Category: Rights

Armed Women of America National Conference Opens Doors to Public

2023 Armed Women of America National Conference Opens

Names like Lena Miculek, Mike Seeklander, Miyo Strong of SmartDefense, Terry Vaughan, Nikki Burgett, Cheryl Todd of Gun Freedom Radio, Karen Butler of Shoot Like a Girl, Shelley Hill of The Complete Combatant, Vicki Farnam, and more are all bringing some of the best techniques and education to one spot this August.

2023 Armed Women of America National Conference

Covering topics like off-body carrying, staying calm in a crisis, safeguarding life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, self-defense, developing a personal response plan for an active threat, and so much more, the National Conference & Leadership Summit is personal protection education for women at its best.

Included in this action-packed weekend is hands-on shopping with industry brands like Ruger, Glock, Crossbreed Holsters, Gunsite Academy, Laser Ammo, ErgoGrips, Walkers, MantisX, Premier Body Armor, OTIS Smart Gun Care, CoolFire Trainers, Taurus USA, and many more. Topping it all off is plenty of social networking, add-on pre and post-conference workshops, and fun! Where else can you get this much content and connection in one place? Nowhere.

Previously reserved for chapter leadership, the Armed Women of America is opening its annual conference doors to all members, skill levels, and interests. Beyond that, in recognizing the incredible growth in women shooters, they are opening weekend EXPO to the general public. All of this offered for hundreds less than a single ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.

If you’ve not heard of the Armed Women of America (AWA), they are a non-profit organization with chapters across the country where women gather regularly to learn and grow in their abilities to handle firearms safely, responsibly, and competently. They offer a welcoming, non-intimidating place for women to learn more about topics including firearms safety, personal protection, concealed carry, mindset and so much more. The meetings offer classroom and range time, all under the guidance of certified women instructors who volunteer their time. Their vision is that women have the skills, mindset, and training to defend themselves and those in their care.

Justice, for once!

Last month I wrote about a case that the Pacific Legal Foundation was arguing before the Supreme Court.

At issue in the case, Tyler v. Hennepin County was the outright theft of Geraldine Tyler’s home equity. Geraldine is 94 years old, and currently living in a nursing home, having been driven out of her condo due to high crime (caused by the failure of the city and the county to enforce the law).

She fell behind in her property taxes, and the county sold her condo and kept all the money, including equity that remained after paying her tax bill.

It was an appalling act of government theft, but of course, appalling and government are often found in the same sentence.

Well, the Supreme Court ruled on the case today, and the news, for once, is good. The good guys won by a unanimous decision. Every single Justice agreed that Hennepin County is a bunch of lying, thieving, greedy, and tyrannical bunch of MFers.

Uh, maybe that last part is hyperbole. They only said lying, thieving and greedy. None of the Justices would swear in an opinion.

Governments are very big on seizing property. And in this case, the seizure was particularly galling because much of the money owed was due to penalties, not taxes. A small GoFundMe would have gotten the taxes paid off in a few days, but at 94 such things don’t generally occur to a person, and she had nobody to think of such matters.

The Court’s decision seems like a no-brainer, but then again it should have been for lower courts. The fact that she won in the Supreme Court is great news, but the fact that it had to be decided there is very bad news indeed. The county in which I live–and in many others around the country–have been stealing money from taxpayers without remorse.

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And with CHF and CAD/CAM-CNC manufacturing, such ‘forensics’ are even more problematical

FYI, this is a l-o-n-g article.

Devil in the grooves: The case against forensic firearms analysis
A landmark Chicago court ruling threatens a century of expert ballistics testimony

Last February, Chicago circuit court judge William Hooks made some history. He became the first judge in the country to bar the use of ballistics matching testimony in a criminal trial.

In Illinois v. Rickey Winfield, prosecutors had planned to call a forensic firearms analyst to explain how he was able to match a bullet found at a crime scene to a gun alleged to be in possession of the defendant.

