Media – Page 7 – MILESFORTIS

Comment O’ The Day
“Looking at the news today, if Elon wants an idea of what else Twitter can do, setting up a Twitter Book Mart and selling books (including, or especially those dropped by amazon) would be a good and useful one. The actual physical distribution of books is straightforward; publicizing them is the hard part. And the one thing Twitter does really well is publicize.”

Amazon Fascists Ban Another Book That Leftists Hate.

The battle for the freedom of speech is heating up this week, with Elon Musk chasing out the Twitter fascists and beginning to open up the platform for free discussion and dissent (amid howls of rage from the Left), but the other social media giants are showing no signs of retreating from their fascism. New English Review Press announced Sunday that a book it published back in 2017, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology by the renowned ex-Muslim scholar Ibn Warraq, has been pulled for sale from Amazon without explanation or the possibility of appeal.

It’s a strange move. I have the privilege and honor of having known Ibn Warraq for many years and calling him my friend. I’ve also read The Islam in Islamic Terrorism. Before I met him, his groundbreaking and courageous work Why I Am Not A Muslim was a powerful influence on me in the 1990s and had a great deal to do with my beginning to write about jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women myself. Ibn Warraq is a gentle soul, a careful scholar, a superb writer, and a profound and original thinker. The Islam in Islamic Terrorism is not some flame-throwing hate screed but a carefully documented exploration of the elements of Islam that jihad terrorists use in order to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims.

Amazon, however, is run by Leftists, and for Leftists, any criticism of Islam, including any hint that it may have some connection to Islamic terrorism, is “Islamophobic” and thus to be rejected out of hand without any discussion of the actual evidence. For years now, the notorious far-Left smear machine, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has defamed opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression as “hate group leaders,” and Amazon has banned counter-jihad 501c3 charitable organizations from its Amazon Smile charity program on the basis of the SPLC’s “hate” listings.

Amazon has also shown a readiness to ban books that counter the Left’s nonsense. A few years back, the Leftist behemoth banned Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. It has also banned other books that jihadis and their allies would find offensive, such as Peter McLoughlin’s Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal, and Mohammed’s Koran by McLoughlin and British activist Tommy Robinson.

Leftists will say, as they always say to criticism of the social media giants, that Amazon is a private company that can do what it wants and that if patriots don’t like it, they can start their own bookstore. Remember bookstores? There used to be many in every American city. They all had different selections, based on the owners’ perspectives and interests. But now they are almost all gone. Amazon dominates the book market, and Barnes & Noble takes most of the rest. If Amazon decides that your book is not acceptable, then most people who are interested in books will never have the opportunity to see it at all.

In earlier, less polarized times, the U.S. government determined that several monopolies — Standard Oil, American Tobacco, AT&T — were not in the public interest and compelled them to break up. It would be a great boon for the freedom of speech if Big Tech were subjected to this treatment, but the U.S. government as it is currently constituted is more likely to act against Musk for protecting the freedom of speech on Twitter than against the other social media giants for suppressing that freedom. The American people would also benefit immensely from the breakup of Amazon and reconstitution of bookstores that reflect differing points of view with selections that reflect not just Amazon’s doctrinaire Leftist line, but other points of view as well.

The Islam in Islamic Terrorism can still be found here. But it’s clear that Amazon is intending to shut down debate on a highly controversial issue. Even if you don’t care for the works of Ibn Warraq (which would be odd, as it would mean you don’t care for lucid, elegant prose, compelling reasoning, and a broad command of the salient facts), make no mistake: anytime Amazon pulls a book for political reasons, we are all threatened. The precedent has been set by the only bookseller that really matters today that books that are offensive to the Leftist elites can be deep-sixed at will. This precedent is dangerous and corrosive to a free society. In this age of the Biden regime’s creeping authoritarianism, it’s ominous in the extreme.

Just more willful ignorance

BLUF
The stereotype of gun owners is a lie. The media calls us male-pale-and-stale, and who cares if old white men are disarmed anyway. In fact, gun owners now look like a cross section of the USA. Minority urban women are the fastest growing segment of new gun owners. I think Democrat politicians are afraid that more women and minorities will decide to become gun owners. These new gun owners might enter the culture of armed America and protect themselves.

That fear keeps Democrat politicians up at night.

New Gun Owners are Invisible to the News Media and Democrat Politicians

More people own guns today than ever before. That growth is a continuation of a long term trend that goes back several decades. In addition to that gradual increase, we’ve also seen an extraordinary growth in new gun buyers in the last two years. We had to rewrite who owns guns and why they own them. Today, about four-out-of-ten families have a firearm in their home. Despite the astounding changes in gun ownership, the way some politicians talk about guns and gun owners is out of date. New gun owners are subjected to a crash course in being misperceived and misrepresented by politicians and by the mainstream news media alike.

What is real and what is fantasy?

Sitting President, Joe Biden, echoed old myths about gun owners at a fundraising event in June. He said,

“More people get killed with their own gun in their home trying to stop a burglar than, in fact, any other cause.. Think about that. Because it’s hard to do. It’s a hard thing to do.”

Mayor John Fetterman, the Democrat candidate for the US Senate from Pennsylvania, also felt the need to comment on guns and gun ownership. He said,

“I have seen with my own eyes at the scenes in my community what a military grade round does to the human body.” He said that rifles, particularly modern rifles, should be outlawed.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said,

“This whole concept that a good guy with a gun will stop the bad guys with a gun, it doesn’t hold up. And the data bears this out, so that theory is over.”

Those statements don’t fit what we know. We know a lot about new gun owners because we talked with them. Gun stores asked new gun owners why they wanted a gun so the gun shop employee could direct the customer to the appropriate products. The industry trade group representing firearms manufacturers and distributors collected those answers. The stereotypical gun owner used to be an old white man who bought a gun to go hunting. Several years ago, personal safety replaced hunting as the major reason new gun owners buy a firearm. Today, gun owners are from every demographic group; male and female, rich and poor, urban and rural. Gun owners represent every ethnic and racial group. About one-out-of-four African-American adults own a firearm. It seems strange that the mainstream media and politicians have deliberately ignored that change.

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Free Bird.

Everything about Elon Musk insults the coddled, low-testosterone consensus that has been ruining America this last decade through the promulgation of its dependency agenda.

“The Bird is Freed!”

