Category: Safety

Europe on Fire Proves the Value of Our Second Amendment

As arsonists, rioters and looters swarmed the streets of Paris Sunday night, French police were completely ineffective and President Emmanuel Macron and his wife were off attending a concert, which featured Céline Dion.

Well-planned rioting and thievery are taking place throughout France and other European countries. Some say the actions are coordinated by the extreme far left and will continue unabated. France is still six months away from its next presidential election.

Europe is on fire.

Its victims are on their own.

Extreme anti-gun laws throughout the continent have helped fuel the fires.

France has some of the strictest anti-gun laws in the world.

For a permit to purchase a “sporting arm”—not a handgun or a semi-automatic rifle—the applicant must be 18 years old and possess a valid hunting license or a shooting club membership. The applicant must also have completed and passed a medical exam, a mental health exam, an extensive criminal background check and government-approved firearm safety training.

Once they’ve completed all of these legal requirements, they are required to submit an application to their local police. This alone can take months or even years. Many applicants have been rejected for no reason.

Even if they manage to pass the requirements and purchase a firearm, concealed carry is outlawed. Gun safes are required. Ammunition must be stored separately, and law enforcement can conduct an in-home inspection whenever they want.

Anyone caught violating these rules can face the loss of the firearm, stiff fines and years behind bars.

France’s stiff anti-gun laws have had a horrific impact on the ongoing crime spree.

One female shop owner in Paris tried to reason with the masked rioters as they calmly walked past her into her shop and stole her merchandise.

“What’s the point of doing this?” she asked the criminals who paid her no mind.

If she had a firearm, she might have been able to stop them, right?

This is the point where many will point to our Second Amendment and claim that the riots spreading across Europe could never happen here.

Unfortunately, that is not true.

We have far too many large America cities where the Second Amendment has been bankrupted by local politicians, where the crazy French gun-ownership requirements seem almost par for the course, where only the bad guys have guns.

Try to buy an AR, magazines and ammunition in New York, Boston or Washington D.C. and you will soon learn this is true.

Millions of Americans are being stripped of their Second Amendment rights by their state and local politicians. Honest, hard-working Americans are serving decades in state prisons for “offenses” that aren’t even considered illegal in free states. Meanwhile, those of us who live in states that recognize the value of the Second Amendment often take for granted the pain and suffering the victims and their families are going through.

“Move!” we tell them. “Get out of New York!”

This, friends, needs to change, and we can help make the change.

When we hear about the decades in prison someone received in a deep blue state for an “offense” that’s not even considered a crime in the rest of the country, we should be spurred into action. After all, we are still one country.

Our Second Amendment rights are simply magnificent. They allow us to defend ourselves. However, we need to ensure that every American has equal access to these rights—as the Founders intended—regardless of where they have chosen to live.

We need to make this a key issue while we have a President and an administration who value both our concerns and the Second Amendment.

We need Second Amendment rights and protections for every American.

How to Use Cover, Tactics for Self-Defense

Cover is a gift from the heavens if someone tries to kill you with a long-range, portable hole puncher. Cover projects a literal blanket of security that sits between you and certain death. I guarantee anyone reading this owns a gun for self-protection and likely carries the gun for self-defense purposes. If you carry a weapon and intend to defend your life and the life of your family, then you need to know how to use that bulletproof heavenly gift.

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“When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” is once more proven true.

First 30 Seconds: The Active Shooter Problem
by Ed Monk

“Ed Monk is today’s leading expert on thwarting mass murderers. His recommended strategy is by far the most effective, as proven in cases where the defenders did what Monk suggested.” — Massad Ayoob

The basic tenet of Mr Monk’s solution is simple;

“Fighting back quickly gives the best chance of a low victim-count. Fighting back without a gun has often worked. Fighting back with a gun has almost always worked.”

Fitting Together Two Self-Defense Frameworks

Ability, Opportunity, Jeopardy & The Five Elements: how two self-defense frameworks fit together.

Spend enough time studying the law of armed self-defense and you will eventually run into two influential ways of thinking about when deadly force is justified. Massad Ayoob has spent decades teaching ability, opportunity and jeopardy—the AOJ triad. Attorney Andrew Branca, author of The Law of Self Defense, offers a five-point framework: innocence, imminence, proportionality, avoidance and reasonableness.

