is us; it is how we participate in our society. It is how we treat each other. It is us ignoring the devastation around us.

I wrote a column entitled Estrangement that I ran a few years back over the holiday season. It focused on how people should stop their minor arguments with family members or friends and use the holiday season to knock on the door, open the door and end the bitterness over trivial things.

We need to do that as a country. I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand many more of these days sitting at my desk crying over the mass slaughter of children or any other fellow Americans. We must do better.

Let us not spend another Memorial Day mourning the murder of children instead of mourning the loss of those who fought to provide this country with the freedoms we uniquely enjoy.

*****

The article was published by FlashReport and is reprinted with the permission of the author.

TAKE ACTION

America is now aware of the Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Governance Board’. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called disinformation a “threat” that needs to be addressed with federal law enforcement power. (Is it coincidental that Elon Musk will shortly take Twitter private and re-establish a free speech platform in America?)

This new DHS office is the Biden Speech Police and represents an existential threat to our First Amendment and our Republic. Please click the adjacent red TAKE ACTION link for the resources to inform your Senators and Representatives about this unconstitutional and tyrannical assault on American Free Speech and our fierce rejection of it.

BLM UNHINGED: Policing is Just a ‘White Supremacist Institution’ Rooted in ‘Slave Patrolling’ thumbnail

BLM UNHINGED: Policing is Just a ‘White Supremacist Institution’ Rooted in ‘Slave Patrolling’

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By Discover The Networks

Breitbart News reports that the Marxist revolutionary group Black Lives Matter (BLM) railed against the “white supremacist” institution of “policing,” decrying its roots in “racism” and “slave patrolling,” while attacking politicians who support “our killers,” in a series of tweets Thursday.

In the wake of President Biden signing an order to improve accountability in policing, the official BLM Twitter account whined, “Maintaining a white supremacist institution like policing costs Black lives. This continued commitment by politicians to support our killers makes them accessories to our demise.”

“Politicians have been protecting systems of policing as if it could magically abandon its roots of slave patrolling and anti-Black violence,” BLM continued in subsequent tweets. “Banning choke holds and requiring body cameras doesn’t keep us safe. More money for ‘training’ doesn’t keep us safe.”

Fact check: policing does not have roots in “slave patrolling and anti-Black violence.” Policing is a very basic law-and-order measure employed by different cultures going back many, many centuries. Ancient Rome, for example.

But according to the corrupt, racist, neo-Marxist BLM movement, Biden’s executive order “willfully ignores the inherently racist origins of policing & advances the same ideas over and over again as if somehow it will magically make old, outdated approaches work.”

“Halfway measures will not save our people from white supremacy and state violence,” BLM tweeted.

Fact check: white supremacy today has absolutely zero political and cultural power in America. And most black Americans disagree with the BLM radicals about policing — they want more, not less, of a police presence in their communities.

Black Lives Matter (BLM)

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BLM’s D.C. Chapter Objects When Shot Police Officer Is Hailed As “Hero”

After a Metropolitan Police officer was shot and wounded by a barricaded black suspect on the night of January 24, 2022, the Washington, DC chapter of BLM posted a series of tweets asserting that the American public should not “jump to conclusions” reflexively depicting such officers as “heroes.” “Let’s wait till we have all the information (isn’t that what y’all tell us),” the chapter tweeted, condemning “the difference in how people talk and act when an officer is hurt vs when they hurt a Black person.” “This is the point we’ve been making for months,” said a subsequent tweet. “Tear jerker press conferences and proclamations of heroes coming soon. Imagine if people knew these folks’ name. Being black in DC is more dangerous than any job.”

BLM-DC also posted a link to its #StopMPD campaign, which called for an end to “police violence and terror” while rejecting claims that not all officers are “bad” people. “This assertion is almost always coupled with examples of law enforcement officials who step outside of their assigned duties to ‘help’ Black people and champions the belief that we can change systems by changing the individuals who work within this system, but not [changing] the system,” the #StopMPD campaign declared. “We’ve seen time and again that doesn’t work.” The #StopMPD webpage also described the District of Columbia as an “occupied police state” that had always been hostile to nonwhites.

To learn more about Black Lives Matter, click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The right to bear arms is “child sacrifice” — and abortion is not? thumbnail

The right to bear arms is “child sacrifice” — and abortion is not?

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

As an Australian with conservative values and close family ties to the United States, I find mass shootings like the recent unspeakable tragedy in Texas every shade of confusing.

There is little doubt that ready access to guns in America makes the murderous fantasies of the insane more accessible, tempting, and efficient.

On the other hand, a laser focus on gun laws ignores a whole host of underlying cultural rot that contributes to these nihilistic horrors. Where do we even start? The drug epidemic, mental health, the expulsion of God from public schools, violent video games, social media, and fatherlessness (the latter especially) all play their diabolical part.

And then there’s, you know, the “right” to kill unborn children.

“I think of child sacrifice as a modern phenomenon, a barbaric one that defines this country,” mourns Maureen Dowd in a New York Times piece entitled ‘America’s Human Sacrifices’. “We are sacrificing children, not only the ones who die, but also those who watch and those who fear the future. Children having their tomorrows taken away. Small sacrifice if we can keep our guns.”

Dowd certainly puts her finger on a problem there, but without the slightest trace of irony she continues: “The Republicans are doing everything they can to stop women from having control over their own bodies and doing nothing to stop the carnage against kids; they may as well change the party symbol from an elephant to an AR-15.”

Hang on. If the radical autonomy of “a woman’s right to choose” supersedes a child’s right to not be killed in the womb, why on earth should Americans be prevented from keeping their second amendment rights to bear arms? After all, merely owning a weapon is not the same as ending a life, which is precisely what every abortion achieves.

Dowd is right to invoke abortion, but she has done so for all the wrong reasons. If we’re going to discuss child sacrifice and abortion in the same breath, let’s begin with the 63,872,429 babies killed since the passage of Roe v Wade.

The irony was likewise lost on a slew of leftwing lawmakers who sought to score political points while the news of the Texas tragedy was still fresh.

“As a nation, we simply cannot allow this to continue. Every single day, children and young people are losing their lives to people who do not value the sanctity of life and take advantage of the unabated presence of firearms in our communities,” pro-abortion Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement.

Sanctity of life? If only we were really talking about that!

Abortion advocate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pining for a tussle with Republicans in the aftermath. “There is no such thing as being ‘pro-life’ while supporting laws that let children be shot in their schools, elders in grocery stores, worshippers in their houses of faith, survivors by abusers, or anyone in a crowded place,” she wrote on Twitter. “It is an idolatry of violence. And it must end.”

The word “projection” springs to mind.

It was a grim spectacle in America last week — one that continued long after the last gunshot rang out. But to make the Uvalde tragedy all about gun laws is an exercise in mostly missing the point. And to weaponise it for political gain is unconscionable.

If every gun in America were confiscated tomorrow, the endemic mass killing of abortion would, if many of the Uvalde mourners had their way, remain.

Sure, let’s talk about gun laws. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that a technocratic tweak can alleviate America’s moral malaise. And may we never speak of child sacrifice again until we make wombs safer than a Texas school.

What Memorial Day is Really About thumbnail

What Memorial Day is Really About

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By Mark T. Cicero

Today is Memorial Day, a day that many think of as just another three-day weekend, yet I encourage every American to take a moment to remember the reason for this day. Today we remember the more than 1.3 million service members that paid the ultimate sacrifice, laying down their lives, in defense of our country and our freedoms. From the estimated 8,000 volunteers who died in the Revolutionary War to the approximated 450,000 who died in our Civil War (still America’s bloodiest war), and the 405,000 who gave their lives in World War II, this country has a long history of service and defense of our Constitution – the entire Constitution including all of its Amendments.

