Pritzker compares AR-15s to “missile launchers” while calling for a federal ban

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker seems to be channeling his inner Joe Biden in his defense of the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons and “large capacity” magazines. Biden has famously (and erroneously) proclaimed that while the Second Amendment may protect muskets, it never allowed citizens to own cannons; a statement that’s been thoroughly debunked on multiple occasions yet still emerges from Biden’s mouth on a regular basis.

The thrust of Biden’s argument, factually deficient though it may be, is that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect the right to keep and bear any and all arms, and Pritzker is now piggybacking on the president’s pontifications with a ludicrous comparison of his own.

 “We’ve banned assault weapons. We’ve banned high capacity magazines. We’ve banned switches that turn regular guns into automatic weapons and here in Illinois those are things that will keep people safe and alive, but we need a national ban,” Pritzker said.

The White House Wednesday highlighted Illinois’ law as what the Biden administration would like to see nationwide.…

To the consolidated lawsuit challenging the state’s gun and magazine ban, Pritzker said he’s “heartened” after last week’s hearing in the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The governor cited some of the judges’ questions focused on whether the issue is a “popularity contest which guns we’re going to allow.”

“Because the people who were advocating for semi-automatic weapons were saying ‘well gee, everybodies got one now, so you can’t ban them.’ Well that’s ridiculous,” Pritzker said. “If everyone had a missile launcher, we shouldn’t ban missile launchers?”

I confess that I’m not up to speed on the legality of owning missile launchers, but it’s perfectly legal to own a grenade launcher… as long as you’re willing to register it under the NFA and pay a $200 tax stamp. But as long as missile launchers cost millions of dollars, I don’t think Pritzker has to worry about a Patriot missile system being erected by a private citizen in Chicago or Joliet. We’re not talking about exotic weapon systems that will never be in common use for self-defense, we’re talking about commonly-owned rifles lawfully possessed by tens of millions of Americans for hunting, recreation, self-defense, and other lawful activities.

Todd Vandermyde, who’s consulting plaintiffs in the challenge to Illinois’ ban, said more gun control won’t make the streets safer. He said the governor’s other policies are “an abject failure.”

“They don’t go after the criminals. ‘Oh no, we’re going to give them electric home monitoring. Oh no, we’re going to let them go out for 48 hours. Oh no, we’re not going to require cash bail,’” Vandermyde told The Center Square, referring to the state’s latest changes to the criminal justice system.…

Vandermyde said the case isn’t about missile launchers.

“They just keep jumping to the absurd that if you allow rifles, shotguns and pistols then you have to allow all this other stuff. And nobody is arguing [that], that’s not even before the court in any way,” Vandermyde said.

Vandermyde’s correct in noting that this argument is more useful to politicians than to the attorneys defending the state’s ban, but Attorney General Kwame Raoul is deploying a similar argument that’s equally absurd. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported back in March:

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Thursday filed a brief defending Illinois’ assault weapon ban, arguing the weapons restricted by the newly enacted law aren’t commonly used for self-defense and that large capacity magazines are accessories — not “arms.”

It also argues the country’s founding fathers owned guns that could only fire a single shot before reloading — proving assault weapons and large capacity magazines weren’t in “common use” when the Constitution was ratified.

“The assault weapons restricted by the Act are not commonly used for self-defense; by design and in practice, they exist for offensive infliction of mass casualties,” the brief states.

It also argues the term “arms” refers to weapons and not “accessories,” and that large capacity magazines are therefore not protected under the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

The Supreme Court has already stated that arms that are in common use today are protected by the Second Amendment, not just those arms that were around at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. In Caetano v. Massachusetts , a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that stun guns and other electronic weapons fall under the scope of the Second Amendment, pointing out that in Heller the justices determined that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

Note that the Supreme Court specifically referred to “bearable arms”, which negates Pritzker’s hamhanded comparison of missile launchers to AR-15s. But if the courts were to accept Raoul’s argument, then what’s stopping them from concluding that all semi-automatic firearms, including handguns, fall outside the Second Amendment’s protections? We may soon find out, because based on the makeup of the Seventh Circuit panel that recently heard oral arguments in the Illinois gun ban cases I’m not all that optimistic that the appeals court will follow Supreme Court precedent and the Bruen test to their logical conclusions; modern sporting rifles are indeed in common use for a variety of lawful purposes, and are therefore covered by the Second Amendment’s guarantee of our right to keep and bear arms.

