Admittedly, this column is a bit behind the times, I apologize. Parshah Shoftim was a few weeks ago. And part of the Parshah really hit home. Probably because if I spend any time at all listening to the news, all I hear is impeachment, impeachment, impeachment (said is the best Jan Brady whine). The secret Soviet style hearings which include only progressive #Demoncrats, the liar Adam Shiff-less., and lots of leaks, lots and lots of leaks.
Shiff-less
But here’s the relevant portion of the Parshah that got me to thinking
Part of Parshah Shoftim
This is from Deut./Devarim דברים
19:16.
Haven’t all of the women hired to attack Kavenaugh recanted? After they and their complicit media tried to ruin his and his family’s lives. Of course.
Honest law-abiding gun owners, judged guilty for the acts of criminals.
And as Sammy “The Bull” Gravano points out, the mob will always have guns. You only have to listen to the first couple minutes if you want.
Well, the mob and #Bozo’s armed guys he would have sent in to make sure American Citizens complied with his rules, so they could “recover” the AR-15s and AK-47s. Recover? Were they missing before they were stolen by #Bozo?
But the real hypocrisy of liberals is on full display in a fairly recent bill proposed by Sen. John Cornyn -Rep of Texas. He proposed a bill to “combat mass shootings”. He proposed to do this by
It would expand resources for mental health treatment, facilitate the creation of “behavioral intervention teams” to monitor students exhibiting disturbing behavior and offer new tools for law enforcement.
The bill’s school safety proposals are a response to years of school shootings perpetrated by young people described as isolated and troubled.
What is their objection you ask?
Privacy experts and education groups, many of which have resisted similar efforts at the state level, say that level of social media and network surveillance can discourage children from speaking their minds online and could disproportionately result in punishment against children of color, who already face higher rates of punishment in school.
“This is all very frightening,” an education policy consultant, who has been tracking the legislation, told The Hill. “There’s no real research, or even anecdotal information, to back up the idea … that following everything [kids] do online is really a way to determine that they’re going to be violent.”
Now, I’m not a fan of monitoring or big brothering anyone. But this is hypocrisy at it’s finest. And if you don’t believe me, you could ask Alexandria Keyes. She was suspended from school for five days after she posted a picture of herself with her brother.
The two are shown holding guns and the photo is captioned, “Me and my legal guardian are going to the gun range to practice gun safety and responsible gun ownership while getting better so we can protect ourselves while also using the First Amendment to practice our Second Amendment.”
Oh the shock, the horror, the carnage! Oh, wait there wasn’t any. The girl and her brother just went to the range practiced marksmanship and harmed no one. But panties were being twisted into a bunch at a rapid rate, and Alexandria was suspended for disrupting school. Huh? She wasn’t at school, she didn’t use a school computer to post the picture. Sen. Cornyn’s bill only monitors online activity while the students are using school computers.
Abbe Smith, Chief Communications Officer for Cherry Creek School District, told me that the decision to suspend Keyes “involved multiple social media posts that concerned the school community and resulted in multiple parents keeping their kids home from school out of concern for safety.” Smith said that federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protections prevent her from discussing the details of the case, including disclosing the other photos the district allegedly considered in Keyes’ suspension.
More about this
The school’s policy references Colorado law, which defines the grounds for suspension as “behavior on or off school property that is detrimental to the welfare or safety of other pupils or of school personnel, including behavior that creates a threat of physical harm to the child or to other children.”
… According to Cherry Creek School Board policy, the school district reserves the right to suspend students who “[repeatedly interfere] with a school’s ability to provide educational opportunities to other students.” Over the phone, Smith noted that since multiple parents kept their children home after becoming aware of the post, Keyes’ photo could be viewed as an impediment to the school’s ability to educate, even if the district didn’t ultimately make its decision based on the chances that Keyes posed a physical threat. Does this mean parental fears can be a mechanism for the school district to veto a teen’s extracurricular activities?
Is Cherry Creek not worried that this is going to prevent Alexandria from speaking her mind online? Maybe Cherry Creek never got the memo from the educational policy consultant that monitoring online activity of children is not effective in determining if they are going to be violent later?
And those sanctimonious sniveling parents that bullied the school into suspending her? They have accused her falsely. She has done nothing wrong. They have left a mark on her school record because of their hoplophobic tiny minds. They have allowed their lack of education and knowledge to deprive her of five days worth.
What should then be their sentence?
False statements given to police because someone wants someone’s guns seized in a storm trooper operation because they are A) mad at their uncle B) don’t like how someone voted C) don’t think people should be allowed to own guns D) ___________________ for whatever reason. Police show up, guns are seized and sometimes, sometimes, people die. Red Flag laws, the height of hypocrisy coming from progressives.
