Category: Safety

Need more than one (1).

In Wake of Uvalde, Recently Passed Texas Statewide Mandate Means an Armed Security Officer in Every School

Texas lawmakers quietly passed a sweeping mandate for school safety measures, including a requirement to post an armed security officer at every school and provide mental health training for certain district employees.

Texas House Bill 3, which was signed into law June 14 by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, went into effect on Sept. 1, and comes in the wake of the horrific Uvalde school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in May 2022.

In the bill, each school district campus is required to armed security guard which includes: a school district peace officer; a school resource officer; a commissioned peace officer employee; a school marshal; or a school district employee who has completed school safety training and carries a handgun on their person on school premises.

HB00003I

 

Gun Violence Declared a Public Health Emergency.

Gun violence has been declared a public health emergency in New Mexico following the death of an 11-year-old boy.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham made the announcement following the death of a young boy in a shooting on a highway. Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina confirmed in a press briefing that a boy was killed and a second woman was taken to hospital in critical condition. They were attacked while traveling westbound on Avenida Cesar Chavez near University Boulevard. Neither of the victims have been named.

Declaring a public health emergency, Lujan Grisham shared a statement lamenting the death of the boy and the earlier unrelated killing of a five-year-old girl in the area. “Today, I join the family of an 11-year-old boy in mourning his violent death yesterday. And I mourn the loss of a 5-year-old girl murdered in her bed last month,” the statement read.

“These are disgusting acts of violence that have no place in our communities. As a mother and grandmother, I cannot fathom the depth of these losses, and their effects will be felt by families, friends and communities forever.”

She said new measures need to be brought in to end gun violence in the state and called for a meeting to determine what steps can be taken to reduce harm caused by guns. Lujan Grisham continued: “The time for standard measures has passed. Today I am declaring gun violence a public health emergency in New Mexico.”

The executive order signed by Lujan Grisham stated the “rate of gun deaths in New Mexico” had increased by 43 percent from 2009 to 2018, compared to an 18 percent increase nationwide. It also said guns are the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the state.

In her comments, the governor urged New Mexicans to take action against gun violence, saying: “To my fellow citizens: get loud. Step up. Demand change: from your neighbors, from your friends, from your communities, from your elected leaders. Enough is enough.”

Lujan Grisham’s actions were met with derision from New Mexico House Republican Minority Leader Ryan Lane, who accused her of politicizing the death to “push her anti-gun agenda.” Lane said in a statement: “The Democrat’s policies have created and exacerbated the crime crisis that is literally killing New Mexicans daily. It is unacceptable that it has taken this long to notice the number of everyday New Mexicans that are being affected by criminal violence.”

Newsweek has contacted Gov. Lujan Grisham via an email form on her website for comment.

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You know, concealed means concealed, but as I don’t live in NM……

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New Mexico governor issues order to suspend open and concealed carry of guns in Albuquerque

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency public health order that suspends the open and permitted concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque for 30 days in the midst of a spate of gun violence.

The Democratic governor said she is expecting legal challenges but felt compelled to act in response to gun deaths, including the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week.

The firearms suspension is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates that only the Albuquerque area currently meets. Police are exempt from the temporary ban on carrying firearms.

Lujan Grisham said the restrictions “are going to pose incredible challenges for me as a governor and as a state.”

“I welcome the debate and fight about how to make New Mexicans safer,” she said at a news conference, flanked by leading law enforcement officials, including the district attorney for the Albuquerque area.

Native American women taking up firearms classes for self defense: ‘Refusing to be victims’
Native American women are increasingly turning to gun ownership as a self-defense measure, according to a New Mexico gun shop owner

Gun ownership is stepping in to help bridge a safety gap in New Mexico’s vast Indian country, according to gun experts in the state.

“No one is coming to save you” is a motto among Native Americans in New Mexico, according to Joe Talachy, a Pueblo of Pojoaque tribal officer who owns one of the few Native-founded gun stores in the U.S.

Talachy joined law enforcement in 2005, before serving as lieutenant governor and then governor of the Pojoaque Pueblo, notching a total of 11 years in tribal leadership. Now, he’s back in law enforcement and opened Indigenous Arms 1680 Ltd. Co., where locals have flocked to arm themselves against the unforeseeable and sign up for gun safety classes.

