Category: Media

What journalist doesn’t get about “ghost guns”

Whatever the topic of the day is, there are some who will think they’re experts in it. While people have a right to their opinions and a right to voice them, I’m always amused by how idiotic some of the takes actually are.

This is especially true when it comes to “ghost guns.”

I put the words in quotes because, well, most of the people who sling the term want to use it because it sounds scary. Most don’t really understand much of anything about the topic at hand, only the talking points politicians and activists sling around.

Take this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Clarence Page titled, “What the right doesn’t get about ‘ghost guns’”

In it, it shows that Page doesn’t get a lot himself.

An often-repeated story about W.C. Fields holds that as he approached the end of his life, a friend was surprised to find him reading a Bible.

“Looking for loopholes, m’boy,” he reportedly explained. “Looking for loopholes.”

That scene comes to mind these days as I hear the standard response given by the National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America and other gun rights groups to even the most modest attempts to inject a little sanity into our nation’s gun laws.

The latest example of loophole-seeking has emerged in the recent pandemic of “ghost guns.” I’m not talking about the spirits of deceased firearms. “Ghost guns,” as many have been learning, is a street nickname for home-assembled firearms. Their parts can be 3D printed or ordered over the internet and constructed at home like Ikea furniture to produce a full-fledged gun.

The bad news is in their illegality. Buyers of unfinished parts or components have not been required to undergo a background check, and their weapons have no serial numbers, which makes them virtually impossible for police to trace.

Except most guns used by criminals are virtually impossible for police to trace…at least, to trace in any meaningful way that helps to solve a crime. Most guns are illegally acquired in the first place, meaning the trace gives them a name and an address of someone who bought the gun, but they’re not the criminal.

With all this talk about tracing, you’d think crimes couldn’t be solved without it. Yet more than half of all firearms are stolen.

Now, Mr. Page, tell me how tracing will help?

But as stupid as that comment is, Mr. Page ramps it up to 11 with this nonsense:

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How the government covers for anti-gun media

I tend to be pretty critical of media bias. After all, I used to actually believe that media bias wasn’t really a huge thing, that those who saw it were really just upset that the news wasn’t biased in their direction.

Then I grew up. I saw all the examples of bias as supposed journalists went out of their way to push slanted reporting as hard fact.

Yet over at Ammoland, they’re looking at someone else’s bias, a bias that helps the media get away with stuff you or I never would.

A broadcast journalist using a hidden camera enters a gun show, purchases two “80-percent” gun kits, then goes to the state attorney general’s office where two agents help complete and assemble the guns before firing them on a range—allegedly violating state and federal gun laws in the process—while the camera records it all.

During a Sunday morning interview with a network news anchor, a nationally-known gun rights leader is challenged to discuss a 30-round magazine held by the anchor, on a show broadcast from the nation’s capital, where such magazines are known to be illegal.

A nationally-known broadcast journalist produces a special about gun control during which the video is edited to make it appear several gun rights activists are speechless when asked how felons or terrorists might be prevented from purchasing guns without background checks.…

A look back over the years suggests a pattern of “gotcha” journalism that seems to invariably get a pass, and gun rights activists are calling foul, as there is the perception that news agencies are using the First Amendment to undermine the Second Amendment. Grassroots activists contend that if private citizens did the same things depicted on screen, they would almost certainly face prosecution.

In other words, it seems government officials are heavily biased as well and are benefiting the media when they conduct actions that would destroy anyone else.

Time and time again, some in the media have outright broken laws, broadcast it, and gotten away with it because they’re advancing the narrative that certain parties in the government actually agree with.

For example, Katie Couric got away with deceptively editing a “documentary” so it appeared gun rights activists had no answer for a question because the judge argued it “demonstrated the sophistry” of the plaintiffs. Yet to call the actual response–the one Couric removed and pretended didn’t exist–sophistry is to take a position on the validity of those arguments.

That’s an act of bias that has no place in a courtroom.

Yet time and time again, government officials–either law enforcement or in the courts–have taken a side.

That means it’s imperative that such officials be targeted for removal from office. Lawsuits, campaigns, petitions, whatever it takes, we need to hold these people accountable for their blatantly biased actions in favor of a blatantly anti-gun media.

