Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Moron

OMG! Gun Rights Absolutists Are Working to Tear Down the NFA! And They’re Making Progress! OMG!

By Dan Zimmerman

With the political winds blowing in its favor, the GOA began drafting language some time last year to remove suppressors and short-barreled long guns from the NFA. After sharing the proposal with a few industry leaders, they worked with sympathetic Republican lawmakers to wedge it into the budget reconciliation bill – Andrew Clyde on the House side, and Roger Marshall, Mike Crapo and Steve Daines in the Senate.

“We had the language and we had key members of Congress to introduce it,” [Luis] Valdes, the GOA spokesman, said. “We’ve been looking at challenging the NFA since GOA first came into existence 50 years ago. The NFA is clearly unconstitutional.”

The move came at a hospitable time, with Trump urging Congress to use the budget reconciliation process to pass his “big, beautiful” bill, spurring a flurry of hasty lawmaking.

Still, the NFA proposal touched off weeks of high-stakes wrangling. The version passed by the House only removed the tax on suppressors – an easy sell to moderate Republicans, but which the GOA viewed as far too watered-down. The Senate version included a full repeal of silencers and short-barreled long guns from the NFA, only for the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, to find that the proposal violated the “Byrd rule” that bars extraneous measures from consideration during budget reconciliation. The GOA responded with a national alert calling to “fire the anti-gun parliamentarian now!”

The final version of the sweeping budget bill left intact the NFA’s registration requirements, which include some extra paperwork and fingerprint submission, but dropped the tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns to $0. The changes left machine gun restrictions untouched.

It was a remarkably swift reversal of key provisions of one of America’s bedrock gun laws. But instead of declaring victory, when Trump signed the budget bill into law on 4 July, the GOA immediately filed what it called a “big, beautiful lawsuit” seeking to overturn the NFA restrictions on suppressors and short-barreled long guns entirely.

Within a month, 15 Republican-led states had joined as plaintiffs. On 1 August, the Firearms Policy Coalition, another gun rights group, filed a similar lawsuit, joined by the NRA. What had seemed like an outlandish position only a few months earlier was suddenly becoming the conservative political consensus.

— Roque Planas in Inside the gun absolutists’ bold plot to repeal one of America’s strongest firearms laws

*cough* Declaration of Independence *cough*

Image

This moron is the type of domestic enemy we swear oaths to defend the nation against. And he’s a Senator.
Since he doesn’t agree with the quotation, even though he may reside in the U.S. and even have been born here, he is not an American since these are some of the fundamental first principles the nation was founded on.

Well, he’s got several things wrong from the start. (pretty much standard for those with a Harvard education)  The most egregious about the 2nd amendment. It ‘allows’, or ‘gives’  nothing. The people already had RKBA before the U.S. was the U.S. The whole of the Bill of Rights are restrictions on government powers as written by the very authors in its own preamble

Democrats need to drop calling for gun bans and ask these two questions

Another day, another mass shooting — and yet another instance of our politicians failing to keep us safe from gun violence. We see pictures of mothers running barefoot to schools trying to get to their kids. We are told to give “thoughts and prayers” for children who were shot while literally praying. We are told there needs to be bans on guns in a country where there are more privately-owned guns than there are people.

As a liberal, I have lost complete faith that even the most caring Republican will do anything of value to stop gun violence in this country. The Republican (read gun lobby) position is that the more guns that are on the streets, the less safe it is, then we can bilk taxpayers for police budgets while getting people to buy more guns because it’s less safe.

We can see that in the “solution” that President Trump has for crime. But Trump’s use of the National Guard and federal agents walking around major cities won’t do anything to take guns off the street. That would not be profitable for the gun lobby.

But also, as a liberal, I have watched Democrats do the same song and dance over “common sense” gun laws that seem to lack common sense and are about as likely as Kanye West and Taylor Swift recording a duet together. As a gun owner myself, I often scoff or shake my head in confusion over the fact that Democrats could easily get the upper hand on the gun control debate by dropping the insistence on gun bans. They should instead be solely focused on gun trafficking and restrictions based on criminal convictions and mental health issues.