That’s what Elon Musk tweeted upon the consummation of his bid to buy Twitter. ’Twas a consummation devoutly to be wished. Why? For one thing, as Musk later tweeted, henceforth comedy once again will now be “legal on Twitter.”

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter for more money than you or I can really contemplate ($44 billion) lit the punditocracy ablaze. On the Left there was, as St. Matthew (13:42) put it in another context, abundant “fletus et stridor dentium,” “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” On the Right, there were cheers and not a little “Schadenfreude,” which is German for “serves you right, knucklehead.” The Right also went in for some creative trolling.

The dominant narrative, on the Left anyway, is that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter represents a conservative takeover of the social media giant. Twitter had been a brash and scrappy upstart, you see, and now it has been “colonized” by the rich and powerful. . . .

That’s the idea, anyway. You can practically hear the Nabobs of the Narrative holding their breath while they wait to see if the public buys it.

Their public will, of course. But how about the rest of us?

The New York Times gave fastidious expression to this canard in a story headlined “Twitter, Once a Threat to Titans, Now Belongs to One.” A “threat to titans,” eh? What do you suppose that means? The Times explains in its subhead. “A decade ago, the social media platform was a tool for rebels and those challenging authority. But over time, the powerful learned how to use it for their own goals.”

In order to appreciate how funny this is, you can start with CNN’s story about the pile of money paid to the executives that Musk, in his first order of business, fired on Thursday. It is a large pile. According to CNN, Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s former CEO, Ned Segal (former CFO), and Vijaya Gadde (former Chief Legal Officer) will walk away with nearly $200 million. (I pause so that you, along with many others, can savor the word “former.”)

Gadde, by the way, was not only paid many millions of dollars a year but was also instrumental in engineering the expulsion of Donald Trump, then the president of the United States, from the platform.

The idea that Twitter was a challenge to the establishment before the advent of Musk is almost as wrong as the idea that Musk is conservative and that he aims to transform Twitter into a a bastion of Trumpesque MAGA (or, to quote Joe Biden’s focus group, “ultra-MAGA”) sentiment.

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CNN Sounds Alarm: SCOTUS May Wipe Out Gun Control ‘Nationwide’

CNN sounded the alarm Sunday, warning that the pro-Second Amendment makeup of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) portends an end to gun control “nationwide.”

CNN’s Tierney Sneed pointed to the June 23, 2022, SCOTUS decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen, noting that it not only struck down New York’s proper cause requirement but also set forward stringent rules for how lower courts must decide cases related to the Second Amendment.

On July 1 Breitbart News noted that SCOTUS remanded a number of cases, vacating the decisions and ordering them to be reconsidered in light of Bruen. The cases centered on an “assault weapons” ban in Maryland, a “high capacity” magazine ban in California, and carry restrictions in Hawaii, among other things.

Roughly two weeks later Breitbart News pointed to a Washington Times article suggesting the Bruen decision puts all types of gun control in the crosshairs of gun rights groups.

The Washington Times paraphrased Justice Clarence Thomas’s emphasis on the important of decisions like Bruen, McDonald v. Chicago (2010), and District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), saying, “The test courts must apply is whether a firearms restriction would have seemed reasonable to the founding generation that crafted and ratified the Second Amendment. If not, the law must give way to the Constitution.”

In light of this framework for testing restrictions, CNN warns that gun control in every state is in jeopardy:

Since the June ruling, federal judges in at least a half-dozen different cases have already cited the Bruen decision to rule against gun restrictions that have included local assault weapons bans, prohibitions on the manufacture of homemade firearms and bans on older teenagers publicly carrying handguns.

Several other laws now face new legal challenges under the precedent, among them zoning restrictions barring shooting ranges, licensing and training laws and the federal ban on certain misdemeanor offenders from possessing firearms.

CNN noted changes that have already occurred in jurisprudence in light of Bruen:

A federal district judge cited the ruling last month when halting Delaware restrictions on possessing and manufacturing untraceable firearms, saying that the law’s defenders failed to provide persuasive evidence that similar restrictions existed in the historical record. The precedent was also referenced when local assault weapon bans in two Colorado jurisdictions were put on hold this summer; the judges in both cases were each appointed by Democratic presidents.

CNN also noted a decision handed down on Thursday to “pause” new gun controls New York enacted in response to Bruen.

Breitbart News indicated the New York controls were paused via a temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby.

No, SCOTUS didn’t just rule against gun rights

Today it’s often difficult to determine when the mainstream media is being deliberately deceptive or is just incompetent. Whatever the case may be, they are routinely wrong.

Take for instance a recent ABC News headline reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) bump-stock ban:

Supreme Court upholds bump stock ban in big win for gun safety advocates

The Supreme Court did no such thing.

In December 2018, the ATF published a final rule amending the code of federal regulations to declare that items colloquially known as bump-stocks fall under the definition of “machineguns” as defined in the National Firearm Act. As these items were not registered prior to when the federal government froze the sale of new machineguns in 1986, the rule made bump-stocks contraband.

Gun rights proponents across the country took exception to what many perceived as impermissible executive branch law-making. As a result, several cases challenging the new rule were filed in federal court. Rather than concerning the Second Amendment, at issue in these cases is the permissible scope of administrative rule-making and the extent to which administrative agencies should or should not be given deference in interpreting criminal statutes.

In the case Aposhian v. Garland, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the ATF rule, at which point the plaintiffs petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case in August 2021. Similarly, in Gun Owners of America, Inc. v. Garland, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the ATF rule, prompting the plaintiffs to petition the Supreme Court in March 2022. On October 3, the Supreme Court declined to hear either case.

First, denying cert in a case is not a ruling on the merits of that case. The decision not to take a case is not an explicit endorsement of a lower court’s ruling. In his dissent in Darr v. Burford (1950) Justice Felix Frankfurter explained,

The significance of a denial of a petition for certiorari ought no longer to require discussion. This Court has said again and again and again that such a denial has no legal significance whatever bearing on the merits of the claim. The denial means that this Court has refused to take the case. It means nothing else.

Second, there is good reason in this instance why the Supreme Court may want to take a wait and see approach to how the law in this area develops in the lower federal courts.