BLUF:
Elon Musk will not save free speech online. Even if his intentions really are good ones, the scale of the problem goes beyond one platform. And free speech online is too important to rely on the benevolence of billionaires. But his attempted takeover of Twitter has already done us a great service, in revealing how important censorship now is to America’s permanently hysterical elites. (Just call them what they are: wanna-be tyrants)

WHY ELON MUSK HAS RATTLED THEM

We stand here on the edge of tyranny… Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. That, roughly speaking, has been the commentariat reaction in recent days as the world’s richest man has launched a takeover attempt of the social-media giant, citing his concerns about its censorious policies as his main motivation.

Musk revealed last week that he had become Twitter’s largest shareholder, with a 9.2 per cent stake. Now he’s offered to buy the whole company for a cool $43 billion, a nice premium on its current worth. As it stands, Twitter’s board is resisting and America’s great and good have gone berserk.

The Washington Post’s Max Boot was swift out of the blocks. ‘I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter’, Boot tweeted. ‘He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.’

On an even more demented note, Robert Reich, veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, essentially argued that Musk buying Twitter would put us on a fast track to fascism; that Musk’s vision for an ‘uncontrolled’ internet was ‘​​the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron’.

Reich wasn’t the only one gripped by this interesting idea that dictators love free speech and that more of it online will bring the Third Reich back. New York University journalism professor ​​Jeff Jarvis had this poetic response to Musk’s bid: ‘Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.’

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UNREGULATED “GHOST GUNS”

I think it’s high time for manufacturers of unfinished frames to start suing the heck out of Everytown for Gun Safety.

But gun safety advocacy groups, like Everytown for Gun Safety, which pushed the federal government for years to take action on ghost guns, applauded Biden’s moves and insisted that both Dettelbach’s appointment and the finalized rule will help combat gun violence.

“Ghost guns look like a gun, they shoot like a gun, and they kill like a gun, but up until now they haven’t been regulated like a gun,” said John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president. (link)

Feinblatt isn’t stupid. He isn’t ignorant. He isn’t mistaken.

He is a liar.

Privately manufactured firearms are firearms, and are regulated as such. A prohibited person may not build one. A prohibited person may not possess one. They may not be manufactured with the intent to sell, only for personal use. All that before the Biden administration’s new rule.

Certainly the Department of Justice and ATF are aware of that.

Seven men charged with guns trafficking in Inland Empire, ‘ghost guns’ among 30 firearms seized
Seven men have been arrested and charged with multiple federal firearms- and drug-related offenses as part of a federal investigation that recovered seven automatic weapons among a haul of so-called ghost guns, officials said Tuesday.
[…]
Most of the guns were privately made firearms bearing no serial numbers or identifying marks, commonly referred to as “ghost guns.”
[…]
Damon Moore, aka “Damage,” 27, of Bellflower was charged with engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license, being a prohibited person in possession of a gun, and distribution of methamphetamine.

If “ghost guns” are, as Everytown Liar-In-Chief claims, unregulated, exactly what US Code were these men charged under, eh? Looks like a truckload of 18 U.S. Code § 922 and 18 U.S. Code § 923 violations, but Feinblatt says it ain’t so; not too swift for an attorney. Maybe the Catholic University of America should demand his law degree back.

And a question for real attorneys: Is it a reportable ethics violation for an attorney to deliberately misrepresent laws?

I’m a bit curious about why the AP’s “Lead Justice Dept. & federal law enforcement reporter” let a demonstrably false statement like that go unchallenged. It raises the question of whether he’s an ignorant idiot, or just a fluffer for the victim-disarmament industry. (Rhetorical, of course; it’s AP.)

Chris Wallace walks away from a nice soft cushy gig on Fox because he’s a proggie and can’t stand his co-workers -which he likely had little to no contact with anyway. Gets hired by CNN to be a host on a new streaming channel and the channel falls-flat-on-its-face

Nobody Wants a Piece of CNN History
CNN offers NFTs of opening moments of its streaming service. They’re not flying off the shelf.

An attempt by CNN to promote its new streaming service by selling NFTs of the opening moments of its programming has backfired, with a large majority of the product still available more than 24 hours after the initial broadcast.