It’s the sort of testimony experts give every day in criminal courts around the country. But this time, attorneys with the Cook County Public Defender’s Office requested a hearing to determine whether there was any scientific foundation for the claim that a specific bullet can be matched to a specific gun. Hooks granted the hearing and, after considering arguments from both sides, he issued his ruling.

It was an earth-shaking opinion, and it could bring big changes to how gun crimes are prosecuted — in Chicago and possibly elsewhere.

Hooks isn’t the first judge to be skeptical of claims made by forensic firearms analysts. Other courts have put restrictions on which terminology analysts use in front of juries. But Hooks is the first to bar such testimony outright. “There are no objective forensic based reasons that firearms identification evidence belongs in any category of forensic science,” Hooks writes. He adds that the wrongful convictions already attributable to the field “should serve as a wake-up call to courts operating as rubber stamps in blindly finding general acceptance” of bullet matching analysis.

For more than a century, forensic firearms analysts have been telling juries that they can match a specific bullet to a specific gun, to the exclusion of all other guns. This claimed ability has helped to put tens of thousands of people in prison, and in a nontrivial percentage of those cases, it’s safe to say that ballistics matching was the only evidence linking the accused to the crime.

But as with other forensic specialties collectively known as pattern matching fields, the claim is facing growing scrutiny. Scientists from outside of forensics point out that there’s no scientific basis for much of what firearms analysts say in court. These critics, backed by a growing body of research, make a pretty startling claim — one that could have profound effects on the criminal justice system: We don’t actually know if it’s possible to match a specific bullet to a specific gun. And even if it is, we don’t know if forensic firearms analysts are any good at it.

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Dër GrëtchënFührër® is at it again.

Michigan governor signs red flag gun law, questions linger over enforcement

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave final approval Monday afternoon to a red flag law that aims to keep firearms away from those at risk of harming themselves or others as the state grapples with ways to slow gun violence in the wake of its second mass school shooting.

Michigan joined Minnesota as the second state in under a week to implement a red flag law after Democrats in both states won control of both chambers and the governor’s office in November. New Mexico previously was the last state to pass a red flag law in 2020.

Whitmer signed the legislation just outside of Detroit, flanked by state lawmakers and individuals affected by gun violence. Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who began campaigning for gun safety after she was shot in the head in 2011, was also in attendance.

“We have heard too many times from those who knew a mass shooter who had expressed concern in advance about that mass shooter’s intentions,” Whitmer said Monday. “With extreme risk protection orders, we have a mechanism to step in and save lives.”

The new law, also known as extreme risk protection orders, is expected to go into effect next spring. It will allow family members, police, mental health professionals, roommates and former dating partners to petition a judge to remove firearms from those they believe pose an imminent threat to themselves or others.

The judge would have 24 hours to decide on a protection order after a request is filed. If granted, the judge would then have 14 days to set a hearing during which the flagged person would have to prove they do not pose a significant risk. A standard order would last one year.

Michigan became the 21st state to implement a red flag law. Questions remain of whether the state will have better success in enforcing it than others have. An Associated Press analysis in September found that in the 19 states with red flag laws, firearms were removed from people 15,049 times since 2020, fewer than 10 per 100,000 adult residents.

Some local sheriffs in Michigan have told The Associated Press that they won’t enforce the law if they don’t believe it’s constitutional. Over half of the state’s counties have passed resolutions declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, opposing laws they believe infringe on gun rights.

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Four Reasons For The Crime Increase
Whenever Anyone Tells You Guns are the Reason for the Rise in Crime, Show Them This Article

Miss Swearer hits another home run

The entirety of the American system of government rests on two very simple yet profound premises—that every human being is endowed by our Creator with natural and unalienable rights, and that the only just end of government is to secure these rights for its citizens. Unfortunately, far too often, ill-considered progressive policies not only fail to adequately secure Americans’ natural rights from criminals who would undermine them, but actively worsen the problem by making it harder for peaceable citizens to defend themselves. Here are four specific policies that routinely make us all less safe and that, after crime rates predictably rise, are then used as excuses from gun-control proponents to further restrict our right to keep and bear arms.

