While sorting through the news Tuesday morning, two seemingly unrelated stories ended up in adjacent tabs.
First…
Sandy Hook lawsuit against AR-15 maker could actually reach the Supreme Court
But the state supreme court ruled plaintiffs’ suit can proceed under Connecticut’s unfair trade practices law. Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that Bushmaster’s advertising essentially encouraged customers and others to use their XM15 rifles — the type used by Lanza — for criminal purposes.
Leaving aside how Bushmaster is responsible for the use of a firearm it sold to a dealer who sold it to a woman who had it taken by someone else after she was murdered…
Alleged: Advertising the rifle as suitable for mass murder.
Which brings me to the second article…
Study: ‘Assault Weapons’ and Magazine Bans Do Not Lower Homicide Rates
[Lead study author Michael Spiegel] observed, “Laws regulating the sale of assault weapons are unlikely to have a large impact on homicide rates, because these weapons are used in only a very small proportion of homicides. The vast majority of firearm homicides in the United States are committed with handguns.”
Hardly news. The government discovered the same thing after the federal “Assault Weapon Ban” of ’94. And that very thing had been predicted by numerous people when the bill was being debated.
But the juxtaposition of the stories struck me.
Pantytwisters: Eek! Bushmaster is advertising mass murder tactical death machines and encouraging us to go out and kill everything!
Everyone else: Didn’t work.
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Last year, van Nieuwenhuyzen v. Sniff set up the Ninth Circus for the dilemma of upholding a gun control law or shooting down sanctuary cities.
Now federal Southern District of California Judge Roger T. Benitez has made a ruling in Duncan et al vs. Becerra that, once appealed by the state of California, likewise presents the Ninth with a little problem. Benitez has found California’s 10-round magazine limit to be unconstitutional.
Ah, but the way he wrote it. You have to like a ruling that begins
“Individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts.”
And then the introduction: He cites three self-defense cases in which women needed more rounds.
The Ninth is likely to reverse Benitez, based on past history. And then we get to note that it means they want women dead.
Beyond the introduction, the ruling is rather dry reading, but worth the effort for Benitez’ analysis. He notes the irony of California’s law.
Perhaps the irony of § 32310 escapes notice. The reason for the adoption of the 19 Second Amendment was to protect the citizens of the new nation from the power of an oppressive state. The anti-federalists were worried about the risk of oppression by a standing army. The colonies had witnessed the standing army of England marching through Lexington to Concord, Massachusetts, on a mission to seize the arms and gunpowder of the militia and the Minutemen—an attack that ignited the Revolutionary war. With Colonists still hurting from the wounds of war, the Second Amendment guaranteed the rights of new American citizens to protect themselves from oppressors foreign and domestic. So, now it is ironic that the State whittles away at the right of its citizens to defend themselves from the possible oppression of their State.
Exactly.
He spends a great deal of time explaining why the law is inconsistent with Heller, and why this law fails, not just strict scrutiny, but even intermediate.
In light of the ongoing bump-fire ban cases, I found a few other points interesting.
Plaintiffs who have kept their own larger capacity magazines since 1999, and now face criminal sanctions for continuing to possess them, no doubt feel they have been misled or tricked by their lawmakers.
[…]
In an analogous First Amendment case, the Supreme Court called this approach turning the Constitution upside down.
Sound familiar? Those once-lawfully owned stocks suddenly making people into criminals. I don’t know offhand if Guedes or the other bumpfire cases cite Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449, 474–75 (2007) or Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), but they should.
Benitez addresses “legislative deference,” too. In this context, that is the deference a court would owe the lawmakers who presumably carefully study matters before crafting law (giggle if you wish; that’s the theory). He tosses that in Duncan, because this law was passed by public referendum. No deference owed.
In Guedes et al an issue is what deference courts owe unelected bureaucrats who change legislative intent. None, I think.
After dozens of pages explaining why unsourced, anecdotal “expert” witnesses, mischaracterized laws, misstated rulings, arbitrary thresholds, and nonsensical exceptions are bovine excrement, Benitez concludes
This decision is a freedom calculus decided long ago by Colonists who cherished individual freedom more than the subservient security of a British ruler. The freedom they fought for was not free of cost then, and it is not free now.
Freedom over security. I am astonished to see that from a judge in California. The Ninth will soil their black dresses.
I expect all the Californian police-staters are going to have trouble wrapping their minds around that. To be perfectly clear:
1. Defendant Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and his officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and those persons in active concert or participation with him, and those duly sworn state peace officers and federal law enforcement officers who gain knowledge of this injunction order, or know of the existence of this injunction order, are enjoined from enforcing California Penal Code section 32310.
2. Defendant Becerra shall provide, by personal service or otherwise, actual notice of this order to all law enforcement personnel who are responsible for implementing or enforcing the enjoined statute. The government shall file a declaration establishing proof of such notice.
Paragraph 2 is a thing of beauty. Not only is the judge tossing the law, he has made AG Becerra personally responsible for making sure every LEO is the state knows it’s the law. If this were to stand — and that alone will make the Ninth want to reverse — then anyone busted in the future for a 15-round mag by some local yokel cop, who says he didn’t know, has grounds to sue Becerra, even if charges are eventually dropped.
This is obviously a good thing, but don’t get too comfortable. This is a ruling by a District court. In the Ninth Circuit. All things considered, I expect the Circuit to reverse and remand.
Depending on plaintiff’s resources, this will most likely need to go to the Supreme Court. Given the varied magazine limits in assorted jurisdictions, SCOTUS should grant cert. Will they? The post McDonald record isn’t encouraging, especially last week’s decision to deny a stay in the bump-fire ban.
Stay tuned.
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Lucian K. Truscott (the IVth, no less) is an effing moron. This was in Salon, so I’m not going to link to it and give them traffic. If you want to see it, search the headline:
Youuuuu might be a gun nut if . . .
Woe be unto the innocent bystander, or even the less-than-innocent liberal wuss Salon columnist, if you raise your hand and say something . . . anything . . . about guns and gun ownership. Boy, are the gun nuts ever ready for you!
