Category: Deceit O’ The Day

NRA was the first National Gun Control Organization

There are many in the gun community that are angry with Trump for the bump stock ban. I have never blamed Trump for the travesty that was the bump stock ban, because I don’t think that he is the one who sold out gun owners. Let’s be honest here- the NRA greenlighted the bump stock ban. This is nothing new, the NRA was pro gun control for most of its history.

In the 1920s, the National Revolver Association, the arm of the NRA responsible for handgun training, proposed regulations later adopted by nine states, requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, five years additional prison time if the gun was used in a crime, a ban on gun sales to non-citizens, a one day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, and that records of gun sales be made available to police. Florida becoming the 26th state to get rid of concealed weapons carry as a crime meant getting rid of that NRA proposal after 100 years.

During the 1930’s, the NRA helped shape the National Firearms Act of 1934. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to make gun control a feature of the New Deal. The NRA assisted Roosevelt in drafting National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act, the first federal gun control laws. These laws placed heavy taxes and regulation requirements on firearms that were associated with crime, such as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers. Gun sellers and owners were required to register with the federal government and felons were banned from owning weapons. Not only was the legislation unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1939, but Karl T. Frederick, the president of the NRA, testified before Congress stating, “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

After the assasination of President John F. Kennedy on  Nov. 22, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald with an Italian military surplus rifle purchased from a NRA mail-order advertisement, NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth agreed at a congressional hearing that mail-order sales should be banned stating, “We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”

The NRA also supported California’s Mulford Act of 1967, which had banned carrying loaded weapons in public in response to the Black Panther Party’s impromptu march on the State Capitol to protest gun control legislation on May 2, 1967.

Then came 1968. The assassinations of JFK, jr and Martin Luther King prompted Congress to enact the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act brought back some proposed laws from 1934, to include minimum age and serial number requirements, and extended the gun ban to include the mentally ill and drug addicts. In addition, it restricted the shipping of guns across state lines to collectors and federally licensed dealers. The only part of the proposed law that was opposed by the NRA was a national gun registry. In an interview in American Rifleman, Franklin Orth stated that despite portions of the law appearing “unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

It wasn’t until a mini-revolt was staged at the 1977 NRA convention that there was a change in direction. A group of gun owners pushed back and deposed the old leaders in a move called the “Cincinnati Revolt.” Led by former NRA President Harlon Carter and Neal Knox, the revolt ended the tenure of Maxwell Rich as NRA executive vice president and introduced new bylaws. The Revolt at Cincinnati marked a huge change in direction for the NRA. The organization thereafter changed from “hunting, conservation, and marksmanship” and towards the defense of the right to keep and bear arms. The catalyst for this movement was that the NRA wanted to move its headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado. The new headquarters in Colorado was to be an “Outdoors center” that was more about hunting and recreational shooting than it was the RKBA.

I became a member of the NRA about a decade later and remained an annual member, until I became a life member about 15 years later. I believed for years that the NRA was fighting the good fight for gun owners. It wasn’t.

The NRA was always influenced by a group of Fudds who supported hunting, but hated guns that weren’t for hunting. The bureaucrats who were a part of the NRA’s organization always tried to steer towards hunting, eventually caused the organization to morph into an organization that used the threat of Democrat gun bans for fundraising.

LaPierre was able to use the large flow of money to fund his luxurious life on the company dime, including over $13 million each year for travel and a postemployment golden parachute worth $17 million. LaPierre testified in the NRA’s bankruptcy hearings about his annual weeklong trips to the Bahamas on the company dime.

All they were good at was bargaining away gun rights to the Democrat gun banners in exchange for money and power. That’s why my political donations for the past 15 years went to other gun rights organizations, and yours should, too.

EDITED TO ADD:

Thanks to an anonymous poster, we get this quote, directly from the pages of the March 1968 edition of The American Rifleman, the NRA’s official monthly publication:

the NRA has consistently supported gun legislation which it feels would penalize misuse of guns without harassing law-abiding hunters, target shooters, and collectors”

NRA president Karl T. Frederick

Note that they make no mention of RKBA as anything other than support for the hobby of hunting. The article goes on to declare the NRA’s support for firearm registration, waiting periods, as well as prohibitions on sales of ammunition and firearms across state lines. The also express support for the prohibition of firearms to what they termed as :undesirables.”

The NRA is not, and apparently never has been, a true supporter of the Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. They should rename it the National Hunting Association. It can collapse and die for all I care. We don’t need them.

The results of a ‘study’ often mirror the politics of who’s paying for it

That Kaiser Gun Study The Media Love Is Garbage

It’s become virtually impossible to find reliable data or polling on gun violence these days. A new Kaiser Family Foundation report being shared by virtually every major media outlet this week offers us a good example of why. The headlines report that “1 in 5 adults” in the United States claim that a “family member” has been “killed” by a gun. And, let’s just say, that’s a highly dubious claim.

