BERLIN AIRLIFT IN REVERSE: U.S. Flying Baby Formula From Germany.
****
There’s some irony in the news today about U.S. military planes flying baby formula from Germany to Indiana. Only this time, the threat isn’t from a foreign power. The threat is from the criminal incompetence of the Biden administration, which ignored the baby formula crisis for months until the media began to report on it……………
The SiG Board of Directors is going to be stacked with Generals in the coming years.
Personally, even in .300 Blackout, without a suppressor on it, I wouldn’t want to be near one of these little fireball makers.
SOCOM finally found its next-generation personal defense weapon
After years of searching, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has picked Sig Sauer to provide its next personal defense weapon for U.S. special operations forces.
On Thursday, SOCOM released a notice of intent to award a five-year fixed firm price contract to the firearms manufacturer. The new personal defense weapon of choice for SOF troops? The Sig Sauer MCX “Rattler,” which can be chambered in both .300 Blackout and 5.56mm calibers.
“After years of continuous market research, USSOCOM HQ has concluded that Sig Sauer is the only vendor that can fulfill USSOCOM’s need for the Commercial PDW requirement. USSOCOM HQ has been researching and reviewing different systems since 2017,” the notice of intent said. “We have meticulously reviewed each system for technical acceptance and whether it fits the commercial definition. Except for Sig Sauer, the vendors did not meet the technical requirements and/or the weapons do not meet the commercial definition.”
The size and cost of the order were not disclosed.
SOCOM started its hunt for a new personal defense weapon in 2017, hoping to get a new weapon built around the M4 carbine’s receiver, giving SOCOM operators more firepower while still being compact and portable. The command procured 10 Rattlers in 2018 for testing and evaluation, but kept its search going, issuing another search for weapon system designs in 2019. The goal was to find a new PDW with “a highly concealable .300 Blackout upper receiver group (URG) and buttstock kit solution for the M4A1 platform.”
Turns out that, after all of that searching, it was back to the MCX Rattler. SOCOM noted that requirements meant no prototypes or weapons were in limited development, and Sig Sauer’s new weapon fit the bill for rapid fielding.
“The PDW system will allow Operators to have maximum firepower in a concealable weapon,” SOCOM said in the notice. The order will include the guns themselves plus suppressors, magazines and cleaning gear, plus additional parts and training on the new platforms.
It’s worth noting that .300 Blackout round is designed to be quieter than regular ammunition, while still being powerful, and that personal defense weapons are meant to provide more firepower than a pistol while being much more portable and compact than carbines or rifles, making them ideal in close-quarters scenarios.
Sig Sauer has called the MCX Rattler its most “discreet platform,” and the 5.5-inch barrel certainly makes it short. The MCX Rattler is also designed to quickly switch between the types of ammunition.
The pick by SOCOM was another major contract for Sig Sauer, which previously snatched up high-profile (and lucrative) contracts for the Pentagon-wide Modular Handgun System contract and Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle and automatic rifle variants.
It’s unclear when the Sig Rattlers will go into the field with SOCOM operators, or if some of the initial orders are already in use.
This is what ‘Gain of Function’ gets you.
Wuhan Lab Publishes Study Manipulating H7N9 Virus To Be More Lethal.
A scientific journal published by top Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers shared studies appearing to engage in gain-of-function type research, a controversial method of studying pathogens that can increase their lethality.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is believed to have engaged in the risky form of research regarding bat coronaviruses, as now-deleted webpages reveal the lab manipulating bat coronaviruses to “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”
Now, the latest edition of the lab’s journal, Virologica Sinica, appears to contain a similar style of research with the H7N9 virus in chickens and mice. The publication’s Editor-in-Chief is Wuhan’s infamous “bat lady,” Shi Zhengli, who is the lab’s premier bat coronavirus researcher and a recipient of funds from Anthony Fauci through Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.
Virologica Sinica published the study “Combined Insertion of Basic and Non-basic Amino Acids at Hemagglutinin Cleavage Site of Highly Pathogenic H7N9 Virus Promotes Replication and Pathogenicity in Chickens and Mice” in its most recent edition, published February 2022.
