Category: RKBA

David Hogg: Second Amendment Is Collective Right

If you want a hot take on guns and gun rights that probably has no resemblance to reality, you should follow David Hogg’s Twitter feed sometime. Of course, it’s also a place with a lot of stupid that’ll probably cause you to give yourself a concussion with the constant overwhelming need to smack your forehead.

The failed state-college applicant turned Harvard man–if that phrase doesn’t tell you all you need to know about Harvard, I don’t know what will–has said some pretty dumb things, including recently claiming he thinks he’s the target of Russian bots.

But on Wednesday, he went down a rabbit hole of stupid with just one single tweet. Pretty impressive, until you see the tweet.

Now, Hogg isn’t a thought originator. He’s a parrot, repeating what others have told him and making himself sound important so the media will keep fawning all over him.

This ain’t original either.

A lot of people claim that the Second Amendment was never meant to be an individual right. Yet people like Hogg can never answer one simple question in response. If it’s wasn’t intended to be an individual right, then why did the writers use the phrase “the right of the people” in the first place?

In the First Amendment, it makes reference to “the right of the people” to assemble peacefully and to petition the government.

The Fourth Amendment highlight “the right of the people” to be secure in their homes and their property from unreasonable search and seizure.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendment both also reference “the people’s” rights.

How is it, in 50 percent of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, the writers refer to “the people” but it was only in the Second Amendment that they really meant the people collectively and not an individual right?

In truth, any deflection from this fact is nothing more than an attempt to muddy the waters, to make it seem less clear that our right to keep and bear arms wasn’t so the state could have guns or formally recognized militias could, but for you and me to have them.

This bizarre claim that the Second Amendment isn’t an individual right keeps cropping up, and a number of people share it. It’s almost a litmus test for where someone stands on gun control.

Regardless, though, it’s a tired argument that’s been trotted out over and over again.

I find it amusing that people who think Roe v. Wade is definitive and should be the final say on a topic like abortion are so ready to completely dismiss Heller which specifically found that the Second Amendment was an individual right and not a collective one.

The question was answered, and it’s highly unlikely to be overturned on the merits of anything. If it is, it’ll be an activist court pushing a leftist agenda. It won’t be because of anything else, as I’ve clearly shown.

But people like David Hogg will persist, no doubt, to try and insist it’s a collective right, as if that term has any actual meaning in the first place, and consider themselves smart because they believe that.

However, if David Hogg is the caliber of person who can get into Harvard and manage to stay, then we as a nation need to seriously rethink how much gravitas we give Ivy League graduates.

Sheriff Arnott’s example is bogus. Missouri Law (as well as Federal) makes  firearm possession by convicted felons a felony. Of course – knowing him since he was a patrol deputy – his intellect never did impress me.

Springfield law enforcement weighs in on impact of ‘Second Amendment Preservation Act’

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) – Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott has been vocal throughout his 20 years with the department. He is pro-Second Amendment rights. It’s why when the Second Amendment Preservation Act was first introduced he thought it was a good thing.

“Basically the way the bill was designed or the intent of it. I totally agree with,” he says.

The intent is to protect Second Amendment rights for gun owners by stopping local law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws.

Some local agencies say this law will prevent them from doing their jobs. Sheriff Arnott doesn’t see it quite that way, but he does see it has changed the way they work.

He gives the example:

“We stop somebody on a vehicle stop,” said Sheriff Arnott. “They have a hunting rifle in the back, you run the numbers and it’s not stolen. But that’s because [the person] just burglarized a house and they’re a convicted felon but the case hasn’t been reported yet. Nine times out of ten we would seize the weapon in the past. If things don’t add up like he doesn’t know where he got the gun, we [usually] would want to seize that gun but now we’ll send it down the road. Now we’ve probably let a stolen gun go down the road.”

And he says that can mean consequences.