What then should be their sentence? And what should their sentence be if it results in the death of an innocent gun own, exactly as they intended it would?
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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An occasional “hobby” of mine is fact checking the Everytown list of “school” shootings. It’s been awhile so I decided to try again.
Since they don’t actually link to supporting documentation for their claims, I have to — tediously — search for reports. So I only checked the ten most recent listings.
10/8/2019 Houston TX Westbury High School After hours, on campus. Not school-related, but it meets Everytown’s broad definition.
10/8/2019 Athens GA University of Georgia Accidentally shot himself. This counts; but personally I think they should separate out college/university incidents with adults.
9/29/2019 Buffalo NY Buffalo State College Off campus, . Not a school shooting.
9/19/2019 San Jose CA San Jose State University Parking structure. I’m not sure if it was on college campus; reports aren’t terribly clear. I’ll score this “maybe.”
9/12/2019 Manhattan KS Manhattan High School Off campus, after hours. Not a school shooting.
20% of the “school” shootings were not; not even by the expansive Everytown definition.
Another 10% was questionable. I think it was a parking structure near campus housing, but I’m not sure.
Of the seven remaining incidents, four were college/university, not what the uninformed would expect to be schools full of children. And two of those were only coincidentally on campus.
That leaves three real school shootings, involving minors in some way. One of those was only that minors were inside the building struck by a stray round from mobile shootout as the cars passed the school.
But technically, Everytown’s error rate is down to a mere 20%, or maybe 30%. Or 40% (intent matters; no one was trying to hit that school window). Or 60% wrong, if you don’t count the college shootings that had nothing to do with the colleges.
I’ll be generous and give them a 50% “correct” rate. That’s actually up since the last time we played.
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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.
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.
“Imagine the deaths if the shooter [Las Vegas] had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get. Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.”
“Durn tootin’, great shootin’. Cool dude sertin’ he’s 2nd Mendment rahts. Hell yeah! Every country has its psychopaths. In US they have guns.” [Mocking misspellings in the original].2
Richard Dawkins, author and famous atheist.
“The NRA, a vile organization with a sinister, deadly grip on America’s lawmakers, bought Trump’s silence when they backed him during the election campaign.”3
Piers Morgan
“After Sandy Hook and Las Vegas, what is the rationale for any civilian owning an assault rifle and high capacity magazine?”4
Barbara Streisand
“How long do we let gun violence tear families apart? Enough. Congress & the WH should act now to save lives. There’s no excuse for inaction.”5
Joe Biden, former Vice President
“I’m not an ordained minister; I’m not a theologian, but these guys [NRA] are going to hell.”6
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, sixth grade teacher, Utah, and Vice President National Education Association [NEA] the nation’s largest teacher’s union.
Television news reporters often refer to semiautomatic rifles as “assault weapons,” say guns “go off accidentally,” infer AR15s are capable of full-automatic fire, employ the phrase “gun violence,” and display background screen icons (Browning High Power for example) in reports on violent assaults even when the weapon used was a knife. If journalists are going to bang on authoritatively about something, shouldn’t they know what they’re talking about? Considering network news is for many people their sole source of information, isn’t it important for journalists use proper terminology? Improper use of terms can confuse and mislead the public with respect to laws, regulations, and the types of firearms owned by citizens. I’ve dropped notes to journalists apprising them of proper terms when they used them incorrectly and all responses were cordial. Scott Goldberg of ABC News who incorrectly claimed bump stocks turned semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, refused to respond. Chris, a reporter in the Kansas City news market, agreed that news reports employ biased terminology. He revealed when discussing firearms, incorrect terms are actually provided through press releases issued by Police Public Information Officers relative to a crime under investigation and in scripts written by producers. Journalists are also guided by playbooks listing approved vocabulary that reflect political bias. For example abortion supporters are called “Pro-Choice” even though the choice promoted is abortion and opponents, who call themselves Pro-Life, are instead labeled “Anti-Abortion” or “Anti-Choice” hardly neutral or objective. Chris revealed he was chastised by his boss for saying “illegal alien” instead of the approved term “undocumented immigrant.” Job security enforces compliance.7
Perhaps at no time in American history has the meaning of words mattered more. Consider how for the past 50+ years the Left’s agenda driven political ideology has shaped America. Their control over public education is monolithic, they own pop-culture, the movie, music, and entertainment industries, dominate print and broadcast journalism, influence Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations, and have invaded professional sports. In public education, they write the narrative and point of view allowed to be taught to such a degree, classrooms are little more than indoctrination centers. As a teacher I came up against the Liberal’s hegemonic sway over what kids are taught and their ‘Edstapo’ goons on constant prowl for heretics and dissenters (especially true in SocialIST studies departments). There are ways of being burned at the stake without using fire. Spoon feeding a biased curriculum to an unknowing gullible captive audience is bad enough but perhaps worse is what they leave out. Political Correctness, invented by Stalin,8 dictates what kids are taught on every issue from global warming, immigration, economics, the Constitution, and gender bending, to the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Not taught the other side? They don’t even know one exists!