The paper’s abstract outlines how researchers “generated six H7N9 viruses,” analyzing how various amino acids altered the virus’ virulence and infectivity.
“We characterized the reconstituted viruses in terms of viral replication in avian and mammalian cells, thermostability and acid stability, cleavage efficiency, the virulence in mice, and pathogenicity and transmissibility in chickens,” outlined the study.
“The I335V substitution of H7N9 virus enhanced infectivity and transmission in chickens, suggesting that the combination of mutations and insertions of amino acids at the HACS promoted replication and pathogenicity in chickens and mice,” explained researchers.
While the study conducted experiments on mice and chicken, it noted that H7N9 variants are “also highly transmissible in ferrets, posing the threats of pandemic potential in humans.”
Debunking lawmaker’s claim of 9,000 murders with ghost guns
Illinois passed its ban on so-called ghost guns and now it has been signed into law. The damage has been done.
In a report on the new law, an opponent of homemade firearms had some interesting thoughts.
One of those proponents is Pamela Bosley, who co-founded the organization Purpose over Pain, which aims to help raise awareness of gun violence, host community events and provide parents of children killed by gun violence with crisis support.
Bosley started the group after her son Terrell was shot and killed in 2006.
“You can take these guns and you can purchase them online, you can purchase them in the store, you can put them together and you could shoot any of us,” said Bosley on Wednesday.
The bill, HB 4383, was passed in the final hours of this spring’s legislative session on 31-19 and 66-36 votes in the state Senate and House, respectively. The legislation was sponsored by Sen. Jacqueline Collins and Rep. Kam Buckner, both Chicago Democrats.
“In this year alone, ghost guns have claimed more than 9,000 lives,” said Collins.
Really? That’s a pretty bold statement.
Especially since a previous report about Illinois’s proposed law gave a much different number, citing just 325 homicides with such weapons since 2016.
But homicides are increasing, apparently, so maybe she’s privy to some numbers the media hasn’t seen? It seemed highly unlikely that they skyrocketed quite that much, but stranger things have happened, so I thought I’d take a look and see what I could find.
There aren’t a lot of sources for running totals on gun-related homicides in this country, so I had to go to the Gun Violence Archive. While I often criticize their methods with regard to mass shootings, there’s not a lot of monkey business they can play with murders.
The problem is that it’s unlikely they track it by weapon type. Still, 9,000 murders with “ghost guns” seemed awfully high. Maybe if I just looked at the percentages, I could get an idea as to whether Collins had a clue what she was talking about.
Unfortunately for her, GVA only reports 7,325 gun-related, non-suicide deaths in 2022 so far. That includes confirmed defensive gun uses (438 of them), which drops the number down to below 6,900. It also includes 552 accidental shooting fatalities.
That leaves just a smidge over 6,300 murders in total so far in 2022. Now, these aren’t the official numbers, but they’re as good a snapshot as anyone is going to find at this point in time. If anything, with GVA’s biases, you’d expect the numbers to be a bit on the high side compared to the real numbers.
So how in the hell could “ghost guns” claim 9,000 lives this year alone when there are nowhere near that many lives claimed by guns at all?
Look, you can make whatever arguments you want about “ghost guns.” You’re entitled to your own opinions. What you’re not entitled to are your own facts.
Lawmakers can make honest, good-faith mistakes, but there should be some way to tell that it was a mistake. Instead, what Collins told the media appears to be nothing more than an outright fabrication.
In short, it looks like she’s lying and the Illinois media isn’t interested in fact-checking her on this.
Judge Napolitano is too kind. Actually she doesn’t have blinders on. She’s just another wanna-be tyrant who complains about the Constitutional restrictions on goobermint like they all do.
BLUF:
The governor has blinders on. She complains of too much freedom. In New York, there is too little.
