Yours, theirs, doesn’t matter. Progressives are all in for the ideology of control. Be it whether or not you can have a 32 ounce soda pop or an AR-15. And yes, Mikey Bloomberg financier of the astro-turf Everytown for gun safety, is gearing up to run for President. It’s about control because without control they don’t have the power they are striving for.
Soda Bans
They are trying so desperately to peddle the bill of goods known as “It’s for the children”. But it really isn’t you see.
All those “Red Flag” or Preemptive prove your innocence or extreme risk orders of protection? No matter what you choose to call it by, it stinks. It is gun confiscation without due process from someone who has done nothing. In most cases they are engaging in mind reading. Or in some cases, just vindictive behavior.
In the case of the Bucket O’Chum school terrorist at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, he had given a wealth of signs, but due to a policy put in place during obama’s term there had been no consequences for his previous criminal behavior. The same with Trayvon Martin. Recently there was a juvenile in Baker County in Fl. who had made threats against his classmates and teachers. He had a plan all written out. He showed it to another student who told authorities. He was taken into custody by authorities before he could carry out any of his heinous plan. But I found this interesting.
“MAKE SURE THE TEACHERS ARE DEAD,” he ranted in a notebook. “Then rinse repeat.”….
The boy’s plan described killing teachers and fellow students in chilling detail. To maximize the carnage, he’d deploy an arsenal of knives and guns at a pep rally or some other high-traffic venue. He calculated he’d have nine minutes before squad cars and medics could reach the scene. He wouldn’t be acting alone, he hoped, having recruited at least three schoolmates who, like him, were “100% down that they might die that day.”
They try to hoodwink us, telling us there is no time to spare to ensure someone’s rights are upheld, Baker act won’t do. Must have confiscation without due process, without facing your accuser in court.
So about those nine minutes.
At the recent attack at Saugus High School, the Bucket O’Chum began firing and his pistol jammed. Although according to the Daily Mail he used a .45 caliber semi-automatic rifle, which he removed from his backpack. Heck of a backpack. But they are British, and MSM, so #FakeNews. What do they know about firearms? But it was a regular semi-automatic pistol. And it jammed. He cleared the jam and safely continued on firing secure in the knowledge he had plenty of time. He counted his shots saving the last one for himself. Help was only moments away,
Three off-duty police officers, who had just dropped off relatives at the school, were the first responders on the scene: a detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and police officers from Inglewood and Los Angeles.They were joined within a minute by uniformed deputies on duty from the sheriff’s station in Santa Clarita, as well as a sheriff’s deputy who works at the school as the school resource officer.
But the help was needed within seconds.
This being Kalifornia, I wonder if the off-duty police officers will be reprimanded for carrying their weapons into the school? The school resource officer was one of the last to arrive. I’m not criticizing him. He is one man, he can’t be everywhere. He’s not like Scott Peterson, the “Coward of Broward” who stood by outside the building, or former Sheriff Steve Israel who supported him. He was just the last to arrive. When seconds count the police are only moments away. If it saves just one child, right Mad Mommies? Right harridans of The View? Well, yeah, as long as it doesn’t involve anyone but the bad guy having the gun. How much quicker could the response have been had there been an armed teacher near by?
Laurens County, Georgia doesn’t intend to ever have to look back and wonder. They have began arming and training their teachers. They intend to do everything, politically correct or not, to protect the children from harm. I like the sign outside the school.
Outside every school building in the county is a yellow sign that reads, in part: “Warning. Staff members are armed and trained. Any attempt to harm children will be met with deadly force.”
Seem straightforward to me.
Like the shooting in a Duncan Oklahoma Walmart parking lot recently. The first two victims died, then a good guy with a gun put a stop to further carnage. But, there was a good guy, a regular citizen there, with his gun. Or as the Daily Mail would call it, his semi-automatic rifle.
But to progressives, it’s not really about protecting children, if it saves just one life is a bunch of schiff. What is the message taught at schools? Violence is always wrong, if there is a fight and you defend yourself, you get in trouble (and suspended) same as the person who started it. Don’t fight back, just tell a teacher. Since Jews are being attacked all over the world now, some just for wearing a Kippah and the charges are often ignored, or even dropped. This is not working out well. I recently heard an interview with Schmuel Hacohen “Super Jew”, on the Tamar Yonah show. He relates a story about his father decking a man when he was young. His dad was a scientist, but he still knew how to fight. Afterwards when young Schmuel was bubbling over about it, he father told him he was not proud of what he did. “Violence is not a good thing, it is not always a bad thing, sometimes it is a necessary thing.” We now have generations of children who only use violence to bully and intimidate, those that would stand up for themselves against it are vilified. And just in case someone would be inclined to fight back, or step in, they must have you disarmed and deprived of your most effective defense weapons. Only criminals are allowed to have those.
The episode of the Tamar Yonah show that followed was an interview with Eitan Fischberger, Israel Campus Coordinator for CAMERA on Campus and Aviva Rosenschein, CAMERA’s International Campus Director. They told of what it’s like on college campuses for Jewish students and those that would stand up for Israel against the lies being told, and against the bullying. Sometimes by their professors. They address the false information being put out by Jewish Voices for Peace, Peace Now, the BDS BS movement, J-Street, If Not Now and others. Far too many Jews have become disconnected an apathetic about Israel. There is one Jewish Nation, if you allow it to be destroyed, where are you planning on going as antisemitism increases? France? England? Have at it.
But some young Jews are defying the herd. And doing it brilliantly. The fact that he needs to write under a pseudonym is too bad. But I understand why he feels he must. The lad is a student of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, HY’’D. Rabbi Meir’s father was close friends with Zev Jabotinsky. My Shimshon’s middle name is Zev. Many many of Rabbi Meir’s predictions have sadly come to pass. He believed Jews should be living in Israel, and that Jews should be able and willing to defend themselves. The writer laments that Betar is no longer around. I do as well. I’m an American Jewish teen and believe we need to teach self defense. It’s a good column.
My one and only (so far) multimedia column for The Zelman Partisans is a reading of a letter by Rabbi Meir Kahane, Dear World
Progressives see the same events we do, but they are determined to double down on their policies of leaving the innocent helpless and at the mercy of someone else showing up to help them. It doesn’t matter if it is there children, your children or parents, or you. No one must be allowed to defend them. They continually attempt to force law-abiding gun owners who have committed no crime to pay the consequences of people who have already committed several. It gets in the way of their ideology, and they love that way more than anything or anyone else. Why are they willing to sacrifice innocent souls on the alter of their ideology? Power.
“Labour thou under the notion I believe there be not significant exceptions to the narrative contained herein? Forbear it not for this is certainly untrue.”1
Author
It was Sunday and the church was awash in a sea of color supporting the local NFL team taking afield that day. Noticing I was not similarly attired, a church member asked me why. I no longer watch the NFL because I am a retired police officer was my reply. Looking puzzled, he walked away saying nothing. How can anyone watch the NFL? Players, receiving enormous sums simply to play a game, use it as a platform to trash America’s police, military, and the flag. “Program Directors” have replaced pretty pom pom and baton twirling girls leading college marching bands at halftime with male dancers clad in unitard body suits prancing about trailing long multi-colored scarves. Female singers, more aptly described as “sexual livestock”, belt out paens to bedroom partners and political causes. What does any of this have to do with football? How can people of faith watch the NFL? Like Mafia enforcers, the NFL uses coercion and extortion threatening to take the Super Bowl from states daring to pass laws stipulating males and females use sex-appropriate bathrooms (G-d made them male and female, two sexes, not “genders”) a disgrace for which the NBA is equally guilty. How far must those who hate this country push until Americans fight back? Had the churchman stayed to listen, I would have explained my disgust for athletes who take a knee (group-hug in the case of the Seattle Seahawks) during the National Anthem. A fundamental problem also exists with respect to the role of sports and America’s institutions of higher learning.
The human race established it as the “natural order” from the start. Those winning the genetic lottery, the more attractive and athletically talented kids, grow up treated better by parents, teachers, peers, and society as a whole. Those fortunate to embody both attributes come closest to approaching divinity on earth. In the movies Carrie and Christine, based on Stephen King novels, a star athlete hangs out with friends who are awkward nerdy social outcasts. Not likely. If this was the norm, movies like She’s All That, starring Freddie Prinz, Jr., and Rachael Lee Cook (1999) or The Duff (Designated Ugly Fat Friend), starring Robbie Amell and Mae Whitman (2015), wherein on a dare or bet, school hunks attempt do-overs of girls deemed by peers as unattractive outcasts,2 wouldn’t be wildly successful. These are modern Cinderella stories people wish were true. Should kids, based on looks, receive preference in college admissions? Most people would answer, no. Should universities extend admission preferences to children of the rich, the connected, and athletes there primarily to play sports? They do. Each takes a slot from non-scholarship kids who worked hard earning grades for admission. Should athletes uninterested in scholastics be able to trade on the names of academic universities using college as training camps for professional sports where they will enjoy lucrative salaries? These questions are perhaps more profound than the controversy of athletes taking a knee during the National Anthem.
Full disclosure; I love football. I always have going back to Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts. I grew up watching every game possible dreaming of the day I wore the blue quarterbacking the Colts. Alas, it was not to be. I tried two sports in high school and one in college but I was never meant to be a jock. Standing 6’ and weighing 120 pounds my high school senior year, I might have made a good javelin for someone to throw. I had no negative opinion of athletes whatsoever but then came high school.
Like flour, my first high school sifted kids into one of three sections; Academic: college bound, Commercial: junior college, maybe, and General: kids warehoused until graduation because they were too young to be tried as adults. Classes for each were completely different. Before my defenestration from the Academic Section, I met a kid named Thurman. He was a walking stereotype; brainy, large glasses, unkempt clothing, whose closest brush with exercise was getting on and off the bus. He posed no threat nor physical challenge to anyone. Nevertheless, high school football players singled him out for torment and persecution. Distances between classes at my large sprawling high school afforded jocks, patrolling the halls like packs of ravenous hyenas, ample time to spot prey. Separating Thurman from the herd, the jocks soon ran him down. They tore textbooks from his hands tossing them onto the breezeway, threw his lunches in the trash, broke his glasses, roughed him up, and shoved him inside the full sized lockers…regularly. The Phys-Ed department divided the 10th grade course into short units covering sports from basketball, vaulting, volleyball, flag football, gymnastics, to climbing ropes where, hanging exposed, the jocks yanked Thurman’s shorts down in front of the girls. Coaches teaching the class did nothing. Thurman had no idea who they were. Sometimes they got others and me too but I had no glasses or lunch and General Section courses weren’t big on textbooks.
Kids soon learned wealthy kids from the North end’s Country Club, cheerleaders, and jocks were demigoddesses and demigods, untouchable. Jock cafeteria behavior was often obnoxious, they acted out in class, bullied lesser males, and forced others to allow them to copy homework and off answer sheets during tests. Was it because victims feared a beating if they snitched, other kids worshipped them, and teachers were indulgent that jocks seemed to suffer no consequences for their actions?3 At times students, usually girls, spoke out against their behavior. Jocks argued they were entitled to special treatment because of sacrifices they made in practice and games.
In my freshman gym class was a gangly uncoordinated white kid who towered 6’7’. He had no interest in sports. Our gym teacher, the basketball coach, asked him to try out for basketball but he said no. From that point on, the coach encouraged, pressured, then cajoled, mocked, and harassed the freshman until he broke and went out for the team. He was terrible. He showed up in gym class bruised and battered from practices. He attended basketball camp over the summer and returned a much better player. From then on girls hung on each arm of his Letterman’s jacket like Christmas ornaments. He no longer spoke or associated with his former freshman gym class chums.
Because I was “non-verbal” (a consequence of living in Philadelphia, a story for another time), my grades suffered. Summoned to the guidance counselor’s office, he waved my grades over his head like a Grand Jury indictment asking what I wanted to do after graduation. When I said, college, he laughed saying I had no chance of ever getting in. Anywhere. Upon his recommendation, the school humiliated, summarily dismissed, and sentenced me down to the General sections. School administrators and guidance counselors were notorious for relegating kids with emotional and behavioral problems, and those deemed “slow”, into those classes. Every student understood General Section meant “dummy classes”. For example, there were no labs, beakers, Bunsen burners, formulae, or experiments in Hoodlum Chemistry. I earned an A writing a short story detailing science problems astronauts would encounter going to Mars, including fighting lizard men living beneath the sand.