Turn on any popular news magazine today and you will see a conversation to limit the Second Amendment as a result of the tragedy in Uvalde. The previous weeks, there were more than a few suggestions that we should limit the First Amendment because a lifelong Democrat voter Elon Musk was considering a takeover of Twitter and Secretary Mayorkus of the DHS was on the verge of instituting a very Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board. There are long debates on these and all the Amendments and this is not the time for outlining all those arguments.  However, remember both of these attacks on the foundational elements of our Constitution are designed to install greater power in the politicians who no longer serve us but now feel that they rule us.

Is it odd in a sense that we will die to protect our Constitution from attack from abroad, but not from within?

How many of us intentionally voted for double-digit inflation, an unprotected border, a flood of toxic Fentanyl, paying for a war in Ukraine, delivering our national sovereignty to Director-General Tedros of the WHO, a war on fossil fuels, and dramatically rising crime rates in most urban areas of our nation? This is merely the civil backdrop while our children are being indoctrinated with liberal ideologies of ‘gender fluidity’ and are taught that Marxism, totalitarianism, and socialism are far superior to the inefficient government we labor under now. Consider the manic war on religion that is continually waged: any reference to God is being stricken from any public space, people have been dismissed from their positions for engaging in prayer, and only the non-Christian religions are respected. Why press this war on God and religion?  That answer is simple: hope.

Why was it so important for churches to close during the Covid lockdowns? No, it wasn’t fear of transmission – remember the crowds in Costco – it was fear of that we might look to our Creator instead of worshipping the alter of Anthony Fauci. Whether you declare yourself Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, or non-denominational: when you recognize that there is a higher power than anything we can see on this earth, you no longer put all your faith in your political leaders. That is what our ‘health officials’ were really driving at.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Preamble to our Constitution: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Endowed by their Creator.  Creator refers to the God of the Bible. This is the first reference to God in the Constitution and perhaps the most important. It underscores the Founding Father’s reliance on Judeo-Christian principles in the drafting of the Constitution. This is the first nation in the recorded history of the world that posits that our rights are God-given and not given to us by the government. Jefferson continued in the Preamble: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”. In other words, it is the Government’s role to protect those rights not to limit them.

Our servicemen and women have stood watch over these freedoms for over two hundred years, and over one million have given their lives to maintain them. In 1918, Irving Berlin wrote the beautiful song/prayer “God Bless America” and revised it twenty years later into its current form:

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,

Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God bless America,

Land that I love,

Stand beside her, and guide her

Through the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,

To the oceans, white with foam

God bless America, My home sweet home

God bless America, My home sweet home.

This song isn’t sung as much today as it was when I was a child and that is symptomatic of our separation from this nation’s foundational Judeo-Christian principles. While we barbeque our burgers, hot dogs, and ribs this weekend, visiting with friends and family, let us take a moment to remember all those who went before us to create, maintain and preserve our nation and remember: there are no atheists in foxholes.

TAKE ACTION

America is now aware of the Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Governance Board’. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called disinformation a “threat” that needs to be addressed with federal law enforcement power. (Is it coincidental that Elon Musk will shortly take Twitter private and re-establish a free speech platform in America?)

This new DHS office is the Biden Speech Police and represents an existential threat to our First Amendment and our Republic. Please click the adjacent red TAKE ACTION link for the resources to inform your Senators and Representatives about this unconstitutional and tyrannical assault on American Free Speech and our fierce rejection of it.

Father of Shooting Victim Has a Simple 3-Point Plan to Protect Schools and it Doesn’t Ban Guns thumbnail

Father of Shooting Victim Has a Simple 3-Point Plan to Protect Schools and it Doesn’t Ban Guns

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By Royal A. Brown III

I, like every other God loving, law abiding American grieve for the 19 children and 2 adults murdered by a mentally insane, Evil young man apparently using AR-15 style semi-auto rifles BUT the gun(s) he used did not commit these terrible crimes; he and the Devil did.

It also appears, just like the Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killings in 2018, to have been entirely preventable had School and District Administrators not been negligent.  We know from MSD case law enforcement and both the FBI and Sheriff levels were negligent as well but we the jury is still out in the case in the Texas shootings; we do know they stalled for 45 mins before a brave Border Patrol Agent took it upon himself to move in and kill the murderer.

A Dad of a child killed in FL school shooting is right below and I mentioned most of what he said during my brief presentation at WH 912 meeting Thursday night starting with “We don’t need more gun control”  Rather What we Need are:.

  •  Physically secure schools, not ones with unlocked doors and gates that shooters can easily enter classrooms thru.
  •   Armed, trained Resource Officers or Security Guards such as we have in FL in every school under the Sentinel/Guardian program
  •   Armed, trained school personnel which FL law allows but School District Administrators & most County Sheriffs have been against for no good reasons.
  •   LE standard operating procedures to run to the sound of gunfire in schools, without delay. rather than waiting to “develop the intel or the situation”
  • Better identification and care for mentally unstable people especially those known to others like medical, LE and education officials as potentially dangerous.

This is especially true when these murderers are sending threatening signals over social media.  We need the legion of leftist social media watchdogs and algorithms to be more concerned with actual threats of violence than censoring conservative speech they wrongly find to be “hateful speech” because of differences in political ideologies. Both Cruz in Florida and Ramos in Texas had sociopathic issues broadcast over social media.

We don’t need the Federal Government and the Department of IN-JUSTICE “administrative deep state” dictating unconstitutional policies and a leftist Congress or RINO State Legislators overreacting and passing laws and implementing witch hunt procedures impacting law abiding gun owners from exercising their 1st, 2nd, 4th  5th and 14th Amendment rights by mis-labeling them “domestic terrorists”, “white supremacists” etc.

This is disinformation designed to scare them from speaking out against the socialist/Marxist/communist policies of the O’Biden Administration.

Gird yourself, another round of emotionally driven, non-fact based, barrage of gun control efforts are own their way!

Father of School Shooting Victim Has 3-Point Plan to Protect Schools – And It Doesn’t Involve Banning Guns

Andrew Pollack — the father of Meadow Pollack, who was murdered in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting — said he was “so angry” after learning of Tuesday’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, because it could have been prevented.

As Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have tried to use the tragedy that resulted in the deaths of 21 people to once again argue for more gun-control laws, Pollack countered that is not the answer.

“We shouldn’t be focusing on gun control now. Parents should be focused on what they can do. They could learn and educate themselves,” he told Fox News Wednesday.

“We should be looking at what we can be doing to fix these things in schools. A single point of entry. How did the intruder get into the school? It should be locked down. We need school resource officers. And it’s just terrible to think that this was all avoidable,” Pollack further stated.

The Floridian also tweeted a simple three-point plan to make the schools safer, offering what is needed is 1) an armed guard; 2) a single point of entry; and 3) teacher training.

“We send out $Billions to other countries all the time. Why not fund school safety in America?” Pollack asked.

©Royal A. Brown, III. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Trump: Schools Need to Confront Bad Behavior Quickly, No Law Can Cure the Effects of a Broken Home

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In Uvalde, A Picture Is Emerging Of Extreme Cowardice And Incompetence Among Local Police

Florida Sheriff Grady Judd Says His Officers Will ‘Put A Bullet Through Your Head’ If You Attempt A School Shooting

Who is the Texas school shooter? What we know | Fox News

RELATED TWEETS: 

Photos Surface Of Heroic Border Patrol Agent Who Killed Texas School Shooter https://t.co/HOc9Kvrzhu

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 28, 2022

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— Dr. Rich Swier (@drrichswier) May 29, 2022

‘No One Better’: WH Tasks Susan Rice with Gun Control Effort thumbnail

‘No One Better’: WH Tasks Susan Rice with Gun Control Effort

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By Discover The Networks

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during the daily briefing on Thursday that President Joe Biden is putting Domestic Policy Adviser Susan Rice in charge of the administration’s gun control efforts.

“She is coordinating the President’s whole-of-government approach to reducing gun violence,” said Jean-Pierre. “She has decades of experience coordinating interagency processes in the federal government. There is no one better at bringing department heads to the table to drive the process.”

