Category: Narrative O’ The Day

BLUF
As stated, the policy recommendations presented by the authors are merely longstanding goals of the gun-ban industry, which would help propel them toward their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament. The only difference is that now their policy recommendations are presented as necessary to “address the dangers of armed insurrectionism.”

Johns Hopkins: More Gun Control Needed to Prevent Second Civil War

By Lee Williams

A recent report by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which is part of Johns Hopkins (Michael) Bloomberg School of Public Health, conflates private gun ownership with armed insurrection in order to advocate for expanded gun control.

The 32-page study, which is titled “Defending Democracy: Addressing the Danger of Armed Insurrection,” not only revisits and revises the Jan. 6th protest — even though no protesters were armed and the only casualty was 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police — it resurrects actual armed insurrections from American history, such as Shays’ Rebellion of 1786, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 and the American Civil War.

The three authors, who are all attorneys with a history of paid anti-gun activism, clumsily raise the insurrection boogeyman to push for additional regulations for carrying firearms, tactical training prohibitions, additional gun-free zones, expanded Red Flag laws and the repeal of state preemption statutes, which has long been a major goal of the gun ban industry. Preemption laws prevent local jurisdictions from enacting their own gun-control regulations, which would result in a patchwork of gun-free zones.

Their authors’ warped message is to be expected, especially when you consider the biased nature of their backgrounds, their sponsors, their sources and Michael Bloomberg’s school itself. (If you type “gun violence” into the school’s internal search engine it will yield more than 1,000 results.)

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It’s Almost as if Giffords’ Standard for ‘Gun Safety’ Has Nothing to Do With Actually Keeping People Safe.

How do you clowns seriously argue that a state like Idaho, with its 2022 homicide rate of 2.0 per 100,000 people, less than half of what California has, is “failing at protecting [its] communities”? Seems like it is doing a pretty damn good job at keeping people safe overall.

It kinda seems like your standard for “safety” is “do what we say”, not the actual results. That’s why you give violent hellholes like Illinois and Maryland high grades despite their horrid results. They didn’t actually solve anything, but they pass what you demand!

Yes, the southern states also do terribly, but they also had sky-high homicide rates when their gun laws were much stricter.

Rolling Stone Blames Gun Industry For Mass Shootings – Reveals Greater Fear Of Patriot Rebellion

It’s the old leftist anti-gun standby:  Pretend as if the 2nd Amendment was drafted only to protect hunting and self defense against criminals.  Ignore the fact that the Founding Fathers explicitly created gun rights for the purpose of repelling and overthrowing a corrupt government.  Pretend as if Americans are not supposed to have access to military grade weapons when that is exactly what the 2nd Amendment was enshrined to protect.

Under the Constitution, the American militia was intended to act as the defense force for the nation.  And, the militia was made up of every able bodied male citizen.  The militia was the military (in a sense), and the militia had access to all the weapons needed to fulfill their role.  This included repeating rifles (automatic rifles), cannons, explosives and even naval ships in private hands.  The Founders never intended for a standing military to exist, nor did they ever intend for a standing military to act as a proxy in place of an armed citizenry.

As James Madison noted:

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”    
– James Madison, January 29, 1788, Federalist No. 46     

And, as George Mason asserted:

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
– George Mason, June 4, 1788, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention

It should be treated as a revealing condition that the establishment and corporate media consistently attack the civilian ownership of guns which they argue are “made for war.”  These guns which they refer to as “assault rifles” (because it sounds scary) are used in less than 3% of all gun crimes in the US.  They are also a small percentage of overall mass shootings in the US, yet they garner almost 100% of the anti-gun lobby’s attention.

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Next Gun Control Fight Likely to Target Ammo

Over the weekend the New York Times ran a lengthy story on the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant and its role in producing ammunition for the civilian market in addition to the U.S. military. The Times report explicitly tied ammo produced at Lake City to mass shootings, with the paper reporting that Lake City ammunition has been “bought by murderers, antigovernment groups, and others.”

Not just to complain about, but potentially to legislate or regulate as well. I’ve been covering 2A issues long enough to recognize the pattern here; a major media outlet “uncovers” something it portrays as a problem, and then anti-gun politicians and gun control groups start demanding action be taken. The New York Times report itself doesn’t contain too many comments from anti-2A activists, but it doesn’t need to. That’s what follow up stories are for. Instead, the purpose of the initial report is to establish some reason to be concerned; in this case, the presence of Lake City-produced ammunition turning up at crime scenes.

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Biden campaign co-chair uses gun control to deflect

In the past, we’ve seen a couple of politicians get themselves out of some hot water by declaring an intention to focus on pushing gun control.

They make the announcement and the controversy around them seems to evaporate almost overnight.

That doesn’t work so much for President Joe Biden.

After all, this isn’t exactly a new push from him.

However, that isn’t going to stop his campaign co-chair from trying to use the tactic to deflect questions about his age.

