Reuters has a little problem with accuracy, especially when it involves their gun control hobbyhorse.
Swiss set to back tighter gun controls, avoid EU clash: poll After militants killed scores in Paris and elsewhere in 2015, the EU in 2017 toughened laws against purchasing semi-automatic rifles like the ones used in those attacks, and made it easier to track weapons in national databases.
I asked Reuters, and specifically the author of that article for a reference for that semi-auto claim. Because all the rifles I saw fired in footage from the January Charlie Hebdo and November 2015 attacks were automatic.
No response. From either of them.
So it’s time to shame them again. Last time I did this, it took three tries to persuade them to get the data right.
Automatic rifles. Which I knew from seeing the car machinegunned. Rocket launcher. Grenades. All of which are already banned for French civilians. The only semi-auto were pistols.
That was an early report, when it wasn’t clear exactly what the murdering scumbags used; just that they were AK-variant assault rifles. And the subgun; automatic.
Later, it got nailed down to specific models.
Specifically, the AK-variants were:
2 Type 56 assault rifle (Chinese AK variant assault rifle)
2 Zastava M70 machine guns (Serbian Ak variant assault rifle)
All automatic AK-variant rifles. Not semi-auto.
So, Reuters and Mr. Shields; would you care to correct the story… and note the correction?
[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]
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“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,
Illusions- The condition of being deceived by a false perception or belief. An erroneous perception of reality.
Justice- The principle or ideal of just dealing or right action conformity to this principle or ideal, righteousness the justice of their cause.
I confess, I’m one of those poor sods who like to see the best in people I’m close to. I make excuses for them, I try to overlook things, make allowances, tell myself it doesn’t matter, it was an accident and so on and so for ad nauseam. I’ve come to the conclusion that is a very naive way to live, and that there is a better than good chance you will end up getting blind-sided. Then you do the “it’s probably not how it looks, they didn’t mean it” and now you are deceiving yourself, they don’t even have to do it for themselves, you do it for them. How accommodating! Choosing to live with an illusion is a very counter productive, and frankly stupid way to live. Not only are you not able to accomplish things you could be working on, you’re probably working on things you don’t need to be so you’re wasting your valuable time. It can also be fatal. But, I’m far from the only one that struggles with this. Whole segments of populations and countries do as well.
Let’s take a little look at the modern Demoncratic party, the party of the working man as it is thought to be. This is from a email, but I’ll add to it.
116th
Congress was sworn in, and all day long, the media was salivating and fawning over the “remarkable diversity” of the new Democrat members. It was a day of “firsts,” we were told. It was indeed a day of many firsts. While the new Democrat majority offers many members of note, we wanted to highlight a few “firsts” who are examples of the “diversity” that was sworn in today.
#1.Ilhan Omar
The first person who married her brother – in order to commit immigration fraud – ever be elected to Congress. Omar is also the first open supporter of female genital mutilation to ever be elected to Congress. Amazing diversity!
#2. Rashida Tlaib
One of the first Muslim Brotherhood-linked and anti-Semitic candidates to be elected to Congress. She also claims to be a “Palestinian.” And she knows how to swear. Tlaib quote: “Impeach the Mother F_ _ _ _ _ _ President” (First words out of her mouth after being sworn in.)
#3. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Let’s just say she’s the first person elected to Congress who lied about being from the Bronx, and thus,made up her life story. She’s also an overt Marxist. (Not even covert!)
#4. Abigail Spanberger
The first substitute teacher from an Islamist school (nicknamed by law enforcers as ‘terror high’) ever to be elected to Congress.
#5. Donna Shalala
Rep. Shalala was HHS Secretary from 1993 to 2001 under Bill Clinton and worked from 2015 to 2017 at the Clinton Foundation, and in 2016 she admitted in an interview that some significant Clinton Foundation donors received “courtesy appointments” in the Clinton State Department. To top it off,apparently she can’t let go of politics: at 78, she’s the oldest female House freshman in history.
There is is a lot of value put on these important “firsts”. I think if this is the sort of the thing the Demoncratic party values, every person has historic “firsts” they could celebrate that are worthy of joy similar to the election and value of these Demoncratic women.
Your “first” car wreck, the “first” time you get beat up, the “first” time you get robbed, the “first” time you bounce a check, the “first” time you get thrown off your horse, the “first” time you’re lied to by someone you trusted, the “first” time you lose a loved one. All are notable firsts, and if the Demoncrats have a bar that low, well then, I’ve given them more.
So what do these remarkably “diverse” women bring to the table? Anti-semitic, anti-Israel, anti-women’s rights, anti-self defense, anti-freedom. See, they’re against all the good stuff and in lock step with what Nanny Pelosi tells them.. For now, I don’t think she’ll be able to keep them in lock step all that long.
One only has to look at how well the Somalis have integrated into the communities where obama dumped them to understand that importing the Somali way of life into American politics is a really bad idea. Or you could just look at how it’s playing out in Germany. Or Sweden.
The Israeli military has expressed growing concern over a new phenomenon that sees Palestinian parents from Gaza enter Israel to take their children for medical treatment, only to abandon those same children at the Gaza border and disappear.
These are folks who receive official permits from Israel to bring their suffering children for free medical treatment (oh, those nasty Zionists!), and then leave those children at the border, hoping someone will pick them up and care for them.
Either way, the parent(s) in question are more concerned about their own well-being, which they know, contrary to what’s portrayed in the mainstream media, can be best provided for in the Jewish state.
But the media has been very, very busy of late. None stop coverage of a heinous even that happened recently. A vicious attack on a defenseless person. It was horrible. And the media covered it in great detail as well as what has happened afterwards. I’m talking about Ori Ansbacher HY’’D.
A beautiful 19-year-old girl, Ori Ansbacher’s remains were found in the Ein Yael forest, south of Jerusalem. Her body was naked with multiple stab wounds to the upper torso.
Ori was a volunteer at a youth center in Jerusalem, she had gone for a walk to the Jerusalem forest to be alone after an argument.
She was spotted by a terrorist who had come into Israel illegally to kill Jews. Yeah, actually I do know what was in his mind. I’ll get to that. She was raped and stabbed repeatedly.
So what is known about the Bucket O’Chum that killed her?
“I want to be a Shaheed,” he declared at the time. When the interrogator asked him how he intended to become a Shaheed, the suspect replied, “I will do it again, I will buy a knife again and I will come back here to go to jail or be a Shaheed. I will do anything in order to go to jail. And if you release me, I’ll come here with a knife and I’ll be a Shaheed.”
