Gun rights group files emergency petition to SCOTUS on gun ban case

Illinois has been going above and beyond as of late to make Second Amendment related news. The National Association for Gun Rights filed a lawsuit last year challenging the city of Naperville’s so-called “assault weapons” ban. That case, Bevis et al v. City of Naperville was amended earlier this year to include the State of Illinois as a plaintiff, which enacted a ban in January. The request for an injunction against the law made its way all the way to the Seventh Circuit, and Bevis et.al. were not granted any temporary relief. It was announced in a release that an emergency appeal has been filed to the Supreme Court of the United States on the matter.

There was a similar situation in the Second Circuit Court of appeals, with a challenge to a New York law that’s unconstitutional – also enacted post NYSRPA v. Bruen – and the plaintiffs were moved to make an emergency appeal to the high court. In that case, the Second Circuit refused to respect the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision. While SCOTUS did not intervene in that case, Justice Alito did state in an unsigned order the following:

Applicants should not be deterred by today’s order from again seeking relief if the Second Circuit does not, within a reasonable time, provide an explanation for its stay order or expedite consideration of the appeal.

Appealing to SCOTUS at these stages in the game for emergency relief is not necessarily something that’s commonplace, but may draw the ire of the justices on how the lower courts are disobeying their orders.

The National Foundation for Gun Rights (NFGR) is asking the United States Supreme Court to provide emergency relief from two assault weapons bans in place in Illinois.

NFGR argues that the Illinois ban violates the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right of individuals to bear arms. NFGR’s lawsuit also challenges an AR-15 sale ban enacted by the City of Naperville, IL.

NFGR initially requested a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois blocking both the state and local bans on behalf of fellow plaintiff, Naperville gun store owner Robert Bevis, whose livelihood has been severely impacted by both bans. The district court trampled multiple Supreme Court precedents to rule against gun rights, so foundation attorneys appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, pleading that Plaintiff Bevis was facing the loss of his business without speedy relief.

The Seventh Circuit declined to temporarily block the two semi-auto bans pending its review of the preliminary injunction appeal, so NFGR is filing an Emergency Application for Injunction Pending Appellate Review with the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s interesting to note that in many cases, lower courts have been getting the orders correct. In this case, the Seventh Circuit, and in the case of Antonyuck v. Nigrelli, from the Second Circuit, they are not willing to enjoin bad laws while the cases play out. We’re likely to see cases out of New Jersey challenging the so-called “carry killer” law there, head to the Third Circuit as soon as an opinion is delivered by Judge Bumb in a Federal Court.

Is this going to be the trend? Are the Circuit Courts of Appeal going to completely ignore the Supreme Court on all these issues concerning firearms by reversing the enjoinment/restraining orders of lower courts, or not enjoining them themselves?

“The assault weapons ban is a blatant violation of the rights of law-abiding citizens and does nothing to address the causes of gun violence,” said Dudley Brown, President of the National Foundation for Gun Rights. “Between them, Illinois and the City of Naperville are about to drive a law-abiding gun store owner into bankruptcy just because they don’t like his business. That’s grossly unconstitutional, and we’re asking the Supreme Court to put a stop to it.”

NAGAR’s opening remark in their filing to the high court hits at the core of the issue:

This is an exceedingly simple case. The Second Amendment protects arms that are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, especially self-defense in the home. See New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2128 (2022) (citing D.C. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 629 (2008)).

The arms banned by Respondents are possessed by millions of law abiding citizens for lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home. Under this Court’s precedents, “that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.” Friedman v. City of Highland Park, Ill., 577 U.S. 1039 (2015) (Thomas, J., joined by Scalia, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). There cannot be the slightest question, therefore, that the challenged laws are unconstitutional.

Kudos! to NAGAR for punting this case into the lap of the Supreme Court. Eventually one of these lower courts’ decisions is going to tick off the high court at one of these stages and they’re going to have to step in. At least, one would think so.

Given the way the Circuits behave, we can almost assume that whenever the pending cases in California make their way to the Ninth Circuit, that we’ll be dealing with similar malfeasance within the judicial system, and who knows what’ll come of the cases in the Third Circuit. We’ll be watching the progress of this case and report back with any new developments.

Hackers Are Breaking Into ATT Email Accounts to Steal Cryptocurrency.