The video NFT, or non-fungible token, features host Kate Bolduan welcoming viewers to the “first live broadcast” on CNN+, and is being sold for $50 on CNN’s NFT marketplace. The news network appears, however, to have overestimated the demand for the piece of digital history—of the 250 NFTs made available, only about 80 were purchased.

The head of CNN+ told the Hollywood Reporter, which decided to write an actual news story announcing the NFT offer, that he expected interest from “digital collectors.”

“CNN+’s debut is a historic moment for CNN,” said CNN+’s Andrew Morse in a statement. “We’re excited to raise the curtain on this new platform and making CNN+’s first live moments available as an NFT is the perfect way to celebrate our launch with digital collectors.”

The trendy pieces of digital property have taken off in recent years, with demand for even mundane offerings such as a picture of a New York Times column about NFTs going for over half-a-million dollars. Anticipated releases of NFTs typically sell out extremely quickly and for large sums of money. In 2021, an NFT collection sold by Brazilian artist Monica Rizzoli sold out in one hour for roughly $5.55 million.

The failure of the CNN+ NFT is the latest piece of bad news surrounding its launch. Fox News reporter Charlie Gasparino said just a day after the product launched that employees were already bracing for layoffs due to lackluster sales projections. The report was bolstered by CNN’s decision to slash prices for the service, offering users 50 percent off for life if they agree to shell out over $2.99 a month.

“CNN+ already showing no confidence in their product,” wrote reporter Saagar Enjeti. “Throwing away [subscriptions] at discount rates to fake their initial sign up numbers.”

The network has made a large investment in the streaming service, poaching reporter Chris Wallace from Fox News specifically for a show on CNN+. Other daily programming will come from Kasie Hunt, who previously worked for MSNBC, as well as longtime CNN hosts Wolf Blitzer and Brian Stelter. It is unclear whether any NFTs featuring Stelter will be offered.

17 Inconvenient Facts For the Gun-Control Movement

Imagine if you only read The Washington Post and only watched MSNBC and like-minded media outlets. If you did that, you might be deceived into thinking America is a regular Wild West Show of daily mass shootings. You might think guns themselves are evil and that crime is the fault of people who legally own firearms. You might even believe that an American citizen could simply go online and buy a machine gun, as former President Barack Obama (D) once told us. You might also think that suppressors are the tools of assassins, and that semi-automatic rifles with pistol grips are commonly used by criminals. Perhaps you’d even surmise that President Joe Biden (D) was making a good point when he suggested a ban on pistols chambered in 9 mm.

At best, many of these gun-control narratives are simply based on ignorance of firearms. At their worst, a considerable percentage of the mainstream media’s storylines regarding the Second Amendment are outright falsehoods meant to convince people to vote away their freedom.

Every issue of America’s 1st Freedom is filled with sourced facts and honest perspectives designed to arm citizens with the truth, but sometimes these kinds of list articles are needed to refute the shotgun patterns of anti-Second Amendment propaganda coming from the mainstream media and gun-control groups.

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The lies the media refuses to call out

The media isn’t exactly friendly towards gun ownership. We all know this, so I’m not exactly breaking news here.

However, they will still occasionally take issue with outright lies, even if they ultimately agree with the position.

There are some lies they won’t bother to call out, and this is one of them:

What is known about the links among gun prevalence, gun purchasing trends and gun violence?

We’ve known for a long time that the more access there is to firearms in a society, the more firearm violence there is likely to be. It’s been shown in comparisons of societies and U.S. states with different levels of firearm ownership.

During the pandemic, as purchasing picked up across the country, we learned there was – at least early on – a relationship between an increase in gun purchases above expected levels and a later increase in violence above expected levels.

As 2020 went on, that signal was lost, except for domestic violence, because many other things were contributing to increases in violence.

We’ve known no such thing about access to firearms.

We’ve been told that such a link exists, but when you look at the studies that claim this, you can see serious problems with every single one of them.

For example, when comparing societies or even different states, it’s impossible to truly control for other variables that may somehow impact violent crime. While the prevalence of guns may exist, so do numerous other factors that can easily contribute to the problem.

Issues like jobs, education, population density, and a host of other factors all have been argued to contribute to crime. So why wouldn’t they also be a factor where guns are easily accessible?

That’s a question the media never answers.

