Category: RKBA

The Bloody Failed Experiment of Gun-Free “Death” Zones

After watching senseless killings in Gun Free Zones time and time again, logical-thinking people start to consider the fact that deaths occur in these locations because people can’t defend themselves when under attack. Mainstream media, in coordination with the Democrat party, is highly tuned in to this awareness and works effortlessly to counteract that thought process through an endless stream of propaganda, rhetoric, and gun-blaming.

They know that logical-thinking people are aware of their anti-gun fear campaign. Still, they also know that there is a good portion of Americans who can be easily manipulated into believing the anti-gun lies.

We wonder how, if they know that they are putting good people in danger with their false narrative, Gun Free Zones, and dangerous gun restrictions, they can continue this experiment in unnecessary loss of human life?

The biggest culprit of unnecessary and preventable death is the Gun Free Zone. It is also becoming quite apparent that the Gun Free Zone is a valuable tool for gun restrictions. At a certain point, the gun-grabbers start to look foolish for continuing dangerous policies with no remorse, but the Gun Free Zone brings with it death, and an excuse to blame guns for human violence. This is the main driver for gun-restriction support.

Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why it is that left-wing media and politicians will start blaming firearms, with total disregard to the suffering families and loss of life before the victims are even removed from the scene.

There are several reasons for this immoral behavior, including the fact that a good portion of our Country values politics over morality.

This could be a result of the demonization of Judaism and Christian values in our society. It could also be the fact that there is a concerted effort to teach people to devalue human life if it doesn’t benefit them.

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Anti-Gunners Offer Surface-Level Takes On Shootings

Right now, a lot of attention is focused on Lewiston, Maine, and for a pretty good reason. When 18 people are killed and another 13 injured, folks are going to notice and talk about it.

I don’t have an issue with that, even if I also know a lot of people are just going to regurgitate anti-gun talking points.

But there were a number of other shootings that didn’t quite rise to the level of “mass shooting” as most of us think of it.

Yet the anti-gunners are still going to offer surface-level takes.

On the heels of Maine officials confirming that the shooter who killed 18 people in Lewiston earlier this week was found dead, shootings in Florida, Illinois, and Indianapolis early Sunday fueled further calls for action by U.S. lawmakers to reduce gun violence.…

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement: “This morning, we are waking up to news of another deadly shooting. Our communities are exhausted… My heart breaks for the victims’ families whose children did not make it home, for the people who were injured in the gunfire, and hundreds of others who ran for their lives in Ybor City last night.”

“Guns turned this night out into a nightmare,” she added. “How many more times do we have to wipe the blood off our streets before action is taken? Once again, we urge Congress to do their jobs and pass responsible gun laws to protect all Americans from gun violence.”

Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts called the incident “the logical outcome of Florida’s permitless carry law, which went into effect in July” and means that “civilians no longer have to have background checks or training to carry hidden, loaded handguns in public.”

Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention group Brady, declared in response to the violence in Tampa that “this isn’t normal and we don’t have to live this way,” highlighting that the U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times that of peer nations.

It’s amusing, in a dark way, because they’re completely ignoring the fact that one of these shootings happened in gun-controlled Chicago.

Moreover, there’s absolutely no evidence that permitless carry had anything at all to do with what happened in Florida or in Indiana.

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Senate passes Kennedy amendment protecting veterans’ Second Amendment rights

The Senate passed an amendment introduced by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that protects veterans’ Second Amendment rights if the Department of Veterans Affairs steps in to manage their financial benefits.

The Senate voted 53 to 45 Wednesday in approval of the amendment.

“Veterans who sacrificed to defend our Constitution shouldn’t see their own rights rest on the judgment of unelected bureaucrats—but right now, they do,” Kennedy told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

“My amendment would prevent government workers from unduly stripping veterans of their right to bear arms. Every veteran who bravely serves our country has earned VA benefits, and it’s wrong for the government to punish veterans who get a helping hand to manage those resources.”

Under current law, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports a veteran’s name to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System when they seek help managing their finances in a conservatorship.

