“Crisis of Crimes”: New Orleans Becomes Murder Capital of America

Progressives in top city leadership positions have helped transform New Orleans into the murder capital of America.

WSJ reported the Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico, recorded the highest homicide rate of any major city so far this year, with 41 homicides per 100,000 residents.

Metropolitan Crime Commission Inc., a nonprofit that works on crime-reducing strategies in the city, said the homicide rate is up 141% compared with the same period in 2019. It pointed out carjackings are up 210%, shootings 100%, and armed robberies up 25%.

“The homicide rate is on pace to surpass last year’s rate, which was the worst since Hurricane Katrina in 2005,” WSJ noted. 

The city’s alarming spike in the homicide rate comes at the same time as “progressive prosecutor” Jason Williams became the district attorney of the metro area in early 2021. He promised a “more selective” approach to prosecutions that goes “beyond punishment.”

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Joe Biden Delivers a Mess of a 60 Minutes Interview, Leaves His Handlers Scrambling

Joe Biden appeared on 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, and it was an absolute disaster of an interview. As I type this, stories are already coming out about how he blindsided officials in his administration and how his handlers are scrambling to clean up the mess.

In fact, within an hour of the interview premiering, the first clarification had already dropped regarding comments the president made about defending Taiwan from a Chinese attack. That was the second time in the last few months that the administration has had to walk back Biden’s comments on the subject.

Things didn’t get better as the topics changed. When asked about inflation, Biden gave perhaps the worst answer imaginable.

When it comes to bad economic news, there are two ways to handle it as a president. The right way is to admit the truth and then lay out a quantifiable plan for how to improve things. Americans are very forgiving of politicians who speak plainly to them. On the other hand, the wrong way is to simply pretend like everything is actually great and that anyone who doesn’t think so is an idiot. Guess which strategy Biden has chosen?

The dismissive snark about an 8.3 inflation rate that is crushing the poor and middle-class is just astonishing to witness. His skin is so thin you can see straight through it, and while I know Biden doesn’t have to live with any of the consequences of his policies, you’d think he could at least fake it a little. Besides, his excuse doesn’t even make sense. Who cares if the rate only went up “an inch” if the overall rate is still sky-high? Core inflation continues to rise, mainly driven by food and housing (including rent) prices.

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It must have finally dawned on them that it stopped working from them politically

Biden: ‘The pandemic is over.’

President Biden declared the coronavirus pandemic “over” in an interview that aired Sunday, pointing to the return of large events and the lack of masking and other public health measures in place nationwide.

“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”

The United States is still recording an average of more than 400 deaths per day from COVID-19, according to New York Times data, and more than 1 million Americans have died from the virus since the pandemic began in early 2020.

Highly contagious variants have spread throughout the globe, making it nearly impossible to fully eradicate COVID-19.

As a result, the Biden administration has focused its messaging on the importance of getting vaccinated and receiving booster shots to increase immunity, as well as the wide availability of of antiviral pills and other forms of treatment for those who contract the virus.

Biden himself contracted COVID-19 in July, but experienced only mild symptoms, according to his doctor. Officials credited his mild case to being fully vaccinated and taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

The U.S. and much of the world has returned to hosting large events over the past year, like the auto show, and done away with requirements that attendees wear masks or provide proof of vaccination. The U.S. still requires foreign visitors to be fully vaccinated to come to the country by plane.

The World Health Organization (WHO) still categorizes COVID-19 as a pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s top medical adviser on the pandemic, said earlier this year the U.S. was moving “out of the pandemic phase” with COVID-19, pointing to the manageable levels of hospitalizations and deaths in the country.

Biden has in the past argued that the United States had turned a corner on the pandemic, most notably during a speech on Independence Day in 2021, when he asserted the country had the tools necessary to “declare independence” from the virus.

But in the weeks that followed, the delta variant contributed to a surge in cases and deaths. And in late 2021 into early 2022, the omicron variant again led to a spike in cases and deaths. Newly available booster shots were designed specifically to shield Americans from severe cases of the omicron variant.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Biden said the “impact on the psyche of the American people as a consequence of the pandemic is profound.”

“Think of how that has changed everything. You know, people’s attitudes about themselves, their families, about the state of the nation, about the state of their communities. And so there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, a great deal of uncertainty. And we lost a million people. A million people to COVID,” he said.

“When I got in office, when I got elected, only 2 million people had been vaccinated. I got 220 million — my point is it takes time,” he added. “We were left in a very difficult situation. It’s been a very difficult time. Very difficult.”

Demand for private security is booming in Minneapolis.

In June 2020, the Minneapolis city council famously vowed to defund the police department. Though their plans fell through, the fully funded MPD is nonetheless struggling. More than 250 officers have resigned or retired since then. Earlier this year, the Minneapolis supreme court ruled that the city has a duty to staff the MPD with a minimum of 731 sworn officers, but the department is at least 100 officers short of that target. Meantime, crime has spiked, with 96 homicides in 2021—doubling the number in 2019 and tying a 1995 record.

Private security has stepped into the breach. The number of licenses approved for new private providers rose from 14 in 2019 to 27 in 2021, according to data from Minnesota’s Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services. Demand is exploding as businesses increasingly opt for private guards over off-duty cops.

Christopher Forest started his private security firm, Unparalleled Security, after the rioting of 2020. Today, he has 175 employees. Forest did not set out to start a private security firm, having previously worked as CEO of Minnesota’s largest valet-parking company. But after June 2020, his clients began approaching him with requests for security guards. These clients had once hired off-duty police officers for their security needs, but the MPD’s image after the George Floyd killing made that more difficult.

