Florida cops get “Stand Your Ground,” too

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) self-defense protections extend to police officers, as well as civilians. I’m going to make two points about this.

1. DUH!

Police officers are persons, too. Of course they’re entitled to the same rights as any other person. That’s a no-brainer.

2. This police shooting was not a SYG situation.

SYG — despite common mischaracterizations in the anti-rights media — is not a “shoot first any time you panic” defense. All it does is two things.

The first: If you are in a situation in which you would otherwise be allowed to use defensive force, you don’t have to try to outrun the bad guy — or his speeding bullets — before defending yourself.

The second: By invoking SYG, the defender no longer has to prove his innocence. It becomes up to the prosecution to prove his guilt. For those who slept through history and government classes, the latter assumption of innocence unless proven guilty is how every other “criminal” case works. It’s embedded in the American legal system, and hearkens all the way back to English common law which is the original basis of American law.

So why do I say this wasn’t SYG?

Deputy Peter Peraza claimed he was defending himself against Jermaine McBean. McBean had a rifle across his shoulders, which Peraza claimed McBean lowered from his shoulders and aimed at him, and McBean ignored orders to drop it. He specifically claimed that there was no reason for McBean to not hear the instructions.

The facts and witnesses say otherwise.

The “rifle” was an unloaded air gun. 911 callers merely said the person was carrying it, not brandishing. At least one witness to the shooting stated that the air gun remained across McBean’s shoulders and that he never pointed it at the officer.

The claim that McBean should have been able to hear instructions — and therefore he willfully ignored them — came into question. Police noted that McBean was not wearing the earbuds which were tucked into his pocket.

And then crime scene photos came out. Immediately after the shooting, pictures show the earbuds still in the deceased’s ears. His family said he was in the habit of listening to music as he walked. But somehow, the dead man managed to remove his earbuds and place them in his pocket, conveniently supporting the officer’s version of events.

Other officers also gave conflicting and contradictory accounts of the incident. The original judge who dismissed charges simply declared the police conflicting statements were due to a difference of perspective, but the civilian just wasn’t credible.

Apparently neither were the photographs showing that someone tampered with evidence to support the police shooting. If you have to lie about why you shot, and tamper with evidence to support the lie, the shooting was probably not good.

Stand Your Ground applies to valid self defense. This wasn’t that.

 

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The KSTP “Bump Stock” Memo Finally Appears

About that mysterious memo obtained by KSTP, which was being sent to law enforcement and FFLs… except no FFL had seen it, and which I’ve been trying to get from them since December 4th: I finally got a definite reply from KSTP’s Beth McDonough, who broke the story.

The memo at last. Um…

Well, at least one page of it.

(click to enlarge)

McDonough said that she only had one page.

Note that rather than “being sent to law enforcement agencies and gun shops with a federal firearms license,” it is an internal memo addressed to “All Special Agents in Charge.” That certainly explains why no FFL has seen it. Perhaps McDonough is a little vague on the difference between SAC and FFL.

Without the rest of the memo, including the signature block, I still don’t know where this came from. Is that “Assistant Director, Field Operations” in the ATF’s DC headquarters, is this from the Minnesota operations boss?

And it sure would be nice to see “these procedures,” so we’d have a clue about compliance (malicious though it might be).

Oddly enough, it is dated November 28, 2018, but speaks of the rule already being in effect, having been published in the Federal Register.

Not as of December 16, 2018.

According to this, the rule is in the “Final Rule Stage,” but not in “Completed Actions.”

When all is said and done, having the memo — at least the one page — doesn’t clarify much of anything.

 

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Law and Order: Western Society under Siege Part IV

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.

22 IBID. 62-64.

33 Heather McDonald, The War On Cops (New York, N.Y., Encounter Books, 2016), 8-9.

44 David Carson, “Ferguson Mayor Asks Where National (sic) Guard Was,” Gov. Nixon Pledges More,” November 20, 2014, St. Louis Post Dispatch, at http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ferguson-mayor-asks-where-national-guard-was-gov-nixon-pledges/article343a2224-Ad61-54fb-b5ac99957F7.amp.html.

55 Starkes, 66-67.

66 McDonald 11.

77 IBID. 17.

88 IBID. 17-18.

99 Starkes, 68-73.

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Forgotten Memo: KSTP’s mysterious bump stock doc

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.

Compare this…

…to these real examples.

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?

They aren’t telling.

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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Worst year for school shootings?

Supposedly we’ve had a 60% jump in school “violence.” Something must be done, right?

2018 is worst year on record for gun violence in schools, data shows
This year has been by far the worst on record for gun violence in schools, the advocacy group Sandy Hook Promise said, citing research by the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

The NPS Center for Homeland Defense and Security , a near 60% increase on the previous high, 59, an unwanted record set in 2006.

