Safety – Page 25 – MILESFORTIS

When CNN Quotes Everytown Troublesome Facts Kick In

Over the weekend, CNN reported on gun control laws passed so far in 2022, adding this reference, “There is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings, according to a January study published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit focused on gun violence prevention.”

However, an article in the Keene Sentinel, a newspaper serving southwest New Hampshire, reveals a small problem with Everytown’s research that might raise an eyebrow, if not some serious questions. Headlined “New Hampshire paradox: State gun laws remain loose as violence rate remains low,” the story’s lead paragraph tells a different tale.

“National rankings indicate New Hampshire has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, and yet the state also maintains a low rate of firearm violence,” the newspaper says.

The report also quotes State Senate President Chuck Morse (R-Salem), who told the newspaper’s editorial board recently that gun-related violence is a problem of people, not guns.

“I don’t believe it’s a gun problem because look at New Hampshire.,” Morse reportedly stated. “We have more guns than probably any other state per capita. We have open carry, we passed constitutional carry, and we’re one of the safest states in the nation.”

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Leftist Attacks on Law and Order are Precipitating a Shift in Favor of the Right to Self-Defense

On the morning of July 19, news broke that Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg dropped a second-degree murder charge against 61-year-old, bodega clerk, Jose Alba. Earlier in the month, Alba had been arrested in Manhattan and charged with murder after defending himself from 35-year-old Austin Simon’s attack.

Alba’s saga is just one of many instances sending the same message. It is one that Soros-backed prosecutors and the left have been pushing for years: you do not have the right to defend yourself, ever.

Video surveillance would show Simon’s girlfriend berating Alba after her government issued food-stamp debit card was declined. Only moments later, Simon entered the store, walked behind the counter and shoved Alba against the wall. Simon then stood over Alba and blocked his exit.

When Alba attempted to get up, Simon grabbed him by the neck. That’s when Alba reached for a knife and stabbed Simon during the brawl that ensued. Simon died.

Alba’s bail was originally set at $250K, an outlandish number considering DA Bragg is an advocate for ending the cash bail system. In a move paralleling Bragg’s distaste for self-defense, ‘GoFundMe’ removed Alba’s page after people began donating to him.

After his arrest, it was revealed that Simon’s girlfriend pulled out her own knife and reportedly stabbed Alba during the brawl. At the time officers chose not to arrest her explaining that she was simply defending her boyfriend.

So, in the city of Manhattan you encourage your boyfriend to assault the man who refuses to let you steal from him and you have the legal license to stab him when he fights back.

Thankfully, the charges were dropped. But why were they filed to begin with? And why hasn’t the DA instructed his deputies to avoid charging victims and instead stay focused on the myriad number of violent criminals?

Alba’s mistreatment is the natural outworking of the Soros-backed prosecutors’ efforts to protect the criminal at all costs.

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Threaten? That would be the least of a bunglars worries with me.

83 Percent: OK to Threaten Intruder With Gun

If someone is breaking into your home or business, 83% of voters say that it is appropriate to protect yourself by threatening him with a gun. A Scott Rasmussen national survey found that just 8% think it is not appropriate, and 9% are not sure.

The survey also found that 79% of voters believe that self-defense is a legitimate purpose for owning a gun, 69% say that hunting is, and 26% say protection against the government. Just 9% say there is no legitimate purpose for owning a gun.

Methodology
The survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted online by Scott Rasmussen on July 12-13, 2022. Fieldwork for the survey was conducted by RMG Research, Inc. Certain quotas were applied, and the sample was lightly weighted by geography, gender, age, race, education, internet usage, and political party to reasonably reflect the nation’s population of registered voters. Other variables were reviewed to ensure that the final sample is representative of that population.

‘Many, many’ Texas teachers seek to carry guns in schools, Tarrant County sheriff says

Many Texas teachers are becoming qualified to carry firearms in schools in the wake of the Uvalde mass shooting, according to Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn. Waybourn was part of a panel of politicians on Tuesday who spoke at an America First Policy Institute summit in Washington, D.C.

He joined Congressman Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt during a panel called, “Provide Safe and Secure Communities So All Americans Can Live Their Lives in Peace.” Pam Bondi and Matthew Whitaker led the session.

Donald Trump was scheduled to speak at the summit Tuesday afternoon. Bondi asked the panelists about various topics on policing and crime in the U.S.. She asked Waybourn what he thought needed to be done in schools in the wake of the deadly shooting in Uvalde. Waybourn apologized on behalf of Texas for the “epic failure of law enforcement in Uvalde.”

Waybourn said schools must be “hardened” to protect kids from shooters, mirroring Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s call for action to better secure schools from potential shooters. To protect schools, Waybourn said, schools need “a good guy with a gun ready to go,” whether that person is a police officer or a “well-trained vetted staff member in that school.”