“I think it just had to do with the temperature in the room when you have a police officer in a venue versus an unarmed security guard,” Forest says.

Michael MacDonald, who runs a smaller private security firm called JomsVikings Protection and Security, agrees. “Stores do not want cops out in front because of the negative attention it can bring to their facilities,” says MacDonald. His license to operate was issued July 31, 2020. Today, he has 18 full-time and ten part-time employees.

High crime means that new clients, such as movie theaters, are entering the market for private security, says Richard Hodson, the chairman of Minnesota’s Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services. Hodson says he knows of a retired police officer who recently got a license to run his own private security firm but has had to turn down contracts because he cannot hire enough guards to staff them. Demand exceeds supply.

Businesses still fear negative publicity from taking an aggressive enforcement stance. Forest says retail clients instruct his guards not to confront shoplifters. “Retail is in a place where they do not want you to even address the person,” he says. “You are not to talk to them. You are not to approach them. You are not to ask to see the items in their bag. If they are purchasing something, you are asked to not look at the receipt. You are 100 percent visual deterrent, and that is all.”

That approach isn’t universal. MacDonald says that his guards sometimes confront shoplifters, but never aggressively. “When we zone in on the individual who is stealing, we go over there and we say, ‘Hey, man, we know you stole. Can you just put it back and then leave?’ We start with that approach. We don’t go right to the top,” he says. “I will only take a contract for a store if there is a clear understanding that we are strictly there for employee safety. We are not loss prevention.”

Should guards call police to stop crimes in progress? MacDonald’s personnel tend not to do so for shoplifting. Forest says that some of his guards who work for hotels do intervene if guests are engaging in illegal activities; in theory, they should call the police, but they usually don’t. “If it is not a life threatening situation, the police do not show up,” Forest says. “They let my guards de-escalate on their own.”

Even a nonconfrontational approach can escalate. MacDonald describes an incident that occurred in July: “A guy stole a bag of chips and shoved it down his pants. Our guy made an approach and was like, ‘You can keep the chips, but you still got to go.’ Well, the guy brandished a firearm out of his bag. So our guy pulled his firearm. And then the guy took off running. But our employee had the level of training to remember that he could still re-holster it, and he does not have to engage any further.” That incident merited a rare call to the MPD. “If it gets higher than a theft, like what happened with my employee, then the cops will actually come, because otherwise they are not coming,” says MacDonald.

Some Minneapolis residents still prefer to hire off-duty cops, whom the department makes available through what it calls the “buyback program.” The upscale Lowry neighborhood established the Minneapolis Safety Initiative for off-duty police to conduct patrols. Residents are trying to raise $210,000, suggesting a recurring contribution from their neighbors of $220/month for at least six months. The Minneapolis Safety Initiative attracted significant coverage, including criticism from some who argue that wealthier neighborhoods are purchasing scarce police hours.

Nevertheless, demand for private security is growing. MacDonald and Forest expect to see significant expansion in the year ahead. High crime and police shortages are changing the public-safety landscape in Minneapolis.

BLUF
While this reference guide is by no means a comprehensive list of the administration’s entire gun control agenda, there is one thing that is not missing.

Nowhere in any of the Biden-Harris administration’s plans is there a single mention of how they intend to disarm criminals. Only law-abiding citizens are targeted for disarmament, not the bad guys.

That, friends, is all you need to know of their true intent.

A reference guide to Joe Biden’s war on guns
Documenting the administration’s anti-gun agenda.

The Biden-Harris administration’s war on guns is the most comprehensive and multi-faceted gun control scheme ever created.

Former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice, who has admitted meeting with gun control groups regularly at the White House, likely drafted most of the plan.

Under Rice, the administration nimbly exploits any anti-gun gain, while quickly pivoting away from pushback from the media, the public or Congress.

By design, most of their gun control agenda skirts any oversight — legislative or constitutional — and is immune from other normal checks and balances.

With their weaponized foot soldiers in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives willing to carry out any order regardless of its constitutionality, the Biden-Harris administration has become one of the biggest threats to the Second Amendment since the Bill of Rights was first written.

Because it is so vast and comprehensive, simply tracking all of the administration’s gun control initiatives has been difficult, which is why this reference guide was drafted.

What follows is a partial list of the Biden-Harris administration’s gun control agenda. It will be updated as needed.

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Say Her Name

fletcher

Some victims are more equal than others.

If I were a real MAGA extremist, I’d be able to tell you about a specific murder trend happening in America right now, but I don’t want to get on the FBI terror watch list.

What I can tell you is this: we are living in a real-life version of The Purge. Murders are up at least 44 percent in two years.

For over two years, we heard a long list of murder victims shouted on TV every day. I know by heart the names and murder circumstances of Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbury, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and many others.

This new trend is a little different. In fact, I couldn’t help noticing that some particularly gruesome recent killings have been met with a strangely subdued reaction by the mainstream media. Which is weird, because silence is violence.

Crime itself is nothing new. Like many of you, I’ve already been a victim of lots of crimes. Multiple cars broken into overnight, wallets pickpocketed at bars, that sort of thing.

I have also been the victim of a few much scarier crimes. Once, I was robbed at gunpoint. I was alone, walking home just after dusk on a prestigious East Coast college campus. The robber demanded my wallet as he jabbed his handgun into me. He snatched the $20 I gave him and ran away.

