Liberal politicians who order police to stand down are the same people who want to ban guns

By John R. Lott Jr. –

Minneapolis and other major cities have finally re-opened, at least to looters and arsonists. For three days, police in Minneapolis and St. Paul were ordered to stand down as rioters destroyed their cities. In New York City and Washington, D.C., on Monday night, police stood by as looters destroyed parts of those cities.

The same politicians who ordered police to stand down and released prison inmates are the same people who want to ban guns. These politicians prevent citizens from protecting themselves, at a time when police protection cannot be depended on.

For three days, police in Minneapolis and St. Paul were ordered to stand down as rioters destroyed their cities. Sadly, so many of the victims of this violence have been blacks. Black store owners have lost their businesses. In these heavily black areas, blacks will lose their jobs. Black shoppers worry they “have nowhere to go now.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said it’d be “ridiculous” to break up demonstrators who violate crowd-size rules for the coronavirus. The president of the NAACP is asking police nationwide to stand down to preserve the peace.

In Minnesota, you face a $25,000 fine if you open your business during the current COVID-19 lockdown, but criminals effectively have immunity. The few who were arrested for violent acts in Minneapolis were quickly bailed out of jail with financial help from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign staffers.

As of Sunday morning, more than 255 businesses had been destroyed in the Twin Cities. The looting was extensive. Many large companies have reported that they are “temporarily or indefinitely closed.” Officers even abandoned their own police station, which was then set on fire by protesters.

Across the country, police have had orders to stand down.

“Tonight, I watched Seattle burn. Seattle is dying, by fire, looting, weakness of the political leadership,” wrote Seattle KVI radio talk-show host Kirby Wilbur. “We watched on TV as our law enforcement stood by while vandalism, looting, assaults, pure chaos reigned in the streets of our downtown business district.”

But the violence in Minneapolis would have been much worse if people hadn’t been able to defend themselves and their businesses with guns. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “African-American owners of GM Tobacco told me they were armed and ready to protect their business — and that they stand in solidarity with those who seek justice for [George] Floyd.” Visible from the front of the store was Minneapolis’ Third Police Precinct, which rioters set on fire.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. People may remember the Korean store owners who successfully used semi-automatic rifles to protect their businesses during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

One searches in vain for Democratic politicians who have reprimanded the rioters. On Saturday, after several nights of riots, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat, egged on demonstrators by calling for a continuation of the “righteous protests” and necessary routing out of the “racism” that she said is endemic in Minnesota.

Twitter didn’t seem to mind incitement to violence by liberals such as Colin Kaepernick. He tweeted that “revolting is the only logical reaction. … We have the right to fight back!” Others on Twitter are calling for “a violent rebellion against an entire system.”

Democrats in Minnesota have been forceful advocates for gun control. Mr. Walz and Mrs. Smith have been strongly endorsed by Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control organization, Moms Demand Action. They have supported banning some semi-automatic guns based solely on superficial appearance. They also support limits on magazine sizes.

Especially in a riot, semi-automatic firearms that reload automatically are much more useful for self-defense than are single-shot weapons. Hopefully, the presence of a gun by itself will deter an attack, but if you have to open fire it will be a big help to not have to constantly manually reload.

My research shows that police are the single most important factor in deterring violent crime. But the riots have shown yet again that politicians frequently won’t let the police do their jobs when they are most needed.

The riots have shown several things that liberal politicians don’t seem to understand. The police themselves know that they normally arrive on the scene after the crime has occurred, and that having a gun is by far the safest course of action when you are confronted by a criminal. It is also the most vulnerable in our society — namely blacks who live in high-crime cities — who benefit the most from having the option to be able to defend themselves.

Bedford County Supervisors OK militia resolution

The Bedford County  (VA) Board of Supervisors approved a resolution at its Tuesday, May 26, meeting recognizing a militia within Bedford County, pursuant to the Second Amendment.

When questioned who was over the Bedford County militia, Chairmen John Sharp of District 4 said that the board was not over it. He also said that it’s a formal recognition that they have a right to exist.

“Unless there is some constitutional reason why they can’t own a firearm, I don’t have an issue with it,” said Sharp.

He said it’s like a move on a chessboard, and that they are playing chess with Richmond right now.

MILLIONS OF FIRST-TIME GUN BUYERS DURING COVID-19

By Jim Curcuruto, NSSF Director of Research and Market Development

The early part of 2020 has been unlike any other year for firearm purchases—particularly by first-time buyers—as new NSSF® research reveals millions of people chose to purchase their first gun during the COVID-19 pandemic.