“People are starting to say, ‘Look, I used to see guns as being scary,’ and all this. But they’re looking at self-defense now as a necessity. Given the current circumstances and the instability going on, people are starting to understand that they need to defend themselves. For Native American people, our men and women – I’ve trained plenty of them – they’ve decided to take their own self-defense into their hands as well,” Talachy told Fox News Digital in a phone interview.

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¡Grupos de Autodefensas para tu y mi!

‘Who You Gonna Call’ in Austin, Texas, if You Are Robbed? Cops Say Don’t Call 911

As Americans in just about every large city endure a crime wave, some of those cities have all but given up fighting crime and given the bad guys free rein over the city. Businesses are getting out of those big cities in record numbers because of rampant theft and Soros-backed prosecutors who will not charge criminals. In one city, crime has gotten so out of hand that if you get robbed, well, don’t call 911. File a report, and they’ll get back to you.

Austin, Texas, is a blue island in a fairly red state. As a result of liberal Democrat leadership that embraced the “defund the police” movement, Austin police are severely short-staffed and are asking anyone who gets robbed near an ATM to call the non-emergency 311 number instead of 911. Robbery victims also have the option of making an online police report of the incident. Austin Police took to X to inform residents what they should do if they are robbed, saying:

“Even if you are cautious & follow all the safety advice, you may still become the unfortunate victim of a robbery. Do you know what your next steps should be? Make a police report & provide as much information as possible so we can recover your property quickly and safely.” 

Police also reminded those making a report to tell them the date and time of their ATM withdrawal. So, while being robbed, possibly at gunpoint, might seem like kind of an emergency to you, Austin Police have informed citizens that they don’t have enough manpower for it to be an emergency to them.

Thomas Villarreal is the President of the Austin Police Association. He places the blame for the crime wave in the Texas state capital squarely at the feet of a seemingly uncaring city council, stating, “We just continue to have a city council that doesn’t show its police officers that [it] cares about them.”

During a recent appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Villarreal had this to say about his city’s law enforcement predicament,

We’re a growing city, a city that should be up around 2,000 officers and growing right now. I’ve got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we’re moving in the wrong direction. There’s less and less and less resources to go out and do the job. I’ve got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls because we just don’t have the resources to adequately police the city.

Here at RedState, we have been covering the rampant crime wave affecting Austin and other Democrat-run cities. Not only are their policing policies, post-George Floyd, affecting individual residents, but they are also affecting businesses. Business owners say they do not feel safe, and the lack of police presence or response also drives away customers. One business owner said it took ten days to get a police report, and at the same time, business owners are being asked not to have weapons for their protection in their business. Since the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020, and as Austin’s homicide rate has climbed, 911 callers are often put on hold for up to half an hour.

In addition to what Thomas Villarreal sees as an uncaring city council, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson also does not appear to have any sense of urgency when it comes to crime in his city. Up until recently, Austin police had a partnership with the Texas Department of Safety, which Watson praised and stated that crime had gone down as a result. But just two days later, Watson announced the end of the Austin police/Texas Department of Safety alliance, stating that it did not reflect “Austin’s values.” No word from the mayor on whether being robbed and having no police available to handle the situation constitutes an “Austin value.”  Just last month, Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon resigned after ongoing conflicts with the city council over staffing and increasingly smaller police budgets.

So, for the foreseeable future, if you get robbed in Austin at an ATM, you’d better just call it into 311 and wait your turn. Makes you wonder what the next thing to be called a “non-emergency” will be.

New Data Says You Stopped Mass Murder Most of the Time

We live in a media driven culture. We also have government agencies putting out biased reports that serve their political masters. It is rare that the media even questions the agency reports. That wouldn’t matter, but many of us confuse media headlines with facts. I’ve seen people on Facebook say that there were hundreds of “mass shootings” this year and that our children are not safe in school any longer. They are wrong, and you stop mass-murder most of the time.

Please let me pose a different question.

If an ordinary citizen stops mass-murder and the mainstream media refuses to report it, did it really happen?

