Category: Media

Credit Where Due: VP Harris Finally Pressed By Media on Illegally Obtained Firearms

It was quite surprising to hear it when it happened but Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, was fact checked in real time about the real drivers of criminal gun violence. She was tripped up on her answer because the journalist pressing her wasn’t buying the vice president’s tired talking points.

It happened during an interview of the vice president at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) after one of the questioners asked Vice President Harris about her gun control platform.

For those needing any reminding, the Biden-Harris administration has been the most fervently anti-gun administration in history. Vice President Harris, as the administration’s “gun czar,” has infamously instituted a “whole-of-government” attack on the firearm and ammunition industry and the Second Amendment. She is colluding with gun control groups – who literally operate out of her office. As President Joe Biden’s “gun czar,” Harris has continually failed to bring criminals to account for their crimes.

Vice President Kamala Harris tries to claim to voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and other close-polling states that she “isn’t taking anyone’s guns away from them” while in the same breath calling for a ban and confiscation of an entire class of lawfully made and legally purchased firearms – the most popular rifle in America. That’s just about the extent of her “plan” to reduce criminal gun violence. But finally, she received pushback for specifics that voters deserve to hear.

Please Answer the Question

Whenever Vice President Kamala Harris has been asked about criminals committing gun crimes, her response is predictably always the same. She calls for more gun control on law-abiding Americans, lists a kitchen sink full of anti-Second Amendment talking points and blames Congress for inaction. This is despite the fact that for the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration, Democrats controlled both chambers in Congress and The White House. She never mentions that not even all Democrats in the U.S. Senate supported a bill to reinstate, and expanded, a so-called “assault weapons” ban. That doesn’t stop the vice president from repeating those calls. But the interviewers at the NABJ wanted more specifics from her.

“In cities like Philadelphia, handguns are responsible for most homicides and violent crime,” NPR’s Tonya Mosely began. “How will you address the issue of the use of handguns because a push for an assault weapons ban only addresses, um, a significant but small part of the problem?”

The vice president began her answer by repeating the talking point that she and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz were both gun owners. She claimed “we’re not trying to take anyone’s guns away from them. But we do need an assault weapons ban.” As she continued to filibuster her answer about how Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) need to be banned and universal background checks must be implemented, Mosely interrupted and pressed her further.

“Respectfully, we do understand that. But I’m asking specifically about handguns because many of those handguns aren’t purchased at places that run background checks. In many of those instances those handguns aren’t bought lawfully.”

The vice president was stumped. She had no response to the logical reasoning that the firearm industry continues to highlight when calls for gun control are made – that criminals do not follow the law. NSSF has reported on Department of Justice data that shows 90 percent of firearms used by criminals in the commission of their crime were obtained through illicit means and not at a firearm retailer. It’s also one of the main reasons why universal background checks won’t work. That and the fact that a national firearm registry is prohibited by law under the Gun Control Act of 1986 and the Brady Act of 1993.

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BLUF
If there’s one thing the Democrats have proven without a doubt over these last three and a half years, it’s that they’re committed cheerleaders to censorship and shutting down opposing views.

CA Gov. Newsom Signs Ban Against Political Deepfakes; Elon Musk Mercilessly Trolls Him With… Deepfakes

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a strict new censorship law Tuesday that will make it illegal to produce or distribute AI political videos around election season. Tell me that this doesn’t sound like it infringes on the First Amendment:

The new law, the strictest in the country, takes effect immediately and aims to crack down on deceptive content which uses artificial intelligence to create false images or videos.

The law makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes ahead of Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties, per The Associated Press.

The blowback was immediate. Former Republican State Senator Melissa Melendez (R) predicted this law will have a short shelf life:

A free speech group called The Fire argued that this is not the way to attack the problems posed by AI:

In targeting “deceptive” political content, California’s new law threatens satire, parody, and other First Amendment-protected speech.