Last year, I arrived at a public park to retrieve one of my children from sports practice. As I pulled into the lot, I noticed a group of men hanging around a parked car. My inner systemic racist noticed that they were young, black, dressed like gangbangers, and smoking weed. My inner white privilege told me I should find a different place to park, immediately.

But I convinced myself that there was no way anything bad could happen here, in full daylight, in view of a playground full of kids, so I dismissed my inner “racist” and pulled into the lot.

I called my husband and told him, “I think I just interrupted a gang meetup. These guys look like they have guns.”

He told me to ignore my inner racist. “It’s broad daylight, you’ll be fine.”

Thirty seconds after hanging up with him, I heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire close by. At first I thought I was dreaming. How could my inner racist have been so right? And then I thought, oh no, I was correct in my assumption that these guys were sketchy, and now I’m going to die a “racist.”

The shots were very loud, because they were being fired three feet behind my car. The shooter was crouched down and aiming at the guys who had been standing around the parking lot and were now running for their lives. I watched him shoot one man in the stomach. The victim clutched his guts, screaming, and fell to the ground.

I tried to make myself as small as I could. I learned that you can’t get down very far when you’re stuck in the front seat of a minivan. The shooter kept blasting away, and I called my husband back, this time to say goodbye. He was an hour away, totally unable to help me, and I just managed to tell him what was happening. Then I braced myself in case a stray bullet came through my car, and like the racist that I am, I prayed and waited for death.

When the shooting stopped, there was absolute silence. That was the moment I was most afraid, since I assumed the shooter would be searching for a getaway car, and I was the perfect carjacking prospect, since I’d been the only other person dumb enough to park in the lot. Take another car, I silently begged. Please don’t take this one, with the toddler car seats in it. Do you know how expensive those are?

I heard sirens in the distance. I waited on the floor of my car until a cop tapped on my window. As he took my witness statement he told me, “This parking lot is a gang hangout for the Bloods. What in the world are you doing here?” “Trying not to be racist!” I almost said.

Ah, the Bloods, of course. That would explain why the guys running away had been wearing red, and why the shooter wore a blue baseball cap. (The Bloods are one of the two big L.A. gangs; the other is the Crips. In the 1980s, even white kids from the westside couldn’t go out wearing red or blue, since the Bloods wear red, and Crips wear blue. It is as stupid as it sounds, and if you don’t believe me, go watch the Sean Penn movie Colors.)

My “racism” had tried to warn me, but I didn’t listen. The cop then beckoned for me to get out and look at something behind my car. There were bullet casings all around my car, inches from my tires. “Your car is in the crime scene so we can’t let you leave,” he told me, as another cop strung yellow investigation tape around my parking spot.

My son emerged from the gym with his team. I stared at him and realized that if they had walked out five minutes earlier, it might have been a bloodbath. Rounds had gone through at least two nearby cars, including one containing the parent of a boy on the team, but by some miracle no other innocent people were hurt.

The cop, a Latino guy, advised me to stay away from the park, since it’s near the projects that “the gang controls.” He was telling me to listen to my inner racist! What if I’d pulled up to the parking lot, taken a look at the group of men, and decided not to go in? Would that have been the right thing to do—or the racist thing to do?

As the police officer talked to me, furious people from the neighborhood stood on the other side of the police tape and yelled things like, “Fuck you! Get the fuck out, this is our neighborhood!” Looking back, I probably should have apologized to the polite young man who screamed “white bitch,” since my “racism” is certainly what drew the police to his park that afternoon—it may have even instigated the shooting.

Common Sense is “Racism”

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Well, I had never supported SloJoe for as long as I can remember, I always know him as plagiarist who was a pathological liar.
Nice to see some who used to support him seeing the light.

How Joe Biden Lost My Vote

“The new puritans, then, are best understood as a clergy for a godless age, presiding over a dreamscape of their own making, rewriting our language, history and traditions as they go along. Yet, for all their clout, there are still some among us who steadfastly refuse to praise the elegance of the emperor’s new clothes, who would rather point and laugh at the naked man in our midst. Not for the first time in human history, our way out of this madness will depend upon the heretics.” – Andrew Doyle, The New Puritans

Joe Biden emerged from his speech last week “on the continued battle for the soul of our nation” like a squalling infant birthed from the loins of blue-check Twitter, bathed in the blood-red light of militant fascism.

He was finally their guy. Gone was the empathy guy. Gone was the unity guy. Gone was the moderate guy. Be mean, Joe. Get them, Joe. Get tough, Joe. Tell them their participation in Democracy is a threat to … Democracy!

Yes, tell them, Joe. Tell the “MAGA Republicans” they’re not welcome in their own country. Tell them their participation is a threat to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Tell them that Democracy means they have to sit down and shut up.

Tell the truck driver who travels coast to coast, working the graveyard shift, to bring freshly cut meat to supermarket shelves. Tell the police officer, the waitress, the bartender, the cable guy, the grocery store clerk, the grandmother, the garage mechanic, the veteran who served in Afghanistan who now has been kicked out of the military for not taking the vaccine, the mother of two who now must home school her children – that they are the violent extremists posing the biggest threat to the country they call home.

Tell them, Joe, that you’ve decided to throw them away like human garbage and that you’re hoping for another January 6th so you can arrest anyone who ever voted for or supported Donald Trump. Tell them that you and you alone ARE America, and any threat to your power is a threat to the State because that’s not fascism at all.