Circle The Wagons: The Government Is On The Warpath – OpEd

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

The government may NOT take private property for public use without just compensation. Nevertheless, under the guise of the “greater public interest,” the government often hides behind eminent domain laws in order to allow megacorporations to tear down homes occupied by less prosperous citizens in order to build high-priced resorts and shopping malls.

Government agents may NOT force a citizen to testify against himself. Yet what is the government’s extensive surveillance network that spies on all of our communications but a thinly veiled attempt at using our own words against us?

The government is NOT permitted to claim any powers that are not expressly granted to them by the Constitution. This prohibition has become downright laughable as the government continues to claim for itself every authority that serves to swell its coffers, cement its dominion, and expand its reach.

Despite what some special interest groups have suggested to the contrary, the problems we’re experiencing today did not arise because the Constitution has outlived its usefulness or become irrelevant, nor will they be solved by a convention of states or a ratification of the Constitution.

No, the problem goes far deeper.

It can be traced back to the point at which “we the people” were overthrown as the center of the government. As a result, our supremacy has been undone, our authority undermined, and our experiment in democratic self-governance left in ruins.

No longer are we the rulers of this land. We have long since been deposed and dethroned, replaced by corporate figureheads with no regard for our sovereignty, no thought for our happiness, and no respect for our rights.

In other words, without our say-so and lacking any mandate, the point of view of the Constitution has been shifted from “we the people” to “we the government.” Our taxpayer-funded employees—our appointed servants—have stopped looking upon us as their superiors and started viewing as their inferiors.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so used to being dictated to by government agents, bureaucrats and militarized police alike that we’ve forgotten that WE are supposed to be the ones calling the shots and determining what is just, reasonable and necessary.

Then again, we’re not the only ones guilty of forgetting that the government was established to serve us as well as obey us. Every branch of government, from the Executive to the Judicial and Legislative, seems to be suffering this same form of amnesia. Certainly, when government programs are interpreted from the government’s point of view (i.e., the courts and legislatures), there is little the government CANNOT do in its quest for power and control.

We’ve been so brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that the government is actually looking out for our best interests, when in fact the only compelling interesting driving government programs is maintain power and control by taking away our money and control. This vital truth, that the government exists for our benefit and operates at our behest, seems to have been lost in translation over two centuries dominated by government expansion, endless wars and centralized federal power.

Have you ever wondered why the Constitution begins with those three words “we the people”? It was intended to be a powerful reminder that everything flows from the citizenry. We the people are the center of the government and the source of its power. That “we” is crucial because it reminds us that there is power and safety in numbers, provided we stand united. We can accomplish nothing alone.

This is the underlying lesson of the Constitution, which outlines the duties and responsibilities of government. It was a mutual agreement formed by early Americans in order to ensure that when problems arose, they could address them together.

It’s like the wagon trains of the Old West, comprised of individual groups of pioneers. They rarely ventured out alone but instead traveled as convoys. And when faced with a threat, these early Americans formed their wagons into a tight circle in order to defend against invaders. In doing so, they presented a unified front and provided protection against an outside attack.

In much the same way, the Constitution was intended to work as an institutionalized version of the wagon circle, serving as a communal shield against those who would harm us.

Unfortunately, we have been ousted from that protected circle, left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness that is the American frontier today. Those who did the ousting—the courts, the politicians, and the corporations—have since replaced us with yes-men, shills who dance to the tune of an elite ruling class. In doing so, they have set themselves as the central source of power and the arbiters of what is just and reasonable.

Once again, we’re forced to navigate hostile terrain, unsure of how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from militarized police, weaponized drones, fusion centers, Stingray devices, SWAT team raids, the ongoing military drills on American soil, the government stockpiling of ammunition, the erection of mass detention centers across the country, and all other manner of abuses.