I can’t begin to tell you how much I want to correct the spelling on that “shaheed” to more accurately reflect the proper word for this piece of human excrement. He smirked happily for the camera, and helpfully re-enacted the crime for the Israeli police.
And, have you heard any of the harpies on The View mourning Ori? Ms. Madcow? Anyone? Linda Sarsour decrying the violence against women? Any of the pink hatted harridans? No?
Well, the arabs in the Israeli Knesset didn’t either. They didn’t condemn the act, nope MK Aida Touma-Sliman claims Ori Ansbacher murder a heinous crime and shouldn’t stain struggle of ‘Palestinian people’. It wasn’t an act of terror by someone raised and educated to hate Jews, it was a “gender crime”.
I much prefer the response of MK Bezalel Smotrich,
“This despicable terrorist must die, his home must be destroyed, and his family must be deported here and now, without the High Court and without B’Tselem. Simply because our lives come first.”
And of course the Zehut political party has an excellent plan to deal with the arab population living in the Jewish state.
Why, there’s even talk that Israel may cut back the amount of money the give the Falestinian Authority (FA) by a few million. That’s money the FA uses to pay the families of the people that kill Jews, or are killed trying. Yep, Israel pays for the arabs to kill Jews.
Why? Illusions.
Some people labor under the illusion that the arabs are “peace partners”. The arab MK in the Knesset that called it a gender crime isn’t even honest enough to admit what it really is, and instead tries to use the horrific act to bring the conversation back to the “Falistinian struggle”. Hogwash. It’s hard to have a peace process or plan that have turned down every single one offered.
Illusions by the media that they will never be treated in the same manner by an arab. I mean after all, they carry the water for them. Perhaps they could ask Lara Logan or Kim Barker about that? Illusions behind their high security walls in their homes that we don’t need a wall at the border, and we don’t need to screen who is coming in.
Illusions by the Demoncrats that the muslim and communist women they are so proudly promoting have any intention or desire to serve the Americans that elected them.
Illusions by the people that elected those women that they were good candidates and would work for them.
Illusions by RINOs that they are on a good path to staying in “power”, because that’s what it’s about to them.
Illusions, they are everywhere.
And why haven’t you heard or Ori Ansbacher? Because the media was doing what they do best. #FakeNews. They were spreading the illusion of an attack on some low list actor called Jussie Smollett. Who probably didn’t deceive the media, but not having learned their lesson from the Covington High School fiasco bought his line, hook and sinker. Reaction to Jussie Smollett and Covington Case Shows Media’s Agenda.
Yes indeed, the media is all over the false claim of an attack on some minor actor, but the horrific death of a beautiful 19 year old girl receives no attention at all. The illusion of what was really important. It was easy to deceive the media, they wanted to be deceived.
But we don’t. We don’t want illusions that Demoncrats aren’t planning to enact some kind of gun confiscation scheme. We can’t afford illusions that someone will always be there to help or save us.
After services this Shabbat we had Kiddush, lunch. We were all talking, and somehow the Second Amendment or guns came up, don’t recall how that happened. But one of the gentleman at our table related a story about a time when he was in Israel. One of the men showing them the territory of Judea and Samaria was armed. He said someone commented on it, wasn’t he scared living in a place where he had to have a GUN? He smiled and said no. He wasn’t scared, he is an excellent shot. As is his wife, their children and their grandchildren are all excellent shots. He said he was worried about the tour group, Jews living in the diaspora. Because many of them don’t have guns, they rely on someone else to keep them safe. He said I sounded like that man.
That man has no illusions.
As long as people are living with illusions, there will not be, there can not be, justice.
“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.”
There was a mass killing in Oregon Saturday night. The report says four dead, two injured (not including the alleged asshole, who was killed by a deputy).
Notice I said the report. That one is still light on details, so I started checking my usual news feeds, to learn more.
ABC: No.
CBS: No.
NBC: No.
Hmm. So I checked a few more outlets. An event with seven casualties normally makes the national news.
MSN: No.
MSNBC: No.
CNN: No.
If any of those “news” services have the story, it’s buried well enough that I couldn’t find it. So I did a web search on “oregon mass killing”: Nothing. Doesn’t show up.
It’s almost as if those people don’t count, as far as the lamestream media is (not) concerned.
Drop down to the eighth paragraph in the report.
Jensen said the four people were not killed by gunfire, but did not provide further detail on their cause of death.
Same day, fewer casualties, but the killer used an evil gun, so it’s reportable.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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The Zelman Partisans have a page, A Gun Culture Primer, originally meant as a guide for newcomers to firearms, but especially gun-controlling idiots so they would have some clue what they are talking about. I often point “reporters” to it when I’m trying to explain why they’re wrong about… pretty much everything gun-related.
As you can guess, it doesn’t get many visitors.
While it covers such things as the Constitution, laws, judicial precedent, firearms technology, terminology and notable people and groups both pro- and anti-gun, possibly my favorite section is “Imaginary Stuff.” Think “shoulder thing that goes up.”
You may have missed a few of the more recent innovations um… inventions uh… misconceptions hell… schizophrenic delusions, so I thought I’d share that with you.
I figure TZP readers need a laugh about now.
Every one of these has actually been reported in the news.
Automatic Rounds:According to CBS these are apparently cartridges that turn any gun into a machine gun. In the real world of physics these don’t exist.
Body-piercing rounds: Either these idiots have found remote-installation nipple piercing rounds (“Do you want dumbbells or rings?”) or simple idiocy. Pretty much any bullet fired from a firearm is “body-piercing.” Context suggests reporters Ricardo Torres-Cortez and Emma Cauthorn simply haven’t read the charges… or any other report about Haig, who is accused of manufacturing and selling armor piercing ammunition.
Carnage-enhancing pistol grips: According to Rep. Eric Swalwell [D-CA], rifles are “more powerful and cause more carnage when used with a pistol-grip.”
Deadly Assault Funnel: “a shotgun is like a backwards funnel, you don’t have to have direct aim to hurt a lot of people.” Umm… No. Just… no. Apparently physics isn’t taught in journalism school. Or a prerequisite. At office range, 12 gauge 00 buck from a cylinder bore (i.e.- max spread) will have a baseball or softball-sized pattern. You have to aim. That’s why shotguns have sights.