At present, another bump-stock case, Cargill v. Garland, is making its way through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In December 2021 the Fifth Circuit upheld the ATF rule in this case. However, following a petition by the plaintiff, in June the Fifth Circuit agreed to hear the case en banc (in front of the full court, rather than just a panel of circuit court judges).

Could the Supreme Court be waiting on the Fifth Circuit to rule en banc before entertaining a bump-stock case? That is a distinct possibility. What isn’t is that the Supreme Court has made a ruling on the merits of these important cases. Reporters should know better.

I've always said that polls saying Americans want more gun control depend on people not knowing current laws, and not knowing what the proposed laws do. This new poll confirms that. https://t.co/xBzRPI2wlF

— Tom Gresham (@Guntalk) October 7, 2022

It’s easy to get ‘consensus’ when you persecute and prosecute anyone who disagrees.

BREAKING: The American Medical Association is asking Big Tech and the Department of Justice to censor, deplatform, investigate, and prosecute journalists who question the orthodoxy of radical gender surgeries for minors, arguing that public criticism is "disinformation." pic.twitter.com/NHv32Zzdu5

— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) October 3, 2022

What’s interesting is how the blame gets assigned to the federal, state, or territorial level depending on where the Republicans are.

Do Republicans Cause Hurricanes?
The corporate media gears up to give DeSantis the Katrina treatment.

With the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy, three things always happen when a hurricane makes landfall in the United States. First, the storm will be touted by the corporate media as evidence that anthropogenic climate change presents an existential threat to humanity and the planet. Second, anyone who dares question the accuracy of this claim will be either ignored or denounced as a dangerous anti-science “denier.” Third, if the hurricane happens to hit a state with a GOP governor, he will be blamed for causing any resultant death and destruction.

In the case of Hurricane Ian, all three commenced more than 24 hours before the storm actually arrived in Florida. On Tuesday, CNN talking head Don Lemon contradicted Jamie Rhome — the acting director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center — about the effect of climate change on the storm’s intensity. Rhome tried to stay on topic and cautioned Lemon against linking any single weather event to climate change. Lemon nonetheless insisted on providing this brilliant scientific analysis: “Well, listen, I grew up there and these storms are intensifying. Something is causing them to intensify.”

Also on Tuesday, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell told White House reporters that she had concerns about the complacency of some Floridians who hadn’t experienced a major hurricane, but she characterized FEMA’s interaction with state officials as “excellent.” Predictably, Politico misrepresented the administrator’s comments in order to create a false narrative about Florida’s allegedly “lax response” to storm warnings. Later, a “reporter” hit Gov. Ron DeSantis with this: “FEMA Administrator Criswell said today that she acknowledged concerns about Florida’s, as it was said, ‘lax response’ to the storm so far.” DeSantis immediately shut him down:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Give me a break. That is nonsense. Stop politicizing, OK? Stop it. We declared a state of emergency when this thing wasn’t even formed.… Honestly, you’re trying to attack me I get, but you’re attacking these other people who have worked very hard. So, that’s just totally false. I don’t think we have ever, certainly since I’ve been governor, declared a state of emergency this early.

Politico later executed a stealth edit, replacing “lax response” with a more accurate description of Criswell’s comments. If the reporter’s question sounds familiar, it’s not an illusion. The “lax response” trope has been used by the media for decades against GOP governors and presidents when no genuine fault can be found with their reactions to natural disasters. Remember when President George W. Bush was blamed for the Katrina disaster after routing more funds to Louisiana for civil works projects than any other state? Never mind that Louisiana public officials misappropriated much of the money that was meant to reinforce the levees.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, DeSantis was taking incoming fire from the Fourth Estate as the storm was about to make landfall. The Weekly Dish’s Andrew Sullivan was generous enough to offer this inspired insight: “DeSantis now being tested as a governor not a troll.” This is unusually trite for Sullivan. His effusions, while frequently vicious and sometimes a little crazy, are usually a lot more original. Where this storm is concerned, though, he has fallen in with the theme adopted by most of the corporate media during the past 48 hours — Hurricane Ian is a timely test of DeSantis’ leadership. Here’s an example of the genre from TIME:

Ron DeSantis is about to face the most consequential 72 hours of his political career.… DeSantis, however, remains largely untested. For three years, he’s been able to pick culture-war fights with teachers and Walt Disney World without the pesky distraction of serious governing. He doesn’t have a lot of the compassionate chits that his predecessors had stored up in advance.

If the author of this piece believes that DeSantis has been “largely untested,” he should consider leaving journalism. In reference to hurricanes, DeSantis dealt effectively with the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm that hit the Florida Panhandle just before he was elected in 2018. Moreover, he responded to COVID-19 more effectively than any other large-state governor in the country, despite Florida’s huge percentage of elderly — and therefore vulnerable — residents. He has rarely received credit for that by corporate media, which will doubtless bury any good news about his response to Hurricane Ian.

As bad as the media coverage has been on Hurricane Ian, however, the dumbest response to Florida’s latest storm came from Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). During a discussion with the renowned climate experts of Morning Joe, she delivered herself of this gem: “We just did something about climate change for the first time in decades. That’s why [Democrats] have to win this as that hurricane bears down on Florida. We’ve got to win in the midterms.” Thus, ipso facto, Republicans do cause hurricanes and DeSantis must get the Katrina treatment to prevent him and the GOP from destroying Gaia.

DEMONIZING GUN ADS IS A MISGUIDED WITCH HUNT

Gun control advocates are ready to start grabbing pitchforks and torches in their attempt to drive out firearm manufacturer advertisements. They fear that today’s advertising is running to a tipping point where they need to rally the villagers to chase the monster pieced together by mad gun advertisers out of town.

Today’s gun ads, they claim, are a horrific menagerie of “toxic masculinity,” fearmongering and anti-government militancy. Except none of that is true. Gun control’s efforts are more like a witch hunt, and more like Monty Python’s version of one depicted in the cult classic, “The Holy Grail.”

They’re too busy clanging alarm bells to roust of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to realize that the monster they’re chasing doesn’t exist. The real monsters are the criminals, not the law-abiding gun owners who are lawfully purchasing firearms for self-defense, recreational shooting and hunting.

They want to muzzle and silence our industry so the American heritage and tradition of hunting and the shooting sports is not passed on to the next generation.

Defining Acceptable Ads

Adweek was the latest to weigh in. The advertising trade publication, which regularly highlights efforts by various gun control groups to demonize lawful gun ownership, posted a feature claiming that today’s gun ads are turning America’s children into “extremists.”

