Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.
This political judgement, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self preservation a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to God and Nature. – John Locke
President McConaughey makes the case for gun control compromise at the White House
The average joe doesn’t pay attention to daily political claptrap, especially when it’s coming from a figure as underwhelming and predictable as the president. But have an A-list actor revisiting the most gruesome and heartbreaking details of a mass shooting and some will perk up.
I wonder if the true target of having McConaughey speak today isn’t Congress but Greg Abbott. In an alternate universe, McConaughey is running for governor against him right now. He’s sufficiently well-liked at home that having him champion a cause like this in an emotional way after a catastrophe might affect some Texans. If McConaughey ends up as an advocate for red-flag laws at the state level, that’ll put pressure on Abbott.
He said we need laws to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys. Bad guys don’t care about the laws. That’s why they are bad guys.
— Thought Criminal Rob (@tripodcat73) June 7, 2022
Another point is; Why does anyone give these people ‘authority’? I could not care less what a movie actor believes I should or shouldn’t do, own, believe, or think.
Violence isn’t a disease, it’s a behavior. They only call it a disease as a willing participants in the gooberment attempts to acquire power to control the people
Why doctors are calling gun violence in the U.S. an epidemic.
A growing number of health care providers say gun violence is a public health issue……
Democrats Admit the True Purpose of J6 Hearings.
The Democrats’ partisan January 6th Committee hearings are going prime time this week, and Fox News is getting flak from the usual left-wing suspects.
“Fox News won’t air the January 6 hearings because they prefer their sedition made fresh on-site,” Hillary Clinton quipped on Twitter. I think she should hire a new joke writer.
“FOX won’t televise the hearings of the greatest Crime in Presidential history,” tweeted Rob Reiner. “Our Democracy is hanging by a thread.” Cry me a river, Meathead.
The fact is, there’s only one reason why any network will air the hearings of these pointless, blatantly partisan hearings—and it has nothing to do with the so-called insurrection. It has to do with helping the Democrats in the upcoming midterms.
This isn’t a guess. They’ve already admitted to this. “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message,” reads the headline at the New York Times about the hearings—showing absolutely no shame that government resources are being used for blatantly partisan purposes.
“With their control of Congress hanging in the balance, Democrats plan to use made-for-television moments and a carefully choreographed rollout of revelations over the course of six hearings…to persuade voters that the coming midterm elections are a chance to hold Republicans accountable for it,” the report explained.
The article goes on to quote Democrat lawmakers and operatives all but admitting the purpose of the hearings is to distract voters from astronomical gas prices and historic inflation.
Click on the pic for a large image
Take out “The” and “of ‘assault weapons’” and it would still be right.
The Reality of ‘Assault Weapons’ is Far Too Boring and Inconvenient for the Media.
We’re hearing a lot of claims and counter-claims about modern sporting rifles right now. While these “modern” guns are more than half a century old, honest gun owners still buy and use them every day. Occasionally, criminals use them as well, but that’s rare. About one-out-of-eight gun owners have a modern sporting rifle today. And as we’d expect, rifles are used in armed defense situations about an eighth of the time.
Semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles were introduced to the civilian market here in the US in 1905. The US military adopted them about three decades later for use in World War II.
The civilian version of the modern sporting rifle, the AR-15, was introduced in 1956 so it has been with us for over six decades. In addition to its low recoil and plastic stock, the AR platform’s real innovation is its modularity. The AR can be adjusted to fit people of almost any stature in seconds, which is why it’s so popular. It’s the gateway rifle, the volksgun. I think that is why the democrats want it banned.
Here are two recent news stories that involve the use of a modern sporting rifle . . .
Homeowner with an AR stops two home invaders
It was mid-morning when a homeowner in Brownsboro, Texas heard the sounds of breaking glass coming from inside his home. The homeowner grabbed his AR rifle and went to see what was happening. The homeowner saw two strangers in his house. The defender told the intruders not to move. The second intruder, a female accomplice, ran away. The defender let her go and called 911.
Police arrested the male intruder. The homeowner pointed out the broken glass near his front door. Police arrested and searched the neighborhood for the second robber.
The defender was not charged with a crime.
The homeowner never pulled the trigger as he defended himself. That’s the usual outcome and happens in over 80 percent of defensive gun uses. There are exceptions, of course.
Woman with concealed carry license stops felon with an AR
A woman with a concealed carry permit was attending a graduation/birthday party at an apartment complex in Charleston, West Virginia. The party had spilled out into the parking lot with about 40 people at the celebration. At about 10 at night, a man drove through the parking lot and people shouted for him to slow down.
The driver took offense and came back a half hour later. He climbed into the back seat of his car and started shooting at the crowd with an AR rifle. The woman shot back several times, stopping the attacker in what would have been a mass shooting. No one else was injured.
She called 911 and remained at the scene. Emergency medical services declared the shooter dead from multiple gunshot wounds. The attacker was a convicted felon with a long criminal record. Police are investigating how he got his firearm.