There are 333 million people living in the United States, and somewhere around 259 million of them are over the age of 18. Twenty percent of those adults equals nearly 52 million people. There were more than 40,000 gun deaths in 2022, and around 20,000 of them were homicides — a slight dip from a Covid-year historic high that followed decades of lows. So, according to Kaiser’s polling, every victim of gun violence in the past few years had hundreds, if not thousands, of “family members.”

Now, to be fair, we can’t really run the numbers because Kaiser doesn’t define its terms or parameters. For example, what constitutes a “family member”? Is your second cousin a family member? Because if so, that creates quite the nexus of people. What about your stepbrother’s second cousin? Or how about your uncle who died in Iraq? Or how about that grandfather you never met who committed suicide in 1968? Kaiser could have asked people about their “immediate” relatives. The opacity is the point.

Then again, you can always spot a misleading firearms study by checking if the authors conflate suicides and murders. Kaiser does. The underlying problems leading to a homicide or a suicide are typically very different. So are the solutions. There are numerous countries with virtually no private gun ownership that have persistently high suicide rates. There isn’t any other societal problem in which Kaiser wouldn’t stress the distinction between criminality and mental health struggles.

But even if we count suicides, the claim is fantastical. As are many of the others. If we trust this poll, we would have to accept that around 50 million Americans were personally threatened with a gun. And that 54 percent of American adults — which can be extrapolated to mean 140 million adults — have personally or have a family member who has witnessed a shooting, been threatened by a gun, or been injured or killed by one. (Another 28 percent, or 72 million people, contend they have carried a gun in self-defense — which is also exceedingly unlikely.)

Kaiser’s “key findings” highlight many issues tied to anti-gun activist talking points. In the middle of polling, Kaiser conveniently switches up the definition of an “adult” from 18 and older to over 19, so it can regurgitate the claim that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. Kaiser wonders if your “health care provider” has talked to you about guns or gun safety. Did you know, Kaiser asks, that 6 in 10 parents with guns in their households say a gun is stored in the same location as ammunition?

What Kaiser doesn’t mention in its press-friendly “key findings” — and no media piece I’ve read mentions — is that 82 percent of those polled feel “very” or “somewhat safe” from gun violence in their own neighborhoods. Only 18 percent of Americans say they worry about gun violence on a daily or almost daily basis, while 43 percent say they worry about it “rarely” or “never.” So, you’re telling me, half of American adults have personally experienced gun violence themselves or toward someone in their family, but less than 20 percent worry about it often?

There are numerous other problems with Kaiser’s findings. Perhaps the most important, though, is the sample size. Granted, I’m no polling expert, but I suspect that the self-reported thoughts of 1,271 people — answering a bunch of poorly defined questions about a highly emotional and politically charged issue “online and by telephone” — should not be relied on with any certitude. And yet, there isn’t a single establishment media reporter writing about the report that exhibits a hint of skepticism.

The Louisville Shooter’s Inconvenient Social Media Being Conveniently Scrubbed

“Another Democrat killer,” Sebastian Gorka tweeted Monday as some of the Louisville shooter’s social media accounts came under scrutiny.

With credit to someone named Andy S., Gorka reposted the killer’s “anti-Trump and pro-lockdown posts on a Reddit under an account with the same name at his already nuked Twitter account.”

Louisville Shooter

The killer locked down his Twitter account “a bit back,” according to another user who claims “he RT’d and followed other stuff that’s more antifa/far left such as Vaush & antifa doxxing blog left coast right watch.” The amateur sleuth summed up the killer’s Twitter feed as “AOC fan, anti-trump, NRA hater, etc.”

The correct Twitter account seems to be “sturg__” and not the “csturg41” handle he used on Reddit and Instagram.

There’s nothing on the killer’s Reddit more recent than four months ago, but at least some of the lefty stuff he posted can still be seen here and here. Mostly, his Reddit is filled with sports, videogames, complaints about women, and parental issues.

But what was he posting to his more public accounts? We might never know.

UPDATE: Sure enough, Reddit scrubbed the csturg41 account just as I was wrapping up this column. Soon he’ll be as invisible as the Nashville trans shooter’s manifesto.

ASIDE: As a matter of personal policy, I don’t mention the names of mass shooters. Whatever fame/ignominy they seek in this life or the next, they won’t get any help from me. Remember their victims instead, please.

“Most of [the killer’s] accounts have been wiped,” according to Twitter user Darth Crypto. “I found songs he liked on SoundCloud, High School basketball pictures, family members, a Pokemon obsession, but nothing else.”