Double-Single Action 1911: Invented by The University Daily Kansan, this photoshopped monstrosity includes an extra double action trigger because it’s “more dramatic” that way, and propels complete 9mm cartridges.
Full semiautomatic: Invented for CNN by retired (presumbably forceably retired, for mental health reasons) Army general Hertling. Either Hertling and CNN are idiots, or they wanted folks to hear “full automatic” and mistakenly think ARs are machineguns. Or both. There is no such thing as “full semiautomatic;” a firearm can be semiautomatic, as are AR-15s, or full automatic (machineguns; highly regulated and taxed, and impossible for honest civilans to purchase new). Assault rifles are select-fire, meaning they have semiautomatic and automatic modes, but no “full semiauto” (and are machineguns; see above re:regulated).
Ghost Gun: Compliments of California’s De Leon, inventor of the Caliber Clip(tm), it is either a nonexistent gun made entirely of plastic, a homemade non-serialized gun, or a factory stock gun whose serial number has been obliterated. We suspect the variant depends on what De Leon has been smoking, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Heat-Seeking Bullets: Other than the fictional rounds in the Sellek movie Runaway, these exist only in Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington’s feveredincendiary imagination.
High Magazine Cartridges: “Ban ‘assault weapons,’ ban high magazine cartridges,” says Congresswoman Michelle Lujan-Grisham [D-NM01], and gubernatorial candidate, on 5/18/2018. I’m not even going to guess. Is it a magazine? A cartridge? Does it count if it’s drunk instead of high? Is there an exemption if it’s on Ritalin (i.e.- speed) for ADHD? Is Lujan-Grisham drunk or high?
Multi-burst trigger activator: An imaginary device that causes a semiautomatic weapon to fire multiple bursts of rounds with a single trigger activation. Being imaginary, it does not exist. It is the result result of fevered dreams of ignorant Massachusetts politicians. They apply the term to trigger cranks (which allow a shooter to activate the trigger rapidly by turning a crank), “hellfire” adapters (an ineffective spring behind the trigger which is intended to return the trigger to firing position quickly), bump-fire stocks (which have nothing to do with the trigger or any other internal operating part of the firearm), and anything else that frightens them.
Massacre Machine Gun Magazine: Since Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney used this in the context of a school shooting in which no machinegun was used, we assume it has the same level of reality as heat-seeking and ghost bullets, possibly chambered in 30 caliber.
Rapid Fire Ammunition: Apparently eliminates any need for machineguns or bump-fire stocks. Patent pending by People for the American Way’s Elliot Mincberg. Still trying to find this ammo in stores.
Shoulder Thing That Goes Up: Former NY Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy introduced a bill to ban “assault weapons” based on cosmetic features. One feature she found particularly objectionable was the barrel shroud. A reporter asked her what is a barrel shroud; McCarthy cluelessly explained that it’s the shoulder thing that goes up.
“Machine gun loophole”: An imaginary hole in the law; coined by Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes who, lacking any knowledge of law or firearms, thinks bump-fire stocks are machineguns, yet somehow not covered by the NFA. (see bump-fire, machinegun)
Rapid-Fire Magazine: Invented by MENSA founder(/sarc) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, we suspect these are magazines for unicorns, written on the 2nd Reading Grade Level. No such firearms accessory exists.
If you know of any I’ve missed, please send me a link, and I’ll be happy to add it.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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Experiences living in California’s Bay Area, as a public high school teacher later for more than two decades in the Midwest, and now witnessing what is transpiring in the body politc convinces me the Left will stoop to any fabrication, dirty trick, smear, and hypocritical double standard to advance their agenda regardless of who is destroyed. Their strategy requires identifying certain groups to be targeted and demonized. Nothing unifies people like a bogeyman. Trashed and bashed by pop-culture for years, Christians have long served as a Leftist fave. They afford ready-made props useful in riling up the ignorant, the superstitious and conspiracy addled, bitter middle-aged feminists, malcontents perpetually angry and bitter about their lives, radical nihilists, anyone with an axe to grind, and those who despise G-d’s natural order galvanizing them in support of various faux crusades. All too often these intellectual lumpen have no idea they are pawns advancing a greater political cause and destined not to sup at victory’s banquet table. Now Police officers have become the current sacrificial lamb offered up to the eye of the hoi polloi storm.
Unlike war, wherein soldiers typically face death only on the battlefield, men and women donning the uniform of a police officer step onto the battlefield every day they go to work. The enemy doesn’t wear uniforms and they have access to weapons, vehicles, supplies, and technology. They live in plain sight, undetected, on the battlefield be it urban, suburban or rural and always outnumber the good guys. Police officers don’t fight enemies in a foreign land but here, at home. Enemy soldiers can locate their residences attacking them and their families where they live, a la Mexico. Unlike portrayals on the silver screen, most work in single officer squad cars. Backup may be minutes or hours away or nonexistent. Instead of facing the enemy as part of a unit, they typically face the enemy alone. Instead of decompressing back at base camp with fellow soldiers before rotating back to the U.S., police officers go home to families who can’t possibly understand the distant gaze in the eyes of men and women who see and face too much death and suffering. Police officers can only engage the enemy after he has fired on them first. When executing search and arrest warrants on known violent murderers, officers can only use deadly force if they are first attacked by the enemy. The level of stress they face is manifested through unusually high rates of depression, alcohol abuse, divorce, and suicide. Citizenry seemed unconcerned with the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of hardened violent criminals lose on the streets and millions more in prison. If united, they would form an unstoppable army of rage, murder, rape, and destruction. This is why police officers are called the “Thin Blue Line,” a tiny army standing between humanity and the most blood-thirsty murderous army ever assembled. Who has their back? Lieutenants and captains whose only interest is climbing the promotional ladder? Police Chiefs who view their job as a public relations experience ready and willing to throw anyone under the bus who threatens their reputation or political aspirations? Or citizens who don’t want to see cops in their rear view mirrors when speeding but are furious they aren’t guarding their homes 24/7 from burglars? Although putting their lives on the line to protect them, the liberal Jihad has singled out police officers as props to promote their political agenda. This they do by promoting a false narrative that cops are the point of the white man’s spear in a war of genocide against the black race.
