Live With It
Get familiar with your handgun by living with it every day.

Lately I’ve been re-reading the works of that grand old man of sixgunning, Elmer Keith, and I noticed that Mr. Keith had the same advice that was later offered by Col. Jeff Cooper; live with your handgun. The savvy handgunner has their gun on, or within reach, during most of their waking hours. But, actually, that’s not enough. On a regular basis, it is important to handle it, shoot it, and practice with it. That’s what it really means to live with your defensive handgun.

As a young peace officer, my first duty gun was a 4-inch Smith & Wesson Model 19. I shot some of our department matches with it but the smartest thing that I did was to start handgun hunting. The .357 Magnum cartridge was plenty powerful for Rio Grande turkey, javelina, feral hogs and even our Texas Whitetail deer. The hunting experience really helped to learn to judge distance, press the trigger smoothly and even handle moving targets. The bonus was all of that good, wild game that went into my freezer. Handgun hunting gave me a graduate course in gun handling long before I ever heard a shot fired in anger.

The desire to live with my handgun also drove me to handloading because that was the only way that I could afford to shoot a lot. The side benefit to that was that I learned a great deal about cartridge development, velocities and the various kinds of bullets that were available to the handgunner.

Today, I know that times are tough but I have trouble sympathizing with the person who is continually buying new guns but can’t seem to find the funds needed to get professional training. The smart thing to do is to get that training and then put a lot of rounds downrange practicing what has been taught. And, to really conserve funds it is a great idea to get some dummy rounds and do some regular dry practice at home. And handloading is still a good way to cut costs for live-fire practice.

Living with the defensive handgun doesn’t mean just having a gun and keeping it nearby. We budget good training, we practice what we’ve been taught and we shoot every time we have a lawful chance to put some lead in the air. I’ll probably never be the game shot that Elmer Keith was or a fast shot like Bill Jordan… but it won’t be from not trying.

November 20

1776 – During the Revolutionary War, British forces land at the Hudson River Palisades in New Jersey and then attack Fort Lee. The Continental Army starts to retreat across New Jersey.

1789 – New Jersey becomes the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

1805 – Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio, opens in Vienna.

1820 – An 80 ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the whaling ship Essex of Nantucket off the western coast of South America, inspiring Herman Melville’s story of Moby Dick.

1862 – The Confederate armies of Mississippi and Kentucky merge as the Army of Tennessee, under command of General Braxton Bragg.

1902 – George Lefevre and Henri Desgrange create the Tour de France bicycle race

1903 – The day before his 43rd birthday, Tom Horn, convicted of murder, is executed by hanging in Cheyenne, Wyoming

1910 – Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosí, denouncing Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution.

1923 – The Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion Papiermark.

1931 – AT&T begins commercial teletype service.

1940 – During World War II, Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, joining the Axis powers.

1942 – During World War II, the 1522 mile long Alaska Highway opens for military traffic from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska.

1943 – During World War II,  the U.S. stages Operation Galvanic, invading the Gilbert Island chain with the 2nd Division of the U.S. Marine Corps assaulting Tarawa Atoll’s Betio Island and the U.S. Army’s 27th Division assaulting Makin Atoll’s Butaritari Island.

1945 – Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.

1953 – Scott Crossfield piloting the Douglas Skyrocket, breaks Mach 2 – 1,300 miles per hour – at the High Speed Flight Research Station, Muroc, California.

1958 –American puppeteers Jim and Jane Henson establish Muppets, Inc.

1962 – In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, President Kennedy ends the quarantine of the island and the diplomatic crisis with the Soviets.

1968 – 78 miners are killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company’s No. 9 mine in Farmington, West Virginia

1974 – The U.S. Department of Justice files an antitrust suit against AT&T Corporation. This suit later leads to the breakup of AT&T and the Bell System.

1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, meeting with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaking before the Knesset

1980 – A misplaced Texaco exploratory oil probe drills into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing Lake Peigneur in Louisiana to flow down into the mine, filling it while swallowing the drilling platform, 11 barges holding supplies for the drilling operation, a tugboat, and 65 acres of the surrounding terrain.