For years I’ve warned regardless of how many 2nd Amendment victories are won, America is always a mass shooting and Supreme Court appointments away from losing everything. Fewer Americans than ever today grow up exposed to firearms whether through hunting, target practice, or competition. Their source for information on firearms comes from pop-culture, news and social media, and public education all dominated by liberals hostile to the 2nd Amendment. At some point in their life, an individual is responsible for searching out the truth on any issue. But it doesn’t work that way. Americans are too intellectually lazy to bother. Rather than the rebuke so richly deserved for indolent self-inflicted ignorance, with patience and perseverance the great-unwashed must be educated. Hence this primer. Based on statements in the news and social media, to some degree non-gun owners seem to believe anyone can walk into a gun store, hand over cash, and walk out a few minutes later with a firearm. Is this true?
Only those legally eligible can purchase firearms and only in the state of their residence. Age requirements apply; 18 for rifles and shotguns, 21 for handguns, and they must present a valid drivers’ license. If expired, suspended, revoked, or they moved without updating the address on their license, purchase is denied. Everything is in order, can they now buy a gun? No. They must complete federal form 4473 providing identifying information; name; date and place of birth, social security number, and so forth. Next they’re required to answer a series of questions including who is the actual purchaser of the firearm. Buying it for someone else, a “straw-purchase,” is prohibited. Additional questions include; are they a convicted felon, under felony indictment, a fugitive from justice, drug user, dishonorably discharged from the military, renounced their citizenship, in the country illegally, not a U.S. citizen, subject to a restraining order, or if they have been convicted of domestic violence, misdemeanor or not. A yes answer to these questions means they cannot buy a firearm. An untruthful answer is a felony punishable by federal prison, fines, and loss of the right to own firearms, vote, and hold state or federal jobs…forever. Suppose they lie?
Once form 4473 is completed and signed by a customer, gun stores must call the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Police agencies and the military are required by law to provide information on prohibited individuals to the F.B.I. who, in turn, enter it into a centralized data base. Upon receiving a request for authorization to sell a gun from a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder, the F.B.I. searches its data base determining if the intended purchaser is not legally prohibited. It’s the F.B.I. who authorizes or denies sales. Suppose a buyer has no criminal record but is mentally unstable? Information on those adjudicated through a legal process as “mentally defective” or having been institutionalized, is also entered into the F.B.I.’s data base and they will be denied purchase. Can’t an FFL just skip all this?
Commercial gun sales can only be made by FFLs. Information on each firearm they receive through purchase, trade, and so forth, must be entered into a logbook along with information as to whom it is ultimately sold. Logbooks are subject to random inspection by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms [BATF]. Whether storefront or homebased, FFLs must be able to account for every gun taken in and or sold. Data entry discrepancies may lead to revocation of the FFL and felony prosecution. If the business is sold or closes, logbooks and all 4473 forms are transferred to the BATF, a form of registration. If denied purchase at a gun store, can’t prohibited persons buy firearms at gun shows through some kind of “loophole?”
Gun show promoters lease venues for their events in turn renting space to FFLs, often gun stores. All laws and requirements with respect to buying and selling guns apply at gun shows. Private sales may occur but typically comprise hunting rifles, shotguns and relics. Police officers and AFT Agents are often on hand supervising compliance. Only a miniscule number of criminals purchase firearms at gun shows. Typically they obtain them through burglary and theft. But what about these machine guns we keep hearing about. Can’t anyone walk in and out of a gun store with machine guns?
In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act [NFA] regulating various firearms and devices commonly known as “silencers,” but its main focus was submachine guns, those capable of firing continuously with one pull of the trigger. Submachine guns were not banned. Instead, owners paid a $200 stamp tax and registered the firearm with the federal government.9 The Gun Control Act [GCA] of 1968 was interpreted by the BATF to prohibit the importation of fully automatic firearms by civilians. In 1986, the GCA was amended by the Hughes Amendment (Representative Charles Hughes, Democrat New Jersey) prohibiting civilian possession of full-automatic firearms manufactured after 19 May, 1986. To sell and or purchase firearms covered by the GCA, individuals apply for and obtain a special license from and register the firearm with the federal government paying required fees.10 Title I FFL’s pay a Special Occupation Tax to sell full-automatic firearms. This elevates them to title III hence the common but inaccurate term “class III license.” GCA applicants must meet all legal requirements for ownership, submit to a 6 to 12 month BATF criminal background investigation, provide finger print cards and passport sized photos, pay a $200 stamp tax, and register the firearm with the BATF. Because no full-automatic guns produced after May of 1986 may be sold to civilians, their pool is extremely limited translating into stratospheric prices.11 The idea, as my son says, that “some edgy teenager” can afford one is preposterous. Although not an edgy teenager, add me to the preposterous list.
