Category: Crap For Brains

Skynet smiles

Dystopia Arrives in San Francisco: Authorities Introduce Policy Granting Robots a License to Kill.

In this episode of Dystopian Moments on the Left…

While I hesitate to make comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian account of a future totalitarian state in the classic “1984” while writing about the crazy goings on in today’s America, what term is better suited when dystopia finally arrives? That is if you consider killer robots taking out human beings in the streets.

The San Francisco Police Department has submitted a proposal to city officials, which is likely to be approved on November 29, that would give robots the license to use deadly force against suspects who threaten the lives of citizens or police officers — with military-style weapons, no less.

Look, I’m all in on the notion that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, but — and maybe it’s just me — robots armed with military-style weapons killing human beings sounds a bit creepy and, well, Orwellian. Nonetheless, as reported by Mission Local, the draft policy reads:

Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when the risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.

San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of the draft last week, which will face the Board of Supervisors on November 29th, where it’s likely to sail through. The Board will also be required to sign off on the purchase of any new military-style equipment, but the police will be able to replace existing equipment up to a value of $10 million without approval.

Tifanei Moyer, senior staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, wrote in an email, as noted by Mission Local, that the policy isn’t standard and that legal professionals and citizens should reject the idea.

We are living in a dystopian future, where we debate whether the police may use robots to execute citizens without a trial, jury, or judge. This is not normal. No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.

That’s a bit nonsensical in my book, given that an officer in the same situation, as outlined earlier, would make the same deadly force decision — or would he or she? Jennifer Tu, a fellow with the American Friends Service Committee, appears to disagree:

There is a really big difference between hurting someone right in front of you, and hurting someone via a video screen.

The SFPD has 17 robots in its arsenal, 12 of which are fully functional. According to police spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca, they have never been used to attack anyone. That appears about to change. If the policy is approved as expected, it will just be a matter of time before a robot takes out a suspect.

Hell, let’s extrapolate. How long will it be before deadly robots patrol the crime-infested streets of cities across America? If it someday happens, would that be a good thing or bad? Questions abound.

On November 29, San Francisco and its citizenry will likely take a giant step forward — or would that be backward?  All the way to George Orwell’s 1984.

BLUF
Biden may have directly named Elon Musk at that press conference, but his threat was aimed at every household in America.

Biden’s not-so-subtle lurch toward dictatorship

In the wake of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden was asked during a rare press conference, in reference to Twitter’s new owner, whether he thought Elon Musk was a threat to national security. With a pause and a smirk, the president said that topic was “ worthy of being looked at. ”

With those words, Biden made it clear that if you even seem to oppose his politics, your private life will be under the direct scrutiny of the state. Despite his constant prattle about saving our democracy, Biden seems to think he’s running an authoritarian police state.

In truth, the federal government already maintains entities that review acquisitions such as Musk’s for anything from foreign influence to anti-competitive business practices. After many months in which Musk’s negotiations to purchase Twitter happened in full public view, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that she sees no basis for the government to investigate that purchase.

Despite Musk’s having followed the law, Biden, on a whim, wants to change the game. Suddenly, and after years of Twitter and other social media having significant foreign investors, a normal and transparent voluntary transaction is a potential “threat to national security.”

Biden signaled his desire to strip off the veneer of the rule of law and use the power of the presidency as a dictator would—by his whim and without respect for the rules that everyone else must abide by.

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He used that ‘no redeeming social value‘ line because he believes it has some magical power over the courts. Where his senile brain got it was when SCOTUS in Memoirs v. Massachusetts required that to prove obscenity it must be affirmatively established that the material is “utterly without redeeming social value”

Biden Protected by Very Guns He Says Have ‘No Redeeming Value’

President Joe Biden is protected by semiautomatic firearms yet told reporters Thanksgiving morning that he cannot understand how sales of semiautomatic guns continue, as they have “no social redeeming value.”

Biden said, “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It has no social redeeming value.”

(Can you even imagine a world in which Secret Service agents are standing around with six-shot revolvers in their holsters?)

After criticizing semiautomatics, Biden pledged anew on Thanksgiving to ban “assault weapons.”

Ironically, again, Biden is protected by “assault weapons.”

Breitbart News reported that Biden was given a Secret Service detail during the 2020 presidential campaign and from that time till now, agents are around him 24/7 to keep him safe.