She did not mention Rice’s role in the Obama administration’s disastrous response to the attacks on the Benghazi consulate in Libya in 2012 that left four Americans dead or her role in defending Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s service record.

“We have a whole-of-government approach that I just mentioned, that Ambassador Susan Rice is leading, along with other departments,” Jean-Pierre replied to questions about whether Biden would appoint a “czar of gun things.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) reacted to the news on social media. “The architect of the Benghazi cover-up?” he asked. “I can’t think of anyone worse.”

Susan Rice

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Rice’s Enormous Wealth

In a disclosure filing that she released on March 20, 2021, Rice reported that she held between $36 million and $149 million in various assets — far more than the $13.6 million to $40.4 million she had reported in 2009. According to an ABC News report in 2021: “In her most recent filing, Rice reported holding shares worth between $250,000 and $5 million in major corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Apple and Microsoft. She also had a significant amount of stock options in Netflix, where she served as a board member, and reported earning more than $300,000 from exercising Netflix stock options in the past year. In addition, she reported shares in several oil and gas industry companies, including $1 million to $5 million of holdings in the Canadian multinational natural gas distribution company Enbridge Inc.”

To learn more about Susan Rice, click here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Gun-Grabbing O’Rourke Changes Position on AR-15s Yet Again

Olbermann: Conservatives in the ‘School Children Killing Business’

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Joe Biden and Anti-gun Democrats are Fueling Gun Sales, Says SAF thumbnail

Joe Biden and Anti-gun Democrats are Fueling Gun Sales, Says SAF

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By Editors at Second Amendment Foundation

In the aftermath of this week’s murderous rampage by a deranged killer inside an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, gun sales have reportedly “rocketed” and the Second Amendment Foundation said today that President Joe Biden and his Democrat colleagues in Congress have only themselves to blame.

“Whether he likes it or not, Joe Biden is largely responsible for this,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “When he went on national television to provide comfort to a grieving nation, and instead launched a tirade against law-abiding firearm owners and gun manufacturers, he only further divided the country and used the bully pulpit of the presidency to foment irrational fear and loathing of businesses and especially people who have absolutely no connection to the crime.

“In their bid to spread hysteria and hate,” he continued, “Biden and his fellow Democrat gun prohibitionists on Capitol Hill, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, have actually talked more people into buying more guns. Stock prices at Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Company have reportedly spiked.

“If Biden and his gun prohibitionist pals are concerned there are too many guns in civilian hands,” he added, “they should lower their rhetoric and cut back on their attacks on our constitutional rights. The public realizes the importance of the Second Amendment, which guarantees we will have the tools to defend ourselves against the kinds of dangerous lunatics that liberal policies have allowed to roam free.”

Earlier this week, SAF and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued a joint statement in reaction to the unspeakable attack at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.

“We are all Americans,” Gottlieb stated, “and we all are devastated by the psychopathic actions of an individual who had, it is now emerging, exhibited warning signs that appear to have been ignored. But Americans are not ignoring the warning signs from gun prohibitionists that they are about to accelerate their crusade against the Second Amendment.

“That’s why more people are rushing to gun shops,” he said. “There is no small irony in the fact that Biden, Schumer and their anti-gun colleagues are the driving force behind this sudden spike in gun sales. Joe Biden may go down in history as a better gun salesman than Barack Obama or Bill and Hillary Clinton, and that’s no small accomplishment. Biden may be remembered as the ‘Top Gun’ of retail firearm sales.”

*****

This article was published by the Second Amendment Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

America is now aware of the Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Governance Board’. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called disinformation a “threat” that needs to be addressed with federal law enforcement power. (Is it coincidental that Elon Musk will shortly take Twitter private and re-establish a free speech platform in America?)

This new DHS office is the Biden Speech Police and represents an existential threat to our First Amendment and our Republic. Please click the adjacent red TAKE ACTION link for the resources to inform your Senators and Representatives about this unconstitutional and tyrannical assault on American Free Speech and our fierce rejection of it.

The Devil Went Down to Texas: The Utter Evil of the Uvalde Massacre thumbnail

The Devil Went Down to Texas: The Utter Evil of the Uvalde Massacre

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

To massacre children is literally Satanic.

Paul Harvey: If I were the Devil…

It’s hard to know what to say in the wake of a heart-rending tragedy like Tuesday’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas. It would be easy—but irresponsible—to interpret the event conclusively when so little is known. It would be easy—but wrong—to try, in spite of that ignorance, to force one’s narrative framework on it in pursuit of an agenda.

But our attention is irresistibly drawn to such a horror. We are compelled to stop and silently reflect. But, after reflecting, it is imperative that we talk about it—to express condolences and outrage, yes, but also to learn from it as best we can. To truly honor the victims, we must figure out how to prevent similar atrocities from happening again.

Especially at this early stage, it is impossible to know exactly what would lead a person to do something so evil. But certain revelations about the 18-year-old killer raise societal issues that, even if they weren’t the decisive factors in this case, are tremendously important regarding the issue of violence—and evil—in general.

The Daily Beast reports:

Although Salvador Ramos was described as “quiet” by numerous people who knew him, a young woman who worked with him at Wendy’s until March detected an aggressive streak. Several former friends said he had stopped showing up at school and was not going to graduate with the senior class this year.

“He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes, and one of the cooks, threatening them by asking, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies,” said the former co-worker, who did not want her name used.

“At the park, there’d be videos of him trying to fight people with boxing gloves. He’d take them around with him.

Some would attribute such an “aggressive streak” to males being broadly socialized to be forcefully assertive and competitive. They largely blame this culture of “toxic masculinity” for mass shootings and violent crime in general, both of which are predominantly committed by men.

This blame is misplaced, however. As Jordan Peterson wrote in 12 Rules for Life:

“Those who put forward such theories assume, first, that aggression is a learned behaviour, and can therefore simply not be taught, and second (to take a particular example) that, ‘boys should be socialized the way girls have been traditionally socialized, and they should be encouraged to develop socially positive qualities such as tenderness, sensitivity to feelings, nurturance, cooperative and aesthetic appreciation.’ In the opinions of such thinkers, aggression will only be reduced when male adolescents and young adults ‘subscribe to the same standards of behavior as have been traditionally encouraged for women.’”

Peterson above quotes “Prescription for reduction of aggression,” a 1980 paper published by L.D. Eron in The American Psychologist.

But as Peterson points out, “it is not the case that aggression is merely learned.” Aggression is an innate part of human nature that can manifest very early in life (emphasis added):

“…it appears that a subset of two-year-old boys (about 5 percent) are quite aggressive, by temperament. They take other kids’ toys, kick, bite and hit. Most are nonetheless socialized effectively by the age of four. This is not, however, because they have been encouraged to act like little girls. Instead, they are taught or otherwise learn in early childhood to integrate their aggressive tendencies into more sophisticated behavioural routines. Aggression underlies the drive to be outstanding, to be unstoppable, to compete, to win—to be actively virtuous, at least along one dimension. Determination is its admirable, pro-social face. Aggressive young children who don’t manage to render their temperament sophisticated by the end of infancy are doomed to unpopularity, as their primordial antagonism no longer serves them socially at later ages. Rejected by their peers, they lack further socialization opportunities and tend towards outcast status. These are the individuals who remain much more inclined toward antisocial and criminal behavior when adolescent and adult.”

“Outcast status”—the bottom of the pecking order—is a dreadful place to be trapped, especially for a young man. Judging from reported testimony, that is exactly where Ramos resided. As The Daily Beast related:

Former friend Santos Valdez Jr., told The Washington Post that the two had been close friends until Ramos’ behavior started to “deteriorate.” He said Ramos, who was often bullied over a speech impediment that included a stutter and lisp, once cut up his own face with a knife “just for fun.”