January 2020 started out with a strong SHOT Show®, followed by buzz surrounding background check figures on firearms with NSSF-adjusted NICS data showing year-over-year increases of 19 percent in January and 17 percent in February.

Mid-March brought the COVID-19 pandemic to the front of every news cycle, and firearm sales during this time were a lead story. Thanks in large part to the work done by NSSF’s legislative team, the firearms industry was deemed essential in most states, and firearm retailers were allowed to stay open to conduct business. And conduct business they did, with NSSF-adjusted NICS figures showing year-over-year increases of 80 percent in March and 69 percent in April 2020. These strong increases led to more than 6.5 million NSSF-adjusted background checks in the first four months of 2020, up 48 percent from 4.4 million during the same period in 2019.

NSSF has been the go-to source for information on the firearm industry, providing insights on topics such as women gun owners, first-time gun buyers and shooting sports participation for more than a decade. In May 2020, NSSF surveyed firearm retailers to learn more about what they were seeing pertaining to sales during the first four months of 2020.

Not surprisingly, retailers reported an increased number of first-time gun buyers, estimating that 40 percent of their sales were to this group. This is an increase of 67 percent over the annual average of 24-percent first-time gun buyers that retailers have reported in the past. Semiautomatic handguns were the primary firearm being purchased by first-time buyers, outpacing the second-most purchased firearm, shotguns, by a 2 to 1 margin. Modern sporting rifles, revolvers and traditional rifles rounded out the top five types of firearms purchased by first-time gun buyers.

Retailers noted that these new customers were spending $595 on an average sale and that 40 percent of first-time gun buyers in the first four months of 2020 were female. The main purchase driver among the group was personal protection, followed by target shooting and hunting. Also of note was that 25 percent of first-time buyers had already taken some form of firearms safety course and 63 percent inquired about taking a firearms safety course in the near future.

All this equates to more than 2.5 million new gun owners in a very short period of time. Past NSSF research has shown that in order to keep these new owners active and avoid them becoming lapsed participants, they will need information on topics such as how to safely own, operate and secure their new purchase. Additionally, these new gun owners will need an invitation to go to the range or to the field to learn about firearm safety, personal protection and the recreational side of gun ownership, so be sure to add a +ONESM and invite some of these first-time gun owners with you as the nice weather returns and social distancing requirements are relaxed.

For additional insights on the firearm industry, visit www.nssf.org/research. Please click here to print and share an infographic outlining the results of this survey.

‘We’ve been PLAYED’: Bethany Mandel takes the Left and their ‘scandal of the century’ APART in just two brutal tweets

Anyone else notice how looting a Nike store, setting buildings on fire, and assaulting cops magically did away with COVID? You know, the virus that was supposed to wipe out MILLIONS of Americans if we didn’t lock down and hide our elderly away from their families, shutter our businesses, and place Americans under house arrest?

Funny how it’s somehow ok for thousands of people to ‘protest’ literally on top of one another but we were bad people because we didn’t want our economy to completely implode.

Bethany Mandel said it far better:

 

No new COVID-19 cases from Lake of the Ozarks crowds, Missouri health director says

ST. LOUIS — The large crowds of people at the Lake of the Ozarks over Memorial Day weekend have not led to any more reported cases of COVID-19, Missouri’s top health official health department said Wednesday.

“The answer, to our knowledge, is no,” Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, said when asked whether more cases have come from the gatherings, photos of which showed throngs of people close together without wearing masks.

Williams answered questions during a daily news briefing in Jefferson City hosted by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson to address civil unrest and efforts to contain the coronavirus.

Pictures and videos of the lake crowds had prompted concern among the public and health officials.

One person, a Boone County resident, tested positive last week and likely was infectious while among the crowds. That is according to the Camden County Health Department, which has jurisdiction over much of the Lake of the Ozarks region……….

“Consider Destroying Your Enemy”: Project Veritas Infiltrates Antifa, Insanity Ensues

Didn’t we already get an exposé of extreme action and militancy from Antifa by Project Veritas this year? Oh no, wait — that was from among Bernie Sanders’ campaign workers. At least they’re keeping busy these days.