When you go out to the general public and say you want to ban guns you are destined to not get any traction.

Let’s put the whole Second Amendment aside for a moment. Owning a gun is a different experience in different parts of this massive country. I have lived in two Republican counties. When I lived in Waco, Texas you definitely needed a gun, especially when you went out into the boondocks. The police were far away and you could deal with anything from a criminal to a wild animal, so a gun would come in handy.

I now live in Orange County, Calif., where I feel no need to have a gun when I leave the house. There just isn’t a need (for me anyways).

When you scream about gun bans, that message will not resonate at all in either place. I may feel safe in California, but others don’t live in the nice community that I do. And going out into rural areas outside of Waco, you would be dumb not to have protection. Although people in both Texas and California want mass shootings to stop, we know that screaming for gun bans is a non-starter all over the country. And yet, Democrats will continue to scream for them.

It is time for a different approach. Democrats need to ask just two questions in order to get the legislation needed to bring down gun deaths.

First, does the Second Amendment give you the right to sell guns to a criminal?

Second, should a person diagnosed with schizophrenia be allowed to purchase a gun?

The Second Amendment clearly allows citizens the right to bear arms. Every single gun ban proposal runs face-first into that pesky part of the Bill of Rights, which is why many proposals to ban firearms fail.

Democrats need to get rid of this pie-in-the-sky notion that one day the Second Amendment will be repealed, or that Americans will wake up and turn in hundreds of millions of firearms. Instead of challenging gun ownership, they should challenge specific types of sales.

This is not a revelation. There have been calls to end gun show loopholes and private sales for a while. However, thanks to Trump’s insistence that federal law enforcement and National Guard get involved in local law enforcement, there is now an opportunity for Democrats as well. The NRA’s most hated federal entity is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Democratic governors should all invite ATF agents to come to their cities and insist that they go after gun traffickers, giving them a lot of latitude to do so.

The argument is sound. You have the right to bear arms, but you don’t have the right to sell arms to a felon, a drug dealer, a cartel member, a gang member, a terrorist, a foreign entity or other any other nefarious individual. Take that on the campaign trail and see Republicans try to explain that they are against that logic.

The best Republicans have come up with is “there is nothing you can do,” which is about as lazy as one can get. Especially since most firearms used in homicides are illegal or started off as legal and are somehow trafficked into criminals’ hands.

The second question is also politically incorrect but should be asked anyway. We know that the vast majority of gun deaths are suicides and that some mass shooters exhibit signs of mental illness. Again, the idea of red flag laws have been floated before, but the fear is that it is a gun ban as opposed to a question of safety. So, Democrats need to stop worrying about offending and be specific about whom they want to ban gun sales to.

“Should someone who is schizophrenic be able to buy a gun?” carries a lot more weight than: “We need red flag laws.” Identifying mental illnesses associated with suicides and mass shootings will force Republicans to answer why they want someone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder from owning a gun. Is this politically correct for Democrats? No. But politicians who are committed to reducing gun violence should not worry about offending people.

The Democrats have a huge opportunity to save lives, while not infringing on people’s right to bear arms. They need to stop focusing on gun bans and instead get aggressive on trafficking and mental illness restrictions. They should force Republicans to answer the following two questions: Why are you okay with gun trafficking? And why are you okay with mentally ill people buying guns?

Sticking with those two questions might finally break the political deadlock and this ridiculous cycle of shooting, thoughts and prayers, speeches, no action, and then dealing with another shooting.

The Irony of Attacking Prayer in Wake of Minneapolis Shooting

People offer thoughts and prayers after any tragedy. It’s the first thing they do, mostly because doing more requires more time and organization. And, in most cases, people understand that. They understand it perfectly well, and no one bats an eye.

After the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, though, we got a reminder that it’s only acceptable in the wake of some tragedies.

See, while some have mocked “thoughts and prayers” for some time, it got particularly ugly in the aftermath.

As if the slaughter of children amid screams and shattered stained glass wasn’t cause enough for grief, American opinion makers were convulsed once again this week in a debate over the role of prayer in the wake of a mass shooting, this time at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.