Some men become so resentful of their lowly place in “the order of things” that they seek to bring the whole structure crashing down, even if it means their own destruction. They are desperate for appreciation and respect: to feel high-status. But they have failed to learn how to earn it by channeling their assertive and competitive impulses in pro-social directions. So they decide to go out in a blaze of infamous “glory,” to, just for once and however fleetingly, feel “powerful,” even if they are too cowardly to assert their dominance over anyone other than little children.

Such a wicked deed is to say literally, “to Hell with it.” To Hell with society, with morality, with the structure of Being itself. It is to say, as Satan did in Paradise Lost when, resentful of his status, he tried to overthrow God, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” To commit such nihilistic rebellion is to embody the archetype of the Devil, the Adversary, the Villain.

Again, I don’t know if that’s what happened in the case of Salvador Ramos. But I wonder if it is. And in any case, I do believe the potential for such evil is inherent to the human condition and must be guarded against by us all.

But the preventative for that evil is not to try to repress (or disarm) the assertive, competitive, and ambitious energies that can feed it, as many efforts to address so-called “toxic masculinity” end up doing. The solution, as Peterson explained, is to channel those energies toward the good: toward individual accomplishment, enterprise, great deeds, and heroic service.

If we want people—young men especially—to reject the role of the Villain, we must encourage them to embrace the role of the Hero.

AUTHOR

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

New Shooting, Same Old Bag of Tricks thumbnail

New Shooting, Same Old Bag of Tricks

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By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

Biden and Democrats use mis, dis and malinformation to politicize the Uvalde, Texas tragedy.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes after the Texas school shooting was reported yesterday for Democrats to start howling for gun control.  ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ is a favorite motto of the Left.  This is what the Democrats and the Left do.  It’s how they roll.

That’s not the only cynical ploy of the Left.  Learn some of the others and you will no longer be taken in by the Left’s despicable tactics.  Today, we expose their methods.

The D.C. government received $750,000 in settlement money from the Trump organization and inaugural committee in a lawsuit over supposedly improper use of the Trump Hotel during Trump’s inauguration.  Now the D.C. government is channeling that money to two left-wing groups.  One preaches antiracism and is associated with a bevy of left-wing causes like lowering the voting age and providing government housing to all.  The other pushes abortion and income redistribution.  See how this works?  Extort money in court cases and spread the wealth around to your leftist buddies.  The Obama Justice Department excelled at this, extorting settlements in the billions of dollars that floated many a leftist boat.

Federal COVID relief money was handed out to schools based on enrollment.  The Los Angeles Community College District kept the money flowing by not looking into reports of thousands of fake ‘bot’ students – computer programs that imitate human users.    Another strategy used by leftist institutions of higher learning is to charge outrageous overhead on federal grants and use the extra cash to finance their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.  Not to be outdone, House Democrats recently loaded up the China bill with all kinds of money for completely unrelated diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring in federal agencies.

Another favorite parlor trick of the Left is cancel culture.  Don’t like what somebody is saying?  Just shout them down or, better yet, get their events canceled completely.  Transgender activists planned to disrupt an event at Texas A&M in February featuring Matt Walsh, author of a book warning of the dangers of gender transitioning young children.  But the activists’ entire plan leaked online.  It called for dressing normally then, 20 minutes into the event they were to stand up, raise their left fist, and start chanting ‘Stand Up, Fight Back’ as a large group.  For anyone who doubts left-wing cancel culture is real, I recommend you watch a truly stunning video of what happened to Jeff Younger, invited by a conservative student group to speak at the University of North Texas in March.  In the video, you will see an entire room full of activists pounding on the table, shouting slogans in unison, flipping the bird, and otherwise being as obnoxious as possible to prevent Younger from speaking.  I’m only 15 minutes into the video, but the activists are literally going insane right in front of your eyes the entire time.  Younger, you might know, waged a custody battle with his ex-wife over her gender transitioning of one of their kids.

When all else fails, they just lie.  Why not?  It sounds good and a lot of people will believe you.  I’m sure a lot of people believed Elizabeth Warren when she claimed earlier this year Elon Musk paid zero in taxes.  In fact, he paid the largest income tax bill in U.S. history – $11 billion.  See, it starts with small lies, like claiming you’re part Indian.  Before long, you’re telling whoppers.  The bigger the lie, the more people will believe you.  That’s a basic operating principle on the Left.  They got it from their socialist buddy Hitler.

Then there’s the House Democrats allegedly using privately funded staff to investigate oil companies for spreading ‘disinformation’ on climate change possibly in violation of federal law and House rules.  The Democrats deny they did anything wrong, but Virginia’s previous Attorney General, a Democrat, got called out when he brought in Michael Bloomberg-funded staff to pursue the billionaire’s personal agenda on climate change through official means.

Finally, there’s my personal favorite: The Dependency Machine.  The Democrats cause a problem, then turn around and say, ‘Oh, but we’ll HELP you.’  They did it with Obamacare.  They made insurance really expensive and handed out subsidies to help people afford it.  A recent example is the Biden administration deliberately making energy prices go up, then doling out $4.5 billion to help low-income families cover higher heating bills the Democrats caused in the first place.   The whole racket is designed to make as many people dependent on government and the Democrats as possible.  It’s called buying votes.

So, when you hear Democrats howling for gun control today, just remember that never letting a good crisis go to waste is just part of their bag of tricks.  You have to wonder, where would the Democrats be without their bag of tricks?

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

It’s Time to Start Defending our Children

 Arm Teachers and Harden Our Schools

RELATED ARTICLE: NBA’s Steve Kerr called a ‘hypocrite’ after TX school shooting rant; he backed removing cops from schools

11 Examples of Defensive Gun Use Dispel NYC Mayor’s Concerns on Open Carry thumbnail

11 Examples of Defensive Gun Use Dispel NYC Mayor’s Concerns on Open Carry

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By Amy Swearer

Any week now, the Supreme Court will render its decision in the pivotal Second Amendment caseNew York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, where a majority seems poised to strike down New York laws that effectively prohibit law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms in public for self-defense.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, recently lamented the likely outcome of the case, telling reporters that city residents should be “very concerned” and noting that his administration “did our job of getting the guns off the streets.”

Respectfully, Mr. Mayor, your city’s soaring violent crime rates prove that you haven’t succeeded in getting guns off the streets. In fact, New York’s entire legal framework succeeds only in rendering law-abiding New Yorkers defenseless in the face of criminals who continue to illegally carry firearms and use them to commit heinous acts.

This reality was made painfully obvious during recent mass public shootings in New York state, including one Saturday in Buffalo where the perpetrator’s manifesto explained in detail how New York’s strict gun laws “put him at ease” by ensuring that his victims, even if armed, would have a more limited capacity to fight back.

The right to keep and bear arms plays a pivotal role in protecting law-abiding Americans when the government cannot or will not be there at the moment those Americans are victimized.

Almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For this reason, The Daily Signal each month publishes an article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from 2019, 2020, 2021, and so far in 2022.)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in April. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.)

