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
Category: Media
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.
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.
READ MORE: Gun applicants in NY will have to hand over social media accounts
“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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The story was a lie. Ginned up by one person for political effect.
The Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, finally tried to fact-check the highly suspicious tale of the 10-year-old reported to have had to travel to Indiana for an abortion due to abortion restrictions in Ohio. The story first appeared in the Indianapolis Star and quickly went viral. Why did he wait so long? I had the story on July 5 in a tweet showing my research into the story that relied on one highly biased source named Dr. Caitlin Bernard.
Today is July 9, and the WaPo finally decided to weigh in.
“Patients head to Indiana for abortion services as other states restrict care,” the article was headlined. That was a benign headline. But it was the anecdotal beginning that caught the attention of other news organizations.
Kessler didn’t bother to name those “other news organizations,” which were literally me, myself, and I. After my tweet showing my research into this story that didn’t add up went viral, the only news about it linked to my research. Kessler didn’t bother to give me any credit for that. It probably hurt too much to admit that a conservative news outlet and an independent journalist smoked the Washington Post.
On the same day as my research into what I believe is a political hit job, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin (who, unbelievably, used to work here) wrote a hysterical opinion piece on the “forced births” that furthered its spread. Kessler didn’t bother to fact-check the story at that time. He let Rubin’s piece run without question as she relied on the thin tale to spread her pro-abortion propaganda.
Two Republican governors, Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota and Tate Reeves of Mississippi, were asked on Sunday news talk shows about the case of a 10-year-old girl impregnated by her rapist. Are they really insisting that, regardless of the physical harm that giving birth could cause someone so young, the child be further tormented and forced to have the baby? Yes…The monstrous cruelty of such bills shows how little many conservatives care about the well-being of women and girls who have already experienced the unbelievable trauma of sexual violence.
It took four more days, my viral tweet, Joe Biden weighing in, and a RealClearPolitics reporter asking the White House press secretary about it for Kessler to get interested in fact-checking this story. He didn’t do a terrible job. With the headline that says “A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral,” Kessler threw cold water on Dr. Bernard’s claims.
The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”
Rudavsky never responded to me either; nor did Krift. Krift’s response to the Post is pretty revealing. He refused to answer direct questions about how the information was vetted. I can’t resist: Clearly, Bro, the info isn’t “clear,” or you wouldn’t have the WaPo, Snopes, and a hundred other outlets asking you to clarify your vetting process.
New York Tells Supreme Court ‘Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?’
New York has made a return appointment for Constitutional scrutiny of their gun-carry laws.
Almost immediately after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s previous law over the subjective nature of its “proper cause” clause, New York is back with a beefed-up and even more subjective “good moral character” clause. In addition to requiring multiple references, the newly-passed standard for issuing gun-carry permits includes a social media review. Instead of relying on objective standards, such as an applicant’s record of convictions or mental health commitments, the state is doubling down on the subjective judgment of its permitting officials.
Instead of judging whether somebody has “proper cause” to carry a gun based on specific threats to their life, state officials will now judge whether or not they are of “good moral character” based on their tweets and Facebook posts. It’s difficult to see how the outcome will be any different.
It’s difficult to see how the legal fight will be any different either. Except, perhaps, how quickly New York loses.
New York is defying the Supreme Court. And it’s not trying to hide that fact.
“With this action, New York has sent a message to the rest of the country that we will not stand idly by and let the Supreme Court reverse years of sensible gun regulations,” Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado said in a statement.
Sounds Like Japan Needs Some Gun Laws.
Shinzo Abe was 67.
I really don’t want to hear that this sort of thing only happens in America. Japan has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and none of those laws stopped this lunatic from making his own gun and shooting a politician with it. Laws mean nothing to the evil and the insane.
The NRA didn’t do this, unless there’s a Nipponese Rifle Association.
And once again, our media is a disgrace. Here’s how NPR decided to remember Shinzo Abe:
The man who was just assassinated was divisive and arch-conservative, huh?
And here’s their second attempt, after they deleted that one:
“Ultranationalist.” Well, maybe the third time will be the charm.
And of course, the worst president in the history of the United States had to say something stupid:
Biden statement on assassination of ex-PM Shinzo Abe of Japan: “While there are many details that we do not yet know, we know that violent attacks are never acceptable and that gun violence always leaves a deep scar on the communities that are affected by it.” pic.twitter.com/RWOO2EkVsC
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) July 8, 2022
Shinzo Abe was assassinated on Japanese soil with a homemade gun, and now this moron and his staffers are using it to push gun control in America. I can’t wait for November……..
Another J6 Trump ‘Bombshell’ Outed as a Hoax!
On Tuesday, the liberal media soiled themselves over the so-called bombshell story that on January 6, 2021, President Trump grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential limo and then lunged at a Secret Service agent because he wanted to join the protesters at the Capitol.
The story came courtesy of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
“So when the president had gotten into the vehicle with [Secret Service agent] Bobby [Engel], he thought that they were going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him, ‘We’re not, we don’t have the assets to do it, it’s not secure, we’re going back to the West Wing,’ the president had a very strong and very angry response to that.
Tony described him as being irate. The president said to him something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f—ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’ To which Bobby responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’ He then reached up front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, he said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.”
Any reasonable person would conclude this story was dubious. The liberal media, however, not so much. CNN gleefully described it as a bombshell, yet, like so many other Trump bombshells, it appears this incident didn’t happen at all, and is yet another hoax to add to the pile of bogus anti-Trump stories.
According to Peter Alexander, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, sources close to the Secret Service dispute the story.
“A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel,” Alexander tweeted Tuesday evening.
Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, slammed the committee for allowing this testimony to go unchallenged.
“So a junior staffer was pressured by @Liz_Cheney to lie under oath,” he tweeted. “Why wasn’t there a single committee member asking her if she had proof? This performance collapsed in an hour.”
“The DC media is corrupt and sick,” he concluded.
Soon after Alexander revealed that his sources challenged the story, Hutchinson’s lawyer, Jody Hunt, quickly attempted to walk back her testimony.
“Ms. Hutchinson testified, under oath, and recounted what she was told,” Hunt tweeted. “Those with knowledge of the episode also should testify under oath.”
How many more bogus bombshells are we going to get from these hearings?
The Liberal Media’s ‘Rising Stars’ Always Seem to Crash and Burn
Those who’ve been around more than five minutes know that the mainstream media is little more than a collection of homogeneous, biased hacks that do little more than support the Current Thing(TM) being pushed by Democrats and leftist activists.
It’s great for Democrats who enjoy uncritical coverage of their nonsense, but often outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, et al. get a little too far out over their biased skis when they begin to fall in love with their latest object of obsessive attention.
Take a walk down memory lane with Townhall as we look at some of the mainstream media’s recent “rising stars” — who get treated as saviors — only to fall on their faces.