Within hours of the tragic killings of 10 Americans — nine Black and one white — in a Buffalo supermarket by a deranged white racist last week, the governor of New York began calling for infringements upon personal liberty. First, she argued that social media platforms were somehow liable for these killings since they provided a platform from which the killer could reinforce his hatreds and on which he could manifest them.
Then, she argued that hate speech and incendiary speech should be prosecuted. Finally, she attacked the U.S. Supreme Court, which is about to rule on a challenge to New York’s restrictive concealed carry laws. She said twice that “New York is ready for you.” It is unclear just what she meant, but the implication was that she’d find a way around whatever the court rules.
She uttered a bitter constitutional mouthful.
From the writings and mental history of the gunman, we know that he was and is deeply disturbed. Police brought him to a mental hospital after he made threats at school, and his hatreds were posted on dark websites. Nevertheless, New York gun laws — among the strictest in the country — did not stop him from lawfully purchasing a rifle and the ammunition with which to use it.
The gun control crowd, personified by the governor, makes critical errors in its arguments and shows material misunderstandings of fundamental liberties.
Its critical error is a mistaken belief that someone willing to commit mass murder will somehow comply with gun regulations. It doesn’t matter to the killer what the gun laws are; he will find a way to attempt to kill. What matters is a set of laws with which law-abiding folks do comply, the effect of which is to neuter their ability to defend themselves.
This column has steadfastly maintained that the only language mass murderers respect is their own — violence. Only violence against them, or its serious imminent threat, will stop them.
Biden’s New ‘Ministry of Truth’ Hits a Major Roadblock
I have good news if you value free speech and don’t want the government jamming its nose into the issue. Joe Biden’s new “Ministry of Truth,” officially known as the Disinformation Governance Board, has been put on hold.
That comes after its chosen leader, Nina Jankowicz, was thoroughly exposed as not only a far-left quack but also a disturbing promoter of government censorship. RedState has reported extensively on her past, from Jankowicz’s rants about “gender disinformation” to her desire to be able to edit other people’s social media posts.
Now, per The Washington Post, the Disinformation Governance Board has been paused, and guess who is responsible? You got it, those dastardly Republicans who don’t wish to live in a George Orwell novel.
WaPo has the scoop that the Disinformation Board is getting shut down and, surprise, this is the framing pic.twitter.com/6qny6Ng7xT
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) May 18, 2022
Now, just three weeks after its announcement, the Disinformation Governance Board is being “paused,” according to multiple employees at DHS, capping a back-and-forth week of decisions that changed during the course of reporting of this story. On Monday, DHS decided to shut down the board, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. By Tuesday morning, Jankowicz had drafted a resignation letter in response to the board’s dissolution.
Follow the Science, Unless it Leads Where You Don’t Want to Go
Researchers in California have published the results of a study evaluating the effectiveness of so-called “gun violence restraining orders” (a.k.a. “extreme risk protection orders” or “red flag” orders). Assembly Bill 1014, was enacted in California in 2014, and since then, 19 states and the District of Columbia have adopted similar laws.
Authors of the study, Firearm Violence Following the Implementation of California’s Gun Violence Restraining Order Law, include Garen Wintemute, the director of the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center and a “key contributor” who helped draft AB 1014.
Very briefly, these laws create a mechanism that allows a family member, police officer, or some other third party (in California, this includes coworkers, school employees, and teachers) to file a petition in court, supported by allegations that the person named in the petition, at some point in the future, poses a danger to themselves or others by possessing or having access to a firearm. If the court is satisfied that there is some potential of future harm, it issues an order authorizing police to take away all firearms the person owns or controls, and prohibiting the person from possessing or acquiring firearms while the order is in effect. The initial court process may be “ex parte” (without any notice to, or an opportunity to respond by, the affected person) or a full hearing on notice. In California, the ex parte order has a minimum duration of 21 days. Once confirmed in a full hearing, the “temporary” order is in effect for up to five years, although orders may be renewed indefinitely.