A source told Breitbart News such a detail meant Biden would be protected with semiautomatic pistols and rifles — perhaps ARs and/or Sig Sauer MCX platform firearms. There was also the strong possibility of fully automatic firearms being part of the equation. The latter category of firearms consists of submachine guns, such as the H&K MP5. (An MP5 is a true “assault weapon.”)

Biden’s agents rely on semiautomatic platform firearms to protect him from bad guys, yet Biden criticizes such guns being for sale for average citizens who need to protect their own lives everyday. The key phrase: “No social redeeming value.”

Fauci Deposition report: “he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his Covid response!”
Louisiana AG Jeff Landry: “Wow! It was amazing to spend 7 hours with Dr. Fauci. The man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon ‘the science.’ Only to discover that he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his Covid response!”

The deposition of Anthony Fauci took place today in the lawsuit commenced by Louisiana and Missouri, alleging that numerous Biden administration officials colluded with and directed big tech and social media giants to censor dissenting scientific and medical voices with regard to Covid.

We covered the case and the court order for Fauci (and others) to testify under oath in these posts:

We don’t know much about what happened. The deposition, while it was recorded, was not streamed. And there apparently is a protective order prohibiting the parties or those in attendance from separately recording.

In advance of the deposition, Missouri Attorney General (and Senator-elect) Eric Schmitt promised they would attempt to get answers from Fauci:

“Tomorrow, along with my colleague from Louisiana, my Office and I will depose Dr. Anthony Fauci in our lawsuit against the Biden Administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor freedom of speech,” said Attorney General Schmitt. “Since we filed our landmark lawsuit, we have uncovered documents and discovery that show clear coordination between the Biden Administration and social media companies on censoring speech, but we’re not done yet. We plan to get answers on behalf of the American people. Stay tuned.”

Well, it’s not clear how many answers were given. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who attended the deposition, tweeted that Fauci had a lack of memory

Wow! It was amazing to spend 7 hours with Dr. Fauci. The man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon “the science.” Only to discover that he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his Covid response!

 

Jenin Younes, an attorney from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, representing the physicians and scientist who were attacked after signing The Great Barrington Declaration, was present, and observed:

One of my favorite quotes from Fauci’s deposition today: “I have a very busy day job running a six billion dollar institute. I don’t have time to worry about things like the Great Barrington Declaration.”

The other one, which I didn’t write down carefully enough to claim is verbatim, is: I was too busy developing a vaccine that saved millions of lives to care about what happens on social media.

 

At some point we’ll find out more about the deposition, and what Fauci forgot.

Fauci is leaving his post in December, before Republicans take control of the House. He will be the subject of House committee investigations and will be subpoenaed to testify.

UPDATES

 

I’ll paraphrase Mussolini:
“All within the narrative, nothing outside the narrative, nothing against the narrative.”

Controversial Take: It’s Bad To Put Words In The Mouths Of Murder Victims
On Ben Collins and the scourge of opportunistic post-tragedy commentary

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, Ben Collins, who “covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News,” gave what I found to be a very strange soliloquy about Club Q, an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs where five people were killed and about 18 injured by a man named Anderson Lee Aldrich on Saturday night.

Collins subsequently tweeted a link to it (archived here):

Collins starts by asking, “Am I doing something wrong here?” Then he runs down his and his colleagues’ tireless coverage of anti-LGBT rhetoric on the right, reading a bunch of headlines that are splashed on-screen:

He then says, “And I’m just wondering — what could I have done different? Seriously. As reporters, what can we do different?”

To be blunt, I found this obnoxious and solipsistic. Not everything is about journalists. The probability that any mass murder has anything to do with anything Ben Collins or his colleagues did (or didn’t do) is approximately nil. This is just a very strange, self-absorbed way to understand the world.

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The Supreme Court grants cert for trademark lawsuit over chewable dog toy designed to mimic Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle

 

Now accepting the point that trademark law is an important part of U.S. business, I still find it near ridiculous that SCOTUS will take such a case, and give it the same consideration, and time, that is given any other case they decide to take, instead of likely bypassing one or more of the 2nd amendment cases that undoubtedly come their way during the current session.

I mean…a doggie toy?

Jack Daniel’s Seeks to Take Dog Toys Battle to Supreme Court

Nov. 20, 2020 [NOTE THE DATE! SCOTUS has had this for two years!

Along with weighty matters of state like the presidential election and the future of health care, the U.S. Supreme Court’s tasks could include deciding whether trademark law has an exemption for potty humor.

Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. is petitioning the high court to reverse a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that a maker of dog toys could sell one shaped like the company’s familiar whiskey bottles. The appeals court held that VIP Products LLC’s pun-laden chew toy expressed a humorous message, involved the First Amendment, and satisfied the so-called Rogers test for incorporating trademarks into creative works.

That upset a balance between trademark law and free speech by dramatically and baselessly over-extending the Rogers test for evaluating trademark use in “artistic expression,” Jack Daniel’s and trademark groups argue. VIP Products this week secured a four-week extension of its Wednesday deadline to file a response asking the high court to reject the Jack Daniel’s petition.

The Ninth Circuit’s interpretation “would completely gut the trademark and dilution statutes,” trademark attorney James H. Donoian of McCarter & English LLP said. He said he couldn’t understand the basis for the dog toy being deemed an artistic expression, bristling at the court finding mere “humor” to be enough.

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D.C. Activist Who Pushed for City’s Soft-on-Crime Bill Shot and Killed

Kelvin Blowe was shot and killed in Washington, D.C. on the same day the city council voted unanimously to pass a bill he advocated for that reduces penalties for serious offenses such as robbery, burglary, carjackings, and carrying a firearm without a license.

The Washington Post reports Blowe had spent over five years in prison for robbery and the experience “instilled in him a passion to right inequities he believed he encountered.”

 After getting out, he joined DC Justice Lab, one of the groups that pushed to overhaul the city’s criminal code. He testified in support of the proposed bill in December.

The Marine Corps veteran, who was diagnosed with PTSD, was working as a security guard and was taking coworkers home last week when he was shot and killed when a gunman “emerged from a stolen car after a crash with Blowe. Authorities said they believe Blowe also possessed a weapon, as they recovered a gun next to his body…Blowe’s family said they did not know he had a weapon.”

After the crash occurred, Blowe got out and approached the car when he was then shot. It is not known if Blowe pointed his firearm at them. The suspects fled the scene and have yet to be found.

“It is very difficult to accept that someone who survived the worst of what we have to offer — sent off to the military, sent off to prison — couldn’t survive living on the streets of D.C.,” Patrice Sulton, a civil rights lawyer and executive director of the DC Justice Lab, told the Post “He dedicated himself to preventing the exact kind of harm that befell him.”

“The bill passed earlier this week, reduces the mandatory minimum sentences, which are already lenient for gun offenders [and] felons in possession of illegal guns,” D.C. Police Union Chief Shop Steward Adam Shaatal said in reaction to the news.

Republicans in both the House and the Senate have voiced opposition to the bill that was approved this week. Rep. Jame Comer (R-KY), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, previously told Townhall they will work to prevent the bill from becoming law should Mayor Muriel Bowser signs it since they have jurisdiction over the city.

MEDIA LOSES ITS MIND OVER “RAMBO STYLE KNIFE” USED IN IDAHO QUAD-MURDER

That the media is prone to hyperventillation over anything weapon-related should hardly come as a shock. Our friends in the firearms community face it all the time when the media label what to many is just a light range trip worth of guns and ammunition an “arsenal”. Well they are at it again, and this time it is the knife community’s turn in the barrel, as the media frenzy over the quadruple homicide in Moscow, ID rages.

If you haven’t tuned into the news this week, 4 University of Idaho students were brutally stabbed to death over the weekend, and the Police seem to be at a loss. Their decision to focus on the potential murder weapon, looks to this reporter like an attempt to give the media anything in the face of very few public leads. The murder weapon remains undiscovered.

I am not a forensic expert by any means, though I took a few forensic anthropology classes in graduate school and I understand how the coroner reached their conclusion as to the nature of said weapon. The wound channels from the stabbings would have particular characteristics in terms of size and shape, and from this they have deduced that they match the characteristics of one of the most, if not the most mass-produced and iconic American fixed blade knives, the USMC Mark 2., commonly known as the KA-BAR.

KA-BAR USMC MK. 2 (from KABAR.com)

From Idaho Statesman:

Moscow police appear to be searching for a “Rambo”-style knife involved in the killing of four University of Idaho students, a store manager said Wednesday. Scott Jutte, general manager of Moscow Building Supply, told the Idaho Statesman that police have visited the store more than once to ask whether the retailer sold anyone Ka-Bar brand knives, which are also known as K bar knives. Idaho State Police spokesperson Aaron Snell told the Statesman on Thursday that detectives visited several local hardware stores that may carry “fixed-blade type knives,” but that they weren’t solely asking about Ka-Bar knives.

Ka-Bar, of Olean, New York, manufactures military-grade blades that were originally designed for use by American troops in World War II.