“If a veteran who defended this country has to go to the VA and ask for help managing his or her financial affairs, the VA automatically reports that veteran to the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System . . . and that veteran loses his firearm,” Kennedy said on the floor of the Senate Wednesday. “Automatically. No due process.”

The amendment was spearheaded by Kennedy and fellow Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who championed the measure in June as one that would “would prevent government workers from unduly stripping veterans of their right to bear arms.”

“All our amendment would do, would be able would be to say: The VA, just because you’ve asked for help with your money, can not automatically take away your firearm or report you to [the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System] unless a judge has ruled that that veteran is a danger to himself or to others,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

The executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, the gun rights group’s lobbying arm, applauded the amendment’s passage and Sens. Kennedy and Moran for leading the charge on the bill.

“The men and women who volunteer to defend the Constitution deserve to be protected by the same Constitution for which they risk life and limb,” NRA-ILA Executive Director Randy Kozuch exclusively told Fox News Digital Wednesday.

“It is a national embarrassment that anti-gun bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., have gotten away with unilaterally stripping veterans of their rights for decades. On behalf of millions of NRA members, many of whom are veterans, we applaud Senators Kennedy and Moran for leading on this important issue,” Kozuch continued.

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy argued against the amendment Wednesday, claiming it would arm “mentally incompetent” veterans and lead to “a death sentence for scores of deeply mentally ill veterans.”

The passage comes after Kennedy said last week that he had struck a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the amendment after holding up the bill funding the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and military construction, the Hill previously reported.

“The original position was they wanted me to pull my amendment down, and I said ‘No,’” he told the Hill.

Georgia Lieutenant Gov Wants To Pay Teachers $10,000 Annually To Carry Guns On Campuses

Georgia Republican Lieutenant Gov. Burt Jones unveiled legislation on Wednesday that would annually pay school teachers $10,000 to carry a gun at school in an effort to increase safety on campuses.

“One of the most critical duties we have as public servants is to protect those who are most vulnerable – including all of Georgia’s children,” Jones said in a news release.

Jones said the legislation would use state funding to ensure Georgia’s school systems and teachers have the option to receive proper firearms training and certification. The plan also calls for stricter guidelines for existing school safety plans and to distribute more money to schools that hire school resource officers with police certification, The Associated Press reported.

“We feel like this is the best way to prepare faculty, but also prepare law enforcement and the system however we can,” Jones reportedly said at Austin Road Elementary School in Winder on Wednesday, adding the state should take more “proactive” measures to prevent school shootings.

Republican State Sens Max Burns and Clint Dixon joined the Lt. Gov. in crafting the 2024 legislative priority to increase school safety, contending that protecting children and their classrooms is their first responsibility.

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Mother Jones Gets A Lot Wrong In Its Hit Piece Blaming Makers’ Advertising For ‘Gun Violence.’

Now comes another in the long line of attacks on the gun industry and how it markets its products to customers. The latest is from Mark Follman at Mother Jones. Apparently attempting to blow the lid off of gun makers’ promotional strategies, Follman hangs his hat on a report titled UnTargeting Kids compiled by the Sandy Hook Promise gun control operation.

“Our nation has experienced a tremendous spike in firearm deaths just as gun marketing made a transition from selling firearms for hunting and sporting to marketing highly lethal, military-style weapons to civilians, including children,” the report says. “That marketing is supposedly aimed at adults, but the platforms those influencers appear on, including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, are largely populated by kids.”

There’s only one problem with that. The Sandy Hook Promise report blames “military-style weapons” for the spike in firearm deaths, even though, according to FBI data, year after year, rifles (of any kind) are used in far fewer homicides than knives.

Follman gets his timing wrong, too. The Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex has been trying to blame gonzo gun ads for increased “gun violence” for more than a decade now. But the surge in gun-related homicides didn’t happen until 2020, thanks to the pandemic, the George Floyd Summer of Love, and the deterioration of so many cities thanks to lax law enforcement and permissive “progressive” criminal justice systems.