1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released.

1993 – The Senate Ethics Committee issues censures of Senators for their “dealings” with executive Charles Keating during the Savings and Loan crisis which collapsed that part of the financial system

1998 – The first module component, Zarya, for the International Space Station is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome

2008 – Due to the Sub-Prime Mortgage crisis building up since September causing failures in the US financial system, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997, falling 43% over the past year to less than 8000 points.

2014 –President Obama defers the threat of deportation for nearly 5 million illegal aliens in the US

2022 – Joe Biden turns 80 years old, the first octogenarian to serve as President

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter Dead At 96

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96, according to a statement by The Carter Center.

On Sunday, President Jimmy Carter’s wife died peacefully after being admitted into Hospice care on Friday. She is survived by her four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” President Carter said. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

A biography of Carter given to the White House Historical Association describes Carter as having a “quiet, friendly manner,” which made her “an effective campaigner” for the 39th president.

As the First Lady of Georgia, she created what she called “a more caring society,” according to a biography by The Carter Center, a nonprofit she and Jimmy Carter co-founded in 1982.

“An activist first lady with her own bold agenda, she created a distinct East Wing office from which she set about helping disadvantaged people. Her efforts challenged age discrimination for older adults, encouraged opportunities for people with developmental disabilities, and advanced women’s equality,” the Center states. “Above all, she devoted herself to improving treatment and services for those coping with mental health conditions, a cause she adopted when her husband was governor and that remained her priority for the rest of her life.”

The former president praised his wife’s achievements for devoting herself to several social causes including programs that supported health care resources, human rights, social justice and the needs of elderly people.

In May 2023, it was announced she was diagnosed with dementia.

“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the Carter Center said in a statement.

“It Will Be a Massacre of Millions of People”

I first started researching Tablighi Jamaat almost eighteen years ago, in December of 2005. That was not long after I began investigating Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The results of web searches for both organizations overlapped, due to the commonality of the word “Jamaat” — that’s how I found Tablighi Jamaat.

[“Jamaat” means “community”, or “group”, or “association”. Jamaat ul-Fuqra is the “community of the impoverished”, while Tablighi Jamaat means, roughly, “association of preachers”.]

Back then Tablighi used to skate by without being declared a terrorist group, because it never engaged in any of the wetwork itself. It was billed as an educational group, and the bombing and throat-slitting were always done by some other outfit — Jamaat ul-Fuqra, Al Qaeda, and some years later the Islamic State.

Based on the following investigative report from Italy, Tablighi Jamaat is now a rising star in the world of Islamic supremacism. It is unabashed in its assertion that Islam will eventually conquer Rome and other infidel lands, and that the conquest will require a massive amount of bloodshed.

Many thanks to HeHa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:

 

Video transcript:

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BLUF
Was that an intentional campaign to rid the military of critical thinkers?

The U.S. Army is ‘Begging’ Unvaccinated Soldiers to Return
Army forced to reverse course, as people refuse to enlist

Oh, how much the times have changed!

The United States Army is now begging COVID unvaccinated soldiers, who underwent involuntary discharge for their refusal to take the vaccine, to return to service and also permits them to correct their military records!

Just two years ago, in a shameful campaign, the Pentagon was gleefully discharging soldiers who refused to take Covid vaccines:

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2021/12/14/air-force-discharges-27-for-refusal-to-get-covid-vaccine/

We were assured that these discharges would “not affect military readiness.”

“I can tell you there are no operational impacts across the force for readiness,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. David Ottignon told lawmakers. “There’s no one community that has signaled an instance where a [leader], an NCO or another enlisted Marine is not present because of that.”

The Marine Corps has, by far, kicked out the most service members: 1,968 total, 20% of whom received an honorable discharge. That amounts to just under 1% of the total force, which stands at about 215,000.

However, the readiness suffered: thousands of service members were dismissed, and potential recruits declined to enlist in the Armed Services, because, guess what, young healthy men loath COVID vaccines.