According to the FBI, the answer is almost always, “No!”

I am a data geek and I love to explore the deeper questions around public events. For example, how do we define “mass-murder”, and has that definition changed? How are the murderers stopped? It turns out that you get wildly different answers depending on subtle changes in the questions you ask.

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When criminals can’t tell who’s armed, and it’s extremely easy to carry concealed, they tend to be less criminal.

Estimating The Effect Of Concealed Carry Laws On Murder: A Response To Bondy et al. Carlisle Moody & John R. Lott

“We find that the effect of right-to-carry laws on murder is negative but not significantly different from zero in the year of adoption. However, the effect becomes negative and statistically significant in the following years.

This suggests that it takes time for people to get permits and start carrying guns, and that it takes time for the effects of this to be felt on crime rates.”

 

Random Thought of the Day

Anti-gun people spend a lot of time telling others how afraid of being shot they are for themselves and “the children”. In other words, they spend a lot of time thinking about dying by gunshot. They project that fear onto gun people saying, “What are you so afraid of that you need a gun?”

That is markedly different than my thought patterns. I think about protecting myself and other innocent people by being proficient with a gun. I almost never have a fear of being a victim of a criminal attack.

Antigun people think about dying by gun. Gun people think about protecting life by gun.

Frequently Debunked Crackpots Claim the AR-15 is Worthless for Self-Defense

When the young paste-eaters at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda factory, known as the Trace, team up with the stodgy window-lickers at the Gun Violence Archive to produce a story about the utility of the AR-15 platform as a modern self-defense tool, it’s hard not to get too excited.

It’s like watching two freight trains headed toward each other on the same track. You know the results are going to be cataclysmic. None of these halfwits have ever heard a shot fired, much less one fired in anger, or especially one fired to good effect. They know less about what makes a reliable home defense weapon than I do about man-buns, skinny jeans, or avocado toast.

We have debunked the Trace and the Gun Violence Archive so often it’s getting old. The kids at the Trace masquerade as legitimate journalists when, in fact, they’re nothing more than highly paid anti-gun activists. The GVA purports to track gun crimes and maintain a list of mass shootings, but their data is collected from media, and even social media sources, and their stats are so inflated they’d have you believe a mass shooting occurs nearly every time someone draws from a holster. When the two anti-gun nonprofits combine for a story, it’s bound to be something as bereft of facts as it is poorly written, and to that standard their most recent collaboration does not disappoint.

A story published Tuesday asks: “How Often Are AR-Style Rifles Used for Self-Defense? Supporters of AR-15s, often used in mass shootings and racist attacks, say they’re important for self-defense. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data suggests otherwise.”

The story was written by one of the Trace’s senior fabulists, Jennifer Mascia, who is “currently the lead writer of the Ask The Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.” Mascia has also led the Trace’s hilarious we’re journalists, not activists, propaganda campaign on social media.

Mascia reportedly searched the GVA’s data for “assault weapon,” which she said the GVA defines as “AR-15, AK-47, and all variants defined by law enforcement.” Of course, there’s no mention of whether the weapons were capable of select-fire and, therefore, actual assault weapons. She started with 190 incidents, which she whittled down for various reasons. The results: “That left 51 incidents over a nine-and-a-half-year span in which legal gun owners brandished or used an AR-style rifle to defend life or property. That averages out to around five per year.”

To be clear, I trust Mascia’s findings about as much as I trust the GVA data that produced the results. The whole story is GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.

It is noteworthy that the firearms “expert” whom Mascia found to further beclown herself – who wrote in a CNN story that the AR is the last gun he’d recommend for self-defense – is none other than former Washington D.C. police officer Michael Fanone. He’s the officer who cried a lot before the January 6 Commission – the one with the beard who cried a lot, if that helps jog your memory.

The network must have liked the cut of his jib. Fanone is now a CNN contributor and hawking a new book: “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” (Nancy Pelosi highly recommended it.)

Since he’s so afraid of the AR platform, I can’t help but wonder what weapon Fanone, or for that matter, Mascia, would recommend for home defense. If I had to guess, it probably has two barrels, a wooden stock and exposed hammers.

