Humanity needs to become a bigger priority in this state. This means that stricter gun control is necessary. Our government should listen to its people and make them feel safe, rather than allowing a law as dangerous as permitless carry.
Sumera Siddiqi
Liberal studies freshman at University of Houston
August 9, 2021
Permitless carry infringes on the right to safety
[Is it truth or is it a caricature? Sometimes it is so hard to tell.—Joe]
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]
While many individual preppers and prepper organizations try to remain anonymous, the number of people preparing appears to be growing. In the last year alone, roughly 45 percent of Americans, or about 116 million people, said they spent money preparing for hard times or spent money stockpiling survival goods.
Allan Stein
August 6, 2021
‘Preppers’ Quietly Stock Up for the ‘Perfect Storm’
[We live in interesting times.—Joe]
I’m not going to speculate as to why people buy pickup trucks, but the reality is the vast majority aren’t doing so for work purposes.
Their choice is putting us all at risk, whether on the streets, or through damage to the climate. Reducing further destruction to the climate and harm from needlessly fatal road accidents is far more important than corporate or consumer freedom.
It’s time to ban sales of pickup trucks for non-work purposes, for all of our sakes.
Davide Mastracci
July 13, 2021
Reducing further climate destruction and harm from needlessly fatal road accidents is more important than corporate or consumer freedom.
[Tyrants have to tyrant.
Prepare and respond appropriately.—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]
Community gun violence is highly concentrated in a small number of under-resourced city neighborhoods composed of predominantly Black and Hispanic/Latino residents. These neighborhoods suffer from underfunded social services, few economic opportunities, and concentrated poverty.
The Educational Fund To Stop Gun Violence
February 2021
Community Gun Violence
[EFSGV is a sister organization to Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and has the familiar perpetrators such as Mike Beard and Josh Horwitz. Here they recognize it is not the general population that is at risk of “gun violence”. It is a very small subset of the population. I applaud them for making this concession. But this leads to more “interesting” conclusions.
If you read the link to the article for the source of the QOTD and observe carefully you will discover something interesting. Do a search for “evidence” on that page and take a look for the things they know are effective in reducing criminal violence.
Notice that none of these involve restrictions on firearms.
I believe they know, at some level, that the exercise of our rights protected by the Second Amendment do not make a net contribution to criminal violence. They still advocate for restrictions but they know they don’t have the evidence.
And, of course, they completely ignore the principle of inalienable rights, enumerated powers, and evidence of the defensive uses of firearms, but that is another story.
The bottom line is that this set of bad guys know the truth and openly advocate for the denial of our rights.
Respond appropriately and perhaps someday we can enjoy their trials.—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]
I started off not being pro-gun. I was largely apathetic, kind of leaning toward anti-gun. It became a fascination for me, from a physics and enthusiasm standpoint. I started getting into more political aspects of it and realized that my ability to protect myself with a firearm is probably one of the most important aspects of things that I do in my life, because the most important thing I have is my life. The ability to depend on myself to protect myself, and the people that I love, to me, is one of the most important things you could possibly have in this world.
Colion Noir
July 27, 2021
A Gun-Owning Citizenry Is a Free Citizenry
[I have nothing to add.—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]
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]