The high school football team’s field goal kicker sat behind me in Hoodlum English. Because I never said a word, teachers used me as a “buffer” to separate kids that would not shut up. It was Friday and a frustrated and very pregnant teacher admonished the class if any of us so much as said a word, she was giving us an F. She caught the field goal kicker talking and goofing off but gave him a pass because he was playing that evening. Anyone else would have been staring at a big fat red ‘F’. Then my family moved.
What passed for my second high school in Dog Patch, Appalachia, had a soccer and baseball but no football team. It was too small. Had poaching deer and guzzling Hillbilly beer been Olympic sports, they would have realized their dreams of glory. However, they did have homeroom based intramural flag football teams.
In my senior year, homeroom teacher Mr. ‘P’ announced he was posting a flag football sign-up sheet during lunch. We could choose any position on a first come first served basis. Back from lunch before anyone else, I signed up for wide receiver. Although skinny, I was fast and good at throwing and catching a football. Then the jocks got their hands on the list. By the end of the day, each “skill” position; quarterback, running back, tailback, field goal kicker, punter, and wide receivers belonged to jocks who played school sports. I was no longer a wide receiver. Soccer players Rodger (co-captain), Don, and other jocks erased mine and wrote in the name of a teammate. Six-foot nothing and one hundred and nothing and I was now an offensive lineman? My appeal to Mr. ‘P’, citing his first come first served rule, fell on deaf ears. He refused to overrule the jocks. I quit the team. At first, no one cared. Then coach ‘P’ and the jocks realized, with kids playing both sides of the ball, they needed every boy they could get their hands on and asked me to reconsider. I wouldn’t budge. They offered a compromise; I could play tight end and they would throw me the ball. Tight end means offensive lineman. Jim, a defensive lineman and jock twice my size, knocked me into the dirt so many times I looked like a crash test dummy. This was supposed to be flag football. Team hotdogs, the jocks, took complete control of the team, deciding on plays and who did what. No one else had a voice. Ask yourself why their sense of entitlement came so easily to them. Rodger was naturally the quarterback. The only time he threw me the ball was when he’d been flushed from the pocket and was about to be sacked in our end zone. I caught and took the ball all the way back to the line of scrimmage before being pile driven into the ground by defensive linemen. I never found out who punched me in the jaw on the way down. We made it to the championship game but the superstars were off their game that day. With nothing going right and backed up in our own territory, an angry Rodger insisted on being the punter and proceeded to kick the ball backward, over his head, into our end zone. Opposing players fell on the ball and it was game over. We lost.
At both high schools, kids complained teachers who were also coaches exhibited favoritism toward athletes in their classes. Girls made the same complaint about teacher-Cheerleader coaches with cheerleaders sitting in their classes. Sour grapes? Jealously? Possibly. I witnessed and heard the same later as a teacher. Just me? Maybe, but if true, you would have to explain the 1984 smash hit, Revenge of the Nerds. On to the university.
In college, a friend who double-majored in English and French, tutored at the University of Maryland. Most of her tutees were jocks. She described one as dumber than a sack of rocks, an insult to paper and minerals. He went on to enjoy a successful career with the Dallas Cowboys. My girlfriend at the time was a Parks and Recreation major. Jocks packed out her requisite classes. Coaches typically taught them and, naturally, they preferred “group” work. She was the “g to the p” in “group”, doing all the work. Nevertheless, phantom jock members received the same grade as her. Dark rumors circulated on campus about Jocks getting girls plastered at parties and taking turns having their way with them. In addition, it is common for students to become acquainted with professors in their discipline. Several confided in me that administrators pressured them to pass star athletes, especially those with scholarships, whose academic level wasn’t worthy of a high school freshman.
I tried sports my sophomore year. Too skinny for football, I chose a new sport, rugby, thinking it would help me meet girls. Practices were rougher than actual games and it was there I blew out my left knee. Orthoscopic surgery did not yet exist and I was terrified of needles so I chose home-rehab exercises. My limp lasted a year. As a final insult, the University Year Book staff left my name off the team photo. Outside of sports facilities, I rarely if ever saw a jock. So few, if any, college athletes were enrolled in the Art, History, and Science courses I took (I graduated three universities) the following observations are by nature anecdotal. Perhaps others saw it differently.
During Rugby tryouts the next year, my knee buckled like Jell-O. I hung up the cleats. The knee still bothers me. After Christmas break my junior year, I discovered a secret cabal of non-jocks had commandeered and turned the attic storage room of an old building into a weight room. Although I had never touched a bar or dumbbell, I asked to join them still hoping to rehab my knee. It was January, the attic unheated, and the equipment antique heavy-duty Anglo-Saxon stuff. Floorboards were warped, clouds of chalk hung in the air like fog, barbells rusted, and paint on plates was a distant memory. Risk of tetanus be damned, I loved it. Then came big news my senior year. The University closed our medieval attic gym but opened a multi-million dollar sports complex featuring an Olympic pool, tennis, volleyball, and basketball courts, and a fully fitted weight room. And it was heated. Although designed for all students, in no time power-lifter and football players migrated from their facilities soon taking over the Sports Complex weight room as their own. They did all in their power to intimidate and make non-jocks feel as unwelcome as possible. Lines for the bench presses, one of the few exercises performed by power-lifters, were always long. Jocks made their displeasure vocal and known over having to wait so long between sets because of us pencil necks. Their sense of god-like entitlement, probably germinating in elementary school, was on full display. They mocked and ridiculed us spaghetti armed and legged men unable to lift weight they manhandled with ease. My journey up from pencil-neckdom began by working out with five fellow spaghetti-men. One by one, jock intimidation drove them away. Not me.4
Over Easter Break, the weight room was deserted. A miracle. A young football coach came in and, in a rude manner, told me because of a water main leak, the facility was closed and to leave. I asked why that was a problem. Because there is no water for the showers, he said. I explained I lived off campus and never used the showers but he was unable to grasp this concept, became irate, and yelled at me to get out as if the Sports Complex belonged to him and his football players. My last semester arrived and, dilly-dallying too long looking for off-campus housing, I found none available. Football coaches had gone door to door snagging up everything for freshman athletes who had yet to attend a single class. Because a Maryland State Trooper finished rehabbing a house at the last minute, I found a room. Thanks Fred.
I often wondered why Monday Night Football announcers introduced players by giving their name and the university they attended. What difference did their college make? It’s a football game. Whether at work, shopping, or at places of worship, do the rest of us automatically tell people we meet the name of the college we attended? “Hi, my name is Tim, Auburn U”, or “I’m Sally; The Ohio State”. At least our speech would be comprehensible. It finally dawned on me. Professional football players were identifying the NFL Farm Team in which they had trained. Wow. Was I naïve or what? I thought colleges were scholastic institutions of higher learning not training camps for the NFL. Every “student” attending college to play sports, if they do not belong, displaces one who does. Taxpayer-subsidized Colleges deny deserving kids, admission to the university of their dreams, because they place so much emphasis on sports. Jocks, whose goal is raking in millions as professional athletes, take advantage of the “system”5. Some go on later to “tweet” while driving exotic SUVS costing more than most middle-class homes; America is a racist and unjust country.
Embarrassingly ignorant of history and fueled by the lies of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and their allies; liberals and self-loathing white people, NFL players began spitting, metaphorically, on police officers and America’s soldiers past and present by taking a knee during the National Anthem. Spokesmen for BLM have advocated violence and murder of cops claiming it is self-defense against a war of extermination waged by police officers on behalf of the white race. In previous articles, I documented that this narrative is false, myth, and a massive lie orchestrated and coordinated by the Left. Because public (dis)education so poorly serves today’s pop-culture saturated Americans, they believe this claptrap. Because so many of today’s youth lack any degree of inquisitiveness, and are scandalously gullible, they are oblivious to the fact their ignorance renders them accomplices to attacks on men and women who wear the blue.
Colin Kaepernick, multi-million dollar former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, a team notorious for involvement in anti-2nd Amendment causes, became the face of BLM’s lie in 2015 when he took a knee during the National Anthem. Marcus Peters of the Kansas City Chiefs, and others soon copied him. Journalists reported Kaepernick was under the tutelage of girlfriend, Nessa Diab, an MTV-DJ, Islamic “activist”, and strong supporter of BLM. Kaepernick began posting quotes on social media from Malcolm X, communist mass murderer Che Guevara, communist Black Panthers founder Huey Newton, and cop-killer Assata Shakur. He celebrated Muslim holidays and wore T-shirts depicting Malcolm X and Fidel Castro with slogans deriding America’s police.6
Forty-Niners coach Chip Kelly refused to stand up for America’s police and military. He framed Kaepernick’s disgraceful and buffoonish attacks as a free speech issue7 as did most in the ESPN-Jock sports media Howard Cosell derided as the “Jockocracy”.8 Apparently, Kaepernick’s cheerleaders in the fawning liberal media and the Jockocracy are unaware 1st Amendment speech protections are predicated upon one owning the platform from which he speaks. No one has the right to pop off on any topic tickling their fancy at their place of employment any more than in a neighbor’s living room. NFL players do not own the playing field, bleachers, locker room, training facility, stadium, and so forth. The NFL has hard and fast rules with respect to what players may wear or attach to their uniforms during games. Owners, general managers, and coaches maintain and enforce rules for proper behavior on and off the field, just ask Kareem Hunt (Kansas City Chiefs) and Antonio Brown (New England Patriots). NFL policy requires players to stand, helmet in left hand, and face the flag during the playing of the National Anthem. The NFL spells out disciplinary consequences for violators. But the NFL refuses to enforce these rules and is unwilling to stand up for the country whose citizens lavish millions of dollars on it and its players including tax-payer financed and supported stadiums. Instead, the NFL punishes with fervor any state daring to take a stand against what Archie Bunker called “sexual-preeverts”, men dressed as women, who insist on violating women’s bathrooms. NFL spokesmen claim respect for 1st Amendment free speech rights motivates their tolerance for players kneeling during the National Anthem. Really? Ironically, the same vertebral-challenged NFL prohibits players from possessing or storing firearms at any location associated with the NFL including training facilities, in vehicles on parking lots, team planes, buses, and you name it. The same applies to fans. For the NFL, some rights are more rights than others. In a shameless display of hypocrisy, the craven NFL refused to allow the Dallas Cowboys to wear decals on their helmets honoring the five Dallas police officers gunned down in a BLM inspired ambush.9
Perhaps huge profits, salaries, mansions, and exotic automobiles has blinded NFL panjandrums, team owners, and players to the fact that football is just a game. It possesses no inherent social value. Perhaps copying actors trying to deflect attention away from their mahoosive salaries and aristocratic lifestyles, teams exploit people’s emotions by sporting colored ribbons supporting the current cause de jure. Following public outrage over players taking a knee during the National Anthem, some teams, like the Seattle Seahawks, tried to have it both way by standing arm in arm instead of kneeling or placing hand over heart. Gutless. Kansas City Chief’s tight end Travis Kelce, who graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in “Exploratory Studies”, and has a 5-year contract worth $46 million dollars stooped even lower placing hand over heart and kneeling. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t honor those who despise this country while standing up for this country. Journalists rank teams on a “Thug-Scale” based on the number of players arrested for DUI’s, drug charges, assaults, domestic violence, rape, and even murder possibly explaining player’s dislike of law enforcement.10 Attempting to clean up their image, the NFL ran commercials with players telling us not to hit our spouses. Who are they to give moral advice to anyone?
A lifelong fan who grew up watching every college and professional football game possible, it pains me to give it up. I am no longer able to stomach the hypocrisy of the NFL. Sports has perverted the purpose of colleges and universities. Scandals involving players who coasted through high school and now college with grades they never earned, graduating with diplomas they can barely read, and the cover-up for athletes who pawed and mauled girls too humiliated and intimidated to go public, has gone on for far too long. Players, who grew up treated by schools and society as demigods now inject themselves into politics supporting causes determined to destroy values and beliefs Americans hold dear. I watch no more.
11 Please forgive my shabby attempt to channel Sir Walter Scott. Published two hundred years ago in 1819 and purchased in 1983, I am finally reading his novel, Ivanhoe. It is refreshing to rediscover classic literature and sad to realize Americans are too lazy and intellectually flaccid to tackle literature, formative of their culture, as what remains of Western Civilization slides beneath the waves.
22Spoiler alert: Neither girl in either movie is fat or unattractive, quite the contrary which evoked criticism from girls who, sadly, believe they are both. The notion weight and unattractiveness are mutually inclusive is terribly wrong and has destroyed the lives of many young people.