Especially if your column is chock full of false statements.
“New Zealand came to its senses and banned them. When will we?”
“Ban the sale of gas operated weapons.”
“I mean, look at the reaction of the NRA to something as sane as the recent ban on bump stocks”
Reaction to the ban? The VNRA came up with the idea. Their “reaction” was to their members’ reaction to the ATF actually doing what the VNRA called for.
“it’s an utterly defensible ban on a device that converts a legal gun into an illegal weapon of mass destruction.”
WTF? Even the lunatics at the ATF never claimed that. Do you know what a weapon of mass destruction is?
“If you listen to the NRA, you would think that banning bump-stocks is the first step on a slippery slope to disarming America.”
Or if you listen to Pelosi, who hopes it is. Or the Parkland Pussies.
“I was raised to understand that guns are designed and manufactured to kill. I was trained in the Army on multiple guns, and I was trained to use them to kill.”
Oh yes; let’s talk about Truscott’s military experience:
Truscott attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1969. […] He was threatened with being sent to Vietnam, so he resigned his commission about thirteen months after graduating, receiving a “general discharge under other than honorable conditions.”
Lots of relevant military experience there, huh? Here is more detail if you want it. Charge: “Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”
“The shooter in Las Vegas had bump stocks on nearly all of the 24 guns that were found in his room” 14 of 24 firearms were equipped with bump-fire stocks. However, no state or federal report on the incident has said bump-fire was used.
“Then they go after you for mis-using, or mis-interpreting gun language.”
Yes. Because terminology matters. If you get it wrong, you confuse semi-auto AR-15s with military assault rifles, or cars for main battle tanks. Or, like McCarthy, you file a bill to ban the wrong item because you didn’t know the correct word.
“Define an “assault weapon!” AR-15 style rifles aren’t “assault weapons” because they don’t have “select fire.””
No, dumbass. “Assault weapon” is a political term used to confuse the ignorant. An assault rifle is the select-fire weapon. Assault rifles are used by virtually every army in the world. No nation generally issues semi-autos to its regular troops.
“It is, of course, sold on the open market to any civilian who walks in with the scratch to buy one.”
Not quite. It’s sold to anyone with the cash, who passes a background check. And the particular pistol pictured has a suppressor, which is an NFA item requiring a tax, and federal permission to possess, which is another background check.
“a .177 bolt action rifle my brother gave me.”
Got me there. Could you be more specific? I don’t know of any firearm chambered in .177. Is that actually an air rifle? Or, perhaps, it’s .17 HMR.
“I was raised to understand that guns are designed and manufactured to kill.”
You were raised wrongly. Firearms are designed to propel a projectile at a target. Intent is in the mind of the user. A soldier is trained to kill the enemy. A kid plinking at cans has the intent of knocking them over, not killing.
“Guns like the assault rifles used by the Las Vegas shooter”
According the the final investigative report, he used semi-auto rifles, a bolt-action rifle, and a revolver. None were assault rifles.
“or the shooter in Parkland”
No assault rifles there either. Semi-auto with 10-round magazines.
“Sandy Hook”
Nope.
“Pittsburgh”
Wrong again. Semi-auto rifle and three semi-auto pistols.
“New Zealand”
No. Semi-auto rifles and shotguns. You aren’t very good at this.
I’m a bit puzzled by this statement. Perhaps someone familiar with Vietnam-era Army policies can explain it.
“The last one [semi-auto] I shot was an M-14 in the Army in 1965.”
That would seem to have been his first year at West Point. I would have thought that there’d be a little more rifle training during the four years, and certainly I’d have expected him to qualify once on active duty. Did they not trust him with firearms?
Hey, let’s look at another Truscott column:
Assault rifles are insane: New Zealand came to its senses and banned them. When will we?
Oh, I can hear them now. The NRA and its ilk will tell you that this military-style assault rifle is just the thing to use hunting deer, or elk, or some other poor creature. But it’s really a killing machine, a thing you can buy that is designed for one purpose: to kill a “soft target” from up to a mile away. That is insane.
He’s ranting about the Victrix Armaments Scorpio, which he thinks is “a rifle very similar to “ the “POF USA P-308 AR 10.”
The Scorpio is a bolt-action rifle. Just like his grandmother’s heirloom .22. Standard 5-round capacity; probably less than his .22, or his revolvers.
Oh, well. His market has always been anti-rights lefties, so I guess he’ll continue to play well there. Not so much in the real world where people take time educate themselves. I expect you could slip a drive belt around his grandfather’s rotating body and power a small city.
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Obviously the only possible reason to oppose control is because we hate people. It couldn’t possibly be that we want the ability to defend our families and ourselves. Neat trick; demonizing gun owners as unfeeling bastards who don’t value life, while virtue-signalling his own “concern.” Qasim Rashid is a human/civil rights-violating piece of… work, who tries to steer the argument by taking his — entirely unfounded —assumption as fact.
And oh-so-well informed.
I still remember when my older brother wrote to us from US Marine Corps bootcamp to tell us that he’d earned the expert rifleman badge for his firearm. It was the highest possible award that the Marines offered.
The Marines might disagree with that, unless he was attempting to say — rather poorly — that it is the highest rifle marksmanship award.
Rashid also appears fond of another common gunpeople control tactic: The strawman argument.
Those who oppose responsible gun legislation claim that gun laws won’t work because criminals will still find a way to get guns. By such logic we shouldn’t have any laws at all because, after all, criminals will break them.
That’s comparatively clever, because uses part of the truth, to tell a lie of omission. In fact, we note that criminals will still get guns because the laws his slimy ilk propose always target honest gun owners, not the actual criminals. That last part is rather important. It’s particularly important for victim disarmers to ignore: Never once has any anti-gun legislator (or wannabe like Rashid) ever even attempted to answer the question of how [insert dumbass infringement imposed on honest people] will adversely impact criminals who already obtain arms through unlawful channels.