More than a few gun owners have seen these as competing systems. Which one do you pick? But that’s the wrong question. AOJ and the five elements aren’t rivals. Rather, they are complementary frameworks and understanding how they fit together makes both more useful.

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From her quoted statements, she wants to make it less dangerous for her gangs.

Minnesota: Somali Democrat Mayor Pushes Gun Ban as Fix for Somali Gang Crime

St. Louis Park Mayor Nadia Mohamed (D), the first Somali-American elected mayor in Minnesota, suggests the solution to Somali gang gun violence is to ban firearms.

A clip of Mohamed expressing her support for a gun ban has made the rounds on social media.

Bearing Arms quoted part of her comments wherein she dismissed criticism of the Somali gangs as “rhetoric” that is “irresponsible” and turned to gun control as a solution:

A crime is a crime is a crime is a crime. But what the rhetoric you are pushing, at best is irresponsible, at worst is dangerous. So you may be wondering, hey Mayor, how can we solve for this then? How can we have conversations that are effective, that can actually get something done? And the answer is easy.

Ban guns.

On October 4, 2026, Breitbart News pointed to reports indicating alleged Somali gang-related gunfire broke out at Eden Prairie High School in a Minneapolis suburb Friday around 9:00 p.m.

A news release from the Eden Prairie Police Department said two Somali males were injured during the shooting, one of whom was 17 and the second of whom was 18. The injuries they sustained were not life-threatening.

More Than the ‘Assault Weapons’ SCOTUS Case, THIS is What Terrifies the Gun Control Industry Most of All.

“In recent years, women made up almost half of all new gun owners, a striking shift from the historical norm, when women accounted for about 24 percent of gun owners,” Rosanna Smart and Andrew R. Morral of the RAND Corporation recently wrote. “After more than a decade of stable gun ownership, women’s ownership rose starkly between 2018 and 2021, going from 10 percent of adult women owning guns in 2018 to 15 percent in 2021, then up again slightly to 16 percent by 2024.”

They add that the big surge in women’s gun ownership has occurred since 2018 and, almost without exception, is seen across the board without regard to race, age, income, party identification, or education. Men, too, have bought guns amidst record firearms sales boosted by the chaos of 2020, though not to the same transformative extent as women. As broad demand for the means of self-defense has put the lie to the already overstated argument that gun ownership was a passing fixation of rural white men, women have rushed to take advantage of the empowering technology.

“Some of the largest relative increases were among groups of women with historically low rates of gun ownership, such as Hispanic women and those living in the Upper Midwest, who saw ownership rates more than double after 2018,” add the RAND authors.

Smart and Morral draw on data from the General Social Survey (GSS), which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. The GSS numbers largely square with other sources.

“Ownership is demographically diverse: 45.7% of validated gun owners are female, 25.6% do not identify as White (alone), and the gap in ownership rates between White Americans (34.6%) and Black Americans (33.0%) has narrowed to less than two percentage points,” Georgetown University’s William English wrote last month, of numbers from the National Firearms Survey.

— J.D. Tuccille in Women Are Better Armed Than Ever

DO IT THIS WAY ⇓

Woman shoots masked intruder dead in Frankford apartment break-in: police

PHILADELPHIA – A 29-year-old man is dead after investigators say he broke into a Frankford apartment and was shot dead by the woman who lives there.

What we know:
Police say the shooting happened at an apartment building on the 4600 block of Castor Avenue around 5 a.m.

Investigators believe a 29-year-old man wearing a ski mask shattered a second floor window and entered an apartment.

A woman who lives in the apartment encountered the intruder and fired at least two shots, one striking the man in the head.

Officers found the man lying on the bedroom floor and brought him to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters that the woman and the intruder knew each other and had some sort of prior relationship.

Investigation continues
What’s next:
No arrests or charges have been reported as of Wednesday morning.

Police have not said if the gun used in the shooting was legally owned.