An agenda takes shape when one recognizes for Black Lives Matter (BLM) and their Leftist allies, the only blacks who “qualify” as victims of shootings are those killed by cops or whites. The enormously larger number of black homicide victims in “Chiraq” (gang slang for Chicago), 677 from January to March (2016) alone, consisted of black on black murder but BLM, the New Black Panthers, and the white liberal media refuse to recognize or address who is doing the killing.1 Over its Fourth of July, Chicago experienced 11 people gunned down and another 50 wounded in one weekend. Many of the black children were what Millennials refer to as “collateral damage.” BLM’s website declares it’s working to create a world where blacks are no longer targeted for “demise” by whites and the police but, they make no mention of the epidemic of black on black violent crime and the blacks who have targeted each other for demise. Memphis, Tennessee, for example, is so bad that “98 percent of Tennessee’s other communities have a lower crime rate. In 2015, 74.5 percent of Memphis’ homicide victims were black and 68.3 percent were under the age of thirty-five” along with 435 children who were “shot at.” What have liberals, including the New York Times and BLM, said about the crisis in Memphis? Nothing. Not even a word that, in 2015, all 145 black murder victims were killed by other blacks.2
The New York Times, president Obama, and other liberals blamed the shooting of Michael Brown, (Ferguson, Missouri), on the racism of the city’s mostly white police force signaling to protestors they should express themselves which they did through looting, rioting, and assaults.3 As the size and threat of the roiling violent mob mushroomed out of control in Ferguson, the mayor pleaded with Missouri Governor, liberal Democrat Jay Nixon, to send the State Police and National (sic) Guard. But Nixon fiddled while this proverbial Rome burned.4 BLM, Obama, and the Liberal Media used Michael Brown to “prove” racism was endemic to white police officers but where were they and the New York Times when 9-year old Jamyla Brown was shot doing homework in her Ferguson, Missouri home? There were protests but they were in nearby St. Louis following the police shooting of eighteen year-old Mansur Ball-Bey during a drug raid (19 August 2015). The gun Bey pulled on police was stolen and officers retrieved 3 more guns and a quantity of crack cocaine in his possession. Demonstrators, the blind, the gullible, shrieking moms, and those seething with rage and racial hatred pushed the notion of police as the tip of the white race’s war of extinction against the black race. Soon rocks, bricks, and bottles filled the air, cars were set fire, buildings trashed, looted, and burned, and police, trying to save lives and restore order, were assaulted as well.5 In each riot, Ferguson and St. Louis, (and later, Baltimore) the police were prevented by government officials (liberal Democrats) from doing their job. White residents caught at the epicenter of these riots and found themselves targeted for assault by virtue of their skin color, and dialed 911, were told they were on their own. And yet the liberal media refused to call this violent savagery a riot instead employing the gonadophobic politically correct term “unrest.”6 I was a public high school teacher at the time and a liberal teacher (but, I repeat myself) chastised me for using the terms “riot” and “looters,” because they are “racist.” I asked, if he and other liberals automatically assumed “riot” and “looter” applied to blacks, who was being racist? And, if many if not most rioters and looters turn out to be one race or another, what benefit is there in lying about this? He said it didn’t matter. Those terms were forbidden. Does not this craven supine approach to addressing violent crime by the Left signal to criminals that, whatever they do, theft, burglary, rape, and violent rampages, it will be rationalized away and excused as long as committed by minorities? What justice then is promised to victims? Why does it seem as if the political leaders and media personalities most hair-pulling furious about racism in America are also the most lily white? Caucasians so white they’d disappear if they fell into a snowbank? These are the liberal whites whose income precludes contact with people of a darker hue unless staying in a hotel or ordering a meal. Isn’t that called “projection?”
Under no circumstances can Liberals admit the truth about race and crime. To do so would undermine what they are teaching America’s young in public schools, reinforced through their party propaganda organs, the liberal media, that blacks are numinous victims and whites, perennial oppressors. If white children grow up guilt ridden enough to accept this view, they will vote to purge their shame by supporting the Left’s political and social remedies…socialism and the end of individual liberty in America. Whipping up racial conflict advances the Left’s agenda. For example, the liberal New York Times trumpeted the ‘police war on blacks’ narrative declaring “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast.” The Times also published a statistic from a 2014 study claiming “Black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than are young white males.” This is a lie. Killing of blacks by police is “rare” but black on black murder is commonplace. Even the Washington Post, marching orders for liberals, conceded of the 258 blacks shot and killed by police in 2015, most were committing serious assaults against the officer! In 2014, 6,095 blacks were victims of homicide, almost all killed by other blacks. Even if police shootings were eliminated, the impact on this statistic would be negligible. In reality, blacks “are responsible for a death rate ten times that of whites in urban areas.” Young black men commit homicides at a rate nearly ten times that of whites and Hispanics, combined. This “astronomically high homicide commission rate means that police officers are going to be sent to fight crime disproportionately in black neighborhoods, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects.” And they will be shooting at the cops.7
Does it not make sense? Most crime, especially violent crime, occurs in black not Asian neighborhoods so, where should meager police resources be directed? To keep an eye on Japanese people? Armed “exchanges” between bad guys and cops will most often occur in high-crime neighborhoods, which means black neighborhoods because that’s where the armed bad guys live and “work.” In the study cited for its hit-piece, The New York Times’ “study” ignored this reality and that the study actually revealed 62 percent of those shot by police “were resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer” as was Michael Brown. Yet the New York Times insisted in claiming “many police officers see black males as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.”8 Perhaps blinded by a political bias that oozes from its pages, the Times has it backward. The cops are trying to halt the epidemic of violence in black neighborhoods. It’s the thugs and hoodlums, gunning down each other, moms, dads, and their kids who view each other as expendable.
