Category Archives: gun grabbers

Law and Order: Western Society under Siege Part IV

Experiences living in California’s Bay Area, as a public high school teacher later for more than two decades in the Midwest, and now witnessing what is transpiring in the body politc convinces me the Left will stoop to any fabrication, dirty trick, smear, and hypocritical double standard to advance their agenda regardless of who is destroyed. Their strategy requires identifying certain groups to be targeted and demonized. Nothing unifies people like a bogeyman. Trashed and bashed by pop-culture for years, Christians have long served as a Leftist fave. They afford ready-made props useful in riling up the ignorant, the superstitious and conspiracy addled, bitter middle-aged feminists, malcontents perpetually angry and bitter about their lives, radical nihilists, anyone with an axe to grind, and those who despise G-d’s natural order galvanizing them in support of various faux crusades. All too often these intellectual lumpen have no idea they are pawns advancing a greater political cause and destined not to sup at victory’s banquet table. Now Police officers have become the current sacrificial lamb offered up to the eye of the hoi polloi storm.

Unlike war, wherein soldiers typically face death only on the battlefield, men and women donning the uniform of a police officer step onto the battlefield every day they go to work. The enemy doesn’t wear uniforms and they have access to weapons, vehicles, supplies, and technology. They live in plain sight, undetected, on the battlefield be it urban, suburban or rural and always outnumber the good guys. Police officers don’t fight enemies in a foreign land but here, at home. Enemy soldiers can locate their residences attacking them and their families where they live, a la Mexico. Unlike portrayals on the silver screen, most work in single officer squad cars. Backup may be minutes or hours away or nonexistent. Instead of facing the enemy as part of a unit, they typically face the enemy alone. Instead of decompressing back at base camp with fellow soldiers before rotating back to the U.S., police officers go home to families who can’t possibly understand the distant gaze in the eyes of men and women who see and face too much death and suffering. Police officers can only engage the enemy after he has fired on them first. When executing search and arrest warrants on known violent murderers, officers can only use deadly force if they are first attacked by the enemy. The level of stress they face is manifested through unusually high rates of depression, alcohol abuse, divorce, and suicide. Citizenry seemed unconcerned with the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of hardened violent criminals lose on the streets and millions more in prison. If united, they would form an unstoppable army of rage, murder, rape, and destruction. This is why police officers are called the “Thin Blue Line,” a tiny army standing between humanity and the most blood-thirsty murderous army ever assembled. Who has their back? Lieutenants and captains whose only interest is climbing the promotional ladder? Police Chiefs who view their job as a public relations experience ready and willing to throw anyone under the bus who threatens their reputation or political aspirations? Or citizens who don’t want to see cops in their rear view mirrors when speeding but are furious they aren’t guarding their homes 24/7 from burglars? Although putting their lives on the line to protect them, the liberal Jihad has singled out police officers as props to promote their political agenda. This they do by promoting a false narrative that cops are the point of the white man’s spear in a war of genocide against the black race.

An agenda takes shape when one recognizes for Black Lives Matter (BLM) and their Leftist allies, the only blacks who “qualify” as victims of shootings are those killed by cops or whites. The enormously larger number of black homicide victims in “Chiraq” (gang slang for Chicago), 677 from January to March (2016) alone, consisted of black on black murder but BLM, the New Black Panthers, and the white liberal media refuse to recognize or address who is doing the killing.1 Over its Fourth of July, Chicago experienced 11 people gunned down and another 50 wounded in one weekend. Many of the black children were what Millennials refer to as “collateral damage.” BLM’s website declares it’s working to create a world where blacks are no longer targeted for “demise” by whites and the police but, they make no mention of the epidemic of black on black violent crime and the blacks who have targeted each other for demise. Memphis, Tennessee, for example, is so bad that “98 percent of Tennessee’s other communities have a lower crime rate. In 2015, 74.5 percent of Memphis’ homicide victims were black and 68.3 percent were under the age of thirty-five” along with 435 children who were “shot at.” What have liberals, including the New York Times and BLM, said about the crisis in Memphis? Nothing. Not even a word that, in 2015, all 145 black murder victims were killed by other blacks.2

The New York Times, president Obama, and other liberals blamed the shooting of Michael Brown, (Ferguson, Missouri), on the racism of the city’s mostly white police force signaling to protestors they should express themselves which they did through looting, rioting, and assaults.3 As the size and threat of the roiling violent mob mushroomed out of control in Ferguson, the mayor pleaded with Missouri Governor, liberal Democrat Jay Nixon, to send the State Police and National (sic) Guard. But Nixon fiddled while this proverbial Rome burned.4 BLM, Obama, and the Liberal Media used Michael Brown to “prove” racism was endemic to white police officers but where were they and the New York Times when 9-year old Jamyla Brown was shot doing homework in her Ferguson, Missouri home? There were protests but they were in nearby St. Louis following the police shooting of eighteen year-old Mansur Ball-Bey during a drug raid (19 August 2015). The gun Bey pulled on police was stolen and officers retrieved 3 more guns and a quantity of crack cocaine in his possession. Demonstrators, the blind, the gullible, shrieking moms, and those seething with rage and racial hatred pushed the notion of police as the tip of the white race’s war of extinction against the black race. Soon rocks, bricks, and bottles filled the air, cars were set fire, buildings trashed, looted, and burned, and police, trying to save lives and restore order, were assaulted as well.5 In each riot, Ferguson and St. Louis, (and later, Baltimore) the police were prevented by government officials (liberal Democrats) from doing their job. White residents caught at the epicenter of these riots and found themselves targeted for assault by virtue of their skin color, and dialed 911, were told they were on their own. And yet the liberal media refused to call this violent savagery a riot instead employing the gonadophobic politically correct term “unrest.”6 I was a public high school teacher at the time and a liberal teacher (but, I repeat myself) chastised me for using the terms “riot” and “looters,” because they are “racist.” I asked, if he and other liberals automatically assumed “riot” and “looter” applied to blacks, who was being racist? And, if many if not most rioters and looters turn out to be one race or another, what benefit is there in lying about this? He said it didn’t matter. Those terms were forbidden. Does not this craven supine approach to addressing violent crime by the Left signal to criminals that, whatever they do, theft, burglary, rape, and violent rampages, it will be rationalized away and excused as long as committed by minorities? What justice then is promised to victims? Why does it seem as if the political leaders and media personalities most hair-pulling furious about racism in America are also the most lily white? Caucasians so white they’d disappear if they fell into a snowbank? These are the liberal whites whose income precludes contact with people of a darker hue unless staying in a hotel or ordering a meal. Isn’t that called “projection?”

Under no circumstances can Liberals admit the truth about race and crime. To do so would undermine what they are teaching America’s young in public schools, reinforced through their party propaganda organs, the liberal media, that blacks are numinous victims and whites, perennial oppressors. If white children grow up guilt ridden enough to accept this view, they will vote to purge their shame by supporting the Left’s political and social remedies…socialism and the end of individual liberty in America. Whipping up racial conflict advances the Left’s agenda. For example, the liberal New York Times trumpeted the ‘police war on blacks’ narrative declaring “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast.” The Times also published a statistic from a 2014 study claiming “Black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than are young white males.” This is a lie. Killing of blacks by police is “rare” but black on black murder is commonplace. Even the Washington Post, marching orders for liberals, conceded of the 258 blacks shot and killed by police in 2015, most were committing serious assaults against the officer! In 2014, 6,095 blacks were victims of homicide, almost all killed by other blacks. Even if police shootings were eliminated, the impact on this statistic would be negligible. In reality, blacks “are responsible for a death rate ten times that of whites in urban areas.” Young black men commit homicides at a rate nearly ten times that of whites and Hispanics, combined. This “astronomically high homicide commission rate means that police officers are going to be sent to fight crime disproportionately in black neighborhoods, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects.” And they will be shooting at the cops.7

Does it not make sense? Most crime, especially violent crime, occurs in black not Asian neighborhoods so, where should meager police resources be directed? To keep an eye on Japanese people? Armed “exchanges” between bad guys and cops will most often occur in high-crime neighborhoods, which means black neighborhoods because that’s where the armed bad guys live and “work.” In the study cited for its hit-piece, The New York Times’ “study” ignored this reality and that the study actually revealed 62 percent of those shot by police “were resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer” as was Michael Brown. Yet the New York Times insisted in claiming “many police officers see black males as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.”8 Perhaps blinded by a political bias that oozes from its pages, the Times has it backward. The cops are trying to halt the epidemic of violence in black neighborhoods. It’s the thugs and hoodlums, gunning down each other, moms, dads, and their kids who view each other as expendable.