The researchers examined whether implementation of the California gun violence restraining order (GVRO) law was associated with decreased rates of “firearm assault” or firearm self-harm between 2016 (when AB 1014 took effect) and 2019. They compared the post-GVRO rate of firearm violence in San Diego County (chosen because it had a “high GVRO uptake” or incidence of GVROs) with the estimated outcome in a synthetic control unit (a combination of California control counties weighted to match the firearm violence trend in San Diego, 2005-2015, as closely as possible). The researchers “hypothesized that the GVRO law would be associated with a reduction in firearm violence.”
The results, though, showed that the GVRO law had no impact – “we found no evidence that GVRO implementation was associated with decreased firearm assault or firearm self-harm at the population level in San Diego.” The researchers sought to qualify this result by noting that the findings could be “partially explained by access to firearms through the underground market,” or “could reflect a true absence of association or limitations of our study; further research is needed to determine which of these is the case.”
More People Dead as Gun-Control Fails in New York State
Time and again we’ve seen crazy murderers target unarmed citizens in New York City and New York State. A few weeks ago, a black man deliberately attacked white people on the New York City subway. We saw a white teenager deliberately go hunting for blacks and Jews in Buffalo last week. Sadly, the response of New York politicians is the same each time. Despite the extraordinary gun-control laws already in place, New York Democrats think the solution is to disarm more law-abiding citizens. It is hard to look at violence but it is more dangerous to think that more ink-on-paper will keep us safe next time.
What he also wants is for the reinstitution of the Obammy era program of listing Veterans and Social Security recipients who get their monthly payments sent to a fiduciary who manages the person’s finances to be entered as a prohibited people in NICS.
In Buffalo, Biden calls for gun control that’s already law and didn’t work
Joe Biden brought his confusing anti-gun rhetoric to Buffalo, Tuesday – a city still grieving the loss of 10 good souls who were cut down Saturday by a hell-bound madman.
Even though most of the victims have yet to be buried, Biden didn’t hesitate to use the solemn occasion as an opportunity to advocate for more gun control, in this case another federal “assault weapon” ban.
“There are certain things we can do,” Biden told the grieving crowd. “We can keep assault weapons off of our streets. We did it before and violence went down.”
Even the FBI has acknowledged that the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that Biden referenced, which was a part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, did little to deter or prevent crime.
Besides, New York already has a stringent “assault weapon” ban, as well as every other anti-gun law Biden has ever called for. They’re codified into state law, yet none of them worked.
The mass murderer was not stopped by New York’s SAFE Act, which bans AR-15s and similar weapons. The state’s ban on standard-capacity magazines didn’t stop him, nor did the New York’s mandatory background check requirement or its Red Flag gun-confiscation law.
New York State Police were called to the gunman’s high school last June because he threatened to commit a mass shooting during the school’s graduation ceremonies. He was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for an evaluation, and was released after a day and a half. However, this did not trigger New York’s red-flag law, which should have stopped him from purchasing a firearm.
Rather than infringing upon the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens, Biden should focus on why yet another mass murderer was “known to law enforcement,” yet no action was taken before he began killing people.
Why New York’s ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban Didn’t Stop the Buffalo Massacre
The problem is not sneaky entrepreneurs who sell accessories; it’s legislators who ban guns based on functionally unimportant features.
The suspect in the mass shooting that killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store on Saturday used a rifle that was widely described as an “assault weapon.” With certain exceptions that don’t apply here, that category of firearms is illegal in New York. Yet The New York Times reports that the shooter legally bought the rifle from a gun dealer in Endicott, New York. How is that possible?
It turns out that the rifle, a Bushmaster XM-15 ES, was not an “assault weapon” at the time of the purchase, but it became an “assault weapon” after the shooter tinkered with it. The details of that transformation illustrate how arbitrary and ineffectual bans like New York’s are.
Dad agrees with me that all these ‘slipped through the cracks’ don’t add up to mere ‘incompetence’.