Gun control laws don’t stop criminals from acquiring and using guns. They never have. But there is more we can learn from these two news accounts. AR rifles don’t turn honest homeowners into enraged murderers and they don’t make criminals into unstoppable killers. Modern sporting rifles are actually mundane. And as we’d expect, our neighbors only use lethal force as a last resort.
The reality is, however, that honest reporting about ordinary citizens defending themselves doesn’t make much money for the mainstream news media. They find it more clickworthy to say that a particular piece of steel, plastic and aluminum is horribly frightening and unusually deadly. Apparently that’s the only thing that keeps us watching through the commercials.
Quip O’ The Day
As Harry Browne used to say, government breaks your leg, hands you a crutch, and expects you to be grateful.
White House announces 5th flight of baby formula with enough for nearly 2 million bottles.
une 7 (UPI) — The Biden administration has announced the fifth flight of baby formula to the United States in an effort to improve the ongoing shortage of the infant necessity.
The White House in a statement said Monday that it is sourcing a flight under Operation Fly Formula to transport 110,000 pounds — the equivalent of some 1.8 million eight-ounce bottles — of Nestle Nan SupremePro Stage 1 infant formula.
The formula, which is coming from Germany, will arrive in Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday, officials said. The product will be available nationwide through the the company’s distribution channels.
WHY TEAM BIDEN MIGHT BE PURPOSEFULLY GRINDING DOWN THE MIDDLE CLASS.
Now in handy video form!
Wondering why gas has nearly doubled since Biden took office? Watch this. pic.twitter.com/X5tcDOPtT8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 2, 2022
Democrat Senator Brags About How Gas Prices Don’t Affect Her
During Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing to discuss “The President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) displayed just how tone-deaf she is on gas prices affecting her constituents when she bragged about driving an electric car. When it comes to the price at the pump, Sen. Stabenow said, “It didn’t matter how high [the price] was.”
“After waiting a long time to finally have enough chips in this country to finally get my electric vehicle, I got it and drove it from Michigan to here this last weekend and went by every single gas station, and it didn’t matter how high it was,” Sen. Stabenow said about gas prices. “And so I’m looking forward to the opportunity for us to move to vehicles that aren’t going to be dependent on the whims of the oil companies and the international markets,” she continued.
BLUF
But the big takeaway I think here is — they want to push Congress and social media to control us more because they know we are winning.
Former Obama Adviser Lets Cat out of the Bag on What Dems Want to Do to Control Us
Former White House Communications Director for the Obama administration Dan Pfeiffer appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday and what he said was revealing, threatening, and great–all at the same time.
Pfeiffer claimed that the people who listen to “right-wing media” were “more likely to believe conspiracy theories about vaccines, conspiracy theories about elections.
“That is the problem in this country is that we have a very well funded, very aggressive operation that is spreading these lies for profits and political gain, and it is incredibly dangerous.”
He put out what was the constant theme of the segment — attacking Facebook for purveying “news,” which Mika laughingly said was “not where you get news.” Because how dare you not listen to mainstream outlets like hers?
That was quietly hilarious, when you think about all the conspiracy theories that Democrats and MSNBC have pushed over the last few years, with Russia collusion, paid for and spread by the DNC, with the Clinton campaign top of the list. People on the left believe all kinds of crazy things about pee tapes and Ginni Thomas (Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife) trying to “overthrow” the government (big scoop: she did no such thing) because of the crazy pushed by liberal mainstream media. Meanwhile, while there’s a lot from the mainstream against conspiracy theories on the right, there’s not so much targeted at deflating the conspiracy theories that flourish on the left.
Here’s another take on the moronic crap-for-brains CBS article about Japanese gun control laws. And an interesting statistic
Why comparing gun violence here to Japan is stupid
Japan and the United States don’t have a lot in common. Culturally, we’re quite different, though not necessarily incompatible. After all, while legions of Americans consume bits of Japanese culture as if it were the greatest thing ever, other legions in Japan do the same thing with American culture.
But there are profound differences between the United States and Japan.
You wouldn’t really know that if you saw this story going on about their low rates of gun homicides.
As the U.S. gun control debate intensifies, some Americans are looking overseas for ideas on how to prevent mass shootings. Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world. There were more than four firearm homicides in the U.S. per 100,000 people during 2019, compared to almost zero in Japan.
As CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, Japan’s strict laws on private gun ownership have surprising origins in the United States. She met Raphael, a well-known Japanese YouTuber who decided to take skeet shooting lessons. Despite being ex-military, he had to jump through all the same hoops that any Japanese civilian must clear to get a gun license.
There’s mandatory training. You have to pass a written exam, plus a physical and mental health evaluation. Even then, the police will go and ask your family and friends whether you have any violent tendencies.
The point, of course, is very clear. Japan good, America bad. (The article later goes on to point out the irony in the fact that their gun laws are the result of American occupation following World War II.)