The majority of crimes involving guns are committed by people involved in gangs or drugs, mostly using cheap pistols…the same as it has been for decades now. So-called “assault weapons” have been used in a handful of horrific, high profile mass shootings, but they’re not used in a statistically significant number of gun-related homicides.

Follman, however, doesn’t let facts get in the way. Instead, he turns to the Gun Control Industry’s favorite former insider for his insights . . .

““That this type of marketing has contributed to creating today’s radical violent extremists is inescapable,” former gun company executive Ryan Busse argued in The Atlantic, referring to the 18-year-old avowed white supremacist who used a Bushmaster rifle in May 2022 to murder 10 Black people and injure three others at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.”

Except that you don’t see gun ads anywhere unless you actively seek them out. There aren’t gun TV commercials, there are no gun ads in magazines or newspapers, or on most websites. You only see them if you’re already on gun-related websites, read gun-related magazines, or choose to follow gun companies on social media (and even there, most platforms throttle their content).

Then there’s the inconvenient fact that no one has ever proven that any mass shooter so much as saw one of these allegedly edgy ads, let alone the more extraordinary claim that a gun ad somehow influenced one of them to commit mass murder.

By the way, Mr. Follman, you should reach out to Mr. Busse and get a comment from him to update your article. Now that he’s running for Governor of Montana, he suddenly claims he doesn’t support an assault weapon ban. How does that square with those prior claims of his?

Follman’s article includes the usual hand-wringing about the popularity of video games that include guns. But what limited relationship firearm manufacturers had in that area ended over a decade ago. Now developers use popular guns in their games without permission or payment either to or from gun companies. So Sandy Hook Promise got what it says it wanted a long time ago. Any inclusion today of popular guns in video games today isn’t the fault of gun makers.

So Follman’s piece is riddled with incorrect “facts,” a faulty chronology, and tries to blame gun makers for something they have no control over. That doesn’t make for a particularly effective hit piece. Better luck next time.

The 2nd Amendment is not about Hunting
Paul Revere did not shout “The Deer are Coming” during his Midnight Ride

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Guy Relford’s show on Saturday was about Indiana University’s symposium “The Courts, the 2nd Amendment, and Public Policy”. The symposium had the provocative subtitle “Just Shoot Me”.  Academia, liberal courts, and liberal politicians erroneously misinterpret the 2nd Amendment. The 2008 Heller Decision settled much of the debate. “Militia” does not mean the National Guard. In 1791, when the 2nd Amendment was ratified, “militia” meant the “whole of the body of the people”. Any member of the community was considered a member of the militia. As Guy has mentioned on numerous occasions on his show, “well-regulated” does not mean “regulated” by the government. “Well-regulated” means a “working” and or efficient” militia.

The President and many liberal politicians believe that the 2nd Amendment in regard to private ownership of arms is for hunting. While many colonialists were expert hunters, the 2nd Amendment was not written for hunting. It was written for self-defense, and the defense against tyranny.

As Guy so excellently explains using Paul Revere’s midnight ride,

In riding through the countryside, he (Revere) did not say, “The deer are coming, the deer are coming!”

Revere’s warning was to alert the people to arm themselves against the British “Regulars” who were coming for them. The Founding Fathers, when writing the 2nd Amendment, understood the importance of the people being armed against tyranny. They lived it.

All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land. —William Kingdon Clifford

Illinois Gun Owners Refusing to Register Their Firearms

Despite the “invitation” by the Illinois State Police to gun owners holding semi-automatic firearms that will become illegal to own on January 1, 2024 to register them, scarcely 4,600 of the more than 2.4 million holding FOID (firearms owner ID) cards have accepted the invitation.

The bill, which Illinois Governor JG Pritzker eagerly signed into law in January, was immediately challenged by numerous parties, including gun owners, gun dealers, and pro-Second Amendment political action groups. It bans the possession of more than 170 different types of semi-automatic weapons, but provides a “legacy” loophole.

That loophole opened on October 1, and, as of this writing, just 3,000 gun registrations have been received by the police, with another 1,600 “accessory” registrations. That’s out of a total of 2,415,481 gun owners holding ID cards.