NOT THIS WAY ⇓

California Man Arrested After Firing Warning Shots at Burglars

Let’s start off by noting that yes, warning shots are stupid. I don’t feel like getting into why, generally speaking, in this piece, because it’s not about that. It’s about a California man facing charges for firing warning shots.

It started with the nightmare scenario for many people: the proverbial bump in the night. Someone was inside of the home in the dark of night who shouldn’t have been there.

So a man who works as a security guard decided he needed to do something, but he apparently didn’t want to hurt anyone.

A security guard was in custody Tuesday after firing warning shots to scare off burglars during a home invasion in Hacienda Heights.

Several suspects allegedly broke into a home to commit a burglary around 9:20 p.m. Monday in the 15400 block of Skyline Drive, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said.

An armed security guard at the residence, which is located within the gated Skyline Estates community, fired warning shots in the air to scare off the burglars, the sheriff’s department said.

Several suspects fled the location in a dark-colored sedan while others remained inside following the shots, according to the sheriff’s department….

Deputies detained the security guard who informed them that he fired the warning shots in the air. It is illegal to discharge a firearm without threat of the loss of life, the sheriff’s department said.

Now, some items were stolen and were recovered nearby, so there is evidence of a burglary.

Further, because the guard was home at the time, it means it was a “hot” burglary. Those are considered fair game in most states, especially those without an explicit duty-to-retreat law. California does not actually have one of those. Believe it or not.

So while firing a warning shot into the air was colossally stupid, and the man should most likely be charged if that round hits anything or anyone, that’s not what he’s charged with, and that is the problem here. If he technically shot straight up into the air, terminal velocity limits what the round will do when it returns to the Earth, but the issue is that few people will hold a gun perfectly straight, and thus the problem.

A burglar in the home with you is a threat to your life. That’s established doctrine in most states, and the reason for that is the high number of “hot” burglaries that turn into violent encounters, including homicides.

Of course, this is Los Angeles, where they value the lives of criminals over ordinary citizens. Why, those burglars might have been illegal aliens who should be welcomed to take all of our crap because we live on stolen land or something!

Charges should fit the crime, but the only “crime” here is the stupidity of that warning shot, especially up into the air. Especially as that block seems to have everyone packed in like sardines.

Still, it’s Los Angeles. Is anyone really surprised that they’re going to be hell on someone defending themselves during a home invasion? Seriously? That doesn’t make it right, though. Not in the least.

Study on firearm safety pours cold water on anti-2A storage law assumptions.

A new study revealed that firearms safety education was far more effective at encouraging gun owners to securely store firearms than legislation was.

The study, published by Crime and Delinquency in June, sought to determine how prevalent firearms safety training was as well as how many firearms owners kept their firearms secure.

The study found that 90% of gun owners reported receiving at least informal firearms safety training.

“Within the United States, a substantial 90% of owners report receiving some form of instruction, typically divided into formal and informal tracks,” the study said.

“Formal training generally encompasses structured hunter safety, self-defense, or professional courses. On the other hand, informal training, which was reported by roughly 70% of owners, is a form of cultural transmission passing through friends or family.”

Anti-Second Amendment groups like Giffords and Everytown have pushed for legislation that would hold people criminally responsible in the event a child gained access to a firearm.

According to the groups, 26 states and the District of Columbia have laws that leave a gun owner subject to potential prosecution should a child gain access to the firearm.

The study, though, noted that the laws were not effective at increasing the rate at which firearms owners safely stored their firearms. Instead, the best predictor was having received firearms safety training at some point.

“The results from our multivariable model show that the strongest predictors of secure firearm storage were completing a form of gun safety training, either formal or informal, demonstrating that gun safety training and secure firearm storage are interconnected,” the study said.

“Together, these findings suggest that most gun owners in the United States are well-versed in firearm safety practices and store their guns securely when they are not using them.”

“Another interesting finding from analyses was that having a state law requiring secure firearm storage was unrelated to gun owners’ storing their weapons securely.

This confirms findings in prior research and suggests that policymakers should focus on other mechanisms to promote secure firearm storage,” the study added later.