That question is always guaranteed to result in silence.
More strawmen.
Who can honestly claim that domestic abusers and violent felons deserve easy access to firearms?
Is Rashid proposing that? Because I don’t know any pro-Second Amendment people arguing to arm violent criminals.
Half-truths are another standby for scumbags like Rashid. Let’s see what else he trots out.
After the 1987 Hungerford mass shooting left 16 dead, England enacted meaningful gun reform. England has experienced one mass shooting since.
And 89 dead in vehicle, bomb, and knife attacks. And there were zero mass shootings in the 20th century prior to the Hungerford incident. Based on the fact that the next came after those “meaningful” reforms, you could as easily argue the reforms contributed to the second 20th century occurrence.
But we have to disarm the people, because only government agents can be trusted… Uh oh.
If we go back to 19th century England, all the mass shootings were committed by the government. 18th century: all by government. 17th: government forces again.
After the 1995 Port Arther [sic] mass shooting left 35 dead, Australia enacted responsible gun legislation. Australia has experienced zero mass shootings since.
Wrong. At least 8, since Port Arthur,and sixteen more massacres by other means, accounting for more deaths than the shootings.
Here’s a meaningless “factoid” that sounds impressive, if you don’t actually know a damned thing about the topic.
And after the 2009 Winnendon school shooting left 16 dead, Germany enacted responsible gun legislation. Germany has experienced only one mass shooting since.
Let’s examine that. In post-reunification Germany, there have been 5 mass shootings. From unification to Winnenden, there was an average of 5.6 years between those, with the longest gap being 9.5 years. From Winnenden to the 2016 Munich shooting was 7 years. I really don’t think there’s a trend supporting his alleged point, since the greatest period between shootings was before his “responsible” laws. As with the English “example,” a pedant could easily argue that the changes in German laws made mass shootings more common, on average.
Gaming the assumptions, lies, half-truths, and strawman arguments. It’s as if Rashid were trying to create the ultimate victim disarmament fable. All he left out was bogus “research” with synthetic control groups.
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“Demonstrating perseveration, liberals insisting they don’t want to take away anyone’s guns is like the government telling plains Indians, because no tracks have been laid is proof trains will never come through their land.” Author
I Recently returned from Monaco celebrating Lewis Hamilton’s fifth Formula 1 World Championship, the Port Palace Hotel, (7 Avenue, Kennedy, Monaco) is fabulous. Hamilton, who is British and Black,2 joins Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio at that mark with German Michael Schumacher holding the record at seven. Okay, I wasn’t really in Monaco. My family popped corks in the states. Cheers. But all was not well.
To my chagrin, the Great Unwashed turned Congress over to trolls who despise the U.S., hate its Constitution, and hate its Judeo-Christian foundations. I kind of understand young sock-puppet Millennials voting for neo-Marxist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (or is it Evita?) in spite of her abysmal ignorance of economics, history, and the Constitution after all, they probably went to public schools. When run by liberals, dumb kids showing up at school house doors (Alyssa Milano) graduate even dumber. What I can’t fathom is how anyone could vote for reprehensible batrachian Nancy Pelosi whose former career, if I’m not mistaken, included playing Miss Gulch, the woman who took Dorothy’s dog away. Technology doesn’t exist capable of measuring her level of arrogance, pomposity, and deceitfulness. Were she attached to a polygraph, it’d explode the moment she opened her mouth. Rumor has it she and Cher recently tussled on the floor of their plastic surgeon’s office over the last bottles of collagen, Botox, and a Styrofoam cooler of baby’s skin for grafting.
In Part 1, I observed writing on race and crime was akin to crossing a mine-infested no-man’s land. On one side is a race hurting from wounds inflicted through discrimination and hatred. They search for acceptance leading to healing. On the other is a race who, to some degree, exacerbate the crisis by indifference. It’s expressed through attitudes like; “Crime ain’t happening in my neighborhood, why should I care?” Or “I had nothing to do with racism, it all happened in the past, so, why are these people still so angry?” And worse; “It’s a black thing.” They relate to blacks as if the latter are recent immigrants rather than having been in America, almost from the start, as American as the white man.
Ah, but perched like vultures in burned out trees overlooking the no-man’s land of racial division are today’s young Neo-Marxists, ready to swoop down on anyone daring to address race and crime in a fair and honest way. Blacks willing to do so are chastised as “traitors, Uncle-Toms,” and “racial-sellouts.” For whites willing to address the sources of the problem come shrill high pitched harridan shrieks of “racist” from the twisted fever spittled lips of Left-wingers. White flimsy-bodied Kulak-haters in black unitards regret none of the mayhem, destruction, and death they’ve unleashed in minority communities by stoking the flames of mistrust and animosity. They need it. Social disorder is vital to the Left’s strategy to realize their great project; subordinating the individual to the all-powerful state. Their route to power has never been the ballot box. It’s riding the crest of a wave of mass social unrest and violence as they did in Russia, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Palo Alto. Racial division is a tool useful for the left in breaking down social order. Their technique is to whip up anger among blacks, goad them into acts of civil disobedience, and provoke overreaction by police like the 1960s, and then the revolution is on. Unless issues of race are addressed honestly, reconciliation remains a pipedream. If you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong answer. As painful as it might be, the starting point is facing reality.
In 1999, Walter E. Williams, black Professor of Economics (George Mason University) wrote that “most violent crime in America, in our country, is committed by blacks.” They commit 54 percent of all murders, 42 percent of rapes, and almost 60 percent of robberies. With respect to interracial crime, “blacks are fifty times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites that whites against blacks.” Most of the violence is intra-racial with 93 percent of black homicide victims killed by other blacks.3 What the Left fails to mention is less than a hundred years after the end of slavery, a higher percentage of black children grew up in two-parent homes than white kids.4 In addition, the current crime problem in the black community was unheard of in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. They didn’t have to shut their windows and lock their doors like they did in white neighborhoods, and could stroll their streets after dark without fear. Poverty and high school dropout rates were on par, often less, than white communities as well.5 Crime, poverty, unemployment, and poor education in the black community, accepted as the norm today, is in fact not and never was. A direct correlation can be drawn between this monumental change and liberal government social welfare programs, starting in the 1960s, and decline of the black family.6 They were making it on their own when the government pulled the rug out from under them.