33Unbeknownst to me, a jock copied off my test answer sheet in biology. Other kids lied and told him I knew he was copying and purposely put down the wrong answers. Twice my size, He cornered me in a hallway and threatened to beat the *BEEP* out of me if this turned out to be true. He would have if this had not been a lie. I still remember his white T-shirt and size of his arms as he grabbed my shirt and slammed me against the wall.
44 I never touched steroids, (lifters called it “juice” and “the sauce”) or any form of sports enhancing drug ever. Yet, several years after college, I was able to hit 350 on the bench, one rep-lock outs too, 425 deep squat, and 10 lock out reps with 185 pounds on the military press. My weight went from 120 to 225 eating food, not drugs.
55 at https://work.chron.com/much-money-nfl-player-make-year-2377.html. The median salary for NFL players is $860,000 per season with rookies starting at an average of $450,000. However, this does not take into account their haul from endorsements, commercials, team merchandise, and so forth.
1010 “Which NFL teams have the most player arrests? Bengals, Broncos, among longest rap sheets since 2000”, at http://blog.masslive.com/patriots/2017/05/nflarrests_which_teams_have_t.html. Updated May 12, 2017. The top 10 were: 1. Minnesota Vikings, 2. Denver Broncos, 3. Cincinnati Bengals, 4. Tennessee Titans tied with Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 5. Indianapolis Colts tied with the Jacksonville Jaguars, 6. Cleveland Browns, 7. Chicago Bears tied with the Kansas City Chiefs, 8. Miami Dolphins, 9. Baltimore Ravens tied with the Seattle Seahawks, and 10. Los Angeles Chargers tied with the San Francisco 49ers out of 32 teams.
For those that haven’t heard yet, retail giant Walmart has decided that to keep the forces of evil at bay (the anti-gun harpies and their ilk) the best thing they could do would be cave into the pressure. Because their customers who shop at Walmart looking for value on things they use in their daily lives are not nearly as important as getting the harpies to quit and being labeled as “socially responsible”. Mind you, the harpies are not nearly as large a segment of the population as the people that quietly go about their business shopping at Walmart, I don’t believe.
This has lead a buddy of mine of Facebook to point out a few things. Said buddy is staunch Second Amendment supporter, so his views may be subtle. Thanks Bill for the lines.
My breakup with Walmart will not be easy. I have two outstanding items at the pharmacy that have to be handled there, but then I’ll transfer the prescriptions elsewhere. I’m serious about this.
I do owe him and his buddies one, they helped me figure out how to get a screw out of the laser sights on my .380 and only chided me a tiny bit for carrying that small a gun at times. Good lads all! But being a helpful friend, I told him about Israel Pharmacy. I’ve set 3 people up with accounts there and they’ve all been pleased and saved money, and no they aren’t paying me.
So regarding my buddy’s salient points, let’s examine the death and destruction Walmart unleashes on a daily basis on the unsuspecting communities they invade. And if you are a small Mom and Pop shop, I suspect you would agree with the characterization of Walmart as being an invasive species that puts small businesses out of business and then quits carrying the necessary items.
This one is startling. A study by Johns Hopkins found that 250,000 Americans are killed by medical errors each year. That’s 17 times the number killed by guns. Yet Walmart has a pharmacy in each store.
But my friend wasn’t done with his observations.
In 2018, 40,000 people died in automobile crashes in the U.S., yet Walmart still sells the vital parts and ammunition to keep these machines of carnage operating.
And
In 2014, nearly 5000 people died in bathtub drownings in the U.S., yet with few exceptions, every home still contains at least one of these known instruments of death. In fact, the government requires them!
My gracious! The inhumanity! Think of the bathtub bumpstocks Walmart sells! High capacity bottles of bubble bath, huge bags of scented Epson salts, bath scrubbies in multiple colors and that doesn’t count the dangerous chemicals Walmart sells to clean aforementioned bathtub of death! And they sell Tide Pods!
In 2017 there were nearly a thousand fatal bicycle accidents, yet Walmart still sells these machines of death. Walmart has blood on their hands.
I can hear it now, “Walmart peddler of death”. Yes, it’s a pun. Yes, it’s a bad one.
But let’s go back to the “groundbreaking” stance bit. It’s not really you know. And if Walmart quits selling ammunition you can just go to K-Mart and buy it. Oh, wait. Kmart Kills Ammunition Sales
Maybe not.
Company officials made the announcement Thursday following meetings that included company executives, a prominent gun-control advocate and victims of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
Kmart stores have not carried handguns since the 1970s, but still sell hunting rifles and other long guns. For some time, the Troy, Mich.-based company has been under pressure from gun-control advocates to stop selling firearms.
In November 1999, talk show host Rosie O’Donnell resigned as the company’s celebrity spokeswoman because of her strong support of gun control.
And in December 1999 the company withdrew an application for a license to sell rifles and shotguns at a new store in New York after protests by an anti-gun group.
Company spokeswoman Julie Fracker said the sale of firearms and ammunition had been under review as part of a merchandising strategy by the company’s new executive team for some time.
“Obviously we consider ourselves a socially conscious business, but this was a business decision made in the best interests of the company,” she said.
And about Rosie resigning as spokeswoman? Well, she’s important you see, you aren’t. If you aren’t rich enough to afford professional body guards, well then your life isn’t worth preserving. She of course can afford armed bodyguards, and has them. #Elitist #Hypocrisy
The latest balance sheet data shows that DICK’S Sporting Goods had liabilities of US$1.93b due within a year, and liabilities of US$3.22b falling due after that. On the other hand, it had cash of US$116.7m and US$68.5m worth of receivables due within a year. So its liabilities total US$4.96b more than the combination of its cash and short-term receivables.
This deficit casts a shadow over the US$3.08b company, like a colossus towering over mere mortals. So we definitely think shareholders need to watch this one closely. At the end of the day, DICK’S Sporting Goods would probably need a major re-capitalization if its creditors were to demand repayment.
…
DICK’S Sporting Goods’s net debt is only 0.48 times its EBITDA. And its EBIT easily covers its interest expense, being 32.4 times the size. So you could argue it is no more threatened by its debt than an elephant is by a mouse. But the bad news is that DICK’S Sporting Goods has seen its EBIT plunge 13% in the last twelve months. We think hat kind of performance, if repeated frequently, could well lead to difficulties for the stock. There’s no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine DICK’S Sporting Goods’s ability to maintain a healthy balance sheet going forward.
Who cares about those mouth breathing gun owners? Oh, I dunno, the shareholders? If I were a shareholder and the CEO started making monetary decisions based on “social justice” knee jerks rather than responding to customers I think I would lead the charge to oust them. That’s my money you’re playing with. I invested in a company, not a high school experiment with a popularity contest.
This has lead to the popular Babylon Bee news site (satire) breaking the news on two more new Walmart policies
BENTONVILLE, AR—In a bold move intended to curb the thousands of deaths from vehicles each and every day, Walmart has decided to stop selling auto parts, sources confirmed Tuesday.
According to shocking reports, people have purchased car parts at Walmart and then those cars have been involved in accidents, proving a direct correlation between selling auto parts and causing deaths.
“We can no longer be complicit in an industry that kills over 3,000 people a day,” said a spokesperson for Walmart. “Every time we sell a muffler, steering wheel cover, or flame decal, we are potentially causing the death of a person, and we cannot support that any longer.”
But hey, while perusing the Bee’s homepage, I did get a bit of good news!
U.S.—Beto O’Rourke promised to take away everybody’s guns when he is president, though sources have confirmed that O’Rourke will never even get close to being the president.
…
“Man, I can’t wait to see how that presidential pen feels signing an unconstitutional executive order,” he added wistfully, though he will never know how that feels.
At publishing times, O’Rourke’s pro-gun control comments had caused his number of supporters to get cut in half, leaving him with just one.
That’s the thing about all this modern incarnation of “social justice”. In placating the harpies, and playing to the #FakeNews cameras you cause harm to the people you are suppose to be working for, shareholders or constituents. Not to mention the people that work for you. They used to be called “employees with families” till their jobs went away because that store had to be closed. If you’ve enhanced your ego or reputation at the expense of someone you’ve betrayed, it seems there could be fallout. I hope it falls hard on you.
I bet there might be a local gun shop with knowledgeable people around. They may not mix paint for you, but I bet the can make some sensible gun related recommendations should you ask.
The news media hype mass murders like sports. They generate excitement using continuous coverage, announcer-like intensity and narratives, names and backgrounds of “contestants,” manisfestos and quotes, play by plays, tactics and gear, video and photos, comparisons with other contestants, and scores. Regardless of intention, the news media are strongly encouraging copycats.
But it doesn’t stop there. The news media then use the carnage as propaganda to push an agenda — to disarm the population at large — which would result in millions of defenseless law-abiding citizens everywhere at the mercy of an infinitesimal percentage who desire to be their mass-murderers. Again, regardless of intentions, the news media are pushing for broader playing fields with more targets, higher scores, and greater notoriety for mass murderers.
(At this point, it’s worth remembering that the greatest mass murderers are governments, a risk that increases dramatically with civilian disarmament.)
There is hope. A few countries have seen the light. They have directed their news media to change their coverage of mass murders — and their news media have complied, with minimal coverage, non-hyped language, no emphasis on the perpetrators, just a presenting of facts about the event and moving on. In those countries, mass murders have dropped to zero or nearly zero.
In the US, our news media is only getting worse. Hearing such intense, ongoing, sports-like coverage of the latest horrific events is not just personally sickening, it is quite literally sickening our country. It is doing nothing to help alleviate the problem and may, in fact, be escalating conditions.
We have to demand better. We have to demand a similar change from our news agencies — but without usurping the 1st Amendment.
For those discomfited by my point of view, and for liberals that entails maniacal hatred, don’t get your Garanimals’ training undies in a twist. I’m in the extreme minority. I’m so “old-school” and normal, nothing more than shirt and trousers will ever emerge from my closet and I managed to reach middle-age sans tattoos, never involved in drugs, and without carnal knowledge of Madonna. Is that rare or what? I’ve never won a popularity contest either and am not about to start now. So why sweat me? Like-minded Americans could fit in one room without a shoe horn.
Unbeknownst to me how, I was added to the email blast alert list of Democrat Party Panjandrum Nancy Pelosi known affectionately in some circles as Bela Pelousy. My first impulse was to hit delete and unsubscribe followed by multiple showers and a round of antibiotics. Wait a sec. Imagine the immense loss in entertainment value not reading lunatic emails penned behind the Tofu Curtain by Bela’s neo-Bolshevik scribes out in California. I reconsidered. Pouring a beverage and popping popcorn, I began reading. Hysterical. What a hoot. I stopped laughing. Radical Trotskycrats couldn’t fund-raise through preposterous wild-eyed frothing at the mouth emails, spewing claims unmoored from reality, unless significant numbers of the Great Unwashed are gullible and ignorant enough to believe such rubbish. Or went to public schools. Or both. G-d help us all.
Based on radio and television discussions, online articles, and conversations with Millennials, in general they seem to oppose abolishing the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But they also tend to support so-called “assault-rifle” bans and believe safer guns and more training are the remedies for “gun-violence.” If true, their knowledge of firearms and understanding of crime issues needs to be addressed. What is the best approach?
All too-often Millennials propose gun control laws whose underlying premise is grossly naïve; people are incompetent with respect to self-defense so shouldn’t fight back against criminal attack. And “because,” they claim, an armed woman is more likely to shoot herself than the bad guy, she should submit to rape. Could these gutless arguments stem from an unwillingness by TSNAGs (Typical Sensitive New Age Guys) to shoulder a responsibility once embraced by men; protecting society’s most vulnerable? Is cowardice behind their claim disarming all but cops will create safer communities? Making matters worse, people proposing more gun laws sometimes know little or nothing about guns. They employ incorrect terms, trade in urban legends, and rely on internet disinformation. Maybe they ask where’s the safety on Ruger’s GP100, call AR15s “assault weapons,” refer to magazines as “clips,” claim anyone can walk in and out of a gun store in five minutes with a machine gun, say the Constitution “gives” us the right to keep and bear arms, or claim gun-registration will never lead to confiscation. Can gun-owners be faulted in believing when a liberal man marries a liberal woman, it’s a same-sex marriage? How does one address their ignorance and misinformation? Understandably those in the self-defense community often respond to the ill-informed with insults but, is this the best approach with Millennials? Is treating them as lunkheads for not knowing what the rest of us were taught the best way to win converts? No. Instead, with gentleness and patience, take them under your wing. Guide them to a saving knowledge of the truth about self-defense. Teach them the 2nd Amendment protects the right to save their lives and those of loved ones from bad guys who’d take them in a second without remorse. They’re smart. As they learn, questions will arise and your answers will lead to more questions and soon you’ve taught them what used to be common knowledge. Let’s start here.
