“The very existence of flame throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves; Gee, I’d sure like to set those people on fire over there, but I’m way too far away to get the job done.”
-George Carlin

By the way, flame throwers are not restricted by federal and most state laws.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States….Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America
— Gazette of the United States, October 14, 1789.

Biden’s FBI Reportedly Altering Murder Data to Suit Gun Violence Narrative.

In October, Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) broke the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had stealth-revised its reported violent crime data for 2022 to show a 4.5% increase, rather than the originally reported 2.1% decrease, for that year. Among other things, that adjustment added 1,699 more murders for 2022. Given that the vast majority of murder crimes are reported, Lott asks, “How do you miss 1,699 murders?”

Now, another source, Just Facts Daily (JFD), a “research institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies,” has done a dive into homicide reporting and uncovered what appears to be an unusually large number of “homicides recorded on death certificates that are not reported as murders by Biden’s FBI.”

As context, the federal Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics explains that the United States relies on “two national data collection systems to track detailed information on homicides: the [FBI’s] Supplementary Homicide Reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Fatal Injury Reports.” The Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) are part of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, while the Fatal Injury Reports are developed from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), a public health-based resource maintained at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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Data Proves Conclusively That Those Who Carry Firearms Almost Never Commit Crimes.

When the landmark Bruen ruling was first published in June of 2022, politicians in the few remaining holdout states that didn’t issue concealed carry permits to regular citizens had a collective meltdown.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it “outrageous,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said it was a “radical decision,” and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin described it as “bad constitutional law and even worse for public safety.”

Gun control groups were also apoplectic. Giffords claimed the ruling would would “escalate gun violence,” “spur unlawful militia activity,” “embolden those inclined to vigilante justice,” “increase violence at protests,” and cause “more domestic violence and hate crimes.”

Antigun groups like Giffords, which now argue in court that Bruen allows all their favored gun control laws, thoroughly condemned the ruling when it was published.

Antigun politicians, acting with an urgency they don’t seem to have for real problems like rampant retail theft and homelessness, passed laws in five states that made concealed carry permits pointless by banning carry at almost every relevant public place. Those laws immediately faced lawsuits (including the one CRPA is working on challenging California’s law), and all are partially enjoined to varying degrees as the litigation proceeds.

Yet something funny happened after 2022. Instead of the proverbial “blood in the streets” that was predicted, the national homicide rate dropped. This happened everywhere; in the antigun states forced to issue carry permits for the first time, in pro-gun states like Ohio and Florida which went further and adopted “constitutional carry” (meaning no permit is required to carry a gun if you can legally own one), and even in individual cities like Philadelphia that began issuing permits more liberally as a result of the litigation.

Philadelphia’s homicides are falling sharply as the lockdown-era crimewave recedes. Source: https://www.phillypolice.com/crimestats

Miami even had its lowest year for homicides since it began keeping track of them in the 1940s. So why were the antigun politicians and their allies in the gun control industry so hilariously wrong? Why didn’t every argument turn into a shootout? Why didn’t our homicide rate spike?

In short: because Americans with concealed carry permits almost never commit crimes.

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BLUF
Only when we’ve plowed the soil of the Deep State with salt can we talk about a truce. But the damage personal damage we inflict over the next four years, in terms of jail time, bankruptcies, and legal judgments, must so terrify that second tier of Deep Staters that no matter what another batch of Democrat operatives cook up, they will refuse to get involved.

Op-Ed: Lawfare Will End When the Left Is Too Terrified to Contemplate Continuing It

Now that Donald Trump is headed to the White House, he has to make a decision vital to the Republic’s health. Over the last eight years, President Trump and his allies have been the subject of a non-stop stream of lawfare attacks designed to cripple him while he was president and later, after he peacefully turned over the reigns of power to the addled Joe Biden, to imprison him for what could have been the rest of his life.

The campaign to jail him was clearly a conspiracy involving Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, GA, District Attorney Fani Willis. The extent to which the civil cases against him were coordinated with the criminal cases has never, as far as I know, been explored, but it is hard to imagine that it did not exist.

This use of the judicial system to attempt to impoverish and imprison political opponents is foreign to the United States and to its founding principles. The decision that Trump has to make is to either ignore the attacks calculated to ruin his life or should he be faithful to the promise he made at CPAC in March 2023 and seek retribution.

In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add I am your Warrior, I am your Justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your Retribution.

Andy McCarthy, writing in National Review, makes the case that Trump should end lawfare by ending lawfare.

You don’t have to be an admirer of Bannon or Navarro to see these prosecutions as toxic partisan lawfare. Or to understand how, in the end, this helped Trump with voters

— not because Americans have affection for these men, but because the Democrats’ unabashed exploitation of the government’s law enforcement apparatus for their own political advantage was despotic and frightening.