That matches what little I’ve been able to dig up. He also seems to have been active on a site called loveforquotes.com, but it’s been doing nothing but returning server errors when I try to dig into the “csturg41” links.

The killer also had an Instagram account, which has also been nuked. Nevertheless, at least one screencap survives, including threats made Monday morning right before the massacre.

Intel Point Alert posted that he “reportedly texted friend before shooting saying he was feeling suicidal and ‘would shoot up the bank’.”

The 25-year-old killer’s LinkedIn profile is still active and shows the obligatory “he/him” preferred pronouns. (No link because it displays his name.)

This is a developing story and I’ll post more as I’m able to find it — assuming there’s anything left to find.

BLUF
It’s always problematic conducting polls about individual rights or personal freedoms. As a few of my colleagues pointed out, our gun rights are not subject to popular opinions, and popular rights do not need constitutional protections.

“The bottom line is this,” one said. “Had the residents of 1963 Alabama been polled regarding integration of Birmingham schools, the results would have shown overwhelming opposition. That’s why rights are independent of public opinion.”

Fake News: Debunking the media’s favorite constitutional-carry poll
Poll claims majority of Floridians oppose unlicensed concealed carry.

By Lee Williams

A few weeks before the Florida legislature began debating an unlicensed concealed-carry bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this week, the legacy media started pimping a new public opinion poll that made some incredibly bold claims on the topic.

The poll, which was conducted by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, or PORL, alleged that a vast majority of Floridians rejected the very idea of unlicensed concealed carry. Only 22% of Floridians supported the legislation and 77% opposed the bill, PORL claimed.

“Not only is there bipartisan opposition to this ‘constitutional carry’ bill, but folks seem to feel passionately about it with the majority (67%) saying they strongly oppose the bill. Even among Republicans, most people are against carrying weapons without a permit,” Dr. Michael Binder, PORL faculty director and professor of political science, said in a March 9 press release announcing the poll.

As you can imagine, a feeding frenzy ensued. Armed with Binder’s poll numbers, the legacy media went absolutely nuts.

“As Floridians apparently know better than their elected officials, public health research overwhelmingly shows that relaxing firearm regulations contributes to increases in violent crime as well as firearm-related death and injury,” Caroline Light, who teached gender and ethnic studies at Harvard University, wrote in a column titled “Expect more violent crime if Florida passes permitless gun carry,” which was published by the Tampa Bay Times.

“Permitless carry bill closer to law despite new poll showing that it’s vastly unpopular in Florida,” wrote the Florida Phoenix.

The media onslaught didn’t stop even after Gov. DeSantis signed the bill into law.

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Where’s The Manifesto?

My home city of Nashville has been in a virtual non-stop uproar since the tragic murders of six people, three of them 9-year-old children, at The Covenant School on March 27.

This has been ineffably sad for the family and friends of the victims, who are victims themselves, their grief often overwhelmed in a city, indeed a country, now so politicized that our common humanity seems some distant memory from a long ago Jimmy Stewart movie one sees only at Christmas.

Lost too in all this is any sense of what really happened that Monday or why it happened.

Distraction reigns. The last few days have been arguably the mother of all distractions when, as reported here at The Epoch Times and virtually everywhere, riots or protests (depending on how you see them) broke out in front and within the Tennessee State Assembly.

The rioters/protestors were largely high school students, bent on gun control, instigated, at least in part, by three members of the assembly, two of whom have now been expelled for their behavior.

Unfortunately for the local GOP and Republicans everywhere, the two expelled, deservedly or not, happened to be black, naturally providing a propaganda opportunity for our resident White House “civil rights activist” and ally of former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-N.C.) who once informed us “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Meanwhile, the tragic murders are being used inevitably as a battering ram for gun control that has never been shown to work and for red flag laws that can work, but not in the way intended.

Which brings me to the missing “manifesto.”

In the immediate aftermath of the murders the police informed us the obviously emotionally disturbed shooter was transgendered, something that was ratified by the video of the killings at the Christian school showing the female-by-birth Audrey Hale dressed entirely like a macho terrorist.

Further, they told us she had left behind documents and a manifesto, explaining her actions.

Then, as if by magic, we heard no more of the word transgendered in any of its forms, from the media or anywhere, nor, almost simultaneously, anything of the manifesto, except that it had been handed to the FBI for review.

Regarding the media, it isn’t just CBS, widely known to have decreed the word “transgender” should be omitted in coverage of the crime but almost all of the MSM. NPR, recently labeled “state-affiliated” on Twitter, does not mention the word in its recent update on the crime, nor does it apply a pronoun of any sort—male, female, or “they”—when referring to the shooter. This must be a new form of asexual reporting.

As for the FBI, no word so far on when they will release the manifesto, in original or redacted form.

Sound familiar?