Those who support some legal restrictions on guns, often Democrats, say that Republican politicians who appeal to prayer are trying to distract from their own inaction on such things as red flag laws or stricter background checks on gun purchases.

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told a news conference after the shooting, in which an assailant killed two Annunciation students and wounded 18 other people attending Mass.

Of course, it’s not like Frey didn’t catch criticism for his comments.

Critics, especially on the right, chided the Democratic mayor.

“It is shocking to me that so many left wing politicians attack the idea of prayer in response to a tragedy,” Republican Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, posted on X. “Literally no one thinks prayer is a substitute for action. We pray because our hearts are broken and we believe that God is listening.”

The problem here isn’t that Democrats have a problem with thoughts and prayers specifically–oh, many do, but that’s not what this is about–it’s that they have a problem that our thoughts and prayers won’t force us to embrace their so-called solutions.

The preferred policies of many anti-gun lawmakers, mostly Democrats, tend to be soft on criminals and hard on law-abiding citizens. They’ve resulted in orders of magnitude more deaths than from all the mass shootings in this country’s history combined, but those aren’t relevant in their mind. Those are just good policies, and shame on you for bringing them up in the wake of some awful tragedy.

But they’ll politicize anything and everything when they get a chance, including the fact that pro-gun folks offer their thoughts and their prayers in the aftermath.

Look, my prayers are for the comfort of those who lost people they care about in the attack, because I’ve been there and I know it hurts. I offer prayers for those injured to heal quickly and completely. I offer prayers that those who were there can find peace in the wake of something indescribable.

And I’m not going to stop because some jackwagon thinks that my refusing to give up my rights because some other jackwagon did something terrible is something that should shame me into silence.

It won’t.

They think that our refusal to embrace the things they claim are solutions is some admission that we don’t care about anything, but where the hell was Frey telling us how the red flag law Minnesota passed failed to stop this horrific incident? Where was the admission that the killer sought out a gun-free zone where he could kill the innocent? Where was his acknowledgement of gun control’s complete and utter failure here?

There’s an irony here in people like Frey attacking prayer in the wake of a shooting that took place while the victims were literally praying. It’s a sick irony, but it’s still irony.

Especially since his policies failed, but he’s mad that we pray for the fallen but won’t back those same policies.

Minneapolis Mayor Who Attacked Prayer Now Moves To The Next Amendment Of The Bill Of Rights

Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey attacked gun ownership and the Second Amendment during an MSNBC appearance on Wednesday in which he doubled down on dismissing prayer.

Frey’s initial comments criticizing those who prayed came during a Wednesday morning press conference after an active shooter opened fire during an all-school mass held by the Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday morning, killing two children and wounding at least 17 other people. Frey praised “other countries” that passed sweeping gun control after shootings while appearing on “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

“We have more guns in America than people. Say that again. We have more guns in America than people. Why? Why is it so easy to get a gun? Why is it so easy to get a whole heap ton of guns? Why is it that you can buy a gun virtually every month if you wanted to? What good is that?” Frey ranted to host Jen Psaki. “We’re not talking about your father’s hunting rifle. We’re talking about people that have gotten guns that seemingly — in this case, legally — that obviously have a whole ton of mental health issues.”

WATCH:

“You’re not right in the head if you’re going to a church to shoot it up. You’re not right in the head. But the fact that you have guns, in fact, many, many guns, why is that okay?” Frey continued. “You know, this has gone down in other countries and they say, ‘You know what, we’re not going to allow this anymore. We don’t want this to happen anymore. We’re going to do something about it.’”

Australia carried out a mandatory “buy back” of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns after a 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur. Canada passed legislation banning over 1,500 types of firearms in the wake of an April 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that killed 23 people.

Other Democrats, including Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also called for gun laws, including a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” in the wake of the shooting. Frey’s comments drew praise from Klobuchar and CNN host Dana Bash during a Wednesday afternoon segment on the network, during which Klobuchar called for the ban on so-called “assault weapons.”