What went wrong? Who is responsible? How can we begin to fix this? Those are the questions that should be asked. Blacks didn’t do this to themselves. But these questions won’t be asked because white liberals stoking racial division today are ideologically the same ones responsible for what has been done to the black community in the first place through their social engineering. Compounding the problem are “black” groups misidentifying those who stabbed them in the back and, asking the wrong questions, choose the wrong solutions.
Today Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the New Black Panthers (NBP) are joined by white Crypto-Marxists promoting revolution in America. Since the 1960s, they’ve demonized America’s founding conservative institutions, religion and family, until they’ve become epithets for hatred and racism. They corrupted public education harnessing it as a transmission belt for ideological indoctrination of each generation. Next they set their sights on other conservative institutions, the Boy Scouts and U.S. Military and, through insidious feminization and homosexualization, they too fell. Finally, deploying a fictitious narrative cooked up in the rotting fetid swamps of their brains, they went after the last man standing, the police, claiming they’re the tip of the white man’s spear in a war to destroy the black race. It is them they blame for violence in black communities. Is any of this true? Have circumstances changed since Williams wrote about race twenty years ago?
Twenty-three percent of New York City’s population is black (only 33% is white) yet blacks account for 75 percent of the City’s shootings compared to 2 percent by whites. Its black population commit 70 percent of all robberies and blacks and Hispanics account for 98 percent of illegal gunfire in the city. Most of the victims are black and Hispanic. Redacted by the liberal media is the fact most legal gun purchases in the Five Burroughs are made by whites but only a miniscule percentage are used in crimes.7 Blacks and Hispanics commit violent crimes in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population as a whole. But Liberal whites, who typically don’t live in or near minority neighborhoods, insist crime rates are the same, proportionate, for all races. They contend no race commits violent crime at a higher rate than any other, therefore, New York’s crime and arrest rates should mirror those percentages. If 23 percent of the city’s residents are black and 33 percent white, then 23 percent of crime should be committed by blacks and 33 percent by whites. But that’s not what’s happening. Black crime is way out of proportion to their percentage of the City’s population. What then accounts for the disparity? According to the white liberal media, it’s the result of racism.8 The Left would have you believe cops protect families in communities where they often live, arresting black suspects for assault, robbery, rape, and murder but look the other way when the same crimes are committed by whites. Yeah, right. I served and worked with police departments on the East and West Coasts and never met a police officer who wasn’t more than happy to put the habeas grabbus on the scrotes and dirt-bags of society irrespective of race.
Contrary to what white liberal pantywaists at the New York Times claim, police killings of blacks are actually extremely rare. They comprise a “minute fraction of black homicide deaths.” Approximately 25 percent of those shot and killed by the police are black meaning 75 percent are not.9 An arithmetic exercise is in order to put this into perspective. Yeah, I know, I went to public schools too.
Blacks comprise 13% of the U.S. population. They commit 57%+ of all murders, 45% of assaults, and 62% or robberies in America’s seventy-five largest counties.10 Of that 13%, approximately 47% are male.11 Approximately 49% of that 47% are between ages 18 to 34, the cohort committing the overwhelming majority of violent crimes.12 The 49% of the black population that is male represents 6.20% of the total U.S. population. The 47.7% of that 6.02%, ages 18-34, represents only 3.03% of the total U.S. population. When roughly 3% of a race commits 60% of the nation’s murders, and most of its rapes, robberies, and assaults, is it any wonder that cops profile, and people black and white, fear them? To be politically correct, should people equally fear Japanese, Indian-Americans, or Jewish Deli-owners? Wait a minute, professor, the Washington Post (marching orders for Bolshevik Millennials) claims “unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire.”13 What do you say about that? If 60%+ of violent criminals are black, isn’t it far more likely the police will have encounters with them than whites? But let’s take a closer look at the paper serving the Kremlin on the Potomac.
Of the 987 people shot by police in 2015, 35 were unarmed black men, 2 unarmed black women, and 31 unarmed white men. Leftwing mouthpieces like the Post typically refer to unarmed suspects shot by the police as “victims.” What they dishonestly left out of this reporting is that of the 36 unarmed blacks, 5 tried to grab the officer’s gun and shoot him or her, several more had the officer down on the ground beating him or her senseless with the cop’s service equipment, (what would’ve happened once the officer went under), and 2 were killed by stray bullets fired from guns aimed at someone else. Black males are far more likely than white males to violently resist arrest, make a grab for the officer’s gun, and physically assault officers. In arresting suspects, no requirement exists for officers to first determine who is the better boxer, wrestler, or martial artist.14 Police officers are commissioned to enforce the law, keep the peace, and arrest those for whom probable cause exists to believe they’ve committed a crime. They’re not required to take a beating in performance of their duties.
Big surprise, the Pravda Post forgot to mention in cases they referenced that the suspects had gained control of non-firearm pieces of the officer’s equipment, including nightsticks, which are potentially lethal weapons especially when the officer is pinned to the ground, on his or her back. Detectives were beat bloody with their own portable radios while others under arrest, possibly on drugs, shrugged off night sticks, chemical sprays, and TASERS and were beating the cop senseless. Most people can only last a few minutes in an all-out struggle. But bad guys on drugs, like PCP,15 with the strength of Hercules, can go a lot longer. Officers often face suspects who are larger, stronger, and more physically fit. As a policeman, I took a class taught by a Captain from San Quentin, Marin County, California. Convicts behind bars practice escaping police holds, (feet apart and spread them, hands interlaced behind your head, and so forth), disarming cops, and killing them with their own service weapons. It was a chilling class. Once a cop is down, scumbags don’t need a gun to kill him or her. Kicks to the head, throat, ribs, and so forth will quickly incapacitate and kill a victim,16 one reason white-supremacist gnat-zies and ex-con thug-bikers wear steel-toed boots. If cops wait until they’re going under before grabbing the Smith & Wesson, it’s too late. Reality check; “Police officers are at a greater risk from blacks than unarmed blacks are from police officers. The per capita rate of officers being feloniously killed is 45 times higher than the rate at which unarmed black males are killed by cops.” And “An officer’s chance of getting killed by a black assailant is 18.5 times higher than the chance of an unarmed black getting killed by a cop.”17 But this is not what is explained in black communities or the liberal media.