A.B. 2839 bans sharing “deceptive” digitally modified content about candidates for office for any purpose. That means sharing such content even to criticize it or point out it’s fake could violate the law.

The law also requires satire and parody to be labeled, like requiring a comedian to preface every joke with an announcement he’s making a joke.

That’s not funny — it’s scary. Whatever concerns exist about AI-generated expression, violating the First Amendment isn’t the way to address them.

Newsom was triggered by a (hysterical) Kamala Harris campaign ad that Musk retweeted without telling everyone a fact that was completely obvious to any sentient being—it was a fake. I wrote about the “commercial” when it came out in July:

But Gavin grew cranky and failed to appreciate the humor. In fact, he said that the measure was in direct response to Musk’s post:

But what perhaps the elegantly coiffed governor failed to take into consideration was that Musk is kind of like a hornet’s nest: poke him, and he’ll come back at you like a swarm. He masterfully mocked the failed guv with several tweets, including one Tuesday where he retweeted the original fake Kamala ad (which currently has 55 million views) that so upset Gov. Grumpy:

He wasn’t done, though; remember that I said that it was like poking a hornet’s nest; you’ll probably get bitten more than once. On Wednesday, the X owner fired off another fake video, this one produced by the parody site The Babylon Bee. (Note to Mr. Newsom: the Bee openly says they are a parody site. I’m sure if they run afoul of this ridiculous new law, their lawyers will make that very clear.)

It is absolutely brutal—and brilliant:

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, and I am not qualified to deliver a detailed legal analysis of the law. However, I can nevertheless confidently tell you that there will be plenty of court action surrounding it, and that it could ultimately be struck down.

The incredible power of AI is a serious issue, and sensible laws will have to be considered as it gets better and better. That being said, I’m sure not comfortable letting folks like Gavin Newsom decide what we can and cannot say. If there’s one thing the Democrats have proven without a doubt over these last three and a half years, it’s that they’re committed cheerleaders to censorship and shutting down opposing views.

More of the Nashville Trans Shooter’s Manifesto Just Dropped

The Tennessee Star has published 90 pages of the manifesto belonging to the “transgender” Nashville shooter who slaughtered six victims, including three children, at a private Christian elementary school on March 27, 2023.

According to the never-before-seen excerpts legally obtained by the local newspaper, Covenant School killer Audrey “Aiden” Hale, a 28-year-old biological woman who identified as a “transgender man,” wrote about wanting “a boy body in heaven” and craving “brown love.”

“If God won’t give me a boy body in heaven, then Jesus is a f*gg*t,” Hale wrote on one page.

On another, she said, “Brown love is the most beautiful kind.”

Hale had repeatedly questioned, “why does my brain not work right?” Concluding, “Cause I was born wrong,” she lamented, “Nothing on earth can save me…never ending pain. Religion won’t save.”

In an undated entry, Hale wrote, “The [cocoon] of my old self will die when I leave my body behind and the boy in me will be free; in the butterfly transformation; the real me.”

Hale often signed off with an octagonal symbol, which first appears on the journal’s cover. The shape was drawn on the very first page, opposite where Hale wrote, “Why does my brain not work right? Cause I was born wrong!!!”

The journal, which was written between January and March of 2023, is one of many Hale had in her possession.

Police initially identified this journal, along with a spiral notebook found in the car she used to drive to the school, as the shooter’s “manifesto.” Authorities also seized approximately 20 additional journals Hale authored over a 15-year period from 2007 to 2022. Those writings are said to span about 1,000 pages.

According to the local outlet, a source familiar with the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigation handed over the handwritten journal, which The Tennessee Star is referring to as “The Covenant Killer’s 2023 Journal” in order to distinguish it from the numerous ones predating 2023, in early June of this year.

“We believe it to be authentic,” The Tennessee Star’s editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy wrote in a statement on the outlet’s website. MNPD further confirmed its authenticity in court, with a court filing submitted by MNPD Lieutenant Alfredo Alevado authenticating it.