The excuse provided by Illinois anti-gun pols was the Highland Park shooting on July 4, 2022, where a mental case (who should have been singled out under the background-check system but wasn’t) climbed a ladder onto a building overlooking the July 4 parade and opened fire.

He dressed in women’s clothing to avoid capture, which explains the lag between the shooting and his arrest.

The pols focused not on the shooter and his mental problems and the failure of the background-check system to rein him in, but instead on the millions of Illinoisans who weren’t at the parade and weren’t involved in the shooting.

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New York City Gun Restrictions Ruled Unconstitutional

Local laws allowing New York City officials to subjectively deny gun possession permits violate the Second Amendment, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan struck down portions of a New York City law governing when licensing officials may deny permits to own rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Cronan determined that allowing the City to deny licenses to applicants who are “not of good moral character” or when they feel “other good cause” exists allows too much discretion and does not fit with how America historically regulated guns. He found that makes them unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s latest Second Amendment test.

“This case is not about the ability of a state or municipality to impose appropriate and constitutionally valid regulations governing the issuance of firearm licenses and permits,” Judge Cronan wrote in Srour v. NYC. “The constitutional infirmities identified herein lie not in the City’s decision to impose requirements for the possession of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Rather, the provisions fail to pass constitutional muster because of the magnitude of discretion afforded to City officials in denying an individual their constitutional right to keep and bear firearms, and because of Defendants’ failure to show that such unabridged discretion has any grounding in our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The decision, which is likely to be appealed by city officials, may result in more residents of the nation’s largest city being able to legally arm themselves. It also represents the continuing fallout from a landmark gun case ruling handed down by the Supreme Court last year.

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Why Biden Wants SCOTUS To Rule Agains Rahimi

I’m going to start this off by saying what we almost have to say when talking about the Rahimi case, that the plaintiff in this case is not a good person. By all indications, he’s a terrible human being and not someone I’d want as part of my life.

But, our rights don’t exist only for those we approve of. They have to be protected for everyone, regardless of whether they’re a good person or not.

And Zachey Rahimi is such a person.

Now, his case is going to the Supreme Court, and a lot of people are blatantly misrepresenting it. They’re saying it’s about keeping domestic abusers disarmed, all while ignoring that the case doesn’t try to take on laws that rule those convicted of such offenses are prohibited from owning guns.

Because Rahimi wasn’t convicted of any such thing when he was charged with illegally possessing a gun. He just had a restraining order against him.

Over at The Federalist, John Lott gets into the real reason the Biden administration is fighting this so hard.

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The Last Three Years Prove We Need The Second Amendment More Than Ever

Guns can save your life and your livelihood but only if your right to own them hasn’t been taken from you.

The right to keep and bear arms has long been under attack but now, as violent crime, international terrorism, and grave abuses of government power abound, Americans need the Second Amendment more than ever.

A majority of Americans say they already own or want to own guns in the future. Nearly three-fourths of gun owners polled cited protection as a major reason for retaining their firearms.

For anyone paying attention to the rapid erosion of Americans’ civil liberties over the last few years, pro-Second Amendment sentiments like this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In 2020, during the height of government-mandated lockdowns, Americans were sentenced to their homes with court-ordered ankle monitors, dragged off of public buses for refusing to wear a mask, and fired from their jobs over a shot that didn’t even do what the government said it would.

Around that same time, crime spiked and race rioters in cities all across the nation dealt billions of dollars worth of damage to civilian and government buildings alike.

Americans were confronted by violent crowds on their streets, at their businesses, and even on their front lawns. The chaos quickly turned deadly but that didn’t stop leftists from pushing a national campaign to defund the armed law enforcement sworn to protect civilians.

The crime problem was only exacerbated when Democrat mayors and district attorneys committed to releasing violent criminals back into the streets in the name of “equity.” Their soft-on-crime policies are almost exclusively responsible for the murder rates in the nation’s top 10 most homicidal states.

Those numbers aren’t helped by the millions of people, including convicted criminals and potential terrorists, who began pouring freely across our open Southern border the moment President Joe Biden took office.