“We may not recover as many stolen guns,” said Sheriff Arnott. “Somebody may get killed because, again, it was used in crime that night that we would have had on a car stop earlier. But that’s how the new statue that’s how we’ll operate.”

Republican Senator Eric Burlison sponsored the bill. He says it is designed for law-abiding citizens and has a loud and clear message to the Biden Administration.

“This is a way of reminding the president, that this is the proper role of government, is that these laws are to be handled by the state and not by the federal government,” State Senator Burlison says.

And he says the federal government will of course be able to enforce its own rules and regulations.

“The people that we pay, and that we tax, our tax dollars are going towards, we want to make sure that they’re following the laws that we are passing in this state,” he adds.

Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams says day to day, this won’t have an impact on the way officers work.

“I don’t think the street officer worries or cares about this whatsoever,” Chief Williams says. “And I’ve tried to make that clear that this is a very limited potential where it would affect them.”

But he says he has seen the criticism.

“Legislators I’ve talked to say this is preemptive. What if something happens? What if the federal government says start registering and tracking firearms? What if the federal government says we want you to go out and confiscate guns from people? We’re not going to do that,” Chief Williams says. “This helps provide that protection. I’ll say I’ve seen some comments from even some of my peers across the state, who I know haven’t read it completely and totally, to see how it’s gonna affect us and how it’s not,” he adds.

Both Sheriff Arnott and Chief Williams agree there are parts that will likely see change. Some they call “grey areas”

“There’s a couple of things in that law that is probably going to have to go to court for the court to decide what is constitutional and what is not,” Sheriff Arnott says.

Chief Williams can see some tweaks.

“I’m anticipating the legislature will hopefully come back this next session and clear some of that ambiguity up, clarify some things, and make some adjustments to any negative consequences to the public or the police.”

But both say, for now, they will follow the rules, enforce the law, and their focus remains the same keeping citizens safe in our community.

Almost forgot.
Happy Assault Weapons Ban Sunset Provision Day, Everyone!

On this day in 2004, the Assault Weapon Ban that had been enacted in 1994 reached its sunset date.
Lest anyone also forget, the NRA had a big hand in getting that 10 year sunset provision added.
Also, this law was one of the major factors in such a massive demoncrap loss in Congress when 8 Senators and 54 Representatives were sent packing.

ATF nominee’s fall is just latest defeat for gun control advocates

President Biden’s decision to pull David Chipman as his nominee to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is a high-profile victory for pro-gun groups and a defeat for gun control advocates in what will likely be this year’s most consequential gun debate.

The withdrawal shows that even under Democratic control of Congress and the White House, efforts to tighten restrictions on guns face an uphill climb.

Chipman’s nomination fell not just because of opposition from Republicans, but also moderate Democrats.

Biden pulled Chipman’s nomination after Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, privately said he wouldn’t support him. Democrats had no room for defections in the 50-50 Senate, and Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) also declined to endorse Chipman.

It’s just the latest defeat for gun control advocates.

Continue reading “”

Guns are Used Responsibly in the United States

The most effective lie is the lie by omission. Tell part of the truth but not all of it. This propaganda technique works particularly well with an audience eager to believe the lie.

The US mass media lies to us a lot, in exactly this way: They feed us selected facts without proving their true context.

I follow the news about armed defense. I notice the things that are so consistently not said that the omissions must be deliberate. In this article, I will present the most accurate facts I can find. I list the sources where I got those facts. I give you my opinion about what those facts mean in full context. I want you to be able to make up your own mind about guns, and the media that reports on them.

Continue reading “”

Although I agree its  ‘The American Rifle’, I’m not so exclusive.
I’d say it’s a lot more than just Stoner’s rifle that contains wanna-be tyrants

AR-15s Are Why Leftists Can’t Commit Taliban Atrocities Here
Taliban executions remind Americans to never give up arms they need for the primary reason the Constitution guarantees their right to have them.