“We have had a First Amendment right to publish these unredacted documents from the moment we legally obtained them,” Leahy stated.

Leahy then outlined in great detail the legal avenues The Tennessre Star meticulously took to acquire the manifesto:

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Matt Whitlock

Cotton lays out all the important facts that have been completely misrepresented:

“[Trump] didn’t take campaign photos there. These families — Gold Star families — whose children died due to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s incompetence, invited him to the cemetery, and they asked him to take those photos…”

“You know who those families also invited? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — where were they? Joe Biden was sitting at a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting at her mansion in Washington, DC. She was four miles away — ten minutes. She could’ve gone to the cemetery and honor the sacrifice of those young men and women, but she hasn’t. She never has spoken to them or taken a meeting with them. *It is because of her and Joe Biden’s incompetence that those 13 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.*”

And when the anchor pushes back that Harris attended that “they attended the dignified transfer,” Kamala Harris did NOT, just Joe who was seen and photographed repeatedly checking his watch.

NBC News Wants to Teach You How to Store Guns Correctly

I grew up watching NBC News because our local TV station was an NBC affiliate. We’d hit the local news, followed by the network news.

It wasn’t until I was a fair bit older–older than I’d like to admit, really–when I realized just how biased NBC News actually was. It was kind of jarring.

They’re especially bad about issues like guns, and I cringe every time I find an article from them on the topic. It’s usually not likely they’ll speak with anyone who understands them and when they do, they aren’t exactly flattering.

So when I saw they published a piece on gun storage, well, I was prepared to be disappointed. Especially when it talked about “experts.” That usually means anti-gun mouthpieces who have never even touched a gun without fainting, so the advice is going to be geared to make guns as useless as possible. That…didn’t happen.

Instead, it’s a sober, reasonable discussion of various methods of gun storage, some of their pros and cons, and mostly just leaves it there.

Yes, it cites studies that claims most gun owners aren’t securing their guns, but those are the studies that are out there. I’m not going to fault the writer for going there when that’s the information available.

This is perhaps the most troubling part of the piece:

Twenty-six states and Washington, D.C., have safe-storage laws that punish gun owners if a child accesses an unsecured firearm. These laws have drawn support from gun safety advocates and the U.S. Surgeon General, but they’re opposed by gun rights groups that argue people should be free to decide when and how to secure their weapons.

That’s not quite how the debate falls–mandatory storage laws have a bad habit of getting in the way of someone’s self-defense needs, which is why gun rights advocates oppose them–so this bit presents a bit of the writer’s bias, but this is someone working for NBC News.

Nothing about this is surprising.

Yet from here, it’s just a brief discussion of some of the gun storage options out there. It’s very brief, so a lot of nuance is missing, and there seems to be a phobia about guns loaded, but it’s not the most terrible article on the topic I’ve ever seen.

So that leads me to wonder why NBC News never thought to write it before.

Oh, I get that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy made headlines recently talking about this as a small part of his overall desire to see our gun rights stomped on, but there was no reason not to discuss this a lot earlier.

We have a reach here at Bearing Arms. The other gun rights sites out there do as well, and ours may well be more targeted than NBC News ever would be, but they have a broader reach and they can speak to the more casual gun owner.

They could have hit this years ago. They could rehash it regularly, even, just to make sure that people know what their options actually are.

Why didn’t they?

For people who seem to believe they have the duty to change the world, this is a simple thing they could have done ages ago.

Supreme Court backs Biden administration in social media case

Held: Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. 
[In other words, we aren’t going to rule on this because…..reasons. So the federal goobermint can go right ahead and keep on doing this slimy crap]

Respondents are two States and five individual social-media users
who sued dozens of Executive Branch officials and agencies, alleging
that the Government pressured the platforms to censor their speech in
violation of the First Amendment.