In the last few weeks alone, Americans learned that the FBI targets Trump voters as domestic extremists, judges will gladly overstep their bounds to dictate Americans’ right to free speech, and a former first lady and failed presidential candidate can make public calls for re-education programs for conservatives without scrutiny from her party or the press.

They also learned in the wake of the massacre in Israel that strict gun laws make people vulnerable to surprise attacks that not even trained military can quell quickly enough.

It’s a tough pill to swallow but one that everyone should be thinking about as pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American sentiments brood at home and abroad.

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Only the gullible were fooled.

Mask Off! ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Group 97percent’s Executive Director Joins Gun Control Group Brady

97percent calls itself as “a bipartisan group of gun owners and non-gun owners,” and describes their purported mission as follows:

We are bringing gun owners directly into the conversation about gun safety — creating spaces where both gun owners and non-gun owners can have an honest, civil discussion about ways to reduce gun-related violence, while respecting the 2nd Amendment.

How bipartisan is this group, and how seriously do they take the concerns of gun owners? For starters, their website has several instances of the phrase “gun safety” but not a single mention of “gun control.” 97percent’s research (archived links) led them to support violent misdemeanor laws, universal gun registry (i.e., universal background checks), red flag confiscations, and permit requirements to purchase any gun. They want these laws implemented federally, and where the Constitution bars the federal government from doing so, they want the federal government to “incentivize” the states to do it. They have expressed concern over Bruen (archived links) because of its removal of corrupt discretion from the hands of government apparatchiks.

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Jewish Americans Arm Themselves in Wake of Israeli Horror

“There’s another order coming from Hamas to kill the Jews. I happen to be Jewish, and I don’t want to be killed.”

That’s the succinct explanation Joshua, a doctor in Los Angeles, gave for why he decided to buy his first gun this week. He’s far from alone. New owners and trainers alike described scenes of gun stores and safety classes full of Jewish Americans hoping to protect themselves from the kind of slaughter that played out on October 7th when Hamas terrorists streamed over the border into Israel and ruthlessly slaughtered more than 1,400 men, women, and children.

“I was at a local gun store a couple of days ago, where my wife was doing her firearms training test, and it was full,” Joshua, who–like several others who spoke to The Reload for this story–did not want his real name revealed in large part due to safety concerns, said. “There was a line outside to get in for people to do their tests, or buy firearms, or practice on the range. And I would say it was 90% Jewish people and Israelis.”

He said the motivation of those in line was clear.

“We all know what happened in Israel. It was a horrific attack on civilians by Hamas with the tally now up close to 1,500 dead,” Joshua said. “It’s the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s almost worse than the Nazis. They buried the bodies or cremated the bodies. The Nazis hid their atrocities. Hamas is live streaming their atrocities where they kill babies, shoot the elderly waiting at bus stops, rape women, and mow down young people at a music festival for peace.”

35-year-old Simon, an Israeli-American also living in Los Angeles, recoiled at the awful attacks. Then he too bought a gun.

“Watching the events unfold in Israel since October 7th has been gut-wrenching and unreal,” he told The Reload. “Unfortunately for us Jews around the world, our security situation has worsened. Now is the time to arm myself and protect my family. So, I’ve decided to purchase my first firearm and undergo firearm, general situational awareness, and home defense training.”

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Second Amendment matters in a time of crisis
The importance of good guys with guns

Hamas attacked as Israelis were wrapping up the seven-day Jewish festival of Sukkot on Oct. 7. As many as 1,200 Israelis and some Americans were murdered, thousands wounded, and hundreds more taken hostage. Hamas terrorists went into civilian areas and attacked defenseless people who were walking down the street or shopping in stores.

A Sept. 20 Jerusalem Post headline prophetically warned: “Israelis should carry guns on Yom Kippur, police say.” But as of 2022, only 148,000 Israelis carried permitted guns in public for protection — just 3% of the adult Jewish population. Twenty years earlier, more than 10% of adult Jews in Israel had permits.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called the recent police statement dangerous. He echoed sentiments common among Democrats in the United States: “Calling the citizens of Israel to come with weapons to the synagogue on Yom Kippur is not a security policy. It is dangerous populism.”