No. That’s utter crap. I wanted to check the NPS “shooting” raw data. The very first one I semi-randomly selected (wanted something recent) was a guy who drove around town and shot out windows randomly — and happened to include a school — with a BB gun.

What has increased dramatically is news reporting of incidents, and false inclusion of non-firearm/non-violent incidents with no specific relation to schools.

After the very first “incident” I checked was garbage, I couldn’t make myself waste any more time fact-checking what is clearly just another agenda-driven database chock full of BS. Feel free to do your own checks.

 

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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Happy Hanukkah 2018

Happy Hanukkah! The story that celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, a Jewish Priestly family from Modiin that aren’t Israeli, didn’t live in Israel and they defeated the Greek empire that wanted to force them to abandon their faith, their heritage and their G-d.

If I were going to write the story today I would cast Jewish Voices for Peace, J street, If Not Now, B’Tselem, and leftist Jews as the Hellenistic Jews of the Hanukkah story. Because they work against Israel and those that want to live life according to Torah. It’s kind of interesting to me, I recently took a class called “Wrestling With Faith” in it we talked about the Mitzvot. The 613 little holy bread crumbs G-d gave to leave a path for us to follow to find him. You want to get to know someone? You ask him or her questions about themselves, and sometimes getting that information is like pulling teeth. G-d plays no such games with us. He says these things I like, these things I don’t like. You want to make me smile? You want to show you are a child who listen to their father? These are house rules. Which kind of baffles me when people tell me they don’t matter anymore. Maybe I just haven’t found the Parasha where it says G-d changed him mind about those. But that was the point of the Hellenization. To separate the Jews from the things that G-d ask. It’s like doing everything the opposite of what your boss, significant other, spouse or coach says you should do and then expecting them to still feel the same way about you. It doesn’t usually play out that way. So Hellenization was meant to turn people from the worship of G-d to the worship of the human body, art, and pagan rituals. They wanted to convince the Jews living in Israel that they didn’t need to observe the new months, circumcision, Torah study, Shabbat observance. They wanted to drive a wedge between the people and G-d.

For more info on this history of Hanukkah and information you’ll find we’ve got quite a few choices.

It’s The Most MACCABEE Time of the Year!

Oh, it’s probably nothing…

#Amona

A Holiday Classic…

Some things are worth fighting for

At This Time

It definitely wasn’t safe to openly practice being a Jew in Israel at that time. As other times down through history different people of different nations have tried to eradicate Jews and their Judaism. It never began with cattle cars, concentration camps and ovens. It began with yellow stars and discrimination. At the end of WWII the world joined us in vowing #NeverAgain, and now there has been a self serving attempt to cheapen that phrase by a money grubbing, attention seeking political pawn who is protected by armed guards even as he oinks out that those that can’t afford paid protection be rendered defenseless. Little swine.

Did we think that would be the final attempt after the final solution? Well, it wasn’t.

Rashida Tlaib to lead congressional trip to Judea and Samaria

One of the two new muslims elected to congress. She is leading a group to Israel, but not to visit Israeli Jews, Arabs, Christians and Druze. Nope, to visit the ancient people (est. 1964) Falestinians. The other muslim Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is also no friend.

Tlaib in the interview also came out in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which she said brings attention to “issues like the racism and the international human rights violations by Israel right now.”

Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the other Muslim woman elected to Congress in November, said in an interview shortly after the election that she supports the BDS movement after saying during her campaign that it was “counteractive” and prevents dialogue.

What do people not yet accept or understand about “taquia”?

Menorah toppled near Harvard University

South African synagogue goes up in flames guesses on if it’s arson or not?

New Hampshire Town Reject Menorah Display, Citing Vandalism

One might think it’s becoming unsafe in America for Jews to openly admit or display their faith. One would be correct. From wonderful Jack Engelhard in a column titled Americas Hidden Jews. This whole column is well worth reading.

Professor of Jewish and Holocaust studies at Columbia University Elizabeth Midlarsky is about the only one at the college who dares to identify herself openly as Jewish.

Let that sink in.

Remember, this is America. This is New York.

A few days ago she walked into her office to find it vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. “They got me,” she told The Washington Post. “I’m afraid.

And then we have Airbnb or AirBS depending on if you ask the company or me what their name is. AirBS is a site where people can list property, apartments or rooms they have to rent to vacationers. They have recently decided parts of Israel aren’t in Israel. So any of the Jewish homes listed in Judea and Samaria, the Biblical heartland, were removed. Not the Falistinian ones mind you, they’re still listed. Just not the Jewish ones. Have they done this in any other part of the world where there is dissension occurring? Why do I bother asking? Of course not. It is flat out anti-semitism. Are they being called out for it. Nope.