I’m somewhat familiar with the AR myself, which is why I trust it to defend my hearth and home. It’s light, accurate, and deadly, which is exactly the point, and something we should stop making allowances for.

Despite the exhortations of Bloomberg’s activists or crybaby ex-cops, an AR-15 is exactly what I want when The Bad Man comes a-calling.

BLUF
“The numbers indicate if we didn’t have gun-free zones, we would have more people stopping these attacks,”

Over 60% of ‘active shooters’ stopped by ‘good guy with a gun’

A large percentage of “active shooter” incidents are thwarted by armed citizens who sometimes don’t even fire their weapons, but those cases are no longer counted under President Joe Biden’s pro-gun control policies.

According to just-released data from the Crime Prevention Research Center, 41% of active shooting incidents were stopped by armed civilians.

Outside of so-called gun-free zones, which bar the legal carrying of firearms, over 63% of active shooting cases were ended by an armed civilian, according to the center.

The new data from John R. Lott Jr., the former Justice Department senior adviser for research and statistics, are his latest to challenge undercounting and bias in government reports on shootings and back up efforts by Second Amendment and police groups to encourage people to carry firearms.

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Frequently debunked crackpots claim the AR is worthless for self-defense
The Trace teams up with the Gun Violence Archive and hilarity ensues.

When the young paste-eaters at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda factory, known as the Trace, team up with the stodgy window-lickers at the Gun Violence Archive to produce a story about the utility of the AR platform as a modern self-defense tool, it’s hard not to get too excited.

It’s like watching two freight trains headed toward each other on the same track. You know the results are going to be cataclysmic. None of these halfwits have ever heard a shot fired, much less one fired in anger, or especially one fired to good effect. They know less about what makes a reliable home-defense weapon than I do about man-buns, skinny jeans or avocado toast.

We have debunked the Trace and the Gun Violence Archive so often it’s getting old. The kids at the Trace masquerade as legitimate journalists when in fact they’re nothing more than highly paid anti-gun activists. The GVA purports to track gun crimes and maintain a list of mass shootings, but their data is collected from media and even social media sources, and their stats are so inflated they’d have you believe a mass shooting occurs nearly every time someone draws from a holster. When the two anti-gun nonprofits combine for a story, it’s bound to be something as bereft of facts as it is poorly written, and to that standard their most recent collaboration does not disappoint.

A story published Tuesday asks: “How Often Are AR-Style Rifles Used for Self-Defense? Supporters of AR-15s, often used in mass shootings and racist attacks, say they’re important for self-defense. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data suggests otherwise.”

The story was written by one of the Trace’s senior fabulists, Jennifer Mascia, who is “currently the lead writer of the Ask the Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.” Mascia has also led the Trace’s hilarious we’re journalists, not activists, propaganda campaign on social media.

Mascia claims her story was a response to a reader’s question: “Many gun owners claim to buy assault-style rifles for defense. So how many documented cases are out there where someone actually defended themselves with an assault-style rifle?”

Mascia reportedly searched the GVA’s data for “assault weapon,” which she said the GVA defines as “AR-15, AK-47, and all variants defined by law enforcement.” Of course, there’s no mention whether the weapons were capable of select-fire and therefore actual assault weapons. She started with 190 incidents, which she whittled down for various reasons. The results: “That left 51 incidents over a nine-and-a-half-year span in which legal gun owners brandished or used an AR-style rifle to defend life or property. That averages out to around five per year.”

To be clear, I trust Mascia’s findings about as much as I trust the GVA data that produced the results. The whole story is GIGO — garbage in, garbage out.

It is noteworthy that the firearms “expert” whom Mascia found to further beclown herself — who wrote in a CNN story that the AR is the last gun he’d recommend for self-defense — is none other than former Washington D.C. police officer Michael Fanone. He’s the officer who cried a lot before the January 6 Commission — the one with the beard who cried a lot, if that helps jog your memory.

“I’m more familiar with the gun than most people: I own one. And one thing I know for sure is that this weapon doesn’t belong in the hands of the average civilian,” Fanone wrote of the AR platform in the CNN story.

The network must have liked the cut of his jib. Fanone is now a CNN contributor and hawking a new book: “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” (Nancy Pelosi highly recommended it.)