In Afghanistan the world is again seeing that radical Islam is an ideology premised on murdering non-believers and using that example to intimidate everyone else. Historically, the same has been true of leftism, when its adherents have achieved totalitarian control in a country.

Leftists don’t have totalitarian control in America yet, so over the last few years they have mostly given us a heads-up about their desires by rolling out mock guillotines during their protests and riots, posing for photographs with mock-ups of President Trump’s guillotined head, talking about burning down the White House, and on social media wishing death upon Trump, his supporters, and Americans who express skepticism about the 2020 presidential election, masks, or vaccines.

However, they are working toward totalitarian control, by opening the border to people they think are future Democrat voters; proposing that felons, illegal aliens, and minors be allowed to vote; threatening to pack the Supreme Court; pushing federal legislation to take over election rules to benefit the Democrat Party; and, as Democrats have done for decades, stealing elections.

Even if they had totalitarian control, they would still need a willing army to do in America what they have done in every other country in which they have achieved it—disarm, then round up and kill or imprison their opponents. Under the noses of naïve, uniform-worshipping Americans who have assumed everyone in the military has the same values they do, the transformation of the military has been underway for a long time. It is being continued by the Biden administration and its Marxism-enabling sycophants among the military’s senior commissioned and non-commissioned officer ranks, but it is not complete, particularly in the military’s all-important combat arms elements.

However, even if the left had a willing army, it still would not be able to impose the tyranny for which it lusts because, unlike its victims in other countries, the American people are armed. Contrary to Biden’s claim that Americans would not be able to protect their liberty without F-15s and nuclear weapons, it is still true today, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in “The Federalist Papers,” No. 29, that the Army “can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens.”

James Madison, who introduced the Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives, made the same point in “The Federalist Papers,” No. 46, writing, “Let a regular army . . . be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the state governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger (with) a militia . . . of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.”

The citizens Hamilton and Madison had in mind today include millions who own AR-15s and other firearms and ammunition magazines the Democrats have been trying to ban for the last three decades, including thousands of military veterans who know how to fight and tens upon tens of thousands of civilians they, their students, and their students’ students have trained.

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Man who shot teen on RTD bus says it was in self defense

AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) — William Farnsworth has had to pull out his gun many times as a bounty hunter, but the 23-year-old said he never thought the first time he would shoot someone would be on a moving RTD bus in Aurora.

“I tried my best to defend myself before I used a weapon, and, in the end, I had to shoot him,” Farnsworth said in an exclusive interview with the Problem Solvers.

“I was losing consciousness, the man was on top of me beating me senseless and he said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ And I told myself, ‘If you lose consciousness, he’s going to follow through with that threat,’” Farnsworth said.

Farnsworth was riding the bus July 9 with his wife and 18-month-old daughter when he said he and his wife asked a young couple on the bus to stop vaping because it’s not allowed.

“He ignored us until the third time we asked him. He stood up and he said, “F— you, f— your wife and f— your baby.’ And he started swinging at my wife and baby first, and I had to throw myself in-between them,” Farnsworth said.

Farnsworth then took out his gun and shot the unidentified teenager once in the chest.

“He said, ‘You shot me’ and walked off the bus and lied in the grass. Made no attempt to put pressure on the wound,” Farnsworth said.

“I acted in self-defense, and most of the officers on the scene told me they would’ve done the same thing,” said Farnsworth.

The Problem Solvers made a public records request for the bus surveillance video, but an RTD spokesperson told FOX31 the footage would not be released because it’s part of a pending criminal case.

However, law enforcement sources told the Problem Solvers the surveillance video backs up Farnsworth, who insisted he had no choice but to use deadly force when he was attacked.

Even though Farnsworth faces no charges, he’s been told he can’t have his Glock handgun back until the case against the teenager is adjudicated because prosecutors need the gun as evidence.

Why Southerners Don’t Care About New York Times Op-Eds

I was born and raised in the Deep South. I have a deep affinity for the place of my birth, one that I wouldn’t have imagined I’d have in my teenage years.