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Study makes bizarre leap about guns and lethality of shootings

There’s always going to be some anti-gun study floating around. We’ve seen that time and time again, and the media will always be happy to report on that study with nary a word of criticism about, well, anything.

In fact, it’s almost amusing how little criticism these studies get.

The latest, in fact, doesn’t actually make a whole lot of sense. Why? Because it implies that guns have somehow become more lethal.

A new study has found that fatalities from gun violence in the U.S. have increased over time, with more victims dying at the scene of a shooting before they can be transferred to medical treatment facilities.

The research, which was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined gun violence incidents from 1999 to 2021, including firearm deaths due to assaults, unintentional injuries and unknown intent.

Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers discovered the proportion of deaths at the scene increased from about 52% in 1999, to almost 57% in 2021.

Nearly 49,000 people died from gun violence in the U.S. in 2021, according to the CDC.

The research letter summarizing the study said this increase in fatalities was likely due to several factors, including higher guns sales, social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a “lack of new federal firearm legislation.”

Now, the good news is that this study didn’t count suicides. That’s actually surprising because it’s a handy way to skew findings in an anti-gun direction. So it seems the numbers are pretty accurate.

Where I have a problem, though, is their findings. Higher gun sales and lack of regulation don’t make guns more lethal. In fact, during the time period the study looked at, there weren’t really any advancements in firearm technology that would account for any such thing.

We also know that so-called assault weapons started becoming popular prior to this time period as a result of the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban, so it’s unlikely that would play a role. The researchers do try to blame larger capacity magazines, which might play a role–if you can put more rounds on target, the chances of killing someone are increased–but I don’t see how they figure they made that case.

In fact, they seem to suggest they didn’t even really look at that sort of thing when they note, “Further investigation of the temporal and geospatial distributions of prehospital deaths, weapons used, patterns of injury, and variations by race and ethnicity and age is needed to guide effective interventions.”

So they reached a conclusion as to why this was a problem when they don’t know any of that other stuff?

I don’t know, seems a little sketchy, which is why I say this study kind of doesn’t make any sense.

Yet again, though, they seem to just know the problem is the lack of federal gun control laws while not comprehending literally anything else? Yeah, no wonder people are growing to distrust research more and more.

It’s only too bad no one in the media will look at these studies twice.

Cue Captain Renault

Fact check: Democrats distort the record on guns after Nashville shooting

One week after a shooter opened fire in a Nashville, Tennessee, Christian school and killed six people, including three children, Democrats have continued to press for an assault-style weapons ban they have sought for years.

Democrats accused their Republican counterparts of blocking legislation that would protect children at school from mass shootings, while GOP lawmakers insisted that further limits on gun ownership would not have stopped the Nashville attack or others like it.

And while Democrats still don’t have the votes yet to advance an assault-style weapons ban, they have relied on occasionally misleading rhetoric to push for one anyway.

Here is a fact check of some of the latest Democratic gun arguments.

“[We’ve had] more school shootings than days in the year so far in 2023.” — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), CBS’s Face the Nation, April 2

This is a misleading claim from Murphy.

The Connecticut Democrat has long served as a voice for gun control advocacy due to the painful history of his home state, where a school shooter claimed the lives of more than two dozen people, most of them children under 7 years old, in 2012. Murphy was the congressman representing the district of the school at the time.

He appeared to cite statistics from the K-12 School Shooting Database, a data resource compiled by the Violence Project.

That database claims 95 shooting incidents have taken place at schools so far in the 93 days of this year.

But the claim is misleading because of just how broadly the group defines a shooting incident. The total includes any incident “when a gun is fired, brandished (pointed at a person with intent), or bullet hits school property, regardless of the number of victims, time, day, or reason,” according to the Violence Project.

That means, for example, that a gang-related shooting near a school during which a bullet strikes a sidewalk on a weekend, with no students present, would still count toward the total number of school shootings for the year.

Most people would provide a very different definition of a school shooting, and the type of shooting that occurred in Nashville is much rarer. According to the same dataset, only 105 school shooting incidents since the 1970s have involved “indiscriminate shooting.”

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CDC team got sick while investigating health risks from Ohio toxic train derailment.

A team of seven US government investigators fell ill while studying the health impacts of the February derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals through East Palestine, Ohio, according to the CDC.

The group, including members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, were going house-to-house surveying town residents near contaminated areas when they began feeling symptoms including sore throats, headaches, coughing and nausea. The group spent a day working from their hotel, before their symptoms quickly resolved, the agency told CNN.

“Symptoms resolved for most team members later the same afternoon, and everyone resumed work on survey data collection within 24 hours. Impacted team members have not reported ongoing health effects,” a CDC spokesperson told the network.

The public health agency did not initially disclose the team getting sick to the public.

