Fourth Amendment Abuse
We do it all the time, don’t we?


Image generated with MidJourney using the prompt dawn swat raid in the suburbs

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I was going to make this a paid post, but I think I want people to see it more than I want to make money. It’s not a minor matter.

In my last post, I talked about why we might want to make it hard for the government to get a warrant. And before we start, let’s make something clear: this is a right afforded to all Americans and cannot be undercut by state or local authorities. Also understand that there is no specification about who does the searching and seizing. It does not matter if it’s the President of the United States himself. He doesn’t get to look at your stuff without a damn good reason and a warrant.

And yet we violate this amendment so often that we don’t even think about it. Why should we? The letter of the law is usually followed. The spirit, however…

We’re talking about the Fourth Amendment, kind of in isolation, but it doesn’t exist by itself, and there isn’t really any order of priority to the rights enumerated. In other words, you can’t justify breaking the Fifth Amendment just because you kept the Fourth. And the Fifth actually has bearing on what has happened with the Fourth because of one of its clauses: [No person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Why is this clause important? Because you either have a system in place to protect We the People from abuse by those who have authority to take away everything, or you don’t have a government established by We the People. The whole process, the whole system, is designed to give every American a chance to argue their case, and not just in front of a judge. It’s also designed to give every American a chance to cooperate with the process peacefully.

Which brings us to one of the major loopholes in the above amendment. It says that a warrant must be issued. It does not say how that warrant has to be delivered.

Look at the illustration above. Are there times when this is the correct approach to serving a warrant? Possibly. Had all other avenues been exhausted first? There are two recent cases that I will highlight to suggest that they were not.

The first happened in Utah, in a scenario similar to the illustration above. The FBI gathered before dawn and breached a man’s residence at six in the morning using a vehicle mounted battering ram. The details aren’t clear about what happened, but the man in question was shot and killed. He was in his seventies, needed a walker to get around, and the FBI says he pointed a gun at them. But none of the agents involved wore a body cam, and they left the man’s body on the sidewalk for hours. This was not an isolated property, either, but in a residential area, where stray shots could have injured or killed people who were not involved.

The second happened in Kansas, where local law enforcement raided a small newspaper’s office and the home of the one of the co-founders. They had a warrant that said they could seize all the computers and cell phones in connection with their investigation of alleged identity theft by one of the paper’s reporters, which of course effectively kept them from publishing until the equipment was returned.

Without getting into the details of either case, my concern is not about the guilt or innocence of the citizens involved. My concern is that in both cases, the accused was not given a chance to comply peacefully, or to cooperate with the investigation. This is opposite of why the Bill of Rights was even considered necessary, which was to give the highest respect to every individual American.

The Kansas case gets into the problem of perception. If you serve a warrant on any news organization, you have to be very careful that you do not give the appearance of violating the Freedom of the Press. In this case, the newspaper had printed some accurate but embarrassing information about someone who then accused the paper of obtaining the information illegally. The fact that local law enforcement obtained a warrant in order to start their investigation comes across as way of saying, “No, no, we’re completely following the Bill of Rights. We’re good Americans, and we would never violate anyone’s God-given rights, especially the Freedom of the Press!” The fact that they served their warrant forcefully, even grabbing a cellphone out of a woman’s hand, does not really lend credence to that claim.

Similarly, the Utah case completely misses the point of having to get a warrant in the first place. Especially if you are going to bring a SWAT team in to serve the warrant, and even if everything goes perfectly peacefully, the warrant and the process leading to the decision to use massive firepower to serve it had better be public after the fact. I don’t care if it happens against a gang-banger in the depths of the urban jungle. I want to see the justification for such an intimidating display, and I want it to be judged.

And here’s where we get into the way the Constitution and the Bill of Rights see the government as opposed to the citizen. Going back over the way the branches of the Federal Government are given checks and balances, while the citizen is given every benefit of the doubt, tells me that America is based on the idea that any government is suspect, and will eventually devolve into a system that abuses the authority it is given. Americans have the civic duty to notice these impulses and stop them before they get out of hand.

The individual American is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The government gets no such protection, and perhaps we should treat it that way.