Since he’s so afraid of the AR platform, I can’t help but wonder what weapon Fanone, or for that matter, Mascia, would recommend for home defense. If I had to guess, it probably has two barrels, a wooden stock and exposed hammers.

I’m somewhat familiar with the AR myself, which is why I trust it to defend my hearth and home. It’s light, accurate and deadly, which is exactly the point, and something we should stop making allowances for.

Despite the exhortations of Bloomberg’s activists or crybaby ex-cops, an AR is exactly what I want when The Bad Man comes a-calling.

Violent Crime! Our Personal Safety Depends Upon Ourselves

Fewer than half of crimes in the U.S. are reported IMG Pew Research

The “deterrent value” of law enforcement is at an all-time low!

Less than half of crimes of violence in the USA are never “solved.” Of the ones that are “solved” or “cleared,” few arrests and successful prosecutions ever result.

Less than twenty percent of property crimes are ever “solved.”

Owing to the foregoing, the majority of felonies, even forcible felonies, are never reported (what’s the point?) and thus never show up on any statistics. Thus, as dismal as the crime statistics we actually have, real figures are vastly worse!

Low arrest rates are a direct result of “passionless policing” by critically under-staffed, non-supported police departments, combined with unenthusiastic prosecution by liberal, pro-criminal prosecutors, as well as mayors and city council members.

Accordingly, among VCAs (violent criminal actors) in most metro areas, there is scant risk associated with physically victimizing others, at least risk represented by law enforcement. The real risk to VCAs (particularly drug traffickers) is from the violence visited upon them by other VCAs during territorial disputes.

And, of course, there is always the risk of running into an armed “victim,” as frightened Americans continue to buy guns at increasing rates every month.

As citizens, our personal safety depends almost exclusively upon ourselves. We are no longer “protected” by police in the way we used to be, and may never be again!

Lifestyles need to be tweaked accordingly….

Gun Free Zones are murder magnets.
Arm yourself because no one else will save you

Jacksonville update: Assailant avoided not one, but TWO secure targets before going to the third

A few days ago, we learned how the assailant in the white supremacist attack on the Dollar General store in Jacksonville, FL avoided a hard target and went for an undefended one instead. From the previous article:

Jacksonville assailant found a soft target after security scared him away from the first

Prior to the shooting, the gunman had been turned away from the campus of a nearby historically Black university, Edward Waters University. There, he refused to identify himself to an on-campus security officer and was asked to leave, the university stated in a news release.

“The individual returned to their car and left campus without incident. The encounter was reported to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office by EWU security,” the school said.

It was obvious why the assailant ran away from there. An armed on-campus security officer arrived. That would have meant an immediate confrontation, which the assailant did not want. He wanted to take his own sweet time ending the lives of innocent, unarmed victims.

It turns out, however, that this was not a one-off occurrence. The assailant had initially planned to attack a different Family Dollar store and ran away from there also because he saw the possibility of immediate armed resistance. CNN’s newer report states this (archived links):

The Jacksonville gunman’s dad called 911 after the deadly rampage started. Here’s what he said about his son

Authorities have released details from a 911 call made by the father of [***] – the gunman who killed three people in what authorities called a racially motivated rampage at a Dollar General store in Florida. […]

After the gunfire started, [***] texted his father and told him to go into his room, where the father found a will and a suicide note, Jacksonville’s sheriff said. […]

[***] had been getting psychiatric help and was on medication, but it looked like his son had stopped taking his medication because there was a full bottle that was filled on July 23, his father told the operator.

The father said he called the Clay County Sheriff’s Office a few years ago when his son threatened to kill himself.

[***] flunked out of college, then worked at Home Depot and was “pretty much been living in his room” after losing that job, his father told the operator.

The same factors – mental illness, self-isolation, unemployment – play out in a lot of these incidents. Clearly, this man was sick to begin with. At some point, he also went down the path of hate.

Investigators believe the gunman originally intended to attack a different dollar store – a Family Dollar he visited just minutes before driving to the university, Waters told CNN’s Abby Phillip on Monday night.

Waters believes the sight of a security vehicle arriving at the store and parking outside deterred the shooter.