Some more for our friends way south of the border

Colombian President’s Open Carry Is Signal to Narcoterrorists and Citizens Alike

The last time I wrote anything about Colombian President Abelardo De La Espriella was early September, when he ended the decade-long suspension of carry licenses and encouraged residents to legally protect themselves.

Like Mexico, Colombia has pretty restrictive gun laws and a powerful criminal element who ignores them with impunity, while average citizens are largely helpless unless they too are willing to break the law.

Now De La Espriella is sending a message to narcoterrorists and lawful citizens alike. A group calling itself the Conquering Self Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada has laid siege to the city of Santa Marta, a popular tourist destination home to about 600,000 people. The group had set fire to vehicles and threatened the residents to stay home or else face the consequences.

De La Espriella, in return, sent the military to Santa Marta, where they killed a high-ranking member of organization. The president himself showed up in Santa Marta earlier this week, and spoke to officials and the press while openly carrying a handgun on his hip. The gun-carrying has upset some of De La Espriella’s detractors on the left, and even caught the attention of the New York Times.

The president’s gun display ignited debate across Colombia. In Santa Marta, some praised Mr. De La Espriella for his swift arrival and the strong message he sent to the armed group by deploying troops.

“In the last four years, security was terrible,” keeping tourists away, said Luis Arévalo, 37, who rents tents to beachgoers. “There’s been a change, just one month in, since the Tiger arrived,” he added, using Mr. De La Espriella’s nickname.

“He’s roaring.”

Others in Santa Marta described Mr. De La Espriella’s visit as a publicity stunt. “Everyone says that — pure stunt,” said José Ángel Gutiérrez, a 71-year-old retiree.

… Tiziano Breda, senior analyst for ACLED, said Mr. De La Espriella had set up a confrontation between government forces and the armed group that is the de facto authority in the area, and has ordered similar shutdowns before.

“They are both pushing citizens to abide by their respective rules,” he said. “The armed group says the blockade is continuing until Friday, and the government is encouraging shops and businesses to open already,” he said, adding that this created a real risk of retaliation for civilians who trusted the state and reopened.

Which, frankly, is all the more reason for De La Espriella to encourage Colombians to lawfully arm themselves, and to work with the legislature to reform the country’s gun laws so that it’s easier to do so.

De La Espriella’s decision to open carry isn’t a one off. The Times reports that his administration posted a video of the president in the city of Cali on Thursday, where he once again had a handgun on his hip. If he wants the criminal element to see this as a sign of his strength, great, but it’s far more important to continue to aggressively combat them and restore law and order to cities where these cartels have become the de facto authorities.

In the meantime, De La Espriella should encourage Colombia’s law-abiding citizens to take up arms in self-defense. His open carry is already signaling that, but he should be much more open and explicit about the ability of average, everyday Colombians to protect themselves from the narcoterrorists who want to rule over them with an iron fist.

Oregon concealed carry license laws challenged by gun rights group

The lobbying group Gun Owners of America filed suit against the city of Salem and Marion County on Friday, challenging Oregon’s concealed handgun carry license laws.

The lawsuit targets restrictions that bar certain out-of-state residents from obtaining permits in Oregon and the state’s refusal to recognize permits from other states.

Cynthia Ladd, the group’s Oregon director and an Arizona resident, is the plaintiff.

In a sworn declaration filed in federal court, Ladd wrote that she’ll be visiting the state Capitol in Salem and meeting with legislators in the next 90 days as part of her lobbying work and wishes to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense in the city. But her Arizona concealed gun permit is not recognized and she can’t apply for one in Oregon.

The state, though, adopted a law in 2021 that bans guns from the Oregon Capitol, even those who have concealed handgun licenses. The city of Salem also prohibits unlicensed possession of loaded guns in the city.

The suit alleges that Ladd is “a typical, law-abiding American citizen with ordinary self-defense needs, who cannot be dispossessed of her right to bear arms in public for self-defense in Oregon simply due to her nonresident status.”

The city of Salem declined comment, citing the pending litigation, according to Robert B. Layne II, the city’s spokesperson.

To obtain an Oregon concealed handgun license, an applicant must be a resident of Oregon, or a non-resident who lives in a bordering state, including Washington, Idaho, Nevada or California.