It’s not the sort of thing that shouldn’t be done to our side; it’s a betrayal of justice that shouldn’t be done, period, full stop.

Other than being wrong, McCarthy argues that the actions of all public officials have the same immunity that the Supreme Court declared applied to President Trump; see BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules on Presidential Immunity.

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How We Know Guns Aren’t Albuquerque’s Problem

When New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham took her animosity toward the Second Amendment and ramped it up to 11, trying to ban all lawful carry in Albuquerque, she said it was in response to the rampant violent crime in the city. She called it a public health crisis and used the draconian restrictions we saw during COVID-19 to justify this particular draconian measure.

And, of course, she got slapped down over it.

But it’s clear that she never got the message regarding the right to keep and bear arms nor the fact that while the city does have a problem, it’s not guns that are causing it.

In fact, it’s probably something else fueling a lot of the problems.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office seized 65,000 fentanyl pills and three guns on Tuesday during a search of an apartment off East Central.

Richard Cortez, 44, who authorities say lived in the apartment, is charged with drug trafficking and three counts of possession of a firearm by a felon.

Michael Herrera, 18, who was inside the apartment at the time of the raid, is charged with resisting, evading or obstructing an officer for not surrendering “for over 30 minutes.”

Both men were booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. Neither man had an attorney listed in online court records.

Court records show Cortez was sentenced to prison for drug trafficking in 2010 and for years afterward bounced between prison and probation after repeated violations.

In 2016, a BCSO deputy arrested Cortez on felony drug possession, according to court records. Cortez faced another potential prison stretch, but the case was dismissed, and Cortez was set free after the deputy didn’t show up for court.

Prosecutors filed a motion to detain Cortez until trial following Tuesday’s seizure, calling him “dangerous.”

“The defendant is a major dealer of fentanyl in the Albuquerque area,” according to the motion. “He had three firearms ready for use.”

How could he possibly have gotten guns? Gun control laws are in place to prevent people like this from getting guns, after all.

Then again, there are laws intended to prevent people from getting 65,000 fentanyl pills, too, and we see how well they worked.

See, the issue with most violent crime is that the violence is often ancillary to something else. In the 1990s, when the homicide rate was so ridiculous, it was gangs and drugs. To some degree, that’s still the case. Convicted felons aren’t reformed, they’re just put back on the streets where they seek out ways to continue with their previous criminal endeavors.

In this case, Cortez was a known felon with a long and prodigious history as a criminal, only to be able to become a “major dealer of fentanyl in the Albuquerque area.”

It looks to me like putting him right back on the streets time and time again wasn’t really doing all that much, and knowing a deputy didn’t show up for court in 2016, which got his case dismissed makes it that much worse.

Let’s remember something, folks. If fentanyl is so heavily controlled–and yes, it is–and people like this jackwagon can get it, why does anyone believe you can keep someone like this disarmed? What makes them think that suddenly a law will be passed that will make it so he can’t get firearms from any source?

It’s insane.

Then again, what about gun control isn’t?

Smith & Wesson Gets Booted Off Facebook

One of the oldest firearms manufacturers in the United States, with generations of history supplying legal firearms worldwide to law enforcement, police and other government organizations, not to mention millions of civilian customers, has had their Facebook account shut down.

Getting the boot

According to a post that Smith & Wesson made on The Social Media Platform Formerly Known As Twitter (“X,” as Elon Musk wants us to call it now), the historic manufacturer saw their Facebook account canceled in late November, 2024. Here’s their announcement, verbatim:

Despite our extensive efforts and resources spent on trying to adhere to Facebook’s ever-changing community guidelines on firearms, our account was suspended indefinitely on Friday, November 22nd, 15 years after its original creation.

In an era where free speech and the right to bear arms are under constant attack, we want to thank @elonmusk and @X for supporting free speech and our constitutional rights guaranteed by the 1st and 2nd Amendments.

While we work to reinstate our account, we encourage our 1.6 million Facebook followers and fans to seek out platforms that represent these shared values.

https://twitter.com/Smith_WessonInc/status/1861856272657822178

 

They posted the following image of their ban announcement as well:

And for his part, Twitter/X owner Elon Musk replied to Smith & Wesson’s post by saying “We restored the gun emoji and believe in the Constitution 🔫🔫.”

An ongoing trend

While some readers might be surprised by this news, they shouldn’t be. Meta-owned Facebook is just one of many online platforms that continue to enact restrictions on legal firearm owners—I myself have received warnings for posting photos from a hunting stand. YouTube creators have seen their channels targeted by anti-firearm restrictions in recent months. In an era of political and social instability, Big Tech appears to be doubling down on its slow march to ban public displays of firearms, instead of walking back policies that discriminate against gun owners.

You must understand, therefore, that there are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. The first way is natural to men, and the second to beasts. But as the first way often proves inadequate one must have recourse to the second.
— Niccolo Machiavelli