BLUF
Ultimately, there are no easy solutions to the complex problem of school shootings. But we can make our schools far safer without sacrificing our fundamental freedoms

The Best Way To Prevent School Shootings Is Armed Staff

In the wake of tragic school shootings like Apalachee High School in Georgia, our nation grapples with a critical question: How do we best protect our children?

Sadly, too often, the debate devolves quickly into partisan talking points. The Biden-Harris administration seized on this tragedy to call for more laws that would restrict Americans’ right to self-defense, but which would have done nothing to stop this shooting. In fact, at both the federal and state levels, it is already illegal for a 14-year-old to purchase and possess a firearm, but, neither those laws nor others, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, deterred this evil.

More recently on the debate stage, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris attempted to amend her clear anti-gun record, despite previously voicing support for confiscating guns as a candidate in 2020.

It’s crucial to set politics aside and approach this debate with facts.

The reality is that many of our schools remain soft targets, vulnerable to those intent on causing harm. “Gun-free zone” signs offer false security, deterring only the law-abiding. We need a multifaceted strategy that hardens schools as targets while empowering responsible adults to protect themselves and those in their care.

Continue reading “”

Jill Biden’s Cosplaying As President Just Got Much Weirder

The saga of Jill Biden cosplaying as president of the United States just got a lot weirder, and this time the press is involved.

On Friday, questions arose after she was spotted sitting at the head of the table and leading a cabinet meeting at the White House. That it was the first in over a year only made the situation more perplexing. Joe Biden doesn’t meet with his cabinet for that long and when he finally does, his unelected wife takes the lead? Then, later on the same day, it was revealed that her name was being embossed on honorary legislation folders as if she were equal to the president.

She wasn’t done, though. In what appears to be a very coordinated campaign at this point, MSNBC put out a slobbering segment in which Jill Biden gives “journalist” Peter Alexander an Oval Office tour. The two are also seen discussing the “transfer of power” as if her opinion on such matters is relevant.

To call all of this odd is an understatement. Jill Biden taking a leading role in multiple aspects of the administration all on the same day is too obvious to count as a coincidence. There’s a message being sent here. What exactly that is is up for consideration, but I suspect Joe Biden’s relinquishing of the presidential nomination to Kamala Harris has something to do with it.

The ride is almost over for his wife. Those Air Force One rides and taxpayer-funded vacations end in January. Perhaps she just wants to make a few memories, inappropriate and head-scratching as they may be. Of course, the other possibility is far worse. Namely, that Joe Biden is so completely unable to fulfill the duties of his office that Jill Biden is having to step in “unofficially” in a much more public fashion.

I’m not sure what’s worse, that Americans are having to deal with all this amid an array of serious issues facing the country or that members of the press are absolutely giddy about it. Check out this picture of Alexander in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race while insisting he’s completely mentally fit to serve and that he’s the most “consequential” president in modern history, and hacks like Alexander are taking pictures at the Resolute Desk smiling like a five-year-old. Interviewing Jill Biden would have been a great opportunity to drill down on her husband’s escalating senility and how he can remain in office despite being unable to run for reelection. Instead, like a good little lackey, Alexander tossed some softballs and got his novelty photograph as if he went to an amusement park.

It’s pathetic. This is not what journalism is supposed to be. This is also not what a First Lady is supposed to be doing. Are there no serious reporters left in the mainstream press who will bother to ask what in the heck is going on?

This Is the Most Deliciously Devious Part About Israel’s Exploding Pager Attacks

As a spy thriller fan, I love reading about the clever gadgets the good guys use to vanquish the bad guys, which is why I’ve been fascinated by the story of Hezbollah’s deadly exploding pagers. How did Israel pull this off? Was it really Israel who did this? This attack is even more exacting than the exploding bed at the Iranian “safe” house.

Now we’re learning more details of the attacks, and they’re as impressive as they are diabolical.

Three thousand beepers exploded this week, killing a bunch of Hezbollah terrorists and some innocents. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon lost an eye in the attack.

After that attack, Hezbollah began using walkie-talkies, and they exploded.

When the terrorists decided to meet in person in Lebanon Friday, someone bombed the meeting.

Israel has not confirmed it carried out the attacks, nor is it likely they will ever lay claim to them, but U.S. intelligence officials who talked to their favorite intelligence mouthpiece, the New York Times, claimed Israel pulled it off. Time will tell what the truth is.

This operation has obviously been planned for quite some time. Though Israeli intelligence agencies were completely caught off guard by Hezbollah’s Iran-backed October 7 attack, they appear to be trying to make up for that huge intelligence debacle.

Defense One reports that Hezbollah had a deal with a Taiwan company, Gold Apollo, to supply the Islamic supremacist terror organization with pagers. Someone probably needs to have a little chat with the Taiwan company that sells AR-924 pagers to terrorists, but they told whoever asked that they weren’t responsible for the pagers.