Concealed carry is much more widespread in the United States than in Israel. In 2022, 8.5% of American adults had permits. Outside of the restrictive states of California and New York, about 10.2% of adults had permits. And these numbers don’t even account for the fact that there are now 27 constitutional carry states where it isn’t necessary to have a permit to carry.

California, with one of the lowest concealed handgun permit rates and the strictest gun control laws in the country, shouldn’t hold itself out as a model for the rest of the country to follow. The periods after 2000, 2010 and 2020 show a consistent pattern: California’s per capita rate of public shootings is always much greater than in the rest of the country.

On Sunday Oct. 8, the day after the attack, Israel radically changed its policy on who could carry guns publicly. “Today, I directed the Firearms Licensing Division to go on an emergency operation in order to allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves. The plan will take effect within 24 hours,” Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir posted on X.

In response to terrorist attacks for decades, Israel put more police and military to protect people, but they found that no matter how much money they spent, they couldn’t cover all the possible targets.

Before Israel began letting civilians carry handguns in the 1970s, terrorists committed attacks in Israel almost entirely with machine guns. Afterward, terrorists usually used bombs.

The reason was simple: Armed citizens can quickly immobilize a gun-wielding attacker, but no one can respond to a bomber once the bomb explodes. Still, armed citizens have occasionally succeeded in preventing bombings.

Like their Israeli counterparts, American police recognize their own limitations.

“A deputy in uniform has an extremely difficult job in stopping these attacks,” said Sarasota County, Florida, Sheriff Kurt Hoffman. “These terrorists have huge strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for a deputy to leave the area or pick an undefended location. Even when police or deputies are in the right place at the right time, those in uniform who can readily identify as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, ‘Shoot me first.’ My deputies know that we cannot be everywhere.”

Police1, the largest private organization for law enforcement officers, surveyed its 749,000 members and found that 86% of them believed that casualties from mass public school shootings could be reduced or “avoided altogether” if citizens had carried permitted concealed handguns in public places. An incredible 94% of mass public shootings occur in places where civilians are banned from having guns.

And 77% of Police1 members supported “arming teachers and/or school administrators who volunteer to carry at their school.” No other policy to protect children and school staff received such widespread support.

When a life-threatening crisis strikes, there might not be time for police to arrive. Amid such a massive assault by Hamas, it was simply impossible for the Israeli police and military to protect all civilians.

Unfortunately, some lessons are learned the hard way. If only more Israelis had been armed at the time of the attack, more of them would be alive today.

I’m often stunned by what it takes to get some people to open their eyes and decide they need to provide for their own defense.

S. Florida Jewish Community Arming Up After Hamas Attack in Israel

The Hamas attack in Israel has set of alarms within the Jewish community in southern Florida, according to WPLG News, and many people in that community are buying guns and signing up for training courses.

Concerns may not be lessened by President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel or his planned speech to the nation Thursday evening.

The report reinforces an article in AmmoLand News, which focused on the fact that U.S. citizens might provide an obstacle to such terrorism in this country because the Second Amendment protects their right to be armed. There is no such right in Israel, and some leading advocates want gun regulations relaxed.

The Daily Caller quotes firearms retailer David Kowalsky who notes many of his new clients are “Israeli and Orthodox Jews.”

“Just wanting to be trained to protect their families and have a firearm at home or on their person,” he said. “Since last Saturday we have seen a tremendous public display of how prevalent anti-Semitism is and hate speech and how they want to rid the world of Jews.”

That appears to be true, as demonstrations around the U.S. sympathetic to Palestinians, and critical of Israeli counterattacks in Gaza, have been reported.

According to the WPLG report, “Dozens of South Florida gun shops and shooting ranges are seeing a spike in gun sales and a desire to train since Israel was ambushed by Hamas terrorists.”

Over the weekend, FBI Director Christopher Wray was “ominously warning there is a rising number of terror threats against the US — and that the biggest concern involves potential lone wolves,” according to a story in the New York Post.