More than 17,000 service members balked at taking the shots, citing safety fears linked to the vaccine’s speedy development and spurred by misinformation about messenger ribonucleic acid technology, as well as concern over fetal cell lines used in formulation and testing. The more the controversy raged in the news, the more troops asked to skip the shots, Military Times reporting found.

The COVID vaccine mandate removed three times as many servicemembers (8,339, see above) compared to the 2,402 soldiers tragically killed in Afghanistan. The involuntarily terminated soldiers were, of course, the best, the brightest, the healthiest, and most conscientious, who cared the most about their health.

Thousands were given career-destroying reprimands:

Lt. Col. Terry Kelley, a spokesman for the Army, said that 2,767 soldiers have received “general officer written reprimands” — killing their opportunities for promotions or transfers within the military — and that two battalion commanders as well as four other officers have been relieved of their duties but remain enlisted in the military.

The leadership, sadly, stayed silent. (pictured here is Lloyd Austin)

As a result, the military is missing its recruitment goals by 25%:

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BLUF
Post-Bruen, just as what happened after Heller, many federal courts are trying to stymie the obvious results of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions. A continued effort by Second Amendment advocates will be required to ensure proper enforcement of these landmark rulings.

Seventh Circuit Strains to Uphold Illinois’ Gun and Magazine Ban

At this point, gun owners and other productive Americans don’t anticipate much good news out of Chicago. On November 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit lived up to those expectations when it upheld Illinois’ ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms in Herrera v. Raoul.

In early 2023, Illinois enacted the ill-titled Protect Illinois Communities Act. That legislation, among its numerous anti-gun provisions, prohibits commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms such as the AR-15 and ammunition magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Current owners of prohibited guns are only permitted to retain their property if they register their firearms with the government. The plaintiffs in the present case challenged Illinois’ statute on Second Amendment grounds.

This may have seemed like an open-and-shut case to some who follow Second Amendment jurisprudence.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects ownership of arms “in common use” for lawful purposes. In case there was any confusion about what “arms” that might entail, Heller decision author Justice Antonin Scalia cleared that up in 2015 when he signed onto a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Friedman v. Highland Park. In the dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas explained,

Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.

Commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms have only become more common since Heller and the Highland Park case. In 2022, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the firearm industry trade association) estimated that since 1990 more than 24 million modern sporting rifles (their term for commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles) have entered circulation in the U.S. A 2023 Washington Post poll found that “6 percent of Americans own an AR-15, about 1 in 20.” Given compelling research finding that polling systematically undercounts the number of gun owners in the U.S., that number may be far higher.

The standard capacity firearm magazines Illinois prohibits are not just common, but ubiquitous. Many of the most popular handguns and rifles in America are designed to use magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Americans own hundreds of millions of firearm magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds.

If Heller weren’t enough, in 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion made clear that in order for a firearm regulation to pass constitutional muster it must fit within the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment right. As the dissent in the present case noted, “’in common use’ is a sufficient condition for finding arms protected under the history and tradition test in Bruen.” However, for a firearm restriction to be permissible it must meet that further burden.

Specifically, the Bruen opinion explained,

[w]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”

Given that the concept of an “assault weapons” ban targeting semi-automatic long guns came about in the 1980s only after gun control advocates failed to ban their preferred target (handguns), such prohibitions have no place in the American tradition.

To uphold the Illinois ban, the Seventh Circuit set about contending that the AR-15 falls outside the definition of “bearable arms” discussed and protected in Heller. According to the Judge Diane Wood,

the definition of “bearable Arms” extends only to weapons in common use for a lawful purpose. That lawful purpose, as we have said several times, is at its core the right to individual self-defense.

Wood contended that firearms that are prominent in military purposes fall outside this definition and are therefore not arms covered by the Second Amendment. Wood then claimed that the AR-15, despite its solely semi-automatic function, resembles the fully-automatic military M16 sufficiently for it to also fall outside the Second Amendment’s protection.

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Bystander Shoots Someone’s Attacker 5 Times

In North Carolina, a female bystander who was armed came to the victim’s aid after an attacker shot him in the face.

