There are lies, damned lies and gun control lies. The problem with the gun control lies is that those who continue to spout them have no shame even when they’ve been proven wrong.
Larry Keane
August 9, 2021
NSSF: There’s one thing those who are pushing for gun control don’t want you to know. It’s called “the truth”.
[As Lyle sometimes points out, a case could be made that they take pride in their lies.—Joe]
I have been listening to the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland on Audible on my commute.
It’s a difficult book to listen to.
In chapter 10, the author talks about the clearing of the ghetto at Międzyrzec to send the Jews to Treblinka.
What stuck out at me was that 11,000 Jews were deported and over 900 shot by a cadre of only 350 police.
…
And there wasn’t one report of Jews fighting back.
J. KB
July 23, 2021
Why I am the way I am
[The book sounds as if it has similar content to Hitler’s Willing Executioners which I have posted (this post is extremely relevant J. KB concerns) about before.
I just purchased the Audible version of Ordinary Men and will start it later this week when I finish the current book I’m listening too.
As difficult as the books may be to read/listen-to they present some very important lessons worth learning.—Joe]
Everything we know about evidence-based violence interruption says you have to interact directly with the highest-risk individuals. And that’s true for police, but that’s also true for all sorts of community services, including but not limited to street outreach. So for all of these individuals who are at the highest risk, all of a sudden, all of those services stop because of the physical distancing mandates.
Thomas Abt
August 2, 2021
What Philadelphia Reveals About America’s Homicide Surge
[Ahh… This can explain the rise in violent crime over the last year or so. I had not had a good hypothesis for what was going on. This sounds quite plausible.—Joe]
Why is it that back in the 1950’s, one could walk into a hardware store, gun shop or mail order all kinds of firearms with no background checks or waiting period and crime was far less than today?
James
August 7, 2021
Comment to BREAKING: Mexico Blames American Guns For Their Problems, Sues U.S.
[My first hypothesis is criminals were more likely to be prosecuted then. My second hypothesis is that we didn’t have a culture of entitlement and people competing for profit in the victim Olympics. Both could be true as well as false.—Joe]
The democracy beat shouldn’t be some kind of specialized innovation, but a widespread rethinking across the mainstream media.
Making this happen will call for something that Big Journalism is notoriously bad at: An open-minded, nondefensive recognition of what’s gone wrong.
Top editors, Sunday talk-show moderators and other news executives should pull together their brain trusts to grapple with this. And they should be transparent with the public about what they’re doing and why.
As a model, they might have to swallow their big-media pride and look to places like Harrisburg, Pa., public radio station WITF which has admirably explained to its audience why it continually offers reminders about the actions of those public officials who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Or to Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn’s letter to readers about how the paper and its website, Cleveland.com, refuse to cover every reckless, attention-getting lie of Republican Josh Mandel as he runs for the U.S. Senate next year.
Margaret Sullivan
July 28, 2021
Our democracy is under attack. Washington journalists must stop covering it like politics as usual.
[Ms. Sullivan openly demands the suppression of views which diverge from her narrative.
Prepare and respond appropriately.—Joe]
New York’s licensing requirements criminalize the exercise of the fundamental Second Amendment right, with rare exception. As a result, each year, we represent hundreds of indigent people whom New York criminally charges for exercising their right to keep and bear arms. For our clients, New York’s licensing regime renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction. Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic. And that is no accident. New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities. That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today.
BRIEF OF THE BLACK ATTORNEYS OF LEGAL AID, THE BRONX DEFENDERS, BROOKLYN DEFENDER SERVICES, ET AL. AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS
July 2021
[Via Damon Root.
It is somewhat disturbing that pointing out that the demographics of the illegal prosecutions are believed to make a difference in whether the law is declared unconstitutional or not. It would seem to me the constitutionality of a law should not be decided on skin color or ethnicity.
That said, if it gets another SCOTUS justice vote (Root opines, “It’s possible that such arguments will resonate with Justice Sonia Sotomayor”) I give my thanks to the public defenders for their contribution.—Joe]
The FBI needs to go away. It should happen in an orderly and thoughtful process, over a period of months. Congress should authorize and create an investigative division in the U.S. Marshals Service and open applications for law enforcement officer seeking to be rigorously screened, vetted and then accessed into the new organization. Similar action was taken before in the very creation of the FBI. It is now time to clean house and restore the public’s trust in the “premier investigative agency” of federal law enforcement.
Chris Farrell
July 28, 2021
Disband the FBI
[About 99% of the Federal government needs to go away to be operating with the limits set by the U.S. Constitution. So the FBI is just a tiny snowflake at the tip of the iceberg.