Nor do they seem to consider why this knowledge is so unquestionable despite crime skyrocketing someplace like Los Angeles, which doesn’t have easy access to firearms?

It’s because the media simply doesn’t care about the truth.

They’ve pushed the gun control narrative with every fiber of their being. They’ll have a gun-control advocate on the primetime talk shows to calmly discuss their point of view, but gun rights advocates are often paired with another gun-control activist so they can debate the issue, tilting the balance so people are really getting inundated with one side.

Media personalities have to know what they’re doing, just like they have to know that this idea that we know definitively that increased access to guns somehow makes violent crime higher is bogus.

They know and they don’t care.

They like these kinds of lies because they can hold up those flawed studies and say they’re only spitting facts, trusting that most people wouldn’t understand why those studies are complete and utter BS. They’re hoping you’re too stupid to learn how to read a study, learn to find the flaws in a given study, then criticize it for being what it is, an attempt to push a narrative.

Frankly, I’m kind of sick of seeing this nonsense from our media. The thing is, I don’t expect to ever see them do better, either.

BLUF:
Nobody’s trying to save Ukraine by taking their guns away. Quite the opposite, in fact. No one is trying to stop Russian aggression by trying to ban tanks and bombs. And to be honest, Ukraine’s allies haven’t been able to actually stop the atrocities being committed by Russian forces, even with the images of dead and wounded children on our smartphones and computer screens, which makes Graham’s idea even more disturbingly awful.

If Graham actually meant what she said, she wouldn’t be directing her ire and outrage at guns, gun makers, or gun owners. She’d be demanding sanctions and consequences for those responsible for atrocities on American streets; the ones who are actually pulling the trigger.

Columnist compares U.S. guns to Putin

Gun control activists are desperate to find some way to use Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to bolster their attacks on our Second Amendment rights, but Boston Globe columnist Renee Graham’s latest column is a bizarre new low. Her contribution to the gun control debate? The media should start showing more dead bodies, because that will convince politicians to take action, just as they’ve done since the images of slain Ukrainians and dead Russian soldiers have started appearing on our social media feeds.

Disclaimers about graphic or disturbing content are standard, but many Ukrainians have been adamant — they do not want journalists to shield what Putin’s war is inflicting on their sovereign nation and its residents.

“We know the enemy. In the end, the world must see and hear this,” a Ukrainian soldier told a CNN reporter after he was injured when his barracks were struck by a Russian missile. “I don’t know. How many deaths will it take for everyone to see?”

In his lament, I heard the echo of so many in this nation tired of relentless gun violence and elected officials unwilling to do anything about it. Would their collective hand finally be forced to action if the media were flooded with graphic images of the toll of America’s addiction to guns?

Here’s the first problem with Graham’s argument: that Ukrainian soldier isn’t blaming the deaths of his countrymen on arms makers or equipment used by the invading Russian army. He’s blaming the individual responsible for sending Russian troops across the border in an attempt to turn Ukraine into a vassal state of a reconstituted Russian empire.

Graham, on the other hand, never once mentions the people who are perpetrating violent crime in Boston or any other American city. Her focus is entirely and exclusively on guns.

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ANALYSIS: The Real Problem with ‘Gun Violence’ is Media Bias

Reporting on the revival of a “controversial unit within the New York Police Department” to tackle increased violent crime by going after firearms, CNN headlined its story using an all-too-familiar term that has become firmly entrenched in the media’s lexicon: “gun violence.”

CNN’s headline was as subtle as a heart attack: “NYPD deploys Neighborhood Safety Teams to battle gun violence.”

A quick perusal of one day’s headlines from around the country found nearly a dozen stories all talking about “gun violence,” leaving one to conclude the problem with crime is guns, rather than criminals.

But at this point, what can one expect when the New York Times is finally acknowledging a probe of Hunter Biden, and that it had obtained emails “from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation?”

The New York Times is now the subject of a scathing critique by Michael Goodwin at the rival New York Post, which is all about media bias during the 2020 presidential election campaign. The content of those emails could have swung the election for Donald Trump, Goodwin suggests, but they were withheld from the American public by a “Big Government, Big Tech and Big Media cabal” determined to keep Trump from being re-elected.