Police in Shelby, North Carolina, said on November 6th that 33-year-old Unterio M. Jolly got into an argument with another man on the street.

The two guys eventually went in different directions, but according to Capt. Seth Treadway, Jolly found the other man and confronted him with a handgun about half an hour later.

Jolly allegedly then shot the man he had been arguing with in the face. A woman with a concealed carry permit stepped in to help him and shot his attacker five times.

“Then they kind of go their separate ways, and about half an hour after, Unterio shows up with a gun and shoots (the man) in the face and the shoulder,” Capt. Seth Treadway said. “Right after he does that… a concerned citizen shoots back, trying to protect (the man) and hits Jolly about five times. She shoots him five times.”

The attacker suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and Jolly’s gunshot wound left him in critical condition.

Jolly is being charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, possession of a firearm by a felon, and assault.

The Shelby police said, “We will consult with the District Attorney’s Office later in the day to see if those charges need to stay the same,” and continued, “I do not expect any charges on the person that returned fire.”

A Well-Outfitted Militia: German Translation of the Second Amendment Offers Insight

There’s a perennial debate in gun politics in the United States. The gun control side makes various specious arguments claiming that the Second Amendment protects muskets and not modern arms, that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to a select militia like the National Guard, not We the People, and that “well-regulated” authorizes the de facto destruction of our rights via regulation.

Those of us who have studied the copious scholarly research on the text and history of the Second Amendment know that those arguments are bunk. We know that the right to keep and bear arms is not dependent on militia service. We know that the right extends to modern arms, much like the First Amendment is applicable to modern forms of communication. We know that “well-regulated” means in proper working order, not choking off that right while pretending to nurture it.

To further support the originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment, there’s insight offered from an uncommon source: the re-translation into English of founding era documents originally translated into German. The following is the abstract from an academic paper published in the American Journal of Legal History:

A Well-Outfitted Militia: German–American Translations of the Second Amendment and Original Public Meaning
By Brandon Kinney

This article seeks to uncover the original public meaning of the Second Amendment by scrutinizing unusual and previously unexamined sources: German–American translations of the Bill of Rights during the Founding Era. Translations offer a unique perspective of political culture, because they served as thoughtful analysis and contextual commentary on the source text.

Using six German–American translations in the Founding Era, this article argues that the public understanding of the Second Amendment during the Founding Era was one that recognized the individual right to own firearms for individual use unconnected to militia service as well as a constitutional endorsement of an armed population as the best bulwark to preserve the liberty of the national people.

Though the exact text of the translations differ across publishers and states, they retain thematic and syntactic similarities that suggest a public consensus over the meaning of the text. The notion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right rather than a collective one is borne out by additional translations well into the mid-nineteenth century.

Printers adjusted their translations of the amendment after the militia as a military institution had fallen into disuse but preserved or strengthened the clause protecting the individual right to arms rather than letting it ‘fall silent’.

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November 19

636 – The moslem Rashidun Caliphate defeats the Sasanian Empire, the last non-moslem empire of Persia, at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in modern day Iraq.

1493 – Christopher Columbus lands and claims the island he names San Juan Bautista – modern Puerto Rico.

1794 – The United States delegation headed by John Jay, and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign a 10 year treaty which attempts to resolve some of the economic, trade and territory occupation problems left over from the Paris Treaty of 1783 which ended the Revolutionary War.

1863 – President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, the Serbian Army defeats in detail the Ottoman Army in Monastir Vilayet near the modern town of Bitola, causing a collapse of the 5 century long rule of Macedonia by the Ottoman Empire

1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.

1942 – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch Operation Uranus, a counterattack on Nazi forces at Stalingrad.

1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe.

1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.

1969 – The Apollo 12 Lunar Excursion Module Intrepid lands on the moon at Oceanus Procellarum – Ocean of Storms – and astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

1979 –  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.

1985 – President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time at a summit in Geneva.

1996 – United Express Flight 5925, a Beechcraft 1900, and a private Beechcraft King Air collide on the runway at Quincy Regional Airport in Quincy, Illinois, killing all 14 passengers and crew aboard both craft.