  1. April 1, St. Paul: A man fatally shot his daughter’s ex-boyfriend after he kicked in the family’s front door in the middle of the night and threatened her, police said. The former boyfriend had a long history of domestic violence, including three prior convictions for domestic assault dating to 2006. He was facing additional domestic violence charges—all related to alleged physical assaults against the man and his daughter—and had active warrants out for his arrest.
  2. April 5, Somerset, Kentucky: A man was assaulting his girlfriend inside their home when a juvenile came to the woman’s defense, retrieved a handgun, and fatally shot her assailant, local officials said.
  3. April 7, Brownsboro, Texas: A would-be burglar who broke into a house by smashing through glass in the front door found himself face-to-face with the homeowner, who—armed with an AR-15—held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The burglar was arrested, but police said they were unable to locate a second, female suspect believed to be his accomplice.
  4. April 8, Melbourne, Florida: A man sitting in his truck outside a friend’s house was confronted by an acquaintance who, angry about an earlier argument, opened fire on him, police said. The man grabbed his own handgun and shot back. When the handgun jammed, the man—still under fire—grabbed an AR-15 from his backseat. During the ensuing shootout, he got out of the truck to use it as cover. He eventually retrieved a second AR-15 from his trunk and maintained his defensive fire until his assailant ran away. Police were able to find, arrest, and charge the man with several felonies.  No one was injured during the shootout, police said.
  5. April 11, Las Vegas: A teenager was arguing with someone on a residential street when a neighbor, who was walking his dog, tried to intervene, police said. The teenager pointed a gun at the man and threatened him, but he was legally carrying his own gun and fatally shot the teen. Police said the man acted in lawful self-defense, wasn’t arrested, and won’t face charges.
  6. April 14, Charleston, South Carolina: A man called police to say that another driver had shot at him, but his story quickly fell apart when other witnesses reported that he was, in fact, the aggressor in a violent road rage incident. Officers arrested the man, who is accused of tailgating a female driver, throwing a soda can at her car, and then threatening her with a gun before firing several rounds at her. She grabbed her own gun from the glovebox and shot back in self-defense, police said.
  7. April 17, Philadelphia: Two armed men with fake badges impersonated police officers, forced their way inside a home, and attempted to zip-tie a resident’s hands, police said. The resident quickly realized that the men were not real cops, drew his own gun, and fatally shot one of them. The second intruder, who fled, was not immediately captured. The resident encouraged fellow Philadelphians who can legally own guns to buy one to protect themselves from violent crime.
  8. April 21, Brentwood, Tennessee: When a woman’s estranged husband violated a protection order and showed up at her apartment without permission, she called her father and brother for help, police said. When they arrived, the husband lunged at them, so the brother shot him three times, wounding him. Police said the husband would be charged with stalking and violating a protection order when he is released from a hospital.
  9. April 25, Cleveland: A man held a store employee at gunpoint and grabbed cash from an open register, police said. As he turned around to flee, another employee tried to follow him out, so he shot at her. This employee, however, was armed. She returned fire, striking the robber in the leg. Responding officers couldn’t find the injured robber, but recovered his abandoned backpack with the gun still inside.
  10. April 27, Princeton, West Virginia: A homeowner discovered a man breaking into his vehicle in the middle of the night, then held him at gunpoint until police arrived. Responding officers found several items in the man’s possession that had been stolen from area residents, including the backpack in which the man had placed the other items.
  11. April 29, Miami: An employee at a demolition and trash hauling company confronted a man who was trying to steal a catalytic converter from a car in the company lot, police said. Instead of fleeing, the would-be thief ran at the employee while wielding a saw, so the employee drew his firearm and shot him. The wounded thief dropped the catalytic converter and fled, but police later found him and his stolen getaway car.

It’s clear that, try as they might, law enforcement officers simply cannot be there to defend most citizens from violent crime at the moment they are victimized. The Second Amendment enables these innocent Americans to have more of a fighting chance against criminals who would harm them.

And what’s more, the data is clear that concealed carry permit holders are, as a class, one of the most law-abiding segments of the population.

Mr. Mayor, New York has nothing to fear from a future where its law-abiding citizens are allowed to defend themselves in public with firearms.

New York’s violent criminals, on the other hand? They should feel a little more afraid.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

America is now aware of the Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Governance Board’. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called disinformation a “threat” that needs to be addressed with federal law enforcement power. (Is it coincidental that Elon Musk will shortly take Twitter private and re-establish a free speech platform in America?)

This new DHS office is the Biden Speech Police and represents an existential threat to our First Amendment and our Republic. Please click the adjacent red TAKE ACTION link for the resources to inform your Senators and Representatives about this unconstitutional and tyrannical assault on American Free Speech and our fierce rejection of it.

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Studies Find No Evidence That Assault Weapon Bans Reduce Homicide Rates

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

The studies, data, and examination of the available evidence by scholars suggest that assault weapon bans or buybacks will have little if any effect on rates of violent crime and gun violence.

Mass shootings are unconscionable acts of violence and are the most acutely disturbing form of gun violence. In the wake of such tragedies, many gun control advocates lambast gun rights supporters for allowing “weapons of war” onto the streets of America and not supporting “responsible gun reform.”

The measures put forth are usually either a ban and/or mandatory buyback of “assault weapons,” most of which are more accurately known as semi-automatic rifles. (“Assault weapon” is a vague term that varies state to state and can include common pistols and shotguns depending out other attachable accessories.)

While these initiatives are “common sense” to advocates, if one takes the time to examine the data and evidence, it becomes abundantly clear that gun control in this form will do little to reduce gun violence.

VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: HOMOCIDES 2007 – 2017

Mother Jones’s database of mass shootings, defined as shootings involving three or more fatalities, shows that between 2007 and 2017, there were 495 people murdered in such events. When breaking down those shootings by the weapons involved, it is revealed that around half of those victims (253) were murdered by a perpetrator with an assault weapon (AW), such as an AR-15.

Over the same timeframe, FBI annual crime reports show that there were 150,352 homicides in total, of which 103,901 involved firearms. This means that mass shootings involving AWs constitute 0.17 percent and 0.24 percent of all homicides and firearm homicides, respectively.

To further illuminate the relative infrequency of mass shootings with “assault weapons,” consider the fact that in 2017, some 1,590 people were murdered using knives or sharp instruments.

Over the last five years, 261 people were murdered with AWs in mass shootings (an average rate of 52 murders annually.) At such a rate, it would take over 30 years of mass shootings with AWs to produce the same number of deaths as one year’s worth of knife murders. (It would take 135 years’ worth of mass shootings with AWs to produce the 7,032 deaths that handgun homicides did in 2017.)

Consequently, even a completely effective ban/buyback of AWs would have an incredibly small impact on rates of homicide and gun violence, and then there is always the probability that people intent on committing mass violence will substitute AWs with other available firearms or methods of destruction (such as homemade explosives.)

There are theoretical reasons to doubt the effectiveness of a ban or buyback of assault weapons, but it also doesn’t help that real-world evidence suggests these measures fail to produce reductions in gun violence.

Between 1994 and 2004, the federal government banned the manufacture, sale, or transfer of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.  A subsequent Department of Justice study found no evidence that the ban had had any effect on gun violence and stated that “should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

A recent study published this year in the Journal of General Internal Medicine examined state gun control policies and found no statistically significant relationship between assault weapon or large-capacity magazine bans and homicide rates. A Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study came to the same conclusion.

In 1996, Australia experienced a horrific mass shooting. In response, the government implemented a mandatory buyback scheme that banned and confiscated certain types of firearms, including assault weapons.

A 2016 JAMA study on the matter found no statistically significant change in the trend of the country’s firearm homicide rate following the law’s passage. The authors also noted that the decline in firearm suicides post-ban could not clearly be attributed to gun control since non-firearm suicides fell by an even greater magnitude.

VIEW INFOGRAPHIC: THE FREQUENCY OF MASS SHOOTING OVER TIME

Last year, the RAND Corporation released an extensive scientific analysis of available evidence on gun control measures and how they relate to various crime outcomes. Regarding the effect of assault weapons bans on mass shootings, they determined the evidence was “inconclusive.”

When former President Bill Clinton claimed the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban was associated with reduced mass shootings, Politifact rated that claim as “half-true,” noting that “the ban’s impact remains unclear.”

Using Mother Jones’s data on mass shootings, I constructed the graph you see above. Prior to the ban, on average five people were killed with assault weapons in mass shootings per year. During the ban, that number went slightly down to four. Post-ban, it rose to 22.

But mass shootings with assault weapons didn’t rise until 2012—eight years after the ban ended. In the seven years after the ban, there was only an average of four people killed in mass shootings with assault weapons per year.

Given the fact that the pre-ban period and the seven years after the ban had essentially the same rate of mass shooting deaths with assault weapons, it is hard to prove that the ban had any effect on mass shootings.