Deceitfully calling them “assault-weapons,” and “assault-rifles,” liberals would ban America’s rifle, the AR15/AR10 and their derivatives. But these are semiautomatic not assault-rifles, (no firearm is classified an assault weapon). They comport with the type of firearm Alexander Hamilton had in mind observing in Federalist #46 that an armed citizenry is the chief bulwark against infringement and oppression by a federal government, and an army it might raise for that purpose.1 Those calling for “safer” guns and more training are apparently unfamiliar with firearms. Considering approximately 124 million people own about 270 million guns,2 (or more), and there were 505 deaths due to “accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm” in 2013,3 (not even half of a half of a half of a percent, you get the drift) safe gun handling is not a problem in America. Would guns complicated by additional safety devices and more training impair the thugs shooting up Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia,4 and Washington, D.C. among others?
In the past several decades, various firearm manufacturers began attaching unnecessary function-retarding devices (magazine disconnect safety) aimed at fending off slip-and-fall lawyers, buying goodwill among anti-gunners, and saving from themselves, people too stupid to unload their gun before cleaning it. Remarkably, even self-defense gurus piled on teaching CCW holders not to carry guns with personal hand-loaded ammunition because it made them appear more blood-thirsty. Editorialists for firearm magazines, gun forums, pro-gun attorneys, and those training citizens at various shooting schools and academies echoed these proscriptions as well. These admonitions took on the life of hoary old clichés everyone accepts but never questions. With all due respect to ThePersuaders, as a policeman, when I heard someone utter the cliché; there’s a fine line between love and hate, it was always after husbands or boyfriends beat, stabbed, or murdered their wives or girlfriends. There is a huge chasm between love and hate. I am no fan of hoary clichés. If you get worked up over what comes next, keep in mind, drugs, tattoos, Madonna, extreme minority…
I’m acquainted with the PARDs (Pistol Rescue Doctors) who perform operations transforming liberal guns into conservative guns. They surgically remove from pistols magazine disconnect “safeties,” an unnecessary handicapping mechanism. I realize liberals enjoy taking sharp objects to everything from fences to babies, but, in this case, patients emerge from operating rooms feeling much better. These surgeons have rescued pistols from both domestic and foreign marques. A minimally invasive procedure, each gun is able to return to a normal life the same day, without prescription Opioids. What is this safety? A magazine disconnect safety prevents a pistol from firing unless a magazine is firmly inserted and locked in place. It doesn’t matter if the magazine is loaded with rounds or not. Unless the magazine is in place, the pistol is inoperable.
In an ongoing campaign to limit the type of firearms which may be sold and possessed, down to, well, none, California created an ever evolving list of “safety” features and attributes firearms must have in order to be legal in the Rainbow state. To the ever shrinking list of legal guns was added in 2007, the requirement of a visual and tactile loaded chamber indicator and a magazine disconnect “safety.”5 It remains unclear how such mechanisms reduce crime by identifying, apprehending, and bringing violent criminals to trial. In order to continue marketing guns in California, and placate lefty anti-2nd Amendment politicians (the beard and ponytail crowd), Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson (metal pistols) added magazine disconnect “safeties” not typically found on pistols manufactured by Beretta, CZ, Glock, H&K, FN, SIG Sauer, Springfield, and 1911A1s, or Smith’s modern plastic pistols.
Self-anointed “gun-experts,” among the most insufferably arrogant people I’ve ever encountered, and Neosporin scraped knee spraying worry warts argue that, before cleaning a pistol, someone might forget to check to see if it’s loaded and suffer a negligent discharge [ND] with tragic consequences. Do they assume everyone, other than them, is too ignorant, stupid, and irresponsible to safely handle guns so as many function retarding devices as possible must be added to them? The rarity of gun-accidents puts a lie to this notion. For everyone I’ve trained with, at police and public ranges, the approach is much the same. Training is 100% focused on safety. A standardized step by step protocol is taught and pounded into the heads of new shooters. Range Masters are unforgiving. 1) all guns are considered loaded, 2) guns at all times must be pointed in a safe direction, 3) shooters must know their backstop meaning, what you’re shooting at and the dangers of shooting in that direction, 4) don’t touch or load guns until conditions are safe to do so, 5) When done firing, place the pistol on the bench, table, etc. with the slide locked back and the ejection port up so anyone can see if it’s loaded. Rounds, fired or not, are ejected from the cylinder of revolvers and the gun is placed on the shooting table with the cylinder propped open for inspection, 6) before disassembly for cleaning, the pistol’s magazine must be out, the slide locked back, and the chamber inspected to ensure no rounds remain in the gun, 7) never point even a disassembled gun at anyone, 8) when unloading an unfired gun, whether back from the range or a day of concealed carry, you must account for each round. By always following these or similar steps in the same order, they become part of what’s known as “muscle memory.” Simple. For those finding these steps too complex or mentally challenging, no amount of safeties will make their firearms safe. For them a safe gun is none at all. But don’t punish the 99.99% who handle firearms responsibly with useless feel-good beanbag lava lamp “safety” devices. An on-line Ruger Forum reveals there are Henny Pennys among gun-owners.
Magazine disconnect safety deactivation opponents argue, although removing them makes pistols no less safe, the why of it would not be understood by juries. Others contend that, even in cases where use of deadly force is justified, prosecutors will use removal to paint defendants in the worst possible light. Forum member ‘Sandlapper’ wrote; “It is a safety device you are removing and I’ve always thought safety and gun are too (sic) words that worked well together.” When another forum member asked if this had ever been an issue in a court case, removal opponent ‘Storm40’ delivered what he thought was the coup de grace citing People v. Superior Court (DU) Los Angeles County, (1992). In this case, an LAPD ballistics expert testified the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver used in the shooting case had been crudely altered and it’s “trigger pull dramatically reduced.” Storm40 added that the revolver’s “safety mechanism” didn’t function.6 Having fired snub-nosed revolvers from Colt, Sturm-Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Taurus over the years, I never encountered a “safety-mechanism,” left-wing novelist Stephen Kind notwithstanding.
Great Scott, has America descended so deeply into Henny Penny emasculation that the blood of America’s rugged, individualistic, and self-reliant forefathers has evaporated from everyone’s veins? Have Neosporin wielding moms patrolling playgrounds ever vigilant for scraped elbows turned Americans into the sky is falling ninnies?
Back in the day, a young man’s first car was typically a tired old jalopy. He soon went to work tossing out performance inhibiting parts replacing cams, intakes, carburetors, exhaust manifolds, and gears with those designed to wring from the car its true performance potential. At least outside of Palo Alto. When liberal environmentalists, who pee their pants at the mere mention of horsepower, employed the tyrannical power of government to foist all manner of unconstitutional performance crippling “pollution” devices on cars, sons and daughters of pioneers and settlers did what free people always do. They chucked them. None of their modifications rendered cars any less safe. Whether driving a 1974 Ford Pinto pumping out 80 horsepower or a 2018 Dodge Demon with 840 screaming horses on tap, what makes cars safe or unsafe is how they’re operated. For those driving sewing machines (electric cars), time among aficionados of real cars is highly recommended…and fun.
Removing magazine disconnect safeties does little to alter trigger pull weight on hammer or striker fired pistols and renders them no less safe. With Ruger’s SR9, removal actually smooths trigger press resulting in a more accurate gun. No one wants to shoot innocent bystanders. Won’t prosecutors use this modification to vilify defendants? Let’s be frank. If a prosecutor has charged you in a self-defense case, they want your scalp. Ethical or not, fair or not, they’ll throw anything they can at you to win conviction. District Attorneys are politicians. Even If you do everything right; approved factory ammo and a totally bone-stock gun, and you’re a pillar of the community completely justified in the use of deadly force, a D.A. who chooses to bring charges will so blacken your character and reputation, your own family won’t recognize you. Trial lawyer Gordon Cooper, an experienced attorney who represents gun-owners, observes the legal system is biased and stacked against gun-owners. And that’s whether you tuned your gun to be more efficient or not. In his experience, “many law-enforcement officers, district attorneys, and even jurors seem to think that if you own or carry a firearm, you are inherently guilty in some way.”7 It won’t matter whether or not you added clearer sights, replaced the grip panels for a better fit, had a trigger-job to improve a horrendous pull weight, Cerakoted the frame for rust prevention, or removed a magazine disconnect “safety.” Ultimately the issue to be decided is, was the use of deadly force justified? Prosecutors attempt to load juries with as many gun-ignorant Oprah watching malleable Neosporin nitwits as possible. It’s the defense attorney’s responsibility, through the voir dire and trial process to block this and provide expert counter-witnesses. As to Ruger Forum member Sandlapper’s cliché about guns and safety going together, Confiscationists use the words “gun” and “safety,” together all the time. Are you going to allow those who know nothing about and or hate guns, dictate what does or doesn’t belong on your gun because the word “safety” is attached to it? For liberals “safety” means national gun-owner registration, restrictions, bans, forced-buy backs, and confiscation. Is that what you want, Sandlapper? If you allow Confiscationist Henny Pennys to build a “safe” gun, chances are it won’t fire. Messages on T-shirts, bumpers stickers, and social media pose a much greater threat to a defendant in a self-defense case than a finely-tuned gun.
Ruger Forum member “Spring” noted disconnect “safety” removal does not lighten trigger pull and the same dire warnings were applied to gun-owners using hollow point rounds; they’re “designed to kill” and make gun owners appear “blood-thirsty.” You’ll get hammered by prosecutors if they discover you used hollow-points in your self-defense gun, people warned. Another Forum member observed that, with respect to the California snub-nosed revolver case, modification of the revolver’s trigger was not an issue and played no role in determination of guilt or innocence. Two women were engaged in a physical altercation (sounds like a high school cafeteria at lunchtime), one turned to leave, and the defendant shot her in the back of the head.8 Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows immediately what the defendant did wrong. If not, don’t touch a gun until you get some serious legal training.
As much as I respect Massad Ayoob, I take issue with his admonition against disconnect safety removal.9 As a policeman, I and other officers were issued Smith & Wesson Model 19 revolvers. By the 1980s, new specimens typically came with heavy gritty triggers and large wooden grips. It was routine for officers to replace wooden stocks with rubber grips, change the sights, and pop for a department legal trigger job. Like performance mods on a car, this didn’t make the gun any less safe, it simply ran better.
Prosecutor: “Isn’t it true officer Goldstein, getting an action job indicates you intended to shoot the deceased?”
Goldstein: “No, pulling the trigger does.”
Gaston Glock’s masterpiece has no magazine disconnect safety and is perhaps the most customizable pistol on the market. From slide hold-open levers, magazine release buttons, springs, barrels, slides, name it, the performance of off the shelf guns can be greatly enhanced. This can make for more confident and accurate users. Ultra-light triggers aside, in self-defense situations, employing a finely tuned and accurate gun means less chance of bullets striking unintended targets. Gun owners who experiment with various loads are more likely to know which bullets might over or under penetrate in given situations allowing them to choose wisely. This makes them and the gun safer.
It’s possible, sitting in a car, at a desk, or reaching for items on grocery store shelves, to bump the magazine release button just enough to unlock the magazine of some pistols. With the magazine still in the well, nothing appears amiss. Attacks by criminals are often sudden and violent, allowing victims but a second to pull their gun and fire in self-defense. Only, the gun won’t fire. The magazine is unlocked. What about the fact a round is already chambered. It won’t matter. The gun is inoperable due to the magazine disconnect safety. For naysayers who might argue this would probably be a rare occurrence, how rare will it be if it’s you? Gun Writers note most attacks and self-defense uses of pistols occur at handshaking distances. Suppose a scumbag makes a grab for and gets his hand on your gun and, in the ensuing struggle, the magazine release button is bumped sending the magazine flying. No sweat, you still have one in the pipe. Weren’t you paying attention? Without the magazine locked in place, the pistol is inoperable. While the Scrote is stabbing you with a knife or bludgeoning your skull with a crowbar, you’re on hands and knees, scrambling around on the sidewalk, trying to find the ejected magazine so it can be re-inserted into the pistol to make it work. Only, you won’t be able to do that. Because you’re dead.