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Daydreaming the Guns Away

We find ourselves living in a highly consequential time for the legal clarification of the 2nd Amendment. Extremely aggressive, wide-ranging bans of semi-automatic firearms have been enacted in various parts of the country, drawing legal challenges. While the ultimate resolution of these challenges is unknowable, many observers believe the Supreme Court will eventually arrive at a decision prohibiting the wholesale banning of semi-automatic firearms. Those who dream of eliminating all private gun ownership in the United States face the prospect of a devastating legal defeat.

One can imagine their looming disappointment. They have failed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would effectively redefine the 2nd Amendment out of existence, and they are about to bear the consequences of that failure. But from their perspective, there is comfort to be had in the prospect of eventually stripping the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution altogether, no matter how long it may take.

Such is the hope that animates aspiring intergenerational social reformer Allan Goldstein, who, in his “Let’s get serious and repeal the Second Amendment” has stepped forward to boldly launch a 50-plus year plan to eradicate all privately owned firearms in the United States.

Perhaps the piece might have been better entitled “Let’s Get Hysterical.” How galling it must be to be deprived of so obvious a good — a gun-free society — on account of something as frivolous as an obsolete, suicidally-construed constitutional amendment. On Goldstein’s account “[t]he Supreme Court has decided that ‘a well-regulated militia’ includes gang bangers and wild-eyed loners with a grudge.” What a shame Goldstein did not bother to provide a citation to the Supreme Court decision in which this is asserted.

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States Attack Private Shooting Ranges as ‘Antigovernment Paramilitary Training Camps’

The small town of Pawlet, Vermont – population 1,386 – has been feuding with Daniel Banyai for years over two shooting ranges he built on the 30-acre property he’s owned since 2013.

Neighbors complained about the noise and said Banyai and his friends are super scary. Town officials said Banyai built structures on his land without applying for any zoning permits.

In 2021 Banyai told the Associated Press his property, which he calls Slate Ridge, is a “safe and environmentally friendly place for people to discharge their firearms.”

None of that mattered to Pawlet town officials. After their initial zoning efforts failed, they sued Banyai in Vermont’s Environmental Court, which ordered him to remove the unpermitted structures and earthen berms within 135 days. Banyai ignored the ruling, and in February the Environmental Court held Banyai in contempt of court. He has been racking up civil fines at the rate of $200 per day ever since.

“Respondent has demonstrated a willfulness, perhaps even an enthusiasm, for disregarding the Town’s Bylaws, this Court’s Orders, and the authority of the Judiciary,” Vermont Environmental Court Judge Thomas Durkin said in his order.

Attempts to contact Banyai for this story were unsuccessful.

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Bob McManus: Alvin Bragg didn’t trust a grand jury to do his bidding in Daniel Penny subway chokehold case.

Daniel Penny, the Marine Corps veteran who fatally subdued a deranged, threatening vagrant on the subway last week, was arraigned Friday on manslaughter charges in Criminal Court.

Anyone who expected differently in DA Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan hasn’t been paying attention.

Penny had put Jordan Neely, a career criminal who was terrorizing the F Train May 1, into a chokehold; Neely subsequently died — and thus the charges.

In less bizarre times — that is, before America lost its bearings on matters of crime, criminals, and simple justice itself — the case wouldn’t be complicated: A vagrant was menacing subway passengers, a straphanger reacted, the vagrant died — and a grand jury could be trusted to do the right thing.

But those days are history.