Two contractors working on the derailment for the EPA also reported health symptoms after working in an area with strong odors, CNN reported. The agency said that none of the other more than 100 EPA employees on the scene reported any issues.

More than half of the people in a state survey reported headaches, anxiety, couching, fatigue, and irritated skin after the derailment, according to research released Friday from the Ohio Department of Health.

Officials have said the water and air in East Palestine is safe to consume, despite rampant conspiracies online that following the crash and subsequent decision to conduct a controlled burn of some of the chemicals that were spilled.

On Friday, governor Mike DeWine’s office confirmed 1,900 feet of railroad track at the crash site will be removed to allow for the excavation and removal of contaminated soil, and said testing at 157 private wells showed no contaminated water.

As The Independent reported, public health experts say long-term testing is needed in East Palestine to monitor the potential health effects of exposure to the toxic materials transported by the train that derailed.

“Byproducts from the burn could be very toxic and we don’t know yet know what they are,” Dr Erin Haynes, professor of preventive medicine and environmental health at the University of Kentucky told The Independent. “They have probably settled onto the soil. They’re in the homes on surfaces and they could be in the waterways in the sediments…We do not know the long-term consequences of that exposure.”

Biden, ATF gaslighting the public about ‘rogue’ gun dealers
Biden trying to change public perception of gun dealers he’s forcing out of business.

by Lee Williams

Joe Biden, his weaponized ATF and their sycophants in the legacy media launched an elaborate campaign this week to change the public’s perception of the thousands of federally licensed gun dealers in the country, whom Biden desperately wants to put out of business.

It is classic gaslighting, but it should not come as any surprise. Biden declared war on guns and gun dealers just months after taking office, and he foreshadowed his latest move earlier this month.

In an Executive Order issued March 14, Joe Biden promised to “provide the public and policymakers with more information regarding federally licensed firearms dealers who are violating the law.”

The problem for Biden is that gun dealers aren’t violating the law. They’re making minor clerical errors, but that isn’t stopping the most anti-gun president in modern history from trying to create a new narrative.

“Gun dealers violating federal law put us all at risk by increasing the likelihood that firearms will fall into dangerous hands,” Biden’s executive order states. “The President is directing the Attorney General to publicly release, to the fullest extent permissible by law, ATF records from the inspection of firearms dealers cited for violation of federal firearm laws.”

As if on cue, the ATF just released the names of nearly 100 gun shops it has put out of business by revoking their Federal Firearms Licenses, or FFLs, on a website page titled: Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy.

ATF strongly implies that the revocations resulted from five serious violations of the Gun Control Act (GCA), specifically:

  • Refusal to allow an IOI to conduct an inspection
  • Transferring a firearm to a prohibited person
  • Failing to conduct a required background check
  • Falsifying records
  • Failing to respond to a trace request

However, the ATF points out that the actual reason for the revocations may include but are “not limited to, the above list.” That is a massive understatement, since the real reasons for the majority of recent FFL revocations are far less serious. They are, in fact, minor clerical errors, which the ATF now considers willful violations of its self-written rules rather than simple mistakes, because of its zero-tolerance policy that Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in June 2021.

In other words, Biden and the ATF strongly imply that the scores of gun dealers whose shops they’ve shuttered transferred firearms to prohibited persons or failed to run background checks or barred an ATF inspector from entering their shop. But that is certainly not the case.

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Karine Jean-Pierre Responds to Question About Gun Confiscation With an Alarming Answer

When faced with a relatively easy question about President Joe Biden’s position on gun confiscation policies, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t give a straight answer.

Invoking repeatedly failed candidate Robert Francis O’Rourke’s 2019 presidential debate promise that “hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” a reporter asked Jean-Pierre, “Does the president support not just banning the sale and manufacture of semi-automatic weapons but further than that, confiscation?”

It’s a straightforward question: Does President Biden think legally owned firearms should be confiscated by the federal government? But Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say “yes” or “no” in what should be an easy answer.

Instead, Jean-Pierre ignored the question and retreated to the usual Democrat talking points about “weapons of war” that “should not be on the streets across the country in our communities, they should not be in schools, they should not be in grocery stores, they should not be in churches — that’s what the president believes.”

Jean-Pierre went on to claim Biden “has done more than any other president the first two years” to address what Democrats say is a crisis of “weapons of war” in America. “Now it’s time for Congress to do the work,” Jean-Pierre said. “And he’s happy to sign, once that happens, he’s happy to sign that legislation that says, ‘ok we’re going to remove assault weapons, we’re going to have an assault weapons ban.'”

Even though Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say whether Biden supports gun confiscation for “assault weapons,” President Biden’s record on the subject is not a winning one, nor is Democrats’ obsession with eradicating “assault weapons” — a purposefully non-specific term usually paired with other buzzwords such as “military style” — a policy goal that’s been shown to limit instances of violence in which the perpetrator uses a firearm.