Read the smoke signals, and the warning is clear: the government is on the warpath.

Right to bear arms

Here we are in the middle of the Fourth of July week. This is sort of the unofficial start of summer in the Flathead. If you were like most of us, this past weekend and coming week will be spent outdoors, camping, hiking, fishing, mountain bike riding, boating, swimming and kayaking.

I spent yesterday, the Fourth, at our lake cabin with family and friends. This included some fishing, eating hamburgers and potato salad, target shooting and just plain relaxing on the shore of “my” lake. Last week I was in Canada fishing. As usual, Canadian fishing was fantastic. But that is another story for another week.

We shot lots of fireworks from our dock. Seems like every lakeshore lot and cabin owner likes to help with the evening entertainment, so we all shoot a lot of fireworks. We don’t want to be outdone by our neighbors. I am always amazed at how the fireworks manufacturers can take common white explosive powder and make such a wide array of beautiful multi-colored aerial displays. Wow!

A very important part of every Fourth of July celebration is the need to remember what this day represents in the birth and history of our nation. We all need to appreciate the tremendous vision the gentlemen had who drafted the Constitution and its amendments. As a hunter and owner of several firearms, I really appreciate the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. Of all the amendments to the Constitution, the right to bear arms seems to have generated more continuous controversy and media attention than most of the other amendments.

Many folks believe the Second Amendment was designed to protect the interest of hunters or for citizen self-protection from bad guys. Those are certainly worthy reasons for having firearms. But the primary drafter of our Constitution and its amendments was Thomas Jefferson. He is quoted as saying, “the primary purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect citizens from the tyranny of their governments.” Protection from their governments. Wow, that is certainly a different slant as the reason for having the Second Amendment!

In the last 90 years, tens of millions of common unarmed citizens in Europe, Asia and Africa have been murdered by their governments. These unarmed citizens had no way to protect themselves from their evil governments and their armed soldiers. That can’t happen in America with over 100 million armed civilians!

The current liberal mainstream news media has certainly sided with the anti-gun groups that want to reduce citizen rights to own firearms. Every time there is a mass shooting, which is defined as involving four or more people killed or wounded, there is media scream for more gun control. For some reason the shooting of four or five people seems to attract more news coverage than the 100-200 Americans who die every day in America from illegal drug overdoses. The loss of any citizen is indeed a tragedy. Drug deaths are the real current preventable tragedies in America, not gun deaths. FBI statistics show that more homicides are committed with knives than guns. Should we ban knives?

Lucky for us, the vast majority of law-abiding American gun owners, have been blessed with a conservative Supreme Court that has made several recent rulings protecting our constitutional right to bear arms. Their decisions in the Heller case (2008), McDonald case (2010) and the New York State Rifle and Pistol case (2022) have been favorable to gun ownership and possession. Twenty years ago, most states required a state or local government issued permit to open carry or conceal carry a handgun. Now the majority of states, including Montana, allow handgun carry without any permit. It’s our constitutional right.

As mentioned in the opening part of this column, last week our family was fishing in Canada. Since we drove to Canada, I had to store my handgun, which I normally carry when traveling, with a friend. Canada’s constitution does not have a strong right to firearms that allows its citizens or visitors to carry handguns.

So, as we continue to celebrate the birth of our country this week, let’s remember all rights and privileges we Americans have which are not enjoyed by most other citizens of this world. Lucky us. God bless the USA!

Gavin Newsom Says Something So Mind-numbingly Stupid, Only a Leftist Could Believe It

With our country more divided than most everyone alive has ever seen it, we’re keenly aware that Leftists seem to live in an entirely separate reality from our own. In their world, it’s perpetually the hottest year evuh, Klansmen rove the streets in gas-guzzling trucks, murdering unarmed black youth, women are both superior and oppressed, and men have babies. So we shouldn’t be too surprised when one of them says something that manifestly isn’t so. Nonetheless, occasionally one of the luminaries of the Left will utter something so extraordinarily stupid that I am compelled to call it out. Today’s honoree is California Governor and 2024 Democrat presidential understudy Gavin Newsom.

