In the November 14 edition of the Miami Herald, in an article titled: Report: Majority of trafficked guns in Caribbean are from the U.S., shipped from Florida, reporters Jacqueline Charles and Jay Weaver claim a lack of restrictive gun laws in the United States cause high murder rates in Caribbean countries. From the article:
A new report from the U.S. government’s lead investigator on gun trafficking in the Caribbean area is confirming what region leaders have long said: Most of the firearms wreaking havoc in their vulnerable nations and being used in 90% of the homicides are coming from the United States.
Note the premise included in the misuse of the English language in the opening sentence: the firearms wreaking havoc.
Firearms do not wreak havoc. This is Orwellian distortion of the language. Firearms are inanimate objects. Firearms do not cause harm. Firearms do not have a will of their own. The correct usage would be: People in vulnerable nations are wreaking havoc with firearms. This is important. Semantics are important. You must correctly understand cause and effect if you are to solve a problem. If you confuse cause and effect, your attempts to solve problems will almost certainly fail. You will attempt to change an effect rather a cause. Occasionally, simply by chance, an action taken with the wrong assumption may line up with a real cause.
Firearms do not cause murders and violent crime. The evidence does not support this assumption. Firearms numbers vary wildly across the globe, and in the Caribbean. Firearms laws vary wildly across the globe and the Caribbean as well. Murders and violent crime vary wildly as well. There is no correlation between them.
People can sometimes find a correlation between firearms laws and murders/violent crime committed with firearms. This does not show firearms cause crime. It shows a truism. Firearms can be used in crime. Firearms can also be used to defend against crime. There is no good evidence to show a decrease in overall murders or overall violent crime when/where extremely restrictive firearm laws are implemented. If overall murder rates or overall violent crime rates do not decrease when firearms laws are implemented, the laws have failed in their stated objectives.
Why are there small lifeboats on gigantic steel ocean liners? Why do we spend thousands equipping our vehicles with airbags? Why do we wear seatbelts and place our infants in safety seats? Why do we build storm shelters under our homes? Why do we install ground-fault interrupter outlets by sinks and bathtubs? Why do we get painful inoculations? Why do we voluntarily undergo sickening chemotherapy? And why do we protect ourselves with firearms?
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Sadly, there are those who seek to usher in a sort of post-Constitution era where the citizens’ individual rights are only as important as they are convenient to a ruling class. Seeking ancient laws that may partner well with a present-day infringement on a right proclaimed in the Bill of Rights without reading it in conjunction with the aforementioned history is nonsense. The Statute of Northampton cannot in the least bit be used to vex the rights of Illinois citizens in the 21st century to keep and bear arms. The oft-quoted phrase that “no right is absolute” does not mean that fundamental rights precariously subsist subject to the whims, caprice, or appetite of government officials or judges.
Stephen P. McGlynn U.S. District Judge of the Southern District of Illinois November 8, 2024 Barnett v. Raoul
McGlynn writes some great stuff in declaring “assault weapon” bans illegal. But his “permanent” injunction was stayed upon appeal. It will probably take SCOTUS to put an end to this nonsense. For now, it is just words and not the force of law.
This is what they think of you. They want you dead.
And, of course, they want someone else to do their dirty work for them. They want the state to kill the people they don’t like. Also, note that it is an entire class of people they want dead. Considering people as individuals on a case-by-case basis would take too long.
If New York’s powers that be really are stupid enough to go after Peanut’s family on this — and there’s no reason to believe they aren’t — they not only will get their anti-gun butts handed to them in court, but they’ll deserve to be ravaged by all of the furies of PR hell they’ll raise along the way.
Either way, it seems that Peanut may get the last laugh.
I think the problem is the powers that be cannot comprehend there are or should be limits to their powers. And, of course, they also believe they are the smartest people “in the room.” This leads to a whole cascading wall of failure.
Those following the gun owner’s rights movement should not be surprised by this attitude. Our opposition certainly gets things done without being distracted by the truth.
I am, of course, reminded that some people can’t handle the truth.
Several officials even suggested that Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent.
If they had not taken the nukes from Ukraine initially, the entire mess might have been avoided.