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Ordinary Men Will Save Our 2nd Amendment

U.S.A. — The 2nd Amendment is one of the most important barriers to tyranny. Our Founders knew that he who has the guns, has the power. The fight for those guns, between those who want control and those who want to preserve freedom, has become especially fierce in recent decades. The enemies of freedom have become much craftier and have been able to use the legal system to their advantage in many cases. However, every once in a while, ordinary men do extraordinary things and often don’t realize the impact on future generations they will have.

In the Bruen case out of New York State, an extraordinary new precedent was created when Judge Clarence Thomas declared gun laws must meet “historical tradition.” Did he know the impact he would have? Did he know that he would be giving the 2nd Amendment new life?

Let’s go back a bit further to two men named Brandon Koch and Robert Nash. Koch and Nash were denied their concealed carry permit in the State of New York because they did not show “proper cause” according to the State. The State of New York had decided, despite the 2nd Amendment, that they would be the authority to which New York residence would plead their case and request permission to carry a gun outside their home. The anti-gun group The Giffords Law Center agreed that licenses are only granted to individuals who show “proper cause,” which means applicants must “demonstrate a special need for self-defense.” The irony of course would be in whom would determine the parameters of “special need” and “proper clause.”

You’ve heard the anti-gun crowd use terms like, “nobody needs to carry a gun in public,” or “nobody needs an AR 15,” or “Nobody needs ten rounds to kill a deer.” The word “need’ is used to get people comfortable with the idea that rights are not actually rights but government issued privileges measured by a metric of need that Democrat legislatures will determine. The New York legislature literally wrote “need” into law when they implemented the “proper cause” requirement. New York Citizens would now be required to demonstrate a compelling “need” prior to being allowed the “privilege” of exercising a “right.” God granted the right to self-defense, New York Democrats believed they can take it away.

Brandon Koch and Robert Nash had a different understanding of rights and privileges and proceeded to take on the fight of their lives. In the process, reminding all those who were watching why it is important for ordinary men to stand up in the face of tyranny. With help from the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, the nearly 8-year process to shut down the State’s overreach had begun.

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2nd amendment history

So often heard is “Why would Founding Fathers want people to have arms? The 2A is obviously about state militias!”
Well, here is correspondence from the Revolution which shows why.
The Continental Army couldn’t arm recruits, and recruits showed up unarmed.

Four guns for 100 men!

It’s a constant refrain. Arms needed. Cartridges and lead needed.

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Not a Second-Class Right – The Second Amendment

On July 25, 2022 the Second Amendment rightfully rejoiced about an historic decision from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). In this now famous case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, (now commonly referred to as Bruen) the court dropped the hammer on the bigotry the 2A Community has faced for far too long.

In that ruling, the court reiterated an earlier statement form SCOTUS regarding the Second Amendment in a case referred to as McDonald: “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 780”

In Bruen, the court went even further declaring: “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”

These were very groundbreaking and profound statements from the highest court in the U.S. It should have meant the immediate end of modern gun control as we know it. Sadly, those of us who have been in the trenches for a long time knew it wouldn’t be. Like many other communities that have faced social bigotry in the past, we knew the anti-civil rights crowd would fight to create scorched earth policies for lawful citizens.

There is one piece of this that really hasn’t been talked about. The phrase: “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right…”

As simple as it sounds, is it really? What does that one statement mean to the rest of Bill of Rights? The 2A Community needs to be shouting loud and clear that the ruling clearly means that whatever government does to the Second, it must also apply to every civil right, period! Imagine the true breadth of this.

If government, as a nation or state, places restrictions on or precents you entirely from exercising your Second Amendment civil rights, then why should we trust you to vote intelligently and responsibly? How about sitting on a jury? If we are not supposed to trust you with a gun, why would we ever trust you to dispense justice fairly? If, for example, a single drunk driving conviction with no jail time permanently revokes your Second Amendment rights, why should it no revoke all the rest.

Imagine all those people who believe healthcare and higher education are civil rights. Now imagine the public outcry if they were to lose those rights because they were declared “unsuitable”? There would be riots in the streets and possibly a real insurrection.