Non-residents who live in a state bordering Oregon can apply for a concealed carry license to an Oregon county sheriff’s office that borders their state. Oregon county sheriffs, though, have discretion on whether to process non-resident applications, and many restrict them strictly to people who work or own property in their county.

Ladd’s lawsuit is one of a number of similar suits that have targeted residency barriers and out-of-state restrictions on concealed carry gun permits.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen found New York’s concealed carry laws unconstitutional. It stated that gun-control provisions had to comport with the text and “historical tradition” of the Second Amendment. Since then, state and local governments have had to show their own gun regulations are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Some states recognize many permits, others only a few, and others, like Oregon, only recognize their own permits granted for residents.

On Friday, the Liberty Justice Center petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the state of Minnesota’s law that requires a long-haul trucker who has concealed gun carry permits in Florida and Georgia to also obtain a license from Minnesota if he wants to carry a gun there.

This wasn’t on my radar, but good to know it’s been – sort of – resolved.

UPDATE: Washington Reverses, Says NRA-Certified Instructors Can Teach

The Washington State Patrol (WSP) appears to have reversed course on allowing certified National Rifle Association firearms instructors to provide safety training as part of the upcoming permit-to-purchase training requirement, TGM has learned.

The problem was first reported by TGM here.

In an email to subscribers of a list of potential instructors Monday, WSP Commander Kevin Baird advised, “The email sent September 11, 2026 regarding NRA sponsorship of firearm safety training resulted from a misunderstanding of the terminology used and how the statute is written.

“I’m pleased to report that the NRA Executive Director, Josh Savani, reached out to me on Friday to clarify the NRA’s position. Based on that clarification, independent NRA-certified instructors may provide the firearm safety training required under RCW 9.41.1132 and RCW 9.41.070.

“However,” Baird continued, “as with all other training providers, WSP must still review and certify the training curriculum to ensure it includes all elements required by law. Those requirements include:

RCW 9.41.1132(1):

(a) Basic firearms safety rules;

(b) Firearms and children, including secure gun storage and talking to children about gun safety;

(c) Firearms and suicide prevention;

(d) Secure gun storage to prevent unauthorized access and use;

(e) Safe handling of firearms;

(f) State and federal firearms laws, including prohibited firearms transfers and locations where firearms are prohibited;

(g) State laws pertaining to the use of deadly force for self-defense;

(h) Techniques for avoiding a criminal attack and how to manage a violent confrontation, including conflict resolution; and

(i) Live-fire shooting exercises on a firing range that include a demonstration by the applicant of the safe handling of, and shooting proficiency with, firearms.

“We have not yet begun reviewing individual curricula,” Baird wrote. “That process will begin once we have processed the majority of the training-provider applications.

“My apologies for the confusion created by the previous email,” he said. “We are working to provide information as quickly and transparently as possible while developing the processes and procedures necessary to implement this significant undertaking. As someone described it to me last week, ‘we are building the airplane while flying it.’ We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through these implementation details.”

Last week’s announcement created a furor, drawing longtime gun rights activist—and NRA-certified firearms instructor—Jane Milhans into the fray. She singlehandedly brought the problem to NRA’s attention, initiating a scramble on both ends, with NRA exchanging information with Baird.

The situation also drew attention from TGM, Ammoland News and radio host Jason Rantz writing about it at Seattle-Red.

As reported last week, an exchange of messages regarding whether NRA-certified instructors would be okayed to provide the necessary safety instruction required by the new state law, RCW 9.41.1132, ignited the controversy.

A message sent last week by WSP to members of a ListServ P2P group, which stated, “RCW 9.41.1132 (3) states (bolding added for emphasis): ‘The training must be sponsored by a federal, state, tribal, county, or municipal law enforcement agency, a college or university, a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms training, or a firearms training school with instructors certified by a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms training.

“We reached out to the NRA to determine if an NRA Certified Trainer would be considered to be ‘sponsored’ by the NRA thereby meeting the requirement of ‘a nationally recognized organization that customarily offers firearms training’.