Following extensive discovery, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court held that both the state plaintiffs and the individual plaintiffs had Article III standing to seek injunctive relief.

On the merits, the court held that the Government entities and officials, by “coerc[ing]” or “significantly encourag[ing]” the platforms’ moderation decisions, transformed those decisions into state action. The court then modified the District Court’s injunction to state that the defendants shall not coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to suppress protected speech on their platforms.

 

TPTB are apparently running scared and are getting their knives out for SloJoe.

ABC, AP, CBS, NBC All Join Heritage, Judicial Watch in FOIA Request for DOJ to Release Biden’s Special Counsel Interview

A large group of news outlets have joined with Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation to sue Biden’s Department of Justice for the release of the audio of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Joe Biden in the investigation into classified documents found at the president’s residence and office.

Among those suing the department under the Freedom of Information Act for the release are ABC News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, NBC News, Reuters, Univision, and the Washington Post.

The outlets are seeking all audio and video recordings of Hur’s five-hour interview with Biden. Biden has asserted executive privilege over the recordings.

“These recordings will help the public evaluate Hur’s decision not to charge Biden and to close the investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s former office and private residence,” the suit stated.

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Analysis: The Pulitzer for Propaganda Goes to…

In 2023, the Washington Post published a series of articles about AR-15-style rifles. The series was scientifically illiterate, error-ridden, propagandistic, and willfully misleading.

Naturally, it has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Here are the facts, not that these matter even a little bit to the Pulitzer committee, members of which declined to answer questions for this column.

The AR-15 and rifles based on its design are two things at once: They are perfectly ordinary firearms that have been sold to civilians in the United States for the better part of a century, and they are cultural totems. They are cultural totems for the gun nuts who love them and for those who wish to prohibit their sale. The AR-pattern rifle has a lot in common with the most common rifles and handguns sold in the United States: It has a semiautomatic rate of fire (meaning that it fires once each time the trigger is pulled but doesn’t require any additional steps between trigger pulls, as opposed to, e.g., a bolt-action rifle, which requires that the shooter manually operate a handle that ejects the spent shell after a shot and then chambers another round for the next shot), and it is fed from a detachable box magazine. These features—semiautomatic firing and detachable box magazines—are what make the AR-style rifle useful for many purposes—including mass shootings. But they are features that the AR-style rifle has in common with most rifles sold in the United States and with nearly all handguns sold in the United States. As the engineering of semiautomatic rifles grows ever finer, even pursuits traditionally dominated by bolt-action rifles—long-range precision target shooting and hunting—have seen semiautomatic rifles make incursions, in much the same way that sports cars today mainly have a feature that would have been anathema to a sporting driver a generation ago: automatic transmissions.

The Washington Post series is very focused on the round the AR-style rifle fires, which it describes as “uniquely destructive”—a demonstrably false, quantifiable claim (as I noted at the time). AR-type rifles come in dozens of different chamberings, but the vast majority are chambered for the round that was long the standard-issue cartridge for the U.S. military: the 5.56mm NATO cartridge, which is nearly identical to and effectively interchangeable with the .223 Remington round. (AR-type rifles chambered for the 5.56mm round can typically fire the .223 without issue, though some older .223 rifles cannot safely fire the 5.56mm.) The Post writers claim that it is the speed of the 5.56mm round that makes AR-style rifles “uniquely destructive,” but this is false as a matter of elementary physics. Velocity is not what determines how much damage a projectile does to a human body—kinetic energy is. Chances are excellent that at some point this year you will be struck by something moving about 1 million times faster than the fastest bullet, and you will never even notice it, because the mass of the object in question is so small. Cosmic rays are an example of this. But the principle holds true at a larger scale: There are many cartridges that produce faster bullet velocities than the 5.56mm does. The 5.56mm generally comes out of the muzzle at about 3,250 feet per second (fps), which is a good deal less than hunting calibers such as the .220 Swift (more than 4,000 fps) or the .30/378 Weatherby (5,000 fps). Hunters and long-distance target shooters often prefer faster-moving cartridges because they are easier to shoot accurately: Bullets are not powered like little rockets but are more like rocks fired out of a slingshot, meaning that they begin to drop as soon as they leave the muzzle and gravity begins acting on them; faster bullets reach the target more quickly and thus have less time to fall and so require less adjustment for distance.