WPLG quoted a Jewish woman identified as Endi Tennenhaus, who said “most of the men in her synagogue” were in the process of arming themselves.

“We said, ‘What about the women?’ We need to do the things we need to do to prepare,” Tennenhaus told a reporter. “To stay safe and to be able to use a gun, God forbid if we ever should need one.”

The report noted many Jewish women had been buying guns, as well as men, and the women were taking firearms training.

Kowalsky’s gun store is providing additional classes to meet the demand.

Florida is one of the 27 states where permitless carry is now legal. But the Jewish community appears strongly interested in the kind of training that goes beyond mere safety in the home.

In Israel, when Hamas terrorists attacked starting with a music festival—killing hundreds of people in the process—nobody was armed. In southern Florida, it is evident members of the Jewish community will not allow that to happen here.

Weapons of War: What They Are and Why We Need Them

The new gun control buzzwords being used today by the left are getting more and more creative. They have to keep coming up with new jargon and slogans to keep up their fear-mongering campaign about how guns are bad and why we must ban them. Today, however, we will discuss one such term that is both ridiculous and true at the same time: “weapons of war.”

The phrase is a relatively new one being used by the left, in fact, it’s the new favorite of high-profile Democrats like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. They both tweet about them quite frequently in their attempts to gaslight the owners of sensible firearms, but more importantly, they use them to gin up fear from people who are already ignorant of what these guns are. Their fear-mongering campaign is quite effective too.

So what exactly are weapons of war, and why are they so scary? Why do they pose such a threat to society that we must ban them entirely? Depending on who you talk to, weapons of war can mean a lot of things, but the most infuriating part of that is the Democrats can’t define them because they know it will destroy their narrative. A weapon of war is just that, a weapon that is used in war; it’s pretty simple. But the argument gets convoluted from there because that definition applies to most of all firearms past and present. Again I ask, what is a weapon of war?

Here’s one bona fide weapon of war, an M1903 Springfield rifle. The rifle was the general issue rifle to all U.S. Soldiers and Marines during World War I and II, with total service in U.S. military usage until 1970. It is a five-round magazine-fed, bolt action rifle that is chambered in the 30-06 caliber cartridge. It isn’t a semiautomatic rifle; it doesn’t have a detachable magazine, doesn’t have a pistol grip or a flash hider on the muzzle. But it is most assuredly a weapon of war that American forces have used in at least three separate conflicts. The rifle is legal to own, with no restrictions, and is used by countless Americans for hunting, recreational shooting, and even long-range competitive shooting matches. But they won’t mention that because then it wouldn’t be scary enough.

Another example of a gun used in war is the Mossberg M500A2 12 Gauge shotgun. This weapon is used by the Marines, Army, and other branches of the military for a wide range of missions. It is a pump-action shotgun that holds between six and nine rounds depending on the configuration. Even with a pistol grip attachment on the stock or forend of the firearm, it does not make it fire any faster or make it any more deadly than it already is. The one modification that this shotgun can have is what is known as a choke, which is inserted into the muzzle and can either reduce or increase the spread of the pellets when they exit the muzzle. Once again, this shotgun, and many like it, is used by millions of Americans for home defense, property protection, hunting, recreational shooting, and more. But again, the Democrats and gun control advocates cannot use that as an example of a weapon of war because it just isn’t scary enough.

The weapons of war the Democrats want to ban are like the one I am using in the featured image of this story. It is an LWRC M6 SPR (Special Purpose Rifle), chambered in 5.56mm, and is a lightweight, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed, shoulder-fired semiautomatic rifle with a maximum effective range of approximately 800 yards. The round it fires is also about the same size as a .22 caliber bullet, one of the smallest sizes of bullets on the market. It can only be fired as fast as I can pull the trigger. It does not create a massive hole in one’s body when shot, and it most certainly does not blow organs out of the body either.

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Poll Shocker: Majority of Young People Say Guns Make Homes Safer

The Guardian is reporting what amounts to a stunning revelation of research supported by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation which says—probably to the foundation’s chagrin—an overwhelming majority of young people (76%) say gun ownership “makes a home safer.”