Because some blacks target non-police random whites for “pay-back” assaults and the conflict between blacks and whites in general, talk of a “race-war” appears on social media. Regrettably, some blacks, including Economist Thomas Sowell and conservative former black Congressman Allen West believe the U.S. is already in the midst of a race-war. Random attacks on whites are justified as revenge for past injustices. Anyone with a white skin is fair game.18 Justification for race war are promoted by white liberal males tying to purge feelings of “white-guilt” guilt implanted into their skulls by public education, pop-culture, and university professors. To prove they’re not racists, they make common cause with BLM and NBP referring to the police as an “occupying force” and treat violent criminals as “victims.” Cop-killers are toasted as heroes within black communities and by white liberals19 who refuse to face the truth that crime in minority communities is black on black, not cop on black.20 St. Louis, Missouri, which makes Forbe’s Top Ten List of most dangerous cities in America like clockwork, is a black majority city in which 95% of homicide victims are black as are the killers.21 Kansas City, Missouri, called Kanshago in some circles (Kansas + Chicago) mecca for connoisseurs of abandoned boarded-up crumbling brick buildings, is 29% black and ranks as more dangerous than 94% of other communities in the state with an extremely high murder-rate, almost all black on black.22 Considering the municipal governments, school districts, and police departments of these cities are typically run by blacks, how can white millennial liberals continue to blame white cops? In addition, is it “white-guilt” that cripples their credulity or slavish adherence to ideology that causes them to stoop to or fall for race-hoaxes?
University of Missouri’s black president of the Missouri Student Association claimed “rednecks” in pickups screamed “nigger” at him warning that black students were going to be assaulted. He claimed the KKK had a presence on campus. Ultimately he, like black students at the University of Alabama and other colleges, confessed their stories of racial attacks were hoaxes. They made it all up.23 They painted the Swastikas and white supremacist symbols on buildings and dorm doors themselves. Further damage was done to the University of Missouri, negatively affecting enrollment and athlete recruitment, when black football players went on strike refusing to practice or play until graduate student Jonathan Butler ended his hunger strike.24 Butler, a self-described black “activist,” was protesting what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and demanding University President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin resign for doing nothing about alleged anti-black racism at the University. Regrettably, vertebral atrophy won the day and these administrators were forced to resign over faux racism and racial hoaxing as leftists learned to use race to flex political muscle.25 Perhaps worse, in a massive display of cowardice and gonadectimization, Board of Curators Chairman (a charitable sex-designation) Donald Cupps apologized to black students for the faux racial incidents, political race “stunting,” and hoaxing committed by black students that also destroyed the careers of lifelong educators and administrators.26 My contacts out in Missouri, advise enrollment at Missouri’s flagship university has plummeted, hundreds of professors have been laid off, and so many dorms closed, the university is renting them out like apartments and hotel rooms. And the most tragic consequences of these false narratives and lies?
From Baton Rouge to Dallas, 2015-2016 saw an “extreme spike” of 56% in ambushes on cops over 2014. This spike began following well-orchestrated and publicized protests and riots coupled with the Left’s calculated inflammatory rhetoric (aided and abetted by former president Obama).27 Another consequence is the “Ferguson Effect.” Afraid of being accused of and punished for racism, police officers scaled back aggressive proactive policing and anything that smacks of profiling. As a result, violent crime has spiked with cities like Baltimore experiencing a blood bath. Street cops know that, like the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators, the powers-that-be will shamelessly throw them under the bus in a heartbeat to placate the violent mob.28 Who suffers the most? Blacks living in the inner-city. Way to go Lefties.
Thomas Sowell
1 Teachers are forced into retirement for various reasons. My crime was engaging in Unprotected Education. I dared to teach the “other side” as opposed to liberal dictum being indoctrinated into the minds of students and was targeted by a coven-like cabal of leftist teachers for expurgation. They were relentless. What makes me so dangerous now that I’m out? Because I was on the INSIDE for 25 years, I know what really goes on, and I’m going to tell. Watch for future articles.
22 I don’t refer to Hamilton as “black.” His father is Caribbean, of African ancestry, and his mum is a blonde Englishwoman. Lewis was born and raised in England. Formula 1 drivers represent their nation, their team, and the sport, not a race. The world, not me, describes Lewis as black. Naturally blacks claim him as he may go down in history as the greatest F1 driver of all time. Although half-white, some whites see him as a “black guy who is part white.” Born with a natural tan, I was forced to “defend” my racial composition as a teacher. Colleagues mocked my suspected racial composition, yes, teachers, and students made up songs whose lyrics were full of speculative mockery. It seems, unless one is 100% white, even if 80%+, they’re not accepted as white but as representatives for their tiny non-white part. Yes, racism exists in America.
33 Walter E. Williams, More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 1999), 20-21.
1010 IBID. 38. See also: Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (North Charleston, South Carolina, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 23.
1414 IBID., 74-76. Citizens seem to think the local cop knows and represents every cop anywhere in America. If one does something wrong, all cops are guilty. I was asked often why cops used mace, nightsticks, and even guns on bad guys instead of using martial arts like William Shatner on the television show, T. J. Hooker. You know, Kung-Fu kick the bad guy’s gun from his hand. They said; Instead of shooting and killing bad guys shooting at you, why don’t you “wing” him instead? You can’t make up this kind of idiocy.
