10/13/2019 Nashville TN Tennessee State University Student murdered in dorm.
School shooting, if you count college/university.
The score today:
3 of 7 of these don’t even meet Everytown’s crazed definition, leaving only 4. That gives them a generous 57.1% accuracy rate; much worse than last week.
There’s a non-student drug deal that was only coincidentally on — university — campus; strike that one: down to 42.9% accuracy.
If you limit it actual shootings at elementary or high schools — you know, where kids might be –, which is what most people think of when you say “school,” only 1 of 7 qualifies: 14.3% “accuracy.” And that one didn’t involve kids; they don’t even know when it happened because no one notice until they found a broken window.
And yet idiot journalists pushing an anti-rights agenda still cite these liars. And Bloomberg continues to pay Shannon Watts for this incompetence.
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“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.
I’ll just drop this here with one comment, to follow.
ABC News Airs U.S. Gun Range Video, Calling It a Syrian War Zone — Twice
The footage, which ABC News purported was of an attack on the border town of Tal Abyad, was aired Sunday on World News Tonight and Good Morning America on Monday morning. However, a comparison by Gizmodo shows the video was captured at Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky back in 2017.
Oh. My.
I would like Swalwell, Biden, O’Rourke, and Harris to note that what US gun owners consider play time is what a major news outlet can mistake for a major military offensive by the Forces of a NATO nation. Tell us again how resisting a tyrannical government is futile.
OK. Two comments: That’s funny.
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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.
Recently the House of Representatives voted on a non-binding resolution to condemn Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS, or BS for short) against Israel. The motion passed 398-17. So who were the 17?
Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon)
Andre Carson (D-Indiana)
Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan)
Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Illinois)
Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona)
Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington)
Barbara Lee (D-California)
Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky)
Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota)
Gwen Moore (D-Wisconsin)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York)
Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota)
Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)
Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin)
Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)
Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan)
Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey)
Sixteen of the 17 representatives who voted no were Demoncrats, one was Republican, Thomas Massie from Kentucky. WTH?? Four out of the five who voted present also were Democrats. The only non-Democrat who voted present was Rep. Justin Amash, an Independent.
“I stand before you the daughter of Palestinian immigrants,” said Tlaib on the House floor the morning of the tally. “Parents who experienced being stripped of their human rights, the right to freedom of travel, equal treatment. So I can’t stand by and watch this attack on our freedom of speech and the right to boycott the racist policies of the government and the state of Israel. I love our country’s freedom of speech, Madam Speaker. Dissent is how we nurture democracy.”
And
Earlier in the day, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) criticized the resolution, saying, “It sets a dangerous precedent because it attempts to delegitimize certain people’s political speech and to send a message that our government can and will take action against speech it doesn’t like”
During the 40-minute floor debate on the resolution, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said the BDS movement “promotes a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that seeks to marginalize Israel, that would deny the Jewish people the right of national self-determination.” He added, “Participating in an international commercial effort that undermines Israel’s legitimacy and scuttles the chances of a two-state solution isn’t the same as an individual exercising First Amendment rights.”
After the vote, Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) tweeted, “Displays of anti-Semitism have become too frequent in the past few months, even from members of this House of Representatives—and it is time that we stand united in support of Israel.”
Of course we know my opinion of the “two state solution”. That is already in place. It’s called Gaza, where rockets and fire balloons are launched into Israel.
She compared the BDS movement to the American boycott of Nazi Germany.
“The right to boycott is deeply rooted in the fabric of our country,” she said. “What was the Boston Tea Party but a boycott? Where would we be now without the boycott led by the civil rights activists in the 1950s and 60s like the Montgomery bus boycott and the United Farm Workers Grape boycott?”
She then pivoted to the history of Americans boycotting foreign government, saying, “Americans boycotted Nazi Germany in response to dehumanization, imprisonment, and genocide of Jewish people.”
She claimed in May that “Palestinian Arabs living in the British Mandate prior to the establishment of the State of Israel “provided” a safe haven to Jews after the Holocaust.” Look up Hevron massacre 1929 if you are unsure why I’m angry about that particular statement.
“There’s always kind of a calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust,” Tlaib said, “that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, has been wiped out … in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways.”
It seems that the two anti-Semites, Omar (whom I don’t think is married to her brother this week, though she isn’t saying) and Tlaib are planning on visiting Israel.
I really like Sha’i ben-Tekoa’s solution. Let them enter Israel through the Hamass terror tunnels, they’ll feel right at home. He also has a great itinerary for them. Ripping good show with some American History on Thomas Jefferson.