Yes, the sear portion of an AR, and other semiautomatic rifles, can be cut and modified to allow for full automatic fire. But, there will be no selective fire option. It can now be fired only fully automatic. Anyone caught with such a modified weapon faces 10 years+ in a federal prison, loss of the right to ever be in possession, let alone own, firearms, loss of the right to vote, and hundreds of thousands in fines. May I make a recommendation to anyone considering this modification? Don’t. You will get caught. It’s possible to modify or buy an already modified sear. It’s a small piece of metal and, as long as it’s not installed in a rifle, no problem, right? Wrong. Mere possession of a sear, modified to allow fully automatic fire, is considered the same as possessing a fully automatic rifle with all the same penalties. You will get caught. Once again, don’t do it. If you must fire one, patronize a gun range that rents these rifles. They’re fun but you’ll probably leave realizing how impractical they are for self-defense. Sustained controlled accurate fire? Yeah, sure.
Not every gun owner in America supports let alone belongs to a pro-2nd Amendment organization or gun club, not even close. Nevertheless, when the Left attacks and besmirches these organizations, they serve for liberals as surrogates for all gun-owners and that means you. The Left works off an old and well established ideology and doctrine; the will of the individual must be bent to and subordinated to will of the state. Private ownership of firearms has no place in such a world view and neither do inalienable rights. It’s our job to educate family, friends, and neighbors about the truth because it will not happen in tax payer financed public schools and universities.
22 Emily Zanotti, 2 October 2017, “Insane: The Worst Twitter Responses To The Tragedy in Las Vegas,” The Daily Wire, at www.dailywire.com/news/21/02/10/2017.
55 Alexander Kacala, “From Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift, Celebrities Respond to Yesterday’s Las Vegas Attack,” at http://hornetapp.com/stories/las-vegas-attack/amp/
66 Todd Woodward, Editor, “Downrange: “Teacher, Leave Gun Guys Alone,” Gun Tests 8 (August, 2013), 2. Lily Eskelsen Garcia is the vice president of the National Education Association, America’s largest teacher’s union which is also a major donor and supporter of the Democrat Party. She was speaking before a Netroots Nation Conference attended by 3,000 “progressive activists” leaders in the drive to forge a Leftwing consensus in public education curriculum in the classroom and political activism without.
77 Email from Chris, “AK-47 ‘Assault Rifle,” KCTV 5 News, 6 December, 2007 to the author.
88 Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The VENONA Secrets (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000), 58.
99 David Higginbotham, “Gun Laws 101: Nations Firearms Act of 1934,” Guns.com at ww.guns.com/2013/01/03,
“Demonstrating perseveration, liberals insisting they don’t want to take away anyone’s guns is like the government telling plains Indians, because no tracks have been laid is proof trains will never come through their land.” Author
I Recently returned from Monaco celebrating Lewis Hamilton’s fifth Formula 1 World Championship, the Port Palace Hotel, (7 Avenue, Kennedy, Monaco) is fabulous. Hamilton, who is British and Black,2 joins Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio at that mark with German Michael Schumacher holding the record at seven. Okay, I wasn’t really in Monaco. My family popped corks in the states. Cheers. But all was not well.
To my chagrin, the Great Unwashed turned Congress over to trolls who despise the U.S., hate its Constitution, and hate its Judeo-Christian foundations. I kind of understand young sock-puppet Millennials voting for neo-Marxist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (or is it Evita?) in spite of her abysmal ignorance of economics, history, and the Constitution after all, they probably went to public schools. When run by liberals, dumb kids showing up at school house doors (Alyssa Milano) graduate even dumber. What I can’t fathom is how anyone could vote for reprehensible batrachian Nancy Pelosi whose former career, if I’m not mistaken, included playing Miss Gulch, the woman who took Dorothy’s dog away. Technology doesn’t exist capable of measuring her level of arrogance, pomposity, and deceitfulness. Were she attached to a polygraph, it’d explode the moment she opened her mouth. Rumor has it she and Cher recently tussled on the floor of their plastic surgeon’s office over the last bottles of collagen, Botox, and a Styrofoam cooler of baby’s skin for grafting.