Jutte said a police officer stopped by the home improvement store and lumber yard off North Main Street in Moscow to speak with him on Monday. “They were specifically asking whether or not we carry Ka-Bar-style knives, which we do not,” Jutte said in an interview. “If we did, we could’ve reviewed surveillance footage. But it wasn’t something I could help them with.” Jutte said he is familiar with the military-style weapon, even though his store doesn’t sell it.

He says he is “familiar with the “military style weapon””…

I am trying to figure out what is specifically “military” about the KA-BAR, other than its history of course. The name of the Mk. 2 in Government-bureaucratese is “Knife, Fighting Utility”. Fighting is a verb, something you could do with it, not a description. I can fight you with a stapler. An entrenching tool is a devastatingly effective melee weapon. We don’t call a “Fighting Shovel”, no matter how efficiently it can be used as such.

Utility is a good descriptive word, as they are used for everything from prying open crates to opening ration cans. The “KA-BAR” (originally made by Camillus, PAL, and others under WWII contract) was much better at these tasks than the WWI era M1918 Trench Knife, with its more fragile, less utilitarian stiletto blade and single grip knuckle-duster hand guard.

The USMC Mk.2, now manufactured by KA-BAR Knives Inc. of Olean, New York, remains one of the most popular fixed blade outdoor knives in existence. A good portion of this is due to its military heritage. Many a serviceman or has carried the knife on deployment, even into combat just like their grandfathers before them. They are an heirloom quality tool, and it is entirely possible that someone actually carried their Grandfather’s own knife in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Of course plenty of civilians, this writer included, own one as well. It is an extremely robust and useful knife to have in the woods. It can shave, baton, drill, and all of the other tasks one might need in the field. I imagine that there is at least one in 20% or more of households in Idaho given the lifestyle and demographics. And that doesn’t count other fixed blade hunting knives as well of which Idaho most certainly has an abundance.

I feel for KA-BAR, which is being dragged by the media online. They slant their coverage to imply that anyone who owns this most common of fixed blades is some sort of survivalist nutball. It is expected, but disheartening.

Where they have made a heck of a jump is to apply the “Rambo” label to the knife. Rambo carried two different Jim Lile custom knives in the First Blood Movies:

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An additional take on the morning’s mendacity by the 3rd circuit court

Appeals Court Cites Bigoted Historical Laws to Uphold Ban on Non-Violent Felons Owning Guns

The federal government can continue to block non-violent felons from possessing firearms.

That’s what a three-judge panel for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday. It found the federal law barring those convicted of non-violent felonies from possessing guns is consistent with the country’s history and tradition of gun regulation. The court specifically relies on historical laws that disarmed disfavored minority groups to reach that conclusion, despite referring to that history as “repugnant” and “unconstitutional.”

“The earliest firearm legislation in colonial America prohibited Native Americans, Black people, and indentured servants from owning firearms,” the court’s per curiam opinion reads. “Likewise, Catholics in the American colonies (as in Britain) were subject to disarmament without demonstrating a proclivity for violence.”

The ruling is the first from a federal appeals court to deal with the federal prohibition on felons having guns after the Supreme Court created a new standard for reviewing gun cases in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which requires modern gun laws to be substantially similar to those in place near the ratification of the Second Amendment in order to be considered constitutional. An established circuit precedent upholding felon-in-possession crimes, even for non-violent offenders, could prove influential as courts flesh out how the new Bruen standard affects modern gun laws.

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Portland’s Antifa ‘Justice’ Strikes Again

A Portland “anti-fascist” activist has been found not guilty of being a fascist by roughing up a journalist and stealing his phone because he didn’t like what the reporter said about his Antifa friends. After the Portland judge let off the notorious Portland Antifa attacker, he delivered a lecture to the victim, reporter Andy Ngo.

There’s your justice, Portland.

Ngo sought justice in court for three-and-a-half years against John Hacker, one of a mob of activists that has made a point to follow, chase, hassle, and attack Ngo multiple times.

 

The Post Millennial reported that Hacker confronted Ngo in a Portland area 24 Hour Fitness where he assaulted the reporter, poured water on him, and stole his phone. Ngo captured part of John Hacker’s attack on video.

“The shaky video is less than 30 seconds long, but prosecutors say it’s a key piece of evidence showing Hacker approaching Ngo, grabbing the device, and yelling, “I will break your f*cking phone,” the news website reported.

The Deputy District Attorney argued before the judge that Hacker had conducted a “harassment campaign targeting Ngo for years.”