Newsom recently posted a video on social media that was filmed while he was in Idaho over the weekend, allegedly stumping for Biden but coincidentally building up his own base. Anyway, the video shows Newsom browsing in a bookstore, while a white text overlay reads, “Visiting a bookstore with banned books in Boise.”

Let’s pause a minute and think this through.

When something is banned, it is removed — like a Republican president can be banned from social media platforms. It becomes illegal and cannot be found or obtained. Yet, here is Governor Nuisance, clowning around in a store full of so-called banned books, prominently displayed for sale. In a dark red state, no less. How is he able to do this?

Because, as with so many other words, “banned” does not mean what the Left says it means. To the Left, a book becomes “banned” if a responsible adult points out that it’s pornographic and not appropriate for minors.

“Book bans are at a record high — there have been over 1,200 challenges in the last year…” tweeted Gov. Tiresome, giving away the game by conflating “banned” with “challenged.”

The rest of the video is similarly idiotic. The text changes to “2022 set a new record…” while the image behind it shows the books The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and a book by Judy Blume. Of course, Toni Morrison has received more awards and honors than I have space to list in this article. Walker and Blume have sold millions of books, been widely read by multiple generations, and have even reached the writers’ pinnacle of having major motion pictures made from their books. But, you know — they’re “banned” or something.

Newsom’s video could not be any more nonsensical or patronizing, but progressives will eat it up and preen:

…and this is the guy they’re probably gonna slip into the race when Biden finally implodes like an experimental submersible that wasn’t designed by boring 50-year-old white guys.

Robbery suspect shot by concealed carry holder on North Side

CHICAGO — A robbery suspect was shot early Wednesday morning in West Ridge by a concealed carry holder.

Just after 3:30 a.m., police said three men, ages 26, 33 and 31 were standing near their vehicle when they were approached by a man displaying a gun.

The man demanded the men’s property. At some point, the 26-year-old man, who has a concealed carry licenses, shot the robbery suspect multiple times.

The man was transported to St. Francis in critical condition.

Woman critical after being shot while in passenger seat on North Side
No other injuries were reported.

The Ranks of Gun Owners Grow, and So Does Their Resistance to Scrutiny
Researchers report that many gun owners, especially newer ones, falsely deny owning guns.

Believe it or not, people are reluctant to tell total strangers about their potentially controversial activities. In particular, Rutgers University researchers say, gun ownership is something many Americans decline to reveal when questioned by people they don’t know. That’s especially true of women and minorities newly among the ranks of gun owners amidst the chaos of recent years. Academics are unhappy that privacy-minded respondents impair their understanding of the world we live in, but such evasion is an inevitable consequence of decades of fiery debate and punitive gun policies.

Fibbing to Nosy Strangers

“Some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.,” says Allison Bond, a doctoral student with Rutgers University’s New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and lead author of “Predicting Potential Underreporting of Firearm Ownership in a Nationally Representative Sample,” published last month in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. “More concerningly, these individuals are not being reached with secure firearm storage messaging and firearm safety resources, which may result in them storing their firearms in an unsecure manner, which in turn increases the risk for firearm injury and death.”

Bond frames the problem of dishonesty among survey respondents as posing a danger to those surveyed since they don’t receive proper firearm safety information. But her deeper concern is with the validity of research into firearms culture and policy in a country where experts don’t have anywhere near as good a handle on the prevalence of gun ownership as they had believed.

“The implications of false denials of firearms ownership are substantial,” claim the authors. “First, such practices would result in an underestimation of firearms ownership rates and diminish our capacity to test the association between firearm access and various firearm violence-related outcomes. Furthermore, such practices would skew our understanding of the demographics of firearm ownership, such that we would overemphasize the characteristics of those more apt to disclose. Third, the mere existence of a large group of individuals who falsely deny firearm ownership highlights that intervention aimed at promoting firearm safety (e.g., secure firearm storage) may fail to reach communities in need.”