Chicago’s nightmare of young black males gunning down each other has been visited upon other cities. Cleveland, Ohio, is a majority black city in which “more than ninety-one percent of the other communities have a lower crime rate than Cleveland.” Oakland, California, ranked by Forbes as the 3rd most dangerous city in America, is majority-black and 99 percent of other cities in the state have lower violent crime rates. Baltimore, my old stomping ground, is also majority-black and has set records for homicides the past several years. Like other black majority cities, its Mayor, Chief of Police, City Council, and Board of Education are black yet the “Black Press,” and the National Association of Black Journalists racializes each shooting between black males and white cops. Even violent black criminals, who prey on their communities, are portrayed as victims. These hyper-racial stories generate “high web traffic which translates into job security” for black journalists. But black on black violence generates little interest in the black community including social media. Perhaps because it was struggling financially, Ebony, a black magazine, commenced a “Save Our Boys’ campaign as if blacks are being slaughtered.” Apparently blacks comprise Twitter’s largest demographic and they employ hash-tags “to make black topics go viral” creating in the process “martyrs of the movement and construct racial grievances.” Through Black Twitter, activists can quickly mobilize protests, backlashes, boycotts, and flash mobs. Movie producer Spike Lee used it to publish what he thought was George Zimmerman’s (Trayvon Martin case) address. It wasn’t and the people living there were under grave threat. Yet none of the outrage in the black community, legitimate or manufactured, address the problem that less than six-percent of America’s population, who are black, commit most of its murders and its victims are black.9
In order to indoctrinate, mold, and shape future voters to accept their vision of a world in which the will of the individual must be bent to the volition of the state, the Left must instill guilt for all racial crimes, past and present, into white children. These children, as young adults, must make restitution for the sins of the white race against all peoples of color by supporting the Left’s massive socialist agenda. They must look the other way with respect to black crime, blame victims not the bad guys, and not criticize the hate fest leading to the ambush and murder of the very police officers protecting their young liberal upper middleclass white lives.
11 Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (North Charleston, South Carolina, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 52-57.
A week ago, Minnesota television station KSTP ran with a story about a mysterious “federal memo” allegedly being sent to law enforcement agencies and Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL) regarding bump-fire stocks.
Aside from pages waved about on camera by reporter Beth McDonough, no one else has seen the memo. KSTP still declines to publish it, paraphrase the contents (if they’re protecting a source), or even say who signed it and when. Apparently the DOJ denies sending such a memo.
David Codrea and I have been trying to get KSTP to publish it, to no avail. McDonough, the reporter for KSTP who “broke” the news of the memo, was asked for a statement for-the-record on why KSTP will not publish the alleged memo.
She, and the station declined to respond. -crickets-
So what can we tell about this memo? All I’ve seen of what seems to be the document is the handful of pages in McDonough’s hand on screen. A screenshot of the documents doesn’t tell me much; too low resolution. It looks vaguely like ATF letterhead.
The logo on the KSTP letter could be the ATF seal, but it’s set far lower on the page than the examples. Other things like the divider line, addresses, and control numbers which I might expect, don’t seem to be there. But, again, the image quality is poor.
It strikes me as something a person might have scanned from real letters on the Internet, then pasted into their own word processor. Maybe someone with the ATF, maybe a prankster.
All the “information” which McDonough mentions sounds straight out of the November 28, 2018 CNN report citing “a senior Justice Department official.”
Over at ar15.com user “AT7” has apparently found a better resolution image, and reports
The memo is addressed to “Special Agents in Charge”
It is from a person in “Fiscal Operations”
Subject is “bump stock type device” with two more words, possibly “abandonment process”. It is dated November 24 2018.
FFLs generally not being SACs, it’s hardly surprising that no FFL (including several at ar15.com, as well as Georgia and Ohio FFLs contacted) have seen this memo.
So what does KSTP have, and where did it come from? What does it say?
KSTP’s silence on a story of major national interest is peculiar, to say the least.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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Unreasonably warm temperatures (55° on 13, December) spawn tourist outbreaks along woodland trails. How does one differentiate tourists from regular hikers and mountain bikers? Voices as loud as their clothing, hands crammed with devices and radios, unleashed trail-poopers (dogs), and packs of even louder chubby fast-food wrapper spewing hotdog fingered kids for whom being chained to a hamster wheel for six months…without food, would be beneficial. People attend movies to laugh, cry, and escape reality if but for a short time. Conversations, seat-kickers, and cell phone glow can spoil the experience. In like fashion, nature is spoiled when rude civilization intrudes. Didn’t the Bush Administration argue the fight against Tourists was international? Didn’t they coin the term “GWOT” for “Global War On Tourism?” Recently I considered reporting a herd of Tourists to Homeland Security. None appeared menacing, not even their dogs, and some seemed friendly enough. But isn’t that what people say when told their neighbor ran over pedestrians with a truck or blew themselves up at the train station killing many people? I’m keeping an eye on them.
In Part I, I began exposing Michael Savage’s campaign to ban private ownership of certain firearms and magazines, in which he employed arguments perfectly useful…to Confiscationists. If I don’t like Savage, why listen to him? I don’t. I used to enjoy his wit and irreverent humor but his undisguised jealousy of conservative radio-talk show hosts and promotion of a Buddha-ized version of Judaism wore thin. His claim to be the only true radio conservative on the one hand, and assertion FDR’s socialist New Deal solved the Great Depression on the other, was the final straw. Anyone with a modicum of understanding with respect to economics, history, and the Constitution knows this is false. I listen when necessary because 2nd Amendment supporters must be prepared to answer its enemies. Las Vegas was the impetus for Savage’s first salvo against the right to keep and bear arms as the second was the Sutherland, Texas church shooting.