August 24

79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and in 2 days buries the cities of Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae,  aaaand Pompeii.

410 – The Visigoths under King Alaric I sack Rome.

1215 – A little over 2 months after being signed by him, King John of England persuades Pope Innocent III to issue a bull declaring Magna Carta invalid.

1682 – William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.

1781 – Militia reinforcements for General George Rogers Clark, under the command of Archibald Lochry, are ambushed and overwhelmed near present day Aurora, Indiana by a Mohawk force under the command of Joseph ‘Thayendanegea’ Brant, which forces Clark to abandon his attempt to attack British held Detroit.

1814 – British troops invade Washington D.C. and set fire to the White House, the Capitol, and many other buildings.

1816 – The first Treaty of St. Louis between the U.S. and the Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi tribes is signed in, *drum roll*  St. Louis, Missouri

1841 – Captain John Ordronaux, reputedly the most successful American privateer of the War of 1812, dies in  Cartagena, Colombia

1857 – The financial Panic of 1857 caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy, begins in the U.S and due to the invention of the telegraph spread rapidly throughout the nation.

1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop, from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey.

1933 – Southern Railways, Crescent Limited train derails in Washington, D.C., after the Anacostia River bridge it is crossing was washed out by a hurricane hitting the area earlier in the day.

1942 – The Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō is sunk and the U.S. carrier USS Enterprise is heavily damaged in The Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

1945 – British Prime Minister Attlee informs Parliament that Britain is in “a very serious financial position” due to the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease by President Truman

1949 – The treaty creating NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,  goes into effect.

1951 – United Air Lines Flight 615, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Decoto, California, killing all 50 passengers and crew aboard.

1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party as a “Communist-action” organization.

1970 – Vietnam War protesters bomb Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

1981 – Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.

1989 – Colombian drug cartels declare “total war” on the Colombian government.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.

1992 – Hurricane Andrew makes landfall in Homestead, Florida as a Category 5 hurricane

1995 – Microsoft Windows 95 is released to the public in North America.

2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term “planet” such that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.

2012 – Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, killing 77 people, is sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention.

 

¡Grupos de autodefensas Para Mi!

Should armed activists patrol Hartford streets?

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — Community activists’ proposed solution to recent gun violence is a community-led patrol made up of legal gun owners.

There have been 28 homicides in Hartford this year, many in the north end of the city.

Cornell Lewis, a gun owner and community activist, has proposed the idea that legal gun owners should band together to defend their neighborhoods.

“We know what to do with our guns, when to do it and we know how to diffuse situations,” he said. “The thing we’re not going to allow is people to oppress the community.”

Lewis created the Self Defense Brigade, a group dedicated to protecting the community by using “appropriate means.” Over the past three years, the group has acted as security at Black Lives Matter protests, funerals and other community events.

“It is better to defend ourselves,” Lewis said. “We have the right to. The Second Amendment says we can carry weapons, and we carry our weapons legally.”

The Self Defense Brigade and other gun-rights groups are planning to be at a rally on Sept. 2 to talk about this idea and to gauge interest. Lewis said a number of Hartford residents and people in other towns have expressed an interest in being involved.

Jeremy Stein, the executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, said he understands that people want immediate solutions to violent crime. He believes an armed guard is not the safest option.

“Adding more guns to our communities will not do a thing to end gun violence, it’s actually quite the opposite. It’s going to create a powder keg of gun violence,” he said.

In a statement to News 8, Hartford’s Mayor Luke Bronin said:
I understand the frustration and anger, because I share that frustration and anger, and I feel the burden of responsibility personally and heavily, as do our police and everyone who does this work.
Our first priority right now is to get the people responsible for the most recent shootings off of our streets, and we are working with law enforcement partners at every level, from the FBI, ATF, and DEA to state police and regional partners.
We’ve seen a series of very different acts of violence in the past few weeks, some of which are intensely personal disputes, some of which appear to be spontaneous disputes that escalate quickly into gunfire, and some of which involve a specific group of very reckless and dangerous individuals that we are working hard with law enforcement at every level to apprehend.“

Awhile back, you’ll recall, the guy starts out on the road to Moscow with his mercs, then stops and whatever. You’d think he’d understand that he was in Putin’s crosshairs from then on and take precautions, because, at that point, he has to stay “on” all the time and Putin just has to be lucky once.