This time, Project Veritas really has infiltrated Antifa, or at least one of its cells in Oregon. Their undercover operative managed to get some video and audio of training sessions in which extremists were urged to gouge people’s eyes, assault them and to “consider like destroying your enemy.” The operative has since “retired” from Rose City Antifa, the video notes at the end, but he’s still doing “blacklock” to keep his identity hidden:

 

  • Nicholas Cifuni, Rose City Antifa: “Practice Things Like an Eye Gouge, it Takes Very Little Pressure to Injure Someone’s Eyes.”
  • Nicholas Cifuni, Rose City Antifa: “Police Are Going to Be Like: ‘Perfect, We Can Prosecute These [Antifa] F**kers, Look How Violent They Are.’ And Not That We [Antifa] Aren’t, But We Need to F**king Hide That Sh*t.”
  • Nicholas Cifuni, Rose City Antifa: “Consider Like, Destroying Your Enemy. Not Like Delivering a Really Awesome Right Hand, Right Eye, Left Eye Blow You Know. It’s Not Boxing, It’s Not Kickboxing, It’s Like Destroying Your Enemy.”
  • Ashes, Rose City Antifa: “The Whole Goal of This, Right, is to Get Out There and do Dangerous Things as Safely as Possible.”

For an organization that’s supposedly not organized, their op-sec is … pretty impressive. The meetings apparently manage to mostly protect identities, so Nicholas Cifuni might have some griping to do after this video release. Or perhaps he might have some talking to do, either to the FBI or to his attorney. Someone in law enforcement is bound to take an interest in this tape, and perhaps in determining the identities of a few others who appear in it. At any rate, it’s clear that the group is organized enough for strategic planning sessions and training, and like PV’s undercover operative says, this suggests some money behind the organizing, too.

Unlike other PV projects, it doesn’t appear that they have more in the can on Antifa. That may not matter long, however, because the Department of Justice has now started to look into their involvement in the unrest sweeping cities this week:

For the past couple of weeks, there have been plenty of people trying to deny any real organization behind Antifa and even their involvement in rioting, despite a long history of violent street action across the country. In the Twin Cities, our leadership tried pinning it on “white supremacists” from outside of the state, only to end up with egg on their faces when the data from arrests started coming to light. Even the SPLC ended up calling shenanigans on that claim. The DoJ’s focus on anarchists and Antifa will likely have a lot more success than attempts to shift the blame away from the extreme-leftist orgs that routinely conduct such operations, only not to this level of success.

5 June

1837 – Houston is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.

1864 – Battle of Piedmont: Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.

1893 – The trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and step-mother begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
“Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one,”

1917 – Conscription begins in the United States as “Army registration day”.

1942 – The United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.

1944 – More than 1000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

1945 – The Allied Control Council, the military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.

1967 – The Six-Day War begins: Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian air-fields in response to the mobilization of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border.

1968 – Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

2004 – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States dies at his home in Los Angeles

Assault weapons ban in Florida quashed by state Supreme Court

TALLAHASSEE — A proposal to ban assault weapons in Florida was rejected by the state Supreme Court on Thursday, with a majority of justices ruling that the proposal was misleading.

The proposal, spun out of the 2018 Parkland massacre, would have changed Florida’s Constitution to make it illegal for people to buy assault weapons or transfer those weapons to others.

In finding the proposal was misleading, a majority of justices took a narrow approach, honing in on just a few words at the end of the proposed ballot summary.

The ballot measure summary, which is limited to 75 words, states that the proposal “[e]xempts and requires registration of assault weapons lawfully possessed prior to this provision’s effective date.”

To the organizers, this wording meant that people currently owning assault weapons would be able to keep them if they registered the weapons. In the full text of the proposal, it clarifies that people can’t transfer those weapons to anyone.

The justices read the summary differently. To the 4-1 majority, the summary exempts the weapon itself. So, in theory, the weapon, if it’s registered, could be transferred to someone else.

But since their interpretation of the summary conflicts with the full text of the amendment, the measure itself is misleading, they said.

“Contrary to the ballot summary, the Initiative’s text exempts only ‘the person’s,’ meaning the current owner’s, possession of that assault weapon,” justices wrote.

Chief Justice Charles Canady and justices Ricky Polston, Alan Lawson and Carlos Muñiz were in the majority…………..

Lawyers for Attorney General Ashley Moody and the National Rifle Association had asked the Supreme Court to strike down the amendment. Moody called it “deceitful and misleading” last year because she said it could ban all sorts of weapons not typically considered assault rifles. Justices did not address that issue in their opinion.

The measure’s wording said the proposed amendment would have banned all “assault rifles,” which it defined as “semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition-feeding device.” It did not apply to handguns.

The opinion (PDF)

Robbery Victim Shoots, Kills Suspect In Mesquite After Being Shot

MESQUITE, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – Mesquite Police are investigating a deadly shooting in which a suspected armed robber was the one killed.