What if anyone running for any public office had to meet the local standards and restrictions faced by the 2A community? After all, if someone is not eligible under local laws to exercise their 2A civil rights, then why should they have the ability to pass laws about it? How interesting would it be for the local police chief to have suitability authority over political candidates.

If all of this seems a little far-fetched it is only because the Second Amendment being treated as a true civil right is sadly a brand-new concept. If indeed the Second is not a “second class” civil right, which it is not, then there is going to have to be a profound awaking across the board with all civil rights. Moving forward, the message from the 2A community to government officials everywhere and the anti-civil rights crowd: “Whatever you do to us, you must do to everyone and every civil right, period. If what you propose is not acceptable for any other civil rights, then it is not acceptable for the Second!”

INSLEE’S TRAINING REQUIREMENT FOR GUN BUYERS SAME AS LITERACY TEST FOR VOTERS

BELLEVUE, WA – Washington Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee this morning signed legislation requiring gun buyers to provide proof they have completed a firearms training course before being allowed to complete their transaction, but the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is calling this the equivalence of a “literacy test” that was used to discourage voting by minorities in the South.

“We’re talking about rights in both cases,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “For Jay Inslee or any other Democrat to contend ‘this is different’ suggests they’re either dishonest or delusional, and perhaps a little bit of both.”

House Bill 1143 explicitly states on Page 2 that the purchaser of a firearm provides proof of completion of a recognized firearm safety training program within the last five years that complies with the requirements set down in the second section of the bill. The legislation is part of the radical Democrat push to make Washington gun laws prohibitively restrictive when the Article 1, Section 24 of the state constitution explicitly states, “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired.”

“This requirement, along with the 10-day waiting period, seem like impairments to us,” Gottlieb stated. “When the governor earlier this year compared this requirement to getting training before being issued a license to drive, he ignored one very important point, and he knows it. Driving is a privilege, but keeping and bearing arms is a right protected by both the state and federal constitutions, and there is nothing in either of those provisions about training, or waiting.

“Inslee and the Democrats can couch this any way they want,” he continued, “but it adds up to the same thing. These requirements are designed to discourage Evergreen State citizens from exercising their constitutionally-protected and enumerated rights.

“Democrats in the Legislature are not only at war with Washington gun owners,” Gottlieb concluded, “they have also declared war on the state and federal constitutions, and the built-in protections for law-abiding firearms owners. As we’ve said many times, this isn’t about guns, it’s about rights.”

Analysis: Will Tennessee GOP Governor’s Red Flag Proposal Change the Debate?

The Volunteer State is the place to watch for the country’s most interesting gun law debate right now.

As gun policy moves forward along preestablished partisan lines in red and blue states, Tennessee is the one place where a policy outside those lines has some chance of passing. Republican Governor Bill Lee, motivated by last month’s Nashville school shooting, is pushing the Republican-controlled legislature to pass a modified “red flag” law, which he has relabeled an “order of protection” law. But, unlike many previous proposals, Lee appears to be working to address common critiques levied against the temporary gun confiscation orders.

“Throughout the last couple of weeks, I have worked with members of the General Assembly – constitutionally minded, second amendment protecting members – to craft legislation for an improved Order of Protection Law that will strengthen the safety and preserve the rights of Tennesseans,” Lee said last week. “We all agree that dangerous, unstable individuals who intend to harm themselves or others should not have access to weapons. And that should be done in a way that requires due process and a high burden of proof, supports law enforcement and punishes false reporting, enhances mental health support, and preserves the Second Amendment for law-abiding citizens.”

Since gaining prominence as a possible solution for mass shootings in the wake of the 2018 Parkland shooting, “red flag” laws have been dogged by complaints that they don’t offer sufficient protections for the rights of those accused of being a threat to themselves or others.