President Biden‘s 2024 campaign co-chair CedricRichmond pivoted to talk about gun control when asked Sunday about the 80-year-old president’s age presenting challenges at the ballot box.

“While they continue to talk about age, we’ll continue to talk about the fact that they’re not talking about banning assault weapons, while they’re banning books but they’re not protecting our children in schools,” Mr. Richmond said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The fact that none of them raised their hand to talk about climate as a real issue when we see fires in Maui, we see hurricanes hitting California, we see the destruction of wildfires. But they’re not talking about that.”

So, as you can see, it’s not just gun control that Richmond tried to invoke to stave off criticism that Biden might just be too old to do the job.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that so-called assault weapons is something very different than the president’s age.

A new assault weapon ban isn’t really going to happen, in part because enough people understand that the issue with mass shootings isn’t because of AR-15s but with people who seem to think killing people wholesale sounds like a swell time.

In contrast, the books being “banned,” in many cases actually aren’t being banned, they’re simply being removed from curriculums or, if they are being removed, there’s a good reason. I’ve seen pages from a couple of notable examples that were pretty sexually explicit, after all.

Meanwhile, we have a president who can barely piece together two coherent sentences as a general rule, who seemingly falls asleep during important events, and who can’t seem to remember that his one son died of cancer rather than being killed in Iraq.

Granted, that last may just be a case of lying, but I’m not sure that makes anything better.

Bringing up his age is certainly valid, and even 69 percent of Democrats think he’s too old.

So why try to pivot to gun control? Because, frankly, that’s all the Biden campaign has at this point. They need to deflect from the very real concern over Biden’s mental faculties. When more than two-thirds of his own party think he’s too old to do the job, there’s a huge problem and they know it.

But they’re hoping the media will focus on the gun control angle instead because it worked with former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and his blackface controversy and with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his brownface controversy.

Both declared they would push for gun control and all was forgiven.

With Biden, though, there’s no reason to think he can step up any anti-gun efforts, that he could get them through Congress even if he did, or that with his age being what it is, he’d remember anyway.

That doesn’t mean the media won’t try, but they won’t make those concerns disappear by pretending they don’t exist.

You might call the time when a boys under 15 year old high school soccer team beat the women’s national team  an indication this is true, but facts don’t matter when the narrative must go on.

Coach fired for saying biological men can outperform women in sports

A high school snowboarding coach has filed a lawsuit against his former employers alleging that he was fired for basically telling students in a conversation that men can outperform women in sports.

Coach David Bloch filed the lawsuit against the leaders of Woodstock Union High School in July demanding he be reinstated. An attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative firm that represents Bloch, said a hearing on the lawsuit is expected to take place in early September.

The federal lawsuit, filed in Vermont, states that Bloch was wrongly accused of violating the school district’s harassment and bullying policy for referencing a student “in a manner that questioned the legitimacy and appropriateness of [a] student competing on the girls’ team.”

Windsor Central Supervisory Union officials did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment over the past two weeks.

Bloch founded Woodstock High School’s snowboarding team over a decade ago and has served as its head coach ever since, according to the lawsuit, focused on the intersection of biological differences between genders and the right to speak on controversial topics.

According to an Alliance Defending Freedom news release, the controversial, three-minute conversation occurred in February when Bloch’s team competed against another team that had a biological male who identifies as a female that competes in the female division.

“Before the competition, Coach Bloch overheard two of his student-athletes having a discussion about that male competing against females, and he stepped into the conversation,” stated the news release from the alliance.

“Coach Bloch said that people can express themselves differently and that there can be masculine women and feminine men. But he also acknowledged the biological reality that males and females have different DNA, and he shared his belief that the physical differences between men and women give men an athletic advantage,” it stated.

Bloch’s attorneys allege the coach never referred to the transgender athlete by name and the competition took place without incident. However, the next day, Bloch was informed of his “immediate termination,” his attorneys stated.

The lawsuit alleges the superintendent who fired Bloch “has a child who identifies as transgender.”

According to Matthew Hoffman, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Bloch’s dismissal raises concerns about his rights to due process and free speech.

“He received no notice of the allegations against him and was not given an opportunity to defend himself before being fired,” Hoffman said in a telephone interview with The College Fix, adding this raises serious questions about the thoroughness of the investigation conducted by the school district.

The lawsuit also argues the school district’s harassment and bullying policies are unconstitutionally vague “because they grant government officials unbridled discretion in deciding what constitutes ‘gender identity,’ ‘harassment,’ and ‘harassment on the basis of gender identity,’” as well as “because they utilize terms that are inherently subjective and elude any precise or objective definition that would be consistent from one administrator, teacher, or student to another.”

In addition to reinstatement, the lawsuit demands the school district acknowledge his termination violated his First Amendment rights to free speech.

Hoffman added that he hopes this incident will lead to changes in policies to prevent similar occurrences, emphasizing that speaking out on controversial topics should not result in the loss of one’s job. He also called for greater protection of employees’ rights to express their opinions.