Police said around 1:35 a.m. on Tuesday, officers responded to a shooting call in the 2600 block of John West Road.

That’s when they came across the injured person who had called police.

He said he had been the victim of a robbery by three people he did not know.

He was shot and shot back at one of the suspects, killing the suspect, police said.

The deceased suspect has been identified and police said next of kin were being notified.

Two other suspects got away.

Politics as usual doesn’t stop for mere riots

ROD ROSENSTEIN ON FISA LIES: I’M ACCOUNTABLE BUT NOT RESPONSIBLE

This morning, [yesterday .ed] the Senate Judiciary Committee called Rod Rosenstein to testify about operation “crossfire hurricane,” the Mueller investigation, and related matters. I watched as much of it as I could stomach — a little less than two hours.

Rosenstein is a snake. He recommended that James Comey be fired (albeit for a different reason than the one Trump mentioned in an interview about Comey’s termination) and then made the firing of Comey the grounds for bringing in a special counsel.

Moreover, he selected Robert Mueller for the job even though President Trump had just rejected Mueller for the position of FBI director. Mueller was thus a disappointed office seeker.

Rosenstein gave Mueller a ridiculously broad writ to investigate, and stood by as Mueller hired one Trump-hating Democrat after another to staff his project. And Rosenstein declined to recuse himself even though he was a player in the firing of Comey — an important element of what he asked Mueller to investigate.

Rosenstein was snake-like again this morning. Most of the questions directed at him by Republicans had to do with his rubber stamping of applications to spy on Carter Page — applications that contained lies the Democrats had paid to procure and that were based on Russian disinformation.

Rosenstein told the Committee that he is “accountable” for this outrage, but not “responsible.” Pressed as to what he means by “accountable,” he said, in effect, he means appearing before the Committee to say he’s not responsible.

The Committee Democrats were their usual nauseating selves. They used their time mostly to (1) complain about the fact that the hearing is taking place and (2) bray about how Russia threatens our democracy.

But our democracy is threatened when partisans in the FBI who want to defeat a presidential candidate, and then want to “resist” the elected president, repeatedly lie to a court so they can spy on that candidate’s campaign. And, for all the noise about Russia, it doesn’t matter to Committee Dems that disinformation from Russians was at the heart of the FBI’s lying to the court and to others.

Of course, it doesn’t matter to them. The Russian disinformation was accumulated in a project paid for by Democrats.

The threat to our democracy, if any, posed by (1) the release by Russia of emails that reveal what Democrat operatives really think and (2) some posts dropped into the vast cesspool that is social media, pales in comparison to an effort by the FBI, predicated on Russian disinformation, to spy on and slander a presidential campaign — and later the elected president.

Yet the Democrats say there’s nothing to see here.

There’s plenty to see. However, the Senate Judiciary Committee isn’t the best vehicle for dealing with it.

John Durham is.

Michael Barone: As in the 1960s, violent rioting hurts the most disadvantaged.

“America is burning. But that’s how flowers grow.” So spoke Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

“Riots are an integral part of the country’s march toward progress.” So read a statement from the Democratic Committee of Fairfax County, Virginia, the affluent Washington suburb that has a population of 1 million.

“Please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful,” asked CNN’s Chris Cuomo. He’s apparently been too busy interviewing his brother, the governor of New York, to reread the First Amendment, which protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

I take a different view. I know how violent rioting, and that’s what we’ve been seeing, despite media attempts at hiding it, can destroy a city and ruin the lives of its residents. In the summer of 1967, I was an intern in the office of the mayor of Detroit when the city suffered a six-day riot in which 43 people died. I was at the mayor’s side in the so-called command center as radio calls came soon after nightfall. Police were abandoning 1 square mile after another.

The riot finally ended after some 12,000 federal and federalized national guard troops restored order. But most of Detroit has still never fully recovered. You can still see the abandoned commercial structures and the residential streets with burned-out houses and hauntingly empty lots.

Downtown and adjacent areas have enjoyed a revival, which I hope will continue. But the lesson is clear. Violent riots destroy people’s willingness to invest their lives and money in a city. Those most harmed are those who start off the most disadvantaged. Violence and crime are a confiscatory tax on what people would otherwise earn and accumulate over a lifetime.

The combined effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns and the last several days’ rioting threaten to destroy the efflorescence of gentrifying central cities, which has followed Rudy Giuliani’s demonstration in New York City, a quarter-century ago now, of how to reduce and nearly eliminate violent crime. The demonstration these last few days that it can be suddenly increased threatens to undo that progress for the next quarter-century.