But there are people that disagree. While they are not calling out the pile of Tlaib by name, their actions say she’s liar liar pants on fire.
Who are these people? Arabs. Specifically Arabs in other countries. It seems the Falestinians are beginning to get on everyone’s last nerve.
This may not have made headline news last week.
This is Saudi blogger Mohammed Said,
This man is an ARAB, and he is being treated this way by the Falestinians. I find this curious as well as appalling. But in the Arab world, it’s an eye for an eye. Literally. In Torah it means the value of an eye for an eye.
So in Riyadh
Who else besides the Saudi Arabs have had a bellyful of the Tlai Falestinians? Syrians.
In an exclusive interview, Syrian analyst Wael Ashaq explained that many people in Saudi Arabia despise how the Palestinian Authority is assisting the Assad regime: “They only care about what is good for them. They don’t care about the millions killed every day by the Assad regime. If we look at the issue historically, the Palestinians went everywhere in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan and created many problems and troubles. We as Syrians helped the Palestinians but when we have a problem with our dictator, they stand with this terrorist regime and help them politically as well as militarily. This is true for both Fatah and Hamas. They are both the same on this.”
On top of that, he added that many people in the Arab world are looking in order to build a strong relationship with Israel: “We want a good relationship with Israel because we know that Israel respects our right to be a free people and a liberated country. Israel is the only democratic state in our area. We don’t see any other free and democratic governments in the area. We are looking for a free Syria that will be just like Israel. The region has changed in favor of a new alliance. Any government has to make good relations with Israel if they want their country to be free and democratic and for their people to live with dignity and to have a good life. Therefore, we condemn Palestinian terrorist practices against Israeli civilians and those who support Israel.”
But wait! There’s more!
Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations and Human Rights, added that many people in the Arab world are waking up and discovering not only how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have abandoned the Syrian people but also have been taking hostile actions against Saudi Arabia. He noted that the Saudis are greatly disturbed with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad for building a relationship with Iran.
Safadi stressed that the Saudis view Iran to be their number one enemy for the Houthis, Iran’s proxy in Yemen, have fired rockets at Saudi Arabia. In addition, they view Iran’s nuclear program to be a major threat to the Saudi Kingdom and its regional sphere of influence. In light of this, many Saudis are greatly disturbed over the fact that many Palestinians don’t share their hostile perception of the Iranian regime and are actually working in order to have a good relationship with Iran.
According to Safadi, another factor that disturbs the Saudis is the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood among Palestinians. The Saudis consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. In light of this, they are not huge fans of Hamas, which is essentially the Palestinian Arab branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that people such as Palestinians have no other option than to “riot” because they are “marginalized” by Israel — drawing swift outrage from Jewish advocacy groups.
…
Radio host Ebro Darden prompted the discussion with Ocasio-Cortez by saying there are a number of “corrupt” governments — lumping together Israel, the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia — which he claimed are “working in concert.”
He went on to assert that young Jewish people are against the “Palestine occupation” and would like to see the ouster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Darden also ranted about “white supremacist Jews” and said it’s “something most people can’t wrap their brains around.”
“And what’s going on with Israel and Palestine, while it’s very, very deep, it is very, very criminal, and it is very, very unjust,” he said.
Ocasio-Cortez agreed, saying, “Absolutely.”
“I think, too, where we’re at as a country when it comes to Israel-Palestine is very much a generational issue,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
One person is responsible, the one who pulled the trigger. Not the gun. But the very anti-Semitic goon “squad” is certainly doing their best to incite hatred with their lies. It seems many in the Arab world are realizing that the Falestinians are a lie and are tired of them, and their lies. How many Americans will still buy the lies and that pile of Tlaib that she and the rest of the goon squad are dishing out?
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.
Just the other day, a friend was telling a few of us about the Prius his son had bought. One acquaintance interrupted to advise him* to tell his son to get rid of it or move out, because the car uses the same power/drive system as an SSBN. and it’s illegal. I told “Al” he should hold off on giving advice like that because he clearly knows nothing about the Prius, which most certainly is not nuclear-powered. “Al” declared that his ignorance of cars and motors doesn’t disqualify him from commenting on car ownership, motor vehicle accidents, or the law.
Should I keep trying to explain to “Al” that giving bad advice based on ignorance can harm other people and make him look like an idiot, or should I just sit back and enjoy the show as he continually makes a fool of himself? It isn’t as if “Al” is really a friend; just a workplace acquaintance.
signed
“Picking the Best Option”
* Update: I see Amy has edited that to delete much of her ignorant display. There is no note — at this time — acknowledging the changes.