“I don’t think he wanted to have any confrontation with someone that would create an issue for him or stop him from doing what he wanted to do,” Waters said.

“He had a goal in mind,” the sheriff said. “I think he wanted those stores – one of those stores. I don’t know why.”

So, the assailant first went to a Family Dollar store, saw a security vehicle, drove away to Edward Waters University. a Historically Black College/University (HBCU), again encountered security there, and finally ended up at the Dollar General where he committed his atrocity.

Duval County Sheriff T. K. Waters does not think that the assailant intended to attack the HBCU:

Surveillance footage shows two young African American men getting into the car next to the suspect’s as he was sitting in the lot, the sheriff noted. That bolsters Waters’ belief that the gunman didn’t intend to carry out an attack at the university, he said.

“He had the opportunity to do so, and he did not,” Waters told CNN on Monday.

The shooter immediately started to drive away after being approached by a security officer, and he was followed until he left campus, Edward Waters University President and CEO A. Zachary Faison Jr. said.

This is where I disagree with the Sheriff. We have seen enough assailants target universities and colleges. I am skeptical that this man parked by a HBCU just to prepare and drive two minutes down the street to a dollar store for his attack.

Assailants love target-rich environments with unarmed targets. They are on a kamikaze mission, and all they want to do is take as many people as possible with them. That’s why they avoid hard targets and go for softer ones instead. It’s not much different from a thief who encounters two bicycles, one securely locked and another poorly secured, and goes for the “low-hanging fruit.”

The lesson learned here is to harden targets and for the people to be prepared. Statistically, public mass shootings by a stranger are exceedingly rare. But if you are concerned about it, take steps to arm yourself, get trained, practice regularly, and be prepared to shoot back.

Mass Shootings Have ‘No Correlation to Gun Laws,’ says Report

U.S.A. — Washington, D.C.—a jurisdiction with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country—leads the nation with “the highest rate of mass shootings per capita,” according to a report in the Daily Mail, citing new research released this week by medical researchers in Colorado.

Here’s how the Daily Mail headlined its story: “America’s mass shooting hotspots revealed: First of its kind study breaks down thousands of massacres by state – and there’s NO correlation between gun control laws.”

The study is published in JAMA Network Open, and it relies on data from the Gun Violence Archive, a database often criticized by the firearms community. The work was done by researchers at the University of Colorado: Leslie M. Barnard, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health; Erin Wright-Kelly, DrPH, MA, Injury and Violence Prevention Center, Colorado School of Public Health, and Marian E. Betz, MD, MPH, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora.

The report may cool some jets in the gun control community, which has maintained that states with the most guns and “lax” laws have the highest number of shootings. But here’s what the report says:

“The rate of mass shootings per 1,000,000 people was highest in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings), followed by much lower rates in Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings) and Illinois (3.6 mass shootings), the states with the next 2 highest rates (Table).”

Translation: Gun laws do not appear to have an impact, since the District of Columbia and the state of Illinois have restrictive laws, while Louisiana is far less restrictive.

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Despite Democrats’ Fearmongering On Firearms, A Majority Of Americans Own Guns Or Want To Own Guns

A majority of Americans are happy or prospective gun owners who keep firearms around to protect themselves, Pew Research found in its latest poll.

The poll, which surveyed 5,115 U.S. adults in June, found that, contrary to Democrats’ anti-gun rhetoric, Americans across all demographics enjoy exercising their Second Amendment rights by personally owning guns or living with someone who does.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans either already live in a household with a gun or have expressed interest in buying a gun in the future. Considering the U.S. is experiencing the highest personal gun ownership uptick since 2011, even those who aren’t firearm owners yet could be soon.

When Pew measured Americans’ attitudes towards guns in 2017, only 67 percent of firearm owners said they had guns for protection. After years of soaring gun sales due to rising crime and the summer 2020 riots, 72 percent of American gun owners now say protection is the primary reason they keep firearms around.Overall, 81 percent of gun owners say owning a firearm makes them feel safer. A majority of non-gun owners, 57 percent, say they also feel safer if someone in their household owns a gun.