Ammoland looked at Hunter Biden’s hard drive last November, focusing on excerpts from Joe Biden’s daily newsletter titled “Office of Vice President Joe Biden News Briefing,” published when the Delaware Democrat was no longer serving as vice president, and before he entered the 2020 campaign.

Then, as he is now, Joe Biden was no friend to the Second Amendment. He gets cover from the same media which has adopted the gun prohibition lobby’s vocabulary.

As noted recently at Liberty Park Press, “’Gun violence’ is a term created by the gun prohibition lobby (often incorrectly identified by the establishment media as ‘gun safety’ or ‘gun reform’ groups). The term, say Second Amendment activists, demonizes guns while essentially relegating other types of violence involving other weapons as somehow less significant.”

To combat this “gun violence,” anti-gunners want to ban so-called “assault rifles.” These are semi-auto sport-utility rifles, but they look “menacing” and they evidently frighten gun haters who have taken to calling them “weapons of war.”

But a look at the FBI Uniform Crime Report for any given year reveals more people are fatally beaten, bludgeoned or stabbed than people shot with rifles of any kind, or shotguns. While certainly true that firearms are used the most in homicides, one never reads about “knife violence” or “baseball bat violence,” while the victims are just as dead. News agencies don’t seem to get this. Long guns are used in a fraction of all homicides.

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DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. SMART GUN TECH STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME

By Larry Keane

There is a media blitz afoot, pitched by developers of authorized user recognition technology equipped firearms; what the media refers to as so-called, “smart guns.” Several of these companies herald that this is the year when they will finally bring their product to market. It might be a little premature to start popping corks, though.

Despite reports praising companies preparing to launch options for consumers, and polling showing Americans may be open to considering this concept, one critical question remains: Are buyers willing to risk their life on authorized user recognition technology?

So long as the answer from firearm purchasers remains “No,” retailers will not sacrifice shelf space for an unreliable product consumers don’t want to buy.
Prove It
Morning Consult released polling of Americans’ relative “acceptance” of “smart guns” and pitches a rather optimistic outlook.

“After decades of delays and controversy over smart guns, 2022 could be the year that the new weaponry is brought to market.”

The article reports Americans are “interested” in “smart” gun technology and “support the development” of the firearms. Less than half, 43 percent, of those surveyed say they are “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in personalized guns equipped with authorized-user technology, while more than half, 54 percent, aren’t. NSSF’s polling in 2019 showed that just five percent said they were inclined to purchase a so-called “smart gun” with 70 percent saying they still had concerns about reliability.

Firearms equipped with authorized-user technology involves adding electronics that in theory only allows a gun to be fired by a verified, authorized user after unlocked by using either a fingerprint, a pin code or through embedded field communication (RFID) connected to a smartphone or other Bluetooth device. Firearm owners know that guns must work as designed each and every time. There’s no room for failure. Adding in electronics to guns adds points of failure and could have horrific consequences for those who rely on them for self-defense.

LodeStar Works Inc., is one developer working to hit the market this year. President and CEO Gareth Glaser is hopeful. Glaser said, “It’s been around a long time now. Everybody uses one form or another of authentication technology on their smartphone.”

The problem for developers lies in the fact that support for “technology development” does not equate to, “I will buy a smart gun.” Not to mention a firearm is incomparable to an iPhone or Bluetooth speaker. Phones and guns are completely different products and equivocating them is beyond tone-deaf to the firearm market that has seen elevated sales largely driven by concerns for personal safety. If the facial or fingerprint recognition on your iPhone doesn’t recognize you, you’re inconvenienced. If your firearm doesn’t unlock in a time of need, you could be dead.

Failing Track Record

The hype for “The Year of the Smart Gun” began early. Leading up to SHOT Show® 2022 in Las Vegas, these new companies were pitching their products as the “hot” new thing.

“Exclusive: Smart guns finally arriving in U.S., seeking to shake up firearms market,” read a Reuters headline. “‘Smart Gun’ Companies Aim For 2022 Commercial Release,” said another. “Are ‘smart guns’ finally arriving in the U.S.? Here is what we know,” was the headline from The Deseret News. The article began, stating as fact, that “Smart guns…will finally become available to American consumers after decades of questions regarding reliability.”