Finding time and money to practice frequently at the range is a challenge for anyone. “Dry-firing” is a method for practicing trigger skills, hand and eye coordination, and building muscle memory. Third generation Smith & Wesson pistols, alloy and steel models, had hammers and a double action trigger pull weight designed to build great forearms. Like a revolver, one can practice “staging” the overly heavy trigger learning to control and fire it at the proper “break” enhancing accuracy and effectiveness. But this requires lots of practice, including long dry-fire sessions. To dry-fire these hammer fired Smiths, one has two options; thumb back the hammer and pull the trigger but, it won’t drop without the magazine in place (Smith 908, for example), or rack the slide. But the slide can’t be racked to the rear and returned to battery if an empty magazine is in place. The slide has to be retracted, allowed to return to battery, and then the magazine re-inserted. Unless you thumb the hammer with a magazine in place, if you dry fire 50 times, you’ll have to repeat this process 50 times. But that’s impossible with magazine disconnect safeties. It’s the same for striker-fired pistols. Dropping the magazine, working the slide, reinserting the magazine, pulling the trigger, and repeating is not conducive to training and, we have a magazine always in the gun. Wouldn’t it be safer during dry fire practice for a magazine not to be part of the equation?
For those clinging to the, what’s the harm with more safeties argument, how many will be enough? At what point does the firearm’s intended purpose become compromised? The way to improve driving skills is through practice, not making it harder for people to drive their cars. In both cases, firearms and automobiles, one learns a set of safety protocols from which not to deviate. I am aware of a man who was killed when the jack holding up the car he was under failed. Anyone who works on cars learns early on this is a hideously dangerous no-no. The same “everyone knows you don’t do this” type of maxim also applies to guns. Those who violate safety protocols, face tragic consequences. The good news is, most of us do follow them.
What would guns designed by Henny Pennys look like? Big and heavy, festooned with a padlock, proof all 29 warning labels were read, owner fingerprint keypad, microphone and voice recognition software, chip reader, DNA blood-sample collection needle, video-screen on which to take a required test, google search for any racist, sexist, bigoted, etc. comment ever made on social media, and an automatic call to the FBI for authorization to use the gun.
In America, when a respected greybeard in the 2nd Amendment and shooting community theorizes from his pedestal this or that handgun modification could be used by prosecutors to hang an innocent person, other sages nod in cross-pollinating agreement. Soon the theory circulates becoming accepted wisdom one dares not question. In the real world, rounds fired at violent attackers in self-defense, from .380s to .44 Magnums, don’t automatically drop knife or gun-wielding Scumbags like a sack of potatoes. You’re in a fight for your life. You must do whatever it takes to prevail. Failure means you die. But, snivels the Henny Penny, they’ll say when you fired your gun, you meant to kill the bad guy with the knife.10 When it comes to saving lives, we can’t let fear mongering and the massive egos of firearms “experts” cripple our ability to defend ourselves. We can’t allow Confiscationists to normalize hamstringing guns with function inhibiting devices in the name of “gun safety” and “sensible laws.” None of this will hamstring violent criminals but may cost you your life.
11 Clinton Rossiter, Editor, The Federalist Papers, #46 (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book from New American Library, 1961), 294-300.
22John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns Less Crime, Third Edition, (Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1.
1010 People who rob, rape, and murder, are intentional predators. Unlike animals whose predation is based on feeding, these predators are motivated by evil hence monsters and no longer part of the family of man and should be treated as such.
“Can we discuss the loss of rights of people going to a concert because of the lack of assault rifle regulations?”1
Singer Sheryl Crow
“It sickens me the ease in which a TERRORIST can be sold a GUN. Is the ease really worth all these lives?! This needs to stop”2 [capitalization and punctuation in the original] tweeting about Las Vegas.
Gigi Hadid, top fashion model
“It would be wise to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and silencers. None of which is excessive.”3
Elizabeth Banks, Hollywood actress
“Gun control now. Enough already. Grow the f__k up. The average person doesn’t need a f__cking maching (sic) gun. Enough already.”4 [Misspelling in the original]
Billy Eichner, Comedian, actor, writer, television personality.
“We love the traditions, the history, the technology of firearms, and we grew up with the sense of deep responsibility owning guns brings. We gun owners have a deeply held belief in gun safety, instilled by our parents and our grandparents. Owning a gun means living by a set of sternly ingrained rules. Those rules belong to us. We live by them. And when someone breaks those rules, we feel betrayed, appalled, and angry.”5
Todd Woodward
Leftist singer Cheryl Crow, from Kennett, Missouri is worth approximately $41 million dollars. No doubt she and the celebrities cited above earn enough to preclude rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi. They probably have bodyguards as well. Armed bodyguards. If Crow knows anything about firearms and gun-laws, she keeps this secret well hidden. If model Hadid knew the Las Vegas mass murderer was a terrorist (no one else did) then why didn’t she speak up or call the FBI before the massacre? Comedian Eichner demonstrates a psychosis peculiar to those on the left to wit; they believe anger, shouting, and profanity lend credence and strength to their argument. The more self-righteous sanctimony they can work up, like a sweaty lather, the more correct they are. Grow up? For real Billy? I heard that. Someone in the room said, “Who cares. I don’t go to the movies and never heard of these people anyway.” Do you know how many followers they have on social media? Remember this is the USSA (United States of Shallow Americans) wherein if people like an actor, singer, model, or entertainer, then whatever they say must be true. Affection determines truth. Mental exertion need not apply. Let’s play a game. Let’s pretend we’re in a large room and seated at our feet are pop-culture icons all eager to learn. They begin with questions like; aren’t people running amuck in streets blasting each other left and right like in the movies and video games we make? Shouldn’t the government ban guns before they hurt more people? Why is anyone allowed to buy military assault weapons? And they’re all ears and no mouth. I know, I know, but play along anyway.
With respect to actress Elizabeth Banks, there are no firearms classified “assault weapons.” Anything that can be used to hurt another; a rolled up magazine, pencil, ashtray, rock, fishing hook, hayfork, Hillary’s laugh (like a cross between a strangled goose and Bob Dylan singing), or a refrigerator hardened biscuit can be an “assault weapon.” Okay, I get it, you meant “assault rifle” like AR15s, AK47s, Ruger Minis, and any rifle with a collapsible stock and fore-end grip. Right? Wrong. For a rifle to be classified as an “assault rifle,” it must possess specific characteristics including: (1) shoulder fired, (2) capable of full automatic fire, and (3) chambered in a cartridge “intermediate between pistol and revolver, and rifle ammunition; i.e., carbine ammunition.”6 Some are capable of selective fire meaning they have a switch to set them on safe, semiautomatic, fully automatic, and back again. By definition this excludes semiautomatic rifles because there is no switch or capability for full automatic fire. Instead their triggers must be pressed, one at a time, for each round fired, a system more than a century old. Other than caliber, similarities between military and civilian rifles are cosmetic. The latter are incapable of selective or full-automatic fire. Liberals invented the term “assault-weapon” to confuse and scare non- gun owners into believing commercial AR15s are the same as military fully automatic assault rifles.7
Okay, maybe you’re right, a songstress replies, but can’t semiautomatics be modified to fire full-auto? In some cases, yes but it takes skill and proper tools to make alterations which typically are irreversible. This false claim, semiautomatics can easily, and apparently legally, be converted to fully automatic, came up at my school in the form of an ambush.
When I was a high school teacher, a colleague in the foreign language department told her students anyone could purchase the part(s) at gun shows to convert semiautomatic rifles to full-auto. Why this came up in a Spanish class, I have no idea. English, Science, Math, SocialIST Studies, and other departments were compartmentalized into their own hallways and, only in my 3rd year, I’d met few teachers outside my own. Therefore, I was caught off guard when a teacher I’d never met (I had to ask a colleague her name) unleashed an attack on me in the teacher’s break room at lunch. Angry and emotional, she yelled at me in accusatory tones claiming anyone could buy the parts to convert semi into fully automatic firearms at gun shows. Collecting myself, I asked what the part was and how many gun shows had she attended? Her response was tempestuous insistence she spoke the truth and if I said otherwise, I was a liar. Why had she targeted me? An introvert in a department of belligerent very vocal leftists, I’d kept my views to myself from day one so her outburst was mystifying. I failed to grasp, until apprised later by the principal, what an intolerable scandal it was for an overwhelmingly liberal faculty to discover a conservative in their midst. And I was unaware to the degree which liberal teachers, who didn’t even know me, talked about me behind my back. MOTOWN’s The O’JAYS sang of my plight. The pattern was typical. Upon discovering a conservative colleague, liberals begin with mild teasing, then goading, next mockery and stepped up insults, and finally angry verbal attacks. When assigned to work with new teachers during faculty in-services, ultra-liberal union goon Mao ZeTodd was invariably lurking nearby. He’d rush over announcing in hysterical tones resembling an Atlanta CDC warning, I was the “school conservative” thus poisoning any chance to build a relationship before rumor, gossip, and lies reached their ears.
I’d attended many gun shows and never seen parts for sale to convert semi to a fully automatic rifles. Being no authority and wanting to get the facts straight, I contacted the local BATF. They said the Spanish teacher was wrong. Possession of any part permitting conversion of a firearm from semi to full-automatic is illegal and a felony. This is true even if one doesn’t possess a firearm. Members of local police departments and the BATF often visit gun shows ensuring everything is on the up and up. It is illegal to make, alter, or offer for sale, any part modifying the semiautomatic function of any firearm, pistol, shotgun, or rifle, to fully automatic. Kiss loved ones goodbye because you’re looking at up to 10 years in federal prison, a $250,000 dollar fine, and permanent revocation of the right to possess firearms and vote as well. Suppose you make the modification and take it to someone’s farm to try it out. A neighbor reports to authorities hearing automatic fire coming from this property. Based on probable cause the BATF secures and executes a search warrant finding the weapon(s). It gets very bad at that point. Altering firearms this way is something you should never have anything to do with. Don’t do it. Run from anyone doing this.8 Did I confront the Spanish teacher with the truth, the fact that she lied? No, it’s the whole introvert thing. Okay ask our glitterati, AR15s are not the same as M16s, but why does anyone need them anyway?
The right to keep and bear arms is recognized through the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as a G-d-given not man-created right from which individuals can’t be alienated [separated] by government. It has nothing to do with hunting or membership in the Military or “National” (sic) Guard and more importantly, is not dependent on notions of a “need.” Were this not so, those who rule, regardless of style of government from authoritarian to democratic, could define and redefine the “need” standard until it becomes an un-scalable wall. In response to mass shootings in the latter half of the 20th century, Britain eliminated self-defense as a reason to “need” firearms essentially banning pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. Because registration had been implemented years before, the government knew who had what when confiscation began.9 An inalienable right cannot be altered, infringed upon, or abolished by a majority vote of one’s neighbors or by government. Okay, says a pop-star, instead of banning guns, couldn’t we save lives by limiting magazine capacity? Who really needs “high capacity” magazines holding 15 to 30 rounds?
High compared to what? The correct term is “full capacity.” I have a question for you; how many rounds does it take to stop an attacker? A 2008 Rand Corporation study found the NYPD averaged an 18% hit rate in shootouts with armed criminals and a 30% rate when the bad guys didn’t return fire10 translating into an approximate hit ratio of 1 to 3 rounds per 10 round magazine. Roughly the same percentage, sometimes worse, holds true for departments across America. Would you limit magazine capacity for the police? Okay maybe not cops but it’s different with civilians. It’s the cops that face armed bad guys a movie star shouts. Based on my experience, more than a few civilians are better trained and know their way around firearms than the average cop. Considering victims, by virtue of their status as the intended target, are first on the scene, why should they be hamstrung by limited capacity magazines when police, on the way if 911 is called, are not? Now toss into the mix an attacker full of murderous rage, under the influence of alcohol and or drugs, and running full speed at you with knife or gun in hand. Forget all this talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight, one-shot stops, and knock-down power, we’re dealing with the real world, not Hollywood. Lethal hits or not, how many rounds will it take to stop the attacker from taking your life before he expires? No one knows. Further, criminals may attack in pairs or groups, one asking for the time or bus fare, distracting the intended victim. Will felons, already barred from possessing the firearms they acquire, obey magazine capacity limits? They tend to keep shooting until their victims are dead.