Down here, we have our issues, to be sure, but one thing we’ve never been really big on are people from the North trying to tell us how to live our lives. Call it a holdover from Reconstruction or just plain stubbornness, but when the New York Times tries to tell Southerners how to live, it usually doesn’t work out well.

Yet, that’s pretty much what the Times decided to do with an op-ed titled, “Southern Republicans Cannot Be Trusted With Public Health.”

Continue reading “”

A Flood of Gun Lies Are Coming & You Need to Aggressively Correct Them

When people lie to you to get you to change your actions, you can bet it’s not in your best interest, but it is in theirs. American gun owners possess over 400 million firearms, and so, in order for the Socialists to disarm us, we would have to give them up willingly, as the Australians did.

They cannot rule the streets of our country until we are disarmed. They need to do it with lies because the truth about firearms has always shown that civilian weapons benefit society.

All the honest firearms research has shown that our guns are a net benefit to our society. Our families, and especially our kids, are safer because we own guns!

To this end, the Biden Regime, and the evil Democrat Congress, are again funding firearms research. Many of you do not remember that such funding in the past, in the 1990s, resulted in a large accumulation of FAKE SCIENCE that supposedly ‘proved’ our guns are dangerous to our families. These funding grants were through the US CDC, and after many battles, the funding was stopped because of the obvious corruption.

We will soon be again inundated with another batch of these fabricated lies. They will be fancied up with scientific words and written by paid-off researchers, who live for these types of grants. The articles are then published in prestigious, but very biased, journals.

The US media will repeat these lies until even many of us are no longer certain about the truth. Many in our extended families will become suspicious of us and our firearms and assume that we are dangerous to them.

Continue reading “”

Disgraced Biden now likely to use proxies in his war against our guns

After his disastrous Afghanistan rout, Joe Biden has no credibility, especially when it comes to his lifelong efforts to strip Americans of our right to keep and bear arms.

Any president who gives a terrorist organization – 358,530 real assault rifles, 126,295 handguns, 64,363 machineguns, 109 helos, 22,174 Humvees, 65 fixed-wing aircraft, 176 artillery pieces, 162,043 radios, 16,035 state-of-the-art night vision goggles, tanks, armored vehicles and much more – has lost the moral authority to demand anything related to our guns, much less that we surrender our ARs or pistol braces or register them with the NFA.

In my humble opinion, there’s no way Biden can walk to a podium and complain about the potential danger posed by an AR in American hands, after his foolishness created the best equipped terrorist army in the world. The Taliban is now a mechanized force with artillery and air support, great comms, pallets of taxpayer dollars just waiting to be spent, and the ability to fight at night.

But the antigun forces don’t care about international events, and they certainly aren’t going to relent. They’re frustrated. They were pressuring Biden to act during the middle of the Afghan debacle. Last week, four antigun groups sent Biden a letter reminding him of his campaign promises and expressing their dissatisfaction with his results.

Just a few days before he got the gun-banners’ strongly worded letter, Biden used the state department as a proxy to ban the import of Russian ammunition, and now the director of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, is chomping at the bit. She wants to get her agency involved in the war against our guns, too, which she views as a “serious public health threat.”

This will become the new normal.

Barack Obama, Susan Rice and whoever else has been pulling Biden’s strings are not going to stop their antigun efforts just because their puppet president has become a laughingstock at home and on the world stage. They’ve always played the long game when it comes to stripping us of our gun rights. They’re going to get creative.

We will likely see more federal agencies join with the Biden-Harris administration, the CDC and the State Department in their war against American gun owners.

Stay vigilant, friends.

Could CDC Research Be Pretext To Censor 2A Activism?

The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are back in the gun violence research business means that a threat that arguably eclipses Letitia James’s jihad against the NRA in terms of a potential existential threat to effective pro-Second Amendment activism exists. In fact, the clock could very well be ticking.