“Assault weapons” is a euphemism that gun-control advocates use to gain support for banning certain semi-automatic firearms with features that provide a cosmetic similarity to firearms capable of fully-automatic operation.

“What has incorrectly been termed an ‘assault weapon’ is a semi-automatic firearm that fires just one bullet with each pull of the trigger (versus a fully automatic firearm — machine gun — which continues to shoot until the trigger is released),” the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) said in a fact sheet. The NSSF estimated that over 24 million “modern sporting rifles,” which include the AR-15, are “in circulation” in a July 2022 release.

Ilhan Omar Loses the Plot with Anti-Gun Fear Mongering

As I’ve said a fair bit throughout the day, I know that the aftermath of mass shootings results in calls for gun control. What happened in Minneapolis doesn’t even really rise to the typical standard of a mass shooting, but two kids are dead and 17 other people were wounded, which means it’s bad enough that I won’t get into semantics right now.

But it would be nice for there to be something approaching sensibility in the calls for gun control. There’s no such thing as “common sense” gun-grabbing, as I noted earlier today, but there should be at least some attempt that looks like addressing the shooting.

Or, you could be Ilhan Omar and go in a completely different direction.

Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar cited today’s school shooting— committed by a Minnesota resident — and used it to demand federal gun control, even though the facts contradict her warning about outsiders bringing guns into the state.

A shooter opened fire during morning Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday while kindergarten through eighth-grade students attended, officials and news reports said. During an appearance on ” The Weeknight,” Omar used the tragedy to argue that Minnesota’s strict gun laws mean little without federal action, warning that residents from neighboring states could bring firearms across state lines and endanger her constituents.

“In Minnesota, we have strong gun laws, but Indiana is not that far away from us. And so we have to recognize as, you know, people who live in the United States, you know, a community like Minneapolis or just the state of Minnesota taking action does not prevent our neighbor from coming and harming one of our community members,” Omar said.

That’s right. It doesn’t really matter what Minnesota does because Indiana won’t do what Minnesota wants it to do.

These are the same people who tend to claim that the issue with preemption is that it doesn’t let local governments decide what works for them, yet here they are saying that every state needs to conform, regardless of what works for them.

Yeah, my days of taking Omar seriously are…well, they’re not even close to reaching a middle, actually.

The killer in this case didn’t come from out of state. He lived there. His mother worked for that school, for crying out loud. He was raised right there in Minnesota, from what we can tell as of this writing.

To make the claim that we need federal legislation because of something that happened exclusively within the borders of Minnesota, which showed that Minnesota’s current gun laws failed to stop a mass shooting, is especially stupid of her.

And that’s saying something.

Even if you did somehow pass national gun control laws, the truth is that criminals will bypass them because they’re criminals. Luigi Mangione is accused of building a gun and a suppressor and killing a guy. He could have bought a gun legally before his arrest, but he didn’t, because criminals don’t.

Plus, there are tons of massacres that have happened over the years that didn’t involve firearms at all, and that always gets missed or willfully ignored. With Omar, it could go either way.

This is the dumbest argument I’ve seen from an anti-gunner, and we’ll see it again. That’s the truly stupid thing here.

 How Fashionable Lefty Mission Creep and Allegations of Racism All But Destroyed One Prominent Gun Control Operation.

In late 2024, with finances tightening, [March for Our Lives] let go five employees — nearly a quarter of the staff. Seeking to refine its mission and funding pitch, the group brought in a consultant who interviewed board members, leadership, and staff, compiling “verbatim comments” from across the organization in a [confidential strategic] report. “We were all so convinced that we were going to rise up and not only crush Trump, but really show how much the youth care what’s going on in society with respect to gun violence,” one comment reads. “That didn’t happen.”

Many of the comments in the report are in tension — they clearly represent individual perspectives, not MFOL’s official views or policies. But themes emerge.

