War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
— John Stuart Mills

No charges for 12-year-old in fatal 51st and Hadley shooting; self-defense cited

A 12-year-old boy who was arrested after fatally shooting someone near 51st and Hadley on Saturday will not face criminal charges.

The Milwaukee County district attorney told TMJ4 on Thursday that the child acted in defense of his mother when he shot a 32-year-old on Dec. 14.

They later died in the hospital.

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-Read our previous coverage of this story

Police had said the shooting stemmed from an argument.

The district attorney said the decision not to file charges is final.

Saudi Suspect Plows Car Into German Christmas Market; U.S. Media Blames [Checks Notes] the Car

An attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, has left at least two people dead and 60-80 injured. According to Die Welt:

A driver drove into a group of people at the Christmas market in Magdeburg. Government spokesman Matthias Schuppe confirmed to WELT that it was an attack. City spokesman Michael Reif also said that the initial report was an “attack on the Christmas market”. The suspected perpetrator is in police custody. WELT learned from security sources that he is a man from Saudi Arabia who was born in 1974.

The Saudi national, who had reportedly been in Germany illegally since 2006, allegedly rented a car and headed to the market two hours west of Berlin, which was teeming with visitors enjoying the Christmas festivities. A suitcase was found on the passenger seat of the vehicle, according to Die Welt, and authorities are currently trying to ascertain whether it contains an explosive device. The terrorist was taken into custody, and it’s not known whether he acted alone.

A police spokesman said the suspect drove “at least 400 meters across the Christmas market.” A witness said the attack occurred in the market’s fairy tale section.

Police have secured the area and are asking people to avoid the city center.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X, “My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the dedicated rescue workers in these anxious hours.”

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser recently called for vigilance at Christmas markets. “Federal security authorities do not currently have any concrete indications of danger,” she told reporters. “But in view of the high threat situation at an abstract level we still have reason to be very vigilant and to take effective action for our security.”

Deutsche Welle reported in November on Germany’s new knife ban:

the German government passed new security legislation in October in response to a deadly knife attack in the western city of Solingen in August. The suspected Islamist attacker killed three people and injured eight more.

The new security package tightened rules on the carrying of weapons in public spaces in Germany and explicitly banned the carrying of knives at festivals, sporting events, markets, fairs and other large events.

“The police will be present in many locations to ensure security,” said Faeser.

The attack in Magdeburg comes eight years, almost to the day after Muslim extremist Anis Amri hijacked a truck and plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and wounding 56 others. According to the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point, Amri was in Germany illegally and was well known to authorities both for his radicalism and his crime sprees:

When Amri entered the European Union on April 4, 2011, via the Italian island of Lampedusa, he claimed to be 16 years old. After his arrival, he was placed in a refugee shelter for minors in Belpasso, Sicily. The Italian authorities asked Tunisia for travel documents in order to return Amri to his home country, but the request went unanswered. In October 2011, Amri and four other Tunisian refugees attacked a staff member at the shelter and started a fire. Amri was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. It was during his incarceration in different Italian jails that Amri became radicalized. A report for the Italian Committee for Strategic Anti-Terrorism Analysis (CASA) stated that Amri was considered a “dangerous person” and a “leader of the Islamists in prison” and that he was “transferred due to severe security concerns.” Amri had threatened and attacked staff and reportedly threatened to decapitate a Christian inmate.

On June 17, 2015, Italy was legally required to release Amri from a deportation facility because Tunisian authorities had not responded to its request to send travel documents for him.  After his release, Amri traveled to Switzerland, where he stayed for around two weeks before traveling to Germany. In early July 2015, German police in the city of Freiburg, near the Swiss border, registered Amri for “unlawful entry” under the name Anis Amir and took his fingerprints and photo. [Emphasis added]

U.S. media outlets were quick to blame the car for today’s attack:

Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.
This political judgement, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self preservation a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to God and Nature. – John Locke

A Hard Heart Kills: Why Liberal Values Breed School Shootings

Traditionally, the school shooting phenomenon was perpetrated by young, disaffected males. But, a disturbing new trend seems to be forming. The tragic shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School this week was committed by a young girl. A fifteen-year-old with a digital history indicative of the deep angst experienced by many young teenagers left adrift in existential darkness.

It is a very disturbing trend indeed when our young girls, typically characterized by feminine compassion, who should be anticipating the joys of family, motherhood, or career, instead are driven to find meaning in mass homicide. Surely, this is a sign of cultural apocalypse.

Reportedly, Natalie Rupnow had an online obsession with mass shootings and death. Can it really be surprising that our culture of death (the death of God, death of the unborn, the death of personhood) produces mass-murdering kids?

We treat the unborn like bio-waste and devalue life to the point of absurd irrelevance, discarding it at will. The message to anyone paying attention is that life is disposable and subject to whim or convenience. Making a statement with the lives of innocent people is a simple metaphysical extension of the secular culture of grievance and lack of eternal accountability.