Chicago’s nightmare of young black males gunning down each other has been visited upon other cities. Cleveland, Ohio, is a majority black city in which “more than ninety-one percent of the other communities have a lower crime rate than Cleveland.” Oakland, California, ranked by Forbes as the 3rd most dangerous city in America, is majority-black and 99 percent of other cities in the state have lower violent crime rates. Baltimore, my old stomping ground, is also majority-black and has set records for homicides the past several years. Like other black majority cities, its Mayor, Chief of Police, City Council, and Board of Education are black yet the “Black Press,” and the National Association of Black Journalists racializes each shooting between black males and white cops. Even violent black criminals, who prey on their communities, are portrayed as victims. These hyper-racial stories generate “high web traffic which translates into job security” for black journalists. But black on black violence generates little interest in the black community including social media. Perhaps because it was struggling financially, Ebony, a black magazine, commenced a “Save Our Boys’ campaign as if blacks are being slaughtered.” Apparently blacks comprise Twitter’s largest demographic and they employ hash-tags “to make black topics go viral” creating in the process “martyrs of the movement and construct racial grievances.” Through Black Twitter, activists can quickly mobilize protests, backlashes, boycotts, and flash mobs. Movie producer Spike Lee used it to publish what he thought was George Zimmerman’s (Trayvon Martin case) address. It wasn’t and the people living there were under grave threat. Yet none of the outrage in the black community, legitimate or manufactured, address the problem that less than six-percent of America’s population, who are black, commit most of its murders and its victims are black.9

In order to indoctrinate, mold, and shape future voters to accept their vision of a world in which the will of the individual must be bent to the volition of the state, the Left must instill guilt for all racial crimes, past and present, into white children. These children, as young adults, must make restitution for the sins of the white race against all peoples of color by supporting the Left’s massive socialist agenda. They must look the other way with respect to black crime, blame victims not the bad guys, and not criticize the hate fest leading to the ambush and murder of the very police officers protecting their young liberal upper middleclass white lives.

11 Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (North Charleston, South Carolina, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 52-57.

22 IBID. 62-64.

33 Heather McDonald, The War On Cops (New York, N.Y., Encounter Books, 2016), 8-9.

44 David Carson, “Ferguson Mayor Asks Where National (sic) Guard Was,” Gov. Nixon Pledges More,” November 20, 2014, St. Louis Post Dispatch, at http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ferguson-mayor-asks-where-national-guard-was-gov-nixon-pledges/article343a2224-Ad61-54fb-b5ac99957F7.amp.html.

55 Starkes, 66-67.

66 McDonald 11.

77 IBID. 17.

88 IBID. 17-18.

99 Starkes, 68-73.

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Savage Ignorance Part II

Unreasonably warm temperatures (55° on 13, December) spawn tourist outbreaks along woodland trails. How does one differentiate tourists from regular hikers and mountain bikers? Voices as loud as their clothing, hands crammed with devices and radios, unleashed trail-poopers (dogs), and packs of even louder chubby fast-food wrapper spewing hotdog fingered kids for whom being chained to a hamster wheel for six months…without food, would be beneficial. People attend movies to laugh, cry, and escape reality if but for a short time. Conversations, seat-kickers, and cell phone glow can spoil the experience. In like fashion, nature is spoiled when rude civilization intrudes. Didn’t the Bush Administration argue the fight against Tourists was international? Didn’t they coin the term “GWOT” for “Global War On Tourism?” Recently I considered reporting a herd of Tourists to Homeland Security. None appeared menacing, not even their dogs, and some seemed friendly enough. But isn’t that what people say when told their neighbor ran over pedestrians with a truck or blew themselves up at the train station killing many people? I’m keeping an eye on them.

In Part I, I began exposing Michael Savage’s campaign to ban private ownership of certain firearms and magazines, in which he employed arguments perfectly useful…to Confiscationists. If I don’t like Savage, why listen to him? I don’t. I used to enjoy his wit and irreverent humor but his undisguised jealousy of conservative radio-talk show hosts and promotion of a Buddha-ized version of Judaism wore thin. His claim to be the only true radio conservative on the one hand, and assertion FDR’s socialist New Deal solved the Great Depression on the other, was the final straw. Anyone with a modicum of understanding with respect to economics, history, and the Constitution knows this is false. I listen when necessary because 2nd Amendment supporters must be prepared to answer its enemies. Las Vegas was the impetus for Savage’s first salvo against the right to keep and bear arms as the second was the Sutherland, Texas church shooting.

On 6 November, 2017 Savage resurrected with a vengeance his anti-2nd Amendment rant from the previous month yelling into the microphone; “Don’t tell me if everyone had a gun in that church they could have stopped the killer! You John Wayne types.” With a sneer he added, “And please don’t play John Wayne with me on this show. I’m going to hang up on you if you call and say if all those church-goers had had a gun, this wouldn’t have happened. Yeah, you John Wayne types. You’d freeze up, drop the gun, and shoot yourself in the foot if evil came into your church with an ‘assault rifle” (sic). He asked how the “shooter,”1 a nut, got a gun. “Why? Because gun laws are too weak” Savage continued. “Gun shows are wide open ranges and anyone can buy a gun there.” He mocked conservatives arguing more guns are the answer and pastors saying G_d is with us even in the midst of such tragedies. Savage insisted every “nut”2 in the nation can buy an AR15 because of “lax gun laws” and the killer was allowed to buy an “automatic rifle.” Although Savage conceded he was ultimately stopped by a man with a gun, “That was only after he had killed everyone” he said and then trotted out an argument near and dear to the hearts of liberals with respect to the 2nd Amendment; “People have a constitutional right to drive,” Savage argued, which comes with all sorts of regulations, licensing requirements, training, and tests to enjoy this “right” (sic). People have to “demonstrate” knowledge of how to operate the car and that they can drive before getting behind the wheel. Why isn’t this true with guns? Then he shouted; “Why is the right to own firearms one hundred percent free from licensing, but not the right to drive? All you tough guys who want ‘assault weapons’ (sic) say, ‘well that government will come down and get us. Let’s roll armed and go out like the militia.’ Yeah, all the tough guys on conservative radio are going to lead you. Onward Christian soldiers with their ‘assault weapons’ (sic). They’ll run so fast you wouldn’t be able to say Mickey Mouse.” Wow. During this diatribe Savage let out he has a concealed carry permit. How does one obtain a permit in radical Left-wing People’s Republic of Marin County of California’s Bay Area? You can’t unless you’re a rich celebrity or well-connected. But, Savage confessed, he’d be too scared to use his firearm so he has two body-guards. Are they armed? When it comes to self-defense, how long must Americans endure being preached down to by upper-crust gated community, goon-protected self-styled aristocrats? It reminds me of the unquenchable hypocrisy flowing from ultra-rich super-liberal Senator Ed Kennedy raging about the plight of the poor in America. Savage continued railing against conservatives claiming the “knee-jerk” reaction from “right-wingers” is; “You can’t touch guns. But we must touch guns!” He yelled becoming unhinged. “Tell me I’m wrong that every nut-job in the world shouldn’t be able to get ‘assault-weapons’ (sic). You’re wrong! Too many nuts have their hands on too many guns!” He accused conservatives of arguing “nuts” should be allowed to have guns adding that those who claim they “need assault-weapons” (sic) for home defense “would poop in their pants instead. People armed is not the answer!” He shouted.3

On the following day, Savage claimed “right-wingers” oppose any and all restrictions on who can have a gun and the number of rounds held by a “clip” adding; “I have no idea why anyone in this country ‘needs’ a thirty-round clip (sic). Who really needs an assault-rifle? What, to hunt elephants? Don’t they use single-shot rifles, in .30-06 to hunt elephants? A single round from that caliber would drop an elephant. So what in the hell do we need a thirty-round ‘clip’ (sic) for? I know, you’re going to stand up like Paul Revere and you’re going to say Charge! You won’t say charge. You’ll drop your gun, you’ll drop your shorts, and you’ll run like everyone else. Stop pretending that you’re a big hero!” He then called for banning “assault weapons” (Meaning ARs, AKs, and similar function rifles) and “multiple round ‘clips” claiming this would limit the number of guns in circulation hence limiting criminal access. The Texas killer was able to kill so many people because “He had a machine gun in his hands!” Savage shouted. But, with an “assault-weapons” (sic) ban, he continued, the killer would have been forced to use a single-shot rifle which would have allowed the men in the church to have subdued him by beating him over the head with a chair. To this insanity Savage added; “One in five police officers is killed by an assault-rifle” and then he screamed; “I no longer believe Americans need to run around with thirty-round ‘clips’ (sic) and assault rifles! When the hell did the 2nd Amendment ever say you had the right to own an ‘assault-weapon?’ (sic) What am I going to do with one, wait for the day the government comes to get me? I’m going to hold off a platoon of government agents? You people are living in a dream world!” He then asserted, as before, AR15s were useless for home defense. The best weapon, he said, is a shotgun but they “are complicated to use” and “their mechanisms are complex, not for amateurs.” Savage again claimed an AR15 round will go through house walls but shotgun pellets would not. A pistol round might go through a wall but this was unlikely, he claimed, because they had 15 to 20 round “clips” (sic) as opposed to the thirty-round capacity of “assault-weapons” (sic). Finally Savage claimed because there are restrictions on the 1st Amendment, you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater or threaten the president, banning “assault-weapons” and thirty-round “clips” didn’t violate the 2nd Amendment. “There’s a difference between the right to bear arms and the right to bear machine-guns” he said.4

It would be beyond charitable to describe what Savage said as either abysmally ignorant or intentionally deceptive. His persistence in calling magazines “clips” and conflation of the terms “assault-weapon” (no such animal), assault-rifle, and machine gun with semiautomatic rifles demonstrates his knowledge of firearms is limited, at best, and promotion of an agenda supersedes honesty.