I see your hand up in the front. Didn’t you sing at a Super Bowl halftime a few years back? Never saw a skirt so short before. What about gun registration to prevent violent crimes, she says, ignoring my observation. Wouldn’t it keep them out of the hands of criminals? Does it now, I reply. Registration is record keeping on who legally purchased and owns what. Since criminals, who typically obtain firearms through theft and burglary are disinclined to register them, what difference would registration make? Consider automobile registration and driver’s licensing requirements. License plates on stolen cars reveal who owns not who stole it. Same with guns. Like firearms, many laws regulate the purchase and operation of automobiles but here the analogy breaks down. Fines, restrictions on and revocation of driving privileges, and even prison to compel compliance with traffic laws has failed. People still text, speed, run stop signs and red lights, steer wheels with knees because a cigarette is in one hand and a triple-decker two-pound bacon burger is in the other, and drive under the influence. Each year they murder thousands of people and hurt, maim, and cripple millions more yet no one calls for the elimination of automobiles even “if it will save one life.” There is no analogue with firearm ownership. Considering approximately 124 million people own about 270 million guns,11 and there were 505 deaths due to “accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm” in 2013,12 and of “2,596,993 deaths in the U.S. for the same year, 1% were related to firearms (most suicides),”13 gun owners have a remarkable record for non-criminal safe handling of firearms. This is not the result of registration or gun control laws but rather, the nature of firearm owners going back to America’s founding. Gun registration schemes typically lead to confiscation as in the U.K., Australia, and California. Speaking of California, one of its denizens, not sure if male or female, raises, his, er, her hand, and asks; why not “reasonable” gun laws, can’t you compromise?
Lewis Dovland notes regardless of rhetoric, gun-controller’s “ultimate goal” remains “confiscation of all guns in America.” Each law passed moves closer to this goal. Take same-sex marriage for example and imagine a line forming a continuum running from ‘A’ to ‘Z.’
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Normal marriage is ‘A’ with ‘Z’ being same-sex marriage. Proponents of same-sex marriage knew demanding ‘Z’ was too much to ask for, so they demanded ‘N’ instead. This sparked debate and resistance. Attorneys challenged state laws against same-sex marriage in court while supporters fanned out across the land branding opponents bigots, haters, extremists, and “homophobes.” Schools were pressured to adopt same-sex friendly curriculum under the rubrics; “tolerance” and “diversity.” Hollywood films and television shows seeded positive depictions of same-sex marriage. Stories planted in the liberal media echoed these portrayals. Opponents were depicted as rabid backwoods Christian fundamentalists chomping at the bit to launch new waves of Salem witch trials. Although the demand for ‘N’ appeared a failure, (citizens in states that remember the 10th Amendment still voted on the issue) in actuality proponents of same-sex “marriage” (sic) achieved ‘C,’ greater acceptance of and crumbling resistance to their agenda. The effort began anew only now, ‘C,’ is the new ‘A’ and there is no way to go back to the original ‘A.’ ‘N’ is again demanded and ‘C’ is again settled for but ‘C’ is now really ‘F.’ By constantly refining ‘A’ toward ‘Z,’ they ultimately got to ‘Z.’ In like manner, Confiscationists through so-called reasonable gun laws, hope to eliminate private possession of firearms in America.14
Gun control laws are predicated on the notion mere existence of firearms increases if not causes violent crime. The solution? Remove firearms from the equation and the problem is solved. This is why Confiscationists focus entirely on the means, i.e. guns, magazines, ammunition, and never on the criminal. But this notion has proven to be terribly flawed to the point of being false by criminologists and researchers from Gary Keck, David Kopel, Joyce Lee Malcom, to John R. Lott, Jr. If it was valid, in states and cities where obtaining firearms is almost impossible for the law-abiding, it would be even more so for criminals causing them to abandon their lives of crime becoming carpenters, waitresses, farmers, teachers, plumbers, nurses, and doctors. But this is not the case. Evil in the heart of malefactors causes evil deeds. Tools to implement evil will be found one way or another. As a policeman I transported criminals to court, jail, and prison. Recognizing some as return customers, I asked, why not turn away from their life of crime? Answer; it’s what they knew and what they liked. None sweated getting their hands on guns either. Fences (who trade in stolen property) and other criminals sell them or they could be acquired on the job during thefts and burglaries. Gun laws play no role in their calculations. “Reasonable” gun laws do nothing to transform wolves but instead, disarm the lambs. One cannot escape the fact that no greater deterrent to criminal assault and mass shootings exists than a public at large possessed of and trained in arms.
88 Students told me what the Spanish teacher said. Some kids bragged in my class knowing someone’s dad or dad’s friend who was altering semiautomatic rifles to fire full-automatic. I told the class in no uncertain terms this was illegal, a felony, and the consequences when they were caught.
99 David B. Kopel, The Samurai, The Mountie, And The Cowboy (Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books, 1992), 70-95
1010 Nate Rawlings, “Ready, Fire, Aim: The Science Behind Police Shooting Bystanders, Time, at http://nation.time.com/2013/09/16/ready-fire-aim-the-science-behind-police-shooting-bystanders/ A New York Times study put the NYPD officer’s hit rate as high as 34%. See Al Baker, “11 Years of Police Gunfire, in Painstaking Detail,” New York Times, at http://www.newyorktimes.com. While I was at the Santa Clara PD range for annual qualification, our [not Santa Clara] new Chief walked in. The Range master said although I’d been waiting an hour, to let him go first. Later he told me the Chief showed up with revolver rounds in his shirt pocket, two different calibers, none matching his gun. I asked if the Chief had passed qualification. He made a funny face, rolled his eyes, and refused to answer on the basis that it might…
1111 John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns Less Crime, Third Edition, (Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1.
“It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.”2
Jeff Snyder
“So long as assault rifles (sic) like the AR15 are legally sold in this state, so long as they are not banned, their threat to civilians will remain in every school, every mall, every movie theater, every nightclub, and in every place the public gathers.”3
Oscar Braynon, State Senate Democrat Leader, Miami Gardens, Florida.
Dressed all in black, including ski mask, he pointed a gun not hesitating to shoot me in the chest. With sounds of screaming, people scrambling to escape, and the gun shot echoing in my ears, I wondered how it had come to this. I had been a police officer trained in dynamic entry,4 hostage negotiation, and firearms but here I was, shot down in a public school. My thoughts drifted back to early morning, 3 November, 2015, where it all began.
Students had the day off but not teachers. High school administrators herded us into the Lecture Hall. What was up? We were being trained to repel attacks by terrorists and active-school “shooters” (sic). Teachers sitting around me, mostly from the English and Math departments, expressed apprehension because none had ever held let alone fired a gun. What did colleagues in my socialIST studies department think? I had no idea. Convicted of being a conservative, I was subjected to the Amish-Shun Syndrome. They sat as far from me as possible. Trainers included city police officers, teachers, and administrators trained in the latest techniques. Considering current policy was assuming the fetal position in classrooms, waiting to be saved or shot, whatever they had in store must be an improvement. Finally this large suburban school district was getting serious about fighting back. Filled with optimism, I scanned the room looking for racks of hangers festooned with body armor, boxes bulging with smoke bombs, tear gas canisters, and flash bang grenades. Maybe there were sign-up sheets for teachers to check out Glock 17s and AR15s. I called dibs on Spikes’ Tactical AR sporting a Crusader on the receiver, the last icon ammonium-nitrate reeking Islamic Jihadi terrorists would see before cashing in on the 72 virgins deal…or is it raisins?5 But I saw none of these.
Presenters not only led off with scare tactics and propaganda, they also used students to spew wanton misinformation. For example, they claimed school shootings were on a marked upswing, getting worse, and our lives were in peril. They displayed graphs and charts mounted on easels to drive the point home. For once, gabby teachers were silent. As the student sock-puppets read off alarming statistics, teacher’s brows furrowed their heads nodding in grim unison. But what the sock-puppets and teacher string-pullers were saying wasn’t even true. It was all lies.6 It stank like a truck load of fish heads spilled on a Los Angeles freeway.
“Facts” presented about the epidemic rise in school shootings came from Everytown for Gun Safety, a faux grassroots gun control organization. It’s the brainchild of and funded by liberal gun confiscationist former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg.7Everytown claimed 74 school shootings had occurred since Sandy Hook, Elementary, in 2012 and this was the basis for the present state of crisis. Everyone assumed the statistic referred only to mass shootings inside schools. No one seemed aware this statistic had been exposed as bogus. Its definition of “school shootings” included “isolated arguments between students [a gun was discharged but the suspect had no intent to shoot anyone] accidents, suicides, and gang activity.” It included every incident in which a gun was discharged, accidental or not, even if no one was struck. And it included shootings occurring near, but not actually on school property, having nothing to do with the school and or its students. Worse, it included gang related shootings in Baltimore and Chicago’s inner cities, with schools nearby, dramatically ratcheting up the statistic.8 If thugs shot it out in an alleyway, or fired at a rival’s homes in a drive by, and a school was in the neighborhood, Everytown counted it as a “school shooting.” But as far as teachers were concerned, based on this statistic, there was an epidemic of “school shootings.” Is it appropriate to harness students to promote a fraud? Appalled, I began telling those around me this information was false, lies. A few looked at me but none responded. No one speaks to those upon whom the principal’s disfavor rests. Why didn’t I take the floor and address this charade of indoctrination and idiocy? Being the victim of a witch hunt (May, 2015) taught me, when they’re looking for witches, they find witches. I was on step three of a three step termination process, for being a conservative in public, and on double-secret permanent probation. As far as I knew, no one had ever been placed on permanent probation before.9 One mistake and I was fired. That pressure, and a heart attack, forced me into retirement that year. I could say nothing.
Training began with presenters passing out black cords resembling fat shoestrings. For the next quarter or an hour, maybe more, we practiced tying knots so complex they’d have given sailors fits. Fire department codes prohibit classroom doors that open inward eliminating the ability to barricade them against intruders. The solution is tying one end of the plump shoestring into a complex knot and attaching the other end to chairs and desks. The idea is, once the attacker(s) shot the lock off the flimsy door, and yanked it open, the cord would drag school furniture along with it blocking entry. Stop laughing, I’m not making this up. Even if this wasn’t an appallingly stupid idea, I wondered how panic stricken teachers would remember let alone be able to tie complex Gordian knots while Jihadis were banging away at them with AK-47s.
Hands shot up. Teachers wanted to know what they were supposed to do if bad guys defeated the knots. A tall young blonde female to my right raised her hand and suggested a solution. When the bad guy pokes his gun through the open door, grab it by the barrel and pull it out of his hands. I stopped breathing. An involuntary response. Shocking. Breathtaking. Unbelievable. Like when the news reported President Ronald Reagan had been shot. I looked around waiting for someone to explain to her why, besides becoming an instant bullet-bag, this was a terrible idea, beyond stupid. To my utter amazement no one did. Instead teachers agreed heartily it was indeed, a good idea. This from teachers who had never held and even loathed guns. My jaw dropped so far open, I was certain colleagues could hear its horrified tendons distend. My life and the lives of your kids are in the hands of shepherds such as these?
But wait, certainly those in authority, those with a modicum of common sense, would speak out against this absurdly dangerous notion of grabbing the barrel of an AK-47 trying to wrestle it away from the bad guy as it’s fired in your face. Right? Considering teachers are responsible for so many lives, this couldn’t’ be more important. Certainly the proverbial “adults in the room,” were obligated to speak up disabusing colleagues of such reckless notions. I looked at the trainers in the front of the room waiting. Some were cops. Good. They would know what to say. They remained silent. This was probably because they were composing the kindest way to tell the teacher her idea was ill advised…and nuts. Instead, several presenters actually agreed with her. Having worn the blue, I stared at the cops in the front psychically imploring them; please, step in and save us from this train wreck. They said nothing. Principals can also destroy SRO jobs.
A student high on insanity, mayhem, meds, and rage, or Islamic Jihadis fueled by violent berserker blood rage, shoves their gun through the door, or bursts into the room blasting anything that moves and twice if it doesn’t, and you’re going to run over and pull the gun from his hands!? Are you kidding me? Could it get any worse?
Hands went up again. Okay, the bad guys defeat the knots, get the door open, and we’re too far away to grab the barrel. Now what? Trainers instructed teachers to repel the attack by rushing the bad guy, throwing books and staplers to distract him, and then wrestle the gun away. Let me see if I understand this. It’s World War I and the French are huddled in trenches awaiting the German assault. Instead of letting artillery and bullets fly as they cross no-man’s land, the French wait until the Boche are upon them and then bean the Krauts with boiled beef and biscuit cans, wrestle their guns away, and kill them. Or, unarmed, rush German machine gun nests, flinging ration cans as they go, and then take the guns from the Huns. I’d call this moronic but, as the saying goes, it’d be an insult to morons. I prayed retirement came before such a tragedy.