The short-term political effects are harder to gauge. A Morning Consult poll showed a 58% to 30% majority, unusual in these polarized times, supporting “calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police forces.” Will President Trump and Republicans benefit from their calls for “law and order,” as President Richard Nixon and Republicans did in the years after the riots in Detroit and many other cities half a century ago? Maybe, and especially if folks like Healey and the Fairfax County message poster are seen as representing the Democratic Party.

But unlike Nixon in 1968, Trump in 2020 is the incumbent president. Incumbents’ first duty is to maintain order and keep things from spinning out of control. Trump might be in trouble if voters come to agree that, as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson put it in his Monday monologue, “No one in authority is keeping order.”

The late political scientist Nelson Polsby called 1968 — with its King and Kennedy assassinations, multi-city urban riots, and violence outside the Chicago Democratic convention — the most awful election year in American history. So far, 2020 is looking like a competitor for that title.

“The moment has come for our nation to deal with systemic racism,” Joe Biden tweeted. Doing so, he might argue, is the only way to get things under control. But one might ask why that moment didn’t come earlier — if not in the 36 years he served in the Senate, then in the eight years he served as an active and involved vice president in the administration of President Barack Obama.

The uncomfortable fact is that the election and reelection of the first African American president did not produce the improvement in racial relations most of the public surely hoped for.

Quite the contrary. In 2008, the Gallup Poll reported that 70% of non-Hispanic whites and 61% of blacks said “relations between blacks and whites” were very or somewhat good. Gallup showed similar results to that question in seven polls during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Feelings deteriorated under Obama. By 2015, only 45% of non-Hispanic whites and 51% of blacks said relations between the races were good.

One can debate how much of this deterioration was Obama’s fault, a subject for another day. But surely there was a widespread sense of disappointment that black-white relations had not become as harmonious as many expected or hoped. Violent rioting won’t help, do that, any more than they’ll grow flowers.

Are we being honest about who is to blame for systemic racism?

The Knoxville News Sentinel published a front-page photo on Wednesday with a caption about protests against “systemic police brutality against people of color.”

Systemic racism is being discussed a great deal in the wake of George Floyd’s death under the knee of now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

The video of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, as Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe, has ignited protests peaceful and violent, with the tragedy also being used by some as a way to destroy, steal – and worse. In one case, looters in St. Louis shot and killed David Dorn, a highly respected black retired police captain, as he was trying to protect a pawn shop.

It’s likely – just as it’s likely the sun comes up in the west – that when a good many people say “systemic racism,” they’re not including the politicians they like and the political party they favor.

One way to tell? Their attitude toward who has been running the systems.

On social media the other day, in discussions of George Floyd’s death, I saw an increasing number of references from Democrats and Democratic friends about the problem of systemic racism. I wrote the following post, citing only a few municipal examples:

“Below are pertinent questions, given the way the Democratic Party defines itself as being the party of tolerance and inclusion, and many Democrats’ characterizations of Republicans or conservatives as racists or racially insensitive.

“Minneapolis, Minn. has been under Democratic control since 1978. Chicago has been under Democratic control for 89 years; its present mayor is a black woman. Philadelphia has had Democratic mayors for 68 years; three of its last five mayors have been black men. Six of the last seven Atlanta, Ga., mayoral administrations were led by black Democratic mayors, and the present mayor is a black woman.

“A city runs its police department and other services; therefore, if there is so much ‘systemic racism’ in these organizations, why hasn’t it been corrected over so many years under Democratic leaders?

“Why aren’t these cities garden spots of racial tolerance, understanding, and virtue?”

There have been no answers.

In the wake of the 2015 riots in Baltimore after the death in police custody of a black man named Freddie Gray, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo interviewed black Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby, a Democrat.

Mosby’s answer, particularly to Cuomo’s last question below, is instructive, in that it’s clear he wasn’t expecting it:

MOSBY: This is much more than Freddie Gray. Freddie Gray was the culmination of, again, decades – the young guys out here showing their frustration and venting, being angry and doing it in an unproductive way, they are carrying their father’s burden. They’re carrying their grandfather’s burden. Again this is generations old of failed policies and broken promises.

CUOMO: You are a Democrat, right?

MOSBY: Yes.

CUOMO: Is this on you guys? The mayor is a Democrat, you’re a Democrat, 50 years of Democratic rule here, and is this an idea that you haven’t gotten it done as a party, as a structure here, and is that the focus on the blame?