Wagner Decries ‘Murder’ Of Prigozhin Amid Reports Anti-Air Missile Struck Plane.

At this point it’s looking like the entire top command of Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group was aboard the private plane that was downed northwest of Moscow hours ago. Wagner itself is confirming Yvgeny Prigozhin’s death, with Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone calling it a ‘murder.’

12-Year-Old Arrested for Armed Carjacking in Democrat-Run D.C.
A 12-year-old boy was arrested by the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department in connection with a carjacking on Sunday.

FOX News reported a woman was driving the car around 1:00 p.m. Sunday when a suspect approached and demanded her keys. The woman believed she saw a gun in the suspect’s waistband.

The Washington Times noted that the woman refused to hand over her keys, and the suspect, believed to be the 12-year-old, ran away.

The boy was apprehended while fleeing, and police indicated he was armed when arrested.

The Metropolitan Police Department pointed out that the 12-year-old was “charged with armed carjacking (gun) and carrying a pistol without a license.”

Breitbart News explained that D.C. witnessed 166 homicides from January 1, 2023, through August 16, 2023, a 27-percent increase over the same time frame in 2022.

Robbery is also up, rising 63 percent from where it was at this point last year, and auto theft is up a whopping 114 percent.

To make it to this level of competition, you have to be really good.

12 U.S. Soldiers Compete in ISSF World Championships in Baku

Twelve Soldiers from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit will compete in the 2023 International Shooting Sports Federation World Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan August 14 – September 1 as part of USA Shooting’s 40 athlete-team.

The ISSF World Championships includes a number of rifle, pistol and shotgun events where more than 1200 athletes from 101 nations will vie for the title of World Champion in their shooting discipline. It is also an opportunity for shooting sports athletes to earn U.S. Olympic Quotas for the 2024 Paris Games.

Olympic Quotas are essentially tickets, or slots, for a country to compete at the Olympics in a specific event. Each country is eligible for two athletes to compete in each event at the Games.

Currently, USA Shooting athletes have earned 15 Paris quotas. Seven of those quotes were earned at prior international competitions by the USAMU Soldiers stationed at Fort Moore, Georgia.

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Video shows Dallas apartment tenant fire through door as men posing as maintenance workers attempt break-in

In a now viral video obtained by WFAA, a tenant in a Dallas apartment is seen shooting through his apartment door as two men accused of pretending to be maintenance workers attempt to break in.

According to the Dallas Police Department, just after 6 p.m. on Aug. 19, officers responded to call for service at the Interlace Apartments where two male suspects had knocked on a victim’s door claiming to be maintenance.

Arrest made in Oak Cliff apartment shootout with burglary suspect posing as maintenance man

According to an arrest affidavit, the video posted and circulated on social media, leading to CrimeStoppers tips that identified the suspect posting as the maintenance worker as 30-year-old Aaron Contreras.

I don’t think this is working out how the gun grabbers wanted

Bill allowing more guns in Tennessee schools moves forward in special session

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — While many gun-related pieces of legislation are not moving forward in the Tennessee General Assembly’s special session on public safety, one firearm bill cleared its first hurdle in committee.

The bill, brought by Rep. Chris Todd (R—Madison County), would allow any law enforcement officer, whether on or off-duty, as well as any member of the armed forces—honorably discharged or not—and anyone with an enhanced handgun carry permit to carry on school grounds or any place used by a school where students would be present.

During discussion in the House Civil Justice Subcommittee, Todd and others argued the bill would help keep schools safer in the event of an emergency before first responders arrive on the scene, but critics and even the Tennessee Department of Safety pushed back, saying it would cause more harm than good.

Elizabeth Stroecker, with the Department of Safety, said the bill would “create a situation where you would have law enforcement potentially coming in not knowing who could be a bad guy or a good guy when someone has a firearm and it’s not clear that they may be a first responder.”

Todd took issue with Stroecker’s claims, arguing whether the department trusted the “trained and permitted individuals your own department has provided permits for.”