The studies, data, and examination of the available evidence by scholars suggest that assault weapons bans or buybacks will have little if any effect on rates of violent crime and gun violence. There seems to be no relationship between these gun control measures and reductions in firearm homicide or suicide, and there doesn’t appear to be any clear evidence they reduce mass shootings.

AUTHOR

Being Classically Liberal

Follow Being Classically Liberal on Facebook.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Ninth Circuit Panel Strikes Semi-Auto Rifle Ban For Young Adults in SAF Case

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By Editors at Second Amendment Foundation

A three-judge panel for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday struck down a California prohibition on sales of semiautomatic rifles to young adults in the 18-20-year-old range, remanding the case back to the district court for further proceedings in a win for the Second Amendment Foundation. The case is known as Jones v. Bonta.

SAF was joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Firearms Policy Foundation, Calguns Foundation, Poway Weapons, and Gear and PWG Range, North County Shooting Center, Inc, Beebe Family Arms and Munitions, and three private citizens including Matthew Jones for whom the case is named.

The majority opinion was written by Judge Ryan Nelson and joined by Judge Kenneth Lee, both Donald Trump appointees, and in part by Judge Sidney Stein from the Southern District of New York, a Bill Clinton appointee. Judge Stein also dissented in part.

Writing for the majority, Judge Nelson observed, “(T)he Second Amendment protects the right of young adults to keep and bear arms, which includes the right to purchase them. The district court reasoned otherwise and held that the laws did not burden Second Amendment rights at all: that was legal error…(T)he district court erred by applying intermediate scrutiny, rather than strict scrutiny, to the semiautomatic centerfire rifle ban. And even under intermediate scrutiny, this ban likely violates the Second Amendment because it fails the ‘reasonable fit’ test.”

“We are delighted with the opinion,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The court majority rightly recognized that delaying the exercise of a right until age 21 does irreparable harm. It also applied strict scrutiny to the semi-auto ban.”

He noted this ruling could have an impact on another case challenging a similar prohibition in Washington State, which is also part of the Ninth Circuit. There, the prohibition was adopted via a citizen initiative in 2018, and was challenged by SAF and the National Rifle Association.

TAKE ACTION

America is now aware of the Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Governance Board’. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called disinformation a “threat” that needs to be addressed with federal law enforcement power. (Is it coincidental that Elon Musk will shortly take Twitter private and re-establish a free speech platform in America?)

This new DHS office is the Biden Speech Police and represents an existential threat to our First Amendment and our Republic. Please click the adjacent red TAKE ACTION link for the resources to inform your Senators and Representatives about this unconstitutional and tyrannical assault on American Free Speech and our fierce rejection of it.

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Cash Register Attendant Pulls A Handgun On A Criminal During Attempted Robbery In Viral Video

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By The Daily Caller

A cash register attendant’s quick thinking might have saved his life.

In a viral video tweeted by Zaid Jilani, a cash register attendant armed himself after spotting a suspicious person, and it turned out that his instincts were 100% correct.

A masked man pulled a gun at the register in what appeared to be a robbery attempt, but the attendant was ready to rock and roll as he presented his own firearm. Fortunately, no shots were necessary, and the bad guy took off. You can watch the insane situation unfold below.

Saw this video on Reddit of a cashier noticing a suspicious customer and preparing himself. Should probably run the CIA.

pic.twitter.com/3cwYCHupGr

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) May 14, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All right reserved.

Are AR-15 Rifles a Public Safety Threat? Here’s What the Data Say thumbnail

Are AR-15 Rifles a Public Safety Threat? Here’s What the Data Say

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Is it true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety?

From Parkland, Florida, to San Bernardino, California, the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and its variants have seemingly become the weapons of choice for mass shooters in the United States.

Many people simply cannot believe that regular civilians should be able to legally own so-called “weapons of war,” which they believe should only be in the hands of the military.

According to Pew Research, for example, 81 percent of Democrats and even 50 percent of Republicans believe the federal government should ban “assault-style rifles” like the AR-15. Given the massive amount of carnage AR-15s and similar rifles have caused, it makes sense that the civilian population simply cannot be trusted to own such weapons, right?

Perhaps, but is it really true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety, so dangerous that it deserves to be banned or even confiscated by the federal government?

It cannot be emphasized enough that any homicide is a tragedy, but in order to get a sense of how dangerous to public safety “assault-style” rifles are, it’s useful to compare their usage in homicide to other methods.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are the two authoritative sources for homicide statistics in the United States.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the CDC reports “produce more accurate homicide trends at the national level” because they capture less under-reporting than the FBI statistics.

However, the homicide data recorded by the CDC includes all homicides committed by civilians regardless of criminal intent. The FBI data instead focuses on intentional homicides (i.e murder) known to law enforcement and excludes non-negligent homicide (i.e. manslaughter.)

According to the BJS, the FBI data is “better suited for understanding the circumstances surrounding homicide incidents.” This is especially true given that the FBI, but not the CDC, records the type of firearm used in a given homicide. For the purposes of this analysis, the data from the FBI will be used.

There are two further limitations of FBI data worth noting.

Firstly, the FBI reports do not look at “assault-style” rifles specifically, but rather, murders involving all types of rifles, whether they are committed with an AR-15 or a hunting rifle.

Secondly, each year there are a few thousand homicide cases where the type of firearm used goes unreported to the FBI. This means that some murders listed under “unknown firearm” may, in fact, be rifle murders.

To account for this under-reporting, we will extrapolate from rifles’ share of firearm murders where the type of weapon is known in order to estimate the number of “unknown” firearms that were in actuality rifle homicides.

If we take the time to look at the raw data provided by the FBI, we find that all rifles, not just “assault-style rifles,” constitute on average 340 homicides per year from 2007 through 2017 (see Figure 1.). When we adjust these numbers to take under-reporting into account, that number rises to an average of 439 per year.

Figure 2 compares rifle homicides to homicides with other non-firearm weapons. Believe it or not, between 2007 and 2017, nearly 1,700 people were murdered with a knife or sharp object per year. That’s almost four times the number of people murdered by an assailant with any sort of rifle.

Figure 1. The Relative and Absolute Frequency of Rifle Homicides 2007-2017

Figure 2. Homicides per year by weapon 2007 – 2017

In any given year, for every person murdered with a rifle, there are 15 murdered with handguns, 1.7 with hands or fists, and 1.2 with blunt instruments. In fact, homicides with any sort of rifle represent a mere 3.2 percent of all homicides on average over the past decade.

Given that the FBI statistics pertain to all rifles, the homicide frequency of “assault-style” rifles like the AR-15 is necessarily lesser still, as such firearms compose a fraction of all the rifles used in crime.

According to a New York Times analysis, since 2007, at least “173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s.”

That’s 173 over a span of a decade, with an average of 17 homicides per year. To put this in perspective, consider that at this rate it would take almost one-hundred years of mass shootings with AR-15s to produce the same number of homicide victims that knives and sharp objects produce in one year.

With an average of 13,657 homicides per year during the 2007-2017 timeframe, about one-tenth of one percent of homicides were produced by mass shootings involving AR-15s.

Mass shootings involving rifles like the AR-15 can produce dozens of victims at one time, and combined with extensive media coverage of these events, many people have been led to believe that such rifles pose a significant threat to public safety.

However, such shootings are extremely rare, and a look at the FBI data informs us that homicide with these types of rifles represents an extremely small fraction of overall homicide violence. Banning or confiscating such firearms from the civilian population would likely produce little to no reduction in violent crime rates in America.

AUTHOR

Being Classically Liberal

Follow Being Classically Liberal on Facebook.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Fifth Circuit Rules Against New Jersey in 3-D Gun Ban Case

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By Editors at Second Amendment Foundation

The Second Amendment Foundation and Defense Distributed today are celebrating a court victory in a long-running battle to allow online publication of information related to the 3D printing of firearms, thanks to a ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that returns claims against the New Jersey attorney general (NJAG) to its jurisdiction.