Why did Joe Biden give that speech? Who thought that was a good idea? Obviously, Joe Biden and his administration know that the “MAGA Republicans” are not a dangerous threat to the country. Otherwise, the Democrats would not have meddled in primary elections, spending upwards of $46 million pushing those very same MAGA candidates towards a win, blocking the more moderate GOP picks.

Surely the Democrats know what they’re doing, right? I mean, they’re asking for America’s vote to stay in power. Joe Biden wouldn’t lie to the people about something as serious as a threat to the Republic, right?

Wrong. Joe Biden did lie. The speechwriter lied. They would do anything, say anything, and put any community or even the country at risk just to stay in power and hold onto the past, the America under Barack Obama from 2008 to 2016.

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How Hochul’s gun laws will make churches less safe

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has been on an anti-gun tirade pretty much since she took office. Any hopes she’d be a smidge better than her predecessor on the Second Amendment have been well and truly dashed. The only thing she may be better on is not sexually harassing her female subordinates.

Following New York’s epic smackdown by the Supreme Court, Hochul and the legislature rushed through a measure seeking to try and adhere to the letter of the Bruen decision only as much as they felt they had to.

Yet that law includes a prohibition of guns at any place of worship.

As noted at our sister site PJ Media, that’s going to make those places of worship a lot less safe.

For your consideration:

  • On June 17, 2015, a man walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., where a prayer meeting was being held. He shot and killed nine people, including the pastor, State Senator Clementa Pinckney. The shooter was charged with a hate crime.
  • November 5, 2017 — a man entered the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church in Texas. He was dressed in black and wearing tactical gear. By the time he finished shooting, 26 were dead and 20 were wounded.
  • On a Sunday morning in December 2019, a man walked through the door of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, and opened fire during services. Two victims died in the attack. The gunman was killed by two parishioners, one of whom was the security guard.
  • October 27, 2018 — a man came into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. After shouting “All Jews must die!” he shot and killed 11 people. Six others were wounded. He was known for posting anti-Semitic rants on Gab.
  • One person was killed and three were injured when a man entered Chabad of Poway in California and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle in April 2019.
  • In January of this year, a man held four people, including the rabbi, hostage at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, for 10 hours before being killed by police. The suspect said that he had hidden bombs in undisclosed locations.
  • In May 2022, the New York Post reported a rise in anti-Semitic activity in the city. This included vandalization of synagogues and attacks on individual people.

It should be noted that if you want to go further back, you can find still more places of worship being targeted.

What’s more, many churches and synagogues can’t afford to hire professional armed security, yet there’s no provision in state law for volunteers to step in if the church so desires.

Look, one area where I tend to infuriate my fellow Second Amendment supporters is that I think a property owner has the right to ban guns on their property. I’m fine with laws that give signs the force of law, even. I want to know where I’m not welcome, after all.

But the flip side of that is that I cannot tolerate laws that tell property owners that they can’t make that determination for themselves. That’s precisely what Hochul’s law does since the churches and synagogues are, in fact, property owners in most cases.

Looking at this list, it’s easy to see that places of worship get targeted by maniacs looking to kill as many people as possible.

Hochul and folks like her probably think this law will stop that, but it won’t. I mean, if a law would stop such a thing, then wouldn’t the laws against murder do the trick on their own?

They don’t, though.

Instead, these places of worship cannot allow their congregations to be lawfully armed as a defensive measure. That means these very places become better targets for the deranged.

And when it happens in New York, remember that it was Hochul and her buddies who made that target so attractive.

Full-auto switches popping up in gun-controlled Connecticut

Full-auto switches take a regular Glock semi-automatic pistol and converts them into a machine gun. I don’t mean that in the sense that bump stocks supposedly do, where they really just allow you to pull the trigger stupidly fast. No, they actually turn the pistols into full-auto weapons.

As a result, they’re illegal in the US. There’s no state in which they’re OK because they fall under federal law. They shouldn’t, but they do.

Anyway, they’ve been turning up more and more in different places. It seems gun-controlled Connecticut is having an issue with them.

A tiny device capable of transforming a handgun into a mini machine gun is showing up in Connecticut, according to police reports.

The device, known colloquially as Glock “switches” or “chips,” can be quickly attached to a handgun, converting the weapon from shooting just one bullet each time the trigger is squeezed to having the capability of firing until the trigger is lifted.

A handful of the devices have been recovered by police in Connecticut in recent years, according to police reports, though it’s unclear how many of the devices are present in the state. Advocates say they pose a danger to the public because they increase the risk of bystanders being shot, and because of the apparent ease criminals are able to obtain them.

Ease criminals are able to obtain these things? Seriously?

Nah, can’t be. Gun control works, we’re told, and these things are seriously illegal. Due to the date of manufacture on these, no one can legally have one except for a handful of exceptions. How can gun-controlled Connecticut have an issue with easy access to one of the most controlled devices out there?

The report goes on to discuss the ease with which these can be obtained, such as from China or via a 3D printer.

Now, there are only a few that have been recovered, but that’s all it takes to create a panic. However, in this case, there are lessons that can be learned despite the limited numbers recovered.

You see, you can’t keep bad guys from doing bad things. If they want full-auto switches, they’ll get them, especially in this day and age.

Thankfully, there’s no mention of Connecticut lawmakers trying to pass laws banning things that are already illegal. Yeah, I know, will wonders never cease and all that, but it’s still worth mentioning.