“And in Texas, many, many teachers are out qualifying today as we speak,” Waybourn said. “And they’re getting ready to go.” The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to questions about where Waybourn received his information on teachers increasingly becoming qualified to carry guns in school. In Texas, school staff can carry firearms in schools as part of the School Marshal program. Through the program, a school district applies for qualification and, if accepted, sends their selected candidate to an 80-hour training course.

Across the state, 62 school districts were qualified through the program for a total of 256 school marshals as of May, Texas Commission on Law Enforcement spokeswoman Gretchen Grigsby told the Dallas Morning News. The names of the districts and marshals are confidential. Transfer of Power A special newsletter from our D.C. Bureau focused on transition to the Biden administration.

Texas has more than 1,200 school districts, including charter schools. Texas also allows staff to carry guns on campus through the Guardian Plan. Under the authority of the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act and the Texas Penal Code, school districts can grant written permission for designated employees to carry firearms on campus.

Texas politicians, such as Attorney General Ken Paxton, have urged schools to arm teachers in the wake of the Uvalde shooting, in which a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in May. Other school districts, including the Fort Worth school district, want politicians to focus on gun laws. On July 12, the Fort Worth school board asked Abbott to call for a special legislative session to pass “common sense” gun law policies to protect students from mass shootings. The America First Policy Institute is a nonprofit organization focused on a policy agenda for Republican leaders.

Mississippi board of education votes to let schools set their own gun policies

The move by the state board of education isn’t likely to lead to armed staff members protecting kids in Mississippi’s few Democratic bastions like Jackson, but now that the board has said individual school districts can set their own policies when it comes to guns on campus many smaller and more rural schools may very well decide that having a few trained and vetted volunteer staffers carrying to protect the students in their care is a good idea.

Late last week the state board of education updated a 1990 policy that barred anyone other than law enforcement from carrying on school grounds, arguing that the old policy conflicts with the state’s “enhanced concealed carry” law. That law specifically allows those with the enhanced carry license to lawfully carry in some “sensitive places” deemed off-limits to those carrying with a regular license or under the state’s Constitutional Carry law, and as of now the board says that districts can choose to permit or forbid employees with enhanced permits from carrying on school grounds.

At the boarding meeting, Erin Meyer, the education department’s general counsel, said state law provides “local school districts with the authority and discretion to determine” its weapons policies. School districts can decide for themselves whether or not employees who hold enhanced carry licenses can bring guns onto school property.

School districts must also adopt policies that apply to non-employees. A 2013 state attorney general’s opinion argued teachers or administrators can refuse to meet with armed people in a “non-public” school area. Mississippi K-12 schools are closed to the public, but a school concert, play or sporting event is open to the public, Cook said.

Patricia Ice, a volunteer with the Mississippi chapter of Moms Demand Action, a gun reform organization, urged school districts to adopt policies that limit firearms on campus.

“Allowing teachers and members of the public to carry guns in our K-12 schools is a dangerous idea that will further jeopardize the safety of students and staff alike,” Ice said. “We need the adults in the room to make evidence-based policy decisions that will actually keep our children safe, rather than making decisions that will put more guns in their classrooms and put our kids at risk.”

Ice can’t point to any issue in states where teachers and staff are authorized to legally carry a firearm on campus as a deterrent to a targeted attack against students, but Moms Demand Action has long opposed the idea anyway. In fact, Moms Demand Action and their parent group Everytown for Gun Safety helped sue to overturn Ohio’s armed school staff statutes, forcing lawmakers in the Buckeye State to craft new legislation this year ensuring that districts have the flexibility to adopt the practice if they choose.

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The Founders knew all about mass killings which were part of the American experience dating back to the Jamestown, Virginia colony.

The Next Big Hurdle For Gun Controllers

Gun control lawmakers and activists now face a big problem as they pass dozens of new laws to substantially limit the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens – this new legislation will almost certainly be deemed unconstitutional.

That’s not my opinion. The Supreme Court made it clear in its recent pro–Second Amendment decision. In language that has drawn shockingly little attention, that ruling shows why many proposed gun restrictions infringe on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Before you can even begin a conversation about whether the proposed laws will have any meaningful effect on mass shootings (they won’t), you need to ask whether the gun restrictions are constitutional. Gun-control advocates don’t want the Constitution to get in the way of their policy objectives—but it’s the truth.

And that’s where the Supreme Court’s recent ruling comes in.

In the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court ruled that law-abiding citizens have the right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense. The Supreme Court explicitly affirmed that the Second Amendment protects twin rights: “to keep and bear arms,” with “keep” meaning to own or possess and “bear” meaning to carry outside the home.

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BLUF
This is a VERY SMALL list of the over 7,000 incidents listed at the http://SSRIStories.org website.

So IS this the ignored connection? Are these mass shooters on some sort of SSRI when they go off the reservation and dream up schemes from hell to do as much harm to others as they can while in an altered state of reality due to these DRUGS?

The SSRI Connection To Suicides, Spontaneous Murder and Mass Shootings.