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Yes, that’s exactly what he’s saying. He’s admitting the truth about unchecked immigration. It’s importing a slave class but this time they fully count for deciding how the House of Representatives is divvied up as well as somehow getting to vote.

MSNBC Legal Lunatic Frets Over America’s ‘Deep Commitment to Free Speech.’

In the ever-leftward marching world of the erstwhile American political party known as the Democrats, assaults on our most cherished constitutional freedoms are the cornerstone of their efforts to fundamentally transform the Republic.

We’re all used to them making a lot of noise about their disdain for the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is one of the few freedoms that they’re at least a little bit honest about wanting to take away. They may not admit to their gun-grabbing fantasies, but many of them now don’t say “no” when asked if that’s the end game.

The assault on due process is mostly denial-based. They’ve been using college campuses to test market their gulag/kangaroo court approach to justice for years now. That approach was put into public practice with their treatment of the J6 defendants. When any of the Democratic elite are pressed about the J6 victims of injustice, however, they get the kind of blank stare that Joe Biden would if someone told him to find the exit on his own after a speech.

The Democrats’ assault on the First Amendment has always been the most complex of their anti-American initiatives for a couple of reasons. One is that they love to cherry-pick the First Amendment when needing justification for their war on religion or their right to riot and burn everything to the ground peaceably assemble. The other is that they need to avail themselves of the very right that they seek to destroy.

Awkward.

Leftists come at free speech from a variety of euphemism-laden angles, the most popular one of late being a concern about “disinformation.” Caterwauling about disinformation was key to the Democrats’ political weaponization of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They had so much success with it that they’re not letting it go.

The New York Post:

MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade argued Monday that the United States’ “deep commitment to free speech” makes Americans uniquely susceptible to disinformation campaigns.

McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, went on “The Rachel Maddow Show” to promote her new book, “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.” She said her “goal” with the book was to spark a “national conversation about truth and our commitment to it.”

She added, “I hope that by dissecting it, explaining it, and educating the public, we can all see disinformation for what it is so that we can begin to push back against it.”

Oh, don’t worry, Toots, freedom-loving Americans do see what you call “disinformation” for what it is — an excuse to shut down conversation about anything that runs counter to your false narratives. Because everything is “Opposite Day” when dealing with the Democrats, those rending their garments over the dangers of disinformation are far and away the greatest disseminators of disinformation. Pathological liars love to say that everyone else is lying.

While it’s fair to say “consider the source” when discussing MSNBC, the network did play a role in the aforementioned success that the Left had with their disinformation contortions in 2020.

Ms. McQuade should have borrowed a Mao jacket from Hillary Clinton for this appearance. Hers is one of the most blatantly commie opinions on free speech offered on a network that traffics in commie opinions.

Editorial Says WA Gun Control Bill ‘Uses Public Safety as Smoke Screen’

An editorial in the normally pro-gun-control Seattle Times says a gun control measure aimed at licensed firearms retailers “pushes gun control to a level of punishment for legitimate businesses.”

Singling out House Bill 2118 from among three measures still in play, the Times editorial board recognizes the restrictive nature of the legislation.

“Some lawmakers may not like the selling of guns in Washington,” the editorial acknowledges, “but it’s a legal business. The Times editorial board praised the Legislature for enacting laws that banned the sale of assault-style weapons and ammunition over the past two years. But HB 2118 unnecessarily tightens the rein on gun dealers while using the public’s safety as a smoke screen.”