1515 PCP: Phencyclidine. Street name is “Angel-Dust.” Some people cook PCP in water and then, using a spray bottle, spray it on Marijuana cigarettes. They smoke it when dry. PCP, formerly a horse-tranquilizer, is a mind-altering drug than can cause extreme paranoia, violence, hallucinogenic episodes, psychosis, and gives the user incredible strength. How do I know? Whaddaya mean how do I know? I had to arrest these junkies and more than a few told me “how it was done.”
I have spent the past ten and a half months trying to confirm or deny one little report.
On February 16, 2018, the Sun-Sentinel reported on an investigation conducted by Florida DCF of the scumbag who would become the Parkland murdering a$$h0le. Basically, it was just another case of the “authorities” blowing off another chance to do something about him before anyone died.
But eleven paragraphs in, I noticed something.
Cruz came under DCF’s supervision and care because he was classified as a vulnerable adult due to mental illness.
As I’ve written before, “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” is a specific legal status in Florida. It is based on a finding by a judge in a formal hearing in which the subject has the opportunity to appear with legal counsel. In short, a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” is a prohibited person under the criteria of 18 U.S. Code § 922(d)(4). Chumbucket should not have been able to pass a background check to buy his rifle.
To be fair, the reporters might’ve misunderstood what DCF told them. So I contacted the Sun-Sentinel to verify that part was correct. I never received a response.
Since then, in an effort to discover if that “vulnerable adult” claim was accurate, I’ve contacted Florida DCF, state legislators, Senator Grassley (when he held a hearing on the shooting), the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school public safety commission, and the world. I have received no answers either way. From anyone. Until today.
A couple of days ago, the Sun-Sentinel’s Randy Schultz wrote an op/ed. He took the position that even if their sheriff is a complete screw-up (which he is), we still need more gun control.
If chum was a prohibited person, then gun control didn’t work. Maybe we should fix what we have before piling on more. I wrote to Schultz to suggest he look into that “vulnerable adult” issue, because I’d had zero luck myself.
Schultz replied. I’ll give him that much. In fact we had quite the email exchange.
Based on published reports, the Florida Department of Children and Families investigated and determined that Cruz was not a danger to himself. It ended there.
No. The results of that investigation had no bearing on chum’s prohibited status. They investigated because he was already a prohibited person “vulnerable adult,” according to the Sun-Sentinel. Which I told Schultz.
If you mean prohibited from buying a firearm, the conditions are that a person must have been committed or adjudicated,
Yes, and if bucket-head really was a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” that’s exactly what he went through to achieve that status. That’s why I want to know if he is: that status is achieved through adjudication of mental incompetence under Florida law.
But neither applied to Cruz.
-blink-
I gave him the Sun-Sentinel story with the original claim, and Florida and federal law cites to show that yes, it did
Correct. But the state made no no finding that he was a threat to himself.
He’s back to claiming that the investigation wouldn’t have made him a prohibited person because it cleared him. I reiterated that the investigation wasn’t done to determine if DCF should petition a judge for “vulnerable adult” staus for the a$$h0le. They were in a position to investigate him because he already was, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
You’ll have to ask the editors. I’m a freelancer.
See above: Been there, done that. They aren’t talking.
“Freelance” this: Was Cruz a prohibited person, as reported by the Sun-Sentinel, or not?
Being a reporter in the area, it should be easy enough for Schultz to check. If he was, the court record should be available. Even if sealed, that the record exists should be public. Heck, he could just talk to the original reporters and ask them to check their notes to see if that was a direct quote from DCF.
Personally, I originally thought the story simply mischaracterized Cruz’s status; reporters make mistakes. Or maybe it was correct, and I’d noticed just another governmental failure. No big deal. Except for all the dead people. I’m used to bureaucratic cock-ups.
After months of deafening silence, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s more to it.
Was Cruz a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness,” or did DCF make a series of truly amazing errors (having an adult under supervision without a judge’s ruling, making a very specific claim of that status mistakenly)?
If Cruz was a vulnerable adult, why wasn’t he reported to NICS? If he wasn’t a vulnerable adult, why does DCF have a report of an evaluation conducted of him as an adult?
If some DCF employee simply misread something, and Cruz was not classified as a vulnerable adult, why doesn’t DCF simply make the correction?
If the murderous slime was not a prohibited person, then folks like me can’t say NICS failed. Gun controllers could use that to rationalize more laws to catch folks not otherwise caught. If he was prohibited, then laws failed, and gun controllers don’t want to admit the system is at fault.
Why the silence? If he wasn’t prohibited, then that supports their gun control agenda. They could say so.
That they won’t say at all suggests to me that he was prohibited, but they can’t risk lying about it and getting caught.
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I often ask victim disarming gun controllers how they expect their infringement du jour to apply to criminals who already bypass laws. For instance, I recently asked Senator Johnny Isakson [R-GA] how he expects to get criminals — who already obtain their firearms through unlawful channels around 93% of the time — to submit their black market purchases for “universal background checks;” otherwise known as preemptively-prove-your-innocence (PPYI) prior restraint of rights.
I almost never get an answer. Certainly Isakson hasn’t answered yet.
This why:
Tucker Zings Progressive’s Attempt at Comparing the Border Wall to Lawful Gun Ownership
“And to borrow the NRA’s argument though, if we put a wall up though to block out illegal, you know people from coming here to want to harm us, people who come here legally are going to be the only ones stopped by that wall because people who are going to come here illegally or to harm us are going to figure out a way around it, just like they’re going to figure out how to get guns.”
[…]
[Former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)] Hahn laughed and then continued, “No, no. Law-abiding people will be stopped by the wall but the people who wish to break our laws will avoid the wall. That’s the right’s argument for everything! It should be accepted here too!”
Don’t build a wall, because it only stops law-abiding people.
Do pass victim disarmament laws because they only stop law-abiding people.
Masks off. They aren’t even pretending anymore. As we all knew, the laws are never intended to do anything but infringe human/civil rights. Criminals aren’t even supposed to be affected.