MOSBY: Leadership is not based off of party lines, and at the end of the day, have individuals failed in this city, in this state, in this country? Yes. Have there been failed policies? Yes. Have things adversely affected places like Baltimore? Yes, whether you’re talking about Reaganomics, whether you’re talking about the contraband where they talk about stop and frisk procedures or mass incarceration. All of these things directly play into recidivism and play into the things that plague these communities. So it’s all about leadership and not necessarily about parties.

That’s a lengthy, rambling way around the barn to say he wasn’t going to give a specific answer to a direct question, because it’s about the party to which he belongs. However, if you go to the City of Baltimore’s website and click on the government directory, under “P” you’ll find the Baltimore Police Department, because it’s the city of Baltimore’s responsibility.

Cuomo’s question was pertinent. It went unanswered.

Why do we not want a knee on George Floyd’s neck? Not only because it’s wrong, but because we don’t want one on ours. If we want our rights respected, we must respect – and protect – the rights of others.

Unfortunately, in too many cases when people say they want an open and honest discussion about race in America, what they mean is they want an open and honest discussion only about what they say is wrong with people who aren’t them.

When people talk about the need to deal with systemic racism, if they’re not willing to talk about the systems run – often for generations by the political party or politicians they support – they aren’t interested in an open and honest conversation; instead, they want only to use the issue as a club against people who aren’t them.

If that’s the case, we’re condemned to never get off this tragedy of a merry-go-round.

Ocasio-Cortez Explodes Over Tom Cotton Op-Ed That Features Ideas Supported By Majority Of Americans

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lashed out at The New York Times for allowing Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to publish an op-ed in the newspaper that features ideas that are supported by the majority of Americans.

Cotton’s op-ed accurately describes the violent riots that have rocked Democrat-controlled inner cities across the country over the last week in response to the death of George Floyd, who died in police custody last week.

Cotton then describes how the violent riots are harming the most vulnerable communities and suggests that the solution to fixing the problem would by to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military to highly unstable areas that are not doing what it takes to fix the problem:

One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested. In fact, the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder. Nor does it violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which constrains the military’s role in law enforcement but expressly excepts statutes such as the Insurrection Act.

Ocasio-Cortez, along with leftist reporters at The New York Times, called James Bennet, Editorial Page Editor at The New York Times and brother to Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet (CO), for publishing the op-ed and made numerous false suggestions in doing so.

Ocasio-Cortez posed the following questions for Bennet:

  • Can you explain why you chose to publish misinformation in your pages in service of an “opinion” for state violence?
  • Can you explain your choice to publish it on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square?
  • Do you believe your Black colleagues saying your choices have put them at risk?
  • Other Qs: Did you consider the author‘s explicit call for violence (“no quarter”) when you chose to run this piece?
  • Is it your belief that you are not responsible for the factual integrity of what you publish?
  • Do you believe calling for violence is an “opinion”?

Ocasio-Cortez was unable to list off any of the “misinformation” that she claimed was contained in the piece…………

Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed that the op-ed, which was published on June 3, was published on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre, which took place on June 4th and 5th in 1989.

Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion that Cotton’s idea somehow puts blacks “at risk” suggests that only blacks are responsible for the violent riots and looting that is taking place.

Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that Cotton explicitly calls for violence is also false.

Cotton correctly noted in his op-ed that the majority of Americans, including nearly half of all Democrat voters, support deploying the military to stop the violent riots.

George-Soros-Backed Leftwing Radical Attorney General Kim Gardner Has Released Every Single Rioter and Looter Arrested in St. Louis

Little background:

George Soros realized that it was very expensive and very hard to attempt to support so many leftwing legislators that they could change the law to make crime, well, not a crime.

So he settled on a new strategy. One that worked. He put a huge amount of money into the campaigns of leftwing, pro-crime prosecutors and attorney generals.

He wouldn’t bother to get laws changed — too difficult! No legislator wants to face a campaign ad against him pointing out, accurately, that he voted to decriminalize crime.

No, he’d just bankroll dozens (hundreds?) of leftwing DAs and AGs to ignore the laws entirely, claiming that prosecutorial discretion gives the absolute power to simply declare that The Law Is No Longer The Law.

Like I said: It worked.

St. Louis’ Kim Gardner is one of George Soros’ success stories.

She accepted several hundred thousand dollars in in-kind donations in the form of positive campaign ads in her favor — to allow her to beat other moderate Democrats who were not pro-criminal in the primary — which were paid for by Stalinesquely named “Safety & Justice Committee,” which is devoted to releasing hardened dangerous criminals from jail to kill citizens.

This committee is funded by George Soros.

Who also funded the Ferguson rioters.

