DAY 9 of National Gun Violence Awareness Month. And today I want to talk to every person who has ever told a woman she does not need a gun.
It is a Friday night in December. Waco, Texas. You are alone. The neighborhood is quiet. And then your back door explodes.
Not a knock. A KICK. Two men. Masks. Already inside before your brain finishes processing what just happened.
December 12, 2025. Speight Avenue. We do not know her name — she did not ask for coverage. What we know comes from the police report and the emergency room records. Because that last part matters.
She fired approximately eleven rounds. The two men fled.
Twenty minutes later, a 32-year-old named Antonio Chavez was dropped off at Baylor Scott and White with a bullet in his forearm. He was already on the books for two violations of a protective order and continuous violence against family. The system had already met Antonio Chavez. The system had already given someone a piece of paper to keep him away. He violated it twice. Then he put on a mask and kicked in a woman’s back door.
His bond was set at $276,000. The woman was never charged. Because Texas law is perfectly clear about what you are allowed to do when two masked men kick in your door.
She had a gun. She is alive. Full stop.
Now the numbers. Because this is still a science classroom.
Women are seven to eleven times more likely to use a gun for self-defense than to be murdered. Not safer with a gun — DRAMATICALLY safer. The University of Chicago — not exactly a right-wing institution — calculated that more relaxed carry laws between 1977 and 1992 would have prevented 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, and 60,000 aggravated assaults every single year. John Lott found that when concealed carry laws were adopted, rape rates fell measurably, county by county, because predators respond to the possibility of an armed victim the same way every living thing responds to mortal risk — they avoid it.
The Supreme Court already told you in DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989) and Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005) that the government has no legal obligation to protect you. The protective order Chavez violated twice was a piece of paper. The court issued it. The system recorded his violations. And on a cold December Friday in Waco, the piece of paper was nowhere in that room when the door came in.
The gun was.
The gun control crowd says they want women to be safe. Then they spend June trying to disarm the tool that makes women seven to eleven times more likely to survive an attack. Those two positions cannot coexist in good faith.
She did not ask to be a symbol. She just wanted her door to stay closed. When it did not, she handled it.
But what do I know — I am only a combat medic, a science teacher, and the father of daughters who will know how to handle it too.
…
Two protective orders. The paper did not stop him. What did? Tell me.
While a piece of paper will not someone from kicking in your door and doing violent things to you, it is not entirely useless. I would be willing to make a sizable bet that when the police and prosecutor were evaluating the situation for people to put in jail a piece of paper rapidly moved the woman to the, “You did good, but you might want to get some training so you can get better hits next time” category.'” The gun moved her to the “alive but seriously shaken” category when she was hovering over the “hospital or morgue” categories.
Do not ever forget that women safety numbers do not matter to the “gun violence prevention” advocates. Even worse is that they will use the shooting of Chavez in their statistics of “gun violence” which needs to be prevented. In their bookkeeping Chavez is the victim.
For those who doubt this notice that they never mention violence crime rates. They only talk about “gun deaths”, “gun crimes”, and sometimes “gun injuries.” There is a reason for this. They have to be deceptive in order to make the narrative work. Deception is part of the culture. Their culture cannot survive without it. Do not let yourself be fooled. Do not be a part of it. And remember Just One Question.
At one point I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming. It never worked anywhere, and they refused to accept it.
Therefore, I thought it was a mental problem. I mean some kind of block that doesn’t even let them see the numbers.
They are enemies of numbers. They hate numbers. I don’t know if lefties hate water or number more. I mean I don’t know if they hate bathing more than numbers.
But what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law. They are very violent, and since they have no way or arguments to answer, they go for physical violence.
Lefties always, let’s say resort to physical violence and all kinds of violent manifestations because they are unable to refute the arguments.
Javier Milei March 23, 2026
Via:
Javier Milei: “I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming that it never worked anywhere, and they refused to accept it.”
“But what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy,… pic.twitter.com/vIK63LlT1f
With this sort of thinking getting more traction we may be able to snatch victory from what just a few years ago looked like certain defeat. But the violence component almost for certain will increase and I don’t know if that will be successfully countered.
One of the things I love about this administration’s politics is that I can absolutely never tell when they are trolling, when somebody just made up some nonsense and attributed it to them, or when they are being deadly serious.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and UFC CEO Dana White have reached an agreement to use cage fights for diplomacy, the State Department said Monday — as Iran peace talks remain in flux.
While I can certainly see the humor and respect her opinion, I’m of the opinion it does contribute to more than a little political friction that isn’t really necessary. But a case can be made that it serves a useful purpose which outweighs the frictional costs.