Do we need MORE GUN CONTROL? Or BETTER PRESCRIPTION DRUG CONTROL?
Reason, logic and common sense should dictate the correct answer.

A mass shooting is defined as an incident where four or more people are shot. So far this year, the numbers average out to 11 mass shootings per week. 2021 saw a total of 692 mass shootings throughout the year.

Year 2022, just the first six months: – January: 41 mass shootings, 59 dead, 128 wounded February: 43 mass shootings, 40 dead, 174 wounded
March: 52 mass shootings, 47 dead, 217 wounded- April: 66 mass shootings, 75 dead, 271 wounded- May: 67 mass shootings, 87 dead, 324 wounded-June: 68 mass shootings, 78 dead, 275 wounded- These numbers accumulate to a total of 386 people dead and 1,389 people wounded.

I’m not sure how The Scotsman reporter Rachael Davies who wrote the article on 05/07/2022 came up with May and June numbers…but hey, that’s main stream media for you!

Now let’s take a look at mass shootings in the USA before 1968 and we will go back as far as 1954. 1968 was the year massive gun control reform was passed with the Gun Control Act. One of the provisions was that no longer could a rehabilitated felon ever have possession of a firearm. Let’s look at mass shootings prior to that day and realize that firearms were taken to school by boys who were going hunting afterwards and could be seen in the back windows of their pickups. That you could easily obtain firearms from a Sears & Roebuck catalog without back ground checks at all and have one sent directly to your home with no FFL dealer involved.

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BLUF
The only way to address gun violence is to do so head-on, with legislation that will actually protect our school children and encourage safe and responsible firearms ownership. We urge Congress to consider a more effective approach, such as hardening schools, allowing teachers to carry firearms in schools, and passing laws that support responsible gun ownership. The safety of all Americans depends on it.

Preventing responsible gun ownership will not make America safer

It has been an important few weeks for the public’s Second Amendment rights. In the first major gun rights decision since 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right to carry a concealed firearm by striking down a New York state law that made it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to carry a concealed weapon outside their home legally, and wrongfully required individuals to demonstrate a “special need” for self-protection to qualify for a carry license. This was a major victory that will affect at least six other states with similar restrictive licensing requirements, also known as “may issue” laws.

Unfortunately, Congress took advantage of the recent school shooting tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, to pass gun control legislation even though that meant ignoring most voters who believe more gun control is not the path forward . The result is the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first package of gun control legislation in decades.

While this bill makes significant and encouraging investments in school safety programs and our nation’s mental health system, it doesn’t fundamentally address the root causes of gun violence, and it even goes so far as to award taxpayer dollars to states that implement red flag laws.

Unsuspecting and well-meaning citizens might think these “pre-crime” laws, which would allow law enforcement to take away the firearms of someone deemed psychologically unfit to carry one, are a good idea. But in practice, they would target citizens before a crime has even been committed and deprive people of their right to due process.

But it hasn’t stopped there. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris recently campaigned for a ban of assault-style weapons, which are most commonly used for hunting, and high-capacity magazines. Biden’s White House has also proposed enacting storage restrictions and banning “ghost guns,” among other things.

All this despite the fact that Biden is on record saying that he “never believed that additional gun control or federal registration of guns would reduce crime.”

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‘Active Shooter Alert’ Bill, Designed to Scare, Draws in GOP Traitors and Suckers

“H.R. 6538, the Active Shooter Alert Act of 2022, is not a public safety tool, but rather an anti-gun propaganda program intended to further public hysteria by hyper-inflating the authentic number of ‘active shooter’ incidents to expand support for unconstitutional gun control measures,” Gun Owners of America advised members in a mid-July alert. “Under the Active Shooter Alert Act of 2022, justified self-defense shootings, gang violence, drug violence, or accidental shootings will be used to send alerts to the American people about the presence of an ‘active shooter’ to intentionally misguide the public and create mass hysteria.”

I imagine an uninterrupted night’s sleep would be damn near impossible on an average weekend in Chicago.

You’ll note whenever GOA uses the term on its own (as opposed to citing what the bill is named) they put the words “active shooter” in quotation marks. There’s a reason why that’s appropriate, and something gun owners should emulate. Per Firearms Coalition Managing Director and “proud active shooter” Jeff Knox:

“It is inaccurate because it does not include any direct suggestion of criminality, using ‘shooter’ to infer that, and it is insulting because by doing this, it implies that shooting is a criminal activity.”

Rep. Thomas Massie describes the bill more bluntly.

“House Democrats are trying to condition Americans to repeal the Second Amendment,” he warns, and he’s not using hyperbole. Any longtime gun owner who doesn’t recognize by now that yes, the prohibitionists really do want to take your guns, is either an oblivious fool or in the enemy camp. (There are also citizens new to owning guns who have never given the matter much thought to see how they’ve been lied to, who are ripe for manipulation and the subjects of another analysis.)