Look at what happened to the American Indians, the German Jews, etc. The examples are endless. Never give up your right to self-defense or your weapons.
FPC LEGAL UPDATE: The Supreme Court has distributed our lawsuit challenging Maryland's "assault weapon" ban for the court's conference on December 13th. These conferences are where the court decides which cases to take up this term. https://t.co/CpAh5oTzbT
We are on a path to have “assault weapon” and standard capacity magazine bans declared unconstitutional nationwide by summer. If SCOTUS decides to accept the case, which most observers think they will, then we probably will win.
See also what Mark Smith has to say:
If it is successful, it will be just short of 31 years after the original national “assault weapon ban.” It will “only” be 17 years after the Heller decision.
The 1994 ban and Ruby Ridge motivated me to buy my first gun and start advocating for gun owner rights. It has been a long fight for me and much longer for a lot of other people. And even if we win this case, it will be far from over. We need to start prosecuting the perpetrators of these rights infringements. Otherwise, it will be another 30 years until their constant whining is little more than noise.
That said, a win will be a really big deal. A win will crush our opponents moral and create a powerful precedent. It will be among the best things that has happened on this long journey.
As said by Conan when asked, “What is best in life?”
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Trump defeated Harris handily and pro-gun senatorial candidates secured a GOP Senate majority and the House is poised to remain in GOP control. This trifecta provides an opportunity to secure pro-Second Amendment legislation that has heretofore eluded both the White House and Congress.
Such legislation includes national reciprocity for concealed carry, which Trump supports, and a hearing protection act, which would remove suppressors from NFA (1934) oversight and regulation.
The previous Trump administration was on the cusp of securing a hearing protection act in 2017, but it was torpedoed by then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R) following the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas attack. Although Yahoo News reported that Ryan tabled the act “indefinitely,” Trump and the GOP-led Congress can pursue suppressor deregulation anew.
We should try for this. Even if we only move the Overton Window a bit, it will make future actions easier. Future action options include court rulings and reintroducing the bills in the next legislative session.
The NFA never should have been enacted but we are (unfortunately) stuck with it for now. In my view, the proper way to attack in the courts the NFA is incrementally, i.e., one case at a time. As I see it, we need SCOTUS victories on AR bans and Mag bans first. Then attack the NFA by arguing “suppressors” and perhaps “short barrel rifles” are protected arms and, of course, look to attack the NFA via going after the Hughes Amendment as per the Rybar dissent in the Third Circuit by then-judge Alito. We have several 2A issues to clean up first before I think we can launch a serious legal assault on the NFA. That’s just the political and legal reality today.
As to my views, I unfortunately do not possess the power to waive a magic wand and eliminate unconstitutional and and/or stupid gun control laws. So, I have to work within our constitutional system, which is not perfect but it certainly beats all the other political systems out there.
Yes, this was posted a year ago. I’m trying to clean up my queue.
If you follow Smith’s YouTube channel (164 K subscribers), you will find his predictions about SCOTUS. He predicts they will take the semi-automatic ban case out of Maryland this term. That would likely mean “assault weapons” and normal capacity magazine bans in all states would be “dead men walking” by next summer:
With that out of the way the NFA would soon see front line action in the courts.
WHAT THIS MEANS: No matter which state you’re in, if you’ve got your concealed carry license, each state will still have to honor it – for example, you have a Florida concealed carry permit – California would have to… pic.twitter.com/GwFYgwOmfx
— Frank Fighting For Freedom 🇺🇸 (@thinktankfranks) November 10, 2024
But words are cheap. It will take a lot to get it through the legislative process. The problem is that if it becomes law then the politicians just lost something to promise during the next election cycle.
This is devastating. The gun safety movement has faced countless setbacks but when it comes to the number one killer of kids, nothing will stand in our way. Make no mistake: Trump’s extremist agenda is a danger for our nation, but it means we’ll double down on our efforts to protect our communities and continue to make progress, just like we did in 2016. The momentum of the gun safety movement can’t be stopped. Gun violence isn’t a left or right issue, it’s a life-or-death issue. We can and will overcome this—together.