Presenters then revealed if an attack occurred and SWAT nailed the scumbag scrote (my words) and we were no longer in any danger, we’d remain under lockdown. No one would be allowed to leave until authorities had searched and cleared every classroom, office, and nook and cranny, one by one. This would take hours. Several teachers asked what to do if students had to go potty. Presenters said, have them pee in a trash can. What about the girls, another teacher asked. Use T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets and hold them up around her, providing a privacy curtain, while she tinkles in the can, came the response.
When did man-hides get turned in for sheep hides? Schools could avail themselves of a voluntary cadre of armed ex-cops and military, and trained citizens. They could open up an irresistible can of whoop-a#% on bad guys taking them out before anyone had to pee in trash cans. I could barely sit still wanting to speak out against this self-inflicted victimhood and cowardice. But, step three of a three step termination process…
Next, in order to be properly trained, completion of role-playing scenarios was required. In addition to the black cords, we were given handfuls of miniature orange whiffle balls. They only had a couple left when they got to me. Teachers were assigned areas in the school where they pretended to be milling about as they would during class passing times. A signal over the PA would announce we were under attack by active “shooter(s)” (sic) and now under lockdown. We were to run to the nearest room, shut and lock the door, employ our newly mastered Houdini-defying knot tying skills, and hide in the dark, maybe peeing on our shoes, until given the all clear.
I wondered, what if the bad guys seized administrators and forced them at gun point to give the all clear? On probation, I said nothing. Once locked in the rooms, police, teacher, and administrator role players, dressed in black including ski-masks, and armed with CO2 paint ball guns, would assault our rooms. If they defeated the knots, they would shoot us. But not to worry, although each gun was loaded with a CO2 canister, there would be no paint ball. We would feel a strong “puff” from the gun. It wouldn’t hurt.
Several young female teachers near me became very emotional, visibly upset. One began to cry in fear. It took presenters several minutes to calm and talk them off the ledge. They were scared. Mortified at being shot by a puff from a paint ball gun? Are you kidding me? This was role playing. Acting. Hadn’t any of them ever played capture the flag, hide and go seek, or at least tag? If they were falling apart over the prospect of being shot by a puff of air from colleague role players, what would they do if confronted by the real deal!
I was assigned to loiter in the lobby of the junior varsity building. It’s an area forming the gaping black mall of the SocialIST Studies Department also known as Mordor. When the alarm blared, everyone stampeded toward my department supervisor’s room. This did not augur well. He called me, and anyone brave or stupid enough to associate with me, the Career Suicide Gang, with me leader for life. He and other teachers warned colleagues, especially rookies, being seen so much as speaking with me was toxic to their careers. I was radioactive and everyone should stay far away from me. This they did. For years. The isolation was so bad, I declared myself a school. I was the principal, teacher, nurse, guidance counselor, custodian, and lunch lady all rolled into one.10 Back to the story.
Everyone made a mad dash for the room. By the time I got there, last, colleagues were trying to Pontius Pilate me, shutting the door in my face. Forcing my way in, I found most teachers were hiding in the office of this former science room, whose door they had shut and locked. The remainder hid in the classroom as the knot-tiers worked their magic. With no place left to hide, I stood along the wall near the door. Defeating the knots and cords, the black-clad shouting role players burst into the room. One pointed a gun at and shot me. For a brief moment I thought I recognized the maniacal blue eyes behind his goggle lenses. Naw, couldn’t be. Was I bothered? No. Running and locking myself in a classroom isn’t what I would have done in the first place. It’s like chickens, fleeing a butcher, running and locking themselves in their coops or, fleeing a monster, a teen girl runs up to the second floor of a house and hides in a closet or under the bed. Instead, taking as many kids as possible, I’d have run down another hallway toward various doors, or up to the second floor, drop down from a window onto the breezeway, and gone. Terrorists shooting to inflict as much carnage as possible will fire into the center mass of stampeding hysterical people. They might notice a few peeling off but the economy of inflicting mass casualties as quickly as possible dictates letting them go. Hide in a room?
I got into trouble at my police academy in California while practicing nighttime vehicle stops. Coppers, role playing as bad guys, were behind the wheels of the cars trainees pulled over. Each time trainees approached the car, asking for drivers’ license and registration, the bad guys got the drop on and disarmed them. Except for me. I’m no former Force Recon Marine, Navy Seal, or a Billy Bad a*%, but every time they pulled a gun on me, I did the same, shooting back. Role players became exercised over my response. The expectation was, anyone with a gun in their face would surrender theirs and, if shot, be dead. I reacted without thinking, looking to escape and evade, fight if I must. Hey, I lived in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Back to the school active “shooter” (sic) training.
I finally learned the purpose of the miniature orange whiffle balls. They simulated the staplers and books we were to throw at bad guys in order to distract them and take away their guns. Oh brother. We ran the drill two more times and each time colleagues slammed the door in my face as if I was a Jehovah’s Witness. With ceremonial hands washed, I was Pontius Pilated each time, gunned down in the hallway. One lesson became immediately clear beyond the inevitable failure of knotted black cords keeping bad guys out of classrooms. Hysterical code red lockdown stampedes for classrooms meant not everyone would make it. Kids, your kids, would be trampled and or abandoned in halls.
Following these melees of madness, teachers reported back to the Lecture Hall for de-briefing. Presenters said, once we in our classrooms, and the doors shut and locked, under no circumstances were we to open them. Teachers asked, suppose a kid, for whatever reason, was slow to get to a classroom and the door already shut and locked. Can we let them in? No. Don’t open it, came the curt reply. A bad guy could be holding a gun to a kid’s head directing him or her,11 to say the coast was clear. An older teacher, whose daughter was in one of my classes, became upset voicing her opposition to this policy. She was certain her daughter, for physical reasons, wouldn’t make it in time. Trainers wouldn’t budge on this policy. I whispered to her that, no matter what, I’d make sure she was safe.
Instead of orange whiffle balls, staplers, and books, wouldn’t it make more sense to arm the appropriately qualified teachers with Glocks? For the idiots who keep lying claiming school districts want to arm “all” teachers, no one ever suggested that. No one. Suggestions have been made to arm those motivated to go through the extensive training in order to qualify. An “informal” poll suggested, out of 200 teachers, maybe 3 or 4 at my school might be willing. But the point is moot. Tremulous districts that teach the best course of action when faced by a grave threat is to curl up in a ball and hide, aren’t about to allow armed teachers, even if in so doing, lives are saved. Political correctness and the liberal’s masculinity drain will not allow it. No one had the moral courage to call out the district’s plan for the hollow feel good sham that it was.
The post Hide and Cower in Place debriefing filled me with equal measures of chagrin and a sense of doom. Teachers, especially those so fearful of the hide-and-go-see game we played, expressed relief saying they felt much better now that we’d been “trained” to fight back. They no longer needed to fear a terrorist/active “shooter” assault on the school. Armed with magical cords, trained to throw books and staplers at bad guys and grab guns away from them, they felt “empowered” to defeat bad guys. Unarmed. I was sick to my stomach. Isn’t it irresponsible, even negligent, to train people for life and death situations with strategies that will get them killed? Isn’t it equally irresponsible filling their heads with an extremely dangerous false sense of security? People who believe they have the answers, don’t search for more. When did Americans, especially men, genetically wired to protect families and the vulnerable against harm, become such Henny Penny’s? When did the idea of fighting back become a notion impossible to consider?
Within a week of training, an assistant principal sent an email asking teachers to report any unsecured aspect of their classroom so it could be fixed. Teaching in a bunker-like room with no windows, I was also blessed with two doors, one of which did not lock. I promptly reported this. Several weeks passed in which I received no response to my email nor was the door fixed. Students aware of the unsecured door became upset so I sent a second email in November, 2015. It still had not been fixed when I walked out the door for the last time in May, 2016. Stay tuned. More tales from the files of the CSG to come.
99 I taught Advanced studies American history. At the time, we used two books, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath. It was easy to recognize that both books pushed a very socialist to communist perspective. Colleagues taught the novels as fact. I contacted the Ayn Rand Institute. I procured a deal wherein the Institute would provide students editions of Atlas Shrugged and teacher’s guides, free. I presented it to my Advanced Studies colleagues, who rejected it even though it would cost the school nothing.A parade of teachers (his words) had gone to the principal demanding I be disciplined and or fired. He called me in, accused me of being a conservative, said the two novels were necessary to teach kids about socialism, and angrily dismissed me from his office. Subsequently, I was demoted by the principal from Advanced Studies to teaching Regular Education American history. I remained part of the American history test writing team. We designed a standardized common test to be used by both Advanced and Regular Education American history teachers. When the young team leader, hand-picked by the principal, asked my opinion about the test questions, I demurred. I didn’t want to be accused of being controversial or non-collegial, for which I had already been written up, step one of a three step termination process. She insisted I share my concerns. I responded it sounded like the test was almost set and I had no problem taking it up the following school year. Again, she insisted I voice my concerns. Because I compose thoughts better in writing than verbally, I asked if I could forward my concerns in an email. She said that would be fine. This I did, because, like anyone else, I make stupid decisions. I pointed out some questions reflected a liberal bias and were historically inaccurate. They mirrored the point of view promoted by the two novels, asking for factual responses based on fictional material. When I was still an Advanced Studies teachers, I had contacted history professors asking them if my conclusions about bias and historical inaccuracies in the two novels was correct. They said “yes.” I reluctantly submitted my concerns, being as respectful as possible…and then she, at the urging of liberal colleagues, promptly ran to the principal with them. I asked her why she had done that. She said my concerns were over her head so she had no choice. He was furious. After school he came unannounced to my room, slammed and locked the door, and proceeded to shout in my face and pound his hand on my desk. He yelled he had been a good social studies teacher (there was no context for this rage filled comment), and accused me of attacking the team leader. I told him he was wrong. My son attended a school in a different district and the team leader’s sister taught at that school. During Back to School Night, I approached and told her what a great teacher and team leader her sister was at my school. I had gone overboard in being careful in phrasing my concerns. He yelled this was only to mask my passive-aggressive behavior! He told me were “through” and he was “finished” with me. He stormed out of the room and then we went on Thanksgiving Break ruined by worry over what would happen. When I returned, he wrote me up for alleged conservative bias not being “collegial,” and for using too many free market sources in my class (I counted, this was a lie). Step One of the Three Step Termination Process. I was also suspected of being a “Libertarian,” and from that point on would have to turn in every assignment, homework, quiz, test, and all materials to him to scan for conservative bias. And what I said in class? No sweat, socialIST studies colleagues had already been hiding outside my room listening, (students told me so and I caught them), and liberal teachers questioned mutual students over what I said in class. And they pawed through every article, hand out, and assignment I turned into the copy clerk for copies (she told me). Less than two years later, I was demoted again. Don’t tell me about tenure. I was in my 21stth year.
1010 This list is not intended to represent a hierarchy. I spent much more time talking with custodians and lunch ladies than I ever did colleagues and administrators…once the shunning began. I never had to worry about walking away from conversations with them and having to check my back for a knife.
1111 Yes, Virginia, there are only two sexes. Gender refers to the masculinity/femininity of words, not people.
Years ago in a galaxy far far away, I served on the board of a couple of Second Amendment groups. One of them very much a grassroots group and it was very active in the legislative process and citizen lobbying. Contrary to what people are sometimes lead to think, “lobbyist” is not a dirty word, or a bad thing. Many people have jobs, employers seem to expect that their employees will be at those jobs. So, when there is legislation that matters to gun owners be it a bill to expand gun rights or a bill proposing further infringement of a law-abiding citizens rights with yet another gun control scam disguised as “gun safety” it would seem fair that the law-abiding citizen should also have their voice heard. Ahh, the conundrum. What is the law-abiding citizen to do? They have a job, but they also have rights that need to be defended. Well, the Second Amendment groups in the state went together and hired a lobbyist to be present at the hearings and speak on behalf of the voters that held opinions most firm about further infringement of their G-d given rights, namely self-defense. From time to time the lobbyist would be accompanied to these hearings by the leadership of the Second Amendment rights groups, and I was privileged to be one of those. A citizen lobbyist, who also happened to represent a passel of voters. I had the high heels and a sparkly barrette. I considered these vital, but not as vital as a couple of other things I possessed. A mission, and resolve. I enjoyed this mission, legislators can be quite tasty if bar-b-qued with BBQ sauce. /snark, remember, I’m a vegetarian.