In Part 1, I observed writing on race and crime was akin to crossing a mine-infested no-man’s land. On one side is a race hurting from wounds inflicted through discrimination and hatred. They search for acceptance leading to healing. On the other is a race who, to some degree, exacerbate the crisis by indifference. It’s expressed through attitudes like; “Crime ain’t happening in my neighborhood, why should I care?” Or “I had nothing to do with racism, it all happened in the past, so, why are these people still so angry?” And worse; “It’s a black thing.” They relate to blacks as if the latter are recent immigrants rather than having been in America, almost from the start, as American as the white man.
Ah, but perched like vultures in burned out trees overlooking the no-man’s land of racial division are today’s young Neo-Marxists, ready to swoop down on anyone daring to address race and crime in a fair and honest way. Blacks willing to do so are chastised as “traitors, Uncle-Toms,” and “racial-sellouts.” For whites willing to address the sources of the problem come shrill high pitched harridan shrieks of “racist” from the twisted fever spittled lips of Left-wingers. White flimsy-bodied Kulak-haters in black unitards regret none of the mayhem, destruction, and death they’ve unleashed in minority communities by stoking the flames of mistrust and animosity. They need it. Social disorder is vital to the Left’s strategy to realize their great project; subordinating the individual to the all-powerful state. Their route to power has never been the ballot box. It’s riding the crest of a wave of mass social unrest and violence as they did in Russia, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Palo Alto. Racial division is a tool useful for the left in breaking down social order. Their technique is to whip up anger among blacks, goad them into acts of civil disobedience, and provoke overreaction by police like the 1960s, and then the revolution is on. Unless issues of race are addressed honestly, reconciliation remains a pipedream. If you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong answer. As painful as it might be, the starting point is facing reality.
In 1999, Walter E. Williams, black Professor of Economics (George Mason University) wrote that “most violent crime in America, in our country, is committed by blacks.” They commit 54 percent of all murders, 42 percent of rapes, and almost 60 percent of robberies. With respect to interracial crime, “blacks are fifty times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites that whites against blacks.” Most of the violence is intra-racial with 93 percent of black homicide victims killed by other blacks.3 What the Left fails to mention is less than a hundred years after the end of slavery, a higher percentage of black children grew up in two-parent homes than white kids.4 In addition, the current crime problem in the black community was unheard of in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. They didn’t have to shut their windows and lock their doors like they did in white neighborhoods, and could stroll their streets after dark without fear. Poverty and high school dropout rates were on par, often less, than white communities as well.5 Crime, poverty, unemployment, and poor education in the black community, accepted as the norm today, is in fact not and never was. A direct correlation can be drawn between this monumental change and liberal government social welfare programs, starting in the 1960s, and decline of the black family.6 They were making it on their own when the government pulled the rug out from under them.
What went wrong? Who is responsible? How can we begin to fix this? Those are the questions that should be asked. Blacks didn’t do this to themselves. But these questions won’t be asked because white liberals stoking racial division today are ideologically the same ones responsible for what has been done to the black community in the first place through their social engineering. Compounding the problem are “black” groups misidentifying those who stabbed them in the back and, asking the wrong questions, choose the wrong solutions.
Today Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the New Black Panthers (NBP) are joined by white Crypto-Marxists promoting revolution in America. Since the 1960s, they’ve demonized America’s founding conservative institutions, religion and family, until they’ve become epithets for hatred and racism. They corrupted public education harnessing it as a transmission belt for ideological indoctrination of each generation. Next they set their sights on other conservative institutions, the Boy Scouts and U.S. Military and, through insidious feminization and homosexualization, they too fell. Finally, deploying a fictitious narrative cooked up in the rotting fetid swamps of their brains, they went after the last man standing, the police, claiming they’re the tip of the white man’s spear in a war to destroy the black race. It is them they blame for violence in black communities. Is any of this true? Have circumstances changed since Williams wrote about race twenty years ago?
Twenty-three percent of New York City’s population is black (only 33% is white) yet blacks account for 75 percent of the City’s shootings compared to 2 percent by whites. Its black population commit 70 percent of all robberies and blacks and Hispanics account for 98 percent of illegal gunfire in the city. Most of the victims are black and Hispanic. Redacted by the liberal media is the fact most legal gun purchases in the Five Burroughs are made by whites but only a miniscule percentage are used in crimes.7 Blacks and Hispanics commit violent crimes in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population as a whole. But Liberal whites, who typically don’t live in or near minority neighborhoods, insist crime rates are the same, proportionate, for all races. They contend no race commits violent crime at a higher rate than any other, therefore, New York’s crime and arrest rates should mirror those percentages. If 23 percent of the city’s residents are black and 33 percent white, then 23 percent of crime should be committed by blacks and 33 percent by whites. But that’s not what’s happening. Black crime is way out of proportion to their percentage of the City’s population. What then accounts for the disparity? According to the white liberal media, it’s the result of racism.8 The Left would have you believe cops protect families in communities where they often live, arresting black suspects for assault, robbery, rape, and murder but look the other way when the same crimes are committed by whites. Yeah, right. I served and worked with police departments on the East and West Coasts and never met a police officer who wasn’t more than happy to put the habeas grabbus on the scrotes and dirt-bags of society irrespective of race.