That’s why Democrats (and Republicans like Isakson) see no irony in announcing new PPYI legislation to “honor” Gabby Giffords, who was shot by a man who passed a background check.
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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My dear, it’s time to admit it. You are in an abusive relationship. He doesn’t really love you. He loves controlling you. You may even suffer from a form of Stockholm Syndrome, in which you’ve come to believe that he does this for your own good.
He is manipulating you with fear. He tells you that you have to give up some things, or freedoms, or you risk losing more.
That’s his modus operandi. “Just give them what they want, or they’ll take everything.”
It’s time for you to take your family and escape from his abuse. You can’t save this “relationship.” It isn’t a relationship, it’s enslavement. Get out, and go to a shelter that will protect you.
It’s time to leave the NRA.
In 1934, the NRA backed the National Firearms Act. They told you they did it to save handguns. But what it did was make militia grade weapons unaffordable, inaccessible, for most militia members. A black eye.
In 1968, the NRA compromised on the the Gun Control Act. They told you it was to prevent worse infringements. But it established licensing and large classes of “prohibited persons” with no constitutional rights. It effectively ended mail order of firearms. Bruises.
The NRA compromised on the Firearms Owners “Protection” Act. They told you it “protected’ you from unconstitutional state abuses. Those abuses still exist. And what you got was a complete ban on new machineguns, making the few in circulation far more expensive. A missing tooth.
The NRA rolled over on the Undetectable Firearms Act. They told you it was to protect existing guns. But it killed research and development of new firearms technologies. A broken, bloody nose.
Gun Free School Zone Act: For the children. But it could make you a felon for walking in the area of a school you couldn’t even see. More bruises, a cracked rib.
Brady: It’ll keep guns out of the hands of criminals, the NRA told you. They didn’t tell you that a supermajority of criminals get guns through unlawful channels bypassing background checks. You got a prior restraint on your human/civil rights, more expensive guns, delays, and the FBI keeping records of purchases. A concussion.
The NRA helped write an “assault weapon” ban. They told you it was because if they didn’t write it, it would have been worse. The NRA’s ban included SKSes with fixed ten-round magazines. Is that blood leaking from your ear?
Remember when the NRA thought constitutional carry — honest folks being armed for defense without begging the state’s permission, and paying for the privilege — was bad? The NRA actively sabotaged state-level CC efforts; successfully in New Hampshire. Slap. Punch.
The NRA supported Fix NICS, which includes language that encourages states to add people to NICS without any trial, hearing, or notice; for non-criminal activities. Boom. Coma.
The NRA petitioned the federal government to “regulate” bump-fire stocks as machineguns, then feigned surprise when they discovered that bump-fire stocks would now be banned post-1986 machineguns… thanks to the NRA’s FOPA compromise. And if bump-fire stocks “easily convert” semiautomatic rifles to machineguns… The all semiautomatic rifles are machineguns under the same open-bolt ban, or ban of semiauto ARs that could accept an M-16 trigger group. The NRA is punching and kicking your unconscious body.
The NRA has endorsed no-due process extreme risk protection orders, so-called “red flag” laws, allowing the confiscation of firearm from someone not accused of a crime. And now they’ve been used to confiscate firearms from folks who simply know someone who wasn’t accused of a crime. Oooh. Fractured skull.
So, my dear, it’s time to wake up and escape your abuser, while you still can. The NRA isn’t beating on you because it loves you; just your money. And when your abusive partner demands money to fix the injuries he inflicted upon you, find something creative to do with those NRA fundraising letters.
Leave the National Rifle Association. For good. That marriage cannot be saved.
(edit: corrected “by passing” to “bypassing”)
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!
As a child growing up, most of the TV shows tended to portray law enforcement as heroes. They always got there in the nick of time, and if they were called in after the unfortunate event happened? They always knew what to do about that as well. They could do a dandy chalk outline of the corpse and then find out who made that happen to the unfortunate victim. And the really superior thing about law-enforcement back then is they could always make it happen in an hour. Minus the time for commercials of course. That’s not like the modern day shows that have running story lines. Like soap operas did when I was growing up. This is back before the day of “Cops as the bad guys”. Oh of course there have always been bad cops, it’s just they weren’t really so much a part of the TV land experience back then. We were taught to respect them, and if we were in trouble, look for a cop. TV shows where the guys stealing cars were the good guys didn’t happen. Nor was there near the amount of realism that you see in shows today.
Hospitals probably weren’t target rich environments back then, aka “gun-free zones”. But to be honest, I doubt that many people carried while at work either. It’s just that now the signs make it clear unless the crew of “Third Watch” happens to be in the ER waiting room they can pretty much be assured everyone will be doing what the medical staff was doing. Ducking, hiding, running, praying. Because throwing chairs, rocks and baseball bats don’t look to be a viable option to me there. No one is going to be firing back at them.
So if the crew of “Third Watch” happens to be in the ER waiting room, and 1-Adam12 has been dispatched to assist in response to Cruz’s call in for back up, how long will it take for Malloy and Reed to arrive on the scene?
“I would just call 911 for help.” There’s this false sense of security that we have created with the 911 system that has people believing that with a single call, a swat team will be dispatched immediately to save you and your family within moments of the call.
Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. So what is the average-police-response-time to a 911 call?
According to American Police Beat, the average response time for an emergency call is 10 minutes. Atlanta has the worst response time with 11 to 12 minutes and Nashville comes in at a lightning speed of 9 minutes.
The Department of Justice, with their statistical prowess, reports that the best response time is 4 minutes and the worst over 1 hour. Interpretation? If you live in an upper income area you probably are privy to the 4 minute response time, while middle to rural areas will see a much longer response time.
Now here is where things get interesting. Even though the Department of Justice determined that the average police response time to a 911 call is 4 minutes, the average interaction time between a criminal and his victim is 90 seconds.
That translates to you being robbed/injured/maimed/raped/murdered and waiting for an additional 2 and a half minutes for the police to arrive. The truth of the matter is that the police will almost always arrive AFTER the crime has happened and the criminal has gone.