“The answer they provided is: NO. They said because these individuals are neither employees nor contractors, and the NRA is not involved in scheduling, promoting, etc. of the classes, the NRA would not be considered as sponsoring any classes for them.”

This was the original message that set off the communications flurry resulting in Monday’s reversal.

“While NRA-certified instructors are not employees or contractors of NRA,” Savani explained, “holding a current certification does entitle an instructor to certain rights and privileges that could be seen to make them ‘sponsored’ for purposes of RCW 9.41.1132(3). For example, NRA certified instructors are permitted to use NRA trademarks in promotion of their NRA training courses. We do not allow use of our marks lightly, and use of these marks puts NRA’s imprimatur on any of our courses being taught by a certified instructor.”

Noted from Sheriff Jim:

Empty Arguments over Empty Chambers

Recently, another internet kerfuffle over – nothing, really.

The premise is that someone, somewhere carries a semiauto pistol for self-protection and carries it half-loaded.

Bless his heart.

The arguments were long and loud, in the style of the information two-track (through a farm field), and, in the end, no resolution was found.

While going over the various (emotional, non-reasoned) arguments, I found some gems, paraphrased here as I don’t have permission to hold denizens of the digital world up to scorn and ridicule.

The original poster noted that one side of the issue are, functionally, NDPs. Kind of like “non-player characters,” NDP is a Chuck Taylor term for “non-dedicated personnel.” Those are the kind with only the least passing familiarity/skills in the carry of firearms. A “Master-“ class shooter, according to his response, noted that he carries in Condition Three (“chamber empty, full magazine, hammer (if so equipped) down”) for personal protection, not on the range.

Because you’re an expert in competing in certain range games makes you as proficient in personal security as the typical gun writer is knowledgeable about brain surgery.

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Maryland Synagogue Challenges Restrictive Gun Law
Montgomery County officials want to prevent houses of worship from making security decisions.

Houses of worship are often targeted by people with murder on their minds. That’s especially true of synagogues, which were disproportionately attacked even before October 7 and have since been on the receiving end of the “antizionist” reframing of hatred of Jews. But in Montgomery County, Maryland, officials recently renewed efforts to forbid the carrying of firearms within 100 yards of “places of public assembly,” including churches and synagogues. Now, some security volunteers are defying the intrusive law as they await the outcome of courtroom pushback against the restrictions.

Violating the First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendments

“Today, the Justice Department filed suit against Montgomery County, Maryland (County). The complaint alleges that the County’s newly enacted Bill 23-26 violates the Second Amendment by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms in daily life,” the U.S. Department of Justice announced on August 3. “Bill 23-26 prohibits carrying firearms at thousands of locations, and also creates an arbitrary 100-yard exclusion zone around each location. The law applies even if the person carrying a firearm is duly licensed and has the express consent of the property owner.”

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Dolly Parton Carried a .38, and She Never Apologized for It

Dolly Parton died Tuesday at 80, and the tributes have poured in for the music, the movies, and the boundless philanthropy. Here’s one more thing worth remembering about the country legend: she was a gun owner who carried for self-defense, said so plainly, and never once seemed embarrassed by it.

The proof is in her own words. In a now-famous 1978 Playboy interview with journalist Lawrence Grobel, Parton described an early trip to New York City — a story any concealed carrier will recognize in their bones.

A Nashville Permit and a New York Night

Parton and her lifelong friend Judy Ogle, green to the big city, found themselves out on the street late at night when a group of men began closing in. “All of a sudden, these men started approachin’ us on the street,” she told Playboy. “They thought we were up for sale.” The men wouldn’t take no for an answer, and one got physical — “really pullin’ at me… just maul me, the whole works,” as she put it. Her friend, doubled over laughing against a wall, was no help at all.

“I Always Carry a Gun”

What those men didn’t know was that Parton was armed. She told Grobel she never traveled without a firearm — and decades later, she still didn’t.

“I always carry a gun,” she said. “A .38 pistol. I have a permit for it in Nashville. I just carry it for protection. I feel safer when I’ve got it. I just don’t like the idea of knowin’ I’m totally helpless.”

That’s the entire case for armed self-defense, delivered in a few sentences by a woman in a towering wig and a wide Southern smile — years before “concealed carry” was a mainstream phrase.