Republicans are the party of emotional, knee-jerk responses. They don’t care about facts, truth, or their fellow Americans. They are emotional children and incapable of empathy.
Just a FYI. This may help you understand how her mind works. I don’t know for certain, but this is the only way I can make sense of it. The original definition of a fascist was:
Fascism The principles or methods of the Fascisti—Fascist, I. A member of the Fascisti. II. Of or pertaining to the Fascisti.
Fascisti … The members of a patriotic society in Italy, animated by a strong national spirit, and organized in connection with a repressive movement directed against the socialists and communists and the disturbances excited by them during 1919 and the years following, which regarded the government as criminally negligent in failing to deal with these disturbances, and took measure on its own account, often violent ones, to combat them, and which developed into a powerful party obtaining political control of the country in Oct., 1922, under its founder and leader, Benito Mussolini, as prime minister; hence, the members of a similar society or party elsewhere.
If you want to loosen up the definition a little you would conclude the following. If you are opposed to socialism and/or communism you are a fascist. Nazis Germany was opposed to Soviet socialism (worldwide socialism, versus national socialism). Both sides were competing for, essentially, the same mind share. Nazis were allied with Italy and shared the common political alignment with fascism.
Hence, her twisted mind can conclude that since you are opposed to socialism/communism you are a fascist Nazi.
Who would have guessed lying about Biden’s cognitive health for 2 yrs, refusing to do an open convention for a new nominee, never mentioning public healthcare & embracing fracking, the Cheneys & a yr long slaughter of children in Gaza wouldn’t be a winning strategy?
Anyone with half a brain? But I thought liberals’ whole thing is being smart? It’s not? They actually just blindly cheer the parade of rickety optics wrapped up in New York Times fonts that is the modern Dem Party?
Well at least it’s time for the dusty hacks & careerists to spread their feathers wide post election and blame Russia and third party candidates. That should fix things.
This was a large donor to the Democrat party. I find this guy most interesting. His take on things, at best half right, at least puts the blame on Harris and the Democrat party.
I find it very telling that all the other whining I see on the web about Harris’s loss is based on introspection. It does not include asking republicans why they voted the way they did. And, one would think, they should especially be asking people who usually vote for democrats why they voted for Trump in this election.
I see, again and again, insistence the voters are sexist, racist, white nationalist, and/or fascist. Nevermind that black men, and all Latinos voted for Trump in greater numbers than in 2020. And in some counties a larger fraction of blacks voted Republican this year than they have since the 1870s! Nevermind these evil voters wouldn’t be pushing lawsuits through the courts that make it easier for individuals own guns and training them on how to defend themselves from the likes of the KKK, men who women, and a fascist government.
Their mindset is it always someone else’s fault. The problem is not they are trying to sell an inferior product. The problem is the people are too stupid and/or evil to buy it. In an individual, this sort of reasoning is a strong indicator of mental illness. It can be argued it means the same thing in a group.
While it’s not always possible to evade government mandates, registering your guns just puts them on a shopping list for sticky-fingered officials. That’s true of registering anything that you value and that powerful people might fear or covet.
Even more concerning, though, is the prospect of governments in supposedly free societies conducting intelligence operations against their people and punishing those who hold disapproved ideas. That’s a great argument for getting rid of the need for government permission to go about our lives. Politicians will never approve of those who disagree with them, but we shouldn’t need their approval.
Way back when I started getting into guns, I thought everyone was in agreement that free speech was a good thing. While considered extremely bad form, it was legal for Nazis to have a peaceful march through Jewish neighborhoods. As near as I can recall, 30 years ago there wasn’t any real consequences to not believing the 16th Amendment was properly ratified, or that the moon landings were faked.
That is not the case anymore. New York passed a law (recently thrown out by the courts) requiring people to hand over your social media accounts to the government before you can get a concealed carry license. People have lost their jobs at Facebook for donating a couple thousand dollars to President Trump’s campaign. Others have lost their jobs for saying men, in general, were better at certain things and women were better at other things.
There currently is a deliberate chilling effect on the exercise of fundamental rights. There is some push back, as in the repeal of the New York law, but it is going to take a lot more time and resources to restore the free exercise of our rights to where they should be.