However, for all of Palmer’s questions, she never bothered to dig beyond the surface level.
Japan’s total homicide rate is 0.3 per 100,000 people. That’s for all weapons, and yes, that is incredibly low by anyone’s standard. It’s easy to see why some would look to Japan and try to see what they’re doing in hopes of replicating it here.
If our gun homicide rate were only 0.3 per 100,000, that would probably be a rate we could live with, right?
Except, our non-gun homicide rate is 1.6 per 100,000. That’s more than [5] times greater than Japan’s total rate.
In other words, whatever is making Japan so relatively safe has little or nothing to do with their gun laws. After all, the Japanese government can’t ban knives, hammers, sticks, or body parts–all of which are used to kill plenty of people here in the United States.
Instead, whatever has created such a low homicide rate is likely something that has nothing to do with weapon restrictions and more to do with culture or, at least, some other regulation.
Unfortunately, that’s beyond the modern media to delve into. That’s a question they never bother to think to ask because they’re apparently conditioned to not think of homicide as anything other than a gun issue.
The thing is, though, if you managed to make all guns go away overnight from every hand in the country, we’d still have a higher homicide rather than Japan–at least five times higher, though I suspect it would increase since you have to assume a large percentage of those who kill with guns would simply shift to another weapon.
So yeah, Palmer skimmed the surface and never dug any deeper, which is par for the course in this day and age.
Feminist Naomi Wolf takes the red pill and takes the first tentative steps on the path to see reality
BLUF
Without the brilliantly-conceived and clearly-worded Second Amendment, without the deterrent to state and transnational violence of responsible, lawful, careful and defensive firearms ownership in the United States of America, it is clear that nothing at all will save our citizens from the current fates of the people of China, Australia and Canada; including the children; who are facing — unarmed, defenseless as their parents sadly are — even worse fates, perhaps, still ahead.
Rethinking the Second Amendment
I wrote this essay some weeks ago, but I kept waiting to publish it til tragic mass shootings were no longer in the news. But that day looks as if it will never come, so I am publishing it anyway, with grief and mourning for those lost to gun violence, as we must nonetheless have this difficult conversation.
The last thing keeping us free in America, as the lights go off all over Europe- and Australia, and Canada – is, yes, we must face this fact, the Second Amendment.
I can’t believe I am writing those words. But here we are and I stand by them.
I am a child of the peace movement. A daughter of the Left, of a dashingly-bearded proto-Beatnik poet, my late dad, and of a Summer of Love activist/cultural anthropologist, my lovely mom. We are a lineage of anti-war, longhaired folks who believe in talking things out.
By the time I was growing up in California in the 1960s and 1970s, weapons were supposed to have become passe. When I played at friends’ houses in our neighborhood in San Francisco, there were posters on the walls: “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” Protesters had iconically placed daisies in the rifle barrels of unhip-looking National Guardsmen.
We were obviously supposed to side with the daisies.
Weapons were archaic, benighted — tacky. A general peace was surely to prevail, in the dawning Age of Aquarius.
You literally can not make this up.
The have nothing but lies, but we knew that already
Joe Scarborough says AR-15s are "deadlier" than the M16s used during the Vietnam War.
That is completely false. The M16s used during Vietnam were fully automatic.
We need to stick to the facts and the truth when discussing guns. pic.twitter.com/PW4JtuSCZb
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) June 6, 2022
Observation O’ The Day
“It is vital that society reject these people. Not just ignore them, but aggressively reject them. If there is one problem in society today it’s too much tolerance for terrible destructive insanity.”
This is evil stuff.
— Steven Colantuoni (@stevecolantuon) June 7, 2022
Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don’t have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.
– Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese journalist
Gun Control Misfire: Trudeau Pistol Ban Sees Stores Sell Out of Handguns
Gun stores in Canada have seen handguns fly off the shelves, with many selling out altogether after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced gun control legislation freezing all pistol purchases.
In what appears to be a seismic political misfire, Canadian gun stores have been reporting a massive surge in handgun sales after the country’s leftist prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced that he would be implementing gun control laws totally freezing the import and sale of this class of firearm.
Many shops in the country have now reportedly sold out of pistols entirely, despite extremely restrictive laws already in place in the country which can make the purchase of a handgun onerously difficult.
According to a report by the AFP, every gun store owner who spoke to the agency openly derided Trudeau’s declaration that he would ban the sale of handguns, while also saying that they had all seen a massive surge in pistol sales since he made the announcement last week.
Jen Lavigne, co-owner of That Hunting Store, speaks with customers on June 3, 2022 in Ottawa, Canada. – Canadians rushed to buy handguns this week, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on May 30, 2022, a proposed freeze on sales in the wake of recent mass shootings in the US. “Sales have been brisk,” said Lavigne. “We sold 100 handguns or almost our entire stock in the last three days since the prime minister announced the freeze,” she said. (Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)