The Australian government has spent the last decade introducing steep tax hikes to curb smoking, and, as a result, the country has the most expensive cigarettes in the world. The average price of mainstream cigarettes is 54.99 Australian dollars per pack (about $40). But the eyewatering prices have driven people to the black market.
The Australian government has spent the last decade introducing steep tax hikes to curb smoking, and, as a result, the country has the most expensive cigarettes in the world. The average price of mainstream cigarettes is 54.99 Australian dollars per pack (about $40). But the eyewatering prices have driven people to the black market.
…
between 2016 and 2025, the price of legal cigarettes nearly tripled while tobacco duty revenue more than halved. As a result, the Australian Treasury has downgraded tobacco excise revenue by $8 billion over the next five years in the latest federal budget.
Lower tax revenue is hardly something to mourn, but Australia’s collapsing legal tobacco market has come with a far darker consequence: a severe wave of gang violence, including firebombings and shootings. Since 2023, organized crime groups linked to Australia’s illicit tobacco and vape market have been tied to “more than 200 firebombings,” “at least 3 homicides,” and “multiple other non-fatal violent attacks,” according to the Australian Intelligence Commission.
…
Australia is yet another cautionary tale of what happens when the government polices the personal choices of adults and opens up a new front in the war on drugs. Even if the Australian government were to now reverse course and reduce tobacco taxes, illegal purchase has become normalized. It will be far more difficult to move customers out of the thriving black market that the taxes have created than it would have been in the first place.
“This is no surprise!”, you might say. And, of course, many people recognize the pattern from the alcohol prohibition era in the U.S. and the current recreational drug market. Some will even predict a similar pattern will happen with firearm bans in the U.S. Yet, here is the part that just baffles me. Yeah, I know, it is irrational to assume people will be rational. Some of those same people will absolutely insist that “Big Phara”, “Big Oil”, or even “The Jews” can control some market.
When I hear someone claim that there is some cheap cure of cancer, some other disease or a dramatic life extension, or a gadget that can dramatically increase your gas mileage, or some other too good to be true claim, but the pharmaceutical/oil/whatever companies are suppressing it, I roll my eyes. If that were true then why when government attempt to dramatically increase the tax like with cigarettes in Australia or even completely ban alcohol other recreational drugs, and prostitution, the market still finds a way to deliver the product?
If a complete government ban on something does not prevent just about any room temperature high school dropout from obtaining the product, then how can the cure for cancer, old age, and the creation of 100 MPG 1970 Ford Galaxies be suppressed? And furthermore, as in the case of the dimwitted high school age kids, why doesn’t “everyone” know where to get a miracle cure for cancer and a 250 MPG gasoline powered Toyota Corolla?
Why can’t they understand that there is overwhelming evidence that the market always find a way?
It is easy to state the obvious, “People are just stupid.” But I don’t think that explains it. Many of the people believing this crap are not stupid in the general sense. I think it is a more subtle psychological issue in involving one or more of the following things and probably others:
Some people get great pleasure believing they know something other people do not know–to the point of “knowing” outrageous things because of the feelings they get from their delusions.
Many people don’t understand how markets work and even the world in general. In their bafflement they imagine things to explain things which are mysterious to them. Witches, ghosts, and demons are just a different manifestation of the same mental deficiency.
Some people grew up in a family or even an entire culture of these beliefs.
For me, I keep reminding myself, “It is not rational to expect people to be rational.” But I really just want to retire to my underground bunker in Idaho and let the rest of the world rot in their delusions.
Following the Freedom 250 team’s installation of temporary lighting on the National Mall, our equipment has been repeatedly targeted by vandals. The recent fuel leak was the direct result of that tampering.
Upon discovering damage to a generator fuel line, Freedom 250 and our vendors mobilized within minutes, coordinated an immediate cleanup response, and fully remediated the site in close partnership with the National Park Service. We take our responsibility as stewards of the National Mall seriously and are working closely with the appropriate law enforcement authorities regarding these acts of vandalism.
The first article links to and credits the second article as the source.
Please notice the first article title says 30,000 gallons and the second says 30 gallons. The body of both articles state it was 30 gallons. The second article also includes the subtitle of:
Cleanup efforts are underway as Freedom 250, a group created by the Trump administration that organized the event, blames “vandalism.”
Later in the first article it says:
One of the people familiar with the matter said the National Park Service would typically hold the permit holder liable for the environmental mitigation required after a spill of this magnitude, but it is unclear if Freedom 250 and Event Strategies Inc., which helped organize the events, are on the hook for the clean-up costs incurred by this accident.