And She Was Ready to Use It

The .38 wasn’t a security blanket. When the man kept grabbing at her, she drew it. “I told the man, ‘If you put your hands on me one more time, I swear to God that I will shoot you,’” she recounted. “And I would have.” She added that she wouldn’t have aimed to kill — she’d have put rounds at his feet instead. The man backed off. The two women made it home. Her friend, by Parton’s account, never did stop laughing.

Carried in Spite of the Law

The quiet defiance in the story is the setting. Parton was carrying her Tennessee-permitted revolver in New York City — a place that, under its old Sullivan Act, treated the right to bear arms as a privilege doled out by bureaucrats. A Nashville permit meant nothing there. She carried anyway, because being helpless in a strange city wasn’t a trade she was willing to make. It would take until 2022 and the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision for the law to catch up to what Dolly Parton already understood on that sidewalk: the right to protect yourself doesn’t stop at a state line.

That refusal to be a victim — matter-of-fact, unashamed, entirely her own — was of a piece with everything else about her. There will never be another like her. Rest in peace, Miss Parton.

Mass-Shooting Stats: Inconvenient Facts Vs. Liberal Lies.

Like everything else, mass shootings have become politicized. The who/what/how many/which guns did they use, etc., are all part of a SNAFU situation, brought to you by the people with the most to hide: liberals.

You may have seen tweets stating that more people have died in France’s current heat wave than in all U.S. mass shootings since 1966:

That’s not true. Mostly. It depends on a few things—”things” the left lies about to hide the truth and demonize those pesky straight, white men. “Things” the left will conflate to get the stats it needs to confuse you and piss off other leftoids.

FACT-O-RAMA! The toilet people on the left are desperate to make MAGA-capped peckerwoods look like the “existential threat” to America. The truth is that the actual threat, no matter how you slice it, isn’t a bunch of white guys. I’ll leave it at that…for now.

What you need to know before we jump into mass shootings is this:

The Democratic Party (and a handful of RINOs) has been hijacked by the Red-Green Alliance globalists. Their goal is to conquer America from within. Their biggest obstacle is the Second Amendment. Therefore, they MUST fudge the numbers regarding gun deaths to scare Americans into giving up their weapons. They need to take your guns to fulfill their dream of a one-world government, as stated in the 45 goals of Communism, which were entered into Congress in 1963 (I added the bold).

Goal # 11:  Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

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FBI Releases Latest Data On Post-SCOTUS Crime Wave That Hasn’t Arrived

The FBI’s new crime report is out, and it’s safe to say that those who listened to the predictions of anti-Second Amendment groups are wondering where the crime is.

Since the Supreme Court struck down New York’s discretionary system for issuing concealed carry permits in June 2022, groups like Everytown, Giffords and Brady United predicted public safety would be diminished by the decision. However, the FBI’s data noted that in 2025, the murder rate went down 18.1%, while violent crime fell by over 9%.

One survey of crime that is widely cited is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) carried out by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which showed from 2021 to 2023, the NCVS reported a 36% increase in the violent crime victimization rate, according to the report.

The FBI shifted how it gathered the data after 2020. In 2021, nearly 40% of police agencies did not send the data to the FBI. However, for the 2023 report, 72% of agencies reportedly participated. The FBI’s release of the new crime figures stated that over 17,000 agencies participated in sending crime data for 2025, while 16,791 sent information on so-called “hate crimes.”

In a July 22 poll commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center, the number of people who reported carrying a concealed firearm went up from 24.3% in December 2024 to 30.9%. In other words, more people are carrying concealed.

This is not surprising for two reasons: First, since Bruen, states like California, New York and New Jersey can’t deny a permit because someone didn’t prove “good cause” to carry a firearm. Second, we’re also seeing many states going to “constitutional carry” where no permit is needed at all.

The result, if you believe the polling data, is that a would-be crook has a much larger chance of coming across an armed citizen when he is trying to commit his crimes. Armed citizens end up being far less understanding than a Soros prosecutor, and the result… well, we’ve seen the results in some recent news articles.