1998 – The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against President Clinton.

2017 – Charles Manson dies in prison, completing his life sentence for multiple murders.

2022 – A man shoots and kills 5 people and wounds 19 more at a nightclub in Colorado Springs before being physically subdued, and later sentenced to 5 consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 2,211 years

 

The Laws of War
Critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza should keep in mind the principles of international humanitarian law–and hold Hamas to those same standards.

Each day brings new accounts of tragedy from Israel and Gaza. Reasonable people agree that the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7—deliberate, videotaped killings of innocent civilians; maiming in the most gruesome fashion of Israeli women and children; and taking Israelis as hostages into its warren of tunnels—stand as deeply disturbing violations of human rights and the laws of armed conflict. As President Joe Biden made clear, Israel possesses a right of self-defense that legally justifies the use of force against Hamas to prevent further atrocities and missile launches against its civilians. Those who argue Israel does not have a right of self defense make two claims: First, they argue that Israel’s “inherent right” is nullified because it is the “occupying power” of the Gaza Strip; and, second, they argue that the right of self-defense in Article 51 of the UN Charter applies only to force against other states, not non-state actors like Hamas.

Both arguments are unavailing. It is highly doubtful that Israel qualifies as an “occupying” power of the Gaza Strip because once it withdrew all military forces from Gaza in 2005, it has exercised no authority over the territory, which is a requirement under international law before assuming the responsibility of an occupying power. UN groups like the Human Rights Council counter that the status of “occupier” still applies because Israel has imposed stringent limits on travel to and trade with Gaza. And yet Egypt has (mostly) sealed off Gaza’s other border without being termed an occupying power.

In any event, even if Israel were an occupying power, that status would not justify Hamas’ intentional attacks on civilian targets in Israel or prevent Israel from using force to protect itself. For example, it was not considered illegal for the United States, as the occupying power of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, to use force against Iraqis who were attacking U.S. forces within Iraq.

The second argument against Israel’s right of self-defense—that it cannot invoke this right against non-state actors like Hamas—is equally untenable. Article 51 of the UN Charter states that nothing shall “impair the inherent right” of self-defense possessed by all member states. In recent years, many governments, including the United States, have adopted the view that this right of self-defense applies against non-state actors like al-Qaeda and ISIS in situations where the government of the state in which the non-state actors are operating is “unwilling or unable” to prevent attacks by the non-state actor. The case of the Gaza conflict is much stronger for Israel than the “unwilling or unable” rationale; Israel is protecting against Hamas’ direct, indiscriminate killing, beheading, torture and hostage-taking of Israeli civilians. 

Of course, Israel must exercise its right of self-defense in conformity with international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the laws of war or armed conflict. This body of customary international law, which was codified in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their subsequent protocols, limits the use of force to the following situations: military necessity; where a distinction is made between combatants and non-combatants; and where the use of force is proportionate to the concrete military objective sought to be achieved.

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There’s a Federal court case in Texas where a man filed a Form1 to make a MG and ATF (of course) denied it. This keeps up and SCOTUS just may get involved, and I’m not the only one thinking that, at the very least, the 1986 ban on new ‘transferable’ guns may get the axe under the “Bruen test” .

Attorney with local ties takes gun rights case to federal appeals court

An attorney and Nixa resident with ties to the area has a case related to gun rights making its way through the federal appeals court system after it was rejected by the U.S. District Court, Western District of Missouri, headquartered in Springfield.

The case has been appealed and will now move to the Eighth District Circuit Court of Appeals, primarily based in St. Louis.

Mark Blount, representing himself, is arguing against the National Firearms Act prohibition on possession of ordinary military weapons manufactured after 1986, with the defendants listed as the United States of America; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); Merrick Garland acting as Attorney General of the United States; and Bernard G. Hansen, acting as Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Kansas City Field Division.

The case background describes Blount’s complaint regarding the National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act and the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, all considered by Blount as unconstitutional, based on his argument the laws collectively infringe upon and deprive him of “ancient, inalienable, private, individual, absolute, ancestral sovereign common law right to keep and bear arms, retained by ancestors, the Founders of this country, and enumerated in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, by prohibiting Plaintiff from possessing machine guns of all descriptions manufactured after 1986.”