The corresponding paragraph in the second, referenced, article says:
One of the people familiar with the matter said the National Park Service would typically hold the permit holder liable for the environmental mitigation after a spill of such magnitude, but it is unclear whether Freedom 250 and Event Strategies Inc., which helped organize the events, are on the hook for the cleanup costs.
My hypothesis is that the creators of the first article deliberately changed the title and added the word “accident” to the body because of their bias against the Trump administration. They know, or at least strongly suspect the vandals were Democrats and want to make the Trump administration to blame for a much worse situation than is actually the case. This was not an accident.
I was just looking back at some things and noticed these comments regarding the California law restricting people to purchasing no more than one gun a month. A three-judge panel ruled 3-0 that it violated the Second Amendment. The consensus among my commentors was that an En Banc panel would find a way to declare the law did not infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms:
Shawn on said:
Goes En Banc. Gun control upheld. Just like all the times before.
Richard on said:
Shawn has history on his side. At any rate, who the heck buys more than one gun a month. The recently awake?
The Ninth Circuit does have some pro-Constitution judges on it. I don’t know how this case, Nguyen v. Bonta, managed the moonshot — getting a full panel of them — but I expect California will appeal and the en banc court will reverse the panel and uphold the law.
They’ve upheld full carry bans. They’ve upheld onerously-restrictive permitting schemes. They’ve upheld AWB laws. The “one gun a month” law is only mildly unconstitutional compared to those; it’s an easy win for the State. (As Richard implies, very few people buy more than one gun a month. A little patience and planning will get most people all the guns they need in less than a year, so the Constitutional infringement is very slight. That will be the court’s opinion.)
I’m not discounting the level of “winning” at play here, getting this decision out of the Nutty Ninth Circuit. Major Kudos are absolutely in order to the SAF and FPC. Fantastic job!
But it’s too early to celebrate. History says it’ll be reversed in a week, a month tops.
Rolf on said:
Generally agree. It will likely get “randomly” sent to a full panel of anti-gun judges and overturned. On the bright side, it’s then possible to appeal to SCOTUS and get it overturned and set aright on a national basis. At the current rate, the American Empire will have long fallen by then, but it will be a great vindication.
While there was occasional non-democrat leadership the Democrats have dominated Seattle politics since at least 1969 with the election of Wesley C. Uhlman as Mayor.
This is what you get:
Breaking: A Seattle neighborhood declares WAR against pimps shooting up Aurora Avenue while engaging in turf wars over prostitutes.
Residents say they have been constantly dodging bullets since the city decriminalized prostitution in 2020, resulting in open-air sex trafficking… pic.twitter.com/KSMb3LrIVH
— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) June 7, 2026
This area of town was bad in the late 1970’s. I remember it was said that almost all the motels in the area rented rooms by the hour. If you drove up the street you could sense the decay without necessarily being able to articulate the reasons why.
A former manager of mine was a Seattle cop for many years. He lived not too far from this area. He told me a couple of decades ago a movie theater was built there. Over the years after that he visited the parking lot of the theater as a cop to deal with a body more frequently than to see a movie.
This is a political problem. These politicians are either not connected to reality and/or deliberately want to destroy our country.
Prepare and response appropriately.
My response is to build an underground bunker in Idaho.
A Virginia judge reaffirmed an injunction blocking the state’s “universal background check” law Wednesday, days after pro-Second Amendment groups sought to hold state officials in contempt when they started enforcing the measure.
Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed HB 1525 into law on April 22 after the General Assembly concurred with her amendments that added an emergency provision directing the Virginia State Police to enforce the law blocked by a permanent injunction issued in October 2025.
The legislature and the governor claim their newly passed law, essentially the same as the previous law, supersedes the court ruling. Does that mean the slaveowner of the 1860s could have gotten their “property” back by repeatedly passing a law that said the 13th Amendment was null and void?
Or how about repeatedly passing a law that said women were not allowed to vote after courts said the 19th amendment prohibited such a law?
These people are not rational. They are like someone who, after I asked, “How do you determine truth from falsity, they responded in complete seriousness with, “It depends on how I feel.”
The Italian – throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage.
The German – carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee.
The Frenchman – takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.
The Chinese – eats the fly and throws away the coffee.
The Russian – Drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge.
The Israeli – sells the coffee to the Frenchman, sells the fly to the Chinese, sells the cup to the Italian, drinks a cup of tea, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.