Bloch is a Roman Catholic “who believes that God creates human beings as male and female. Consistent with his faith—and with scientific evidence—he believes that chromosomes determine a person’s sex,” the ADF news release stated.

Hoffman said that despite the difficult circumstance Bloch is in, many students and community members have privately shared their support with him.

I have not often seen stupidity of this level. It’s like the concept of the black market doesn’t even enter the thought process since it might hash the narrative.

The ability for innocent people to have guns DIRECTLY allows perpetrators to purchase firearms as well. If you do not get to have one, a school shooter doesn’t get to have one as well.
— Lesser G

People who skipped their COVID vaccine are at higher risk of traffic accidents, according to a new study

If you passed on getting the COVID vaccine, you might be a lot more likely to get into a car crash.

People who skipped their COVID vaccine are at higher risk of traffic accidents, according to a new study© Getty Images

Or at least those are the findings of a new study published this month in The American Journal of Medicine. During the summer of 2021, Canadian researchers examined the encrypted government-held records of more than 11 million adults, 16% of whom hadn’t received the COVID vaccine.

They found that the unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash—in which at least one person was transported to the hospital—than those who were vaccinated. That’s similar to the increased risk of car crashes for people with sleep apnea, though only about half that of people who abuse alcohol, researchers found.

The excess risk of car crash posed by unvaccinated drivers “exceeds the safety gains from modern automobile engineering advances and also imposes risks on other road users,” the authors wrote.

Of course, skipping a COVID vaccine does not mean that someone will get into a car crash. Instead, the authors theorize that people who resist public health recommendations might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.”

Why would they ignore the rules of the road? Distrust of the government, a belief in freedom, misconceptions of daily risks, “faith in natural protection,” “antipathy toward regulation,” poverty, misinformation, a lack of resources, and personal beliefs are potential reasons proposed by the authors.

The findings are significant enough that primary care doctors should consider counseling unvaccinated patients on traffic safety—and insurance companies might base changes to insurance policies on vaccination data, the authors suggest.

First responders may also consider taking precautions to protect themselves from COVID when responding to traffic crashes, the authors added, as it’s more likely that a driver is unvaccinated than vaccinated.

“The findings suggest that unvaccinated adults need to be careful indoors with other people and outside with surrounding traffic,” the authors concluded.

This isn’t the first time that researchers have examined the link between behavior and vaccination status. Among young adults, a 2021 study published in the Journal of Bioeconomics found a correlation between self-reported risky driving and having skipped their flu vaccine. It examined the survey responses of more than 100,000 Canadians.

NY Times Says Most Gun Owners are Law-Abiding, AR-15s are in Common Use, and Confiscation is Futile…Then Calls for 1st Amendment Limits on Gun Makers

It is important, of course, to distinguish between the large majority of law-abiding gun owners and the small number of extremists. Only about 30 percent of gun owners have owned an AR-15 or similar rifle, a majority support common sense gun restrictions and a majority reject political violence. …

Democrats, while they may hope for stricter gun laws overall, should also recognize that they do share common ground with many gun owners — armed right-wing extremists and those who fetishize AR-15s do not represent typical American gun owners or their beliefs. That’s especially true given the changing nature of who owns guns in the United States: women and Black Americans are among the fastest-growing demographics.

This summer, for the first time in decades, Congress passed major bipartisan gun safety legislation — a major accomplishment and a sign that common ground is not terra incognita. It should have gone further — and can in the future: preventing anyone under 21 from buying a semiautomatic weapon, for instance, and erasing the 10-year sunset of the background-check provision. States should also be compelled to pass tougher red-flag laws to take guns out of the hands of suicidal or potentially violent people. Mandatory gun-liability insurance is also an idea with merit.

States and the federal government should also pass far tougher regulations on the gun industry, particularly through restrictions on the marketing of guns, which have helped supercharge the cult of the AR-15. New York’s law, which allows parties like victims of gun violence and the state government to sue gun sellers, manufacturers and distributors, is a good model for other states to follow.

Federal regulators should also do more to regulate the arms industry’s marketing practices, which are becoming more deadly and deranged by the year. They have the legal authority to do so but, thus far, not the will to act.

Americans are going to live with a lot of guns for a long time. There are already more than 415 million guns in circulation, including 25 million semiautomatic military-style rifles. Calls for confiscating them — or even calls for another assault weapons ban — are well intentioned and completely unrealistic. With proper care and maintenance, guns made today will still fire decades from now. Each month, Americans add nearly two million more to the national stockpile.

But even if common-sense regulation of guns is far from political reality, Americans do not have to accept the worst of gun culture becoming pervasive in our politics. The only hope the nation has for living in and around so many deadly weapons is a political system capable of resolving our many differences without the need to use them.

— New York Times Editorial Board in America’s Toxic Gun Culture

 

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