‘It’s Just Incompetence’: There Were Red Flags Everywhere With the Buffalo Shooter
Rebecca covered this over the weekend. Tragedy has struck Buffalo. A mass shooter gunned down and killed 10 people at the Tops Friendly Market. The shooter, Payton Gendron, was taken into custody. There is a 180-page manifesto that the FBI is currently authenticating. Gendron appears to be a racist and targeted this area due to its high concentration of black Americans.
Unlike other mass shootings, like Boulder in 2021 and the most recent New York City subway shooting, this one will remain in the news. Gendron is white. He’s racist. He’s everything the liberal media wants when an incident like this occurs. Boulder’s mass shooting was committed by a Syrian. The New York Subway shooter was black. Both stories vanished into the ether rapidly because they didn’t fit the liberal narrative. Yet, there’s another common element with this story: the shooter exhibited red flags that authorities knew about but did nothing.
Gendron threatened to shoot up his high school and was brought in for a mental health evaluation (via Associated Press):
The shooter, identified as Payton Gendron, had previously threatened a shooting at his high school, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia confirmed at a press conference that the then-17-year-old was brought in for a mental health evaluation afterward.
Federal law bars people from owning a gun if a judge has determined they have a “mental defect” or they have been forced into a mental institution — but an evaluation alone would not trigger the prohibition….
Gendron had appeared on the radar of police last year after he threatened to carry out a shooting at Susquehanna Valley High School around the time of graduation, the law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation.
New York State Police said troopers were called to the Conklin school last June for a report that a 17-year-old student had made threatening statements. He spent a day and a half at the hospital before being released, authorities said, and then had no further contact with law enforcement.
So, what gives? Why was there no follow-up? I’m sure we’ll know in due time, but the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018, which sparked another wave of anti-gun activism, was also preventable. In fact, that might be an understatement. Students interviewed after the shooting were not shocked that Nikolas Cruz committed his heinous crime. Also, all three levels of government, state, federal, and local, knew about Cruz’s mental health issues and never did anything.
$5 dollar gas.
No baby formula.
Record crime.
Record inflation.
Border crisis.
And what’s Congress doing today? Holding a hearing on UFOs!
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 17, 2022
groomers in schools https://t.co/WH0HaCKzJN
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) May 17, 2022
New York state has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation and it didn’t make one itty bit of difference, so crap-for-brains Goobernor believes crims will somehow obey more laws.
NY Gov. Wants More Gun Control in State with Tough Restrictions
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul used the weekend mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket to demand “stronger” gun control laws in a state that already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and President Joe Biden will fly the city on Tuesday, likely to make the same plea.
According to WIVB News, Hochul told reporters during a Sunday press conference, “I continue to call on Washington to do just some basic things that we’ve done here in New York. I also call on the Supreme Court, which is actually considering rolling back some of the protections that were put in place here to protect New York citizens from gun violence.”
The high court is expected to hand down a ruling on New York’s restrictive “good cause” concealed carry permit requirement by the end of June.
The Associated Press is reporting that Biden and his wife will go to Buffalo to “grieve with the community.” Biden, a perennial gun control advocate during his nearly half-century inside the Beltway, is expected to call for new gun control measures.
Ten people were killed in what authorities are saying was a “racially motivated” attack. The suspect, an 18-year-old, was armed with an AR-15 rifle, according to published reports. There were other guns in his car, WIVB said.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to declare, “So I think people all across this country have to rise up. They have to speak more loudly and more clearly that there must be gun control in this country. This is a uniquely American phenomenon. These mass shootings don’t happen in other countries across the world. We have to ask ourselves — and more than ask ourselves, we have to take action to stop it, to stop it after this Buffalo, New York incident, to make sure that other communities, that other families don’t go through this again.”
WIVB quoted Gov. Hochul acknowledging, “What was used was not purchased legally in the state of New York. The basic gun was, but the high-capacity magazine associated with it had to come from another state because it is illegal in the state of New York. We need a smart national policy. And let’s start with something that’s — what I would say — is in the no-brainer category after Sandy Hook. Shame on this county, shame on Congress at that time, for not passing something as basic as a background check.”