The Reload was the most measured and accurate. “‘Smart Guns’ Come to the Industry’s Trade Show Amid Hype and Skepticism.”

The history of this technology is not one of success, including hacked and failing test runs. A demonstration by LodeStar prior to SHOT Show® 2022 failed too. A demonstration to show off the technology to shareholders shows an individual loading, chambering and clicking the fingerprint keypad on the side of the 9 mm handgun equipped with the authorized-user technology.

“Alright, ready? Everybody got ears? Alright. Two rounds coming,” he says before firing. Only one round successfully fired while the demonstrator is visibly seen and heard pulling the trigger multiple times for the remaining round before the video abruptly ends. That’s during a controlled test under ideal conditions and in front of the media.

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Yes, they know. They’ve always known. They just approve.

Project Veritas Torches the New York Times and Explodes the January 6 Narrative
Serious journalists know that our oligarchs used Jan. 6 as a Reichstag fire, to target political dissidents.

A Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter has been caught in a video by the conservative group Project Veritas admitting his colleagues vastly exaggerated the danger of the election integrity protest on Jan. 6.

The reporter, Matthew Rosenberg, also called his colleagues names that questioned their courage and manliness.

January 6 Was in Fact “No Big Deal”

Rosenberg, the national security correspondent for the New York Times, said the media’s coverage of the Capitol riot was “overblown” and that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were “no big deal,” according to undercover video released Tuesday by Project Veritas.

In print, Rosenberg and his colleagues have described the claim that there were FBI plants instigating the protestors outside of the U.S. Capitol a year earlier as a “reimagining” of the “attack.” But in the Project Veritas video, which appears to have been recorded without his knowledge, Rosenberg paints a different picture. Here he admits that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.”

warning, some foul language

WaPo columnist says “fans of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have a new favorite word: ‘grooming'” … and I think someone hit a nerve.

You can always tell how insular a person has become in their politics when a term that has been used regularly regarding a topic that has been in the news for years strikes them as something “new.”
Of course, people who don’t share columnist Monica Hesse’s Bryn Mawr value system have actually been using the word for some time.
Okay, I shouldn’t be so hard on Bryn Mawr. After all, it has a politically diverse student body with only around 42% identifying as “liberal” and the rest identifying as Marxists.
Not only that, but, you know, grooming happens.
A lot.
Do a quick search and you find stories like these.
So, you’ll excuse us if we’re a tad sensitive about the teacher grooming issue.
I’m sorry, did I say “sensitive?” According to Hesse, it’s an obsession.
Anti-gay activists are obsessed with talking about “grooming.”
People wouldn’t be obsessed with talking about grooming if leftists weren’t obsessed with talking about sex with five-year-olds.
Elite NYC school is using the creepiest video of all time to teach first graders about masturbation and I have questions.

Of course, the most obvious question is, will there be an AP Program for the advanced students?

And note the term she uses to defame proponents of the Florida bill: “anti-gay activists.”
As is well known outside MSNBC newsrooms and the confines of blue-city newspapers, the word “gay” does not appear anywhere in the bill. Nor does “LGBTetc.”
Were Hesse truly interested in knowing what was in the bill, she would have bothered to read it. It’s very short and easily found. (pdf)
Of course, had she done that you know what would have happened.
Not only does the bill not have the word gay in it, but search for the words “gender” and “sex” (and its variations) and you’ll find they appear only twice each.

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The Times, simply displaying their standard hypocrisy.

What you see from the Ukrainians is real heroism. Little to no training. Little to no logistical support. Yet they arm up and march off to fight an invader. That takes real guts.

The New York Times’ Strange New Respect for Citizens Owning and Carrying ‘Assault Weapons.’

Yes, this is the New York Times writing approvingly of average Ukrainian citizens taking up arms to defend themselves, their families, and their country. They’re being thousands of what the Times refers to as “assault rifles” for which most of them will have had little to no training at all.

Not that it matters. When your country is being attacked by a foreign army, you use the weapons at hand.

An estimated 18,000 assault rifles, variants of the Kalashnikov, have been distributed in Kyiv since Thursday. For many in line, the decision to pick up arms and fight a street battle against one of the world’s largest armies was driven by patriotism.
“I don’t really have any choice,” said Hlib Bondarenko, a 21-year-old computer programmer. “This is my home. I have nowhere to go, and I’m not going to give it up.”