The article focuses on an effort by lawmakers to pressure the FTC to abandon their neutrality and deny gun manufacturers the ability to advertise. They say the ads of yesteryear of plaid-clad hunters unwrapping a rifle under the tree are acceptable, but today’s advertising that draws on patriotism and self-reliance is a bridge too far. They want the FTC to burn gun manufacturers at the metaphorical stake and cut out their tongues.

That is a pretty big leap to suggest that Americans – even youth – exposed to firearm ads will poison their minds. Guns have been advertised for decades, even guns offered in youth models. Mechanix Illustrated ran an ad in 1954 for a Remington .22-caliber rifle, featuring a youth holding a rifle he received as a Christmas present. Sears Roebuck listed firearms in their catalog in 1897, featuring a shotgun for $7.95 and would even deliver a revolver to a mailing address.

Clearly, government regulations restricted that years ago. Even toy guns, like Mattel’s #2 M-16 were featured in 1967 with “braap, brra-a-a-a-ap, brap, brap,” sounds were advertised. None of that turned America’s youth into murderers. In fact, recreational shooting, including the scholastic shooting sports, ranks among the safest sporting activities. Golf, walking and tennis report more injuries than hunting and trap and skeet shooting reports just 0.1 percent of injuries.

Intellectually Dishonest

That is because the shooting sports are heavily supervised. Basic foundational safety rules are a must and are drilled into every gun owner. Children are admonished to only handle firearms under the direct supervision of a responsible adult.

Critics of lawful firearm ownership are being intellectually dishonest when they say it is advertising that is causing out-of-control crime rates or horrific murders. They know this is not true. It is not as if these are individuals who are not academically accomplished. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was once a professor at Harvard University. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) was Yale Law School graduate who also served as Connecticut’s attorney general. They are not uneducated. They are just being dishonest.

They do not want to admit that the soft-on-crime policies they espouse are not making our communities safer. They would rather latch onto every gun control notion they can and mispresent to America that the societal ills are the fault of the firearm industry that they have made a career demonizing. It plays well to their voters when they do not have to admit their policies are failing. It is easier to cast blame and malign an industry, tell America that murderers are not individuals with craven hearts who couldn’t care less about the law, much less the value of human life. It is easier to ignore that the responsible firearm industry offers Real Solutions® than admit law-abiding gun owners are invested in safe and responsible ownership.

Do not believe their false and misleading claims that the firearm industry is evil. They are the ones selling pitchforks and torches.

I think we all already know the answer to this

BLUF
Pelley’s reluctance to ask tough questions about Hunter is deliberate and straight out of the corporate media handbook.

The corrupt press knew Hunter was sealing deals using his dad’s name and title. They also knew that was compromising for the then-presidential candidate. That’s why when Hunter’s laptop with information indicating Joe was not as clueless about Hunter’s business as he seemed surfaced shortly before the 2020 election, the media claimed it was “Russian disinformation” and refused to cover any of the corruption.

Pelley’s refusal to make Joe answer for the Biden family business in a 2022 “60 Minutes” interview is no different than the media’s deliberate memory holing of Hunter’s depravity and the Bidens’ wheeling and dealings in 2020.

Corporate Media Enable Biden Family Corruption By Refusing To Ask Tough Questions About Hunter.

Joe Biden hasn’t had to answer tough questions about Hunter Biden and the Biden family business because the corporate media doesn’t make him.

Thanks to the complacent, corrupt corporate media, President Joe Biden has once again failed to answer questions about the Biden family business and whether his son Hunter Biden’s foreign entanglements have affected how he chooses to run the country.

The most recent side-stepping happened during a “60 Minutes” interview with CBS news anchor Scott Pelley, who claimed that if Joe seeks re-election, “Republicans are most likely to go after your son Hunter.”

“I wonder what you would like to say about your son and whether any of his troubles have caused conflicts for you or for the United States,” Pelley said.

Biden: "There's not a single thing that I've observed that would affect me or the United States relative to my son Hunter." pic.twitter.com/SddIu2Fg68

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 19, 2022

First, Pelley’s “question” was not a question but a softball statement designed to save him from criticism for failing to raise Hunter as a topic of conversation at all. Much like the rest of his corporate media colleagues, Pelley seems to have an incessant desire to prop up the declining president instead of making him answer tough questions.

Secondly, Republicans aren’t “going after” Hunter to get to Joe. They are raising legitimate concerns about someone whose foreign business dealings and criminal dabbling, combined with his closeness to POTUS, pose a serious threat to the national security of the United States.

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5 questions about New York’s new social media requirements for gun applicants

New gun laws in New York for those seeking a concealed carry license, including a review of social media accounts by law enforcement, was cleared to go into effect by a federal judge last week, but questions about how the state will enforce it and future legal challenges remain.

The new rules, part of the state’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act, followed a Supreme Court ruling in June that prohibits states from requiring residents seeking a gun license to prove a special need to carry a handgun outside the home.

The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, challenged a provision of New York’s 109-year-old concealed carry law that required applicants to have “proper cause” for the permit — a special need for self-defense. Five other states had similar laws.

New York responded with a number of changes, including requiring concealed carry applicants to share “a list of former and current social media accounts” from the past three years to assess the applicant’s “character and conduct.” The rule comes in the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, where the gunmen reportedly posted warnings about their violence online.

The new state laws, which also require more classroom and in-person training for concealed carry licenses and the creation of “sensitive places” where guns are not permitted, have already been met with lawsuits. Judge Glenn Suddaby declined to put the law on hold a day before it took effect, saying the New York resident and three gun rights organizations who filed lawsuits didn’t have standing to bring the legal action. But he indicated he believed some parts of the laws were unconstitutional, and legal experts expect other challenges in the future.

While written testimonies are common for gun permits across the country, requiring social media records is an added layer that has not been implemented in other places for the purposes of gun permitting.

“I refuse to surrender my right as Governor to protect New Yorkers from gun violence or any other form of harm. In New York State, we will continue leading the way forward and implementing common sense gun safety legislation,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said of the conceal carry changes in a statement last week.

The social media requirement has raised questions about privacy and what states can request in the permitting process.