One of the pretexts that Silicon Valley uses to censor are claims about “medical misinformation.” Just look at what happened to Alex Berenson at the hands of Twitter. Whether you agree with his take or not, this has to have the attention of Second Amendment supporters.

Here’s why cutting off funding for the CDC to research “gun violence” (in reality, it was the perversion and prostitution of medical research to create anti-Second Amendment propaganda) was the right decision. Silicon Valley used the CDC and the World Health Organization to justify censorship of alleged misinformation. Of course, we now know that the WHO was spreading misinformation on behalf of the Chinese Communists, but that’s a bit of a diversion.

This ticking time bomb for our ability to even get our message out on the dominant social media platforms is this: Once the CDC sponsors “research” that purports to back up the agenda of anti-Second Amendment extremists, Silicon Valley can then take action to silence Second Amendment supporters, on the grounds that they are peddling “misinformation.”

So, in essence, not only could Ammoland (or just about any pro-Second Amendment organization) be silenced, Silicon Valley would be able to label those they ban as liars – with no recourse for those thusly smeared to correct the record. To call this a massive in-kind donation to various anti-Second Amendment extremist groups or candidates puts it mildly.

The fact of the matter is that Second Amendment supporters have to also protect the First Amendment. The ability to make our case is paramount, and it is why our enemies have sought to deny Second Amendment supporters the means to make their case. Michael Barnes admitted that was why the Brady Campaign backed McCain-Feingold two decades ago.

In a way, these are old battles from a couple of decades ago. But they have re-emerged, with new wrinkles that pose existential threats to Second Amendment advocacy. Second Amendment supporters need to contact their Representative and Senators and politely urge that they halt taxpayer-funded anti-Second Amendment propaganda that will be used by Silicon Valley to silence advocacy for the Second Amendment. They also need to work to defeat elected officials who back the CDC’s perversion of medical research via the ballot box as soon as possible.

Treaties still have to be ratified by a 2/3rd vote of the Senate.
That’s 67 StunnedTaters.

Biden aims to sign on to UN’s global gun registration treaty

The Biden administration this week signaled that it is eyeing a United Nations small arms treaty that critics claim will lead to an international gun registration plan — including for individual American gun owners.

Two years after former President Donald Trump withdrew from it, a top arms diplomat at the State Department told the global body that the current administration is swinging behind the Arms Trade Treaty.

“I have come from Washington, D.C., this week to take the floor on the agenda item Treaty Universalization to underscore the continuing commitment of the United States to responsible international trade in conventional arms,” William Malzahn said at the 7th Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty.

“The United States has long supported strong and effective national controls on the international transfer of conventional arms, and the Arms Trade Treaty is an important tool [for] promoting those controls internationally,” he said according to a transcript provided to Secrets by the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association.

The NRA has warned that, among many moves, the treaty will require all arms that Americans buy from overseas makers to be tracked. To do that, a global gun registry would be created and maintained for 10 years. Every owner will be listed on that registry. Continue reading “”

‘forfeited’ credibility? When did he ever have any credibility?

Biden Arms Terrorists After Lecturing Americans on “Keeping Guns Out of Dangerous Hands”

Before being declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden was unabashed in his support for restricting Second Amendment rights. A lengthy section of his campaign website described his ambitions for new gun control, with headings such as “Keep guns out of dangerous hands” and “Make sure firearm owners take on the responsibility of ensuring their weapons are used safely.” Specific policies he supported included “legislation requiring firearm owners to store weapons safely” and legislation to require gun owners “to inform law enforcement if their weapon is lost or stolen.”

More recently, the administration promised to crack down on gun dealers in the U.S. that “are supplying firearms that show up at crime scenes” and to coordinate with state officials that “take their own steps to shut down dealers that fail to live up to their obligations” to prevent diversion to criminal elements.