It should be emphasized that the report authors didn’t conclusively identify anybody who denied gun ownership as a gun owner. Instead, the report dealt in probabilities, with the researchers building profiles of confirmed gun owners. They then applied the profiles across their sample of 3,500 respondents to estimate who was likely fibbing about not owning guns. The results depend on the probability threshold applied, but they came up with 1,206 confirmed owners, between 1,243 and 2,059 non-owners, and between 220 and 1,036 potential but secretive owners lying about their status.

“It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light,” the authors allowed. They also speculated that many respondents falsely denying owning guns may come from communities that are traditionally unfriendly to gun ownership. That’s an interesting possibility considering that nearly half of all those designated as potential gun owners are unmarried urban women of color. In fact, as the study points out, many new gun owners are women and minorities.

Gun Owners Look Like Everybody

“An estimated 2.9% of U.S. adults (7.5 million) became new gun owners from 1 January 2019 to 26 April 2021. Most (5.4 million) had lived in homes without guns,” according to a separate study published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Approximately half of all new gun owners were female (50% in 2019 and 47% in 2020 to 2021), 20% were Black (21% in 2019 and in 2020–2021), and 20% were Hispanic (20% in 2019 and 19% in 2020–2021).”

With gun ownership becoming increasingly common beyond the traditional ranks of white suburban-to-rural men, there are big implications for politics and policy. New gun owners will certainly resist proposals to strip them of self-defense tools they acquired out of necessity. They’re also likely to resent restrictive policies that urban, left-of-center politicians promote to torment gun owners once assumed to be safe targets, but which apply to anybody who owns firearms no matter where they live and vote. Basically, the gun-ownership landscape is growing and changing, but new owners are even more reticent than established ones about revealing their existence to researchers and government officials.

After decades of debate, arbitrary crackdowns, and draconian enforcement actions, who can blame them?

Until recently, many gun opponents tried to paint firearm ownership as a fading fetish among a disappearing class of Americans.

Old Firearm Assumptions Look Shaky

Firearms “are owned by roughly one in five U.S. adults and can be found in approximately one of three U.S. households,” wrote the authors of a 2015 analysis of results from the National Firearms Survey, published in 2015 in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. “Between 2004 and today, we know that the proportion of adults who personally own firearms (and the proportion who live in households with guns) has continued to decline, modestly but steadily, largely because of a decline in personal gun ownership by men.” They estimated 265 million firearms in private American hands.

But in 2021, Pew Research reported: “Four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 30% who say they personally own one.” And Gallup reported in 2020 that “thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household.” Switzerland’s well-respected Small Arms Survey put the number of guns in private American hands at over 393 million in 2018.

Recent years have seen a surge in gun sales, spurred by rioting, social disorder, and political turmoil. Given that many of these gun buyers are first-time owners, it’s apparent that firearm ownership is becoming more widespread and being enjoyed by Americans who might have resisted the idea in the past. These new owners are even more suspicious of scrutiny than their predecessors in the already privacy-minded gun-owning community.

“Our results highlight the potential that several groups, particularly women and individuals living in urban environments, may be prone to falsely denying firearm ownership,” adds the Rutgers report.

Academic researchers and policymakers who draw from their work clearly regret such opacity. But they should cast the blame not on gun owners, but on the activists and politicians who vilified the exercise of self-defense rights and who drove growing numbers of Americans to evade scrutiny.

The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.
— James Burgh

July 6

640 – The moslem Arab army under ‘Amr ibn al-‘As defeats the Byzantine forces near Heliopolis, Egypt, effectively completing control of both sides of the Nile river delta region and of the Red Sea down to the Sudan.

1415 – Jan Hus is condemned by the assembly of the council in the Konstanz Cathedral, in modern day Germany, as a heretic, sentenced and burned at the stake.

1535 – Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.

1536 – The explorer Jacques Cartier lands at St. Malo in France at the end of his second expedition to North America.

1614 –  The southeast of Malta, around the town of Żejtun, are unsuccessfully raided by moslem Ottoman forces, ending their attempt to conquer the island.

1777 – After a 4 day long siege, a final bombardment by British artillery under General John Burgoyne forces American troops to retreat from Fort Ticonderoga, New York during the Revolutionary War.

1779 –  The French defeat British naval forces off the island of Grenada during the Revolutionary War.