Max Markham, vice president of policy and community engagement at the Center for Policing Equity, said he believes the laws as a whole are a “strong legislative package” when it comes to curbing gun violence. But he said the social media requirement is unclear in its scope and implementation, and will need to be better defined in the near future. He added that he expects conservative groups, in particular, will fight the law on constitutional grounds.

Markham said the law includes a process to appeal if a person’s application for a concealed carry permit is rejected, which he believes can help increase accountability and provide space “for individuals who may feel like they’ve been judged incorrectly.”

“I think seeing how it is enforced and ensuring that there is some degree of equity will be really key,” he said.

What is the scope of the law?

The wording of the requirement suggests applicants only need to share their public content with officials, and that the purpose of the search is to corroborate written testimony from character witnesses, according to David Greene, civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Greene believes the social media rules are intended to look for stated intent to commit crimes with a gun. But Greene said there’s a host of information unrelated to a search for criminality that can be gleaned from accessing someone’s social media history.

“[It] can say a lot about someone’s political affiliations, about the community organizations they belong to, about religious groups they’re active in … and their familial relationships,” he said.

Greene said that context – which is hard to gather from a quick social media scan – is relevant to what people share on the platforms, and it can be difficult to get that from a profile alone .

While New York’s new gun law includes welcome changes, such as requiring more firearm training, the social media requirements are a “poor” part and have “serious” privacy concerns, said Adam Scott Wandt, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“I question whether or not that part of the law will subject the state to lawsuits that will eventually find the law unconstitutional. And I also have serious privacy concerns with the state requiring somebody to submit social media accounts for review based upon unclear criteria as to what constitutes ‘good character’ and moral and what doesn’t. It’s messy,” Wandt said.

The New York City Bar Association Committee on Technology, Privacy and Cyber, which Wandt co-chairs, did not have time to offer input or feedback on the laws, either, he said..

Hochul’s office did not answer a question from the PBS NewsHour about outside expert review on the new set of laws.

Is social media monitoring for licenses used elsewhere in government?

Social media monitoring to get an official government license is a rare official policy but at least one other agency has adopted the practice.

Greene said visa applicants have been required to share their social media accounts since 2019. The requirements, originally created under the Trump administration, have been continued by Joe Biden. Users are required to provide social media accounts used in the last five years from a list of 20 platforms. Applicants do have the option to select “none” if they have not used any of the social media sites.

According to the State Department, the collection and review of social media information is intended to “enhance the screening and vetting of applications for visas and other immigraiton benefits, so as to increase the safety and security of the American people.”

Wandt said that he is also concerned about social media reporting requirements being expanded to other professional licensing administered by the government, potentially forcing some people seeking these licenses to sacrifice privacy for their work, he said.

Wandt said there were also questions about how he social media information gleaned from firearm applications will be used or stored by law enforcement.

“Do these things go into a database when the NYPD pulls me over? Is there a database now that they’ll be able to look at and see my social media because I applied for a handgun? I think there are more questions than answers at this point,” he said.

Hochul’s office did not respond to a question from the NewsHour about what happens to the records of an applicant’s social media account after a permit is processed.

Which law enforcement agencies will conduct these searches?

Who will grant gun licenses in New York under the new law is dependent on the jurisdiction. In New York City, the NY Police Department issues gun licenses and will check social media accounts. Across the state, there may be some sheriff’s departments who conduct the checks, but in many cases, a county authority, such as a judge, issues the license. However, in those cases, responsibility for ensuring requirements for a gun license are met will still fall to the sheriffs.

“Troopers remain committed to this mission, and we are dedicated to stopping the criminals who traffic illegal guns and endanger our communities,” State Police Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen said in a statement.

NY Sheriff’s Association Executive Director Peter Kehoe said there is worry by sheriffs that the task of searching through social media accounts would be too difficult. He said there is a risk that law enforcement will miss something in the social media account of someone issued with a gun license who then goes on to commit a crime, putting that responsibility and accountability on the sheriffs.

“It falls on the sheriff because he missed something when he was given an impossible task,” he said.

Kehoe adds that the definition of “character and conduct” under the new statute is too vague.

“The statute says that they have to give us social media accounts and we have to use those to determine whether or not the individual has the right temperament and judgment to be entrusted with a weapon,” Kehoe said.

“What we think shows good judgment might not be the next guy’s estimate of good judgment and it’s all gonna be based on the eyes and ears of the person who’s reviewing it,” Kehoe said.

However, Kehoe denied that political biases would play a role in vetting.

“They’re going to be looking at these accounts. And if they see something concerning, they’re gonna put that in their background report to the judge then it’s gonna be up to the judge to decide, I guess, whether or not that particular concern is disqualifying for the person to have a license.”

In a statement to the NewsHour, Hochul’s office said the law doesn’t change the nature of licensing, it simply adds a new requirement for applicants.

“Local law enforcement and licensing officials have always been responsible for evaluating information provided by prospective applicants to determine whether a permit should be issued. The law doesn’t change that,” the statement said.

“It simply requires them to consider social media activity and other new information as part of their review process for concealed carry applications.”

Is there any training being provided for those doing this vetting?

The section of the law that requires applicants to disclose their social media accounts does not detail what training is required for those doing the vetting. Kehoe said law enforcement has not been given additional funding to do training for law enforcement, or to conduct checks of social media accounts. Kehoe expects “millions” of applicants under New York’s new gun licensing rules, many of whom will have more than one social media account.

“Just on a very practical level, we don’t think we can do this.”

Applicants will only be required to provide social media accounts used in the past three years, however, Kehoe said law enforcement may be required to look farther back into those accounts.

“The statute didn’t provide any resources for us to do this and it’s just not going to be possible to get it done without additional manpower,” Kehoe said.

Markham hopes the state will provide bias training for officials combing through social media, reflecting a wider push for law enforcement agencies to minimize possible unequal treatment of minority communities.

Hochul’s office did not respond to a question about whether additional training or resources would be provided to law enforcement in support of the new requirements.

Can monitoring social media work?

The social media search may catch some people who shouldn’t have access to firearms but many more, including those who might be most dangerous and inhabit the darkest parts of the internet, will slip through the cracks, Wandt said.

“Putting all the constitutional and moral issues aside, I stand by my experience and research that shows me that the truly dangerous, disturbed people have multiple social media accounts, usually not under their real name, and I highly doubt that they will be reported on a application for a carry permit,” Wandt said.