Blount specifically complains his constitutional rights are being infringed upon because, according to court documents, he “plans on purchasing an M-16 rifle, M-4 rifle, Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), or other machine gun which comprises the standard issue equipment of a service member in the United States military, manufactured after 1987, to wit, an ordinary military weapon, or converting the AR-15 rifles that he already lawfully possesses to automatic weapons,” and the acts criminalize his “planned course of conduct.”

The case was dismissed by the District Court, in part, on the grounds that Blount’s argument that his rights were being infringed upon was based on a “conjectural or hypothetical interest” rather than an “invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or imminent.”

In other words, it was rejected on the grounds his argument was based on an illegal act he planned on committing rather than the real possibility of prosecution after committing it, and that he failed “to allege anything beyond a speculative fear of prosecution.”

While the judgment didn’t address Blount’s argument of those laws as unconstitutional, he outlined it in an eight-page document sent to the Quill. In general, he says, the right to bear arms is a constitutional right that has been passed down from the founding fathers, and he describes it, in part, as a fundamental right “upon which rights every other right is based, which rights we had inherited as the lineal, legal, and bloodline descendants of the ancestral class of rights-holders, free Englishmen.”

Blount is a Duke University School of Law graduate. He is married to Ashley Huddleston-Blount, whose family is from West Plains. Huddleston-Blount’s family is from West Plains, and her grandparents owned a small cattle farm in Oregon County and were known throughout the area. She is descended from the Huddlestons who were in the West Plains area as early as the start of the 1820s.

Of Course Gun-Control Fails in Practice, but Does it Work in Theory?

The murderer who attacked children in a Nashville Christian school wrote a diary. Parts of it were published and then taken down. This murderer hoped that she was the only one with a gun and that her victims were unprotected. Many people want the same thing.

In theory, disarming honest citizens makes your country safer. Last month, Israelis again confirmed that gun-control is a failure. Gun-prohibition assumes that murderers and terrorists will obey the law, that they will only buy a firearm through legal channels. In practice, disarming your neighbors gives you all the vulnerability of disarmed victims with none of the benefits of actually disarming murderers. Despite those repeated failures both in the US and abroad, anti-rights politicians want ordinary citizens disarmed. So do academics in both the US and in Israel.

Palestinians killed about 1,200 Israelis during their attack on October 7th. That would be proportional in size to Mexican drug gangs entering the US and murdering everyone in Galveston, Texas. The Palestinian attackers deliberately targeted schools and youth centers.

The real and undeniable advantage of armed citizens is that they are there when the attack happens. They can respond immediately. They also have local knowledge of who the innocent victims are and who are the bad guys that don’t belong. In practice, a government response that takes hours to protect unarmed victims is a unilateral surrender to murderers and terrorists.

Israel asked to import 24 thousand rifles from the United States. Biden said no precisely because some of those rifles might end up in the hands of Israeli civilians. We wouldn’t want civilians to be able to stop terrorists, now would we. Biden also stopped the export of all US civilian firearms for 90 days. I suspect that the Israelis forgot to include another “10-percent for the big guy.”

Please note that this is the same Biden administration that abandoned 83-billion dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan. I’d bet that some of that equipment is now in the hands of Hamas terrorists who are fighting Israel.

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Girlfriend fatally shoots ex-boyfriend as he broke into her house in Issaquah

ISSAQUAH, Wash. — Investigators say a man was breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s house Friday morning when she shot and killed him.

The shooting happened at 10:25 a.m. at an apartment complex near 2900 NW Steelrake Place in Issaquah.

According to Issaquah police, the woman shot the man once, killing him, after he allegedly broke into her home.

“I’m devastated that this kind of violence could happen right here. From now on, I will be walking the neighborhood with a gun,” neighbor Trina Freatman told KOMO News.

Chief Paula Schwan said the shooter called 911 immediately to report what happened and has been ‘totally cooperative’ with investigators.