They pointed the finger of blame at a Hungarian firm called BAC Consulting KFT. This appears to be a shell company run by friendly or Israeli intelligence. Indeed, multiple Israeli cutouts may have been involved in the manufacturing and sales of the devices.

The Times reports that Israel “did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse.”

That’s right. The shell company sold the rigged pagers manufactured by the good guys.

And this is the best part of the story—if you hate Islamo-Nazi terrorists, anyway—Hezbollah paid for its own rigged and exploding pagers.

Defense One characterized the “supply chain hack” operation as “legendary.” The hackers installed “tiny quantities of explosives into at least 3,000 pagers specially ordered by Iran-backed Hezbollah militants across Lebanon and Syria.” Legendary, indeed.

The pagers reportedly were laced with the chemical PETN.

The National Institutes of Health says that “Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), CASRN 78-11-5, belongs to the class of compounds known as organic nitrates. It is used mainly as a demolition explosive and in the manufacture of detonating fuses and blasting caps…and is the main ingredient in Semtex, a plastic explosive.” Ah, Semtex. That’s a big boom-boom right there.

And the terrorist outfit handed out the pagers after they inspected them and still couldn’t detect the Semtex.

I guarantee you this episode will be in every spy thriller novel for 20 years forever.

The Times reports Iran’s terror proxies have been on their heels for a few years. The paper report that “in 2020, for example, Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist using an A.I.-assisted robot controlled remotely via satellite.”

Like Afghanistan terror groups did after they realized U.S. drones could track their phones, Hezbollah has gone low-tech, hence the pagers, walkie-talkies, and in-person meetings.

More soberly, however, the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies killed more than a dozen bad guys, and 2,700 people were wounded, including some kids.

This was the reported breakdown of the casualties.

I guess some of the guys who lived won’t have the balls to reproduce and taint humanity’s gene pool anymore.

When you start feeling sorry for these guys, just remember what their Hezbollah buddies did to families, babies, and women on October 7, and then you’ll snap right out of it.

And Israel literally made them pay for their own deaths.

Oracle Founder Larry Ellison Imagines a Dystopian Future of Constant AI-Powered Surveillance to Enforce “Best Behavior”

Larry Ellison, co-founder, chairman of the board, and chief technical officer of Oracle, has revealed where he sees the world going in one particular aspect – continuous, real-time control of people.

It is a dark place of “AI” (machine learning, ML) mass surveillance, which Ellison wants to make sure is served by his company by way of providing the fundamental infrastructure. It isn’t irrelevant to this story that Oracle’s portfolio also includes multi-decade contacts with the US government.

Oracle is not often mentioned when Big Tech is talked about, but it is one of the biggest in the industry. The reason for staying out of the limelight is that, unlike its peers with big stakes in the social media space, Oracle’s business is database software and cloud computing.

This is the reason Ellison sees the opportunity to place his company, already involved in building AI models, at the center of producing the tools to make this nightmarish scenario of real-time ML-powered surveillance a reality.

Ellison spoke during the Oracle financial analyst gathering to suggest that the company’s databases will become indispensable for the AI infrastructure, and that proof for that is in companies like X and Microsoft having already picked Oracle to provide this service.

“Maximizing AI’s public security capabilities” is what’s on Ellison’s mind, and he decided to sell this by giving police accountability as an example.

The system would prevent police abuse, he said – but the way “AI” combined with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure arrives there is perplexing, to say the least. It involves police body cameras that are always recording (including in bathrooms, and during meals), always transmitting back to Oracle – and with no option to stop this feed.

“Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times” – that’s another way of putting it, and Ellison did.

But who would build such an expensive and elaborate surveillance system just to use it in law enforcement? Not Ellison.

The cops will be on their best behavior, but so will (the rest) of the citizens, he promised. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting,” Ellison added.

Israel Confirms Beirut Airstrike

The Israeli air force killed senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil in an airstrike on Beirut. Aqil was in a bunker several feet below a residential building where he was meeting with the top brass of Hezbollah’s operations array and the leadership of the Radwan Force. Aqil was the head of Hezbollah’s military operations and commander of the elite Radwan force. Israel says that he was the commander of the operation to invade the Galilee in an October 7-style strike.

Alongside Aqil, the top brass of Hezbollah’s operations array and the leadership of the Radwan Force were killed in the strike, according to the military. In a statement, the IDF says Aqil was the head of Hezbollah’s military operations, the acting commander of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, and the head of a plan to invade the Galilee.

“Aqil and the commanders who were eliminated were among the architects of the ‘plan for the occupation of the Galilee,’ in which Hezbollah planned to raid Israeli territory, occupy the communities of the Galilee, murder and kill innocents, similar to what the Hamas terror organization carried out in the murderous massacre on October 7,” the IDF says in the statement.