The Palestinian – blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian so there will be peace.
Twenty percent of likely voters hold a concealed handgun permit (20.2%), over double the rate for adults overall (8%). Constitutional Carry states have only a slightly higher permit rate than pure Right-to-Carry states (21.38% versus 19.81%). However, our research suggests this gap will narrow over time because the share of adults with permits is declining in Constitutional Carry states while rising in pure Right-to-Carry states.
Interestingly, people in Constitutional Carry states carry handguns at much higher rates than those in pure Right-to-Carry states (34.19% versus 25.98%). In Constitutional Carry states, the share of likely voters who carry exceeds the share with permits by about 13 percentage points. In the other pure Right-to-Carry states, the share who carry exceeds the share with permits by about six percentage points. So Constitutional Carry laws result in about seven percentage points more people carrying than have a permit.
There is lots of other interesting information in this post. For example, did you know that:
Very liberal and very conservative likely voters carry frequently at disproportionately high rates relative to their shares of the population. Very liberal voters account for 24.6% of frequent carriers even though they make up only 12.9% of likely voters. Similarly, very conservative voters account for 23.0% of frequent carriers while making up 18.0% of likely voters.
That high a carry rate among voters has to be making a difference in the future of gun ower rights.
Plaintiffs request the following relief from this Honorable Court:
a. Enter a declaratory judgment stating that the Nonresident Handgun Purchase Ban set forth in 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)(3), 922(a)(5), 922(b)(3), and 27 C.F.R. § 478.99(a), and all other related laws, regulations, policies, and procedures, violate the right to keep and bear arms secured by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution;
b. Enter a permanent injunction enjoining Defendants’ enforcement or application of the Nonresident Handgun Purchase Ban set forth in 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)(3), 922(a)(5), 922(b)(3), and 27 C.F.R. § 478.99(a), and all other related laws, regulations, policies, and procedures, because it violates the right to keep and bear arms secured by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution;
c. Award Plaintiffs the costs of this action and reasonable attorneys’ fees; and
d. Award Plaintiffs such other legal and equitable relief as is just and appropriate and as necessary to effectuate the Court’s judgment.
I am so pleased this area of 2nd Amendment law is being pursued. It seems like it should be a real slam dunk. If someone can travel to another state and buy weed, get an abortion, or go to church, then why shouldn’t buying a self-defense tool be a no-brainer, “Hell yes, of course!” That’s just from the philosophical viewpoint.
The legal viewpoint is even stronger. The ban on purchasing handguns depending on which side of a line your feet are resting on is obviously an infringement on the plain text of the 2nd Amendment. And, as pointed in this filing:
Bruen reiterated that, “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17. And a court may “[o]nly” conclude that the conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s protection if the government can “justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 24.
This Court already conducted the type of historical analysis that Bruen requires in Mance. The Court observed that “the earliest known state residency restrictions on the purchase or possession of firearms” occurred in 1909. 74 F. Supp. 3d at 805 (“Defendants have not presented, and the Court cannot find, any earlier evidence of longstanding interstate, geography based, or residency-based firearms restrictions.”). Given this history, the Nonresident Handgun Purchase Ban must be enjoined again.
My view is that it is low hanging fruit that should gathered first. It creates a slippery slope that will create momentum, make it easier to win difficult cases like AR and even machine gun bans, and, figuratively, result in the anti-gun movement making a high velocity splat in the history dumpster where they belong.
I would have thought full auto with tracers would be the preferred configuration for the rear seat “weapons officer.” But I am not one to argue with the people in the air and getting the job done with a red-dot sight on a semi-auto. Perhaps they are shooting a fragmenting round.
And, as long as the drone or its friends aren’t shooting back, I could see that being kinda fun.
California has been a long time leader in the movement to prevent gun violence. The passage of these two bills is just another way the state has stepped up to proactively prevent gun violence before it happens. Education, training, and informed research are essential in our fight to stop gun violence at its source and improve public safety in our communities.
Next up, two pieces of GOA-backed legislation on machineguns were introduced to the House.
First, Rep. Jimmy Patronis’ bill; the “Firearm Freedom Act” is the first-ever bill introduced in Congress that would totally repeal the Hughes Amendment.
For those unfamiliar, the Hughes Amendment is part of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act, added via voice vote, which made machineguns after 1986 illegal to sell to anyone other than the federal government.
Rep. Patronis’ bill rights the wrong that was perpetrated on gun owners 40 years ago.
And, Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced the “Freedom From Taxes Act,” which removes the taxes from machineguns and destructive devices, which are currently subject to $200 tax stamps under the National Firearms Act.