However, there was this bit I wanted to talk about:

“I’ve heard law enforcement officers in other parts of the country refer to this as … ‘the scariest thing that has hit the streets in a long time,’” said Jeremy Stein, executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, a group that supports stronger gun laws.

Stein said the device works by essentially “bypassing” the firearms trigger mechanism, similar to a bump-stock, a device designed to make a semi-automatic weapon mimic a fully automatic rate of fire.

“There’s no legitimate civilian purpose — there is no good reason to have one of these things,” he added.

Well, yeah, there is.

You see, when the bad guys can throw down a whole lot of fire, it might be warranted for law-abiding citizens to have the means to lay down a similar amount of fire.

As it stands, we’re on an unequal footing with our adversaries should we find ourselves up against a criminal armed with a gun possessing a full-auto switch. We simply don’t have the firepower to meet that kind of force.

So having a similar full-auto switch would be a “legitimate civilian purpose.”

Now, with that said, no law-abiding citizen is likely to have one of these. I mean, by definition, if you have one you’re not likely to be law-abiding, now are you?

However, this also shows that what we need isn’t more gun control laws. This is as tightly controlled as they come under the law, and yet for less than the price of a tank of gas–OK, bad example in this day and age, but bear with me–you can get something that will turn your standard Glock into a machine pistol.

Or, you can find the files and make them yourself with a 3D printer.

Look, while I know that Connecticut hasn’t gotten the memo, gun control is dead. It doesn’t work, is unconstitutional, and is just a general waste of time.

If you can’t keep a full-auto switch out of criminal hands, how are you going to keep guns out of them?

Lies, Damn Lies and President Joe Biden

If the old chestnut concerning “lies, damn lies and statistics” was referring to a U.S. president, it would almost certainly be current President Joe Biden (D).

That fact was proven, once again, during the president’s late-August campaign-style appearance in Pennsylvania. Speaking to an audience at Wilkes University, Biden made another one of his preposterous statements about the AR-15—a type of semi-automatic rifle that he loves to hate and wants to ban.

“Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun?” the president asked those in attendance. Apparently, he received no answer to that somewhat rhetorical question, and the White House press corps hasn’t followed up on the outright lie.

In truth, there are many rifle calibers that fire projectiles at a higher velocity than the roughly 3,000 feet per second (fps) of the .223 or 5.56 mm rounds that an AR-15 is typically chambered in, including the .220 Swift, .257 Weatherby Magnum and the .30/378 Weatherby. In fact, the average bullet out of an AR-15 moves less than three-times faster than a typical 115-grain 9 mm pistol bullet commonly used for home and self-defense. Recall, however, that the president once lied about that round, too, saying, “A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

Apparently not believing the president would simply lie about the easily researched speed of a rifle bullet, the dubious “fact-checking” website, Snopes, looked into the matter. In the end, however, the “fact checkers” treated the asinine statement by the president with kid gloves: “The president’s claim is incorrect, and generalizes the varying speeds of bullets fired from different kinds of guns,” Snopes reported. Rather than sticking to “fact-checking,” Snopes went on to editorialize, “However, the AR-15 is still an especially lethal weapon and has been used to murder hundreds of people in mass shootings in the United States.”

Biden also used the occasion to take yet another shot at those Americans who rightly believe that the Second Amendment was written to ensure citizens could defend themselves against a tyrannical government.

“If you want to fight against a country, you need an F-15,” Biden said sarcastically. “You need something a little more than a gun. No, I’m not joking.”

Having a leader threaten law-abiding gun owners with hi-tech jet fighters seems like something you’d be more likely to hear in an authoritarian state. Hearing Biden make the statement didn’t sit well with freedom-loving citizens.

“While we’re here, let’s also acknowledge that ‘your AR-15 is useless because the government could just carpet bomb you into submission’ isn’t an argument in favor of gun control,” said Amy Swearer, a legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. “It’s actually an argument for a better armed citizenry and against trusting whoever said that.”

Additionally, in the same speech the president once again made his tired, oft-repeated statement about deer and bulletproof vests—a statement so ignorant that it’s hard to believe the so-called “most powerful man in the world” would continue to repeat it.

“And by the way, how many—my dad used to love to hunt in the Poconos when we lived in Scranton,” Biden said. “How many deer or bear are wearing Kevlar vests, huh? Not a joke.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. Somebody should tell Biden that—or at least tell whoever keeps adding that dopey line to his speeches.

Lastly, Biden encouraged attendees to vote based on a candidate’s willingness to curtail Second Amendment rights for all Americans.

“It’s time to hold every elected official’s feet to the fire and ask them: ‘Are you for banning assault weapons? Yes or no?’ Ask them. If the answer is no, vote against them.”

Biden is correct about one thing: It is time to hold every elected official’s feet to the fire and ask them if they are for banning common AR-15-style rifles. If the answer is yes, it’s time to vote them out and replace them with someone who respects the Second Amendment.

Bombshell DHS Oversight Report: Biden Resettled ‘Not Fully Vetted’ Afghans in U.S. Who May ‘Pose Risk’ to Americans

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General (IG) has issued a bombshell report that accuses President Joe Biden’s administration of resettling Afghan nationals “who were not fully vetted” across the United States.

Following the U.S. Armed Forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden opened a “humanitarian parole” pipeline that has resettled more than 86,000 Afghans in American communities, many of whom were not screened or interviewed in person.