Unknown hackers are breaking into the accounts of people who have AT&T email addresses, and using that access to then hack into the victim’s cryptocurrency exchange’s accounts and steal their crypto, TechCrunch has learned.

At the beginning of the month, an anonymous source told TechCrunch that a gang of cybercriminals have found a way to hack into the email addresses of anyone who has an att.net, sbcglobal.net, bellsouth.net and other AT&T email addresses.

According to the tipster, the hackers are able to do that because they have access to a part of AT&T’s internal network, which allows them to create mail keys for any user. Mail keys are unique credentials that AT&T email users can use to log into their accounts using email apps such as Thunderbird or Outlook, but without having to use their passwords.

With a target’s mail key, the hackers can use an email app to log into the target’s account and start resetting passwords for more lucrative services, such as cryptocurrency exchanges. At that point it’s game over for the victim, as the hackers can then reset the victim’s Coinbase or Gemini account password via email.

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April 28

1788 – Maryland becomes the 7th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1789 – Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMAV Bounty, setting Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift and then returning briefly to Tahiti before sailing for Pitcairn Island.

1869 – Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad lay 10 miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched.

1881 – Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico, killing Deputies J.W. Bell and Bob Olinger.

1930 – The minor league Independence Producers host the Muskogee Chiefs in the first night game in the history of professional organized baseball at Shulthis Stadium, in Independence, Kansas.

1944 –  Off the Slapton Sands coast in Devon, England, 9 German E-boats attack US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 746 service members and wounding 200 more.

1945 – An Italian Partisan firing squad summarily executes Benito Mussolini and his captured retinue in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra.

1947 – Thor Heyerdahl and crew set out from Callao, Peru on the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

1952 – On the day General Of The Army Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in order to campaign in the 1952 United States presidential election, the Treaty of San Francisco comes into effect, restoring Japanese sovereignty and ending its state of war with most of the Allies of World War II, while the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (Treaty of Taipei) is signed in Taipei, Taiwan between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War.

1965 –  During the Dominican Civil War, U.S. diplomats request increased security forces to protect an evacuation. A battalion of U.S. Marines land at Haina and move to a hotel where 684 civilians are airlifted to the carrier USS Boxer.

1967 – Cassius ‘Muhammad Ali’ Clay refuses his induction into the U.S. Army and is subsequently stripped of his championship and boxing license.

1970 – President Nixon formally authorizes American combat troops to operate in Cambodia during the Vietnam war.

1975 – General Cao Văn Viên, chief of the South Vietnamese military, departs for the US as the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon.

1978 – The President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.

1986 – High levels of radiation resulting from the Chernobyl disaster are detected at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, forcing Soviet authorities to publicly announce the accident.

1988 – Near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle “C.B.” Lansing is blown out of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and falls to her death when part of the plane’s fuselage rips open in mid-flight, the only fatality of the incident.

1994 – Former CIA counterintelligence officer and analyst, Aldrich Ames pleads guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia and is sentences to life imprisonment without parole.

2004 – CBS News releases evidence of the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq.

GloBULL Warming

Baby, it’s still C-O-L-D outside

I know a lot of people have their hearts set on eating bugs, and the world ending with pestilence and fire devouring humankind. Cranky as they are in their native, foaming-at-the-mouth state, the sort of intermission we seem to be in right now on our march to our self-induced, fiery (or watery, if you’re, like, on an island or in Miami) climate change doom just makes them worse. You know, the scrabbling around in Saharan dust looking for excuses to explain why we’re…well…frustrating as it is…not all dead yet. Or drowned. Or at least have wet ankles.

Considering the weather outside lately, if we were expiring in any great numbers from Global Warming/Climate Change/anything AL Gore’s ever predicted, our bodies would be well preserved into early summer.

Take the U.K.: “Balmy” is not the word for springtime in England this year.

This morning, -7.4C (18.7F) was the UK’s official low temperature, set at Loch Glascarnoch, Scotland. This breaks the nation’s coldest-ever low for the date, previously held by Glenlivet’s -6.1C (21F) set in 1956.

Mainland Europe is also enduring a late-season freeze, bringing heavy show [sic] to the higher elevations–most notably the Alps.