Greene said asking whether it will work is the wrong question, since he believes such policies can be inherently harmful, especially if other government institutions, such as general law enforcement, adopt similar policies.

“I do think there’s something dangerous about institutionalizing and normalizing having people provide their social media accounts to the government,” he said.

Expect Silicon Valley Censorship To Ramp Up with ‘Civic Integrity Policy’

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- With the news that Twitter is bringing back its “Civic Integrity Policy,” Second Amendment supporters need to be ready for censorship to ramp up. This is something that has been building up for a long time.

Of course, this is just one possible avenue of attack. There have been other revelations about censorship – at least on Twitter’s part – that Second Amendment supporters should take note of. If anything, these revelations, at a bare minimum, will need some serious oversight by Congress, and some serious corrective actions will be needed.

Those actions will require substantial Congressional majorities and, alongside efforts to halt financial de-platforming, are probably the most important battles for Second Amendment supporters to win – more important than constitutional carry or other legislative fights. Don’t take my word for it – look at what Google did with regard to crisis pregnancy centers after a push from Letitia James.

Yes, the same Letitia James who sought the NRA’s dissolution. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, this is a bad sign.

Silicon Valley’s actions will force many Second Amendment activists to confront a very hard question:

How do we reconcile using the power of government when we ourselves have expressed suspicion – if not opposition – to increasing the size and scope of government? Because at this point, it looks increasingly likely that we will need to use government power to protect our First Amendment rights on at least a short-term basis, and it probably may be for the long haul.

Some of it will be using Congress to check the executive branch – in essence, invoking Constitutional powers – to rein in efforts by various agencies to get social media companies to censor based on such pretexts as “medical misinformation” or even just “misinformation” in general. That is not going to be the big issue.

The big issue will be addressing the fact that these companies also act independently, and their censorship decisions didn’t just come from the government. How much was government influence? That is currently unknown, but perhaps the litigation by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana will change that.

As private entities, they have the same freedom to associate – or not associate – as we do, to a large extent. How much of the censorship is their own doing? We don’t really know. Could the Elon Musk saga change things on Twitter? That is an unknown, as well.

That will require answers. Some will come from the litigation, some from the Congressional hearings. Some, we may not know for sure. How much will the litigation reduce the censorship (we shouldn’t presume it will end all of it)? Again, we don’t – in fact, we can’t – know.

One thing is certain: Second Amendment supporters will have a lot of work to do to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels this coming November and the November two years from now. Get out the vote!

What the Mainstream Media Doesn’t Tell Us About Guns

It’s hard to fool an honest man or woman who wants to know the truth. Unfortunately, many of us depend on the media to bring us much of our news, and lying to us — or withholding key parts of the story — today makes it easier to fool us tomorrow.

Most of us feel horrible when we see news stories about violent crime. Beyond the emotional shock of the story, though, we are seldom told what the story means. Is that newsworthy event a common problem or is it rare? Are there good solutions that make us safer most of the time?

Besides the violence shown in movies and TV dramas, it’s almost as if the news deliberately keeps us in the dark about real violence and its causes. We can’t make good choices unless we have perspective. For a minute, let’s shed some light on the reality of armed citizens and guns

We’re told that guns cause crime. That’s odd because a lot of criminals didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Only one out of twelve violent crimes are committed with a firearm. If someone says they need to disarm honest people in order to stop violent crime, they are going to leave about 92 percent of those violent crimes untouched. No wonder gun control laws don’t make us any safer.

If guns cause crime, then honest gun owners haven’t gotten the message either. Ordinary citizens like us own a lot of guns. About 40 percent of Americans live with a gun in our homes and we own hundreds of millions of firearms that are never used in crimes.

These are the guns you never seem to hear about. The news media don’t want to admit that firearms are ordinary tools that a huge portion of Americans lawfully own and use on a daily basis.

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I’ll take ‘Almost Everything’ for $500, Alex

What the News Media Gets Wrong About Guns & Armed Defense

We know that the news media distorts our view of the world. We see it every day in the way the mainstream media selects and edits their stories. I’m sure you see unusual things in the news that I miss. That is because each of us sees this media distortion most clearly in the individual subjects we know best. For the last decade, I’ve studied what our neighbors do with guns. I see where the news media dangerously twists the truth about armed defense. As ordinary citizens, we need to know more about the world than to be simply fed a copy of the police report after a crime. In fact, ordinary citizens keep their families safe every day but the media sells us a different story. Here is what the mainstream media won’t say.

Evil exists. We face real dangers. The world is simply not the way we want it to be. On average, someone in our family will be the victim of a violent crime during our lifetime. Merciless criminals use force to take what they want and the police are not there to stop them. It is not safe to be defenseless, not even at home. To begin, we face about 30 thousand home-invasion robberies a year, and two thirds of sexual assaults begin with a home invasion. Being unable or unwilling to defend the people we love is not a virtue. Those truths sound obvious to me, but they are absent from our contemporary news.

The media wildly over-reported stories where we were victims of violent crime. At the same time, the media horribly under-reported the many stories where we successfully defended ourselves. It is almost as if the news media didn’t want us to know that we faced dangers and saved lives.

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When CNN Quotes Everytown Troublesome Facts Kick In

Over the weekend, CNN reported on gun control laws passed so far in 2022, adding this reference, “There is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings, according to a January study published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit focused on gun violence prevention.”

However, an article in the Keene Sentinel, a newspaper serving southwest New Hampshire, reveals a small problem with Everytown’s research that might raise an eyebrow, if not some serious questions. Headlined “New Hampshire paradox: State gun laws remain loose as violence rate remains low,” the story’s lead paragraph tells a different tale.

“National rankings indicate New Hampshire has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, and yet the state also maintains a low rate of firearm violence,” the newspaper says.

The report also quotes State Senate President Chuck Morse (R-Salem), who told the newspaper’s editorial board recently that gun-related violence is a problem of people, not guns.

“I don’t believe it’s a gun problem because look at New Hampshire.,” Morse reportedly stated. “We have more guns than probably any other state per capita. We have open carry, we passed constitutional carry, and we’re one of the safest states in the nation.”

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Google hands over home security camera footage to police without a warrant

Google and Amazon are letting the police access data from smart home cameras without a warrant, if they are told this footage is needed because of an “emergency.”