Some participants said the group’s message had become diluted, in part because it weighed in on issues like climate change, abortion, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This detracted from gun violence efforts and hampered fundraising, they said. A few people said MFOL needed to acknowledge that donors respond more to white kids affected by school shootings than to gun violence in marginalized communities. “We don’t utilize the Parkland narrative enough,” one comment reads. “Parkland still brings out a visceral reaction in people. We walked away from the Parkland narrative because people felt we needed to focus on Black and brown communities, but I would not walk away — especially in fundraising rooms.”

According to [former development director Zachary] Ford, it was largely board members who argued that by taking stands on too many causes, the group was turning off donors and abandoning its core purpose. Board members were wary of taking a position on Gaza, for instance, failing to appreciate that silence would harm the group’s credibility with its primary demographic, he said. The divide on Gaza illustrates a broader split that Ford described between staff — whom he characterized as young, assertive, deeply committed to issues of social justice, particularly around race — and the board, which was on the whole older, more buttoned-up, and wary of being divisive. But he stressed that these differences did not lead to the terminations. After the board called for a new direction, sparking concerns that work on behalf of Black and brown communities was in jeopardy, staff accused it of racism. Only then were employees fired, Ford said. …

Former staffers said that the board wanted one-off events that would spotlight the group and its cause, while staff were invested in the steady work of producing long-term results. “It was very clear that the board wanted something splashy, a viral moment, to go back to 2018 and 2019 and have those connections with celebrity, popular culture,” said a former staffer who requested anonymity because of the terms of a severance agreement. In recent years, several of the Parkland survivors who’d garnered public attention left MFOL, though Corin and high-profile board member David Hogg remain. (Hogg’s recent attempt to shake up the Democratic National Committee led to his departure from party leadership.)

The report identifies drawing young people to the group’s cause as another challenge. “We need to think about how to pull Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z-ers in,” reads one comment. “There is a whole generation that does not feel connected to this movement.” Another concern was maintaining authenticity as a youth crusade when so much direct support came from an older demographic, particularly white women. “At one point, 80 percent of our following was middle-aged white women. We focused our message on them, and it was effective,” a comment reads. “That’s when we were raising money.”

— Will Van Sant in They Rallied the Nation After the Parkland School Shooting. Years Later, Their Group Is Floundering.

If This Is Their Best Argument Against National Reciprocity, They Should Give Up Now

Concealed carry reciprocity at the federal level is more likely to happen now, before the midterms, than at any other point in history. It’s still an uphill fight, but President Trump has promised his support, and others are rallying to the cause. That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, there are still enough senators who can filibuster the bill that it makes it a challenge to get it to the president’s desk.

Still, gun control groups are digging in for a fight. They’re trying to lay the groundwork for their attacks on the bill, but if they look like this, they should just give up now.

Let’s start with the headline, because it matters. It reads, “More Than 2,800 Non-Self Defense Deaths Involving Concealed Carry Killers Since 2007, Latest Violence Policy Center Research Shows.”

Note the language here: “concealed carry killers” versus “non-self defense[sic] deaths.”

That’s an important point that will come up here in a bit.

Now, for the “argument”:

Concealed handgun permit holders are responsible for at least 2,817 deaths not involving self-defense since 2007, according to the Violence Policy Center’s (VPC) ongoing Concealed Carry Killers (concealedcarrykillers.org) project, an online resource that provides examples of non-self defense killings involving private citizens with permits to carry concealed handguns in public.

This latest update comes as legislation endorsed by the gun lobby and firearms industry has been introduced in the U.S. House (H.R. 38) and Senate (S. 65) to allow individuals with state-issued concealed firearm permits to carry their weapons in any state that issues carry permits or does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms. The bills are currently moving through the committee process.

Overall, Concealed Carry Killers documents 2,552 fatal, non-self defense incidents since May 2007 in 40 states and the District of Columbia, resulting in the deaths of 2,817 people. Thirty-eight of the incidents were fatal mass shootings as defined by federal law (three or more victims killed), resulting in the deaths of 186 victims. At least 24 law enforcement officers have died at the hands of concealed carry killers since May 2007.

VPC Government Affairs Director Kristen Rand states, “While the firearms industry and gun lobby push for coast-to-coast concealed carry, real-world facts show that concealed handgun permit holders are far more likely to kill themselves or innocent victims than use their gun in a justifiable homicide.”