Olena Sokolan, a business manager, stood proudly in a line made up mostly of men. “I am a woman, but I am strong,” Ms. Sokolan said. “I don’t have any fear. I’m ready.”

See Russian, point rifle, pull trigger.

This is the same New York Times that writes so approvingly of “assault weapons” bans here in the US of A. Never mind that the muddled old Gray Lady has written that Clinton’s AWB both failed miserably and worked as intended. Because as Americans are seeing hourly on their televisions and news feeds, who really needs an “assault rifle” anyway?

News networks ignore Ukraine’s gun rights push

Ukraine is dealing with a lot right now, but one of the smarter things they did was recognize that an armed populace is an asset. They expanded gun rights in the Eastern European nation leading up to the invasion, though, in fairness, guns weren’t completely forbidden there, either.

However, the major news networks seemed to have completely ignored this during their coverage of the buildup.

On Wednesday, hours before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukrainian, the Rada (parliament) advanced legislation that would allow more Ukrainian civilians to own firearms as they stared down the bear that was eager to wage war on and conquer them. It’s another obvious example of why civilian firearm ownership is important and vital for a free people, yet it wasn’t worth any airtime on the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) that night or Thursday.

Citing local Ukrainian reporting, The Reload’s Stephan Gutowski reported: “274 of the country’s 450 elected representatives voted for the bill, according to local media outlet Ukrinform. The bill would formalize the country’s gun laws, allow more civilians to own and carry guns, and allow them to be used for self-defense in more places.”

The Canada-based CTV noted the move came on the eve of, “[o]ne of Europe’s worst security crises in decades” after “Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two areas of eastern Ukraine as independent and ordered troops to be deployed to eastern Ukraine.”

NBC Nightly News did note this distribution of weapons but not the expansion of gun rights on Thursday. Yet reporter Erin McLaughlin spoke with a member of the Ukrainian parliament who’s never shot a weapon before but was among those ready to take up arms:

And most of the media failed to note the legal moves prior to the invasion. Why?

Well, the answer is pretty simple. These are the same networks that play host to people who tell us our AR-15s are useless against tanks and attack helicopters. They don’t want us to see that, on the eve of the invasion, a sovereign nation turned to armed citizens to help defend their homes.

They don’t want people seeing the kind of scenarios the Second Amendment was meant for play out on their television screens.

In truth, they’d much rather keep us ignorant of how Ukraine recognized that they needed those armed citizens if they were going to have any hope of fending off the invasion of a more powerful neighbor.

If we recognize that fact, many would be far less hesitant to back things like assault weapon bans or magazine restrictions.

They’d see one of the scenarios the Founding Fathers feared and recognized the role armed citizens can play. They’re doing so in Ukraine, but they could just as easily have to do so here.

Our right to keep and bear arms is something that any invader has to fear.

The networks, however, would rather you not think about that because they want people to view guns only as something to fear, not something that can be used to protect.

Having crap-for-brains is why and that appears to be a life long affliction

Bad arguments in favor of gun control persist

For proponents of gun control, there are tried and true arguments they trot out whenever they need them, and by “tried and true” I mean “tired and wrong.”

Over and over again, we see these arguments used, with almost no pushback from the mainstream media. After all, they’re the ones making these arguments.

Take this op-ed from the Star Tribune:

Gun regulation long has been the third rail of American politics. But the increase in murders, accidental shootings, suicides, armed carjackings and robberies, as well as the ongoing tragedy of mass shootings, shows the urgency of changing course. A responsible gun safety regulatory system would reduce crime and save lives.

Consider how we regulate cars. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.

With cars, we require operators to be trained and licensed. We register every vehicle, and re-register each when it’s transferred to a new owner. We require liability insurance. We also require safety modifications and regulate how and where cars are driven.

Except that’s an inaccurate comparison. You only have to do any of that if you drive the vehicle on a public road. If you keep it confined to your farm, you’re not required to do any of that.

Further, the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutionally protected right. Cars, not so much. The courts have ruled that driving is a privilege, not a right, so comparing regulations surrounding a privilege to the lack of regulations for a right isn’t asinine, it’s idiotic.