Contrary to what white liberal pantywaists at the New York Times claim, police killings of blacks are actually extremely rare. They comprise a “minute fraction of black homicide deaths.” Approximately 25 percent of those shot and killed by the police are black meaning 75 percent are not.9 An arithmetic exercise is in order to put this into perspective. Yeah, I know, I went to public schools too.
Blacks comprise 13% of the U.S. population. They commit 57%+ of all murders, 45% of assaults, and 62% or robberies in America’s seventy-five largest counties.10 Of that 13%, approximately 47% are male.11 Approximately 49% of that 47% are between ages 18 to 34, the cohort committing the overwhelming majority of violent crimes.12 The 49% of the black population that is male represents 6.20% of the total U.S. population. The 47.7% of that 6.02%, ages 18-34, represents only 3.03% of the total U.S. population. When roughly 3% of a race commits 60% of the nation’s murders, and most of its rapes, robberies, and assaults, is it any wonder that cops profile, and people black and white, fear them? To be politically correct, should people equally fear Japanese, Indian-Americans, or Jewish Deli-owners? Wait a minute, professor, the Washington Post (marching orders for Bolshevik Millennials) claims “unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire.”13 What do you say about that? If 60%+ of violent criminals are black, isn’t it far more likely the police will have encounters with them than whites? But let’s take a closer look at the paper serving the Kremlin on the Potomac.
Of the 987 people shot by police in 2015, 35 were unarmed black men, 2 unarmed black women, and 31 unarmed white men. Leftwing mouthpieces like the Post typically refer to unarmed suspects shot by the police as “victims.” What they dishonestly left out of this reporting is that of the 36 unarmed blacks, 5 tried to grab the officer’s gun and shoot him or her, several more had the officer down on the ground beating him or her senseless with the cop’s service equipment, (what would’ve happened once the officer went under), and 2 were killed by stray bullets fired from guns aimed at someone else. Black males are far more likely than white males to violently resist arrest, make a grab for the officer’s gun, and physically assault officers. In arresting suspects, no requirement exists for officers to first determine who is the better boxer, wrestler, or martial artist.14 Police officers are commissioned to enforce the law, keep the peace, and arrest those for whom probable cause exists to believe they’ve committed a crime. They’re not required to take a beating in performance of their duties.
Big surprise, the Pravda Post forgot to mention in cases they referenced that the suspects had gained control of non-firearm pieces of the officer’s equipment, including nightsticks, which are potentially lethal weapons especially when the officer is pinned to the ground, on his or her back. Detectives were beat bloody with their own portable radios while others under arrest, possibly on drugs, shrugged off night sticks, chemical sprays, and TASERS and were beating the cop senseless. Most people can only last a few minutes in an all-out struggle. But bad guys on drugs, like PCP,15 with the strength of Hercules, can go a lot longer. Officers often face suspects who are larger, stronger, and more physically fit. As a policeman, I took a class taught by a Captain from San Quentin, Marin County, California. Convicts behind bars practice escaping police holds, (feet apart and spread them, hands interlaced behind your head, and so forth), disarming cops, and killing them with their own service weapons. It was a chilling class. Once a cop is down, scumbags don’t need a gun to kill him or her. Kicks to the head, throat, ribs, and so forth will quickly incapacitate and kill a victim,16 one reason white-supremacist gnat-zies and ex-con thug-bikers wear steel-toed boots. If cops wait until they’re going under before grabbing the Smith & Wesson, it’s too late. Reality check; “Police officers are at a greater risk from blacks than unarmed blacks are from police officers. The per capita rate of officers being feloniously killed is 45 times higher than the rate at which unarmed black males are killed by cops.” And “An officer’s chance of getting killed by a black assailant is 18.5 times higher than the chance of an unarmed black getting killed by a cop.”17 But this is not what is explained in black communities or the liberal media.