Perhaps some old-fashioned hell-fire preaching might go a long way toward saving lives, both temporal and spiritual.

Continue reading “”

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Non-Violent Felon Gun Ban

The government can permanently disarm somebody convicted of non-violent felonies if their broader criminal history contains violent conduct, a federal appeals court has ruled.

On Monday, a three-judge panel for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected a Kentucky defendant’s as-applied challenge to his recent conviction for possessing a firearm as a felon. The panel ruled that even if a person is convicted of non-violent felonies, the totality of their criminal record can indicate “dangerousness” that permits disarmament under the Second Amendment.

“Morton’s criminal record demonstrates dangerousness, specifically that he has committed ‘violent’ crimes ‘against the person,’” Judge Rachel Bloomekatz wrote in US v. Morton. “So, his conviction is consistent with the Second Amendment as interpreted in Williams. Accordingly, § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to him.”

The ruling stands out as the first time the Sixth Circuit has applied its unique standard for adjudicating challenges to the federal felony gun ban—by far the most common Second Amendment claim arising in the courts since the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen decision. Other circuits have either issued blanket rulings upholding the federal ban as constitutional or struck it down in narrow applications without setting a generalized standard for evaluating other cases. But the Sixth Circuit crafted a standard that only convicted felons who are shown to be “dangerous” can be disarmed in an August ruling upholding the ban.

Monday’s panel was tasked with applying that new “dangerousness” test to Jaylin Morton.

Morton was arrested in 2022 on several outstanding warrants and was found to be in possession of multiple handguns. At the time of his arrest, he already had “at least six prior felony convictions.” Those included multiple convictions for possessing a firearm as a felon, evading the police, one for burglary, and one for intimidating a participant in a legal process. He also had multiple non-felony assault convictions, including one for a domestic-violence incident in which he “punched his then-girlfriend in the head.”

He was subsequently indicted for possessing a firearm as a felon, which he moved to challenge on the grounds that the Second Amendment does not permit disarming him because his prior felony convictions were for non-violent crimes.

Drawing on the Sixth Circuit’s earlier ruling from August, US v. Williams, Judge Bloomekatz said that the court’s controlling precedent recognizes constitutional applications of the lifetime felony gun ban for offenses that “strongly suggest dangerousness,” particularly “crimes against the person,” like murder and assault. Bloomekatz said Morton’s criminal conduct “undoubtedly” demonstrates he is violent.

“Among other offenses, Morton was previously convicted for wanton endangerment and possessing a firearm as a felon after he shot at his ex-girlfriend and her family, and then showed up at her house a few weeks later and verbally harassed her with a gun on his person,” she wrote. “On another occasion, Morton was convicted of assault resulting from a domestic-violence incident after he punched his then-girlfriend in the head during an argument.”

And though the domestic violence incident was not a felony that currently underlies his lifetime firearms ban, she said the court “may look at Morton’s whole criminal history in assessing dangerousness.”

“Moreover, we are not confined to the fact of conviction alone, but may consider how an offense was committed,” she wrote. “Accordingly, Morton’s convictions demonstrate his dangerousness, making § 922(g)(1) constitutional as applied to him.”

The decision adds to the growing divergence in how lower courts are handling the federal lifetime gun ban for felons. Even courts that have reached similar conclusions to one another have done so under a variety of approaches, which has resulted in a variety of enforcement standards for the most commonly charged federal gun statute.

In June, Department of Justice expressed concern over the growing divide and asked the Supreme Court to resolve the matter.

“The substantial costs of prolonging uncertainty about the statute’s constitutionality outweigh any benefits of further percolation,” US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said at the time.

However, the Court opted to sidestep the matter. Instead, it remanded half a dozen requested cases back down to the appellate system to be reconsidered in light of its most recent case law.

Even as many of those cases have returned with unchanged outcomes, the Court has not yet taken up one that would resolve the question.

Why, yes. Yes it is. And the ‘dilemma’ is goobermint’s

3D-printed guns: Is gun control in America really dead?

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shocking killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, made his first appearance in court on Tuesday. He was arrested after a McDonald’s employee recognised him and called the authorities, while he sat at a corner table wearing a blue face mask and stared into a laptop for hours. Amongst his belongings was found the 3D printed gun that he used to assassinate Brian Thompson. A ghost gun that was seen on the surveillance footage of the crime, that looked so unfamiliar that even police veterans were puzzled by it.

The “ghost gun” found on Mangione was capable of firing a 9mm round and had a suppressor, also known as a silencer, that muffles the sound of the gunshot.

Ghost guns are untraceable, most often self-assembled and can be put together with the help of a 3D printing machine and metal parts bought online in a matter of a few hours. They don’t have serial numbers which can make them almost impossible to track and regulate.

The United States of America, where gun laws have been a hotly contentious and angrily debated issue for decades now, is now faced with a new dilemma.