A district court order had wrongly severed the case against the NJAG, from a lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs, and transferred it to a federal court in New Jersey. Today’s ruling in the Fifth Circuit directs the district court in Texas to “request retransfer from its counterpart in New Jersey.”

“It’s a huge victory for us,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “because New Jersey wanted to be severed from our legal action in their effort to prevent publication of the information by Defense Distributed, thus violating the company’s and SAF’s First Amendment rights to promote the exercise of Second Amendment rights.”

This effort began when anti-gun-rights attorneys general, led by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, filed suit in the Western District of Washington to enjoin the State Department from authorizing the release of Defense Distributed’s files on the internet under a settlement from a previous SAF and Defense Distributed lawsuit. That effort was an offshoot of attempts by then-New Jersey AG Gurbir Grewal and several of his peers to prevent the plaintiffs’ distribution of materials related to the 3D printing of firearms.

Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones stated, “Correctly assessed, the NJAG did not carry its burden to clearly demonstrate that transfer is clearly more appropriate than the Plaintiffs’ choice of forum. The district court erred legally and factually in virtually every aspect of this issue, and its decision, which has unnecessarily lengthened this litigation, even more, represents a clear abuse of discretion for which mandamus is an appropriate remedy.”

An earlier ruling by a Fifth Circuit panel held that the NJAG is “subject to the jurisdiction of Texas courts” in this case because Defense Distributed is a Texas-based company. Today, the Fifth Circuit ruling directs the district court to:

  • Vacate its order dated April 19, 2021, that severed Defense Distributed’s claims against the NJAG and transferred them to the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey;
  • Request the District of New Jersey to return the transferred case to the Western District of Texas, Austin Division; and,
  • After return, to reconsolidate Defense Distributed’s case against the NJAG back into the case still pending against the State Department.

“This case has dragged on for years,” Gottlieb noted. “What today’s ruling clearly demonstrates is that attorneys general who violates our First and Second Amendment rights will be held to answer by the courts, wherever the violations occur.

“NJAG wanted their case severed and transferred,” he added, “and now that will not happen. It’s unfortunate that justice has been delayed so long. It’s time to move forward. This is a case we fully expect to totally win.”

*****

This article was published by The Second Amendment Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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A Gun Rights Reminder: Levi’s Doesn’t Support You

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By 2ndvote .com

As President Joe Biden pushes to even infringe your Second Amendment rights, we wanted to remind you that he isn’t doing so alone. Many corporations have decided that your right to bear arms comes second to their political advocacy – advocacy which violates your human and constitutional rights to self-defense.

One of the worst offenders is Levi’s (1.00), the clothing company which has donated over a million dollars to strip your ability to defend yourself and your family from intruders, criminals, and tyrants. As we highlighted in 2018:

Levi Strauss is a clothing company with an agenda. It has a “1.00” ranking in all five of 2ndVote’s categories where it takes corporate action and just a month ago launched a million-dollar anti-gun campaign.

You may remember that Levi’s desire to control your life isn’t limited to guns. The company recently forced out a senior executive who didn’t hold to their restrictive policies on masks and vaccines. It is the height of irony that Levi’s views self-defense against a man-made virus more important than self-defense against criminals and corrupt government – even though masks and vaccines are of limited value, at best, when it comes to stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Levi’s offenses are myriad. The company donates to Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign, and wants you to put climate alarmism ahead of real issues like having a job and defending your family. It’s no wonder we rank them at a paltry “1.00” out of 5.00. Truth be told, our algorithms score them well below a one, but we trim it there to keep things in perspective.

It’s time to ditch Levi’s in favor of better options for your 2ndVote money. Consider shopping at Everlane (3.00), Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc. (3.06), Lululemon Athletica (3.16), and Cabela’s (3.26) — all companies which focus on impressing you, the customer, not a few loud liberal talking heads.

EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Meet Biden’s Second Nominee to Head ATF

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By Harold Hutchison

President Joe Biden on Monday nominated Steve Dettelbach, a former U.S. attorney in Ohio with a record of supporting gun control measures, to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Dettelbach has a history of backing gun control measures, promoting several firearms restrictions during an unsuccessful 2018 campaign to become Ohio’s attorney general, and making multiple posts on social media calling on America to take action in the wake of high-profile shootings. He told WOSU that he supported universal background checks and bans on so-called assault weapons during his campaign.

During the campaign, Dettelbach received endorsements from prominent gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, as well as former President Barack Obama and Biden.

Dettelbach also opposed a plan to arm teachers in the aftermath of the February 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, telling WOSU “it doesn’t protect people in any meaningful way, it’s more than a day late and much more than a dollar short.”

“Who allows madmen such easy access to firearms?” Dettelbach asked in a 2019 Twitter post shortly after a shooting in El Paso, Texas. “Who armed a madmen with enough hate that he would kill people just because they were Hispanic? Those people must also be held accountable.”

Dettelbach retweeted a 2020 post from the Sandy Hook Promise, a group that advocates for certain gun control measures, asking people to sign a “petition demanding action to prevent school shootings.”

The White House called Dettelbach “a highly respected former U.S. Attorney and career prosecutor who spent over two decades as a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice” in a release Monday.

The nomination of Dettelbach comes in conjunction with a crackdown on so-called ghost guns, according to the release. The Justice Department announced new rules to target ghost guns, including requiring those who make or sell them to get federal firearms licenses and to run background checks.

Biden withdrew the nomination of David Chipman to the ATF in September 2021 after allegations of racist comments and bipartisan pushback over his attitude toward gun owners. Chipman called for banning the AR-15, a popular semi-automatic rifle, and pushed a definition of “assault weapons” that many viewed as more extreme than that of the European Union.

“President Biden’s new pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is a rinse and repeat from his last unsuitable nominee, David Chipman,” Amy Hunter, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, adding:

The new nominee, Steven Dettelbach, is a dedicated gun controller who has supported gun bans, restrictions on lawful firearm transfers, and expansion of prohibitions on who can possess firearms. Dettelbach’s history proves he cannot be trusted to work objectively and fairly with law-abiding gun owners, the firearms industry, or law enforcement—he will serve only to further restrict Americans’ rights.

In a statement Monday, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, one of the gun industry’s largest trade organizations, said it had “significant concerns regarding Dettelbach’s previous public statements supporting bans on Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), or AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, universal background checks, which are unworkable without a national firearm registry that is already forbidden by federal law, and extreme-risk protection orders, or so-called ‘red flag’ laws, without protections for Due Process considerations.”

Dettelbach did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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Indiana the 24th Constitutional-carry State. Three More States Right Behind

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By Bob Adelmann

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law on March 21 his state’s permitless carry bill that had passed both the state’s House and Senate overwhelmingly.

That makes 24. And the third state so far this year.

On March 10, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a similar bill into law. This was followed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who signed a constitutional-carry bill into law on March 14.

Georgia is next, as a similar bill passed both state houses last Friday and will arrive shortly on Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for signing.

Said Kemp earlier, “The Constitution should be our carry permit, and I look forward to signing a Constitutional Carry measure this year to enshrine hardworking Georgians’ ability to protect themselves and their families in Georgia law.”

National Rifle Association (NRA) Chairman Wayne LaPierre told Fox News:

The success of the carry movement in America cannot be denied at this point. When Gov. Brian Kemp signs this landmark legislation, half of America will protect the right to carry as an inherent and inalienable right.

Two more states — Florida and Nebraska — are on the brink of passing laws protecting their citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, without first having to get permission to do so.

South Carolina is right behind, with conservative, pro-constitutional Republican majorities in both statehouses. Constitutional-carry bills failed to pass last year, but the pressure is building on Governor Henry McMaster to urge the legislature to bring such a bill to his desk for signing.

Tennessee already has a “partial” constitutional carry law in place, but it only applies to handguns, and legislators in the Volunteer State are itching to amend it to include long guns. What’s in place, according to John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, is “not real constitutional carry,” and his group is lobbying to expand the present law.