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I ran across another research paper regarding gun control. I was expecting the usual biased crap, but…
That title.
Mathematics ties media coverage of gun control to upticks in gun purchases
Through the analysis of time series from 1999 to 2017, we identify a correlation between the occurrence of a mass shooting and the rate of growth in firearm acquisition. More importantly, a transfer entropy analysis pinpoints media coverage on firearm control policies as a potential causal link in a Wiener–Granger sense that establishes this correlation. Our results demonstrate that media coverage may increase public worry about more stringent firearm control and partially drive increases in firearm prevalence.
The actual paper is paywalled. The available abstract… makes sense, and confirms what everyone has known empirically for years: Threats to restrict rights drive people to exercise them while they can. Maurizio Porfiri et al quantified it.
The study itself doesn’t use garbage “synthetic controls” or inappropriate “cross-sectional analysis.” It’s straight temporal analysis of real data looking for cause and effect. I had to see who Porfiri is; he’s not your usual social “science” type.
He certainly isn’t. He’s an engineer; mechanical, not social. You know, the guys who comprehend that you have to get facts right, or the airplane won’t fly.
In fact, when I looked at some of his other paper titles, I realized I’d heard of his work. He’s done some really neat stuff with robotic fish. That work.
Like his seemingly realistic analysis of how gun control threats drive sales.
If academia really wants to understand “gun violence” and how that relates to the Second Amendment, they need to dump the social scientists (and social justice weasels), and hire more reality-based engineers.
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The last two days of Pesach are observed as the first two, in that they are holidays. This means I’m not on the computer, and I’m not listening to the radio. On Shabbat I don’t anyway. On Shabbat I’m where I’m suppose to be, in Beit Knesset, Shul, my place of meeting and prayer. I’m learning, I learn from my Rabbi and from the other people there that I have grown to care about very much. I have a huge sense of gratitude every single time I walk in, whether it is for Shabbat or a class I’m taking. I learn about
G-d, his love for me, for us, and his direction manual for us to grow in our relationship with him, how he wants us to live our lives, and how to live in peace with each other. And every time I go, I realize how much more I have to learn.
So it was late Saturday evening when I logged onto my computer and saw my first notification of the shooting at another Chabad in Poway Kalifornia. Before I could read the details my mind had already flipped back to the attack at the Chabad house in Mumbai India in November 2008. Mercifully, this was not that. The song that Y.B. had me post, Vehi She Amda is part of the Pesach seder, it’s a song I love, and most days I sing it because I love it that much. I love what it says.
This attacker was a 19 year old “Bucket O’Chum” who was in nursing school. And if that doesn’t scare you, it should. He self identifies as a 19 year old Kalifornia native and a nursing student. ‘I’m just a normal dude who wanted to have a family, help and heal people, and play piano.’ He also self identifies as a human being. I would disagree with that. Around 1130 on Shabbat during the service “Chum” walked in and began shooting any and all he could. There was a family there that have moved from Israel a few years before after the rockets fired from the “Two-state solution” known as Gaza had hit their home more than once. They had lived in Sderot. Another family member visiting from Sderot managed to save his nieces and a neighbor girl despite being wounded in the leg. Little Noya was wounded by shrapnel, and her hero uncle was hit in the leg. Both will survive. He also intended to kill Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, and although the Rabbi required surgery on both hands, and I believe lost a finger he is alive. He is alive because of his longtime friend and Chabad attendee Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60. Lori flung herself between the killer and the Rabbi. A doctor began to perform CPR on her, when he realized it was his wife, he fainted. I can not even begin to imagine. As the Rabbi was wheeled into surgery he kept saying to let everyone know Lori saved his life.
Chum entered Chabad with a rifle, does what kind really matter? He was wearing a green vest and a helmet. He planned to stay awhile. Which might give rise to the question why is only one person dead. And in asking that, I do not mean to imply one is not significant. It is, it is one too many. From all I’ve read Lori was amazing, and it is a very significant loss not only to her family but the community as well. But you would have expected a higher death toll with the amount of preparations he seemed to have made. I have a couple of answers.
During the shooting, a brave off-duty border patrol agent, who was working as private security for the synagogue, fired at the shooter and chased him. Other members of the synagogue, who carried licensed concealed weapons, also went after him. Miraculously the killers’ gun jammed and he ran off. The heroes and G-d hand prevented the killer from claiming more lives.
The fact that there were armed congregants there and they went after him is not something I’ve seen brought out much.