Because some blacks target non-police random whites for “pay-back” assaults and the conflict between blacks and whites in general, talk of a “race-war” appears on social media. Regrettably, some blacks, including Economist Thomas Sowell and conservative former black Congressman Allen West believe the U.S. is already in the midst of a race-war. Random attacks on whites are justified as revenge for past injustices. Anyone with a white skin is fair game.18 Justification for race war are promoted by white liberal males tying to purge feelings of “white-guilt” guilt implanted into their skulls by public education, pop-culture, and university professors. To prove they’re not racists, they make common cause with BLM and NBP referring to the police as an “occupying force” and treat violent criminals as “victims.” Cop-killers are toasted as heroes within black communities and by white liberals19 who refuse to face the truth that crime in minority communities is black on black, not cop on black.20 St. Louis, Missouri, which makes Forbe’s Top Ten List of most dangerous cities in America like clockwork, is a black majority city in which 95% of homicide victims are black as are the killers.21 Kansas City, Missouri, called Kanshago in some circles (Kansas + Chicago) mecca for connoisseurs of abandoned boarded-up crumbling brick buildings, is 29% black and ranks as more dangerous than 94% of other communities in the state with an extremely high murder-rate, almost all black on black.22 Considering the municipal governments, school districts, and police departments of these cities are typically run by blacks, how can white millennial liberals continue to blame white cops? In addition, is it “white-guilt” that cripples their credulity or slavish adherence to ideology that causes them to stoop to or fall for race-hoaxes?
University of Missouri’s black president of the Missouri Student Association claimed “rednecks” in pickups screamed “nigger” at him warning that black students were going to be assaulted. He claimed the KKK had a presence on campus. Ultimately he, like black students at the University of Alabama and other colleges, confessed their stories of racial attacks were hoaxes. They made it all up.23 They painted the Swastikas and white supremacist symbols on buildings and dorm doors themselves. Further damage was done to the University of Missouri, negatively affecting enrollment and athlete recruitment, when black football players went on strike refusing to practice or play until graduate student Jonathan Butler ended his hunger strike.24 Butler, a self-described black “activist,” was protesting what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and demanding University President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin resign for doing nothing about alleged anti-black racism at the University. Regrettably, vertebral atrophy won the day and these administrators were forced to resign over faux racism and racial hoaxing as leftists learned to use race to flex political muscle.25 Perhaps worse, in a massive display of cowardice and gonadectimization, Board of Curators Chairman (a charitable sex-designation) Donald Cupps apologized to black students for the faux racial incidents, political race “stunting,” and hoaxing committed by black students that also destroyed the careers of lifelong educators and administrators.26 My contacts out in Missouri, advise enrollment at Missouri’s flagship university has plummeted, hundreds of professors have been laid off, and so many dorms closed, the university is renting them out like apartments and hotel rooms. And the most tragic consequences of these false narratives and lies?
From Baton Rouge to Dallas, 2015-2016 saw an “extreme spike” of 56% in ambushes on cops over 2014. This spike began following well-orchestrated and publicized protests and riots coupled with the Left’s calculated inflammatory rhetoric (aided and abetted by former president Obama).27 Another consequence is the “Ferguson Effect.” Afraid of being accused of and punished for racism, police officers scaled back aggressive proactive policing and anything that smacks of profiling. As a result, violent crime has spiked with cities like Baltimore experiencing a blood bath. Street cops know that, like the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators, the powers-that-be will shamelessly throw them under the bus in a heartbeat to placate the violent mob.28 Who suffers the most? Blacks living in the inner-city. Way to go Lefties.
Thomas Sowell
1 Teachers are forced into retirement for various reasons. My crime was engaging in Unprotected Education. I dared to teach the “other side” as opposed to liberal dictum being indoctrinated into the minds of students and was targeted by a coven-like cabal of leftist teachers for expurgation. They were relentless. What makes me so dangerous now that I’m out? Because I was on the INSIDE for 25 years, I know what really goes on, and I’m going to tell. Watch for future articles.
22 I don’t refer to Hamilton as “black.” His father is Caribbean, of African ancestry, and his mum is a blonde Englishwoman. Lewis was born and raised in England. Formula 1 drivers represent their nation, their team, and the sport, not a race. The world, not me, describes Lewis as black. Naturally blacks claim him as he may go down in history as the greatest F1 driver of all time. Although half-white, some whites see him as a “black guy who is part white.” Born with a natural tan, I was forced to “defend” my racial composition as a teacher. Colleagues mocked my suspected racial composition, yes, teachers, and students made up songs whose lyrics were full of speculative mockery. It seems, unless one is 100% white, even if 80%+, they’re not accepted as white but as representatives for their tiny non-white part. Yes, racism exists in America.
33 Walter E. Williams, More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 1999), 20-21.
1010 IBID. 38. See also: Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (North Charleston, South Carolina, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 23.
1414 IBID., 74-76. Citizens seem to think the local cop knows and represents every cop anywhere in America. If one does something wrong, all cops are guilty. I was asked often why cops used mace, nightsticks, and even guns on bad guys instead of using martial arts like William Shatner on the television show, T. J. Hooker. You know, Kung-Fu kick the bad guy’s gun from his hand. They said; Instead of shooting and killing bad guys shooting at you, why don’t you “wing” him instead? You can’t make up this kind of idiocy.