However, Congress years ago passed a background check requirement. The National Instant Check System (NICS) has been in operation since November 1998. New York adopted the SAFE (Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement) Act under Hochul’s predecessor, anti-gun Democrat Andrew Cuomo, in 2013.
After Ignoring Waukesha, Biden to Visit Buffalo After Shooting.
Soon after the racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y. on Saturday, which left 10 people dead and several others injured, the White House announced that Joe Biden would be visiting Buffalo on Tuesday to meet with the families of the victims.
“A racially motivated hate crime is abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation. Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America. Hate must have no safe harbor,” Biden said Saturday. “We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism.”
But Biden’s planned trip to Buffalo stands in stark contrast to his refusal to visit Waukesha, Wisc. after a black nationalist supporter of Black Lives Matter drove an SUV through a Christmas parade in a racially motivated attack that killed six people, including an 8-year-old boy. The driver, Darrell Brooks, had previously called for violence against white people and suggested “Hitler was right” for killing Jews in posts on social media.
Then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed that Biden wouldn’t be visiting Waukesha because the trip “requires a lot of assets.”
“Well, I would say first: As you saw the president convey last week, our hearts go out to this community, to the people in Waukesha, that we’ve been in touch, obviously, with officials there, and we’re all watching as people are recovering,” Psaki claimed. “And this is such a difficult time of year for this to happen. It’s a difficult anytime. Obviously, any president going to visit a community requires a lot of assets, requires taking their resources, and it’s not something that I have a trip previewed at this plan— point in time, but we remain in touch with local officials. And certainly, our hearts are with the community as they’ve gone through such a difficult time.”
What assets were required to visit Waukesha that aren’t required to visit Buffalo?
Obviously, the issue of visiting Waukesha had nothing to do with assets and resources and everything to do with the fact that the massacre didn’t fit the preferred narrative of the media or the Biden administration.
In fact, the mainstream media has been desperately trying to get the Buffalo shooting to fit the preferred narrative of the left by insisting that the shooter is a radical right-winger when all evidence says that is not the case. For example, Rolling Stone magazine claimed the Buffalo shooter was a “mainstream Republican,” even though he allegedly referred to himself as “authoritarian left-wing” in his manifesto. Others have tried to claim he was radicalized by Fox News, but he attacked Fox News in his hate-filled manifesto as one of several networks he faults for hiring Jewish people.
Biden has still never visited Waukesha, nor has he visited Brooklyn after black nationalist Frank Robert James went on a shooting rampage in the subway last month. There is also no word as to whether Biden plans to visit Orange County, Calif., where a church shooting on Sunday left one dead and five wounded.
Chicago homicides in 2022: 204 people have been slain.
Information about homicides is released daily by the city of Chicago. The release of homicide victims’ names is delayed by two weeks to allow time for the victims’ families to be notified of a death by Chicago police.
The homicide figures do not include killings that occurred in self-defense or in other circumstances not measured in Chicago police statistics. Homicide data from Illinois State Police, which patrols the city’s expressways, also is not included here.
BECAUSE IT WORKED WELL IN CHICAGO: DEMS SEEK CHICAGO-STYLE GUN CONTROL NATIONWIDE
Lawmakers from Illinois last week introduced bicameral legislation on Capitol Hill that would make unlicensed gun possession illegal.
The move, billed as a way to stomp out gun crime, doesn’t target gun criminals. Instead, the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act would outlaw unlicensed firearm ownership and the transfer of firearms without such a government-issued permit, then direct the U.S. Attorney General to create a federal registry for sales tied to fingerprint-based nationwide criminal background checks.
The measure was introduced in the U.S. Senate as S.4184 by Sen. Tammy Duckworth and in the U.S. House as H.R. 7730 by Rep. Bobby Rush. Both lawmakers are Illinois Democrats with offices in Chicago. Both have been endorsed in the past by a variety of national anti-gun groups, which have given them platforms for support.