Conceding the Texas killer was stopped by an armed man but this would have failed inside the church because, Barney Fife-like, fear-stricken and trembling men would have dropped their guns shooting themselves is illogical. It is stupid. It also ignores the many, more than capable, men and women who carry and could have stopped the killer. It makes no sense unless Savage, shamed there are real people with spines out there, beyond the Bay Area, in places like Texas, is projecting his own timorous nature onto others. During any mass shooting event, in the time it takes to call the police, for them to respond, set up a command post, assess the situation, identify the good from the bad guy(s), and formulate a counter-response, the massacre is usually over. Contrary to the lies told by Savage, when a “good-guy” with a gun is on the scene, casualties are “dramatically lower” and is often the deciding factor in limiting the “body count.” In nine mass shootings in which victims had to wait for police arrive, from Luby’s Cafeteria, Killeen, Texas (16 October, 1991) to Pulse Night Club, Orlando, Florida (12 June, 2016) 220 people died. In eight similar shootings in which an armed good-guy was on the scene, from Pearl High School, Pearl, Mississippi (1 October, 1997) to the Curtis Culwell Center, Garland, Texas (3 May 2015), 37 people died.5 Savage’s attack on men and women willing to shoulder the responsibility for the safety of others, putting their own lives on the line, is disgraceful.

Why do liberals seem to go after the rights of law-abiding Americans as opposed to violent criminals (Chicago)? Why do they mock and ridicule notions of personal responsibility with respect to self-defense? Are the spines of liberal men removed in-vitro or do they dissolve naturally as they progress toward puberty? Savage’s allegation; conservatives want every “nut” to have guns, is a malicious lie and ignores the fact that, under “federal” law, they are already prohibited from so doing. Information on anyone institutionalized and or adjudicated “mentally defective” by mental health officials and judges must be forwarded to the FBI where it is entered into their massive data base known as NICS (National Instant Criminal Background System). If anyone so classified attempts to purchase a firearm, once the FFL (Federal Firearm License) holder calls and submits the individual’s name as required by law, they will be rejected. Further, as to Savage’s assertion armed law-abiding citizens are not the “answer,” approximately 2.5 million people per year employ a firearm to prevent violent criminal attack. In 98% of those cases, displaying the firearm is enough to stop the attack.6 Instead of reducing violent crime, Savage’s solution, disarming intended victims, always the first on the scene by virtue of their status as targets of criminals, would lead to even more murders and mass shootings.

Savage’s analogy between the “right” to drive and to keep and bear arms is slick sleight of hand. There is no constitutional right to drive and it is untrue that the manufacture, sale, and possession of firearms is completely unregulated, unrestricted, and unlicensed. All manner of legal restrictions, including age, legal status as a citizen, mental health, criminal record, and so forth apply to obtaining a firearm. Savage ignores the fact that each year more than 37,000 Americans are killed by other drivers in automobile accidents, essentially negligent homicide, with an additional 2.35 million injured, maimed, and crippled. Automobile accidents are the single greatest cause of death in the United States.7 Speaking as a passionate car lover and former police traffic investigator, Americans in general are careless, cavalier in attitude, irresponsible, and exert little effort to perfect driving skills. And yet once started, they and their automobiles pose a grave hazard to everyone in their path. By contrast, more than 124 million Americans own close to 300 million guns but there were only 505 deaths by gun accident in 2013 and of 2,596,993 deaths from all causes the same year, only 1% were firearm related and most were suicides.8 Comparing drivers to people who own guns makes for a very poor argument. One wonders to which constitution he refers.

The right to keep and bear arms is not subject to a utilitarian “needs” test. It’s no one’s business how many neckties, cars, horses, guns, or pairs of shoes anyone owns. People have a G_d-given right to their property and to accumulate however much of it they desire. But, for the non-gun owning public swayed by such arguments, let me ask you this; how many guns, rounds (not bullets) of ammunition, and magazines will you need when the power goes out, it’s not coming back on for a long time, and when called, the cops aren’t coming either. Remember the riots in Los Angeles (1992), Ferguson, Missouri (August 2014), and Baltimore (April 2015) and attendant looting, robbery, destruction of private property, and even assaults including murder? Where were the cops? Where was the National (sic) Guard? Natural disasters like Hurricanes Andrew (August 1992), Katrina (August 2005), and Harvey (sic) (August 2017) all resulted in attempted looting, rape, robbery, and destruction of property. Again, where were the police? In each case it was armed citizens, or lack thereof, who prevented crime or fell to predatory animals called looters.

Savage’s attempt to delegitimize semiautomatic rifles by tying them to elephant hunting is pathetic. No one hunts elephants with so-called “assault rifles,” nor a .30-06 single shot rifle. It is illegal to hunt elephants (as is the case with buffalo, Rhinos, and lions) with a caliber smaller than the .375 H&H. Most professional and experienced hunters use either the .404 Jeffrey, .416 Rigby, .416 Remington, .458 Winchester, or the .470 Nitro Express in bolt action repeating rifles.9 The point is not to argue the efficacy of one caliber compared to another but to demonstrate Savage hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. These are all strawman arguments. Savage also seems ignorant of the fact that it was the American citizen soldier; the farmer, mechanic, tradesman, shopkeeper, and laborer, trained to arms, who were the backbone of the resistance to Britain’s armies in the War of Independence possessing modern equivalents of the “assault rifles” of their time.

In Federalist Paper #28, Alexander Hamilton declared the people held an “original right of self-defense” to take up arms, resist, and defeat even their own government should it betray and usurp their liberties.10 In Federalist #29, Hamilton added the “best possible security” against a standing army was the whole body of the people, who are armed and “stand ready to defend their own rights.”11 In the Federalist Papers and writings of many other Founding Fathers it becomes clear the main purpose of an armed populace, not a military or National (sic) Guard was to serve as a bulwark against infringement of their liberties by their own government.

Savage’s claim one in five police officers is killed in the line of duty by “assault-rifles” is false. It comes, from Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California), who appeared on Face the Nation making this claim. She took this “statistic” from the Violence Policy Center, a virulently anti-2nd Amendment Leftist organization. Here’s the trick. California classifies all semiautomatic firearms, including pistols, rifles, and shotguns, as “assault-weapons” (sic) a classification rejected by the FBI. Feinstein and Savage conflate California’s broad and ambiguous “assault-weapons” category with semiautomatic rifles meaning ARs, but this is a lie. Roughly 1% of officers shot and killed in the line of duty are killed by semiautomatic rifles.12 Using lies spun by ultra-liberal Senator Feinstein and an extremist anti-2nd Amendment group? Does Savage attack conservatives so viciously, while claiming to be one himself because, well, he’s not really one after all?

More demonstrations of ignorance can be found in Savage’s claim that shotguns are complicated and complex to use. This is absurd. A shotgun is typically one of the first guns kids learn to shoot because its operation is so simple. His claim AR15 rounds will, but shotgun pellets won’t penetrate sheetrock walls is wrong to the point of being dangerous. They all will. Finally, his use of the hackneyed “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” cliché is another liberal shibboleth. Pay attention Michael; the 1st Amendment is a prohibition against government interfering with free political speech. For it to be free, one must rightly possess or control the platform from which one speaks. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is not political speech nor does its shouter own the platform from which they yell. At the least, it’s a property rights violation of the theater owner, the sole determiner of what will or will not be said on his platform. The same holds true for threats against the president. These are fallacious if not atrocious analogues.

Savage’s straw man arguments and discreditable analogies demonstrate ignorance of the fact America’s Declaration of Independence proclaimed all rights G_d-given, inalienable, and among them is life. They are off limits to a majority vote of one’s neighbors or act of government. Inherent in the right to life is the right to protect it which also presupposes the means to do so. It is an illegal and unconstitutional act by man or his governments to alter, modify, regulate, infringe upon, or in any way denature a G_d-given right. It is not possible to square calls for “reasonable gun laws,” which by their nature must violate the 2nd Amendment, with equal claims to support the 2nd Amendment.

11 Typically I employ terms like: Killer, murderer, dirt bag, scum bag, and so forth. A shooter is someone engaged in target practice and competition at the range. Never let your foes and the ignorant shape the narrative through misuse, intentional or not, of vocabulary.

22 Unless someone clearly defines what they mean by “nut,” you should not presume you share the same understanding. For example, to me the term applies to an individual clinically diagnosed as schizophrenic. A person suffering an emotional meltdown, depression, or PTSD, for example, is not necessarily insane, often far from it. Savage lumps them, including soldiers returning from war who have difficulty adjusting to civilian life with the same broad brush as the insane. Cops who have seen too great a loss of life, in tragic ways, too many times and are having trouble dealing with it, could, under Savage’s broad brush, be characterized as nuts as well. They are not.

33 Michael Savage, The Savage Nation, broadcast 6 November 2017.

44 Michael Savage, The Savage Nation, broadcast 7 November, 2017.

55 Caleb, “Fact: Armed Citizens Do Stop Mass Active Killers,” 16 June, 2016, at http://www.preparedgunowners.com.

66 Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, “Armed Resistance to Crime,” at http://scholarlcommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol186/iss1/8/1995. See also John R. Lott, Jr., More Gun’s Less Crime (Chicago, Illinois, The University of Chicago Press, 1998)

88 Atlanta Center For Disease Control at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/invsr64/nvsr64_02pdf.

99 Cameron Hopkins, “African Big Game Hunting Rifles,” American Hunter (July 9 2010).

1010 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Clinton Rossiter, Editor, The Federalist Papers (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book, New American Library, 1961), 178-181.