Judged by these standards, the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan should forever disqualify him from lecturing the rest of the country on “keeping firearms out of dangerous hands.” His bungling of that effort ensured that not just firearms but some of America’s more sophisticated military technology is now available to terrorists and other enemies who are and will continue to use them against Americans, American interests, and American allies.

Whatever one might think of America’s military presence in Afghanistan, it seems axiomatic that reasonable efforts should always be undertaken to ensure that our very own military materiel and armaments are secured against diversion to hostile forces.

It is becoming increasingly clear as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan continues that none of these safeguards were adequately achieved.

The U.S. recognized government of Afghanistan collapsed almost immediately as American forces withdrew. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and other senior government officials fled the country, and military and police forces offered little resistance as the Taliban quickly established itself as the de facto governing authority.

It was the Taliban which the U.S. toppled from power in Afghanistan following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the revelation that the fundamentalist Islamic group had sheltered and enabled Osama bin Laden in his preparation for the most devastating terrorist attack ever on American soil. Their rule had been marked by brutal treatment of anyone who diverged from the Taliban’s religious orthodoxy, with particular emphasis on the subjugation of women.

The New York Times reported that the Afghan military, which the U.S. had spent two decades and $83 billion trying to establish as an effective force, collapsed in days, rather than months or years as U.S. military planners had hoped. Many simply gave up, the paper stated, “with the cause for which they risked their lives appearing increasingly to be lost.”

The Washington Post acknowledged that the Taliban easily “captured many millions, perhaps billions, of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment that had once belonged to Afghan forces.” The haul included not just state-of-the-art small arms but more advanced equipment including armored personnel carriers, drones, helicopters, and night-vision equipment.

As the NRA has already reported, on the other hand, the Taliban do not trust ordinary Afghanis with weapons and have already started going door-to-door seizing personally held firearms, ostensibly because Taliban rule will replace the need for personal self-defense.

Yet media and NGO reports indicate that atrocities and war crimes are underway by victorious Taliban forces. These allegedly include executing surrendering Afghan troops, torturing and killing ethnic minorities and government loyalists, persecuting Christians, forcing girls and young women into sexual slavery, and even setting a woman on fire for “bad cooking.”

These activities (and perhaps future terrorist attacks and collaborations with other terrorists groups) are being enabled in part by armaments the Biden administration did not adequately secure before pulling U.S. forces out of the country.

Indeed, one of the horrors that has defined Biden’s incompetent leadership over the fiasco were images of Afghan citizens so panicked by the thought of being left to the Taliban’s depredations that they clung to the outside of departing U.S. aircraft until, inevitably, they fell to their deaths.

Joe Biden has therefore forfeited any credibility or moral authority on the issue of what ordinary Americans should do with their constitutionally protected arms.

Gun control groups pressure Biden to create firearm control office to bypass Senate

Activists from numerous gun control groups are pressuring President Biden to created a White House-level gun control office that can be led by an individual who does not need Senate confirmation.

Politico reports that push comes as confirmation of Biden ATF nominee David Chipman appears unlikely, now that Sen. Angus King (I-ME) has voiced his opposition to the nomination.

Subsequently, four groups from the gun control lobby–Guns Down America, March For Our Lives, Newtown Action Alliance, and Survivors Empowered–are urging Biden to create a gun control office that will not be dependent on Senate support.

They sent a letter to Biden which said, in part:

Your administration is hard at work pursuing important priorities from infrastructure reform to reducing the disastrous impacts of climate change. But with rising gun deaths and the heightened threat of armed political extremism, gun violence can no longer be seen as a back burner issue.

Politicians have told us for decades that we must wait for the “right time” to tackle this crisis. We are writing to tell you that the time for bold executive action is now — and that you cannot wait on the Senate to take action. Our lives depend on your leadership.

The members of the gun control lobby asked Biden to create an “Office of Gun Violence Prevention.” Politico notes the gun control lobby suggests the leader of the office could be “an aide who does not need Senate confirmation.”