In most states that have adopted them, the civil orders can be filed by a wide array of groups, including some where nearly anyone can file for one. They don’t provide a public defender for those accused. They can be granted in ex parte hearings where the accessed isn’t even notified of the proceedings. And it can take weeks after their guns are seized before subjects of the orders can challenge them.

Lee identified these shortcomings as the main problem with policies in other states that he said “don’t deliver the right results.”

“They don’t actually preserve the constitutional rights of Tennesseans in the best way possible, and they don’t actually get to the heart of the problem of preventing tragedies,” he said. “This is hard. I’ve said that all along.”

He’s announced plans for a special session to pass the expanded protection orders. That was requested by GOP House Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison, who said it was unlikely a bill could be put together with enough support to pass before the end of the regular session. While Lee hasn’t backed any specific bill yet, he has announced the sort of changes he wants.

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Court Finds Geofence Warrants to be Unconstitutional

As far as potential privacy violations at the hands of law enforcement go, the so-called geofencing stands out.

It’s a dragnet-style type of mass surveillance that determines a geographical area (typically as a criminal investigation is in progress — but the authorities really could use it for anything) — and then all those who happened to be in those confines, at a given time, with their mobile device broadcasting their location and other personal data, are basically fair game for searches.

Concerning and extremely sketchy — particularly without proper legal safeguards or even proper warrants — to say the least. And to say the most, straight up unconstitutional, on account of the Fourth Amendment (protecting from unlawful searches).

The latter definition of the practice is what the California Court of Appeals has gone for when it recently ruled in the People v. Meza case, during the appeals stage of the proceedings.

While it might sound logical to observers, the court’s decision is still very significant — digital rights group EFF says — because it set a precedent, being the first time a US appellate court looked into a geofence warrant.

“Dragnet” means that instead of saying who the suspect is and going after them, their online accounts, etc., law enforcement agencies have reportedly been taking it upon themselves to go the easiest route – not to put too fine a point on it, but just “digitally round up everyone” – and then decide if any of these people were involved in a crime.

According to EFF – thanks to this vast, to say the least, database of everyone’s location – it is mostly Google who is asked to go through that data to identify users in a “geofence” delimited by law enforcement.

The Court of Appeal had problems with all this. But all is not as good as it might seem.

In the case at hand, the court found that the warrant that was operated under did not succeed in placing “any meaningful restriction on the discretion of law enforcement officers to determine which accounts would be subject to further scrutiny or deanonymization.”

The court was also not happy, to say the least, that people could be identified “within six large search areas without any particularized probable cause as to each person or their location.”

People can lie all they want. I’m not disarming, and I’ll call such liars, a liar to their faces.

Lies Aimed at Disarming You

Lies come in many shapes and sizes. Some are simple exaggerations. Some are absurd falsehoods. Unfortunately, we tend to believe a bald lie if it is expressed with enough emotion. That outrage also keeps viewers watching and clicking so the press is often more interested in outrage than in the truth. A lie doesn’t become the truth if it is repeated, but the lie may help politicians get re-elected if it is repeated by enough likely voters. We need to call out every lie we see even if that means calling “respected elected officials” liars. Congressman Jamaal Brown, you lie. Representative Jimmy Gomez, you lie. You lie because you say you want to save lives, yet you pretend that more gun-control laws will actually protect our kids. That is a lie and I’ll prove it right now.

Why would politicians hide the truth behind their emotional outbursts? The simple answer is that politicians lie to get what they want. They want press coverage and campaign contributions. Democrat Congressman Jimmy Gomez of California said that Republicans should resign from office if they are not going to pass more gun-control legislation. Democrat Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York yelled at reporters that “Republicans won’t do sh-t when it comes to gun violence.” Implied is the lie that gun-control laws actually save lives, and that anyone who won’t pass more gun-control laws is either corrupt or heartless. Both claims are a lie. Maybe if their Democrat controlled cities weren’t so corrupt then there would be fewer young men shooting at each other on the streets of the congressman’s districts. I think gun control is a distraction from their many failures.