1111 IBID. 182-187.

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Self Defense notions from a Patriarch

So this last week the Parasha was Vayishlach. This is an exciting portion. It’s when Jacob/Yakov/Israel returns home from his exile working for his crooked uncle Laban. Yakov had fled his brother Esav’s murderous rage after Esav regretted having sold his birthright for a bowl of beans, lentils. Esav didn’t value his birthright in the least. Probably a message in there for those that would pressure Israel to give up land for peace. It never works, because like Esav, they just always want more and don’t keep their end of the bargain. So, Yakov is returning home with his wives, their handmaidens and 12 children, a passel of camels, donkeys, sheep, goats and some servants. Yakov has done well, he is a very successful shepherd. But, he is in a quandary, what will his meeting with his brother be like? Will Esav still want to kill him, or will time have mellowed him. Yakov sends angels to ascertain his intentions. Turns out Esav hasn’t changed a bit. He’s heading towards Yakov with 400 men. Yakov is way outnumbered.

Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed (Gen. 32:8)

From Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks:

The fear is understandable, but his response contains an enigma. Why the duplication of verbs? What is the difference between fear and distress? To this a Midrash gives a profound answer:

Rabbi Judah bar Ilai said: Are not fear and distress identical? The meaning, however, is that “he was afraid” that he might be killed; “he was distressed” that he might kill. For Jacob thought: If he prevails against me, will he not kill me; while if I prevail against him, will I not kill him? That is the meaning of “he was afraid” – lest he should be killed; “and distressed” – lest he should kill.

And this brings us to self-defense.

One might argue that Jacob should surely not be distressed about the possibility of killing Esau, for there is an explicit rule: “If someone comes to kill you, forestall it by killing him.” Nonetheless, Jacob did have qualms, fearing that in the course of the fight he might kill some of Esau’s men, who were not themselves intent on killing him but merely on fighting his men. And even though Esau’s men were pursuing Jacob’s men, and every person has the right to save the life of the pursued at the cost of the life of the pursuer, nonetheless there is a condition: “If the pursued could have been saved by maiming a limb of the pursuer, but instead the rescuer killed the pursuer, the rescuer is liable to capital punishment on that account.” Hence Jacob feared that, in the confusion of battle, he might kill some of Esau’s men when he might have restrained them by merely inflicting injury on them.

Self defense is very definitely a Jewish concept, but unlike his brother Esav who delights in it, Yakov will do so if required, but he wants to avoid it. The taking of a life is not something to be done lightly. So what did he do to try to prevent needless loss of life?

He had a three pronged approach. Prayer, he threw himself on G-d’s mercy, he sent lavish tribute female and male goats, sheep, donkeys, camels all with the proper proportion for the most effective breeding program. Sort of a gift that keeps on giving. But then he prepared for battle. He divided his people into camps, his thinking was that if one camp was attacked the other might escape. Then he had the children with each of their mothers. Yakov knew the four women would fight for their children, so he left the children with their mothers, then he placed himself in front of them. Esav would have to go through Yakov to get to his family.

I’ve heard the opinion that if Yakov had really trusted G-d there would have been none of this battle preparation business. He would have just gone and met his brother. I don’t agree with this opinion. I think people are people and they have plans of their own. Plans I may not appreciate or agree with. I think if their plans concern me, I want a say in how they turn out. As Esav’s plans would have included Yakov’s family, I figure he felt the same way. There are cemeteries with those that refused to believe anything bad would happen to them. I’ve heard that there were Jews in the Warsaw ghetto that refused the chance to escape because they didn’t really think the nazis wanted to annihilate them, and perhaps, because they expected a miracle. I heard Rabbi Tovia Singer say in a lecture that while the Jewish nation will always be preserved, that promise does not extend to individuals. I’ve also heard it said that when you pray for help, you usually have to do something, expend some kind of effort for him to have something to help you with. And so, Yakov had his three pronged approach, which ultimately was successful. There was no battle between brothers, only a brotherly meeting, with quite possibly temporary brotherly feelings judging from Yakov’s refusal of Esav’s offer to escort them. It’s like having a black snake to guard your chicken house from mice. Yeah….the snake may eat the mice, but more than likely it is eating the chicken eggs, and/or baby chicks. I’ll pass, and Yakov did as well.

Yakov and concealed carry holders face a moral dilemma. More from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

Moral dilemmas are situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter. The conflict may be inherently tragic. Jacob, in this parsha, finds himself trapped in such a conflict: on the one hand, he ought not allow himself to be killed; on the other, he ought not kill someone else; but he must do one or the other. The fact that one principle (self-defence) overrides another (the prohibition against killing) does not mean that, faced with such a choice, he is without qualms, especially given the fact that Esau is his twin brother. Despite their differences, they grew up together. They were kin. This intensifies the dilemma yet more. Sometimes being moral means that one experiences distress at having to make such a choice. Doing the right thing may mean that one does not feel remorse or guilt, but one still feels regret or grief about the action that needs to be taken.

Even people of great faith, realize that there is a time to “Praise the L-rd and pass the ammunition”.

There is nothing about being prepared with a gun, a concealed carry endorsement if your state requires it, that says you don’t believe that G-d can and will keep you safe. We have fire extinguishers and spare tires, right? We have generators for bad weather, and carry an umbrella. The right tool for the right time.

That I think, is one of the things about concealed carry holders that leftists, politicians and the #FakeNews (sometimes one in the same) don’t understand about “gun nuts”. We are not anxious to kill, we don’t want to do that. What we do want is for us and our families to be safe.

Heat seeking bullets, who knew? Did BassPro have these listed in the Black Friday flier?

Self defense is not a spur of the minute deal. We put thought into what gun, training tactics, classes and tests to be able to live as free citizens. Just like Yakov had his three pronged approach for meeting Esav, we too plan our defenses.

These mixed feelings were born thousands of years earlier, when Jacob, father of the Jewish people, experienced not only the physical fear of defeat but the moral distress of victory. Only those who are capable of feeling both, can defend their bodies without endangering their souls.

Because like Yakov facing Esav, there can be bigger, stronger, mightier evil that hates us.

Elected Moonbat Swalwell
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Nuke us till we glow, and shoot us in the dark?

With the Democrats winning a House majority, we have been warned to expect a lot of gun control laws, with firearms bans topping their evil wishlist. Back in May, the psychotic Rep. Swalwell [D-CA] penned an op-ed, giving us a heads-up on their intent.

Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.

My response at the time was an email asking how he planned to enforce his totalitarian wetdream. He declined to explain.

Now we know. While Alison Airies was satisfied with stop & frisk, followed up with summary public execution, Swalwell is willing to go a bit farther.

For some reason, that May column started making the rounds again, folks apparently thinking it was published last week.

Joe Briggs tweeted an observation regarding the consequences of the ban.

So basically @RepSwalwell wants a war. Because that’s what you would get. You’re outta your fucking mind if you think I’ll give up my rights and give the gov all the power.

Swalwell, war criminal-in-waiting, explained how he would manage it.

And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities.

By Friday afternoon, the nutjob was backtracking.

Joe, it’s sarcasm. He said he’s going to war with America if gun legislation was passed. I told him his government has nukes. God forbid we use sarcasm

No; Briggs said Swalwell’s attempt to massively violate the human/civil rights of tens of millions of Americans would spark a war, one started by the government. Which it would. Swalwell replied with the threat of overwhelming military force against civilians, demonstrating another bit of profound ignorance about other laws he’d have to change.

Sarcasm would be something along the lines of, “Well gee; everyone knows all the evil gun owners will meekly surrender their expensive property to the police state, so force won’t required.” Or, as he tweeted later:

But you seem like a reasonable person. If an assault weapons ban happens, I’m sure you’ll follow law.

That’s sarcasm. The threat of military force was not sarcasm. That was an explicit threat against innocent civilians.

Swalwell is unhinged. He is mentally ill. He has posted a threat more serious than those incriminating social media posts of recent mass shooters. He should be removed from office, and involuntarily committed as a danger to others.

It’s worth noting that this nuke-threatening politician is considering a Presidential run in 2020, potentially giving him access to the nuclear football.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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Poll: Would military personnel deploy nuclear weapons?

By now, I hope you are aware of threats by California Democrat Rep. Swalwell to use nuclear weapons to enforce gun control laws (newsletter subscribers will get an early look at a detail column on the subject; others will wait until Tuesday).

He’s trying to walk back the threat as sarcasm (it wasn’t) or hyperbole to demonstrate that the government has gun owners out-gunned.

Nonetheless, he is working on the assumption that military personnel will be willing to — illegally — exercise overwhelming military force, including Weapons of Mass Destruction, against American civilians to enforce gun control laws.

A couple of decades ago, military personnel were surveyed on a similar issue; the infamous Twenty-Nine Palms Combat Arms Survey. The results were very disturbing.

Swalwell has now upped the ante by suggesting that military personnel would go so far as to conduct nuclear weapon strikes against Americans for the sake of gun control.

I would like to limit this poll to current military personnel and veterans. I suggest reviewing the Posse Comitatus Act before taking the poll.

Please share this poll, to reach as many people as possible. If limited to regular TZP readers, I expect I’ll see a strong bias in responses.

The Question: “The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale, transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms (“assault weapons”). A thirty (30) day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to the local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms. Consider the following statement: I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government.”