1854 – The first convention of the U.S. Republican Party is held in Jackson, Michigan

1885 – Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies

1887 – David Kalākaua, monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, is forced to sign the ‘Bayonet Constitution’ (so called because of the force implied), which transfered much of the king’s authority to the Legislature of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

1892 – 3800 striking steelworkers engage in a day long battle with Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Pennsylvania Steelworks Strike, leaving 10 dead and 47 wounded.

1917 – Arabian troops led by T. E. Lawrence and Auda Abu Tayi capture Aqaba from the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

1919 – The British dirigible R34 lands in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.

1933 – The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game is played in Chicago’s Comiskey Park, The American League defeating the National League 4–2.

1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the “Secret Annexe” above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

1944 – A fire of unknown origin at an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Hartford, Connecticut kills 168 people and injures over 700 more.

1947 – The Автомат Калашникова образца 1947 – the AK-47 – goes into production in the Soviet Union.

1988 – Occidental Petroleum’s Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires. 167 workers are killed, the world’s worst offshore oil disaster in loss of life.

1996 – The pilots of Delta Air Lines Flight 1288, a McDonnell Douglas MD-88 abort takeoff due to engine failure at Pensacola International Airport, with the engine explosion killing 2 and injuring 5 of the 137 passengers on board.

2013 – Asiana Airlines Flight 214, a Boeing 777, crashes at San Francisco International Airport, killing 3 and injuring 181 of the 307 passengers on board. San Francisco television station KTVU news anchor Tori Campbell mistakenly reports faked out names of the flight crew; Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.

2022 – The Georgia Guidestones, a monument in the United States, are heavily damaged in a bombing, and are dismantled later the same day.[12]

Vacationer in rental home shoots intruder

SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. (SNN TV) July 2, 2023 – A shooting early Sunday morning in the Gulf Gate neighborhood of Sarasota seems to have been in self-defense during a break-in.

The shooting took place about 2:15 Sunday morning when a family on vacation was awakened in their rental home by what appeared to be someone in the enclosed lanai breaking into the house in the 6500 block of Colonial Drive in Sarasota County.

One of the victims felt threatened and shot the suspect.

The suspect is still alive at SMH but in critical condition.

The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office investigation is ongoing.

 

FPC Files Opening Brief in Lawsuits Challenging Delaware “Assault Weapon,” Magazine Bans

PHILADELPHIA, PA (July 5, 2023) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced the filing of an opening brief with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in its Gray v. Jennings and Graham v. Jennings lawsuits, which challenge Delaware’s “assault weapon” and standard capacity magazine bans, respectively. The brief can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“The district court wrongly held that Delaware’s bans, which affect some of the most popular firearms and magazines in the country, could be justified by reference to a pattern of historical regulation targeting a variety of arms, from ‘slung shots’ to machine guns,” argues the brief. “But the State has not put forward, and the district court did not cite, a single law that banned possession or carriage of an arm that was in common use at the time like the Delaware bans do.”

“No matter what the State of Delaware thinks, the guns and magazines it banned are protected by the Second Amendment and thus cannot be prohibited,” said FPC Vice President of Communications Richard Thomson. “We look forward to the Third Circuit getting right what the district court got wrong when it declined to preliminarily enjoin Delaware’s bans.”

FPC is joined in these lawsuits by the Second Amendment Foundation……

Forbes Claims More than 330 ‘Mass Shootings’ This Year Using Misleading Data

Forbes pointed to misleading data and claimed on Monday there had been over 330 “mass shootings” in the United States so far in 2023.

They labeled their report “breaking” news.

Writing at Forbes, Ana Faguy relied on the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a pro-gun-control database which abandoned the long-standing definition of a “mass shooting” as four or more deaths in a single incident by a single gunman and replaced it with  “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.” GVA’s new definition allows drive-by shootings, targeted gang attacks, and other non-mass shootings to be counted as “mass shootings,” thus inflating the number of reported incidents.

For example, on Monday Baltimore WBALTV reported that GVA was still counting the April 15, 2023, Dadeville, Georgia, birthday party attack as a “mass shooting.” GVA is doing this although at least six people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

Yet Faguy quoted GVA numbers, saying, “There have been more than 330 mass shootings so far this year, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive.”