Gun-control costs lives and endangers our children in school. Before you can believe that you need to know that armed defense by ordinary citizens is common. We use a firearm to stop death or great bodily injury about 2.8 million times a year. That is over 4600 times a day. In addition, ordinary citizens with a gun prevented several million more crimes than that. Your armed neighbors probably stopped tens of thousands of murders. Armed citizens probably stopped over a hundred-thousand sexual assaults. These armed good guys stopped an immense about of harm. That is good, but our virtue doesn’t stop there.

We started to train and arm volunteer school staff a decade ago after the mass-murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. We have accumulated several thousand man-years of experience with these armed volunteers. You might have missed that their efforts worked in the best possible way: their mere presence prevented attacks at their school. Let me underline that for you.

We have never had a mass-murder at a school that had a program of trained and armed school staff.

Perspective is everything when we want to understand the truth. Only one-criminal-out-of-six uses a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. Criminals use firearms about a quarter-million times each year and they violate our “gun-control” laws millions of times each year. That means that gun control is a failure. In contrast, we defend ourselves with a firearm about 2.8 million times every year. Mass murderers take about 600 lives a year. We protected hundreds of thousands of our children with armed school volunteers. If you haven’t heard it before then I’m telling you now, armed defense is much more common than the criminal use of a firearm.

Gun-control politicians say their laws disarm criminals. In fact, their 23-thousand gun-control regulations disarm far more honest citizens than criminals. Mass murderers deliberately attack us in gun-free zones where we are disarmed by law.

Politicians and the news media don’t tell us everything we need to know to make a reasoned decision. It is deadly public policy to solve a small problem by creating a larger one. We can’t save hundreds of lives by sacrificing tens-of-thousands. If we really want to save lives, then we’d repeal our gun-control laws rather than passing more of them. That won’t work for gun-control politicians who need to shout in public to get reelected. If gun-control advocates really wanted to save lives, then they would stop lying.

How many more innocent lives should we sacrifice on the altar of gun-control?

I’m giving you facts, but facts don’t matter to gun-control ideologues. For them, the ideal of gun-control is an end in itself rather than an instrumental means to save lives. Mass murders are simply an excuse to disarm more honest citizens.

I am not running for office, but I am trying to influence your opinion. Lies matter when we want to deceive. Facts matter when we want to save lives. Time and again, Democrats and Socialists in the USA have said that only Democrats care about children, and everyone else doesn’t care if kids die. I’m calling that a lie. Lives matter to me and they matter to you.

It is uncomfortable to call someone a liar but it gets easier with practice. I did it this time. I’m asking you to do it the next time you hear them lie about us.

SloJoe doesn’t think children belong to their parents, but to the state. Expect this clip to go nation wide next year during campaign season.
And those sunglasses again. Speed (amphetamines) cause the eyes to dilate and make open sunlight painful. Every time you see him wearing the shades, it’s because they’ve had to drug him up just to get him moving.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
aaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
He’s wrongheaded about why – quite normal for a leftist bordering on full commie – but I don’t care as long as they give up and shut up.

The Grim Truth: The War on Guns Is Lost

…..That’s something that people who support gun control measures need to understand: The war is lost. There is no conceivable way for things to change for the better within the next 20 to 30 years, short of a national divorce. There is no way to change hearts and minds of Republicans or the courts. There is no way to change who is in office in most states. There is no way to replace who sits on the courts quickly or change conservative disdain for stare decisis……

 

America’s Censorship Regime Goes on Trial
Missouri v. Biden will test the government’s ability to suppress speech in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’

Ernest Ramirez, a car-wash technician in a small, south Texas town, led a simple but fulfilling life with his son, Ernesto Junior. Junior was a “wonderful child, full of smiles.” Ramirez had raised his son alone; he’d never known his own father and sought to provide Junior with the paternal love he had missed. A talented baseball player, Junior dreamed of playing professionally. The two lived paycheck to paycheck but were happy because, as Ramirez put it, they had each other.