Of course, they note that there are no official records keeping track of this, so they have to base all of their so-called research on news reports and whatever limited data they can get from the states, but let’s start off by looking at the raw numbers presented here. They maintain that the actual numbers are probably higher, which might be true, but probably isn’t. Still, let’s look at what they’ve got because that’s what we have.

It’s been 17 full years since 2007, and I’m making an assumption they’re not including any information from this year–which isn’t a safe assumption, to be fair, but for the sake of argument, I think this will be fine–which means we’re looking at 165.7 “deaths” by concealed carriers per year.

Sure, those are all tragic, to be certain, but when you look at nearly 46,000 “gun deaths” each year, it’s not even a drop in the bucket.

“But Tom, those ‘gun deaths’ include suicides. Isn’t that apples and oranges?”

A fair question, good reader, but it’s not. Why? Because the VPC does the exact same thing.

In the vast majority of the 2,552 incidents documented in Concealed Carry Killers (2,435, or 95 percent), the concealed carry permit holder either died by suicide (1,732), has already been convicted (614), perpetrated a murder-suicide (65), or was killed in the incident (24). Of the 77 cases still pending, the vast majority (61) of concealed carry killers have been charged with criminal homicide, five were deemed incompetent to stand trial, and 11 incidents are still under investigation. An additional 40 incidents were fatal unintentional shootings involving the gun of the concealed handgun permit holder.

The fact that someone has a concealed carry permit has nothing at all to do with their suicide. Plenty of people take their own lives with guns while lacking carry permits. Others use different means of doing the same thing. Suicide numbers really shouldn’t be included in a look at “concealed carry killers,” now, should it? Not if you really want to make the case that national reciprocity will make people less safe.

Interestingly, the chart they include has a section for “self-defense/no verdict,” which makes no sense at all if you’re trying to claim these aren’t self-defense shootings.

Still, if we decide to accept the remaining numbers at face value–mostly because they don’t include any total on those “self-defense/no verdict” numbers–we end up with 1,085 deaths attributed to concealed carry permit holders. That’s an average of just under 64 killings per year. That’s versus an average of just under 18,000 murders with firearms.

That’s not a problem. That’s statistical noise.

Then we have their interpretation of these claims.

VPC Government Affairs director Kristen Rand is quoted as saying, “While the firearms industry and gun lobby push for coast-to-coast concealed carry, real-world facts show that concealed handgun permit holders are far more likely to kill themselves or innocent victims than use their gun in a justifiable homicide.”

Except that’s not the case at all, and even the anti-gun The Trace knows that’s not true.

How do I know that? Because look at their report on defensive gun uses, which looked at both Gun Violence Archive numbers and numbers from The Heritage Foundation.

Gun Violence Archive, the Kentucky-based nonprofit that tallies gun-related incidents in near-real time, also counts DGUs. But it only captures incidents that make the news or are reported to police. And GVA includes incidents involving illegal gun possessors as well as legal owners, including shootouts as well as stand-your-ground shootings. GVA recorded 8,394 DGUs from 2017 to 2021, which works out to an average of 1,678 a year. But that’s likely a massive undercount.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, launched a DGU tracker in 2019 that relies on media reports, but counts only defensive gun use by lawful owners. Heritage tallied 2,106 shootings from 2019 to 2021, for an average of 702 per year. The group cautions that it’s “not intended to be comprehensive” because “most defensive gun uses are never reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media outlets.” That’s a common belief among pro-gun advocates, some of whom believe the 2.5 million figure is, in fact, too low.

Both of these totals are much lower than the 165.7 per year average noted above. It’s worth noting, though, that these are compiled through media reports, just as VPC’s numbers are. If their estimates are low, then it stands to reason that we’re right about the defensive gun use totals also being low, especially since a lot of them never make the news.

And if you remove suicides from the equation, as you should, the difference is even more stark.

However, then we need to consider concealed carry holders versus society as a whole, since this whole report was intended to imply that they’re a danger to society.