“We absolutely trust the people that we permit, but they are not trained or permitted to carry in a school and protect a school and be able to respond to a situation in a school. There is a very big difference in the eight-hour course they take to get the enhanced permit,” Stroecker said.

Todd became even angrier, snapping at Stroecker.

“We literally have administrators in schools and law enforcement that are about to retire or are already retired that are begging us for this legislation, so that they can protect the children that are around them every single day, and you sit here as a representative of our governor that is preventing that!” Todd said.

He was quieted by the committee chairman Rep. Lowell Russell (R—Vonore) before the vote, which saw the bill approved by voice vote. It now moves onto the full Civil Justice Committee.

Other bills, many by Democrats, were killed in multiple committees today by House members. On the Senate side, one committee killed 52 of 55 bills that were on the agenda. The three that survived were priority bills for Speaker Cameron Sexton (R—Crossville).

How Convenient: Hawaii Governor Reveals State Plans “to Acquire Land” Ravaged by Wildfires

On Monday, Hawaii’s Democrat Governor Josh Green announced that his administration is actively considering acquiring properties in Lahaina that have been devastated by recent wildfires.

A total of 99 deaths were recorded as a result of the wildfires that occurred in Maui. Concerns have been raised among officials regarding the potential increase in the death toll, as just 25% of the burn area has been searched thus far.

Local residents are grappling with not only the loss of homes and loved ones but the unsettling attention of developers looking to capitalize on their tragedy.

USA Today reported a particularly distressing account of Tammy Kaililaau, whose home of 20 years was reduced to ashes.

Less than a week after the catastrophic event, she received a Facebook message from someone in real estate. Kaililaau, along with other residents, had been warned via social media that developers might try to buy their land, so she ignored the message.

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This American doesn’t care.
I’m not safer driving to work vs taking the train but I’m still not taking the train. This notion of “safety” as a general state of being is an illusion that neurotic people obsess over. Being safe is a series of actions taken to mitigate unnecessary risk in an inherently dangerous environment or undertaking.

You can exercise gun safety by actions you take when handling a gun, you can take safety precautions when driving a car by being alert, using a seatbelt, etc but nobody on earth lives in a perpetual state of inherent safety. We never have and we never will.

This is a lie sold to people by the media and the powerful in order to accumulate more power at the expense of our rights and liberties and it needs to be called out.

Many Americans Still Wrongly Think Guns Make Us Safer

Large portions of the American public still believe false claims of all kinds about guns, the COVID-19 pandemic and reproductive health, a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.

Though the poll found that percentages of Americans who believe that false claims are “definitely” true is small, the portion who think they are “probably” true is substantial. Overall, between half and three-quarters of the country belong to what KFF CEO Drew Altman called the “muddled middle,” saying that the false claims were “probably” either true or false.

Perhaps most striking of the poll’s findings is the incorrect belief, held by many Americans, that guns make them safer. Sixty percent of Americans believe it’s true that armed school police guards have been proved to prevent school shootings. Eighteen percent of respondents thought the claim was “definitely” true and 42% believed it “probably” true.

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August 23

30 BC –Octavian has Marcus Antonius Antyllus, eldest son of Mark Antony, and Caesarion, the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. and only child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, executed.

79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

1244 – King Frederick II of Jerusalem, ruler for 15 years after his forces of the 6th Crusade successfully retook the city in 1229, surrenders to forces of the besieging moslem Khwarezm Empire

1305 – Sir William Wallace is executed for high treason at Smithfield, London.

1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.

1595 – One of the warlords of ancient Wallachia, Prince Michael the Brave’s forces confront an Ottoman army 8 times its size, led by Koca Sinan Pasha near Călugăreni in modern southeastern Hungary, and achieves a tactical victory, inflicting losses ten times its own before retreating in good order

1775 – King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James’s stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.

1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin. It is not accepted into the United States, and only lasts for 4 years before dissolving back under control of the state.

1785 – Oliver Hazard Perry is born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

1819 – Oliver Hazard Perry dies aboard his his flagship USS Nonsuch enroute to Tobago, having caught Yellow Fever while sailing the Oronoco river on a diplomatic mission to Simon Bolivar.

1831 – Nat Turner’s slave rebellion is suppressed. Turner flees into hiding.