Now, a bombshell DHS IG report reveals that the Biden administration “admitted or paroled” thousands of Afghans “who were not fully vetted” before their arrival in the United States and may “pose a risk to national security” as a result.

The report states:

We determined some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. Government databases, such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. We also determined CBP admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States. [Emphasis added]

We attribute DHS’ challenges to not having: (1) a list of Afghan evacuees who were unable to provide sufficient identification documents; (2) a contingency plan to support similar emergency situations; and (3) standardized policies. As a result, DHS may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities. [Emphasis added]…

In January 2022, we issued DHS a Notice of Findings and Recommendations document notifying the Department of the urgent need to take action to address security risks of evacuees from Afghanistan who were admitted or paroled into the United States without sufficient identification documents to ensure proper screening and vetting. [Emphasis added]

According to DHS IG investigators, Biden’s DHS “did not always have critical data to properly screen, vet, or inspect Afghan evacuees arriving as part” of the massive Afghan resettlement operation.

Specifically, the report details that information in federal databases used to vet Afghans “such as name, DOB, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing.”

Two Afghans, in particular, were resettled in American communities by the Biden administration who were later found to be national security threats with ties to terrorism. One of those Afghans has already been deported, while DHS officials said the other is in deportation proceedings.

Across Biden’s DHS, officials were allowed to bring Afghans to the U.S. without providing proper IDs if they were found to have “no derogatory information” connected to their purported identities, the report states. The agency also did not keep a record of Afghans who failed to provide proper IDs but were admitted to the United States anyway.

“According to internal DHS reports, CBP admitted or paroled dozens of evacuees with derogatory information into the country,” the report states.

Although DHS IG Joseph V. Cuffari suggested two remedies to clean up the agency’s vetting procedures, the report states that Biden’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “did not concur” with either suggestion and has defended his department’s improper vetting of Afghans.

The bombshell report comes after a number of alarms have been raised about the Biden administration’s failure to properly vet tens of thousands of Afghans now living in the United States.

In February, a Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General report revealed that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans arriving in the United States, and that about 50 Afghans were flagged for “significant security concerns” after their resettlement.

Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the report states, have since disappeared into American communities. The report noted that as of September 17, 2021, only three of 31 Afghans flagged with specific “derogatory information” could be located.

Likewise, a recent Project Veritas report alleges that the Biden administration resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” in communities across America.

In August, a federal whistleblower came forward to allege that the Biden administration resettled nearly 400 Afghans in American communities who are listed in federal databases as “potential threats to national security.”

In terms of vetting, the Biden administration has loosened requirements for entry to the United States. In June, DHS announced that Afghans who “provided … limited material support” to terrorist organizations would still qualify for resettlement in American communities.

Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to research, and each refugee costs taxpayers about $133,000 over the course of their lifetime. Within five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.

9/11 and Biden’s Destruction of America’s Soul

When I think back to 9/11, the memories are very clear. It was the beginning of my senior year of college. It’s difficult to picture the United States responding differently than we did. A nation that was bitterly divided over a prolonged presidential election less than a year earlier united against a common enemy.

“A terrorist attack designed to tear us apart has instead bound us together as a nation,” President George W. Bush observed in his radio address days after the attack.

For a little while, anyway.

Disagreements over the Iraq War and the 2004 election quickly tore the country apart again, and they continued to worsen. Barack Obama’s presidency saw unprecedented partisan bitterness. Despite campaigning as a uniter, Obama shunned Republicans during the global recession, passing an expensive and ineffective stimulus plan and a national healthcare plan without Republican support. After losing one-party control, Obama unconstitutionally legislated via executive order instead of making any attempt to work with Republicans on any compromise legislation. He would then go on to use a weaponized government to target conservative individuals and groups and eventually spy on Donald Trump’s campaign and frame him over bogus allegations of Russian collusion. Adding insult to injury, Democrats would go on to shamelessly blame Trump for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is national unity possible ever again? For over twenty years, I’ve held onto the hope that it could be, and that it wouldn’t take another deadly terrorist attack to do it.

But that dream is over.

In the past month, we’ve seen an unprecedented raid on Donald Trump’s home over a presidential records dispute and Joe Biden’s recent primetime speech, in which he declared half the country enemies of the Republic. Despite all the bitter division that plagued us before, that speech felt like the point of no return. Joe Biden destroyed the soul of America, and it’s impossible to see how we can ever recover from that. Where Al Qaeda failed to tear this nation apart, Joe Biden succeeded.

Related: White House: Trump Supporters Are an ‘Extreme Threat to Our Democracy’

America no longer stands united. We are two different countries repeatedly proving we can’t coexist peacefully.

On this 21st anniversary of 9/11, we remember the bravery of the first responders at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and of those who took down Flight 93 before it reached its intended target. Many will reflect on the attack on our nation and remember those we lost, and some will offer platitudes about American resolve.

When I look back on 9/11, what I remember most is the way Americans were able to put aside their differences and treat each other as neighbors and fellow citizens. And now I mourn that such national solidarity will never happen again.

Democrats Are Hoping We Forget They Brought Us Record Levels of Murders, Overdose Deaths, and Teen Suicides.

Democrats have this foolish belief that arresting Steve Bannon, tossing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and ostracizing people in MAGA hats will make voters forget about the carnage the commies have wrought upon our country when We the People step into a voting booth in 60 days, 10 hours, 14 minutes and 12 seconds. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.