House Democrats are trying to condition Americans to repeal the Second Amendment. pic.twitter.com/MSOdkKbTBO

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 13, 2022

Two points:

Repealing the Second Amendment would not invalidate the right to keep and bear arms, which the Supreme Court has recognized, first in Cruikshank and later cited in Heller:

“The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.”

Massie knows that. He also knows the Democrats want us to believe rights come from them, using the term “bill of rights” to propose government-mandated privileges that are generally dependent on dragooning (that is, enslaving) others to provide the “granted” services. (See “FDR’s ‘Second Bill of Rights’ and UN Declaration Show How ‘Progressives’ View You.”)

The second point is addressed directly to Donald Trump in the (admittedly improbable) hope that someone who knows him will call it to his attention: Don’t you think it’s past time you to publicly apologize to Rep. Massie and admit that he was right for putting the Constitution over GOP Democrat Lite politics?

As for the “Active Shooter” Alert bill, it passed in the House of Representatives with 43 “Republicans” either knowingly signing on with or being suckered in by a confirmed enemy of the Second Amendment, bill sponsor David Cicilline (D-RI). He’s the professional worm tongue who out of one corner of his mouth professes, “We all respect the Second Amendment but…” and out of the other corner snarls, “Spare me the bulls*** about Constitutional rights.”

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Judge Denies New York’s Extension In GOA Case Challenging New Concealed Carry Law

The Judge in Antonyuk et al v. Bruen has denied New York State’s motion for an extension to respond to Gun Owners of America’s (GOA) request for a preliminary injunction against the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA).

The case centers around Ukrainian immigrant Ivan Antonyuk and the CCIA. The CCIA was New York’s answer to the New York State Pistol Rifle Association (NYSPRA) v. Bruen Supreme Court decision that knocked down the State’s “may issue” permitting regime. After the decision, Governor Kathy Hochul called an emergency session of the New York State Legislature with the focus of changing the laws to make most of the State off limits for citizens to carry a firearm.

Although the Supreme Court did say certain “sensitive areas” could be gun-free zones, it also noted that the designation had to be used sparingly.

The Court further stated that just because people gather in an area doesn’t mean it could be considered “sensitive.” New York ignored that part of the opinion and passed the CCIA, which made most of the State off limits to firearm carriers. Even private property, by default, is a gun-free zone unless the property owner opted out by posting multiple signs. Violating the law would result in a felony that would see a citizen’s firearms rights stripped for life.

Mr. Antonyuk held an unrestricted carry permit when the legislature passed the CCIA. Instead of the SCOTUS decision making it easier for Antonyuk to carry a firearm in the State, the CCIA restricted the New York resident’s gun rights more than before the landmark ruling. Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation (GOA’s non-profit arm) stepped up to help Mr. Antonyuk challenge the new law. GOA filed a lawsuit against the Empire State and then filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. New York responded by asking for a two-week extension to reply to the motion because of “[t]he extensive nature of the briefing that must take place to address all of the issues that Plaintiffs raise in this lawsuit.” The State also cites “[t]he complexity of the constitutional issues involved.”

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First Time Gun Ownership Continues To Soar
Who is buying all of the guns? The answer might surprise gun control activists…

According to The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) nearly 30%, or 5.4 million of the 18.5 million firearms purchased in the United States in 2021, went to first time gun owners. This number is down slightly from 2020’s record breaking gun sales numbers that saw 40%, or 8.4 million of the 21 million total firearms sold, going to first timers. Retailers report that 23% of customers who bought their first gun in 2020 returned to purchase another in 2021, and that nearly half of first time buyers inquired about professional firearms training, meaning many first time buyers quickly became enthusiasts who are serious about gun safety and self-defense.

For decades, gun control groups have attempted to paint gun enthusiasts as “rednecks” living in rural areas, but the data suggests that this is not the case. The NSSF survey found that 33% of first time gun buyers in 2021 were women, and that the number of African Americans purchasing firearms increased by 44%. Hispanic Americans also increased their gun purchases by 40% in 2021. Mark Olivia, NSSF Director of Public Affairs, notes: “Gun owners no longer fit into the tiny little boxes gun control groups wish to put us in. Today’s gun owner is younger, more urban, and more representative of the different demographic groups we see across America.”

The surge in gun sales in recent years is not confined to “red states” or areas with lenient gun ownership laws. Michigan and New Jersey top the list of states that saw the largest increase in firearm sales from January 2020 to January 2021 with 306% and 248% increases, respectively. Even Washington D.C, which has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, saw an increase in gun purchases of over 200% during the same time period. Year over year, blue-state Minnesota and red-state Alaska saw nearly identical increases in gun sales, over 100%.