It’s been a while since I’ve attended a rally day. In my state there has been a Second Amendment day at the Capitol for years. Usually towards the end of the season, and usually there is a major bill or two we are wanting big time bad, or a big time bad bill we want to see die an inglorious death. I started going back before my state had concealed carry, the lobby was packed full that day, it was standing room only. For years I went every year, even spoke at a couple of them. The last few years I haven’t made it, for various and sundry reasons. But I’ve made it the last couple of years, and this year was just grand.
I did the hike from the parking lot to the capitol and entered the door to the meeting area. The police were there with the airport style scanning machine. I was met by a young police officer when I placed my purse on the table. He regarded my purse dubiously.
Sir: “Ma’am, are you lawfully carrying concealed?”
Me: Yup
Sir: “I’m going to need a driver’s license and a concealed carry card”.
Me: You are an officer of the law, you should already have these credentials.
After a second for my brain to catch up with my mouth, I grinned at him and said, I’ve got to get them out of my purse, ok?
Sir: “Yep, I have a concealed carry. My friends ask me why I bother and I tell them because it’s the right thing to do.”
Me: I like you, I like the way you think.
He regards the depths of my purse skeptically after he studys my cards.
Sir: “Do you carry in your purse?”
Me: Nope.
Sir: “Good, I worry that if a purse was stolen you’ve now lost your defensive tools.”
Me: Oh I do like you, nope, no purse carry.
Sir: “Which side are you carrying on?”
I answer him, and he tells me after I set off the machine the officer at the other end will wand me. I go through, set off the machine get wanded and I’m good to go. I thank them both for what they do.
I went in, said hi to a lobbyist I’ve worked with, sat with some dear people that I haven’t seen for awhile and listened to some great speakers. The MC is well known in the Second Amendment arena as the guy that wrote the book on gun laws. Which is fair enough, he did write the book on gun laws.
It was interesting, the speakers were great, acoustics are always challenging in that room, but still it was good. Two floors up there was some sort of school event going on. A bunch of school children, I’m guessing pre-teen, or early teens must have disapproved of us being allowed to speak in public. When one of the speakers would start to speak, they would start yelling trying to drown out the speaker. Think there is much indoctrination going on in the tax payer funded schools? I’m telling you, Zehut has the right idea, school vouchers for everyone.
After rally we all split up to go speak with our legislators about the bills we want passed, and I also wanted to mention my extreme aversion to “Guilty until proven innocent” Red Flag gun confiscation. I had mentioned my aversion to my former lobbyist mentor and he said while of course the misogynistic mad mommies are pushing for it, it hasn’t gained traction. Good to hear. I don’t know why mad mommies hate women so much that they want to deprive them of a tool that even elderly women can use to equalize the situation, but they do.
Our MC ended the rally with his trademark line, “It’s a good day for liberty”. He always opened his monthly column with that line. And it was a good day for liberty, every day is a good day for liberty. But we must fight for it, there are forces that will not be happy until they have all the power they want, and as long as there are armed citizens, they know that won’t happen. They use whatever tactics they think will work, whether it is going after politicians sympathetic to us with blatant lies and accusations that their allies in the mainstream media help them spread or lies about “ghost guns” or citizens that defended themselves. Be it vote fraud or illegal immigrants voting, they will use it.
We must remain strong in our convictions and our determination. Where the room was packed a few years ago when we wanted, demanded, concealed carry it was now not as full. Attendance was good, but it needs to be bigger. I saw one old friend, he and his young son were there. This man and his wife want their children to learn about freedom and the legislative process and how the two go together. Those kids have been citizen lobbyists since they were probably 4 or 5 years old. Maybe even younger. The legislators sit up and take notice when large groups of people have taken the day off work and showed up to demand their rights be honored. G-d gives rights, legislators recognize or infringe on them.
My lobbying mission finished, I headed for the exit for the drive home. As I walked by the door to the exit I passed the door you enter, Sir and his partner were still there checking people, I smiled and waved at them and said thank you, they both smiled and waved back. It never hurts for the Second Amendment people to be the nice polite friendly ones.
So if you have a chance, and your state has a rally day yearly, go. See friends, network, make friends, talk to your legislative critters. Don’t let bloombergs paid harpies be the only voice being heard at your capitol.
Tonight starts Pesach, Passover. We each leave our own slavery in Egypt behind. I believe it is a constant process, sometimes easier, sometimes harder. But I don’t want to be one of the Jews that chose to stay behind in Egypt rather than face the unknown. I believe that G-d does want freedom for us. This year is a very meaningful Pesach for me, and I hope that you all will have a very blessed holiday as well. Thank you for being with us, The Zelman Partisans as we travel this path together.
Leaving Egypt and slavery
My friend used the line “It’s a good day for liberty” to open his columns, I wrote him and told him I was poaching it for a column. He wrote back fried, poached or boiled, if it’s for the cause it should be used.
I always ride for the brand and I always ended my columns with my own sign off.
I have a girlfriend that recently got a e-mail at her job. She works in a very safe, secure building and profession. It’s a gun-free zone. It’s a two story building with lots of great nooks, crannies and places where people could hide. But hey, they do have a armed security guard. One.
She recently got a email talking about the shooting of a healthcare worker in another state and urging people to keep their eyes open, be aware and take the deescalation classes offered. Oh, well, at least there is a sound plan in place. And there is a plan in place. If they can get to a phone, they can have a page sent out warning and letting security know where the problem is. Then everyone is to hide in place and try to protect their patients.
Officials say within minutes the suspected gunman was in custody. The hospital immediately issued a code silver and locked down the hospital as law enforcement went door to door to ensure the safety of all patients.
Hospital President Charles Williams gave a statement
“As you can imagine…It’s difficult,” Williams said. “Whenever you have someone of your family, we’re family here it’s tough”
Well, I’m sure that is reassuring to the healthcare worker and their family. Might have given them more of a feeling of warm fuzzy if your facility actually made some policy change that didn’t designate them to being a fish in a barrel wearing the proper color of scrubs. FYI, many hospitals have gone to color coding employees. All nursing wears only X color of scrubs, all lab wears only Y color of scrubs, X-ray wears only Z color of scrubs. Most patients don’t seem to realize what it means, but the hospital feels like it’s “done something” from what I heard.
SC hospital security conversation revived after 2 shootings in 2 days. They are discussing making enhanced penalties for attacks against healthcare workers. That was removed as part of sentencing reform in 2010. I’m sure that schizophrenic, or meth head, or pissed off drunk, abusive but “loving” father who just almost killed his toddler, vengeful ex-louse spouse, upset family member will certainly be deterred by increased penalties. That will no doubt stop them cold. I’m not saying they don’t make sense, they do.
But S.C. Hospital Association spokesman Schipp Ames argues health care facilities are a different working environment than anywhere else.
“They’re open to patients and visitors. We have open facilities people can come in and out of. We have sensitive actions with people,” he said. “Why are we not treating them differently?”
The idea, Ames said, is to put enhanced penalties in hospitals that would establish them as designated safe zones.
I’m saying they won’t make a bit of difference. And, I think there is another element that either isn’t being reported yet, or experienced in the US to the degree it has been in Europistan and Englandistan.
The female anaesthetist said the German health service has been completely overwhelmed by the influx of Muslim asylum-seekers who are REFUSING to be treated by female medics. …
She also claimed huge numbers of the asylum-seekers have Victorian diseases including TB, which they risk passing on to locals. …
The doctor, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote to the press back home in the Czech Republic to express her shock at the “unsustainable” situation which she says is now affecting the medical care received by taxpaying Germans. She said: “Clinics cannot handle emergencies, so they are starting to send everything to the hospitals….
“Since last weekend, migrants going to the hospitals must be accompanied by police with K-9 units….
“They abandon the children with pharmacy staff with the words: ‘So, cure them here yourselves!’ So the police are not just guarding the clinics and hospitals, but also large pharmacies.”…
In one shocking incident medic also claimed how migrants STABBED the doctors who tried to save a tiny eight-month-old baby which had been “dragged across half of Europe for three months”.
She said: “The child died in two days, despite having received top care at one of the best pediatric clinics in Germany.
“The physician had to undergo surgery and two nurses are laid up in the ICU. Nobody has been punished.
“The local press is forbidden to write about it, so we know about it through email.
“What would have happened to a German if he had stabbed a doctor and nurses with a knife?
But, lest you think that it’s only the stress of being ill or having a sick family member that brings this out.
Then in Multi-cultural Swedenistan there was the 2016 murder of Alexandra Mezher. The Swedes sent a stern message of warning to any other “refugees” that might thing about doing anything like that in the future.
In August, 2016 he was sentenced to psychiatric care, ordered to pay SEK 300,000 in compensation to Mehzer’s family. If discharged he will also be deported and forbidden from returning to Sweden until 2026. After appeal, the court of appeal upheld the sentence, except extending the deportation until 2031.
Yep, he’d be allowed to return. It’s sort of like the laws making attacking a healthcare worker stiffer. Pointless, but we “did something”.
But it’s not just healthcare clinics and hospitals that feel their employees are a dime a dozen and easily replaceable, despite their being “family” and all.
We’ve all read the stories of Pizza drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers that are expected to be easy targets or face the wrath of their employers.
A pizza deliveryman won’t face charges for fatally shooting a would-be robber several times when he was approached in a high-crime area, but his employer, Pizza Hut, has fired him for violating a company policy against carrying firearms.
“We’re doing all that we can to help him with the transition,” Pizza Hut spokesperson Chris Fuller told the Des Moines Register. The driver, James William Spiers III, was offered two months pay (without tips, naturally) and counseling in exchange for his resignation.
A pizza delivery driver who shot and killed a man who stabbed him during an attempted robbery in Beaver Falls has been fired from his job.
Full disclosure here, I haven’t eaten at a PepsiCo owned joint in years since I found out about their anti-Second Amendment stance. No Taco Smell, No KFC, No Pizza Hut, etc.
But it’s not just pizza delivery drivers that are sitting targets.
Law enforcement sources tell the Problem Solvers surveillance video shows a 14-year-old suspect sticking a gun in the face of the clerk. Moments later the clerk, who has a conceal carry permit, took out his own gun and fired once, hitting the suspect in his stomach.
Nor is it just using a gun that will get you fired.
Do these companies have a right to determine their policies? Certainly. Do they have a right to make a condition of employment that you forfeit your life willingly if attacked a condition of you working for them. Well, I suppose they do. But are those companies and institutions that do this being honest about it? No, no they aren’t. If they were the employment contract would read something along the lines of
In case of emergency, such as being attacked whether by animal or human beast we expect you to willingly leave your spouse alone to raise your children, or in the case of a single parent to leave your children orphans. We expect you to willingly leave your elderly parents grieving the loss of their child and without someone to look after them in their “golden years”. Under no circumstances, and in no way are you to fight back or attempt to preserve your life, or the life of your co-workers or those you take care of, be it school children or patients. But, we will give you two weeks paid vacation, five days of sick time and a mediocre heath-care plan and you can join our credit union.
Naturally the benefits offered would be institution or company specific, but you get the idea.
So, why would it be this way. I suspect it is for the same reasons business have been told by their insurance companies they have to be “gun-free” zones for their insurance. I recently read something that just ticked me right off.
I have been told that many employers ban carry by their employees because they’ve been told that it is less costly to let workers compensation pay for injury or death of the employee than to deal with a lawsuit from someone the employee felt forced to shoot.
All this is because insurance companies want the cheapest way out. Your lives don’t matter to them, your spouse, parents and children don’t matter to them. Remember, the insurance companies supported obamacare.
There are many times I long for a “gun-free zone” liability act. This is one of those time. It’s not that I don’t support the right of a business to make their own policies, I do. I had a conversation with a jeweler one time after I started patronizing his business. At one time he was posted “gun-free” and I wouldn’t go in there. When I noticed the sign was down, I went in to look for a watch band and asked him about it. He said he supported the Second Amendment, he had his CCW and carried, but his insurance company told him he had to do it if he wanted insurance. So how is that giving business owners the right to make their own policies?
Life is precious, even in tough times it can be sweet, there can be good, there can be blessings if we are open to seeing them. That it can be sold out so cheaply by an entity with a bias against it’s preservation by use of an effective tool is just wrong. And it’s evil. That so many young people have been indoctrinated to believe “violence is never the answer” is wrong and evil. Sometimes violence is not only the best answer, it’s the only answer. Because life does matter, don’t ever sell it cheap.
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.
[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]
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