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Savage Ignorance Part 1

Beretta92FS
1911A1
Glock 19 Gen 4

Recently I had occasion to patronize several commercial establishments including an apartment complex. Displayed on the glass entry door of each was the international symbol for “No,” a red circle bisected by a diagonal line. Centered in each was a handgun; Beretta 92FS in the first, 1911A1, possibly a Colt, in the second, and a Glock 19, Gen 4 in the third. I thought; thank G-d for Smith & Wesson. Why do those responsible for malls, schools, stores, apartments, and venues open to the public believe posting these stickers deters those bent on violent behavior? Criminals, by behavior and definition, exist outside the law and if legal prohibitions against them possessing firearms provide no dissuasion, a decal surely won’t. Instead they disarm the law-abiding, the only ones already on the scene capable of halting violent crime and mass shootings.

Webster’s Dictionary (a virginal source of information for today’s public school students) define Straw Man as: “a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up to be easily confuted (overwhelm in argument, refute conclusively).”1 Talk show host and baron of bombast Michael Savage knows something about Strawmen. Recently he launched a series of attacks on the 2nd Amendment, specifically semiautomatic rifles as well as their owners. His wild assertions were an army of scarecrows so stuffed with combustible straw, one dared draw nigh with matches at his own risk. When anyone says; “I own guns” or “I’m a big supporter of the 2nd Amendment” followed by a “but,” they don’t. They’re lying. It’s a trick to seize the intellectual and moral high ground thereby casting those in disagreement as extremists. Savage case in point. He began each show declaring support for the 2nd Amendment followed by an angry frothing at the mouth denunciation of firearms owners and notions of self-defense. In so doing, he promoted arguments undercutting the very amendment he purports to defend. Hay crammed in his Strawmen must have been plucked from the field of contradiction.

Savage’s first broadside came the day after the Las Vegas, Nevada Mandalay Bay Hotel mass shooting. He said he was a gun owner, big supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and to have given a “fortune” to the NRA apparently believing by brandishing such credentials he was immunized against critique. Savage asked if Americans should be able (allowed) to own “military grade weapons” and “assault rifles,” terms left undefined. He asked; should a man in therapy and on medication for mental problems be allowed to own a gun? If concealed carry was legal, how could armed citizens have stopped the killer’s rampage Savage demanded to know. In mocking tones he added; “Gun-slingers will say that. No matter what you hold in your pocket, you couldn’t have defended yourself. Fallacious argument. All you John Wayne’s with concealed carry on your mind, put it aside. You’d have gone down like ten pins.” He asked why anyone “needed” an “automatic weapon” declaring there needs to be “limits.” Should people be “allowed” to own a Howitzer, Russian tank, or bazooka? No one “needs” a semiautomatic rifle to defend their house, Savage continued, saying a shotgun was much better in that role. “The whole idea you’re going to get a semiautomatic rifle to hold off an army, come on. Stop the BS. If someone breaks into your house all you’ll have time to grab in the dark is a shotgun and an automatic pistol, not a semiautomatic rifle. Unless you keep a semiautomatic weapon fully loaded, and in your bedroom, it’s not going to do you any good. And if you do keep one, you’re crazy. If you keep a semiautomatic rifle next to your bed cocked and locked and ready to fire, you’re a sicko.” He then mocked Mandalay survivors who said they were no longer atheists. Next he attacked unnamed conservative talk-show radio hosts who, after Mandalay Bay, still opposed new gun control laws and regulations, yelling into the microphone; “You bunch of John Wayne’s!” He accused them of calling people like him, now supporting stricter new gun control laws; “lousy communist Progressives” adding in sneering tones; “No one wants to seize your guns otherwise it would have happened during the Obama years.” He asked how the killer had obtained “machine guns” because “they’re illegal” reminding listeners he wasn’t new to the gun control debate and had been on his high school rifle team. He asked if every psycho in the nation should own machine guns. “Did you know machine guns are legal in Nevada?” Savage continued. “But of course, fully automatic rifles are illegal.” What? Come again. Continuing in mocking tones, he asked who “needed” a fifty round drum magazine. “They should be illegal!” He shouted. “I argued this before. When I asked callers why they ‘needed’ one, they said to hold off the U.S. government which is against the private ownership of firearms.”2

Savage continued his assault on the 2nd Amendment the following day floating hysterical conspiracy theories attacking the Las Vegas Police for taking too long to assault the killer’s hotel room. Once again he reminded listeners he was a gun owner, “passed all the tests,” and gave money to the NRA therefore his calls for new gun bans had to be reasonable. Again he asked if the right to keep and bear arms included hand grenades, bazookas, used Russian tanks, and half-tracks asking; “Should there be limits on the right to keep and bear arms? What do you mean saying the 2nd Amendment ‘permits’ you to have any number of machine guns? Does this mean you can own two hundred machine guns, that every man should be able to have an arsenal in his basement? I can see having weapons to defend yourself but does that mean an entire arsenal? Why not RPGs and flame throwers? I don’t think the 2nd Amendment goes far enough” he continued in sarcastic tones. “I think we should be allowed to have flame throwers for that evil government that may arise any moment now. We should be able to have flame throwers.” During Savage’s shows, he insisted on calling magazines “clips” and using the terms semi and fully automatic rifles interchangeably.3 He entertained, as experts, numerous callers claiming because they had been in Vietnam, they knew precisely what weapons the suspect used (opinions subsequently contradicted by the FBI). Many voices sounded too tender to have been alive let alone old enough to have served in Vietnam. Once again he labeled anyone holding contrary views as “John Wayne’s” and “right- wingers” promising to hang up on them if they called his show. Savage concluded by attacking the Las Vegas Police, again, and blaming mass shootings on prescription drugs and the “proliferation of guns.”4

Savage’s claims and Straw Man arguments are wrong on so many levels, space and sufficient matches probably don’t exist to address them all. His oft repeated claim to be a firearms authority, supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and NRA backer is artifice, a trick as noted, to prevent debate to the contrary.

As to the efficacy of concealed firearms with respect to the Mandalay massacre, handguns are designed for self-defense at personal distances not against someone shooting rifles from the 32nd floor of a hotel window hundreds of yards away. Savage’s attempt to undermine concealed carry by judging its validity against situations for which it was never intended is a fallacious straw man argument a practice he accuses critics of employing. Does he really know what he’s talking about?

Doctors don’t use the terms bacterial and viral infection interchangeably. Weight lifters know the difference between dumb and barbells. Authorities on any subject use proper terminology. Improper use exposes pretenders, poseurs, and frauds. For example, in Stephen King’s novel Salem’s Lot, his policeman character checks his .38 special revolver to ensure the “safety is on.”5 A kid in his novel IT, warns another kid to be careful with his dad’s pistol, a Walther PPK, because it has “no safety.”6 In the movie The Fast And The Furious, Vin Diesel’s character Dominic Torretto tells Paul Walker that his dad’s 1970 Dodge Charger’s engine had so much torque, it twisted the “chassis” coming off the line.7 As a Deputy Sheriff and later policeman in the 1970s and 80’s, I carried and or shot Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Colt revolvers in .38 special and .357 magnum. None, nor those on revolvers of colleagues, had a “safety.” I’ve also shot a variety of PPKs from Walther and Manurhin and their clones from FEG to Bersa and each had de-cocker safeties. Except for the Imperial (1965), Chrysler abandoned the chassis in favor of a uni-body frame, (1960-1961), which my 68’ Charger has, exposing The Fast And The Furious’s writers to be automotive ignoramuses. In like fashion, Savage insisted on referring to drums and other magazines feeding semiautomatic pistols and rifles as “clips” and conflated “assault weapons, assault rifle, semiautomatic rifle,” and “machine gun” as interchangeable terms, one and the same over and over.

A “clip” holds individual cartridges, “has no spring and does not feed shells directly into the chamber. Clips hold cartridges in the correct sequence for ‘charging’ a specific firearm’s [fixed] magazine.”8 A magazine holds rounds in a box, separate from the firearm for the weapons under discussion. Examples of clip “fed” firearms would include the Russian Mosin-Nagant 91/30 and American M1 Garand of W.W. II fame as well as the postwar Soviet SKS. Cold War weapons like the Soviet AK-47, U.S. M14, and later M16, are magazine fed. No such category of “assault weapon” exists for firearms. Any object that can be used to hurt another; flyswatter, umbrella, coat-hanger, or kitchen counter hardened wedge of cornbread is an assault weapon. The term “assault-weapon” was invented by liberals to frighten non-gun owners into believing your AR15 is identical to an M16 and that AKs and Mini-14s are full-automatic machine guns. Repeat after me; “The other side lies.” Editor of Jane’s Military Publications and firearms expert Charlie Cutshaw writes there are firearms categorized as “assault-rifles” but to be so classified they must be “shoulder-fired,” capable of fully automatic fire,” and chambered in a caliber intermediate “between pistol (or revolver) and rifle ammunition.”9 Some have a device allowing operators to switch from semiautomatic to full-automatic fire and back again. Commercial AK47s, AR15s, Mini-14s, and similar families of rifles don’t have this capability. Their triggers must be pulled, one at a time, for each round fired hence they are not “assault rifles” but “semiautomatic rifles” and “carbines.” “Machine guns” are typically heavy and tripod mounted, with hand held versions called “submachine guns,” and are capable of full automatic fire, emptying a magazine with a single pull of the trigger.10 Consistent misuse of terminology indicates Savage is grossly ignorant and misinformed, flagrantly dishonest, or both. He has no credibility.