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Eleven Fewer Dead People
A deep dive on the Greenwood Park Mall shooting shows a clear path to even fewer dead people than that

On Sunday July 17, 2022, some dork with two rifles and a handgun attempted to shoot up the Greenwood Park Mall food court in Greenwood Indiana. In the span of only fifteen seconds he was shot eight times by private citizen Elisjsha Dicken, an 80% hit rate from forty yards with a double stack nine millimeter handgun, whereupon the dork decided to flee to the bathroom and do us all the favor of dying there. We have much to unpack about this instance, but five key points with mathematical backing show a clear path to saving hundreds of future lives, and further show why the media doesn’t want to save them. Let’s begin.

A Tom Brady Moment

This was a seriously impressive feat of shooting. Dicken has no military or police experience and was taught to shoot by his grandfather. The local news agency WTHR approached several instructors who attempted to replicate the shot, and were able to come generally near to replicating it a range of twenty-five yards. Pistol ranges only go out to twenty five yards. Dicken put eight out of ten shots on target in fifteen seconds at almost double the maximum pistol range distance, completely unprepared, jacked full of adrenaline in a situation that would make most untrained shooters panic, facing an opponent with a rifle designed for that engagement range. This shot was heroic beyond imagination, and the gun community is tremendously impressed. As Douglas Jefferson of NAAGA said in a private channel, “That’s a B-8 drill at almost twice the distance and only 1.5 times the time.” It stresses the need for anyone who carries a firearm to train for the scenarios in which they envision using them, but it also highlights the more important point that even shooters without formalized training can save dozens of lives, as long as they happen to be carrying when something like this happens. Which brings us to the next point.

Gun Free Zones Almost Killed Eleven People

Rampage killings are only stopped by two things, the police or private citizens. Three people died in this shooting. When we perform a true analysis of “rampage killing” statistics, we find that rampage killings stopped by police carry an average of 14.29 casualties, whereas rampage killings stopped by citizen responders carry an average of 2.33 casualties. The average police response time to a 911 call is eleven minutes. Mr. Dicken responded to this shooting forty four times faster than the average police response time, saving (by averages) 11.29 lives in the process. These are facts.

This entire engagement transpired in a gun free zone. If Mr. Dicken had followed the rules on the sign, then 11.29 additional people (by averages) would be dead. The gun free zone sign did not deter the shooter, and eleven people in that food court owe their lives to the fact that Dicken also ignored the sign. This is indisputable.

Permit Carry Laws Almost Killed Eleven People

Dicken didn’t have a permit to carry his firearm, because he currently doesn’t need one. Up until July 1st of this year, Indiana prohibited concealed carry of firearms by anyone without a license. The state’s “Constitutional Carry Law,” which means no permit is required to carry a firearm, only went into effect this month. Seeing how Dicken did not have a carry license prior to the law going into effect, it’s likely that without the law he wouldn’t have been armed, and 11.29 additional people (by averages) would be dead.

While the local Greenwood Police Department has been glowing over the efforts of Mr. Dicken, the Indiana effort to pass this law was opposed most publicly by law enforcement officials, such as Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter who testified against it. If Doug Carter had gotten his way 11.29 additional people would be dead. This is indisputable.

Uvalde Comparison

May be a cartoon of text that says '376 UVALDE POLICE OFFICERS STANDING AROUND ONE 22-YEAR-OLD TAKING ACTION washingt n t'

This cartoon from the Washington Post doesn’t even begin to describe the contrast between these two rampage shooting incidents. Not only did the Uvalde police response do nothing for almost an hour, they actively prevented multiple private citizens from responding on their own. They were very specifically acting as a security detail for a rampage shooter. They arrested parents to prevent them from entering the building. They even intercepted one police officer whose wife was dying in her classroom, disarmed him, and escorted him off scene. A more accurate version of this political cartoon would have 376 police officers surrounding the rampage shooter on a pile of bleeding yet not yet dead bodies, with their backs to him preventing citizens from saving the pile of injured people from dying. That is not an exaggeration.

The official inquiry into Uvalde is not complete as of the writing of this piece. It could be that the Uvalde failure was due to chicken shit cops. It could be due to the fact that all government of all kinds moves at the speed of molasses infused mud. It could be some secret tinfoil hat conspiracy. It could be something else, or some or all of the above. We don’t know. But what we do know is response time differences matter, and we know that 11.96 people are saved when the cops aren’t involved, 11.29 in this case.

I am not someone who lives in fear of rampage shootings. I understand the statistics, which show that these things are as rare as shark attacks, and I do not live in fear of sharks. But some people do live with this fear, because different people have different risk tolerances. It seems to me that some people who live with this fear have some significant overlap with ACAB (“all cops are bastards”) messaging. If you are a rational person within either or both of those groups, and compare Uvalde to Greenwood, you must conclude that absent a non-existent magic gun evaporation fairy the best alternative is ubiquitous citizen concealed carry. This is indisputable.