Then, on April 19, 2021, 16-year-old Junior—who had no previous health problems—received the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Five days later, the young athlete collapsed while running. By the time the elder Ramirez arrived at the hospital, having been told he could not ride in the ambulance with his son, Junior was dead.

According to the autopsy report, the cause of Junior’s death was an “enlarged heart.” Upon receiving the news, Ramirez lost all desire to go on living. But after the initial shock subsided, Ramirez decided to travel and speak about Junior’s fate, in hopes that he could help other families avoid similar tragedies.

That plan proved more difficult than Ramirez anticipated. In September 2021, GoFundMe removed an account he had opened to raise money for a trip to the nation’s capital to share his son’s story. “The content of your fundraiser falls under our ‘Prohibited Conduct’ section,” the company’s email explained. Ramirez lost the donations he had thus far received. Two months later, Twitter took down a photograph Ramirez had posted depicting him standing beside Junior’s open casket, along with the caption “My good byes to my Baby Boy” followed by three brokenheart emojis. Even a father’s simple expression of grief was apparently forbidden by the social media platform’s government-supported censorship regime.

Around that time, Ramirez met Brianne Dressen, a 40-year-old woman who had volunteered for the AstraZeneca vaccine trials and suffered a severe adverse reaction diagnosed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as “post-vaccine neuropathy.” Her varied and acute symptoms at times required use of a wheelchair and drastically curtailed her ability to participate in her young children’s lives.

For a time after her diagnosis, Dressen fell into a severe depression. However, during the spring of 2021, she discovered online support groups for vaccine-injured individuals and their family members. Connecting to others who understood her plight greatly improved her outlook on life, and she began serving as an administrator of several of the groups.

But in July 2021, less than 24 hours after Dressen participated in a press conference with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Facebook shut down one support group’s account. Though participants had merely discussed their often-harrowing personal experiences and shared medical treatments that they found helpful, Facebook claimed they were spreading harmful “misinformation” that warranted the group’s removal.

The cascade of shutdowns of support groups and accounts belonging to the vaccine injured on Facebook and other social media platforms continues to this day. Ramirez, Dressen, and others learned that when their accounts weren’t suspended or removed, they were shadow-banned—meaning that the platforms’ algorithms buried their posts so that they were rarely, if ever, viewable, even to like-minded individuals facing similar health problems. In Dressen’s words: “The constant threat of having our groups shut down and our connections pulled apart left me and many other members and leaders frozen, unable to communicate and connect with those who needed our help the most. We spent more time managing the chaos of the censorship algorithms that continued to evolve, than we did actually helping people through the trauma of their injuries.”

The obstacles encountered by Ramirez, Dressen, and thousands of other individuals with similar experiences and opinions were in no way coincidental or accidental. Nor were they the result of a series of errors in judgment made by low-level employees of social media platforms. Rather, they were the products of concerted efforts at the highest levels of the American government to ensure that individuals with opposing viewpoints could not be heard, contrary to the guarantees made to every American citizen in the Bill of Rights. One purpose of these unconstitutional actions to violate the rights of American citizens was political gain.

As COVID-19 inoculations became widely available to the American public, the Biden White House came to view vaccine hesitancy as a significant political problem. Beginning in spring 2021, the administration explicitly and publicly blamed social media platforms for vaccine refusal: By failing to censor “misinformation” about the vaccines, the president infamously alleged, tech companies were effectively “killing people.” The president’s incendiary accusation was accompanied by threats of regulatory or other legal action (should the companies refuse to comply) from various high-ranking members of the administration, including former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Psaki boasted that government officials were in regular touch with social media platforms, telling them what and in some cases even whom to censor.

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