Meanwhile others who sell similar devices and services, like Arlo, Apple, Wyze, Eufy, claim their policy is the opposite, CNET writes.

It was first reported that Amazon was cooperating with law enforcement in this way, and it has now emerged that Google is treating its customers’ privacy the same way.

In the US, Amazon and Google say that “in most cases” the police have to provide some kind of legal justification to access video from their devices installed in people’s homes, be it a warrant or subpoena. Any other policy, such as making exceptions like the “emergencies” one, is not something a company can be forced to do, reports say, suggesting that Amazon and Google have chosen to adopt such an approach to users’ privacy.

Nevertheless, the two tech giants are proceeding with this policy; Amazon has revealed that it turned over data 11 times when the police submitted “emergency requests,” while Google does not provide any details in its transparency report.

The company has an information request policy that addresses this scenario, to say that if it “reasonably believes” giving footage to the authorities who have no warrant to obtain it will prevent death or serious physical harm, it “may” do so.

Some examples given of when “reasonable belief” comes into play while making these decisions are bomb threats, school shootings, kidnappings, suicides, etc.

“We still consider these requests in light of applicable laws and our policies,” Google promises.

And when Google decides to give law enforcement their data because the company believes there is an emergency, users may never learn that this happened. According to a Nest spokesman quoted by CNET, they do “try” to notify users, though.

Amazon, on the other hand, didn’t even bother to disclose, when asked by both CNET and The Verge, whether or not, and in what circumstances, it lets users know that footage from smart cameras has been shared.

This is just the latest controversy plaguing the “smart home surveillance” market, with others mostly related to security issues.

Eleven Fewer Dead People
A deep dive on the Greenwood Park Mall shooting shows a clear path to even fewer dead people than that

On Sunday July 17, 2022, some dork with two rifles and a handgun attempted to shoot up the Greenwood Park Mall food court in Greenwood Indiana. In the span of only fifteen seconds he was shot eight times by private citizen Elisjsha Dicken, an 80% hit rate from forty yards with a double stack nine millimeter handgun, whereupon the dork decided to flee to the bathroom and do us all the favor of dying there. We have much to unpack about this instance, but five key points with mathematical backing show a clear path to saving hundreds of future lives, and further show why the media doesn’t want to save them. Let’s begin.

A Tom Brady Moment

This was a seriously impressive feat of shooting. Dicken has no military or police experience and was taught to shoot by his grandfather. The local news agency WTHR approached several instructors who attempted to replicate the shot, and were able to come generally near to replicating it a range of twenty-five yards. Pistol ranges only go out to twenty five yards. Dicken put eight out of ten shots on target in fifteen seconds at almost double the maximum pistol range distance, completely unprepared, jacked full of adrenaline in a situation that would make most untrained shooters panic, facing an opponent with a rifle designed for that engagement range. This shot was heroic beyond imagination, and the gun community is tremendously impressed. As Douglas Jefferson of NAAGA said in a private channel, “That’s a B-8 drill at almost twice the distance and only 1.5 times the time.” It stresses the need for anyone who carries a firearm to train for the scenarios in which they envision using them, but it also highlights the more important point that even shooters without formalized training can save dozens of lives, as long as they happen to be carrying when something like this happens. Which brings us to the next point.

Gun Free Zones Almost Killed Eleven People

Rampage killings are only stopped by two things, the police or private citizens. Three people died in this shooting. When we perform a true analysis of “rampage killing” statistics, we find that rampage killings stopped by police carry an average of 14.29 casualties, whereas rampage killings stopped by citizen responders carry an average of 2.33 casualties. The average police response time to a 911 call is eleven minutes. Mr. Dicken responded to this shooting forty four times faster than the average police response time, saving (by averages) 11.29 lives in the process. These are facts.

This entire engagement transpired in a gun free zone. If Mr. Dicken had followed the rules on the sign, then 11.29 additional people (by averages) would be dead. The gun free zone sign did not deter the shooter, and eleven people in that food court owe their lives to the fact that Dicken also ignored the sign. This is indisputable.

Permit Carry Laws Almost Killed Eleven People

Dicken didn’t have a permit to carry his firearm, because he currently doesn’t need one. Up until July 1st of this year, Indiana prohibited concealed carry of firearms by anyone without a license. The state’s “Constitutional Carry Law,” which means no permit is required to carry a firearm, only went into effect this month. Seeing how Dicken did not have a carry license prior to the law going into effect, it’s likely that without the law he wouldn’t have been armed, and 11.29 additional people (by averages) would be dead.

While the local Greenwood Police Department has been glowing over the efforts of Mr. Dicken, the Indiana effort to pass this law was opposed most publicly by law enforcement officials, such as Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter who testified against it. If Doug Carter had gotten his way 11.29 additional people would be dead. This is indisputable.

Uvalde Comparison

May be a cartoon of text that says '376 UVALDE POLICE OFFICERS STANDING AROUND ONE 22-YEAR-OLD TAKING ACTION washingt n t'

This cartoon from the Washington Post doesn’t even begin to describe the contrast between these two rampage shooting incidents. Not only did the Uvalde police response do nothing for almost an hour, they actively prevented multiple private citizens from responding on their own. They were very specifically acting as a security detail for a rampage shooter. They arrested parents to prevent them from entering the building. They even intercepted one police officer whose wife was dying in her classroom, disarmed him, and escorted him off scene. A more accurate version of this political cartoon would have 376 police officers surrounding the rampage shooter on a pile of bleeding yet not yet dead bodies, with their backs to him preventing citizens from saving the pile of injured people from dying. That is not an exaggeration.

The official inquiry into Uvalde is not complete as of the writing of this piece. It could be that the Uvalde failure was due to chicken shit cops. It could be due to the fact that all government of all kinds moves at the speed of molasses infused mud. It could be some secret tinfoil hat conspiracy. It could be something else, or some or all of the above. We don’t know. But what we do know is response time differences matter, and we know that 11.96 people are saved when the cops aren’t involved, 11.29 in this case.

I am not someone who lives in fear of rampage shootings. I understand the statistics, which show that these things are as rare as shark attacks, and I do not live in fear of sharks. But some people do live with this fear, because different people have different risk tolerances. It seems to me that some people who live with this fear have some significant overlap with ACAB (“all cops are bastards”) messaging. If you are a rational person within either or both of those groups, and compare Uvalde to Greenwood, you must conclude that absent a non-existent magic gun evaporation fairy the best alternative is ubiquitous citizen concealed carry. This is indisputable.