Indeed, Hacker was part of a mob that chased Ngo in downtown Portland, forcing the journalist to seek a hiding place at a posh hotel.

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DeWine allies push for passage of STRONG Ohio gun bill in lame duck session

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine cruised to re-election last week, defeating Democrat Nan Whaley by an eye-popping 25 points. Now the governor, who signed Constitutional Carry into law back in March, is hoping to spend some of his newly-acquired political capital to put several new gun control measures on the books, and his allies in the state legislature are doing everything they can to help.

The bill in question is SB 357, and though it’s been bottled up in committee for most of the year, there’s now a push to move the bill forward during the legislature’s lame-duck session that started this week.

An attempt to revive some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence, stalled in the General Assembly since 2019, faces a timeline that’s hard to meet.

State Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, is trying to resurrect some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence that stalled in the legislature in 2019. His Senate Bill 357 will get a first hearing, but also faces a tight timeline. The bill includes a “red flag” provision, better background checks, some limitation on private sales, and using $175 million in federal funds to improve mental healthcare.

Gov. Mike DeWine has signaled approval of the bill, which includes some of the ideas he unsuccessfully floated following the August 2019 mass shooting in Dayton’s Oregon District.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee held its first hearing on SB 357, but didn’t hold a vote on the measure. Dolan, meanwhile, has made a few tweaks to the legislation, which would create a new category of prohibited persons, require adults under the age of 21 to have a co-signer for all gun purchases, and establish a “seller’s protection certificate” that is designed to encourage (but not require) background checks on private transfers of firearms.

“Everything in this sub bill is about before you buy a gun,” said Dolan, who chairs the finance committee.

During months of campaigning for the Nov. 8 election, legislators heard people statewide asking what they’d do to prevent gun violence, he said.

From speaking with healthcare personnel, law enforcement and others, it became clear the state’s current involuntary commitment program is not sufficient to identify all the at-risk people who shouldn’t be able to buy guns, Dolan said.

His substitute bill adds a sixth “disability” to state laws preventing people from buying guns. Existing ones prohibit fugitives from justice, felons, those who committed juvenile crimes that would be adult felonies, drug addicts and alcoholics, and those with established dangerous mental problems from buying guns, he said.

Dolan’s bill adds people who go before a behavioral risk assessment team and have been determined to be a “suicidal or homicidal risk.”

Ohio law already prohibits people under age 21 from buying handguns, he said. His bill would add that under-21 buyers of other guns would need a cosigner age 25 or older. There are exceptions for anyone under 21 in law enforcement or the military, Dolan said.

For some reason Dolan’s really focused on the fact that these provisions are all directed at individuals before they purchase a firearm, though that doesn’t mean that any or all of his proposals would be constitutional or effective.

Take his new category of prohibited persons, for example. The supposed reason to add those who’ve been determined by a behavioral risk assessment team to be a “suicidal or homicidal risk” is that the state’s current involuntary commitment law isn’t working as well as it should. Seems to me the proper legislative response would be to determine why that’s the case and work to fix the existing law, rather than avoiding improving the state’s mental health system by making it easier to deny some individuals the ability to purchase a firearm. If someone truly is a risk to themselves or others, simply denying them the ability to purchase a firearm at a gun store isn’t going to make them any less dangerous, but Dolan’s bill treats guns as the issue and not the supposedly dangerous individual.

There are also major issues with Dolan’s desire to force young adults to find someone who’ll sign off on their gun ownership. The co-signer assumes some legal liability if the under-21 gun buyer were to misuse the firearm; an extraordinary provision that is unlike any existing (or historical) gun regulation that I’m aware of. Not only would this have a chilling effect on the Second Amendment rights of young adults, it’s hard to see how this restriction even remotely fits with the text, history, and tradition of the right to keep and bear arms.

SB 357 has been floating around the Ohio legislature in one form or another since 2019, and so far it’s received a very cool reception from the Republican majority. Clearly DeWine is hoping to capitalize on his overwhelming victory last week, but whether or not his Republican colleagues in the statehouse have had a change of heart about his gun proposals is still very much up in the air. The first test will be a vote in the Senate Finance Committee, and Ohio gun owners should be reaching out to those committee members to share their concerns before the bill has a chance to reach the Senate floor.

Canned Response? White House, Seattle Students Blame Guns, Not Suspects

UPDATED: The reaction to tragic shootings—one at the University of Virginia and the other at Seattle’s Ingraham High School—has been predictable, according to Second Amendment advocates, with the White House and Seattle school students demanding gun bans with no mention of holding the suspects responsible.