Remember in the Hanukkah story how a Hellenized Jew was going to sacrifice a pig on the alter in Modiin since Matthias Maccabee refused to do so? Matthias killed the corrupted Jew, and then the King’s officer that was commanding such a thing. There would be no pigs sacrificed on alters in the Maccabee name. The Hellenized Jews were trying to corrupt the pure ones. They’re still active today.

America’s Jewish left endorses anti-Jewish discrimination

American Jewish peace activists who have spent much of their lives fighting discrimination against ethnic minorities, have decided there is one form of discrimination they support: discrimination against Jews who reside in Judea-Samaria.

Angry At Airbnb For Boycotting The Settlements? Birthright Does The Same Thing.

According to the leftist Jews, that most likely do celebrate Hanukkah, as most all Jews do celebrate Hanukkah, Modiin, land of the Maccabees, IS NOT IN ISRAEL. Nope. Who knew?

I think Daniel Pipes of the Middle-East Forum has the answer to this one. ‘It’s time for Israel to declare victory’

Daniel Pipes is determined to make it clear to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria that in order to survive they must recognize Israel.

The Maccabeean revolt was a two fold war. One, it was incredible military victories, G-d gave many many miracles over the years the battles were fought. The other was the war of faith, religion or culture. However you choose to look at it.

I think I’m going to have to disagree with Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks this time. In his Hanukkah message this year he seems to me at least, to believe the great battle was for education, not military battles. I believe without the military battle of G-d through the Maccabees, there would have been no educational victories. To quote Dinesh D’Souza yesterday, he was discussing the difference between George H.W. Bush and President Trump. He said “sometimes you need Mother Teresa, and sometimes you need Dirty Harry”. I would add and sometimes, no one less than Judah Maccabee will do.

My poem to Judah. Twas a Night During Hanukkah

But I will close with a column by our writer Y.B. Ben Avraham, Cleaning the Menorah for Next Year

The graphics he chose are beautiful, but I love the line he closes it with so very much.

Ein Od Milvado

אין עוד מלבדו

There is no one but him.

Happy Hanukkah!

חג חנוכה שמח

Or, for fans of Queen

 

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About that “federal memo” on bump stocks

A few days ago, KSTP in Minnesota reported that they “obtained a federal memo detailing the new ban on bump stocks.”

The memo, circulated by the Department of Justice, is being sent to law enforcement agencies and gun shops with a federal firearms license.

This topic is of great interest to me, so I was disappointed that they didn’t publish a copy of the memo. I wrote to the reporter and suggested they do so. Failing that, I asked for a copy.

-crickets-

Then they published a new story.

Feds mum on bump stock ban memo obtained by KSTP
The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives in Washington, D.C. declined to comment on a memo, obtained by KSTP on Monday, detailing a new federal ban on the sale and possession of bump stocks.

But they still won’t publish the memo.

Oddly enough, I haven’t seen any other reports — news, forum, or blog — about any FFLs getting the memo. So… off to a few of my local gun stores.

No FFL dealer I spoke to has received the supposed memo. Not “We can neither confirm nor deny,” but “Nope. Haven’t seen anything like that at all.” Nothing about bump-fire or bans. One even pointed out that if a guidance memo had been sent to thousands of FFLs there is no reason not to publish it.

I asked folks to check with FFLs in their own areas. As yet, nothing; no report of an FFL receiving KSTP’s mysterious memo.

Did KSTP get suckered, or misinterpret what they got? If it’s real, is it somehow “classified” such that FFLs can’t or won’t admit having it yet (would that even be legal)?

If the former, KSTP should admit it.

In the latter case, I think Americans should definitely see what plans the feds wish kept secret. And KSTP should definitely publish it (with necessary redactions to protect the source).

If you have seen this memo, please forward a copy to me. Again, you can redact your identifying information, or I can and will do so. I will not reveal the source without your permission.

 

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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Math is hard

The wisdom of Tom Arnold.

OK, with 80 to 120+ million gun owners in America… times .8…

That would be 64,000,000 to 96,000,000 shootings. Is that per year, Tommie?

Maybe it’s over the course of the gun owner’s life. …men average around 75 years, so…

That would be 853,333 to 1,280,000 shootings per year.

According to Everytown for More Violence (who notoriously look for the worst possible numbers of shootings) we only manage 124,761. That’s everything: homicide, suicide, accidents… the whole enchilada.

That’s less than one-tenth (0.097) to fifteen-hundreths (0.146) of Herr Professor Arnold’s (Ph.D. Remedial Common Core Mathematics) carefully researched, scientific, wild-assed guesstimate.

Darn it! Who’s slacking off?

Added for the benefit of Einstein Arnold: Total shootings — not self and family — are a fraction of his claim on self/family alone. I’m not even going to look up the lower self-inflicted and domestic violence numbers (but you can derive some of them from the Everytown link above).

 

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