Joe LoPorto, the Director of Legal Operations for the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate, did a little math, passed along to me, comparing per capita rates overall. Here’s what he told me:

The VPC, financially backed by the Joyce Foundation, itself a President Obama pet project with over $1 billion in assets has been running its Concealed Carry Killers database for years. We all know the numbers they are producing are massively inflated. However, even when taken at face value and considering the most conservative estimate of the number of Americans with a concealed carry permit (rounded down to just 20 million), their own data support our point.

Based on their own data, presented by VPC in a way to look as inflammatory as possible, the murder rate amongst the population of concealed carry permit holders in the U.S. would be 2.7 per 100,000 people, or less than half the murder rate of the overall U.S. population at 5.9 per 100,000. Again, based on their inflated numbers, the suicide rate of concealed carry permit holders would be 5.0 per 100,000 or about 1/3rd that of the overall U.S. population at 14.2 per 100,000.

Even accepting their inflated statistics, their own data show that concealed carry permit holders in the U.S. are substantially safer than the overall U.S. population.

New Jersey is the perfect example.  Before Bruen, virtually no one was able to obtain a concealed carry permit. In the years since Bruen, nearly 100,000 New Jerseyans obtained concealed carry permits… and the violent crime and gun crime rates in the state declined.

Peaceable people exercising their core constitutional rights in the U.S. are not the problem.

That last bit, especially, is absolutely correct.

On every level, their entire premise falls apart. The attempt to demonize concealed carry permit holders fails in the face of literally any other evidence. It only works in a vacuum, and there’s no such thing in the world of media today.

Seriously, this is so absolutely pathetic that they should hide in shame for the next thousand years or so.

Make it make sense: Gun grabbers come out against fighting crime

A gun control nonprofit that wants to disarm Americans has come out against President Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., crime crackdown.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, known these days as Brady: United Against Gun Violence, issued a lengthy statement on Monday condemning Trump’s ongoing D.C. crime crackdown.

The statement began by describing the one-day Jan. 6 riot as “the worst outbreak of mass violence in recent District memory.”

Recall that only one person died during the riot: Rioter Ashli Babbitt. Meanwhile, 99 people have been murdered in D.C. this year alone.

The statement continued by using possibly falsified crime data to claim violent crime in D.C. “has fallen precipitously since 2023 and were at a 30-year low the day the president returned to the Oval Office.”

Hilariously, the statement attributed this alleged low to the Biden administration’s otherwise widely panned policy decisions.

According to the White House, the reality is that “D.C.’s murder rate is roughly three times higher than that of Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than that of communist-run Havana, Cuba.”

The statement from Brady president Kris Brown concluded with her suggesting that Trump’s federal police are the ones “endanger[ing]” D.C. residents, not the hordes of violent criminals running the streets.

“We cannot allow the president to suggest that federalized police is an appropriate response to any and all challenges; or that federalized police do not further endanger the public, especially Black and Brown communities who live and work in or visit D.C.,” it read.

So, in other words, the same people who want to disarm Americans, thus making them prey to criminals, also want to effectively disarm the police, making residents even more prey to criminals. It makes no sense, especially when you factor in how the locals actually feel.

Last year, dozens of business groups with offices in D.C. penned a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser expressing “deep concern about the alarming increase in violent crime across our city.”

 

“D.C. is quickly becoming a national outlier in rising crime, and the trends are alarming,” the letter read. “Our organizations are primarily based in the downtown business district, where there have been horrifying acts of violence.”

“Innocent people in neighborhoods across the city have been targeted in robberies, carjackings, and seemingly random acts of violence,” the letter continued.

D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton has also raised concerns about the city’s violent crime epidemic.

“We stand with the President in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,” he said in a statement. “Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.”

He reiterated this during an appearance this week on Fox News’ “America Reports“:

 

As for Brady, last year it also came out against self-defense, arguing that guns “are rarely used successfully in self-defense.” The stunning claim prompted a fact-check from Breitbart.

“Academic work by Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck shows that, at a minimum, guns are used to protect life and property at least 760,000 times a year,” the fact-check reads.