Aqil was also wanted by the United States for his role in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut as well as directing the taking of U.S. hostages in Lebanon during the 1980s. The targeted killing of Aqil is one more sign that war between Israel and Hezbollah is liable to break out at any time.

Continue reading “”

Legal Showdown Looms Over Suppressor Bans & 2nd Amendment Rights: Carlin Anderson vs. Kwame Raoul

Editor’s Note: Judge Stephen McGlynn is currently presiding over several consolidated cases challenging Illinois’ “assault weapons” ban, including Harrel v. Raoul, Barnett v. Raoul, Langley v. Kelly, and Foster v. Raoul. These cases collectively question the constitutionality of the state’s restrictions on firearms and large-capacity magazines under the Second Amendment.

Additionally, Judge McGlynn is overseeing Carlin Anderson vs. Kwame Raoul, referenced below, which challenges Illinois’ ban on suppressors. The outcome of this case holds significant implications for gun rights advocates nationwide, particularly regarding the legal status of suppressors as protected “arms.”

The ongoing battle for Second Amendment rights took center stage in the courtroom once again in the 2nd Amendment challenge to Illinois’ assault weapons ban.  However, as that case proceeds, Mark Smith notes some of the takeaways that may impact the upcoming case of Carlin Anderson vs. Kwame Raoul.

At the heart of the 2nd case, Carlin Anderson vs. Kwame Raoul is the legal conflict of Illinois’ ban on suppressors—a critical piece of legislation that has ignited passionate debates about its constitutionality. The implications of this case extend far beyond state lines, with the potential to set a precedent in suppressor regulation across the country. U.S. District Court Judge Stephen McGlynn’s courtroom has become a pivotal battleground in determining whether these firearms accessories, often demonized by big Hollywood and anti-gun advocates, fall under the protection of the Second Amendment.

Continue reading “”

Credit Where Due: VP Harris Finally Pressed By Media on Illegally Obtained Firearms

It was quite surprising to hear it when it happened but Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, was fact checked in real time about the real drivers of criminal gun violence. She was tripped up on her answer because the journalist pressing her wasn’t buying the vice president’s tired talking points.

It happened during an interview of the vice president at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) after one of the questioners asked Vice President Harris about her gun control platform.

For those needing any reminding, the Biden-Harris administration has been the most fervently anti-gun administration in history. Vice President Harris, as the administration’s “gun czar,” has infamously instituted a “whole-of-government” attack on the firearm and ammunition industry and the Second Amendment. She is colluding with gun control groups – who literally operate out of her office. As President Joe Biden’s “gun czar,” Harris has continually failed to bring criminals to account for their crimes.

Vice President Kamala Harris tries to claim to voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and other close-polling states that she “isn’t taking anyone’s guns away from them” while in the same breath calling for a ban and confiscation of an entire class of lawfully made and legally purchased firearms – the most popular rifle in America. That’s just about the extent of her “plan” to reduce criminal gun violence. But finally, she received pushback for specifics that voters deserve to hear.

Please Answer the Question

Whenever Vice President Kamala Harris has been asked about criminals committing gun crimes, her response is predictably always the same. She calls for more gun control on law-abiding Americans, lists a kitchen sink full of anti-Second Amendment talking points and blames Congress for inaction. This is despite the fact that for the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration, Democrats controlled both chambers in Congress and The White House. She never mentions that not even all Democrats in the U.S. Senate supported a bill to reinstate, and expanded, a so-called “assault weapons” ban. That doesn’t stop the vice president from repeating those calls. But the interviewers at the NABJ wanted more specifics from her.

“In cities like Philadelphia, handguns are responsible for most homicides and violent crime,” NPR’s Tonya Mosely began. “How will you address the issue of the use of handguns because a push for an assault weapons ban only addresses, um, a significant but small part of the problem?”

The vice president began her answer by repeating the talking point that she and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz were both gun owners. She claimed “we’re not trying to take anyone’s guns away from them. But we do need an assault weapons ban.” As she continued to filibuster her answer about how Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) need to be banned and universal background checks must be implemented, Mosely interrupted and pressed her further.

“Respectfully, we do understand that. But I’m asking specifically about handguns because many of those handguns aren’t purchased at places that run background checks. In many of those instances those handguns aren’t bought lawfully.”

The vice president was stumped. She had no response to the logical reasoning that the firearm industry continues to highlight when calls for gun control are made – that criminals do not follow the law. NSSF has reported on Department of Justice data that shows 90 percent of firearms used by criminals in the commission of their crime were obtained through illicit means and not at a firearm retailer. It’s also one of the main reasons why universal background checks won’t work. That and the fact that a national firearm registry is prohibited by law under the Gun Control Act of 1986 and the Brady Act of 1993.

Continue reading “”