No one wants to take your guns is the mantra of people, who, in the same breath, call for “assault weapons” (sic) and “high-capacity” (sic) bans. Time and again Liberals from anti-2nd Amendment organizations to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have said no one wants to take your guns and then promote Australian gun control which did just that. They are either stupid or brilliantly cunning. Perhaps dangerously naïve, I have never called liberals stupid because they’re not. Recall that U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake essentially resurrected the “sporting purpose” standard in upholding Maryland’s ban on AK and AR rifles mislabeling them “assault rifles” asserting they are not commonly used for lawful purposes including home defense.11 Liberals claiming; no one wants to confiscate guns, followed by proposals to ban AR, AK, and similar rifles, sounds contradictory until one understands their two pronged “trick”; the first is how they define “gun.”12 Confiscationists define “gun” in general as a firearm possessing a long established sporting purpose commonly used for hunting, trap and skeet shooting, and target competition at ranges and with no military analogue.13 This would exclude ARs, AKs, FN-FALs, and so forth. The second part of their trick is to convince the non-gun owning pubic there is no difference between full and semiautomatic firearms. Obama and others said time and again, AR15s, AKs, their derivatives, and similar rifles are military weapons that belong on battlefields, not our streets. It would not be confiscation, they argue, to return military weapons in civilian hands back to the U.S. Military where they belong.14 The only way to do this is through a ban on “civilian” possession of semiautomatic rifles and confiscate them as did Australia and England, and incrementally in California. How can Savage, living in Marin County, California, one of the most liberally infected in the galaxy, deny confiscation is not the liberal’s end game? He lies.

Like Judge Blake, Savage’s claim no one uses and no “cop” would recommend using an AR15 for home defense because they are such a poor choice, is pure buffoonery from one who has lived for too many years behind the Bay Area’s Tofu Curtain.15 Breathlessly, about to reveal a secret, Savage said his listeners, had never heard or been “told this” but one of the reasons AR15s are such poor choices is because the .223 round goes through walls. Shotguns and pistols are better because their rounds don’t. On the contrary, “More Americans than ever are relying on AR15s for home defense. Not only is an AR easier to shoot more accurately than a handgun—thanks to its additional points of contact with the body (cheek weld, shoulder mount, and two hands)—[and longer sight radius]—on AR rifles chambered in .223/Rem/5.56 NATO, produces superior terminal performance, and penetrates less when compared to the typical handgun.”16 An AR is harder to grab in the dark than a pistol or shotgun, Michael? Why is that? People have been attaching optics and lights to ARs for decades. A cocked and locked rifle makes one a “psycho” Michael?17 Employing his unloaded pistols and shotguns without lights against intruders beggars the question as to whose sanity should be in question. His rhetorical cant; “who needs” this or that firearm or “high capacity clips” and that the 2nd Amendment doesn’t allow possession of bazookas, hand grenades, and Russian tanks is a fallacious Straw Man argument to set the stage for infringements against the 2nd Amendment.

Savage is ignorant of or intentionally misrepresents the 2nd Amendment’s meaning. It grants no rights including to own anything. Rather, it recognizes an individual right to self-defense, to keep and bear arms, and establishes prohibitions against any government infringement on this right. The Declaration of Independence establishes it as a G-d-given right belonging to every individual inherent in their humanity whether government exists or not. It is inalienable and off-limits to a majority vote by one’s neighbors, act of government, or fashionable whim of the times. Rights cannot be modified, regulated, licensed, or infringed upon by government otherwise they would be called privileges.18 Inherent in the right of self-defense is the means by which one exercises it. To answer Savage’s “need” question, rights are not dependent upon a utilitarian need standard which, at best, is arbitrary, subject to popular opinion, or manipulated and controlled by those in power. Were this not so, government could raise the bar to demonstrate “need” so high, it becomes insurmountable thus rendering the right de facto abolished. Employing Savage’s Straw Manneed” standard to firearms ownership would subordinate it to ephemeral notions of “the common good, the good of the whole,” or “the greater good.”19 How long before it became extinguished? Ask Britons. By suggesting the 2nd Amendment regulates bazookas, half-tracks, Russian tanks, and grenades, therefore rifles can be regulated as well, is hay falling from massive gaps in Savage’s last Straw Man. Matches please.

Half-tracks and used Russian tanks are not firearms hence are regulated by other laws not the 2nd Amendment which applies to weapons citizen soldiers would keep and bear. Bazookas were the technological equivalent of shoulder fired canons, used against tanks, and grenades are sort of like exploding cannon balls. None of these are proper analogues to firearms. These are fallacious and false arguments employed by the deceitful to trick the unwary into surrendering bits and pieces of their 2nd Amendment rights until all of them are gone. This explains why Savage banned calls from those who knew what they were talking about in favor of kooks, conspiratorialists, the deluded, and poseurs.

11 Frederick C. Mish, Editor-in-Chief, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Massachusetts, Merriam-Webster, Inc., Publishers, 1985), 1165, 276.

22 Michael Savage, The Savage Nation, broadcast 2 October, 2017.

33 IBID. 2 October, 2017.

44 Michael Savage, The Savage Nation, broadcast 4, 5, and 6 October, 2017.

55 Stephen King, Salem’s Lot (New York, N.Y., A Signet Book, New American Library, 1975), 317.

66 Stephen King, It (New York, N.Y., A Signet Book, New American Library, 1986), 353. With eleven years between publication, King still couldn’t get it right.

77 Universal Studios, The Fast And The Furious, 2001.

88 Kyle Wintersteen, “9 Most Misused Gun Terms,” Guns & Ammo, online, 21 November 2016 at http://www.gunsandammo.com.

99 Todd Woodward, “Down Range: Assault Weapons ‘Hoo-Hah,” Gun Tests 11 (November 2004) 2.

1010 U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, at http://www.aft.gov/firearms.

1111 Jeff Knox, “Judge Says Maryland Ugly Gun Ban is Ok,” 13 August 2014, at http://www.FirearmsCoalition.org. See also; Michael Dorstewitz, “Judge Rules AR-15s are not covered under Constitution and are dangerous and unusual,” Liberty Unyielding at http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/08/13/judge-rules-ar-15s-not-covered-constitution-dangerous-unusual/#XErDCz10jgxiDG81.99.

1313 Richard Stevens, “Nazi Strategy Summed Up In 2 Words, Sporting Purpose,” 7 April, 1988, Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, at http://jpfo.org/filegen/-n-z-/nazirot.htm.

1515 I should know, I lived there for ten years.

1616 Richard Nance, “Your AR15 ASAP: Hornady’s Rapid Safe Wall Lock and Gunlock Provide a Safe Storage Solution for Quick Access in the Home,” Guns & Ammo 10 (October 2017), 76.

1717 Expanding what constitutes “mental illness” and “mental instability” is very popular on the Left who will use such determinations to expand individuals prohibited from owning firearms. Can thought-crimes be far behind?

1818 Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, Publishers, Inc., 2005), 3-6. See also; Gary T. Amos, Defending the Declaration (Brentwood, Tennessee, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989), 127-129.

1919 Jeff Snyder, A Nation of Cowards (St. Louis, Missouri, Accurate Press, 2001), 119-121.

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Signs of Hope

I get a weekly newsletter from Rabbi Johnathan Sacks called Covenant and Conversation, this week’s edition is about The Courage of Persistence. It’s always about the Parashat for the week. This week is Toldot. In this newsletter he talks about anti-semitic attacks in the Parashat. When the Philistines filled in the wells of Avraham for example. But a lot of it talks about the dichotomy of antisemitism.

As he points out in Amy Chau’s book World on Fire

Her thesis is that any conspicuously successful minority will attract envy that may deepen into hate and provoke violence. All three conditions are essential. The hated group must be conspicuous, for otherwise it would not be singled out. It must be successful, for otherwise it would not be envied. And it must be a minority, for otherwise it would not be attacked.

He further points out: Hostility to Jews becomes dangerous, she argued, not when Jews are strong, but when they are weak. This is along the lines of what Moshe Feiglin said in his column after the Synagogue shooting in Squirrel Hill.

But there is something more, deeper than the economic factor, which makes us partially responsible for what happened in Pittsburgh. Jewish history is being written today in the Land of Israel. It is clear to all of us that anti-Israel sentiments are the new expression of Anti-Semitism. When Israel is sure of itself, strikes its enemies as it did in the Six Day War, eliminates the hijackers as in Entebbe – the level of anti-Semitism decreases!!! And when Israel displays lack of self-assurance, temporariness, moral flaccidity – a feeling that we are not really on the map, that we are nothing more than colonialists acting only for the sake of self-defense, begging the Hamas for a cease-fire – then our enemies feel that they are just and anti-Semitism flourishes.

Rabbi Sacks continues on,

Antisemitism is a complex, protean phenomenon because antisemites must be able to hold together two beliefs that seem to contradict one another: Jews are so powerful that they should be feared, and at the same time so powerless that they can be attacked without fear.

It would seem that no one could be so irrational as to believe both of these things simultaneously. But emotions are not rational, despite the fact that they are often rationalised, for there is a world of difference between rationality and rationalisation (the attempt to give rational justification for irrational beliefs).

So, for example, in the twenty-first century we can find that (a) Western media are almost universally hostile to Israel, and (b) otherwise intelligent people claim that the media are controlled by Jews who support Israel: the same inner contradiction of perceived powerlessness and ascribed power.