And if you think about it a little bit you realize the bigger issue is all the Federal laws the FBI enforces. The laws need to be eliminated first or at least concurrently with the FBI. If they didn’t have laws to enforce their “teeth” would be essentially pulled and be mostly irrelevant.
The FBI was once extremely well regarded. I remember my dad once telling me, I must have been about eight years old at the time, how great the FBI was. They trained to shoot one handed and using their weak hand only. I was amazed at this. And, “Once the FBI is on a case the case will be solved. The FBI always gets their man.”
After Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the failed coup against President Trump, to hit just a few of the low spots, many people now rightfully regarded the FBI as an enemy of the people.—Joe]
If we’ve gotten to a point where a giant tech company, or even a little company, is silencing people who are providing first-hand sourcing for major, major news stories, or reading press releases from elected officials, that’s like not America anymore.
Naomi Wolf
July 30, 2021
Former Clinton Adviser Naomi Wolf: Big Tech Bans Leading to Self-Censorship
[I was chatting with someone about this sort of thing a few weeks ago and he said something which surprised me. He said, “I don’t expect Facebook to exist a year from now.”
I expressed my surprise but there were more important things to discuss and I dropped it. He is a former Secret Service agent, but I don’t see how that would give him insider knowledge about something as big as the elimination of Facebook as a company.
Is this a QAnon thing I haven’t heard?—Joe]
The frustration is in the United States the freedom of speech and to say things is largely cannot be regulated.
David Chipman
2019
Biden ATF Nominee ‘Frustrated’ By First Amendment Freedom Of Gun Owners To Say Things He Doesn’t Like
[Chipman isn’t fit for a government job as a toilet scrubber, let alone a position requiring a presidential nomination and Senate approval.
Via email from Rolf.—Joe]
From Newsweek (emphasis added):
Millions of Americans could be forced out of their homes after the Biden administration declined to extend the federal eviction ban put in place last September to protect tenants during the pandemic. The White House said Thursday that it would not extend the moratorium, citing a Supreme Court decision last month against an extension past July.
…
Bush and Pressley spearheaded a letter to Biden Saturday—signed by six others including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota—calling for “an urgent government response,” according to Politico. “Extending the eviction moratorium is a matter of life and death for the communities we represent,” they wrote.
Rep. Maxine Waters of California called on Biden to issue an executive order to “expand and extend” the moratorium on CNN Saturday, criticizing the president for following the Supreme Court’s ruling. “We thought that the White House was in charge,” she said. “We have families, probably 11 million families, out there who stand to be evicted.”
I grant you that Rep Waters isn’t the sharpest Fruit Loop in the knife drawer, but her “thought” seems to be shared by others. This appears to include the writer of the article. I find this “thought” of hers extremely telling. She and others do not regard SCOTUS decisions as binding on the executive or legislative branch.
This is truly scary stuff. Make appropriate preparations.
When you provide a means for all citizens who are willing, to become part of the state defense agencies, which includes the right to arms, you have short circuited many of the state sponsored restrictions.
This correspondent has often considered a similar provision could be used in the United States, to push back against federal power.
State legislatures could define any person with a carry permit to be a member of the state militia, on duty; they could make it an option available with a few hours training; they could proclaim that federal NFA laws do not apply to state militia members on duty. It is a powerful tool the states have not yet used.
Dean Weingarten
July 29, 2021
Czech Republic: a Right to Armed Self Defense
[Incrementalism.
See also what Mike B. had to say about this idea.—Joe]
Wokeism has infected the system and it is destroying everything. Let’s say the New York Times was always sort of Left, but it wasn’t bananas Left. There was a big plurality of opinion there and obviously Barry Weiss was there.
Barry Weiss, who’s a liberal. She’s a liberal, which doesn’t even really make sense to me anymore. But God bless her, she’s a liberal. She couldn’t even take it there anymore because there’s no Left far enough for the Left. There’s no woke enough for the wokesters.
They’re constantly purging people and as they do that purge, they’re going to destroy every institution that they’re let into.
Dave Rubin
July 27, 2021
Dave Rubin: A Growing Alliance Against the ‘Cult’ of Woke Ideology
[Encouraging stuff in the interview. Rubin claims more and more people are seeing the light. Seeing that the political left has gone completely off their rockers. And once they see this, there is no unseeing it. They then see the toxicity of the left and that it can be accurately described as a cult.
Once they see the insanity they may not become instant classic liberals or libertarians. But they are escaping the cult and are publicly pointing out the errors of the cultists.
Probably most importantly is that people are starting to think for themselves. They realize the sides are not left and right or “woke” and fascists/racist/supremist.