Breitbart News noted that The Hill relied on GVA numbers last year and ended up claiming over 600 mass shootings in the United States by Thanksgiving Day 2022.

On July 26, 2021, Breitbart News observed that the GVA is also able to report higher numbers of “mass shootings” because it lists defensive gun uses and officer-involved gun uses against criminals as “gun violence.”

Breitbart News pointed out on May 7, 2023, that GVA’s new definition allows drive-by shootings, targeted gang attacks, and other non-mass shootings to be counted as “mass shootings,” thus increasing the number of reported incidents. While President Joe Biden was claiming there had already been “roughly 200 mass shootings” in America for the year, a database maintained by the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University showed there had actually been 19 such incidents in the United States from January 1, 2023, to May 2, 2023.

Watch These Clips and Tell Me You Really Think Biden Will Make It Through the 2024 Campaign

Joe Biden has faced questions about his physical and mental health for a long time now. He managed to avoid being too accessible to the public in 2020 because of the pandemic, but now he doesn’t have the pandemic as cover for avoiding playing the role of the president daily. The amount of pressure that Joe Biden is under to appear in control is just as high as (if not higher than) the exposure he has. There’s simply no easy way to hide him away, save for clearing his schedule and giving him time to recharge out of sight — and that’s a really bad look.

As president, Ol’ Joe has a lot of public obligations. On Independence Day, the birthday of our nation, he was front and center a lot and was as big a gaffe machine as you’d expect. During a National Education Association event in Washington, D.C., Biden became a garbled mess trying to read his script off the teleprompter.

The White House did what it could to cover for Joe, publishing a cleaned-up version of that mess. “You know, I’ve often say — and you’re tired of hearing me saying it, probably, but — children are the kite strings — they’re not somebody else’s chi- — they’re all our children — are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft, and you hold those strings,” the official transcript reads. “You hold those strings. And our job is to make sure you have what you need to do what you do best.”

Is that how Biden sounded? Not to those who listened to him.

Oh, but there is more. Later on, Biden proudly highlighted the achievements of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, claiming that it has successfully helped teachers pay off student loan debt. In addition to getting the name of the program wrong, when he attempted to explain to the educators present how to find information about the program, he completely lost track of what he was trying to say.

“And, by the way, the program is still there,” he said. “Go to — anyway, you ought to contact us to make sure you know exactly how to qualify because you deserve that forgiveness.”

It should come as no surprise that Joe didn’t answer any questions, and Jill Biden was on hand to make sure Biden successfully exited the stage without embarrassing himself further.

The 2024 presidential campaign has technically already started, but Election Day is roughly a year and a half away. When you watch these videos, do you think that Joe Biden will make it until then? It’s not looking good.

1 This one will disappear quickly – wrong demographic
2 Another case of the legal system letting a dangerous criminal lose with a slap on the wrist. Just like it’s a plan, not a bug.

Gunman arrested for Philadelphia mass shooting which left 5 dead is BLM activist who wore women’s clothes.

The rifle-wielding suspect who donned a bulletproof vest before allegedly shooting dead five men and injuring two children in Philadelphia has been identified as a Black Lives Matter supporter who shared gun-toting memes on social media.

Kimbrady Carriker, 40, was nabbed shortly after the bloodshed in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood Monday night, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, citing sources.

Cops haven’t yet publicly disclosed the suspect’s identity.

On his Facebook page, Carriker posted two pictures of himself wearing a bra, a women’s top and earrings with his hair braided long in March, three months before the alleged shooting.

He also regularly posts about supporting Black Lives Matter, including supporting workers who protested in the Strike For Black Lives in July 2020.
Carriker allegedly shot five men dead and injured two children in Philadelphia

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Defending Your Vehicle: From carjackings to aggressive drivers to violent demonstrations, it’s not all that safe on our streets right now.