According to a hyperbolic joint release by their respective offices, the proposal is modeled in part after the controversial Illinois Firearm Owners Identification Card statute. FOID cards are seen by some in the Land of Lincoln as obsolete and, while they haven’t proven to prevent criminals from getting guns, they have sometimes delayed law-abiding citizens from getting them by months. Notably, courts have also found the FOID process flawed and potentially unconstitutional.
Of note, on the trail to the White House in 2020, Joe Biden endorsed such mandatory gun owner licensing as a part of his platform, to the accolade of assorted gun control groups.
Charlatans like Fauci were apparently preferred because his BS was seen as a way to enhance goobermint power
The Public Health Prophet We Did Not Heed
Donald Henderson, who died in 2016, was a giant in the field of epidemiology and public health. He was also a man whose prophetic warnings from 2006 we chose to ignore in March of 2020.
Dr. Henderson directed a ten-year international effort from 1967–1977 that successfully eradicated smallpox. Following this, he served as Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health from 1977 to 1990. Toward the end of his career, Henderson worked on national programs for public health preparedness and response following biological attacks and national disasters.
In 2006, Henderson and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Health Security, where Henderson also maintained an academic appointment, published a landmark paper (embedded below) with the anodyne title, “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza,” in the journal Biosecurity and Terrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science.
This paper reviewed what was known about the effectiveness and practical feasibility of a range of actions that might be taken in attempts to lessen the number of cases and deaths resulting from a respiratory virus pandemic. This included a review of proposed biosecurity measures, later utilized for the first time during covid, such as “large scale or home quarantine of people believed to have been exposed, travel restrictions, prohibitions of social gatherings, school closures, maintaining personal distance, and the use of masks”.
Even assuming a case fatality rate (CFR) of 2.5%, roughly equal to the 1918 Spanish flu but far higher than the CFR for covid, Henderson and his colleagues nevertheless concluded that these mitigation measures would do far more harm than good.
They found the most helpful strategy would be isolating symptomatic individuals (but not those who had merely been exposed) at home or in the hospital, a strategy that had long been part of traditional public health. They also cautioned against reliance on computer modeling to predict the effects of novel interventions, warning that, “No model, no matter how accurate its epidemiologic assumptions, can illuminate or predict the secondary and tertiary effects of particular disease mitigation measures.” Furthermore, “If particular measures are applied for many weeks or months, the long-term or cumulative second- and third-order effects could be devastating socially and economically.”
Regarding forced quarantines of large populations, the authors noted, “There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people,” and they concluded, “The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of movement of large populations; difficulty in getting critical supplies, medicines, and food to people inside the quarantine zone) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”
Likewise, they found, “Travel restrictions, such as closing airports and screening travelers at borders, have historically been ineffective.” They argued that social distancing was also impractical and ineffective.
The authors noted that during previous influenza epidemics, large public events were occasionally cancelled; however, they found no evidence “that these actions have had any definitive effect on the severity or duration of an epidemic,” and they argue that “closing theaters, restaurants, malls, large stores, and bars… would have seriously disruptive consequences.” The review presented clear evidence that school closures would prove ineffective and enormously harmful. They likewise found no evidence for the utility of masks outside the hospital setting.
Henderson and his colleagues concluded their review with this overriding principle of good public health: “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”
Needless to say, we did not heed any of this advice in March of 2020. We instead forged ahead with lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and the rest. When faced with covid, we rejected time-tested principles of public health and embraced instead the untested biosecurity model. We are now living in the aftermath of this choice.
D.A.-HendersonBLUF:
So from this quarter, while you can surely be dismayed and irritated at the stupidity emanating from Team Biden, the advice is this: just know that they’re showing their hand — and it’s a weak one.
But be on your guard, because the drowning man will pull others under if he can. And Team Biden is drowning. Make no mistake about it.
POTATUS Speaks, A Nation Groans
A shot and a chaser from a drowning man.
It’s hard to single out just one thing which came out of the Biden administration this past week which best illustrates how transformationally awful it is.
We’ll have to settle on two of them, which together made up a one-two punch to the gut of American morale.