Mass Media Social Contagion

I will not claim that CNN’s stated goal is to glorify rampage shooters, but that’s the exact effect CNN’s behavior has in the mind of a potential rampage shooter. If CNN reversed its behavior and gave twenty five times more coverage to Dicken instead of Uvalde, then the psychological effects would dampen rampage shooters instead of inciting them. This very rampage shooter may have been spurred on by CNN’s behavior, and CNN gets 30% more rampage shootings to farm for clickbait money because of their behavior.

If the United States were to string together three consecutive incidents of rampage shooters getting plugged by private citizens within seconds, as happened in Greenwood Park Mall, and CNN were to give each of them the sorts of coverage they give to Uvalde, the rampage shooter dorks would be too scared to try it. They’d stay in their basement playing XBox instead of shooting people, and the second order effects of constitutional carry would exceed 11.96 saved per incident, because there would be fewer incidents. CNN not covering rampage shootings at all would reduce rampage shootings by one third. If they elevated coverage of failed rampage shootings stopped by citizens, they’d probably reduce them by an additional third.

But they don’t want to do that, because they’re hemorrhaging money. They need as many of these things to transpire as possible to make their bottom line. They are beholden to Moloch, trapped in a cycle that gets people killed, and the only way I can figure out of this cycle is to produce a lot more citizen shooters like Dicken.

The only way out is to shoot our way out and it’s CNN’s fault.

The Good Samaritan With A Gun In Indiana Serves To Refute Four Common Gun Control Myths

On Monday, a good samaritan with a gun averted a catastrophe at an Indiana mall. Douglas Sapirman, a 20-year old man brought more than 100 rounds of ammunition and three rifles: a Sig Sauer M400 rifle he bought in March 2022; an M&P15 rifle that was found in the mall bathroom and bought in March 2021; and a Glock 33 pistol discovered on his body. In the span of a few minutes, Sapirman fired 24 rounds, killed three people, and injured two others.

But Elisjsha Dicken, a 22-year old man, was shopping at the mall with this girlfriend. And he was carrying a concealed pistol. The New York Times describes his heroics:

Chief Jim Ison of the Greenwood Police Department called the bystander’s actions “nothing short of heroic,” identifying him as Elisjsha Dicken of Seymour, Ind.

He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and, as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Chief Ison said at a news conference where he described surveillance video footage of the shooting. . . .

All the victims were shot by Mr. Sapirman, who fired 24 rounds, Chief Ison said. Mr. Dicken fired 10 rounds, killing the gunman as he tried to retreat to a mall bathroom where he had spent an hour apparently preparing for the attack. . . . .

Over the past two years, the relatives told the police, the gunman had frequently practiced shooting at a range in Greenwood, which is roughly 15 miles south of Indianapolis. . . .

When the police arrived, they handcuffed Mr. Dicken and took him to a station for questioning, where security camera footage confirmed his description of the events. Chief Ison said that the police could not determine whether Mr. Dicken had a gun permit, but that he was carrying his Glock 9-millimeter handgun legally under the state’s constitutional carry law.

“This young man, Greenwood’s good Samaritan, acted within seconds, stopping the shooter and saving countless lives,” Mayor Mark Myers said on Monday.

This amazing story is simply one data point, but it serves to refute four myths about gun control.

First, a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Recently, Eugene catalogued other similar instances of defensive gun use.

Second, constitutional carry ensures that good samaritans can carry, even if they do not satisfy onerous carry regimes. I imagine that if this incident happened in New York, the good samaritan would be indicted for illegal possession of a firearm.

Third, a common argument in favor of “high capacity” magazine bans is that defensive gun use never needs more than a few bullets. Here, the good samaritan used ten bullets, and he could have needed even more. In California, for example, magazines are limited to ten rounds. Had the good samaritan needed one more bullet to drop the assailant, he would have been out of luck in California.

Fourth, it is commonly argued that a person armed with a handgun cannot take down a person armed with larger rifles. This incident proves that myth is wrong.

It is difficult to generalize from a single incident, but the situation in Indiana serves to push back against many of the common gun control myths.

Update: I didn’t realize that Indiana’s constitutional carry went into effect on July 1, 2022. Had this event happened a month earlier, the good samaritan may have been in violation of the state’s carry law. The NY Times has some more details:

Mike Wright, manager of the Luca Pizza di Roma in the mall’s food court, remembers taking shelter when the firing started and then emerging when it stopped to see the bystander behind a low-slung wall with his handgun trained on the assailant he had shot to death.

“He stood there maybe 25 or 30 feet from the body and held that pistol pointed at him until law enforcement arrived,” Mr. Wright remembered on Tuesday. “The good Samaritan guy seemed poised and under control. He appeared to be very disciplined.” Jim Ison, the local police chief, went further, saying that his engagement with the gunman, who had killed three people, was “nothing short of heroic.”

But along with the horror, drama and acclaim came a roaring and rekindled controversy in a country united in revulsion over its ceaseless plague of gun violence, yet bitterly divided over a loosening of gun restrictions like the Indiana law, passed this year, that allowed the bystander, Elisjsha Dicken, 22, to carry his 9-millimeter handgun in the first place. . . .