As we at Townhall have repeatedly noted, Biden’s frequent claim that the “assault weapons” ban he worked on as a U.S. senator was effective just doesn’t pass muster. Biden and his administration’s claim that it’s possible to get the specter of “assault weapons” off America’s streets is one this administration employs frequently while attempting to take advantage of tragedies. “But according to data provided by the Department of Justice, the ban cannot be credited with reducing violence or mass shootings,” Katie noted after Biden repeated the claim last May. Here’s what the DOJ found:

A 2004 Department of Justice funded study from the University of Pennsylvania Center of Criminology concluded the ban cannot be credited with a decrease in violence carried out with firearms. The report is titled “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003.”

“We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury,” the summary of the report on the study’s findings states. “The ban’s impact on gun violence is likely to be small at best, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs [assault weapons] were used in no more than 8% of gun crimes even before the ban.”

If banning “assault weapons” didn’t reduce gun violence, nor reduce the lethality of gun violence, then passing a new ban or going as far as confiscating such firearms — something Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t rule out this week — won’t make a difference either and will only further infringe on the rights of Americans.

We only saw “fact checkers” appear when the truth started getting out.

The Crusade Against ‘Malinformation’ Explicitly Targets Inconvenient Truths.

The legal challenge to censorship by proxy highlights covert government manipulation of online speech.

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According to an alliance of social media platforms, government-funded organizations, and federal officials that journalist Michael Shellenberger calls the “censorship-industrial complex,” I had committed the offense of “malinformation.” Unlike “disinformation,” which is intentionally misleading, or “misinformation,” which is erroneous, “malinformation” is true but inconvenient.

As illustrated by internal Twitter communications that journalist Matt Taibbi highlighted last week, malinformation can include emails from government officials that undermine their credibility and “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.” The latter category encompasses accurate reports of “breakthrough infections” among people vaccinated against COVID-19, accounts of “true vaccine side effects,” objections to vaccine mandates, criticism of politicians, and citations of peer-reviewed research on naturally acquired immunity.

Disinformation and misinformation have always been contested categories, defined by the fallible and frequently subjective judgments of public officials and other government-endorsed experts. But malinformation is even more clearly in the eye of the beholder, since it is defined not by its alleged inaccuracy but by its perceived threat to public health, democracy, or national security, which often amounts to nothing more than questioning the wisdom, honesty, or authority of those experts.

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Poll claims younger Republicans support gun control

There is a serious effort to try and paint gun control as having broad support. The idea here is to make it appear as if pro-gun lawmakers are out of touch with the public in hopes that they’ll bow to pressure and pass restrictions.

Remember that everyone loves a legislator who holds firm to their principles right up until those principles are something the individual voter disagrees with. Then they should totally change and that’s not a violation of principles at all.

Funny, that.

Anyway, with this effort, there tend to be a ton of polls saying gun control has all this support. Kind of like this one that argues Gen Z, Millennial Republicans support it.

Despite widespread overall support for gun control and majority belief in gun rights among Republicans, 59% of Americans report that they’ve engaged in no political activities in the past 30 days in support or opposition to gun access. However, younger generations may be the catalyst for change regarding policy on guns.

The opinions of young Republicans, in particular, differ from those of their older counterparts. Gen Z and Millennial Republicans — adults born in 1982 or more recently — are more likely than older Republicans to believe that gun laws should be more restrictive (39% vs. 22%). Support for more restrictive gun laws has continued to trend upwards among young Republicans – to 47% in February 2023 from 41% in August 2022 – while members of the older generation of Republicans are more likely to believe gun laws are sufficient as they are today. Similarly, 32% of young Republicans think the Constitution protects access to guns only for militias – more than double the share of older Republicans (13%) who think so.

Except that’s only part of the story.

Yes, 39 percent favor gun control but another 39 percent think the laws are just fine and another 22 percent think the current laws are too restrictive.

Conversely, there is 32 percent of Gen Z and Millennial Democrats who think gun laws are either good where they are or too restrictive.

But it’s funny how that’s not the story here, only that 39 percent of younger Republican voters want more gun control. It’s almost as if they’re trying to push a particular narrative and somehow pressure GOP lawmakers into passing some particular bit of legislation.

Nah, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that they framed it that way and pretty much glossed over the fact that 32 percent of Democrats don’t want more gun control.

And the poll doesn’t get into specifics, either, with regard to those younger Republicans. Arguably, support for a red flag law and literally nothing else constitutes wanting more restrictions than the status quo, but is well short of “ban ’em all.” That doesn’t show up on polls like this.

Then there’s the question of just how significant that support is–another subject they didn’t get into, I should note.