I especially like how he describes the “sides”. The sides are best described by “cognitive liberty” and “cognitive outsourcing”. Once people realize they are allowed to, and are capable of, thinking for themselves the world will be a much better place. We won’t all arrive at some universal truth. But it will mean you don’t become a social outcast if you aren’t woke enough. It will mean we have a decent chance of avoiding universal error.—Joe]
With the destruction of President Trump’s solid immigration enforcement, and current disregard and violation of existing federal law, Mr. Biden has unleashed the most severe border and humanitarian crisis in United States history.
Paul Gosar
U.S. Representative to Congress from Arizona
July 23, 2021
Rep. Paul Gosar Sponsors Bill to Ban All Immigration Into US for 10 Years
[He has a valid point. But his proposed solution of banning all immigration makes no sense to me. Supposedly, “the pause is needed to help stem the current surge in illegal border crossings”.
I’m not sure how this is supposed to work. The existing immigration law is being ignored by 100s of thousands each month and somehow another law aimed at the people who are currently obey the law will do… what?
It would seem to me a more effective solution would be to prosecute the public servants who are failing to do their jobs in enforcing the current laws. Including, if appropriate, President Biden.
The legal immigrants I personally know are welcomed by me. They are smart, law abiding, and hard working.
I guess it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just a proposed government law.—Joe]
Via Rolf:
I listened to the first half and got irritated enough that I tuned out while letting the video run to the end to improve their metrics.
The current ATF and all the politicians who voted to give it funding should be prosecuted. Any employees found not guilty and have functional skills could apply for jobs at the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms chain of convenience stores.
The constitution is pointless. It was meant to restrain govt. That didn’t work. The rights you have are the ones you take. In other words quit arguing about it and make machine guns in your garage.
john @john76804114
Tweeted on July 24, 2021
[I’m not sure I agree with this.
I’m incline to keep my car in the garage and have a nice shop for those sort of things.—Joe]
Pushing gun control is racist, misogynistic, and incredible fascist
And no one just carrying a firearm is a threat to anyone by such.
Whereas your demands to violate Human Rights, is a threat.
sacrebleu14 / SA Hinchcliffe @sacrebleu141
Tweeted on July 21, 2021
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Their hatred of guns is deeply rooted in their hatred of personal responsibility. The very idea that you might be responsible for your own safety is abhorrent to them. The very concept that the maintenance of personal freedom and responsibility might actually be worth living a more dangerous life is simply a repellent concept to them. They want to be kept. They want others to make their choices for them. They want to live the comfortable, gray, meaningless lives of a pet.
People that do not desire this are lamented by them, not because those people are wrong, but because those people demonstrate to them how absolutely pathetic they are, and they hate that.
Goober
July 21, 2021
Comment to Quote of the day—Tom Knighton
[One should be careful to not attempt “reading their minds”, but I believe there is a lot of evidence to support this hypothesis.—Joe]
Anti-violence groups in the commonwealth, spurred on by a national organization started by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, have staked a claim for tens of millions of dollars in federal pandemic and economy-boosting money at the General Assembly’s disposal.
The fledgling Virginia Community Violence Coalition has made a smart, critical bid for $37 million of the $4.3 billion available from the American Rescue Plan.
Roger Chesley
July 21, 2021
Curbing killings also means changing culture
[$37 million of public money to infringe upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Respond appropriately.—Joe]
The fact that the bad guys in New York City, the city with the toughest gun control laws in the nation, were still able to get guns and use them in this very shooting should make it clear as day that something just isn’t adding up.
The only narrative this story advances is that gun control is a complete and total failure.
Tom Knighton
July 20, 2021
NY Shooting Not An Example For Gun Control Advocates – Bearing Arms
[It doesn’t add up if you were under the impression the intent of gun control is to reduce crime. There are some people who actually believe this. But long time politicians know better and have different motives.
It’s about creating a safe work environment for themselves and comrades, the criminals. This is well-known. Read The Gulag Archipelago. The USSR regarded thieves as allies in the building of communism because they were the enemy of property owners.
Appearances are that similar motivation is at play in the U.S. It’s certain it is not about violent crime control. Just one question demonstrates this.—Joe]
What is truly telling is that the government is no longer afraid to admit they’re blatantly censoring our 1A rights.
Before, they tried to hide it. Now they brag. They feel like they can do anything now.
This is how tyranny starts.
Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
Tweeted on July 17, 2021
[She is referring to the Biden administration announcement they are “identifying ‘problematic’ posts for Facebook to censor because they contain ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19.”—Joe]