But it’s bound to get better, right?

Don’t hold your breath.

For guns, there is no licensing, no training requirement, no registration, no insurance, no safety equipment required. This enables criminals to obtain guns with no background check, no waiting period — no means of enforcement at all.

Except that every FFL holder conducts criminal background checks on every firearm they sell.

“Oh, but private sales-”

Sure, in theory, but do you know how criminals tend to get guns? Via the black market, which is never going to conduct a criminal background check. Remarkably few buy from law-abiding gun owners looking to lawfully sell a firearm, so it’s a non-issue.

Yet the hits don’t stop there. Oh no, we get this classic gem:

The U.S. Constitution explicitly says “well-regulated” when referring to gun rights, yet the gun lobby opposes any form of gun regulation. The courts have said that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934 effectively banned machine guns from most private ownership. Since that time, the “Tommy guns” of the Al Capone era and other fully automatic machine guns have not been used in mass killings or other crimes.

Oh, goodie, the “well-regulated” argument.

Talk about nonsense.

Look here, Sport. The phrase “well-regulated” meant nothing more than “properly functioning,” such as a well-regulated clock. The term didn’t mean then what it means now and there’s been a lot of actual scholarship supporting that fact.

Plus, more importantly, the right explicitly says “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That’s a contradictory clause unless “well-regulated” meant something differently at the time. It’s unlikely such a contradictory amendment would have been added by our Founding Fathers who desperately were trying to build a nation of laws.

But the author doesn’t care about that. He just wants to see new gun control passed, claiming it saves lives. Except, a look at the UK’s homicide rate before and after they passed gun control shows that it doesn’t really.

So not only are his arguments bad, even the facts work against him.

Gun crimes grab most media attention, while gun use in self-defense gets merely a fraction: experts
People using guns in self-defense overwhelmingly don’t even lead to a criminal being killed or wounded, one crime watcher says

Americans across the country have used legal guns to defend themselves and thwart crimes, but the reports often fly under the radar and most people are unaware how often guns are used in self-defense cases.

“Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves,” Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. He pointed to women in particular, who “behave passively” and are “about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself.”

As crimes skyrocketed in major cities since 2020, instances of women using guns to protect themselves and stop crimes have repeatedly played out.

“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now,” a Chicago woman with a concealed carry permit said in October after two would-be carjackers approached her outside a bank.

“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now.”

— Chicago crime victim

In New Orleans just last week, a mom and Air Force veteran pulled a gun on a man who tried to get into her car while she was sitting in gridlocked traffic with her 2-year-old son. She wasn’t forced to fire the weapon and the suspect took off.

‘Dramatic undercount’

Lott said that, in a typical year, the media reports about 2,000 defensive gun use stories, but he added “that is a dramatic undercount, because the vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news.”

STUDY SHOWS CONCEALED HANDGUN PERMITS SOARED DURING PANDEMIC, RECORD YEAR-OVER-YEAR INCREASE

Lott said there are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.

The Heritage Foundation, which launched a database tracking how often guns are used in self-defense cases, cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which looked at various studies and found “that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.”

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The Constitution may impede them, to an extent, but they still are trying.
It takes what Patrick Henry advised:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”

WaPo Writer Actually Declares Individual Freedom ‘a Key Component of White Supremacy’

George Orwell’s “1984” or “Animal Farm”? Nope. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”? Uh-huh. Some other dystopian novel about life in a future totalitarian America? No way. Straight from the pages of the Washington Post. You know, the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” guys?

More like “Individual Freedom and Liberty Dies in the Darkness of the Radical Left.”

In a WaPo “Made by History” op-ed titled The Ottawa Trucker Convoy Is Rooted in Canada’s Settler Colonial History, Taylor Dysart, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, awkwardly argues that “one’s entitlement to freedom is a key component of White supremacy.” After carefully dissecting the garble, I was able to get to the root cause.

Before we begin, unlike the 187,594,632 (and counting) articles about the Freedom Convoy, totalitarian Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or anything else to do with Ottawa, my focus will be on “none of above.” Instead, it will be about the crux of the lunacy of Ms. Dysart and other lunatics who believe as she does, and the unfortunate publishing of said lunacy by a once-proud American institution.

You’re welcome. Now, on with the show.

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