There are people who have some vague notions of supporting a given policy but aren’t supportive enough to actually do much of anything about it. They might think a gun control law is a good idea, but they won’t base who they vote for on it.

Republicans, regardless of their age, aren’t about to jump ship and vote Democrat just because of gun control. That doesn’t show up in polls, either.

Fauci Caught Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud About the COVID Vaccine During PBS Special

We should all reconcile with the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci is never going away; too many people idolize the man. He’s become a cult-like figure for the COVID freaks on the Left, the male version of Hillary Clinton. Like herpes, you may not see Fauci daily, but he’ll say ‘hey’ every few years. PBS is doing a documentary about that man who got everything wrong about the coronavirus. In some segments posted on social media, Fauci is walking around DC with Mayor Muriel Bowser, trying to increase vaccine rates among black neighborhoods. They were met with skepticism (via Fox News):

The exchange was documented by PBS for an upcoming program on Fauci as part of its “American Masters” series, which aims to help viewers “discover insightful profiles of important figures in America’s artistic and cultural life.”

In a clip from the program titled “Dr. Fauci visits D.C. to battle vaccine hesitancy,” Fauci and Bowser are shown in June 2021 walking the streets of Ward 8 of Anacostia in southeast D.C. – a historical African-American neighborhood that Fauci called “disenfranchised” with low vaccination levels. At the time of the video, Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.…

One man challenged the renowned doctor and the Democratic mayor by saying that “the people in America are not settled with the information that’s been given to us right now.”

“So, I’m not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn’t clear in the first place,” he said.

He pressed Fauci and Bowser about the length of time it took to develop the vaccine and said, “Nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with.”

Bowser defended the vaccinate by saying, “The only reason I’m talking to you right now, as close as we are, is that I’ve been vaccinated,” as she stood about six feet from the man on the front porch of his home.

“But if thousands of people like you don’t get vaccinated, you’re going to let this virus continue to percolate in this country and in this world,” Bowser said.

“Something like the common flu then, right?” the man interjected.…

“[Your] campaign is about fear. It’s about inciting fear in people. You all attack people with fear. That’s what this pandemic is. It’s a fear, it’s fear, this pandemic. That’s all it is,” he said as Fauci and Bowser walked away.

Another woman also challenged the duo, saying, “I heard that [the vaccine] doesn’t cure it, and it doesn’t stop you from getting it.”

The pure comedic aspect surfaces when Fauci blames red states for not pushing vaccination, saying they will keep COVID around as new outbreaks occur. Sir, you’re in deep-blue DC, and people are skeptical of getting vaccinated. Also, the cat was already out of the bag: COVID is endemic. The one thing that Fauci should have come away with during this little walk through DC is that he’s abysmal at messaging. He also said that Republicans needed to be broken to his whims on vaccination.

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Here’s how progressive lawyers are using public nuisance lawsuits to outlaw guns
O.H. Skinner says public nuisance lawsuits are the next ‘Trojan horse’ for the progressive agenda

EXCLUSIVE – A consumer protection group is warning Republican governors against attempts by left-leaning lawyers to use public nuisance lawsuits as a backdoor way to outlaw guns.

The Alliance For Consumers (AFC), a nonprofit organization aimed at “ensuring consumer protection efforts, class action lawsuits, and attorney general enforcement actions benefit consumers,” sent a letter to all GOP governors Friday saying that since the many state legislatures have recently flipped to a Republican majority, they should be on the lookout for progressive activists attacking gun rights through these legal actions.

“With victories through the legislative process becoming harder to achieve, the progressive left is increasingly looking to an alliance of activists, officials, and trial lawyers to weaponize the judicial system against conservatives and impose key policy priorities by way of public nuisance lawsuits,” AFC president O.H. Skinner wrote.

“Under the guise of compensation for injuries to the overall public interest, these lawsuits open the door to courts imposing sweeping policy solutions outside the traditional governmental processes or otherwise reshaping the economy through massive money transfers,” Skinner added.

Public nuisance laws vary from state to state. Historically, they have been used to protect consumers and the public against things like polluted waterways or hazardous public spaces.

However, Skinner said “activists have found a way to use the court system as a weapon to force companies and consumers to comply with a progressive worldview without legislative oversight or public scrutiny.”

“If you hear someone say, ‘We should bring a nuisance case,’ that is a Trojan horse to accomplish something that you probably don’t agree with.” Skinner said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Skinner claims that “the true goal of most nuisance suits over things like plastics, fossil fuels or firearms is seemingly to remove products and services from in the market that do not align with the progressive agenda.”

Skinner said that progressive trial lawyers will try to make the case that just as fossil fuels and plastics are bad for the environment that is shared by the public, guns can also cause public harm, and therefore, courts should curb their use because of this “public nuisance.”