Rep. Boebert’s bill removes the remaining taxes on items regulated by the NFA after the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last summer, where taxes on short barreled firearms and suppressors were reduced to $0.
My guess is that these are all posturing with zero chance of becoming law (or repealing law as the case may be). But still, it is fun to think about.
While I’m not a fan of machine guns*, I really want the restrictions on them removed. When machine guns are available without paperwork, cash and carry, family pack of four at Costco, is sort of my mental marker for “game over, we won.”
* Sure, if someone is paying for the ammo, there are ways to have fun with one. I just don’t see an occasion where I would have a real use for one. Sure, they would be useful in defending against fire breathing dragons. So, if there is some serious intel Daenerys Targaryen is on the prowl in my area of operations I will reconsider.
I think one of the things we really do need to take seriously is if these constitutional officers are not willing to enforce the law, what type of legislation can we introduce to hold them accountable for not doing their job
I know these Republican prosecutors see this as an opportunity for tough guy posturing and amateur constitutional lawyering, but ending the sale of assault weapons in Virginia isn’t something an individual prosecutor can do anything about.
Local prosecutors don’t enforce, they prosecute – and my message to anyone thinking about breaking Virginia law is, don’t bet on Virginia law enforcement ignoring it.
“Amateur constitutional lawyering”? Mark Smith, member of the United States Supreme Court bar, explains why prosecutors refusing to enforce these unconstitutional laws is entirely legal.
I would also like to remind Mr. Cole that if he wants to play that game there are already laws the DOJ could start enforcing.
…from King’s College London, where a team of researchers working alongside chemists from Trinity College Dublin has managed to put together a brand new form of the metal that could replace these pricier options. The metal has been engineered into a new molecule, which they call cyclotrialumane. It is basically three aluminum atoms bonded together in a triangle, making it a trimer.
…
The molecule has shown early promise in the lab, suggesting it could eventually help drive important chemical reactions. The researchers were able to use it to split dihydrogen, the H2 molecules that make up hydrogen gas. Splitting the hydrogen molecule is the main driver of hydrogen energy production, and the same process that runs hydrogen-powered vehicles, so this could help with clean fuel production. The molecule also acted as a catalyst in the controlled chain growth of ethene, which happens to be one of the main building blocks of plastics.
Then there is the weird stuff. Bakewell and her team found that reacting the trimer with ethene creates ring structures that nobody has documented before. These include rings built out of five and seven atoms of aluminum and carbon mixed together. That hints at a whole new class of reactions that go past what platinum and palladium can manage on their own.
So… catalytic converters, fuel cells, and many devices used in thousands of other chemical processes may get much cheaper. Interesting.
The antigunners never gave up on their dream to ban handguns, they just realized that dream was deeply unpopular and decided to focus on “assault weapons” and ancillary restrictions like fees, wait times, etc.
The Glock Switch moral panic gave Everytown and the other groups cover to demand that their allies in California and other blue states sue Glock. Now, they are getting them to ban Glock.
By banning Glock and its clones, they ban the most popular handgun platform in the country. And they won’t stop there; they will find some pretext to declare other popular handgun models “too dangerous” and ban those too. Death by a thousand cuts.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has done nothing so far to stop about a dozen states from banning the most popular rifles in the country. Bruen is working out great….if you are in a pro-gun circuit. Antigun circuits like the Ninth, Second, First, etc. are treating it like a joke and have effectively re-imposed interest balancing, and are upholding pretty much all draconian gun control.
So of course antigun states are emboldened to put their toes into the handgun ban waters once again.
If the Court has any self-respect, if John Roberts cares about the legitimacy of his institution at all, they must take on a hardware case soon and make clear that bans on common firearms are unconstitutional.
And then, they must follow that up with frequent summary reversals of the inevitable antigun circuit court defiance of that ruling.
It is long past time to give the anti-gunners and the disobedient lower courts never-ending nightmares. I’d like to see it in the form of prosecutions, convictions, heavy fines, and long sentences. But that may be beyond our reach for a while. I would settle for the humiliation of being repeatedly slapped down by SCOTUS and my dream of high school machine gun sporting events.
Gonna try to explain this to tech CEOs again: Young Americans are pissed. They feel betrayed. Half have embraced the far right & want to cut off your access to cheap foreign labor. The other half have embraced the far left & want to cut off your head. One side will win. Choose.
But even if you completely accept the basic assertions, I’m not sure a win by either side is guaranteed. It’s plausible that the outcome could be closer to everyone loses.