In other words, criminals are probably electing not to do things which might lead to an encounter with an armed citizen. So, it’s no wonder crime’s been dropping.

Comment O’ The Day:
I have to remind people about this far too often:
“I can chamber a round faster than you can draw your gun.”
Yeah, try doing it with one of your hands or arms disabled.

Paul provides a link to a more in-depth look at the In-N-Out shooting that provides just such experience. The actual video of the shooting starts at 19 minutes.

Armed Defense is Simple, Hard, and Necessary

We go along and then something happens to us that changes our perspective. I was talking to a young man not long after I wrote about armed defense. Each of the ordinary stories I covered included an advanced self-defense skill. The young man said he wanted to make his family safer. We talked about it for a minute. I think that is where emotion raised its head, where truth and fantasy parted company. Let me state the obvious. Protecting your family takes work. Knowing what to do is the first layer of defense. Armed defense is also a skill that takes practice.

We often think that we can buy skill. I’ve felt that way myself. It is true that some firearms will fit your hands better than others. That said, is the problem that your hands are not doing what you want them to do, or is the problem that your brain doesn’t know what your hands and feet should be doing? Hardware won’t replace study and practice. Sometimes we have to climb over our ego and admit we have some homework to do. Let me give you a window into armed defense by looking at the examples from my recent podcast.

In the first story, male and female intruders entered an apartment and attacked the occupants. This happened on a Sunday morning. What could be more ordinary.

On a Sunday morning, it is easy to imagine that our children would be home and that they would open the door if someone knocked and shouted. When you read through this story, there were also children in the apartment but they didn’t open the door.

Right there is our first dose of reality. We need a safety plan at home. We have to talk with our family about what all of us will do. We have to talk with our roommates or frequent guests. We also have to walk through that plan. The walk-through does several essential things. It changes words into habits. It also uncovers the errors that seemed good at first but didn’t work well in practice.

Who is going to call 911? Who is armed or going to be armed, and where will they be positioned to defend the rest of the occupants? It sounds simple, but I’m sure your third attempt will be vastly better than your first rehearsal. It is easier to learn in the daylight than to discover problems at night when a stranger is hitting you.

Staying with this first story, a female roommate shot the attackers while they were hitting the male roommate who opened the door. Shooting at moving targets is beyond what we learned in basic marksmanship. In this case, the attackers and the victim were both moving. Speed, distance, and motion work together to determine how accurate we will be with our shots. Even though a gun works at a distance, we might have to get closer so we are sure to shoot the attackers and not shoot our roommate. Do you know what you can do and how much time you need?

Your safety plan should also include calling your lawyer and getting help as you fill out the final police report. That also includes your roommates knowing what to say, and what not say, to the police. That information is only lightly covered in most concealed carry classes.

In the second story, the defender had to move out of the way to avoid being shot. The defender then had to present his concealed firearm on the move. He had to shoot at his attackers who were likely moving as well. Firearms instructors teach classes where the students move and shoot. Some competition includes moving targets and multiple attackers. Have you practiced moving from one target to another? Have you practiced shooting while most of your body was hidden behind a wall or a car?

In the third story, the defender was being robbed at work. The robber tried to push the victim into a back bathroom. That is horribly dangerous for the victim, and he decided to fight. The defender had to turn so that the attacker couldn’t reach the defender’s gun. The defender then had to create enough distance between himself and his attacker so he could rotate his firearm and point it at his attacker. That means the defenders support arm was in front of his muzzle and between him and the the bad guy. You want to see how that works before you have to perform it on your own. At first, you want to practice with an instructor making sure you’re safe.

In the fourth and last story, an elderly woman was trying to stop a strange dog from biting her dog. In that case, it is best practice to grab your attacker and hold on tight so you both move together. That keeps you from shooting your dog or shooting yourself as the attacker moves.

I said that armed defense was both simple and hard. The contrast is complex and easy. Fortunately, we can decompose a new lesson into small incremental steps so that each new skill is relatively straightforward. The hard part is admitting we won’t suddenly become John Wick when we hear glass break at night.

Many of us have taken some form of firearms class. Please review those skills so they remain available when you need them.