“Gun owners express overwhelmingly positive sentiments about owning a gun, with sizable majorities saying it makes them feel safer and that they enjoy having a gun,” Pew noted.

Safety is likely one of the reasons gun ownership among women specifically has climbed in recent years. In 2017, only 22 percent of women said they personally owned a gun. Now, 25 percent of females have a firearm of their own.

Gun ownership, Pew found, is still higher among rural, Republican voters than among urbanites and Democrats. The latter groups, however, saw increases in gun ownership in the last five years. Between 2017 and now, firearm ownership among urban dwellers jumped 1 percent.

Approximately 4 percent more blue voters say they have guns now than they did in 2017. Six percent more Democrats have guns in their household in 2023 than they did in 2017.

Pew tried to overshadow their robust gun ownership report by highlighting that 61 percent of Americans think it is too easy to get a gun in the U.S. What the poll did not specify is exactly how law-abiding Americans feel about leftist-led legislation that seeks to restrict their Second Amendment rights.

Despite the fact that deadly mass shootings increased during Congress’ 1994 ban on “assault weapons,” Democrats, led by President Joe Biden, desperately want another ban on the most popular semi-automatic rifles on the market.

“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said in November 2022. “It has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

There are a myriad of problems with blue politicians’ unconstitutional gun-grab policies. One such problem is that if Democrats pass a federal ban on AR-15s, they would be depriving Americans of the ability to protect themselves in the they choose.

Seems like 10mm has something going for it. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of it being used successfully.

Men kill grizzly in self-defense near Whitefish

WHITEFISH, Mont. — Two men from Whitefish killed a grizzly bear in self-defense in the Whitefish Range.

One of the men was injured in an accidental shooting during the encounter with the grizzly bear, he was taken to the hospital for a gunshot wound to the shoulder.

“The two men were scouting for hunting season near Smokey Range Trailhead off Canyon Creek Road on the Flathead National Forest on the afternoon of Aug. 26 when they encountered a female grizzly bear with a cub. The men were walking through a thick section of forest when they surprised the bears inside of 15 feet. The adult bear charged the individuals, and both men shot and killed the bear. One of the men was shot in the back shoulder during the incident,” according to Montana FWP.

The following was sent out by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks:

A pair of Whitefish men killed a grizzly bear in self-defense last weekend in the Whitefish Range north of Whitefish.

One of the individuals was injured in an accidental shooting during the encounter. The man was taken to the hospital and treated for a gunshot wound to the shoulder.

The two men were scouting for hunting season near Smokey Range Trailhead off Canyon Creek Road on the Flathead National Forest on the afternoon of Aug. 26 when they encountered a female grizzly bear with a cub. The men were walking through a thick section of forest when they surprised the bears inside of 15 feet. The adult bear charged the individuals, and both men shot and killed the bear. One of the men was shot in the back shoulder during the incident.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks game wardens and members of the Wildlife Human Attack Response Team responded and investigated the incident. The bear’s behavior appeared to be defensive in the surprise, close encounter with the two men. FWP shared the initial findings with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement, and the USFWS concurred it was a self-defense situation. The grizzly bear did not have a history of conflict and was previously tagged for population monitoring work in 2009. The bear was approximately 25 years old. FWP continues to monitor the site for the cub.

Be bear aware

Montana is bear country. Avoiding conflicts with bears is easier than dealing with conflicts. Here are some precautions to help residents, recreationists and people who work outdoors avoid negative bear encounters:

Carry bear spray and be prepared to use it immediately.

Travel in groups whenever possible and make casual noise, which can help alert bears to your presence.

Stay away from animal carcasses, which often attract bears.

Follow food storage orders from the applicable land management agency.

If you encounter a bear, never approach it. Leave the area when it is safe to do so.

Keep garbage, bird feeders, pet food and other attractants put away in a secure building. Keep garbage in a secure building until the day it is collected. Certified bear-resistant garbage containers are available in many areas.

Never feed wildlife. Bears that become food conditioned lose their natural foraging behavior and pose threats to human safety. It is illegal to feed bears in Montana.

Hunting in places that have or may have grizzly bears — which includes northwest Montana — requires special precautions:

Carry bear spray and be prepared to use it immediately.