1515 PCP: Phencyclidine. Street name is “Angel-Dust.” Some people cook PCP in water and then, using a spray bottle, spray it on Marijuana cigarettes. They smoke it when dry. PCP, formerly a horse-tranquilizer, is a mind-altering drug than can cause extreme paranoia, violence, hallucinogenic episodes, psychosis, and gives the user incredible strength. How do I know? Whaddaya mean how do I know? I had to arrest these junkies and more than a few told me “how it was done.”
I have spent the past ten and a half months trying to confirm or deny one little report.
On February 16, 2018, the Sun-Sentinel reported on an investigation conducted by Florida DCF of the scumbag who would become the Parkland murdering a$$h0le. Basically, it was just another case of the “authorities” blowing off another chance to do something about him before anyone died.
But eleven paragraphs in, I noticed something.
Cruz came under DCF’s supervision and care because he was classified as a vulnerable adult due to mental illness.
As I’ve written before, “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” is a specific legal status in Florida. It is based on a finding by a judge in a formal hearing in which the subject has the opportunity to appear with legal counsel. In short, a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” is a prohibited person under the criteria of 18 U.S. Code § 922(d)(4). Chumbucket should not have been able to pass a background check to buy his rifle.
To be fair, the reporters might’ve misunderstood what DCF told them. So I contacted the Sun-Sentinel to verify that part was correct. I never received a response.
Since then, in an effort to discover if that “vulnerable adult” claim was accurate, I’ve contacted Florida DCF, state legislators, Senator Grassley (when he held a hearing on the shooting), the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school public safety commission, and the world. I have received no answers either way. From anyone. Until today.
A couple of days ago, the Sun-Sentinel’s Randy Schultz wrote an op/ed. He took the position that even if their sheriff is a complete screw-up (which he is), we still need more gun control.
If chum was a prohibited person, then gun control didn’t work. Maybe we should fix what we have before piling on more. I wrote to Schultz to suggest he look into that “vulnerable adult” issue, because I’d had zero luck myself.
Schultz replied. I’ll give him that much. In fact we had quite the email exchange.
Based on published reports, the Florida Department of Children and Families investigated and determined that Cruz was not a danger to himself. It ended there.
No. The results of that investigation had no bearing on chum’s prohibited status. They investigated because he was already a prohibited person “vulnerable adult,” according to the Sun-Sentinel. Which I told Schultz.
If you mean prohibited from buying a firearm, the conditions are that a person must have been committed or adjudicated,
Yes, and if bucket-head really was a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” that’s exactly what he went through to achieve that status. That’s why I want to know if he is: that status is achieved through adjudication of mental incompetence under Florida law.
But neither applied to Cruz.
-blink-
I gave him the Sun-Sentinel story with the original claim, and Florida and federal law cites to show that yes, it did
Correct. But the state made no no finding that he was a threat to himself.
He’s back to claiming that the investigation wouldn’t have made him a prohibited person because it cleared him. I reiterated that the investigation wasn’t done to determine if DCF should petition a judge for “vulnerable adult” staus for the a$$h0le. They were in a position to investigate him because he already was, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
You’ll have to ask the editors. I’m a freelancer.
See above: Been there, done that. They aren’t talking.
“Freelance” this: Was Cruz a prohibited person, as reported by the Sun-Sentinel, or not?
Being a reporter in the area, it should be easy enough for Schultz to check. If he was, the court record should be available. Even if sealed, that the record exists should be public. Heck, he could just talk to the original reporters and ask them to check their notes to see if that was a direct quote from DCF.
Personally, I originally thought the story simply mischaracterized Cruz’s status; reporters make mistakes. Or maybe it was correct, and I’d noticed just another governmental failure. No big deal. Except for all the dead people. I’m used to bureaucratic cock-ups.
After months of deafening silence, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s more to it.
Was Cruz a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness,” or did DCF make a series of truly amazing errors (having an adult under supervision without a judge’s ruling, making a very specific claim of that status mistakenly)?
If Cruz was a vulnerable adult, why wasn’t he reported to NICS? If he wasn’t a vulnerable adult, why does DCF have a report of an evaluation conducted of him as an adult?
If some DCF employee simply misread something, and Cruz was not classified as a vulnerable adult, why doesn’t DCF simply make the correction?
If the murderous slime was not a prohibited person, then folks like me can’t say NICS failed. Gun controllers could use that to rationalize more laws to catch folks not otherwise caught. If he was prohibited, then laws failed, and gun controllers don’t want to admit the system is at fault.
Why the silence? If he wasn’t prohibited, then that supports their gun control agenda. They could say so.
That they won’t say at all suggests to me that he was prohibited, but they can’t risk lying about it and getting caught.
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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 