A man’s home is his castle, or so the saying goes, but these days, we also tend to look at our cars, trucks or vans as a castle as well. They’re our refuge in the stormy maelstrom of traffic. They provide us with soothing music from the stereo and cool breezes from the air conditioning vents. However, just because our vehicles are comfortable, it doesn’t mean they’re invulnerable, and that’s why something like the Vehicle Defense Class from Go Noisy USA starts to make a lot of sense.

Neil Davis, Go Noisy’s chief instructor, is a veteran with years of service in British Intelligence in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and a number of other locations, working primarily undercover in some of the hottest of the world’s hotspots. These actions required him to work primarily from “civilian” vehicles like passenger cars and trucks, so unlike other vehicle skills classes tailored to law enforcement, Neil’s classes have “real world” application for the armed citizen, as the needs of a teacher driving to work vary from the needs of an Uber driver who regularly has strangers in the car or a law enforcement officer at a traffic stop. The class was four hours in the classroom and four hours on the range and covered three different scenarios:

  • Carjacking
  • Aggressive Motorists
  • Violent Demonstrations

Carjackings

Carjackings, according to Davis come in two different flavors: Opportunistic carjackings, where the crooks are looking for any old car in a storm, and planned or targeted attacks, where the goal is to relieve someone of their expensive car.

shooting from the car

Shooting through your door? Bad idea. Move your pistol up a little higher.

 

For the armed citizen, an opportunistic carjacking will most likely be a “wrong place, wrong time scenario,” something we can help avoid by not being in the wrong places at wrong times. Targeted carjackings, on the hand, are meticulously planned, with copious prior surveillance so the crooks know exactly when and where they are going to strike.

Which brings up an important point. Crooks choose victims based on how they look and act, so anything you can do to deselect yourself as a victim is probably a good thing. One way to do that is what Davis called the “soak.” Simply put, when you arrive at a new location, take a few seconds and “soak in” the environment. Where are the other cars parked? Is there anyone just standing around? If so, how many, and where are they standing? Who is coming and going from your destination, and what do they look like? Taking a few moments to observe your surroundings like this gives you a baseline of what “normal” looks like and allows you to quickly spot what’s changed when you come back out of your destination, helping you spot potential trouble before it becomes a real problem.

Aggressive Motorists

Angry attacks on the road, Davis says, generally aren’t caused by traffic jams by themselves. Rather, traffic is the spark that sets off an emotional reaction to pre-existing frustration, such as a bad day at the work or a previous incident on the road. Because these kinds of incidents are escalations of other events, being able de-escalate the event is critical, as is not escalating things even more.

Getting out of dodge and putting distance between you and your attacker is the fastest and easiest way to avoid becoming a victim of an incident that has the potential for violence, as is knowing your state’s use of force laws so you can respond in an appropriate way if violence cannot be avoided or de-escalated.

Violent Demonstrations

Here’s where things get really tricky. A mob blocking a road can turn ugly and violent in the blink of an eye, and that can change your response just as quickly. It’s one thing to be stuck in traffic surrounded by a crowd of angry, shouting people, and it’s another thing to have Molotov cocktails thrown at the car next to you and a brick come through your windshield.

Your options for what you should do if you’re alone are radically different than if you have people in your car. This is dependent on the situation, of course. If you can use your vehicle to exit the area, make great haste to do so. However, if you can’t get away (which is the optimal solution) because your vehicle has been disabled or blocked in by immovable objects and it’s clearly a situation where things have gotten out of control, staying in your car means staying in one place, making yourself an easy target. If you’re alone and have to use a firearm, Davis recommends exiting the car to engage an attacker as soon as things turn to lethal force because of the shorter draw time when standing and the wider range of options available to you.

However, if there are others in your vehicle and you can’t leave, he recommends having the unarmed passengers assume the “crash position” found on airliner safety cards into order to give themselves a smaller, more defensible position. Either way, the instability of a riot means you’ve got to have a flexible plan. A one-note response of going to lethal force as quickly as possible is probably going to get you and those in your car in a lot of trouble. We are not in control of the people outside our vehicle, and that’s where the problems can happen.

Staying safe when you’re away from home is a complex task that pushes all our self-defense skills to their limits. However, a calm, clear mind and having the tools and ability to respond quickly and appropriately can help us come out on top when everything has gone south.