In rural areas the time can be even longer. A lot longer. Think 30 minutes, maybe more. It’s not that they are hanging out at donut shops, or trying to get someone at Taco Smell to take their order, there is a lot that goes into 9-1-1 calls, and a lot of calls can go into 9-1-1. The lady with the cat in the tree may have got a call in seconds before you were calling in about the guy fixin to come in through your back door.
There are four possible ways to mitigate the damage inflicted by an active shooter. You can harden the target, arm and train potential victims, strengthen prevention programs and suspect identification, and improve law enforcement response times. Each one of these steps is easier said than done because of the associated bureaucratic, political, and budgetary considerations.
Department of Homeland Security research reveals that the average duration of an active shooter incident at a school is 12.5 minutes. In contrast, the average response time for law enforcement is 18 minutes. That means it only makes sense for us to find ways to improve our response times. Working on our response times is about the only anti-active shooter measure that we can take at the operator level. We must find a way to shave off some time and in doing so, create some type of tactical advantage.
A little discouraging that political weighs into the mix making it harder. But when you consider two Buckets O’Chum in Florida were part of Barry’s social engineering project where by kids got a pass on criminal behavior to make statistics look better and law-enforcement agencies got money in return, I guess it’s the truth. Both of them had criminal actions in their backgrounds. Were they in jail? Juvenile court? Detention? Nope.
But you know what the bottom line on all of this is? They don’t gotta. What do I mean? They police do not have a duty to protect you, yours, your kith or your kin. Or Barbie either for that matter. I know, I know that’s what it says on the side of the Police cars, “To Serve and Protect”. Look, everyone needs a goal, a mission statement if you will. So think of it like that, it’s a goal, it’s their mission. Mine is to lose 7 pounds. They have equal chances of succeeding. They can’t be everywhere at once and fried okra still exists in the world.
This has become an issue again the wake of the actions of the law enforcement of Coward County Florida. Scot Petersen, not the Scott Peterson who murdered his pregnant wife, he’s still on death row, but the deputy who cowered outside as a Bucket O’Chum shot students in a Parkland school after security monitor Andrew Medina failed to confront O’Chum when he saw him or call a “Code Red” in the school. So, because Parkland is a safe gun-free zone and had the crack Coward law-enforcement on hand you have a massive #GunControlFail.
A judge has rejected a deputy’s claim that he had no duty to confront the gunman during the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the parent of a victim, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning found after a hearing Wednesday that ex-deputy Scot Peterson did have a duty to protect those inside the school where 17 people died and 17 were wounded on Feb. 14. Video and other evidence shows Peterson, the only armed officer at the school, remained outside while shots rang out.
The negligence lawsuit was filed by Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was killed. He said it made no sense for Peterson’s attorneys to argue that a sworn law enforcement officer with a badge and a gun had no requirement to go inside.
“Then what is he doing there?” Pollack said after the ruling. “He had a duty. I’m not going to let this go. My daughter, her death is not going to be in vain.”
Bloom ruled that the two agencies had no constitutional duty to protect students who were not in custody.
“The claim arises from the actions of [shooter Nikolas] Cruz, a third party, and not a state actor,” she wrote in a ruling Dec. 12. “Thus, the critical question the Court analyzes is whether defendants had a constitutional duty to protect plaintiffs from the actions of Cruz.
“As previously stated, for such a duty to exist on the part of defendants, plaintiffs would have to be considered to be in custody” — for example, as prisoners or patients of a mental hospital, she wrote.
Police are not the only ones shielded from the consequences of the failure to protect. Another truly horrific case is that of DeShaney v. Winnebago County. That was a spectacular failure of a ‘child protection team,’ consisting of a pediatrician, a psychologist, a police detective, the county’s lawyer, several DSS caseworkers, and various hospital personnel, and the juvenile court. They returned a badly abused child to his custodial father. The father did not meet the requirements in the following year and the child protective services did______________nada, zip, zilch, zero, squat. Eventually the poor little four year old boy was beaten so badly he wound up in a institution for the rest of his life. His dad served less than 2 years in jail. And the child protection team? The department of social services that did nothing on their follow up visits? Nothing, nothing happened to any of them when the child’s mother attempted to sue. I’m thinking the court that awarded custody to the dad should be included in the list of shame there as well.
And what say the anti-gun, anti-self defense pink hatted faux feminists? Don’t get a gun, just go through the legal system. Get a restraining order and then sic the cops on him. And Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales will show you that works as well as the law enforcement team of Coward County. That resulted in 3 dead little girls at the hand of their loving father. The mother had begged police to go find the girls. Her ex walked right through the paper target.
This reality does belie the often-made claim, however, that police agencies deserve the tax money and obedience of local citizens because the agencies “keep us safe.”
Nevertheless, we are told there is an agreement here — a “social contract” — between government agencies and the taxpayers and citizens.
And, by the very nature of being a contract, we are meant to believe this is a two-way street. The taxpayers are required to submit to a government monopoly on force, and to pay these agencies taxes.
In return, these government agents will provide services. In the case of police agencies, these services are summed up by the phrase “to protect and serve” — a motto that has in recent decades been adopted by numerous police agencies.
But what happens when those police agencies don’t protect and serve? That is, what happens when one party in this alleged social contract doesn’t keep up its end of the bargain.
The answer is: very little.
The Mises Institute also makes another excellent point.
The taxpayers will still have to pay their taxes and submit to police agencies as lawful authority. If the agencies or individual agents are forced to pay as a result of lawsuits, it’s the taxpayers who will pay for that too.
Oh sure, the senior leadership positions may change, but the enormous agency budgets will remain, the government agents themselves will continue to collect generous salaries and pensions, and no government will surrender its monopoly on the use of force.
No government will surrender it’s monopoly on power? Well what I ask, could go wrong with that??
“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”
Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.” The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all – except government entities.
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 crowdedtheater” 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.
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.