And because to the left, one dead Jew isn’t enough, there is a list of the predictable responses of the usual victim disarmament crowd including Duke Nukem and Kamala Harris, who by the way, has her own gun and carry permit. Because you see that’s how elitism works. My life and family are valuable, yours aren’t. Like obamacare, we will legislate laws affecting your and your family’s life, but we will exempt ourselves from those laws. A small list is included in the “Anti-Gunner Call for Gun Control” link above. The killer ran off partly because armed members and the off duty Border Patrol agent came after him. The agent firing four shots at his car. So we can’t have armed citizens stopping a slaughter, correct progressives?
The left and its comrades in the mainstream media have taken the Jewish vote for granted for years. Jews are one of the most reliable constituencies of the Democratic Party. A CNN poll last fall found that nearly 80 percent of Jews voted Democratic in the midterm elections. Only 17 percent voted Republican. Yet anti-Semitism on the left in the U.S. has increased recently, including in the media.
And speaking of the media, and all the news that’s fit to lie about, The New York Slimes #FakeNews is becoming more brazen in their antisemitism having recently published a cartoon of President Trump, blind and wearing a kippah being led by a dog with a Magan David collar and Benjamin Netanyahu’s face. They finally removed it after a large outcry. Know what I find somewhat interesting? I’ve yet to see the name of the “cartoonist”. If it was a conservative that had done such a thing, their name, picture and family history back to the Mayflower would be all over the net by now. Say, where’s Omar Barghouti about now? Did the Slimes hire him?
Like Tarrant in his own writings, the manifesto author states that his end goal is to prompt the U.S. government to begin confiscating guns, predicting that a civil war will ensue. The author said he had been planning the attack for four weeks.
Obviously a Duke Nukem supporter.
As long as we don’t look at this honestly, as long as people continue to embrace the big government control of citizens offered by people like #LipstickLenin-Cortez, this will continue. Because excuses are being made for the left, to more easily blame the right.
I admit, I’m having a very hard time with this. I’m trying to understand and make some sense of it. I know I need to work towards something a Rabbi I very much admire wrote,
The solution therefore is to a. Love!
b. a practical mechanism which has helped many is the implementing of the sage advice of the Jewish masters, such as:
1. When you wake up in the morning (as the first thought influences the rest of the day) Express Gratitude (and as research shows, gratitude culminates in hope and happiness)
2. Forgive nightly (yes, before you go to bed – the first part of our bedtime prayers is: we forgive everyone.)
When those that hate and come to kill are met with that kind of a response (without the naughty words) from a hard target things will change. I believe and understand there is a purpose to everything in G-d’s world, but I want to see beautiful souls like Lori Gilbert-Kaye around for a long time, to mentor other women, and continue making the world more beautiful. I want to see people like Almog Peretz who saved the children have a beautiful visit and only happy memories of his Pesach in America. We are not cowards, look at Lori and Almog’s responses. What courage! Which is good, because it’s going to take courage, clarity, wisdom and honesty to admit what the left is offering is not our friend.
For now, all I know to do is pray for healing. And that more places of worship will begin to consider armed security among their attendees.
Reuters has a little problem with accuracy, especially when it involves their gun control hobbyhorse.
Swiss set to back tighter gun controls, avoid EU clash: poll After militants killed scores in Paris and elsewhere in 2015, the EU in 2017 toughened laws against purchasing semi-automatic rifles like the ones used in those attacks, and made it easier to track weapons in national databases.
I asked Reuters, and specifically the author of that article for a reference for that semi-auto claim. Because all the rifles I saw fired in footage from the January Charlie Hebdo and November 2015 attacks were automatic.
No response. From either of them.
So it’s time to shame them again. Last time I did this, it took three tries to persuade them to get the data right.
Automatic rifles. Which I knew from seeing the car machinegunned. Rocket launcher. Grenades. All of which are already banned for French civilians. The only semi-auto were pistols.
That was an early report, when it wasn’t clear exactly what the murdering scumbags used; just that they were AK-variant assault rifles. And the subgun; automatic.
Later, it got nailed down to specific models.
Specifically, the AK-variants were:
2 Type 56 assault rifle (Chinese AK variant assault rifle)
2 Zastava M70 machine guns (Serbian Ak variant assault rifle)
All automatic AK-variant rifles. Not semi-auto.
So, Reuters and Mr. Shields; would you care to correct the story… and note the correction?
[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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Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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nbeknownst to me how, I was added to the email blast alert list of Democrat Party Panjandrum Nancy Pelosi known affectionately in some circles as 