It should be noted that not a single state has repealed a constitutional-carry law, nor has there been a single move in any state to consider such a move.

It should also be noted that arguments against such laws consist primarily of worries that more firearms will mean more gun violence. But that has simply not been the case. According to the Crime Research Prevention Center (CRPC), firearms violations by police officers are very low — about 16.5 for every 100,000 police officers. For citizens who already have a permit, the rate is even lower: 2.4 per 100,000.

Further research by the CRPC reveals that gun violence drops as private gun ownership increases. As John Lott, founder of the CRPC, noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

That makes sense, as the people who benefit the most from carrying a firearm are the most likely to be victims: They are “overwhelmingly,” wrote Lott, “poor Blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.”

As states increasingly remove infringements from the right to keep and bear arms, it becomes increasingly difficult for tyrants to turn the American Republic into a dictatorship. To succeed, they must first disarm every private owner of his firearms. At present, the momentum is heading in the other direction.

The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting. It was always about keeping the government in check.

A quote from Adolf Hitler bears repeating:

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

*****

This article was published in The New American and is reproduced with permission.

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More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents

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By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

In the USA there are between 2.1 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year.

How is it that so many kids raised on “Harry Potter”, “The Hunger Games”, “Star Wars”, and all the Marvel action figure movies manage to miss a critical point of the stories? The lesson being: If you want to prevail over evil villains, you must have the proper tools to fight back.

Millions of people protect themselves and their families with guns every day in the United States. They choose guns as a means of self-defense for the same reason the Secret Service uses them to protect the president: guns stop bad people from doing bad things to good people.

It’s absurd to speak about the right of self-defense in theory but then deny people the tools they need to exercise that right.

Without a gun, most Americans are defenseless at the hands of a violent criminal. How many of us have training in hand-to-hand fighting, the physical strength, and the mental resilience to react in a fight-or-flight situation to repel an aggressive predator, especially someone who attacks us first and is armed with a deadly weapon?

Does a gun guarantee your safety? No, but it gives you the ability to defend yourself against an armed, physically superior, or mentally unstable attacker (or all three).

Why in the world would anyone not want to have the means to protect themselves and their families against criminal predators and lunatics? Worse yet, why would anyone actively lobby their government to deprive themselves and every other law-abiding citizen of the most effective means to protect themselves?

The gun grabbers are convinced that if we shut down the National Rifle Association and take away guns from law-abiding gun owners, then bad people will no longer have the tools to do bad things.

A gun is a tool, plain and simple. You should own a gun for the same reason you install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, purchase fire extinguishers, and buckle your seat belt. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Smart people are prepared. Foolish people bring a knife—or nothing at all—to a gunfight.

The gun grabbers say: “There is no evidence that guns save lives.” The truth: If there is no proof that guns save lives, then why does every American law enforcement agency, including the U.S. Secret Service, carry guns? What’s the point of the guns?

There is an old saying in the world of investing: “Do what the smart money does.” This means that when you personally invest, it makes sense to buy and sell the same investments as the “smart money” people—large banks, institutional investors, hedge funds, and investment gurus like Warren Buffett. The idea is that these industry leaders have a better understanding of the marketplace and better access to information than ordinary investors do. And that is usually true.

What do the “smart money” people do when it comes to protecting lives?

Virtually all professionals carry guns—and lots of them. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the streets you walk on all carry guns. The Secret Service protects the president with guns. The federal Department of Homeland Security, with its $44 billion annual budget, issues its own agents handguns and fully automatic rifles (rifles far more powerful than the AR-15s many gun grabbers don’t want you to have to protect yourself).

So, the smart money in the business of protecting lives chooses guns. That’s right. They choose guns!

But if you don’t want to follow the smart money on guns, then let’s turn to the statistical scoreboard. Does civilian gun use help in self-defense against criminals?

The U.S. Department of Justice investigated firearm violence from 1993 through 2011. The report found, “In 2007–2011, about 1 percent of nonfatal violent crime victims used a firearm in self-defense.” Anti-gun zealots attempt to use this statistic to discredit the use of a gun as a viable means of self-defense, and by extension, to discredit gun ownership in general.

But look deeper into the numbers. During that five-year period, the Department of Justice confirmed a total of 338,700 defensive gun uses in both violent attacks and property crimes where a victim was involved. That equals an average of 67,740 defensive gun uses every year. In other words, according to the Justice Department’s own statistics, 67,740 people a year don’t become victims because they own a gun. (I suspect that if more states allowed concealed carry to be widespread, the number of instances of defensive gun uses would be even higher.)

Is it significant that at least 67,740 individuals use a gun in self-defense each year? Well, in 2016, 37,461 people died in motor vehicle accidents in the United States; in 2015, the number was 35,092 people. Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), called those road fatalities “an immediate crisis.” If the NHTSA administrator considers it a crisis that approximately 37,000 people are dying annually from car accidents, then saving nearly twice that many people each year through the use of firearms is simply stunning.

In reality, the Department of Justice findings about defensive gun uses are very conservative. A 2013 study ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and conducted by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council found that:

Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence… Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008… On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey…”

The most comprehensive study ever conducted about defensive gun use in the United States was a 1995 survey published by criminologist Gary Kleck in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. This study reported between 2.1 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year.

Ultimately, the number of defensive gun uses doesn’t matter much to the anti-gun zealots. Whether the number is 67,000 or 2.5 million or anywhere in between, they’ll do whatever they can to dismiss defensive gun uses as insignificant. They want to focus only on the dead people lying in the street rather than those folks who use a firearm to remain standing.

I suspect those people still alive would have a different view.

Reprinted from The Daily Signal

Excerpt from“#Duped: How the Anti-gun Lobby Exploits the Parkland School Shooting-and How Gun Owners Can Fight Back”.

COLUMN BY

Mark W. Smith

Mark W. Smith is a constitutional attorney and author. Smith currently serves as the vice president of the New York City chapter of the Federalist Society and is also a presidential scholar and senior fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College in New York City.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Anti-gun Support for Jackson Nomination to High Court Raises Alarms, Says SAF thumbnail

Anti-gun Support for Jackson Nomination to High Court Raises Alarms, Says SAF

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By Editors at Second Amendment Foundation

The nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court following the retirement of Associate Justice Stephen Breyer later this year raises alarms, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

“Just the endorsements Judge Jackson’s nomination is receiving should be enough to cause concern,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The nomination is being applauded by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun prohibition lobbying groups including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, and by the anti-gun Giffords Law Center and Brady group. There can be no stronger indication of where Judge Jackson stands on the individual right to keep and bear arms and how she might rule on Second Amendment issues.”

Judge Jackson has also been reversed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, for what Prof. Jonathan Turley described as “judicial overreach.”

“The high court doesn’t need another liberal activist justice on the bench,” Gottlieb observed, “especially where Second Amendment issues are concerned. We know it is inappropriate to ask a Supreme Court nominee how he or she would rule on possible upcoming cases, but considering the energetic support Judge Jackson’ nomination is already receiving from the gun ban lobby, such questions aren’t even necessary.

“When the nation’s most extreme gun control lobbying groups throw their weight behind a judicial nominee,” he added, “there should be no misconception about where that nominee is likely to stand on Second Amendment rights, and frankly, it’s disappointing.

“Since Joe Biden promised to make gender and ethnicity the deciding issues in his Supreme Court nominations,” Gottlieb stated, “we were hopeful his selection would be someone upon whom we could depend for at least some semblance of objectivity. But not now, not with endorsements from organizations known to be hostile to Second Amendment rights, because that is and always has been their litmus test.

“For this reason and no other,” Gottlieb concluded, “Judge Jackson’s nomination raises red flags for gun owners. We implore the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct a thorough and thoughtful vetting process, and to raise questions about her Second Amendment perspectives during any confirmation hearing.”

*****

This article was published bySecond Amendment Foundation and is reprinted with permission.

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