1914 – Japan declares war on Germany

1927 – Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for murder at Charlestown State Prison in Massachusetts

1929 – Arabs attack the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, killing over 60 Jews and forcing the rest to evacuate the town.

1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-aggression Pact.

1942 – German troops begin the attack on Stalingrad.

1954 – The Lockheed C-130 Hercules files for the first time

1966 – NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western “guests”  – actually hostages -to try to prevent the 1st Gulf War.

1991 – The World Wide Web is opened public access.

1994 – Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

2011 – A  5.8  magnitude earthquake occurs in Virginia. Damage occurs to monuments and structures in Washington, D.C. and the resultant damage is estimated at $200 –$300 million USD. Personnel at Felker Army Airfield at Fort Eustis report actually seeing shock waves traveling through a concrete floor of an aircraft hangar.

 

New Jersey’s Falsely Claims Historical Tradition Of Firearm Regulation Exists

Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners in a federal lawsuit challenging New Jersey’s “sensitive places” statute have filed a response brief to the state’s appeal. The case is now known as Koons v. Platkin.

In May, U.S. District Court Judge Renee Marie Bumb granted a preliminary injunction against the state. New Jersey sought a stay of that order pending appeal, to which Second Amendment Foundation filed a brief in opposition.

SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners, New Jersey Second Amendment Society, and four private citizens. Attorney David Jensen, Beacon, N.Y represent them.

“The state is trying to justify the challenged provisions of its ‘sensitive places’ law, which makes it virtually impossible for people with carry permits to actually go to most places,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Essentially, Garden State residents can walk out the front door with their legally-carried firearms, but they can’t really go anywhere.”

“We maintain the District Court acted properly by issuing a preliminary injunction against enforcement of this ‘sensitive places’ statute,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The Anti-Carry Default provision of the law, which prohibits carrying on private property without the owner’s express permission, is tantamount to prohibiting lawful carry in most public places. The section prohibiting carrying a gun in a vehicle, unless the gun is unloaded and placed in a securely fastened case literally makes legal carry impossible while traveling.”

Both Second Amendment Foundation officials say it is impossible for the state to show the challenged provisions of the law, known as Chapter 131, are consistent with a historical tradition of firearm regulation.

“It is a requirement of the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling last year,” Kraut noted, “and they can’t meet that requirement because there was no such Founding-era tradition. The state has failed to show such examples, and the injunctions should be upheld.”

KDJ’s ‘Gun Myth’ Fact-Check: Liberals Vs. Americans, Part 1

I was looking up gun statistics for my article “Liberties Under Assault: 2nd Amendment Edition,” and I tripped on two articles tackling “gun myths.” One was from the Bolshie-riffic prags at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), and the other was by sane people at gunfacts.info. So I thought I’d dig into both and see which site actually knows the difference between an AR-15 and an “assault rifle.”

FACT-O-RAMA! An AR-15 is a semi-automatic firearm, and an assault rifle is a non-existent boogeyman boom-boom stick that haunts tree-huggers in their sleep and makes them wet their non-binary Underoos.

Before we get started, I just want to apologize for the phrase “fact-check” in the headline. I abhor the phrase “fact-check” because it is frequently used by commie websites that employ each other’s articles to verify or debunk alleged “facts.” Meaning, the pinko skanks at USA Today will post “Fact-Check: Did Biden Make Millions Selling Influence to our Enemies Across the Globe? The New York Times says ‘No.’” It’s akin to Stalin saying, “If you don’t believe me, ask Beria.”

However, I will be doing a real fact-check on gun myths. Let’s get this “myth” brawl underway.

In this corner, wearing rainbow trunks, weighing in at 51 kilograms, Johns Hopkins University.

MYTH: URBAN HOMICIDES FALSELY INFLATE STATISTICS ON U.S. GUN DEATHS.

FACT: “The common trope is that places like Baltimore or Detroit or Chicago are the reason we have so many gun deaths in this country,” Cass Crifasi, PhD ’14, MPH, the Center’s director of research and policy, told the Chicago Tribune. And yes, those places … have unacceptable rates of gun homicides. But the places with the highest rates of death are not Maryland, Michigan, and Illinois. They are Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, and Alabama. The places with weaker gun laws have higher rates of death. More people died from guns in Texas than Illinois, when suicide and accidental shootings are included.