Following the shooting death of a 17-year-old student at the high school, police arrested a 14- and 15-year old. The older teen had a Glock pistol in his backpack believed to have been used in the hallway shooting. According to court documents obtained by Liberty Park Press, the pistol had been reported missing 11 days earlier and was posted with the National Crime Information Center as a “lost gun” by the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 28.

Seattle students put forth two demands:

  • Mental health counselors in every school that represent the diverse backgrounds of students, at least 1 per every 200 students
  • Demand Governor (Jay) Inslee call a special session in Olympia to ban all semi automatic (sic) weapons

In Washington, D.C., the White House issued a statement in reaction to the triple slaying of three student athletes at the University of Virginia. An arrest has already been made in that case, which reportedly involved a handgun.

Yet, in a statement released by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the Biden administration said “We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets.” It does not appear this crime involved any kind of so-called “assault weapon.”

The White House statement mentions nothing about prosecuting the man suspected of the killings.

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, took the president to task for trying to “exploit” the tragedy in an attempt to push his gun ban agenda.

“This horrible crime had absolutely nothing to do with so-called ‘assault weapons,’ and the White House knows it,” Gottlieb said. “The statement, which the president had to have approved, amounts to a crass exploitation of a tragedy in a deplorable effort to advance Joe Biden’s gun ban agenda. He has fully embraced the despicable tactic of never letting a crisis go to waste, no matter how awful the situation.”

As in the case of the UVA shootings, the Seattle Student Union has not called for swift justice in the high school murder. The King County, Washington prosecutor’s office has filed a first-degree murder charge against the 14-year-old suspected killer, plus a first-degree assault charge and a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. The 15-year-old is charged with unlawful firearm possession and felony rendering criminal assistance.

According to charging documents against the juveniles, the recovered pistol, chambered in .357 (SIG) was apparently empty. Eight spent shell casings were recovered at the crime scene.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell used the high school murder to resurrect his demand for repeal of Washington State’s firearm preemption statute, which prevents city and county governments from creating their own patchwork of local gun control ordinances. Preemption laws have been adopted by more than 40 states over the past three decades because they provide uniformity to each state’s gun laws.

Meanwhile, Virginia authorities have charged Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr. with three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony, according to Fox News. Two other students were wounded in the incident, and hospitalized.

It’s not a bug, but a feature

Police Chief: UVA Threat Assessment Team Was Alerted About Shooting Suspect in September

University of Virginia (UVA) police chief Timothy Longo said the school’s threat assessment team was alerted about shooting suspect Christopher Darnell Jones in September.

Jones allegedly shot five individuals at the UVA campus’ Gilbreth Garage on Sunday, killing three and leaving two wounded, Breitbart News reported.

Chief Longo announced the capture of Jones during a Monday morning press conference, the Richmond Times-Dispatch noted.

During that same Monday morning press conference, Longo noted that Jones had been brought to the attention of UVA’s threat assessment team in September 2022.

“Our office of student affairs reported to multidisciplinary threat assessment that they received information that Mr. Jones had made a comment about possessing a gun to a person who was unaffiliated with the university,” Longo said.

Longo said that police do not believe the person who reported Jones’ gun ever actually saw the gun.

He noted that “the office of student affairs followed up with the reporting person and made efforts to contact Mr. Jones.”

Longo noted that Jones also came to the threat assessment team’s attention via alleged “involvement in a hazing investigation of some sort.”

He noted that Jones also had “a criminal incident involving a concealed weapon violation outside the city of Charlottesville in February of 2021.”

An friend terms posts like this übërpösts™ (in other words: It’s looong)
I’ll append commentary and observations from around the net.

Observation O’ The Day
It’s a look into the smartest minds of the enemy. Joe Huffman

The Ad Industry’s Plan to Fix America’s Gun Crisis

If you want a crude sketch of the biggest corporate players in a given year of TV, look no further than the Emmy Award for best commercial. Twenty-five years of winners form an ensemble cast of petty bourgeois preoccupations: Nike, Chrysler, Bud Light. This year’s nominees included a commercial for Meta (the artist formerly known as Facebook), one for Chevy (repping the still-muscular auto spend), two for Apple (a perennial contender), and two for the prevention of school shootings—one of which won the Emmy.

PSAs Killed Cigarettes. Can They Help End Gun Violence?

PSAs Killed Cigarettes. Can They Help End Gun Violence?© Getty; The Atlantic

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