Look for bear sign and be cautious around creeks and areas with limited visibility and where any noises you might make do not carry well.

Hunt with a group of people. Making localized noise can alert bears to your presence.

Be aware that elk calls and cover scents can attract bears.

Bring the equipment and people needed to help field dress game and remove the meat from the kill site as soon as possible.

If you need to leave part of the meat in the field during processing, hang it at least 10 feet off the ground and at least 150 yards from the gut pile. Leave it where it can be observed from a distance of at least 200 yards.

Upon your return, observe the meat with binoculars. If it has been disturbed or if a bear is in the area, leave and call FWP.

 

How Big Are Our Virtues?

This is as serious as it gets. It is scandalous when millions of us are put at risk by bad government policy. Likewise, it is vitally important to recognize when we’re doing the right thing and saving thousands of lives every day. This is hard to understand because some of the problem is political, but some of the difficulty is simply the size of our virtue. How can we begin to understand that millions of us prevented serious injury and saved a huge number of lives every year?

Ordinary citizens like us legally use a firearm in self-defense about 2.8-million times a year. Sure, that is a number, but how big is that really?

This is a matter of life and death and society takes it very seriously. In the simplest terms, we are not allowed to use a firearm, or even threaten to use a firearm, unless an innocent victim faces the most serious threats. We are expected to use less violent tools when we face less dangerous threats. We’re only allowed to defend ourselves with a gun when it is the safest thing to do, yet we were forced to use a firearm in self-defense over 76-hundred times a day. That says a lot about how often ordinary citizens were thrown into very dangerous situations.

How frequent is armed defense?

As background information, the FBI said violent criminals committed these 1.2 million crimes in 2019-

  • Aggravated assaults- 821,182
  • Robberies- 267,988
  • Rapes- 139,815
  • Murders- 16,425

 

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BLUF:
Leftists will always blame the gun, not the shooters, because the end goal is to get your gat.

KDJ’s ‘Gun Myth’ Fact Check: Liberals vs. Americans, Part 2: Mass Shootings.

As the United Police States of America continues to shred the Constitution into confetti, I thought I’d continue with analysis of more of the applesauce the left is spewing as “gun myths” as they try to dismantle our Second Amendment rights.

A certain brilliant radio talk show host posits that Democrats keep criminals on the streets for two reasons:

  • Crime causes chaos, which communism needs to successfully spread across the country.
  • Higher gun-related crime statistics are used to justify saying, “We need to abolish guns.”

In other words, leftists encourage criminals to break the law and then use the crime stats as a means of taking guns from We the People. Mass shootings are especially tasty crimes for gun grabbers.

FACT-O-RAMA! A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot, not including the shooter(s), in a fluid situation. Meaning, If I blaze up a Denny’s and shoot three people, go home, take a nap, catch the 3:10 showing of “Barbie,” and shoot three more in the theatre, this is not a mass shooting.

Let’s take a look at what the leftoids at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) are saying about mass shootings:

MYTH: IN MOST MASS SHOOTINGS, PERPETRATORS DO NOT KNOW THE PEOPLE THEY KILL.

FACT: Nearly 70% of mass shootings involve domestic violence, Lisa Geller, MPH, state affairs advisor for the Center, told 12 News in Arizona.

In a study published in 2021, Geller and colleagues found that in over 68% of mass shootings, the perpetrator killed at least one partner or family member and had a history of domestic violence.

The JHU crowd conveniently changed an “or” to an “and” to create a lie.

JHU wrote (emphasis added): “Geller and colleagues found that in over 68% of mass shootings, the perpetrator killed at least one partner or family member and had a history of domestic violence.” But when I looked at their source, I found this: “We found that 59.1% of mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 were DV (domestic violence)-related and in 68.2% of mass shootings, the perpetrator either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of DV.”

Yes, it’s safe to assume that a wacko who perforates his own family probably has a history of domestic violence.

Also, the research JHU is using involves “Fatal mass shootings, defined as four or more people killed by gunfire, excluding the perpetrator,” whereas the aforementioned myth refers to mass shootings. What’s the difference between a mass shooting and a “fatal” mass shooting?” Four (or more) dead people.

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