On 6 November, 2017 Savage resurrected with a vengeance his anti-2nd Amendment rant from the previous month yelling into the microphone; “Don’t tell me if everyone had a gun in that church they could have stopped the killer! You John Wayne types.” With a sneer he added, “And please don’t play John Wayne with me on this show. I’m going to hang up on you if you call and say if all those church-goers had had a gun, this wouldn’t have happened. Yeah, you John Wayne types. You’d freeze up, drop the gun, and shoot yourself in the foot if evil came into your church with an ‘assault rifle” (sic). He asked how the “shooter,”1 a nut, got a gun. “Why? Because gun laws are too weak” Savage continued. “Gun shows are wide open ranges and anyone can buy a gun there.” He mocked conservatives arguing more guns are the answer and pastors saying G_d is with us even in the midst of such tragedies. Savage insisted every “nut”2 in the nation can buy an AR15 because of “lax gun laws” and the killer was allowed to buy an “automatic rifle.” Although Savage conceded he was ultimately stopped by a man with a gun, “That was only after he had killed everyone” he said and then trotted out an argument near and dear to the hearts of liberals with respect to the 2nd Amendment; “People have a constitutional right to drive,” Savage argued, which comes with all sorts of regulations, licensing requirements, training, and tests to enjoy this “right” (sic). People have to “demonstrate” knowledge of how to operate the car and that they can drive before getting behind the wheel. Why isn’t this true with guns? Then he shouted; “Why is the right to own firearms one hundred percent free from licensing, but not the right to drive? All you tough guys who want ‘assault weapons’ (sic) say, ‘well that government will come down and get us. Let’s roll armed and go out like the militia.’ Yeah, all the tough guys on conservative radio are going to lead you. Onward Christian soldiers with their ‘assault weapons’ (sic). They’ll run so fast you wouldn’t be able to say Mickey Mouse.” Wow. During this diatribe Savage let out he has a concealed carry permit. How does one obtain a permit in radical Left-wing People’s Republic of Marin County of California’s Bay Area? You can’t unless you’re a rich celebrity or well-connected. But, Savage confessed, he’d be too scared to use his firearm so he has two body-guards. Are they armed? When it comes to self-defense, how long must Americans endure being preached down to by upper-crust gated community, goon-protected self-styled aristocrats? It reminds me of the unquenchable hypocrisy flowing from ultra-rich super-liberal Senator Ed Kennedy raging about the plight of the poor in America. Savage continued railing against conservatives claiming the “knee-jerk” reaction from “right-wingers” is; “You can’t touch guns. But we must touch guns!” He yelled becoming unhinged. “Tell me I’m wrong that every nut-job in the world shouldn’t be able to get ‘assault-weapons’ (sic). You’re wrong! Too many nuts have their hands on too many guns!” He accused conservatives of arguing “nuts” should be allowed to have guns adding that those who claim they “need assault-weapons” (sic) for home defense “would poop in their pants instead. People armed is not the answer!” He shouted.3
On the following day, Savage claimed “right-wingers” oppose any and all restrictions on who can have a gun and the number of rounds held by a “clip” adding; “I have no idea why anyone in this country ‘needs’ a thirty-round clip (sic). Who really needs an assault-rifle? What, to hunt elephants? Don’t they use single-shot rifles, in .30-06 to hunt elephants? A single round from that caliber would drop an elephant. So what in the hell do we need a thirty-round ‘clip’ (sic) for? I know, you’re going to stand up like Paul Revere and you’re going to say Charge! You won’t say charge. You’ll drop your gun, you’ll drop your shorts, and you’ll run like everyone else. Stop pretending that you’re a big hero!” He then called for banning “assault weapons” (Meaning ARs, AKs, and similar function rifles) and “multiple round ‘clips” claiming this would limit the number of guns in circulation hence limiting criminal access. The Texas killer was able to kill so many people because “He had a machine gun in his hands!” Savage shouted. But, with an “assault-weapons” (sic) ban, he continued, the killer would have been forced to use a single-shot rifle which would have allowed the men in the church to have subdued him by beating him over the head with a chair. To this insanity Savage added; “One in five police officers is killed by an assault-rifle” and then he screamed; “I no longer believe Americans need to run around with thirty-round ‘clips’ (sic) and assault rifles! When the hell did the 2nd Amendment ever say you had the right to own an ‘assault-weapon?’ (sic) What am I going to do with one, wait for the day the government comes to get me? I’m going to hold off a platoon of government agents? You people are living in a dream world!” He then asserted, as before, AR15s were useless for home defense. The best weapon, he said, is a shotgun but they “are complicated to use” and “their mechanisms are complex, not for amateurs.” Savage again claimed an AR15 round will go through house walls but shotgun pellets would not. A pistol round might go through a wall but this was unlikely, he claimed, because they had 15 to 20 round “clips” (sic) as opposed to the thirty-round capacity of “assault-weapons” (sic). Finally Savage claimed because there are restrictions on the 1st Amendment, you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater or threaten the president, banning “assault-weapons” and thirty-round “clips” didn’t violate the 2nd Amendment. “There’s a difference between the right to bear arms and the right to bear machine-guns” he said.4
It would be beyond charitable to describe what Savage said as either abysmally ignorant or intentionally deceptive. His persistence in calling magazines “clips” and conflation of the terms “assault-weapon” (no such animal), assault-rifle, and machine gun with semiautomatic rifles demonstrates his knowledge of firearms is limited, at best, and promotion of an agenda supersedes honesty.
Conceding the Texas killer was stopped by an armed man but this would have failed inside the church because, Barney Fife-like, fear-stricken and trembling men would have dropped their guns shooting themselves is illogical. It is stupid. It also ignores the many, more than capable, men and women who carry and could have stopped the killer. It makes no sense unless Savage, shamed there are real people with spines out there, beyond the Bay Area, in places like Texas, is projecting his own timorous nature onto others. During any mass shooting event, in the time it takes to call the police, for them to respond, set up a command post, assess the situation, identify the good from the bad guy(s), and formulate a counter-response, the massacre is usually over. Contrary to the lies told by Savage, when a “good-guy” with a gun is on the scene, casualties are “dramatically lower” and is often the deciding factor in limiting the “body count.” In nine mass shootings in which victims had to wait for police arrive, from Luby’s Cafeteria, Killeen, Texas (16 October, 1991) to Pulse Night Club, Orlando, Florida (12 June, 2016) 220 people died. In eight similar shootings in which an armed good-guy was on the scene, from Pearl High School, Pearl, Mississippi (1 October, 1997) to the Curtis Culwell Center, Garland, Texas (3 May 2015), 37 people died.5 Savage’s attack on men and women willing to shoulder the responsibility for the safety of others, putting their own lives on the line, is disgraceful.
Why do liberals seem to go after the rights of law-abiding Americans as opposed to violent criminals (Chicago)? Why do they mock and ridicule notions of personal responsibility with respect to self-defense? Are the spines of liberal men removed in-vitro or do they dissolve naturally as they progress toward puberty? Savage’s allegation; conservatives want every “nut” to have guns, is a malicious lie and ignores the fact that, under “federal” law, they are already prohibited from so doing. Information on anyone institutionalized and or adjudicated “mentally defective” by mental health officials and judges must be forwarded to the FBI where it is entered into their massive data base known as NICS (National Instant Criminal Background System). If anyone so classified attempts to purchase a firearm, once the FFL (Federal Firearm License) holder calls and submits the individual’s name as required by law, they will be rejected. Further, as to Savage’s assertion armed law-abiding citizens are not the “answer,” approximately 2.5 million people per year employ a firearm to prevent violent criminal attack. In 98% of those cases, displaying the firearm is enough to stop the attack.6 Instead of reducing violent crime, Savage’s solution, disarming intended victims, always the first on the scene by virtue of their status as targets of criminals, would lead to even more murders and mass shootings.