It is a stunning acknowledgement from a newspaper editorial board which traditionally has supported all kinds of gun control measures.

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Time’s ‘Made By History’ Just Made Up

Once, Time magazine was one of those household names in news. They didn’t break it, but they provided more depth than your local paper really could. People trusted them and Time, back then, lived up to that trust.

Today, like a lot of news publications, they’re a shadow of their former self.

Yet, if I’m being honest, even describing them as that is far too generous. That would imply there’s at least something of the original core still there, just diminished. Instead, all we have is yet another publication ready to spout any anti-gun talking point they care to name.

For example, they recently ran a story about the NRA, premised on Wayne LaPierre’s departure, under their “Made By History” tag.

It doesn’t take long to see it really should be “Made Up History” instead.

Last month, after more than three decades as the figurehead of the modern gun lobby, longtime National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO and executive VP Wayne LaPierre stepped down. His departure comes amid a civil corruption lawsuit brought by the State of New York, which alleges that the NRA and its executives violated their non-profit status and various state and federal laws, as well as grossly mismanaging the group’s finances.

LaPierre stands at the heart of a popular narrative about the recent emergence of the radical right. He has loomed large in the organization’s changing tactics and emphasis as it evolved into a political powerhouse and an uncompromising foe of all gun control.

As the story goes, the NRA was a moderate group focused on sport and target shooting before the “Cincinnati Coup” in 1977. The revolt at the group’s annual convention ushered hardliners into power and drove the reshaping of gun politics in the U.S., including the rise of a new interpretation that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms. LaPierre joined the organization shortly after the coup and became executive vice president in 1991.

Yet, while LaPierre epitomizes the post-1977 NRA, there is more continuity in the group’s history than is popularly known. Dating back to its 1871 founding, in fact, the NRA has had one consistent priority: protecting social order and control. LaPierre articulated this philosophy after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 when he declared that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

The idea is that control of armed force should be deputized to and limited to certain populations—especially elite white men. That has always been the NRA’s driving force, and the only thing that changed after 1977 was the militarization of this organizing precept.

Now, LaPierre has his critics, to say the least, and much of that criticism at least appears to be valid. Yet there’s not a shred of evidence anywhere to support the assertion that when he said “good guy with a gun” that he meant elite white men.

First, how is it that gun owners are at once backward rednecks and also “elite white men” anyway?

Second, anti-gunners keep spouting this idea that we only favor gun rights for white people, yet black gun owners are one of the fastest growing segments, and not a soul I’ve talked to views this as anything but awesome. Another quickly growing group is women, and no one is batting an eye at that, either.

Now, here’s the problem. If this were billed as an op-ed, I’d probably be finished. I might expound on a point or two, particularly with regard to how gun control originally targeted non-white people and only allowed guns for those “elite white men” but, for the most part, I’d focus on that.

Yet this isn’t an op-ed. These are the opening paragraphs that seek to report history.

How can anyone trust any aspect of what follows when their ideological lens is so clearly divined? They’re not interested in the truth or in understanding the past. They’ve got an axe to grind and they expect you, the reader, to ignore it.

What follows from there is, in many ways, revisionism. Sure, it undermines the talking point that the NRA was nice and moderate until 1977 when they suddenly became evil, but it’s also clear that they can’t acknowledge that the right to keep and bear arms applies to everyone and that’s the line the NRA has taken in the past several decades.

There’s been no effort by any gun rights organization to differentiate rights between various racial identities. They fight for people’s right to keep and bear arms. That means people. All people

But the writer over at Time doesn’t see it that way, but since she also clearly has her own view of reality rather than, you know, reality, this is what we get.

What bothers me is how this single line, presented without evidence or context, is likely to be enough to convince people that it’s true, like the lack of evidence is, in and of itself, evidence of its validity when it’s really just journalistic petulance.

So no, Time isn’t a shadow of its former self.

It’s a zombie walking around at the behest of its anti-gun necromancer master.