Chief Ison said the police found no indication that Mr. Dicken had a permit for the handgun. But the chief said he was carrying it legally under the new law. In a brief interview, Mr. Dicken’s lawyer, Guy A. Relford, described his client as an “all-American Indiana boy,” and declined to provide any specific information about him or the mall encounter.

Update 2: The Greenwood Police now report that the Good Samaritan acted quickly. In the span of 15 seconds (not 2 minutes), he fired 10 rounds, eight of which hit the assailant. And his first shot hit the assailant from 40 yards!

That is some top-level accuracy.

With the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, millions of common AR-15 style rifles hit the market, yet annualized homicides by rifle continued to trend downward. GOA opposes any new bans on these commonly owned weapons.

Well, to be honest, in a ‘free country’, I’ve never thought that the police could prevent any crime. That requires an authoritarian Police State the likes of which would be on par with North Korea. The poor people who always believed this, were always wrong, and that’s what’s sad; they were delusional

Confidence in Law Enforcement to Prevent Mass Shootings Plummets

A new poll from Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group shows Americans no longer trust local and federal law enforcement to stop mass shootings. This outcome should be no surprise after a long string of mass shootings where law enforcement knew the perpetrator before the tragedy.

The tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is the latest example. However, school officials and law enforcement were aware of the risks posed by the shooter in Parkland, Fla., and the other mass shooting tragedies since then. It seems the left’s preoccupation with social justice rather than criminal justice prevents law enforcement at all levels from taking proactive action to prevent violence. The social justice push ended stop and frisk in New York City and ensured red flag laws in Illinois and New York were useless.

These examples may explain why a majority of voters report they are not confident local authorities can prevent a mass shooting before it happens. Sixty-two percent of voters say they are not sure their local law enforcement or federal agents could identify and stop a violent person before they started a mass shooting. More than a quarter (26.9%) report they are not confident at all. Only 9.8% indicated they are very confident in their local authorities’ ability to prevent a mass shooting.

Uvalde officers not immediately and aggressively confronting the gunman in the elementary school was reminiscent of law enforcement failures in the Parkland shooting. “Americans watched in horror as an active shooter was permitted to rampage through a school while the police stood outside and did absolutely nothing. Over and over again, citizens are given the clear message that—when it comes to protecting loved ones—you’re on your own,” said Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action.

Americans are painfully aware of the tragic results in these situations and believe in the “good guy with a gun” more than the gun grabbers would like. According to the poll, a plurality believes their fellow citizen with a firearm is the best protection for them and their family in a mass shooting situation. Almost 42% of voters believe that an armed citizen would be their best protection if they were caught in a mass shooting event. Local police retained the confidence of 25.1%, and 10.3% had the most faith in federal agents. Almost one-quarter said none of the above.

Results indicating how many respondents feel they will best protect themselves and their families would be an interesting supplement. Democrats appear the most fatalistic, with a plurality of 33.9% saying they do not trust anyone to protect them and their family in a mass shooting event. But, they are still the party pushing for strict gun control. Meanwhile, 70.4% of Republicans trust armed citizens the most, while only 16.8% and 1.6% trust local or federal law enforcement.

Yet, somehow, our leaders in Congress think more gun laws are the answer. The recent bi-partisan gun law does little to prevent these tragedies, especially in an environment where citizens are losing trust in law enforcement. “At the same time, we’re told guns are the problem, and we should give up our right to self-defense,” Meckler noted. “Voters are not stupid. They understand that responsible citizens offer the best means of protecting our schools, homes, and communities in this country. Pursuing such policies is not only bad politics, it puts all of us at risk.”

As if to prove the point made by a plurality of voters, an armed citizen stopped a mass shooter in a mall food court in Indiana yesterday. According to law enforcement, the gunman shot three people fatally and injured two Sunday evening before a good guy with a gun shot and killed him. The shooter entered the mall with a rifle and several magazines. Greenwood Police Dept. Chief Jim Ison said, “The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began.” The poll ended before reports of this shooting appeared in the news cycle.

A legally armed citizen recently thwarted another mass shooting in West Virginia. A woman used her pistol to shoot a man who had returned to a graduation party with a rifle. He had been in a verbal altercation with the partygoers earlier in the day. “This lady was carrying a lawful firearm,” Lt. Tony Hazelett of the Charleston Police Department said. “A law-abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 or 30 people getting killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat. She engaged it preventing a mass casualty event here in Charleston.”

Examples like these may be why states like Texas, Georgia, and others are passing open and constitutional carry laws. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed constitutional carry in March of this year. As of July 1, no legal gun owner in Indiana is required to have a carry permit after passing the required background check. That law may have made all the difference for the Hoosiers in the mall on Sunday.

The Greenwood Mall Shooting Should End Claims of the Danger of Permitless Concealed Carry.