Savage’s analogy between the “right” to drive and to keep and bear arms is slick sleight of hand. There is no constitutional right to drive and it is untrue that the manufacture, sale, and possession of firearms is completely unregulated, unrestricted, and unlicensed. All manner of legal restrictions, including age, legal status as a citizen, mental health, criminal record, and so forth apply to obtaining a firearm. Savage ignores the fact that each year more than 37,000 Americans are killed by other drivers in automobile accidents, essentially negligent homicide, with an additional 2.35 million injured, maimed, and crippled. Automobile accidents are the single greatest cause of death in the United States.7 Speaking as a passionate car lover and former police traffic investigator, Americans in general are careless, cavalier in attitude, irresponsible, and exert little effort to perfect driving skills. And yet once started, they and their automobiles pose a grave hazard to everyone in their path. By contrast, more than 124 million Americans own close to 300 million guns but there were only 505 deaths by gun accident in 2013 and of 2,596,993 deaths from all causes the same year, only 1% were firearm related and most were suicides.8 Comparing drivers to people who own guns makes for a very poor argument. One wonders to which constitution he refers.
The right to keep and bear arms is not subject to a utilitarian “needs” test. It’s no one’s business how many neckties, cars, horses, guns, or pairs of shoes anyone owns. People have a G_d-given right to their property and to accumulate however much of it they desire. But, for the non-gun owning public swayed by such arguments, let me ask you this; how many guns, rounds (not bullets) of ammunition, and magazines will you need when the power goes out, it’s not coming back on for a long time, and when called, the cops aren’t coming either. Remember the riots in Los Angeles (1992), Ferguson, Missouri (August 2014), and Baltimore (April 2015) and attendant looting, robbery, destruction of private property, and even assaults including murder? Where were the cops? Where was the National (sic) Guard? Natural disasters like Hurricanes Andrew (August 1992), Katrina (August 2005), and Harvey (sic) (August 2017) all resulted in attempted looting, rape, robbery, and destruction of property. Again, where were the police? In each case it was armed citizens, or lack thereof, who prevented crime or fell to predatory animals called looters.
Savage’s attempt to delegitimize semiautomatic rifles by tying them to elephant hunting is pathetic. No one hunts elephants with so-called “assault rifles,” nor a .30-06 single shot rifle. It is illegal to hunt elephants (as is the case with buffalo, Rhinos, and lions) with a caliber smaller than the .375 H&H. Most professional and experienced hunters use either the .404 Jeffrey, .416 Rigby, .416 Remington, .458 Winchester, or the .470 Nitro Express in bolt action repeating rifles.9 The point is not to argue the efficacy of one caliber compared to another but to demonstrate Savage hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about. These are all strawman arguments. Savage also seems ignorant of the fact that it was the American citizen soldier; the farmer, mechanic, tradesman, shopkeeper, and laborer, trained to arms, who were the backbone of the resistance to Britain’s armies in the War of Independence possessing modern equivalents of the “assault rifles” of their time.
In Federalist Paper #28, Alexander Hamilton declared the people held an “original right of self-defense” to take up arms, resist, and defeat even their own government should it betray and usurp their liberties.10 In Federalist #29, Hamilton added the “best possible security” against a standing army was the whole body of the people, who are armed and “stand ready to defend their own rights.”11 In the Federalist Papers and writings of many other Founding Fathers it becomes clear the main purpose of an armed populace, not a military or National (sic) Guard was to serve as a bulwark against infringement of their liberties by their own government.
Savage’s claim one in five police officers is killed in the line of duty by “assault-rifles” is false. It comes, from Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat, California), who appeared on Face the Nation making this claim. She took this “statistic” from the Violence Policy Center, a virulently anti-2nd Amendment Leftist organization. Here’s the trick. California classifies all semiautomatic firearms, including pistols, rifles, and shotguns, as “assault-weapons” (sic) a classification rejected by the FBI. Feinstein and Savage conflate California’s broad and ambiguous “assault-weapons” category with semiautomatic rifles meaning ARs, but this is a lie. Roughly 1% of officers shot and killed in the line of duty are killed by semiautomatic rifles.12 Using lies spun by ultra-liberal Senator Feinstein and an extremist anti-2nd Amendment group? Does Savage attack conservatives so viciously, while claiming to be one himself because, well, he’s not really one after all?
More demonstrations of ignorance can be found in Savage’s claim that shotguns are complicated and complex to use. This is absurd. A shotgun is typically one of the first guns kids learn to shoot because its operation is so simple. His claim AR15 rounds will, but shotgun pellets won’t penetrate sheetrock walls is wrong to the point of being dangerous. They all will. Finally, his use of the hackneyed “you can’t yell fire in a crowdedtheater” cliché is another liberal shibboleth. Pay attention Michael; the 1st Amendment is a prohibition against government interfering with free political speech. For it to be free, one must rightly possess or control the platform from which one speaks. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is not political speech nor does its shouter own the platform from which they yell. At the least, it’s a property rights violation of the theater owner, the sole determiner of what will or will not be said on his platform. The same holds true for threats against the president. These are fallacious if not atrocious analogues.
Savage’s straw man arguments and discreditable analogies demonstrate ignorance of the fact America’s Declaration of Independence proclaimed all rights G_d-given, inalienable, and among them is life. They are off limits to a majority vote of one’s neighbors or act of government. Inherent in the right to life is the right to protect it which also presupposes the means to do so. It is an illegal and unconstitutional act by man or his governments to alter, modify, regulate, infringe upon, or in any way denature a G_d-given right. It is not possible to square calls for “reasonable gun laws,” which by their nature must violate the 2nd Amendment, with equal claims to support the 2nd Amendment.
11 Typically I employ terms like: Killer, murderer, dirt bag, scum bag, and so forth. A shooter is someone engaged in target practice and competition at the range. Never let your foes and the ignorant shape the narrative through misuse, intentional or not, of vocabulary.
22 Unless someone clearly defines what they mean by “nut,” you should not presume you share the same understanding. For example, to me the term applies to an individual clinically diagnosed as schizophrenic. A person suffering an emotional meltdown, depression, or PTSD, for example, is not necessarily insane, often far from it. Savage lumps them, including soldiers returning from war who have difficulty adjusting to civilian life with the same broad brush as the insane. Cops who have seen too great a loss of life, in tragic ways, too many times and are having trouble dealing with it, could, under Savage’s broad brush, be characterized as nuts as well. They are not.