March for  Our Lives’ Zeenat Yahya said, “The president promised bold action over and over again … but he’s not really using all of his powers to tackle the issue of gun violence. When he wants to get things done, he does it. We’ve seen the infrastructure proposals, the Covid relief plan … So I think it’s really up to him to get moving on these things.”

Let me restate my position on ‘Climate Change’.
When the elitists, who say climate change is a real problem, begin living their lives like it is a real problem, I’ll begin to consider that it may be a real problem. As to the rest of this academic BS? You already know my position.

No, The Climate Chupacabra Doesn’t Cause “Gun” Violence

Bloomberg’s anti-Bill of Rights publication The Trace recently ran an article speculating about a causal link between climate change and “gun” violence. The article, which is an interview of Rutgers University–Camden professor Daniel Semenza, checks every fashionable academic fad: climate change, “gun” violence, inequality, you name it.

Cited in the article and professor Semenza’s Twitter thread (Archive link) are a couple of academic papers that posit a link between climate change and violent crime based on speculative models. One cited paper establishes an incontrovertible connection between weather and crime in Chicago based on real data. However, the article as a whole takes a giant leap from crime data in a specific locale tied to weather to massive speculative claims on a causal link between climate change and “gun” violence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, something that’s missing in the article.

Gun violence tends to cluster in more disadvantaged areas where people are interacting, engaging, and getting into conflicts over smaller things, shows of disrespect, and interpersonal issues that happened with family and friends. When it’s hot outside, we’re more frustrated, and it’s easier to get angry. You throw a bunch of guns into the mix and you can see how violence can ensue.

Shootings spike in summer months, and that’s often because in the communities where gun violence is high, a lot of people don’t have air conditioning or they live in smaller homes where they’re not comfortable, so they go outside more.

Although this seems plausible, I cannot help but point out that the country I grew up in – India – is a mostly sweltering hot country with a population of 1.3 billion. I don’t recall people being nasty because of the weather. I grew up without air conditioning in summers that could get up to 120ºF; we couldn’t even run cheap ceiling fans to keep us cool because the power supply was so unreliable and spotty. (It was truly a democratic socialist wonderland.)

My story isn’t unique by any measure; hundreds of millions of people coped with the summer heat without killing one another over small insults. Indian food requires a lot of prep and women managed to cook for their families in front of a hot stove in a hot kitchen without turning knives into assault weapons. Granted India wasn’t violence-free despite its image in the West as the birthplace of Gandhian non-violent political struggle, the country was and is by and large good, and the people are decent despite the hot weather and endemic poverty.

So, what was different there? Maybe a culture that respects life? Or a family structure that’s largely intact despite horrible poverty? A respect for your elders? Religiosity? That’s for sociologists to study and figure out.

There are lots of tall claims about what climate change can cause, scary enough that it almost has the mythical stature of the Chupacabra. (Check out: “A complete list of things caused by global warming,” and “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.”). One common claim is that impacts on food production will lead to violence, something that has failed the real world test. Another common claim is that climate change drives wars; that also lacks concrete proof. Climate alarmism goes back decades; read this article published June 29 1989, titled, “U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked,” and see how many of those claims have come to fruition. (While you’re at it, look at the current version of the article on The Associated Press website and notice how the headline and date of publication have been memory holed.)

Despite the provocative headline above, I don’t think climate change is something humanity should take lightly; I won’t get into that, but what I do take serious issue with is the exploitation of climate change alarmism to push every far-Left agenda item that many of us oppose: top-down economic planning and control, micromanaging the lives of the hoi polloi, controlling their food choices, transportation choices and lifestyle choices, while the elites shamelessly fly in on private jets to congregate on an island in the middle of a pandemic for an ex-President’s glitzy birthday party.

For a long time, we have seen the CDC camel trying to stick its nose under the Second Amendment tent using the ruse that “gun” violence is a public health issue. What’s next? The United States Geological Survey (USGS) mucking around with the Second Amendment using climate change as a pretext?