People are killing other people or themselves in record numbers. Thousands more are dying from overdoses on drugs, many of which are trotted over our southern border. All of these tragedies are happening because of Democrats and their clownish policies.

MURDERS

By now, you’ve heard about this week’s murder-fest in Memphis, committed by people who should have been in jail. Our own master-blaster Paula Bolyard wrote about it earlier.

Thanks to inane no-bail laws, a 20-year-old woman, arrested seven times for crimes involving a machete or another weapon, recently slashed an 82-year-old man’s face in New York City.

I have examples for days of legacy criminals attacking and killing innocent people. Criminals who should have been in the hoosegow but, thanks to the apparatchik-Americans in the Democrat party, are redrumming America with seeming impunity.

FACT-O-RAMA!  Your liberal sister-in-law and her non-binary, pansexual, femme-demi boi?friend believe that allowing black criminals (who further victimize innocent people, most of whom are black) out of jail  is somehow a sign of “open-mindedness” and not what it really is: a callous indifference to the suffering of others so that they can virtue-signal their “wokeness” to their friends as well as feel a sense of superiorty.

The nation is seeing record murder rates, thanks to bolshie policies that victimize criminals. This is the work of “woke” Democrats, and it’s happening in our large blue cities. It’s one thing to simply say “crime is on the rise,” but it’s actually worse than most people realize. You don’t always hear about violent crimes because they occur so often that reporting on all of them would become dull.

LEFTY LABOR DAY WEEKEND THUGGERY YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT!  

  • There were 17 mass shootings in the U.S., leaving 20 dead and 64 wounded, and most of them took place in Democrat-run cities.
  • Philly had over 20 shoot-em-ups, leaving 10 people dead and 23 wounded.
  • Chicago’s annual Labor Day Weekend Festival of Lead saw 55 people shot, 11 fatally, for a total of 2,516 people shot thus far in 2022.

But Joe “allegedly showered with his daughter” Biden thinks you are the problem, rather than the insane, thug-hugging Democrats who allow created this crime blitz.

SUICIDES

When “15 days to slow the curve” turned into a draconian lockdown, I mused that this was a dress rehearsal for communism. Democrat leaders couldn’t wait to see just how much tyranny Americans would take. Embarrassingly, we accepted a lot, and now our kids are paying the price.

FACT-O-RAMA! Historically, people have accepted tyranny when it is served in small, ever-increasing doses.

Boys aged 12-17 tried to kill themselves during the pandemic at a rate that was 3.7 times higher than in 2019, which was a record-level year for kids attempting suicide. The attempted suicide rate of girls in the same age range skyrocketed by a terrifying 50.6%, in large part because Democrats couldn’t wait to take away our freedoms for as long as possible.

Related: Reasons Never to Vote Democrat Again, Vol. II: The Big, Blue Crime Wave

Children are also suffering from a “devastating” learning loss. Check out this misleading headline, which is repeated again in the opening sentence, “Significant learning loss due to COVID-19 is impacting children across America.”

No, learning losses and exploding child suicide attempt rates are not rising due to the Hong Kong Fluey; they are the result of the Democrats’ responses to it. Nice try, pinkos!

FACT-O-RAMA! Closing schools over a virus that rarely affects kids was about as stupid as closing gyms and basketball courts for the same virus that feasts on obese people. Democrats did these things.

OVERDOSES

The Democrats pretend the southern border is secure even as their own lickspittles in the Pravda media are reporting that the highest number of illegal immigrants in history are sauntering into our country, many of whom are drug mules for Mexican drug cartels and their business partners in China.

Drug overdose deaths are topping out at over 100,000 per year. More people aged 18-45 died of fentanyl ODs in 2021 than any other cause, yet Vice President Kamala Harris, placed in charge of the border, has done nothing. Black people are more likely to die from a fentanyl overdose than any other race, while black teen fentanyl deaths have surged fivefold.

HYPOTHESIS-O-RAMA! Hunter Biden’s laptop showed us that the Biden family has corrupt dealings in China. China is making billions of dollars from fentanyl sales in the U.S. Most of the fentanyl comes over the southern border, which Joe Biden refuses to secure. I’m not suggesting that Biden is keeping the border open so that his puppet masters in China can make mad stacks from drug sales but I’m not not suggesting it either.

WOKENESS

“Wokeness” is the excuse the liberal toilet people are using to bring communism to the U.S. The Democrats pretend that letting criminals out of jail and keeping them out with no-bail laws is a sign of virtue. They mislead their voters into believing that allowing illegal immigrants with pockets full of deadly fentanyl to cross the border is somehow a sign of morality. Both of these policies have brought horrendous results. And here is the real punchline: the Democrats are torching the country on purpose.

The Democrats especially like to pretend that they care about black people, but the number of murders and drug deaths directly related to liberal policies paints a different picture.

Remember to bring up these hard, ugly facts when your liberal sister-in-law shows up to borrow money while wearing her “Vote Blue in 2022” t-shirt.

Get the Word Out About Kyle’s Law

A prosecutor who uses his or her authority to virtue signal to the public to advance his or her political career is more dangerous to society than all but the most violent criminals.

Insurance will cover many forms of property crimes, and you can legally use deadly force against somebody who menaces you with death or serious bodily injury.