Hold on, let’s look at that last phrase, “when suicide and accidental shootings are included.” That’s just a lefty pivot. Nice try, jackpuddings. We see how you are trying to manipulate the game.

Yes, roughly two-thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides, but that isn’t what this is about. The left needs to lie and squirm like the lizard people they are and add “suicides and accidental shootings” in order to “prove” that red-state dwellers, meaning conservatives, are more gun-happy than city folk, and as you’re about to see, that just ain’t true.  But again, they’ll say what they must to confiscate your guns.

JHU claims that most shootings are taking place in red states. What it fails to mention is that they are happening in blue cities in red states. And since JHU mentioned my home state of Michigan, check out this map of shootings in the Great Lakes State.

If you take Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Detroit out of the picture, shootings drop significantly. And since JHU brought it up, I’ll add that the Yoopers in the Upper Peninsula (UP), of Michigan aren’t very violent. I suspect those snowbillies in da UP are not shooting people, accidentally or otherwise, just themselves, eh?

BLAST-O-RAMA! Out of a possible 100, with 100 being the safest cities in the U.S., the aforementioned Michigan cities scored the following: Detroit: 1, Lansing: 5, Grand Rapids: 7, Flint: 17 (don’t drink the water, and honestly, that score of 17 seems dubious). The mayors of Detroit, Flint, and Grand Rapids are Democrats. The mayor of Lansing has no party.

Hey look, I’m correct. Suicide in rural Michigan is a problem. But again, we are talking about guns used to kill people illegally. It’s nice of the Punchinellos to drag suicide into a “gun violence” debate and try to use depression to prove a point.

Let’s look at the other states mentioned:

  • The suicide rate in Wyoming is more than double the national average. This is where the “gun deaths” come from. Even the sitzpinklers at USA Today listed Wyoming as #43 in a list of the most dangerous states. Debunked.
  • Mississippi’s suicide rate clocks in at 27th in the nation, but the state ranks highest in murder rate. One-quarter of the murders take place in Jackson, which is run by a Democrat mayor. Democrats run five out of Mississippi’s ten most dangerous cities, (Republicans run four, and one is run by an Independent). Debunked.

FACT-O-RAMA! Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes once suggested that people throw, “bricks, rocks, and bottles” at police chasing black suspects.

  • Six out of Louisiana’s eight most dangerous cities are run by Democrats. One is run by a Republican and one by an Independent. Debunked.

Conclusion: We can see that the beta cucks at JHU had to twist their data in a pathetic and vain attempt to prove that conservatives and guns are “dangerous.” A vast majority of gun crimes committed in red states took place in blue cities.

FACT-O-RAMA! As of this writing, there have been 763 defensive shootings in 2023.

And in this corner, wearing red, white, and blue shorts, weighing in at 188 lbs, gunfacts.info.

Myth: Gun violence is widespread in America

Fact: Misuse of guns is highly centralized in major metro areas, within poor neighborhoods (typically street gang infested) and thus highly among young black males.

According to these maps from gunviolencearchives.com, we can clearly see that most shootings take place in the eastern third of the U.S. The shootings make a significant drop in eastern Texas (roughly San Antonio) and don’t pick up again until the west coast.

Check out this map. It’s interactive. You can zoom anywhere in the U.S. and see that most shootings take place in bigger towns and cities (derp).

Conclusion: Gunfacts.info knows what it’s talking about. Shootings aren’t happening everywhere. Most take place in bigger cities. Unlike the milquetoasts at JHU, gunfacts.info doesn’t need to twist data to support laughable narratives.

Winner, Round One: Gunfacts.info!

Check back for round two in a few days! Until then, keep yer powder dry.

I see this as nothing much more than Goobernor CYA

Tennessee: 2023 Special Session Convenes – Gun Control Legislation Introduced

[On the 21st] the Tennessee General Assembly convened for a Special Session at the request of Governor Bill Lee.  While the announced purpose of the session is to address public safety, there is an attempt to force through several ineffective gun control measures that were rejected by the General Assembly earlier this year.  As of this afternoon, there are numerous anti-gun bills introduced.  We urge all NRA members and Second Amendment supporters in Tennessee to contact their state senators and representatives to let them know you OPPOSE all gun control and ask them to protect your Second Amendment rights.