33 Michael Savage, The Savage Nation, broadcast 6 November 2017.
44 Michael Savage, The Savage Nation, broadcast 7 November, 2017.
99 Cameron Hopkins, “African Big Game Hunting Rifles,” American Hunter (July 9 2010).
1010 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Clinton Rossiter, Editor, The Federalist Papers (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book, New American Library, 1961), 178-181.
So this last week the Parasha was Vayishlach. This is an exciting portion. It’s when Jacob/Yakov/Israel returns home from his exile working for his crooked uncle Laban. Yakov had fled his brother Esav’s murderous rage after Esav regretted having sold his birthright for a bowl of beans, lentils. Esav didn’t value his birthright in the least. Probably a message in there for those that would pressure Israel to give up land for peace. It never works, because like Esav, they just always want more and don’t keep their end of the bargain. So, Yakov is returning home with his wives, their handmaidens and 12 children, a passel of camels, donkeys, sheep, goats and some servants. Yakov has done well, he is a very successful shepherd. But, he is in a quandary, what will his meeting with his brother be like? Will Esav still want to kill him, or will time have mellowed him. Yakov sends angels to ascertain his intentions. Turns out Esav hasn’t changed a bit. He’s heading towards Yakov with 400 men. Yakov is way outnumbered.
Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed (Gen. 32:8)
The fear is understandable, but his response contains an enigma. Why the duplication of verbs? What is the difference between fear and distress? To this a Midrash gives a profound answer:
Rabbi Judah bar Ilai said: Are not fear and distress identical? The meaning, however, is that “he was afraid” that he might be killed; “he was distressed” that he might kill. For Jacob thought: If he prevails against me, will he not kill me; while if I prevail against him, will I not kill him? That is the meaning of “he was afraid” – lest he should be killed; “and distressed” – lest he should kill.
And this brings us to self-defense.
One might argue that Jacob should surely not be distressed about the possibility of killing Esau, for there is an explicit rule: “If someone comes to kill you, forestall it by killing him.” Nonetheless, Jacob did have qualms, fearing that in the course of the fight he might kill some of Esau’s men, who were not themselves intent on killing him but merely on fighting his men. And even though Esau’s men were pursuing Jacob’s men, and every person has the right to save the life of the pursued at the cost of the life of the pursuer, nonetheless there is a condition: “If the pursued could have been saved by maiming a limb of the pursuer, but instead the rescuer killed the pursuer, the rescuer is liable to capital punishment on that account.” Hence Jacob feared that, in the confusion of battle, he might kill some of Esau’s men when he might have restrained them by merely inflicting injury on them.
Self defense is very definitely a Jewish concept, but unlike his brother Esav who delights in it, Yakov will do so if required, but he wants to avoid it. The taking of a life is not something to be done lightly. So what did he do to try to prevent needless loss of life?
He had a three pronged approach. Prayer, he threw himself on G-d’s mercy, he sent lavish tribute female and male goats, sheep, donkeys, camels all with the proper proportion for the most effective breeding program. Sort of a gift that keeps on giving. But then he prepared for battle. He divided his people into camps, his thinking was that if one camp was attacked the other might escape. Then he had the children with each of their mothers. Yakov knew the four women would fight for their children, so he left the children with their mothers, then he placed himself in front of them. Esav would have to go through Yakov to get to his family.
I’ve heard the opinion that if Yakov had really trusted G-d there would have been none of this battle preparation business. He would have just gone and met his brother. I don’t agree with this opinion. I think people are people and they have plans of their own. Plans I may not appreciate or agree with. I think if their plans concern me, I want a say in how they turn out. As Esav’s plans would have included Yakov’s family, I figure he felt the same way. There are cemeteries with those that refused to believe anything bad would happen to them. I’ve heard that there were Jews in the Warsaw ghetto that refused the chance to escape because they didn’t really think the nazis wanted to annihilate them, and perhaps, because they expected a miracle. I heard Rabbi Tovia Singer say in a lecture that while the Jewish nation will always be preserved, that promise does not extend to individuals. I’ve also heard it said that when you pray for help, you usually have to do something, expend some kind of effort for him to have something to help you with. And so, Yakov had his three pronged approach, which ultimately was successful. There was no battle between brothers, only a brotherly meeting, with quite possibly temporary brotherly feelings judging from Yakov’s refusal of Esav’s offer to escort them. It’s like having a black snake to guard your chicken house from mice. Yeah….the snake may eat the mice, but more than likely it is eating the chicken eggs, and/or baby chicks. I’ll pass, and Yakov did as well.
Yakov and concealed carry holders face a moral dilemma. More from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
Moral dilemmas are situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter. The conflict may be inherently tragic. Jacob, in this parsha, finds himself trapped in such a conflict: on the one hand, he ought not allow himself to be killed; on the other, he ought not kill someone else; but he must do one or the other. The fact that one principle (self-defence) overrides another (the prohibition against killing) does not mean that, faced with such a choice, he is without qualms, especially given the fact that Esau is his twin brother. Despite their differences, they grew up together. They were kin. This intensifies the dilemma yet more. Sometimes being moral means that one experiences distress at having to make such a choice. Doing the right thing may mean that one does not feel remorse or guilt, but one still feels regret or grief about the action that needs to be taken.
Even people of great faith, realize that there is a time to “Praise the L-rd and pass the ammunition”.
There is nothing about being prepared with a gun, a concealed carry endorsement if your state requires it, that says you don’t believe that G-d can and will keep you safe. We have fire extinguishers and spare tires, right? We have generators for bad weather, and carry an umbrella. The right tool for the right time.
That I think, is one of the things about concealed carry holders that leftists, politicians and the #FakeNews (sometimes one in the same) don’t understand about “gun nuts”. We are not anxious to kill, we don’t want to do that. What we do want is for us and our families to be safe.
Heat seeking bullets, who knew? Did BassPro have these listed in the Black Friday flier?
Self defense is not a spur of the minute deal. We put thought into what gun, training tactics, classes and tests to be able to live as free citizens. Just like Yakov had his three pronged approach for meeting Esav, we too plan our defenses.
These mixed feelings were born thousands of years earlier, when Jacob, father of the Jewish people, experienced not only the physical fear of defeat but the moral distress of victory. Only those who are capable of feeling both, can defend their bodies without endangering their souls.
Because like Yakov facing Esav, there can be bigger, stronger, mightier evil that hates us.
Elected Moonbat Swalwell
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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