First was his hyperbolic bromide against MAGA/revivalist conservatism. The president, showing off his status as a thoroughgoing nincompoop, thought it would be a good idea to verbally assault some 75 million Americans by predicting that since “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history,” that red-state legislatures will pass laws segregating gay and “trans” kids from their classmates in schools.
No, Joe. Maybe just the bathrooms, though — there seem to be fewer rapes that way.
That was the shot. The chaser was a day later, when after several Supreme Court justices were set upon by angry mobs protesting at their residences and a speaking engagement scheduled for Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs case, had to be canceled due to violent threats, the administration refused to condemn the behavior of the pro-abortion extremists.
BLUF:
It’s time for the U.S. to quit the Programme of Action. And while we’re at it, we should quit the U.N. ammo group and make it clear that, no matter what the U.N. does about bullets, we won’t try to apply its foolish ideas here.
UN Gun Control Program Runs Amok Again
More than two decades ago, the United Nations created a program to curb the trafficking of small arms. It’s done nothing but fire blanks. So now, the U.N. wants to control bullets.
In 2001, the United Nations started the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. Its next meeting will be held in New York from June 27 to July 1.
The Programme isn’t a treaty. It’s a political gathering that’s meant to encourage voluntary cooperation. It meets every other year to produce an outcome document that’s politically (but not legally) binding.
It’s supposed to work by unanimous consent.
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The Programme has achieved very little, if anything. That’s not just my view. The U.N. secretary-general said so in 2008. New Zealand said so in 2012. Its supporters said it was “firing blanks” in 2014. In 2018, the Red Cross said that governments in the Programme talk a lot, but do nothing.
In practice, that suits most of the U.N. fine: All the nations get credit for participating in the Programme while actually doing nothing, while the Programme focuses on peripheral issues, such as 3D-printed guns.
This year, the rumor is that the Programme’s president wants it to focus on banning toy guns. (No more water pistols for your kids, says the U.N.)
If the nations in the Programme genuinely wanted to help control the illicit trade in small arms, it could in theory be modestly useful.
For example, it could seek to eliminate the “Chinese exemption,” under which Beijing is exempt from the requirement to put serial numbers on its firearms, which makes Chinese guns difficult to trace.
But instead, the Programme focuses on irrelevant distractions—and on breaking its own promises.
In 2018, the Programme broke its rule of unanimity to approve an outcome document that added ammo over U.S. protests. The Programme wasn’t supposed to include ammunition. And adding it serves no useful purpose.
The idea of putting numbers on, and trying to trace, individual rounds of ammunition is nonsensical. The resulting database would have trillions of entries.
Most of the Programme’s member nations can’t and don’t even meet their existing commitments. But that didn’t stop the United Nations from adding ammo.
The U.S. does most of the work of running traces on firearms, providing expertise, and giving aid to upgrade foreign recordkeeping through the Programme.
But if the U.S. is going to do most of the work and simultaneously going to have the Programme’s rules broken against it, there’s no reason for us to continue to participate in it.
There are now more good reasons than ever to quit. When the Programme voted to include ammo in 2018, it lined itself up with a U.N. working group. That group’s report came out late last year, and it’s a bureaucrat’s fantasy.
It calls for the negotiation of “a set of political commitments” to “concentrate on through-life ammunition management.” In other words, an entirely new Programme of Action, focused just on ammo.
“Through-life” ammo management may sound innocuous, but isn’t. Here’s what it means, in the U.N.’s own words:
States would reduce security risks by encouraging ammunition producers, where feasible, practicable and consistent with national legislation, to maintain effective accounting and record-keeping systems that permit the retrieval (by serial, batch, or lot number) of detailed sales and transfer records. Ideally, such records should be digital, easily retrievable, and held for as long as feasible.
Translation: The U.N. wants manufacturers of ammo to number their bullets. Then the U.N. wants to track where and to whom every bullet in the world is sold or sent. The U.N. also wants to track who sells to whom. And it wants all those records digitized, easily accessed, and kept forever.