Once example of this already taking place, Skinner noted, is a case from 2022 brought by a leading personal injury law firm – Napoli Shkolnik— that filed public nuisance suits on behalf of New York cities Buffalo and Rochester.

According to Skinner, that suit claimed that major American firearms manufacturers’ work to design, produce, market and sell has “created, contributed to, and maintained the public nuisance of unlawful possession, transportation and disposition of firearms, and the utilization of guns in the commission of an offense.”

“Activists have largely been able to hide the ideological aspects of public nuisance litigation,” Skinner said. “But make no mistake: public nuisance claims are about liberal control, not just about money, and certainly not about helping consumers.”

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told Fox News Digital that while public nuisance laws “have their place” and are a “tool that needs to exist,” governors and state legislators should consider making changes to such laws so they are not abused.

Who’s Deceptive?

Tucker Carlson launched Round Two of the January 6 tapes last night. Betsy Stauffer is working on a longer post on the latest revelations, along with the crazed (but revealing) calls for censorship from the likes of Chuck Schumer. For the moment, I just want to note one point.

Democrats have voiced a faux concern that there might be something suspicious about Carlson’s editing of the clips he shows on his program. Of course, there is no evidence of that. On the contrary, it looks as though the people who have deceptively edited January 6 footage are the Democrats, through their risible “January 6 Committee.”

Carlson’s team says the J6 committee added audio to silent CCTV footage, inserting screams and other crowd mayhem sounds, to make it seem more ominous.

The Democrats’ fake investigation of the January 6 demonstration has been shot through with dishonesty from the beginning. The master deception, fueled by selective release of video clips while barring public access to the rest, was the claim that the protest constituted a “violent insurrection,” despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of protesters, including those who were allowed into the Capitol, were entirely peaceful, despite the fact that not a single one of the alleged insurrectionists remembered to bring a firearm, and despite the fact that there is no conceivable way the “insurrectionists” could have overthrown the government, no matter how long they milled around the Capitol building.

The whole “January 6” narrative is a hoax and a fraud. Kudos to Tucker Carlson for exposing it as such.

BLUF
It was a cover-up from the beginning, and the media colluded in it every step of the way. The only question now is what kind of accountability can be applied, and whether we have stopped playing with GOF entirely at this point.

Former CDC director: Gain-of-function research “probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has seen”

No kidding. However, don’t consider Robert Redfield a johnny-come-lately to the lab-leak explanation for COVID-19’s origin. Almost exactly two years ago, just after the former CDC director took his leave of the Biden administration, Redfield stunned CNN host Sanjay Gupta by declaring his conclusion that the pandemic started as a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and resulted from gain-of-function (GOF) research funded in part by the US despite warnings against it.

Two years later, Redfield declared himself even more convinced today of his conclusions. Redfield testified today at a hearing of the House select subcommittee on the pandemic, and he didn’t hold back:

Redfield also argues that GOF created the virus, and the global pandemic, just as scientists warned would happen in 2014:

This brings us back to the reasons why the lab-leak theory got so enthusiastically suppressed by both the government and the media. In 2014, a group of scientists formed the Cambridge Working Group to urge governments to stop funding GOF, as both too dangerous and not valuable enough to pursue. When Francis Collins lifted a moratorium on GOF in December 2017, CWG founder Marc Lipitsch offered a prescient warning about what would happen, as I wrote earlier:

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TUCKER CARLSON’S EXPOSE BLEW A RATHER LARGE HOLE IN DEMS ‘DEADLY INSURRECTION’ STORY

Carlson has promised to reveal additional footage on Tuesday night.

For over two years, Democrats have portrayed the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as a deadly insurrection staged by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and elevated the threat it posed to our “democracy” to the level of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

They did so by cherry-picking the surveillance footage the public was allowed to see and keeping the rest under wraps for “security reasons.”

On his Monday night show, Tucker Carlson shared some of the previously unseen footage and it told a remarkably different story than the one that has been force-fed to the American people by the highly partisan and duplicitous House Jan. 6 Committee.

Before airing the clips, Carlson told viewers:

It doesn’t answer every question from Jan. 6. Far from it. But it does prove, beyond doubt, that Democrats in Congress, assisted by [then-Reps] Adam Kinzinger [R-IL] and Liz Cheney [R-WY], lied about what happened that day. They are liars. That is conclusive.

The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress. Instead, it shows police officers escorting protestors through the building.

Carlson acknowledges that while a small minority of the protestors turned violent, breaking windows and injuring Capitol police officers, the vast majority of them were peacefully protesting what they believed had been a fraudulent election. Numerous irregularities had been identified and detailed in sworn affidavits from approximately 1,000 poll workers at battleground state vote-counting centers. Additionally, Big Tech and the legacy media had conspired to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

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