A prosecutor, though, can bankrupt most people by filing unfounded criminal charges against them, ruin their lives with prison time and criminal records. Unless the case is particularly egregious like that of Mike Nifong (D-NC), or with crooked judges like Mark Ciavarella (D-PA, a.k.a., federal inmate #15008-067) or Mike Conahan (D-PA, home arrest), there is little or no recourse against these “jurists.”

To put this in perspective, Pennsylvania attorney Frank Fina was suspended from the practice of law for his role in convicting Penn State President Graham Spanier of putting children at risk. Pennsylvania’s current Attorney General, and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro (D-PA), worked hard to reinstate Spanier’s conviction while tweeting that Spanier had been told that Jerry Sandusky was sexually assaulting children on the Penn State campus. The witness, Mike McQueary, testified, however, under oath, that he did not see Sandusky do anything he deemed reportable to police while his father and a family friend, both of whom are mandated by law to report abuse, did not encourage him to report to child protective authorities whatever he thought he might have possibly heard.

I believe that Shapiro, like Scott Harshbarger (D-MA) and Martha Coakley (D-MA) who ruined the lives of the Amiraults, used his position to “virtue signal” his concern for the children prior to the election. The latter is my perception of Shapiro, Harshbarger, and Coakley rather than a statement of fact because I cannot read their minds.

Kyle’s Law

Attorney Andrew Branca, whose opinions often appear on William Jacobson’s blog Legal Insurrection, has proposed what he calls Kyle’s Law due to what he and I both regard as a politically motivated prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse for what was obviously self-defense.

“Too often, rogue prosecutors bring felony criminal charges against people who were clearly doing nothing more than defending themselves, their families, or others from violent criminal attack. …The only motivation of the prosecutor is personal aggrandizement and political capital.” Kyle’s Law would sanction not only the jurisdiction but also the prosecutor who brings a junk case, to be defined as one in which the prosecutor lacks even preponderance of evidence rather than beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did anything wrong.

The American Bar Association’s Rules of Professional Conduct state meanwhile, “A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous…” and also “The prosecutor in a criminal case shall: (a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause…” and probable cause requires a “reasonable belief” that the defendant has committed a crime.

If, for example, a video of a self-defense shooting shows clearly that the person who was shot initiated a deadly confrontation, perpetuated it by not allowing the subject of their attack to retreat in complete safety, and menaced the shooter with immediate deadly force, as did all three of Rittenhouse’s assailants, that’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt in favor of the shooter that the shooting was justified. If we look within the four corners of the charges against Rittenhouse, the prosecutors did not contest this version of the events.  Joseph Rosenbaum initiated a confrontation in which he attempted to strong-arm rob Rittenhouse (a violent felony by itself) of a firearm he could have turned against Rittenhouse on the spot and also one which, as a convicted felon, it was unlawful for Rosenbaum to handle. Anthony Huber the domestic abuser was a member of a mob (which constitutes disparity of force and therefore deadly force) that pursued Rittenhouse while yelling violent threats, thus putting Rittenhouse in reasonable fear for his life and denying him the opportunity to retreat in complete safety. He then menaced and struck Rittenhouse with a deadly contact weapon when Rittenhouse was on the ground. The third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, pursued Rittenhouse with a drawn handgun, which again constituted an implied threat, along with the immediate means of carrying it out.

Another example would be, for example, if a politically ambitious prosecutor had tried to show his “woke” credentials by charging the officer who shot Hakim Littleton even though the latter was on bodycam video firing a handgun at the head of another officer at roughly three paces. It was fortunate that Littleton was a bad shot or it would have been “end of watch” for that officer or, as Black Lives Matter and Antifa would put it, he would have “oinked his last.” This did not, however, happen because the local prosecutors saw the open and shut case of self-defense.

Poster Children for Kyle’s Law

  • The Amiraults were convicted on the basis of “evidence” that included, among other things, accusations that one of them sexually assaulted a boy with a butcher knife that somehow left no injuries, along with a “secret room” and a “magic room” that were never found.
  • Police officer Grant Snowden was railroaded to prison on the watch of Janet Reno (D-FL).
  • Police officer Garrett Rolfe was charged with murder for shooting Rayshard Brooks after Brooks took an officer’s Taser, which the prosecutor stipulated is a deadly weapon under Georgia law, and discharged it at the officers. The charges were finally dropped but should have never been filed.
  • Nikolas Fernandez was charged with felony assault for shooting Daniel Gregory, who reached through the window of Fernandez’s car to punch him. Gregory even admitted openly, “I catch him, I punch him in the face.” He claims that he was trying to stop Fernandez from running over “demonstrators” but the video shows clearly that Fernandez had come to almost a complete stop by the time Gregory reached into his car. Note also the barrier that another “demonstrator” shoves in front of the car which a reasonable person would construe as a prelude to a carjacking or Reginald Denny-style beating.
  • Here is a long list of wrongful convictions in the United States, some of which involved willful prosecutorial misconduct and/or misconduct by rogue police officers eager to get convictions no matter what.
  • Prosecutors should not be afraid to do their jobs just as police officers should not be afraid to do their jobs. Kneeling on a helpless suspect’s neck as Derek Chauvin was convicted of doing is not, however, a police officer’s job, and Chauvin is now in prison as a result. Junk prosecutions whose sole identifiable purpose, at least from the perspective of a reasonable person, noting that nobody can read the prosecutor’s mind, is to advance a prosecutor’s legal and/or political career, should similarly bring the consequences recommended in Kyle’s Law and maybe professional disciplinary action as well.