During the recent attempted mass shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana, a 22-year old man who was lawfully carrying a pistol stopped the killing. For this heroic action, he’s been called “good Samaritan” by local law enforcement. Even the owners of the mall, (who ban guns on their properties praised his actions. That got under the skin of anti-gun activists.

Why? If they were forced to be honest about it like the main character in the 1997 film Liar Liar, they’d have to admit that a quintessential case of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun is utterly devastating to their case against civilian gun rights.

Sadly (for them) the facts keep coming in, and they continue to be very bad for the gun control industry’s agenda. Not only does Greenwood Park clearly demonstrate that permitless carry (a.k.a. constitutional carry) saves lives, but one of the key arguments against permitless carry was also destroyed.

Constitutional Carry Allowed Lives To Be Saved

Recent reporting from WRTV News sheds light on an important detail in how this mass shooting was stopped . . .

According to [Greenwood Police Chief James] Ison, [Eli] Dicken did not have a permit for his handgun, but due to the passage of the “Constitutional Carry” bill in Indiana, he was legally carrying the weapon.

“I am 100% certain that many more people would have died last night if it wasn’t for his heroism,” Ison said.

If there’s a more devastating message for the forces of gun control, I don’t know what it would be.

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A New Report Casts Doubt on the Assumption That Gun Law Violators Are a Public Menace
The vast majority of federal firearm offenses involve illegal possession, often without aggravating conduct or a history of violence.

A new report on federal firearm offenses shows that the vast majority involve illegal possession, often without aggravating circumstances or a history of violence. The data undermine the assumption that people who violate gun laws are predatory criminals who pose a serious threat to public safety. They also highlight the racially disproportionate impact of such laws, which is especially troubling given their excessive breadth.

In FY 2021, the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) reports, 89 percent of federal firearm offenders were legally disqualified from owning guns, typically because of a felony record. Half of those cases involved “aggravating criminal conduct.” But in the other half, the defendant’s “status as a prohibited person solely formed the basis of the conviction.”

The aggravating conduct, which triggered sentencing enhancements under the USSC’s guidelines, covered a wide range.

In 11 percent of the cases involving aggravating conduct, “an offender or co-participant discharged a firearm.” In 4 percent of the cases where a gun was fired, someone was killed; someone was injured in 18 percent of those cases.

Some cases involved a stolen gun, a gun with an “altered or obliterated serial number,” or a prohibited weapon, such as a machine gun or a sawed-off shotgun. Some defendants were engaged in gun trafficking. In more than a quarter of the cases, “the firearm facilitated, or had the potential to facilitate, another felony offense (most commonly drug trafficking).” That last category would include drug dealers who never threatened or injured anyone but kept or carried guns for self-defense.

As you would expect, aggravating factors resulted in relatively long prison sentences. The average was 55 months for cases involving stolen firearms or guns with altered serial numbers, 58 months in cases involving a prohibited weapon, 62 months in cases involving gun trafficking, and 119 months—nearly 10 years—in cases involving “the use of, or conspiracy to use, a firearm in connection with a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime.” In other words, the combination of drug possession and gun possession can be enough to put someone behind bars for a decade, which starkly illustrates the interaction between those two kinds of prohibitions.

In half of the cases involving “prohibited persons,” the defendant “did not engage in additional aggravating conduct.” The average sentence for such defendants was about three years. Even in those cases, you might surmise, the defendants’ prior criminal records probably indicated violent tendencies that justified sending them to prison for possessing a gun. But that is not necessarily true.

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Sen. Chris Murphy Strangely Silent After His ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ Theory Goes Down in Flames

As we previously reported, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) appallingly declared in a tweet last Tuesday that the fact that it took the Uvalde police so long to respond to the horrific Robb Elementary School mass shooting “puts to bed, forever” the “good guy with a gun” scenario often cited by Second Amendment defenders in their arguments.

“We’ve always known it was a gun industry created lie, designed to sell more guns,” he also wrote. “Now we just have the gut wrenching proof”:

While the chilling 77-minute police response video from Uvalde was indeed gut-wrenching, it in no way proved Murphy’s point – in fact, it proved just the opposite for reasons I and thousands of others explained to him in response to his remarks.

In the aftermath of the deadly Greenwood, Indiana mall mass shooting Sunday where three were killed and two were injured, Murphy has gone silent on his “good guy with a gun” theory – perhaps because Greenwood Police Chief James Ison noted in a press conference that the shooter was shot dead “almost as soon as he began” by a “good Samaritan,” a 22-year-old unidentified man who Ison said was “lawfully carrying” his firearm:

“The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop that shooter almost as soon as he began,” Ison told reporters during a press conference on Sunday night.

Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers also confirmed that the suspect was “shot by an armed individual,” whom he called a “good Samaritan.”

“This person saved lives tonight,” Myers said in a statement late Sunday. “On behalf of the City of Greenwood, I am grateful for his quick action and heroism in this situation.”

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