He shows another way that the current situation in Gaza where the peaceful Falestinians so love the land of Israel and long to return to it that they are bombing, setting fire and trying to destroy it.

There is a second aspect of our passage that has had reverberations through the centuries: the self-destructive nature of hate. The Philistines did not ask Isaac to share his water with them. They did not ask him to teach them how he (and his father) had discovered a source of water that they – residents of the place – had not. They did not even simply ask him to move on. They “stopped up” the wells, “filling them with earth.” This act harmed them more than it harmed Isaac. It robbed them of a resource that would, in any case, have become theirs, once the famine had ended and Isaac had returned home.

But in the wake of the shooting at Squirrel Hill, I’ve been hopeful. Why? Because some are beginning to see that self-defense, and defense of others is necessary and right.

As Dave Kopel points out in his excellent paper on The Torah And Self-Defense

This last sentence is sometimes translated as “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

This final sentence does not delegate discretion; it is a positive command. A Jew has a duty to use deadly force to defend herself against murderous attack.

Emphasis mine. It is our duty and a positive mitzvah to defend ourselves!

Returning to something in Rabbi Sack’s newsletter, “Jews are so powerful that they should be feared, and at the same time so powerless that they can be attacked without fear.”

Ahh, but these times they are a changing.

Fighting fire with fire – Jews train to stop repeat of Pittsburgh shooting

 

Jewish Gun Advocate: ‘Learn to Shoot or Get Out of the Way of Those Who Do’

 

This Jewish Boy Is Going to Buy a Gun

 

Colorado gun shop owner offers rabbis free weapons

 

‘When This Happens, You Get a Wake-up Call’: U.S. Jews Turn to Firearms Training After Pittsburgh Shooting

I can’t believe Haaretz actually ran this column!! They are pretty much the Israeli NY Slimes and therefore also #FakeNews.

After Pittsburgh attack, course offers gun training against shooters in synagogues

 

Then there is CAMP JABOTINSKY, they seem to have been around awhile. Just an FYI, my baby Shimshon’s middle name is Zev, after Zev Jabotinsky. It’s fitting, it means “Wolf”.

 

Rabbis offered free AR-15 rifles by Colorado gun shop. Four claimed them, owner says

This made me a little sad, as did this comment at the end of the article.

“I think he absolutely is generous in what he wants to do,” Ader said. “I think he wants to help and is very well intentioned. It just isn’t for us.”

Arming people, Ader told the TV station, “is a preventative measure, it is not part of the solution at all. The solution is civil discourse.”

I absolutely know he is entitled to his own opinion, but I don’t think he realizes yet that there are people out there that want to kill you, your congregation and there is not one thing civil or un that you are going to say to them to have a dialogue.

Some in Jewish Community Advocate Bearing Arms After Pittsburgh

Ahh, yes. These times they are a changing. It doesn’t matter how you want to dress that pig up.

Anti-Zionism IS Anti-Semitism

 

 

 

 

 

It’s still anti-semitism, it goes way back, it is unreasoning and it’s lethal. It is also much, much harder to implement if the target of your irrational hatred is armed and realizes they have a duty to protect themselves, their families and their community.

A friend of mine asked me after the shooting, “Why didn’t someone shoot the man? Why didn’t they stop him”? I pointed out I didn’t know the gun laws in Pittsburgh, but I rather suspected that being big city on the east coast perhaps they have pretty strict gun control and they had been legislated out of their right to self-defense, and therefore, their right to live. This is what happens when you elect big government, people controlling leftists.

Perhaps the new members of the Second Amendment community will begin to understand a big part of the Second Amendment is fighting to keep it because there are most certainly those that prefer an unarmed populace.

Should I mention the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht is tonight?

 

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GA Gov-candidate Stacey Abrams: Ban Everything!

I wish I’d seen this yesterday.

Democrat Stacey Abrams: Banning Guns No Different Than Banning Radar Detectors
The host asked if she was really going to take away people’s guns, and Abrams responded by comparing bans on radar detectors with bans on commonly owned semiautomatic firearms.

She said, “I support a law that will ban ‘assault weapons.’ And just as when we banned radar detection, for example, some people turned in their devices, some people kept them and just refused to use them anymore.”

My perennial question: Do victim-disarming gun people controllers really believe the stupid claims they make, or do they just hope their potential voters are that stupid?

With Abrams, it’s really hard to tell, and probably a mix of her disdain for her constituents and her own demonstrated stupidity. I figure she is pretty representative of Georgia Democrats who “redacted” email addresses (from incriminating voter registration hacking emails by deleting the addresses…

… and leaving the redaction brackets linked to the email addresses.

Note to any GA Dem site visitors, particularly Abrams voters: Radar detectors are legal in passenger vehicles in every state except Virginia. And they aren’t “banned” there; it’s just a fine for having one in your car.


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GA Gov-hopeful Stacey Abrams: A weapon of mass stupidity

Stacey Abrams is a Democrat running for governor in Georgia. She’s running on a platform of mass violation of human/civil rights.

Democrat Stacey Abrams: AR-15s Are ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,’ Must Be Banned
Abrams said she is not “anti-gun,” then listed numerous gun controls, including an all-out ban on commonly owned semiautomatic firearms.

Without noting how she would manage that.

She then described AR-15s as “weapons of mass destruction” and made clear her position that they should be banned from civilian ownership:

This is what I came to expect from victim disarmers a long, long time ago. She is too stupid to realize that “weapons of mass destruction” are actually a thing. And semiautomatic rifles aren’t WMD.

Let’s say she manages to pass a ban on AR-pattern rifles. How will she implement it? How is she going to bell that cat will Abrams lead the stack on confiscation raids, or leave your cops to die for your megalomaniacal dream?

Maybe Abrams simply thinks (hope? dream?) Georgians will be more compliant than Californians, New Yorkers, Connecticut(ians?). Heck, Vermont couldn’t get folks to turn in more than two bump-fire stocks in the entire state.

Does she really think Georgians will go along?

Oh. And Abrams, I realize that if you can’t tell the difference between semiauto rifles and nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, more subtle things probably are well beyond your mental reach. So I’ll tell you a not-so-secret: stalkers and domestic abusers are already prohibited from firearms ownership.

See? Your job is done. Drop out of the race and go home.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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ZAKA is on the scene

זקא‎ is the abbreviation for Zihuy Korbanot Ason. זיהוי קרבנות אסון, literally: “Disaster Victim Identification”

And I’m very tired and sad to hear it, yet again. For those that don’t know, ZAKA is a volunteer group that comes to the scene of a terrorist attack or a car crash or any such tragedy and gathers the body parts, pieces and blood of the Jewish victims so that they may be buried in accordance with Halakha, Jewish law. They also help with search and rescue, but I think they are best known for working with law enforcement and EMS (Emergency Medical Services) units to ensure that the necessary things are done. ZAKA volunteers prefer the work be called חסד של אמת – “Grace of truth” because the kindness they are showing the dead can not be returned by them. I would translate it as “kindness of truth” myself.

And ZAKA was on the scene in Pittsburgh.

ZAKA was on the scene because a Bucket of Chum entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday and opened fire during a Shabbat service. Eleven people lay dead. An elderly Holocaust survivor survived a maniac yelling all Jews must die by being late to the service.

‘It just never ends. It’s never completely safe for Jews. It’s in the DNA. Not just America’s DNA but the world’s.’

He’s right it doesn’t. And with that in mind, doing what we’ve been doing isn’t getting us anywhere.

I’m not really sure why anyone is surprised at the attack. The signs have been there for ages, I know TZP has certainly covered them. But there is a problem, it’s like taking your modern college snowflake leftist out to the woods and dropping them off in the middle of the woods with their $tarbuck$ double non-fat soy whatever and telling them there is a 300 pound grizzly bear in the woods, track it, or avoid it. Read the signs and you’ll be fine.

The snowflake doesn’t think it needs to read signs, it will be non-threatening to the grizzly and just drink it’s latte and it will all be fine. Yeah? Ignore some signs at your own peril. That’s not how life works, it can be how death works though.

Following the attacks what did we hear from the left, both Jewish and Goyim (the standard Hebrew biblical term for a nation)? Mostly what we heard was condemnation of President Trump, the anti-Semite, for the people on the right as “haters”, climate of hate, etc, etc.

I’m far from the only one who is appalled. Caroline Glick Left-Wing Jews Blaming Trump Are Dishonoring the Dead

Glick noted the prevalence of anti-Zionism on the left and within the Democrat Party. Marlow said, “[There is] a mainstreaming of anti-Zionism in the Democratic Party.”

“There is a huge problem with the empowerment of anti-Semites,” said Glick. “You have several Democratic nominees for Congress who are running on openly anti-Zionists platforms. Anti-Zionism is out-and-out anti-Semitism. It calls for the annihilation of the largest Jewish community on Earth, in Israel. … [Trump] is the most supportive president Israel has ever had, [and] they’re calling him an anti-Semite?”

Glick added, “There’s an insanity that’s infected the discourse inside of the Jewish community that doesn’t allow people to understand what the real threats are. Rather than deal with that, these radicals are making up stories. It does no service to the Jewish community in the United States to not pay attention [and] focus on actual anti-Semites who are actually involved in harming the position of Jews in American society, either politically or physically.”

….