Mass Media Social Contagion

I will not claim that CNN’s stated goal is to glorify rampage shooters, but that’s the exact effect CNN’s behavior has in the mind of a potential rampage shooter. If CNN reversed its behavior and gave twenty five times more coverage to Dicken instead of Uvalde, then the psychological effects would dampen rampage shooters instead of inciting them. This very rampage shooter may have been spurred on by CNN’s behavior, and CNN gets 30% more rampage shootings to farm for clickbait money because of their behavior.

If the United States were to string together three consecutive incidents of rampage shooters getting plugged by private citizens within seconds, as happened in Greenwood Park Mall, and CNN were to give each of them the sorts of coverage they give to Uvalde, the rampage shooter dorks would be too scared to try it. They’d stay in their basement playing XBox instead of shooting people, and the second order effects of constitutional carry would exceed 11.96 saved per incident, because there would be fewer incidents. CNN not covering rampage shootings at all would reduce rampage shootings by one third. If they elevated coverage of failed rampage shootings stopped by citizens, they’d probably reduce them by an additional third.

But they don’t want to do that, because they’re hemorrhaging money. They need as many of these things to transpire as possible to make their bottom line. They are beholden to Moloch, trapped in a cycle that gets people killed, and the only way I can figure out of this cycle is to produce a lot more citizen shooters like Dicken.

The only way out is to shoot our way out and it’s CNN’s fault.

BBC asks what’s next for gun control in the US

The United States has just passed a gun control bill. It doesn’t do all that much, though it’s still an infringement on our right to keep and bear arms.

However, for many, it’s nothing but a first step, a good start toward still more regulations imposing on our right to keep and bear arms.

Over at the BBC, they ask

what’s next for gun control here in the US.

Last month, US President Joe Biden signed a landmark gun-control bill into law.

While the legislation, which was passed with bipartisan support, has many limits, it was a step in America’s efforts to tackle escalating gun violence. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court issued a decision that cast the future of more strict limits on gun ownership in doubt.

So where does gun control go from here? Here’s a look at some solutions that gun-control advocates and gun-rights proponents say could help stop escalating gun violence – and our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher assesses their chances.

The future of red flag laws

Red flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, allow police to temporarily seize legally owned guns from people who a judge has ruled to be a danger to themselves or others.

A judge’s emergency order can be issued even in cases where a gun owner has no criminal record or history of mental illness.

Opponents say this violates the right to due process, as the orders can be issued by a judge without the subject present to object.

They go on to bring up things like assault weapon bans, gun buybacks, new rules for younger gun buyers, and a bunch of other things.

Now, in fairness, they also mention arming teachers and hardening schools as well, but not until the very end and even then, the story drips with bias and disdain.

However, all of this ignores the political realities gun control measures face here in the United States.

In other words, it’s easy for the BBC to ask what’s next, but the truth is that the Biden administration has gotten all they’re going to get. You know the gun control side asked for much more, but what they got was the totality of what they were going to get. There’s nothing left on the table.

Even Sen. John Cornyn, who sold us out, has said there’s nothing more that will be done.

So while the BBC can ponder the future of gun control, it’s nothing more than journalistic navel-gazing. It’s an exercise in what might have been and nothing else, because we’re not interested in giving up more ground and the gun control side is only interested in gun control. They don’t care about kids, they care about taking away our rights.

If they were, they’d at least be open to hardening schools. The fact that they’re not tells you they don’t care about dead kids, they care about taking away your guns.

The BBC can ask the question all they want, but we all know the real answer here.

What the News Media Gets Wrong About Guns and Armed Defense

Violence is sometimes the best answer. Your armed neighbor faced an unfair fight when three thugs broke into her home late at night and tried to rob her. She wasn’t out for vengeance or revenge when she grabbed her gun. She didn’t use a gun because she wanted to be famous, but so she wouldn’t be seriously injured or killed. She defended herself with a firearm until the criminals run away. Our neighbor grabbed her gun so she could safely call 911 and get help on the way.

Time and again we saw our neighbors use the threat of deadly force to defend themselves. That is the real pattern of armed defense that is repeated.. and unreported.. thousands of times a day. If the media presented the truth, then we’d know that we defend ourselves with a firearm over a million times a year. That works out to over 45-hundred cases of justified armed defense a day here in the United States. That is real news and somehow we don’t hear it from news media. We’d know that if the media reported the facts.

Armed defense is common. Our neighbors did a remarkably good job of defending themselves and their family. Firearms accidents by legal gun owners were wonderfully rare. Times have changed, and half of new gun owners are women. The bad guys ran away when they realized our neighbor wasn’t the unarmed victim the robbers hoped to find. Our neighbors didn’t shoot very often because the threat seldom rose to the level where it demanded the use of lethal force. When they were forced to shoot, then the good guys usually stoped shooting as soon as they could.

Together, we’ve faced over a million violent crimes a year. Despite that threat, armed citizens were forced to shoot and kill only a few hundred criminals each year, virtually the same number that the police were forced to kill. That is an amazing tribute to our character under very difficult circumstances.

We are wonderfully reluctant to take a life if there is any alternative. We also know who belongs in our home. That explains why armed citizens shoot the wrong person much less often that the police do. Since armed defense happens every day, you and I would know facts like these if the media actually reported the news.

Media distortion is dangerous. Because of biased reporting, we think that mass murder is common and that armed defense is rare. In fact, the reverse is true. We think our armed neighbor was a danger when she was in fact an armed savior. That truth has real world consequences. Since armed defense is so frequent, it is unbelievably hard to restrict the use of firearms without doing more harm than good. Gun control laws disarmed the victims of crime rather than disarming the perpetrators. That puts all of us at risk. Media bias costs lives, but not everywhere.

Most counties in the US did not have a single murder all year. Most criminal violence is localized to our failed cities. We see criminal violence explode where we’ve robbed young men of their future. We’d know that if the media didn’t spin their stories to fit their political agenda. Media bias cost the lives of young urban men.

The truth is out there and we have alternatives to the mass media. We can do our own reporting. We must do it because the mainstream US news media failed us so badly.