Below is a list of restrictive measures that have been filed.  You can view the text of each bill at Tennessee General Assembly – Bill Search.

  • House Bill 7001/Senate Bill 7068 specifies that classes that qualify as training for issuance of an enhanced handgun carry permit or concealed handgun carry permit must include training on the use of gun locks. Therefore, classes that don’t explicitly address “gun locks” would no longer be certified by the state for permitting purposes.
  • House Bill 7047/Senate Bill 7011 creates a Class E felony of threatened mass violence for the reckless handling, displaying, or discharging of a firearm while operating or as a passenger in a motor vehicle.  This legislation could seemingly sweep in conduct, such as a person or passenger moving guns around in their car in a completely non-threatening manner.  Under current Tennessee law, threatening someone with a firearm from a motor vehicle is already aggravated assault and is a Class C felony.
  • House Bill 7056/Senate Bill 7049 expands the offense of aggravated stalking to include persons who purchase a semi-automatic rifle or attempt to use a semi-automatic rifle for the course and furtherance of stalking. The legislation attempts to carve out lawful semi-automatic firearms for different treatment under the law.
  • House Bill 7074/Senate Bill 7044 & House Bill 7075/Senate Bill 7043 include several “safe storage” provisions that control how individual Tennesseans keep firearms.
  • House Bill 7079 requires a federally licensed firearm dealer to install a firearm safety device on a firearm before delivering the firearm to a purchaser if the purchaser is not a federally licensed firearm dealer.
  • House Bill 7090/Senate Bill 7040 requires the Department of Safety to use its existing permanent electronic overhead informational displays located on the interstate system to provide messages that encourage the safe storage of firearms.
  • House Bill 7098/Senate Bill 7026 establishes the Tennessee voluntary do not sell firearms list to prohibit the possession, transportation, and sale of firearms to any person who is voluntarily admitted to a public or private hospital or treatment resource for diagnosis, observation, and treatment of a mental illness or serious emotional disturbance and voluntarily registers to be enrolled to the list.
  • House Bill 7099, House Bill 7100/Senate Bill 7029, & House Bill 7101/Senate Bill 7042 so-called “red flag” gun confiscation legislation requiring firearms surrender without due process.

US Military Reportedly Plans to Lower Yet Another Standard Amid Recruiting Slump

Amid recruiting shortfalls, the U.S. military is planning a policy change that would make it easier for applicants to qualify for service.

Military applicants taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery could soon be allowed to use calculators to help them pass the timed test, which measures aptitude and helps determine the positions in the military one is qualified for.

“We are taking a systematic approach, which will assess the impact of calculator use, and we are developing a way forward for calculator inclusion,” a Pentagon official told Military.com.

The change in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, could help relieve an ongoing recruiting slump, which is attributed to many young Americans not scoring high enough to qualify for enlistment. It would also put the ASVAB on par with how test-taking has evolved in the past decade, with calculators being widely used in math classes and on college entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT. […]

The [recruiting] shortfalls are due to an amalgamation of issues — but at the forefront is a shrinking pool of qualified young Americans, 17- to 24-year-olds, who are eligible to enlist. Many of those applicants are being turned away due to poor performance on the military’s aptitude exam.

Last year, the Army launched its Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a two-track camp for applicants who came just shy of the service’s standards for academic performance or body fat.

There, soldiers have 90 days to come into compliance. The Army can graduate about 12,000 soldiers from that course into basic training, making up much of the recruiting deficit it saw last year with enlistees who otherwise wouldn’t have qualified for service.

The academic track — applicants who struggle to hit education standards necessary for entrance — makes up the lion’s share of that course. (Military.com)

When the use of calculators for the test will be allowed remains to be seen, but already, the move is facing backlash for being yet another example of the “dumbing down” of the military.

Lower scores on the ASVAB test come at a time when the average ACT score fell in 2022 to its lowest levels in 30 years.