Joe Steiger, president of the police union, said he believes that Soros also funded out-of-state activists to escalate protests into riots in Ferguson after the Aug. 9, 2014, police shooting of Michael Brown, 18.”It’s pretty insulting,” Steiger said Friday of the contribution to Gardner. “It’s more important for people to realize that calling for ‘black lives matter’ and ‘blue lives matter’ is not an opposite proposition.”

When Gardner faced ethical complaints and possibly worse due to her shady political witchhunt of former governor Greitens, who descended upon St. Louis but a bunch of Gardner’s classmates from the Soros Finishing School for Young Maoists.

The convergence of the prosecutors, all supported by the same patron, demonstrates the emergence of a national alliance united by shared goals of overhauling the U.S. criminal justice system with an eye toward reducing or eliminating sentences for drug offenders and others.Aramis Ayala, the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties in Florida, was on hand to support Gardner. Ayala was backed by $1.4 million from Soros. Stephanie Morales, a Virginia commonwealth attorney, was also in attendance and received $100,000 from Soros’s Justice & Public Safety PAC. Diana Becton, a prosecutor in Contra Costa County in California, also benefited from $1.5 million the financier poured into the state to support progressive prosecutors.

By the way: Soros also bribes “conservatives” online to accuse you of “anti-semitism” for accurately describing his efforts to fund the revolutionary left wing.

Despite the fact that he is not Jewish and in fact helped Nazis loot treasure from captive Jews.

But hey — his checks clear. So it’s antisemitic, now, to point out publicly available facts.

Well, with all this background established, you will not be much surprised to learn that Soros’ personal AG has set free every single fucking rioter and looter the police arrested.

‘1992 Roof Koreans’ segue into ‘2020 Roof Mexicans’
And we now come to the times when Americans have their own version of ‘Auto Defensas‘, which, when you get right down to it, isn’t such a bad idea anyway.

Armed Neighborhood Groups Form In The Absence Of Police Protection

Cesia Baires knocks on the three apartment doors above her restaurant and a neighboring taqueria just before curfew.

A woman opens the door. Her two young children are inside.

“Remember,” she says to them in Spanish. “Same thing as yesterday. I’m going to come check on you. If there’s anything you guys need, give us a call right away.”

Meanwhile, a few men climb through the window and on to the roof to set up semi-automatic weapons as the curfew begins in Minneapolis. It’s something Baires never thought she would have to do as a small-business owner, but then she found out these apartments were occupied.

“Material things we can replace, that’s true,” she says. “But there are families up here. These aren’t empty buildings.”

As break-ins and fires raged in the first days of mass protests over the killing of yet another black man in an encounter with police, the city seemed to descend into a security vacuum. She says the police disappeared from this neighborhood. That’s when she and others started forming patrols to include people with licensed weapons.

“I’m the one that’s checking everyone,” she says. “If you’re up here with a gun and you’re not supposed to be here and you don’t have a license to carry, then I don’t allow you to even go to the rooftop. Only people with guns are on the rooftop.”

But is this a path to vigilante justice?

“It’s not something that I would want, but we’ve seen how, for at least the first couple days, we were left alone,” she says. “There were no cops that would come around. So what are we to do? Just stand there and do nothing?”

Her group — Security Latinos De La Lake — is one of many neighborhood watch groups sprouting up across the Twin Cities and in other parts of the country as dozens of mostly peaceful protests continue every day, sometimes in the face of violence from law enforcement: tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray. The Twin Cities have largely calmed, but Baires says she wasn’t even able to get through to 911 until Monday.

When asked about the lack of police presence, a spokesman for the Minneapolis Police Department said in an email that the department is facing an “unprecedented situation.” He added that citizens who need help should call 911. The department is also aware of these neighborhood groups. In fact, the police chief and officers have met with some, and the department is not concerned as long as they’re following the law………..

 

Florida, NRA will bypass mediation in challenge to Parkland gun law

The National Rifle Association and Florida officials will avoid mediation in a lawsuit challenging a 2018 state law that prevents people under age 21 from purchasing firearms, under an order issued this week by a federal judge.

The age restriction was included in a law passed in response to the Feb. 14, 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, is accused of killing 14 students and three faculty members with a semi-automatic weapon at his former school.

The law raised the age from 18 to 21 to purchase “long guns,” such as rifles and shotguns. Federal law already banned licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to people under 21, and the state law broadened that to also prevent private sales of handguns to people under 21, according to court documents.