Glick added, “A lot of people on the left in the Jewish community who are not seeing their interests because they’re blinded by ideology. Obviously, when you have congregants in a synagogue that are armed and capable of defending themselves and their fellow worshipers, you’re much safer than you would be with an alarm system or anything else in the face of somebody coming in and trying to massacre you.”

Glick observed, “People in general, in Israel, are better armed [than in America]. We have armed guards outside of every school. … It’s not considered to be a big deal. … This is just common sense.”

Glick concluded, “If you’re under threat, then you have to protect yourself. … It’s about life and death, and when you just concentrate on the fundamentals of the value of life and preserving the most precious thing in the world which is human life, then you come up with pragmatic ways of protecting it.”

Don’t Insult Me As a Rabbi by Blaming Your Political Enemies for Some Dirtbag Jew-Hater Rabbi Dov Fischer, you should really read the whole column.

So I respond: Don’t you dare insult me as a rabbi by blaming your perceived political enemies for some dirtbag Jew-hater. This President could not be a better friend of Jewish concerns and causes. He supports Israel and moved America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem. His daughter and son-in-law are Orthodox Jews, and he treats them lovingly and respectfully, as he does their Orthodox Jewish children, his grandchildren. He ended Obama’s vicious anti-Israel animus, and he has supported Israel strongly in the United Nations. No wonder that Jews throughout the world love him, support him. In Israel, among Israeli Jews, he is wildly popular with a 67% approval rating. They hated Obama — and for great reason.

Some have become so caught up in the media lies and propaganda they can no longer see the truth of who is their enemy and who is their friend. They call what is good bad, and what is bad, good. The left wing of Judaism appears to me, to be more concerned with the worship of liberalism than Torah. Well, what do you call it when Jews daven Kaddish for the arabs that tried to infiltrate Israel from Gaza with the openly expressed purpose of ripping Jewish hearts from their chests? When they burn the land and shoot rockets into schools and homes? When they openly state they want to kill the Jews, and Jews in the diaspora daven Kaddish.

Synagogue shooter hated Donald Trump and shows what real hatred, anti-Semitism looks like

Donald Trump is often blamed by the media as inspiring attacks and violence, but he is not anti-Semitic. The synagogue shooter shows what hate is.

Dr. Tsvi Sadan points out Pittsburgh Massacre is Splitting the Jewish World this is not a long column, and well worth reading.

Jewish lives need to matter to Jews everywhere. Moshe Feiglin did a column on the massacre in Squirrel Hill.

But there is something more, deeper than the economic factor, which makes us partially responsible for what happened in Pittsburgh. Jewish history is being written today in the Land of Israel. It is clear to all of us that anti-Israel sentiments are the new expression of Anti-Semitism. When Israel is sure of itself, strikes its enemies as it did in the Six Day War, eliminates the hijackers as in Entebbe – the level of anti-Semitism decreases!!! And when Israel displays lack of self-assurance, temporariness, moral flaccidity – a feeling that we are not really on the map, that we are nothing more than colonialists acting only for the sake of self-defense, begging the Hamas for  a cease-fire – then our enemies feel that they are just and anti-Semitism flourishes.

At a political event in Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn asked for a moment of silence for the victims. That lasted a few seconds when leftists interrupted heckling the Representative. Wow.

The world is not worried about Jews being attacked, and the left is not our friend, and has not been for a long time. These are a couple of the observations that showed up on a Zehut list I’m fortunate enough to belong to.

Whatever happens to Israel happens to the rest of the world! A world that insists Israel not fight back, that insists Israel make peace with murderous infiltrators who came across our borders as economic immigrants who slaughter us at will at our Shabbat tables and our infants in our cribs. Who curse us with the worst kind of racist invective if we don’t allow violent, Jew hating infiltrators into our communities. What happens to us will happen to you– mida kneged mida. I’m not hating I’m explaining how justice works. This is not just aimed at Pennsylvania. This is aimed at the world. What happens here will happen there. Just ask Germany, France and the UK. Remember Genesis 12:3..Those who bless Israel are blessed, and those who curse Israel are cursed. If only you feared G*d you’d know it’s true.

And

My wife was pointing out how silent social media has been since yesterday’s attack. No viral hashtags of solidarity. No “je suis juif”. No black armbands worn by team athletes in national leagues (which they wear for the smallest of thing, find an excuse almost weekly). But spilled Jewish blood is not worthy of sympathy. It’s not notesworthy, and it’s to be expected. I’m sure there’s millions of people that, underneath their mask of politically correct niceties are pretty happy about this. What I keep wondering is: if I had lived in Austria in the early 30s, and had known what was coming, what kind of a life would I live? What choices would I make for myself and my family? This is a sobering moment. Jews have always been and will always be alone. We may buy our way to the top of the pyramid in gentile society (like Yosef also did) but sooner or later the weight of the entire pyramid is unleashed against us. Jews are the one single “other” capable to unite in hatred Islamic Jihadists, crazy SJWs and white supremacists.

The signs of danger are not what the media and those on the left say they are. The signs of growing anti-Semitism are the plethora of BDS and Free Falestine groups that abound on college campuses. They are professors refusing to write letters of recommendation for students that want to study in Israel, and they get by with it more than once. They are the embracing of Farafreak who compares Jews to termites with no denouncement. What? The View went full out nuts over that statement? No. They are the constant attacks on Israel in the U.N. The signs may be called “Anti-Zionism” or “Anti-Israel” as they call the only democratic state in the middle east an “apartheid” state, but it is anti-Semitism and that’s all it is. The same dirty thing recycled with a new brand label. It’s Jew hatred, period.

Below is a list of columns I’ve done for TZP and a general idea of what they dealt with.

Enough Only Mourning—The death of the most wonderful Ari Fuld

LETS GO FLY A KITE—blame Israel

BUT HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN—The history of gun control and Judaism

The Double Edged Standard Sword—hypocrisy, the BS- BDS

#Neve Tzuf Halamish— The slaughter of the Solomon family in their home as they celebrated Shabbat and a new baby.

Hate in America—the SPLC which spreads disinformation and lies.

The Disconnect—Disgraced Harvey Weinstein called on Jews to be disarmed for things like a Synagogue attack.

Tisha B’Av. From Within—Liberal vs Judaism

We’ve been showing the warning signs for what they are. As I said, I’m not really all that surprised. People may not think President Trump condemned it in a way to suit them, but radio host Mark Levin called it the strongest condemnation of anti-Semitism by any president, ever.

So, what’s the answer? Bear dealt with this beautifully. I want to go a little further down the trail though.

I have never made any secret of the fact I greatly admire Judah Maccabee, and from the book of The Maccabees

Ch. 2 ; Ver. 39-49 ^ First Book

Victory of Now when Mattathias and his friends understood hereof, they mourned for them right sore. And one Mattathias of them said to another, If we all do as our brethren have done, and fight not for our lives and laws against the heathen, they will now quickly root us out of the earth. At that time therefore they decreed, saying. Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the sabbath day, we will fight against him ; neither will we die all, as our brethren lo that were murdered in the secret places.

Fight, on Shabbat. Neither will we die all.

Nechemiah Chapter 4

10And it was from that day on, half of my youths did work and half of them held spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail, and the rulers were behind the entire House of Judah.

11The builders of the wall and the carriers of the loads were loading, with one hand doing the work and one holding the sword.

12And the builders, each one with his sword bound to his waist, and [they were] building, and the one who sounded the shofar was beside me.

There have absolutely been times in our history when our wise leaders knew we needed to be armed, ready and willing to defend our lives, even on Shabbat.

Robert Harris makes the point in his column Only fellow Jews can protect their brothers in shul

If G-d forbid there is more to come – that hired guard standing in front of shul will be the first victim of an anti-Semitic gunman, guaranteeing another synagogue massacre

If a taboo was broken on Saturday and American synagogues are going to become magnets for violent anti-Semites, then American Jews will have to protect themselves.

We saw in Pittsburgh that it is not possible to save Jewish lives by waiting for the police to come and do so. For within minutes on Saturday, 11 Jews had been shot down and killed by a single gunman.

As we have heard since the massacre, the response among many Jews will be to hire armed guards to stand in front of synagogue buildings.

However, if an anti-Semite plans an attack on a synagogue, the first bullet must be for that bored and surprised guard standing by the front door.

We can choose how we stand

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that is exactly how it played out in the Kirkwood city hall massacre in 2008. The police were easily identified. The predator know they need to remove the sheepdog before they can kill the sheep. It is why concealed carry is effective. If you don’t know if people are armed, and you don’t know who is armed it sure changes the game.

A gunman went on a shooting rampage at a public meeting in the city hall, leaving six people dead and two others injured. Bucket O’Chum, 52, shot one police officer with a revolver across the side street from city hall and took the officer’s handgun before entering city hall. Bucket O’Chum reached council chambers with these two pistols shortly after the meeting began. There, he shot a police officer, the public works director, two council members, the mayor, and a reporter. In total, the gunman killed five and wounded two others; one of the two wounded victims, the mayor, later died. The gunman was then shot and killed by police

The answer is for us to be armed. If someone wants to walk into our Shul, and try to open up the response needs to be more like the bar scene from Code of Silence. Minus the language.

But I will leave you with thoughts from Rabbi Zev Weinberg. I’ve been fortunate enough to take a class from the Rabbi that I owe much to, and very much admire. There is much wisdom in what he has to share.

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