Anti-gunners have been insisting for years that guns in the home make families less safe.

The same 2019 study said 42 percent of boys and men in the 13-21 age group expect to own a firearm at some point, after years of efforts to convince the younger generation to avoid gun ownership. The survey results may be viewed here.

Another report, from the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL), supported by Everytown for Gun Safety and the Southern Poverty Law Center, also produced some interesting findings which included:

  • While youth think that gun violence is a problem, they think it flows from the actions of individuals, especially those they perceive as “criminal,” “irresponsible,” “mentally ill” or “bad.” These descriptions tend to be racialized and classed.
  • Youth separate legitimate and illegitimate uses of guns. “Legitimate” uses include protection (e.g., against “home invaders”), hunting and target shooting.
  • Youth perceptions of safety are also racialized, classed and shaped by ideologies surrounding geography and folk-theories about urban-rural differences.
  • Youth from rural areas perceive guns as a ‘fact of life’. Geographical regions are used as shorthand for particular community relations to guns/gun violence.
  • Young, white, cisgender boys/men are frequently introduced to gun use through gendered bonding activities like hunting with fathers, grandfathers and friends.

The Guardian report tends to negatively portray the notion of gun ownership, which perhaps unintentionally exhibits the viewpoints of people who dislike firearms ownership. The story quotes Kelly Drane, research director at the Giffords Law Center, who acknowledges, “Gun ownership has diversified dramatically.”

More women and minorities are buying guns, and according to the Guardian article—referring to the PERIL study—the reason Latinos and Asian Americans are buying firearms is because they are concerned about “the increased threat of racist extremism.”

The PERIL study also showed that about one-third of youths under age 18 “believe they are safer with guns than without them.”

“Protection” Cited As No. 1 Reason For Gun Buys, As 911 Delays Increase

Twenty-six percent of participants in a 1999 Pew Research survey who owned a gun said protection was the primary reason they exercised their Second Amendment rights. By 2013, the figure jumped to 48 percent. Results in 2017 indicated it climbed yet again, up to two-thirds, and this year’s results, released in late August, are higher—72 percent.

It’s a tidal change in attitude that began with the Y2K bug and apparently continues after the widespread violence and social unrest that plagued the COVID 19 pandemic. The dramatic increase in the time it takes first responders to arrive, regardless of where you live or affluence of the community, is one of the diving factors. Seconds count when an attacker is at the door, in your face or on a loved one.

Volume of 911 calls is a driving factor, but there’s another. Law-enforcement officers are leaving the job in record numbers and young adults, who might otherwise enroll in an academy and soon work a beat, succumb to the fashionably inaccurate perception of the profession. As a result, applicants across the nation continue to decline, and those who pass the stringent requirements don’t fill vacancies fast enough.

In April ABC News warned, “Police departments across the country are facing a ‘vicious cycle’ of retirements, resignations and fewer hires, according to policing experts, leaving the communities they protect with understaffed departments and potentially underqualified officers.”

One study found 911 response time in New Orleans nearly tripled from 2019 to 2022. The same report found New York’s figures jumped from 18 minutes to 33 minutes. For comparison, Big Apple law enforcement response time in 1999 was 10.3 minutes, according to the New York Times.

In Nashville, Tenn., Metro Police averaged 73 minutes to respond in 2022. Urgent calls are life-threatening and tracked separately when they come into emergency dispatch. According to a February report from WSMV4 TV—an NBC affiliate in Nashville, Tenn.—“…response time for emergency calls increased from 10.7 minutes to 15 minutes, in the last three years.” Four minutes, 18 seconds seems like the blink of an eye when at work, it’s eternity when a family member is attacked.

The nation’s capital isn’t immune either. WTOP News there found residents experienced an additional 90-second delay in response to Priority 1 [the most urgent] calls to 911 just in the 12 months of 2021.

The numbers make it obvious. More law-abiding citizens than before understand owning a firearm and training are the best way to survive, especially when seconds count, and police are minutes away.