The NRA challenged the law, alleging that the age restriction is an unconstitutional violation of people’s Second Amendment rights to “purchase firearms to defend themselves, their families, and their homes.”

Lawyers for Attorney General Ashley Moody argue that the law doesn’t violate the Second Amendment because, while people between 18 and 21 cannot purchase guns, they may still “keep and use” firearms “for any lawful purpose.”

Lawyers for Moody and the NRA filed a joint motion last week asking U.S. District Judge Mark Walker to allow them to sidestep court-ordered mediation, saying the process “would be fruitless.” The two sides’ positions “are not reconcilable, and no middle ground exists between them,” lawyers wrote in a joint motion “to abrogate” the mediation requirement.

“Accordingly, the issues involved in this case are not amenable to mediation. Mediation would not be a productive exercise, nor would it be a worthwhile use of the parties’, or the court’s, resources,” the lawyers wrote.

In Monday’s order granting the request, Walker wrote “this court finds good cause has been shown why the mediation requirement should be waived.”

10 Years Ago Today, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Blasted Off for the First Time

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has certainly earned its place in history. Falcon 9 is the first orbital class rocket to be reused and the first commercial rocket to ferry human passengers to the ISS.

Each two-stage Falcon 9 rocket is powered by a first stage with a suite of nine Merlin engines, which use kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen propellants, and a second stage powered by a single Merlin vacuum engine. The 230-foot-tall rocket weighs a staggering 1,207,920 pounds and can shuttle a payload weighing 50,265 pounds to low-Earth orbit and a payload of 8,860 pounds to Mars. At sea-level, Falcon 9 can generate a whopping 1.7 million pounds of thrust.

June 4th marks 10 years since the rocket’s inaugural test flight. Since 2010, Falcon 9 has launched 84 times and has safely returned to Earth 45 times. Thirty-one of those rockets have been recycled and flown again. Falcon 9’s reusability revolutionized spaceflight, making it cheaper and more efficient.

 

In Tough Times, Support American-Made Products

We are all facing tough times today, and that of course applies to our “made in the USA” businesses. Both sportsmen and women should consider buying only American-made products next time they need to purchase ammunition, firearms, or outdoor gear. The financial fallout from the COVID-19 virus will most likely be felt for years to come. Let’s do all we can to support our home-grown businesses no matter the product.

When it comes to the shooting and outdoor industry, below is just a sampling of American companies that have excellent track records and products to boot:

Henry Repeating Arms
Henry Repeating Arms is a company that stands on its slogan of “made in America or not made at all.” Henry offers a wide variety of quality lever, pump, and single action long guns, as well as its famous AR-7 survival semi auto rimfire. Henry truly supports communities and the USA through the its ongoing tradition of giving back. The company continually demonstrates this through their “Guns for Great Causes” program. Take a look a Henry Repeating Arms the next time you’re looking for a unique firearm.

Federal Premium Ammunition
If you’re a hunter or shooter you have no doubt used Federal Ammunition. I have personally used it for everything from plinking with my favorite 22 to hunting waterfowl and big game hunting. The company has been around for nearly 100 years since its beginnings in 1922 and is based in Anoka, Minnesota. At this year’s 2020 SHOT Show the company introduced several new lines of ammo for every application from hunting to self-defense

Leupold
I’ve used Leupold rifle scopes for years in a wide variety of field conditions. Located in Beaverton, Oregon, the company is more than 100 years old. All of their rifle scopes, binoculars, and spotting scopes have a lifetime guarantee. I can personally attest to the quality of optics and Leopold’s customer service including lifetime warranty on riflescopes, binoculars and spotting scopes.

Coleman
There is little arguing that the name Coleman is synonymous with hunting camps, summer fishing trips, and classic lanterns — and has been for 120 years. The company started out in Kingfisher, Oklahoma in 1900 and now headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. Known for all camping essentials including, tents, sleeping bags, lanterns, coolers and more. If you’ve spent any time in the field over the years, chances are you’ve used a Coleman product of some kind.

Case Knives
Over 130 years of making classic knives. Not sure what else to say except that Case pocket knives have been some of the most carried, collected, and admired for well over a century now. The company’s headquarters is in Bradford, Pennsylvania, but was originally located in Little Valley, New York. Attesting to the admiration of Case knives, there is currently a Case collectors’ club with thousands of members nationwide.

Only the Beginning
This short list is only the beginning. There are hundreds of USA-based companies that produce all manner of gear and equipment for the great outdoors. They employ tens of thousands of Americans, working hard at making products that help us all get more out of our time in places less traveled. Let’s do our best to support them in these challenging times.