Our very own wild west is wooly, too, but that’s what they’re wearing, not a state of mind. Records have fallen over like frozen antelope. The snow and ice coverage extent measurements have only started since the advent of satellite monitoring in 2001, but when you approach doubling the average?

HELLO

…Starting with the chill –and according to ‘warm-mongering’ NOAA data– the U.S. has set 7 ‘all-time’ low temperature records so far this year (to April 24) vs just the 1 for heat; while in April alone (again to the 24), 321 ‘monthly’ lows have fallen vs 66 for heat.

Moving onto the snow –and in official books dating back to 2001– prior to this year, the highest-ever area of Western U.S. land covered by snow/ice at the onset of April was the 398,000 square miles posted back in 2019. This year, however, has blown past that benchmark, with satellite imagery revealing more than 444,000 square miles of the West was under snow/ice as of April 1.

For reference, the average snowpack in the Western U.S. by the end of March stands at 242,000 square miles.

That crucial mountain snowpack is at record stages in many parts of the west.

…The estimated water content of the western snowpack on March 15, 2023, expressed as a percentage of 1991-2020 average for that time of year. Areas in darkest blue, from parts of California into Nevada, northern Arizona and southwest Utah, were most above average. A number of 150 means it is 50 percent above the average for March 15.

T​he Central Sierra Snow Lab at Donner Pass has tallied 668 inches – over 55 feet – of snow this season, their third-snowiest season since the end of World War II.

Screencap The Weather Channel

That’s a boatload of frozen goodness that will be joining the rain in the rivers and reservoirs when it starts to melt, besides causing mayhem with flooding already saturated hillsides and inland valleys.

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NAZIs ( National SOCIALISTS) are only “the far right”, to you, if you share the same ideology as Joseph Stalin (an INTER-National SOCIALIST more often called Communist)

What Puts Nazism on the Right?

 

[nothing for the uninformed. It’s used leftists have run out of anything else to try and shut down their opponents]

This is a sincere question to which I’ve never had a satisfactory answer. I may have even asked it here before. We all know what Nazism is, but I think we need to define what we mean by “Right,” and specifically the American Right. I know some people prefer the quadrant model of political ideology to the linear one. Libertarian to authoritarian on one axis and communism to free markets on the other. But, where’s the overlap between Hitler’s Germany and American conservatism?

Do law-and-order righties fall on the far right of the axis in opposition to the chaos-and-destruction (2020 summer of love) lefties? I don’t think law and order is all that authoritarian, at least in America. If laws are just and equally applied (increasingly not the case), that would appear to be in a sweet spot near the political middle.

Economically, I don’t see American conservatives as radically free-market fundamentalists, although there are some who seem to hold that position. Personally, I’m more of a fair trade kind of gal. I see tariffs as useful to counteract those who would exploit our entrepreneurial capitalism by dumping their products and putting our industries out of business (cough China cough). But economic fascism seems more related to the hand-in-glove state and corporate cooperation the Left adores (see Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Education, . . . ).

So where’s the overlap with Nazism? Here’s what I think. I think the Left uses the Nazi/fascist slander to suggest that American nationalism (sometimes associated with patriotism or love of homeland) is just like the poisonous ethnic nationalism of Nazi Germany — Hitler’s Aryanism. It’s the basis for charges of “inherently racist” and “white supremacist.”

It’s an absurd notion. Is all nationalism Nazism? Are the French Nazis for loving their culture and language? How about the Swedes or the Spanish? It’s particularly slanderous given that America has never been ethnically pure and hasn’t even aspired to it, except in pockets where Democrats and the KKK (but, I repeat) held sway.

None of which is to say that patriots are required to believe America is faultless. I happen to believe there’s a fatal flaw in our Constitution — a sin of omission that allows the federal government to buy votes by redistributing our tax dollars. That’s a limit on government power (the raison d’etre of our Constitution) I’d like to see, but I’m not an idealist on the matter.

When American right-wingers assent to the idea that Nazis and fascists are on the Right, they’re submitting to the notion that American patriots are racist white supremacists. I dissent. And don’t even get me started on how any form of moral, academic, or artistic excellence is now considered “white supremacy.” As if nonwhites are incapable of high achievement. Who’s the racist now?

Maine legislators consider expanding adult access to guns on school grounds for school safety

AUGUSTA, Maine —
With more than one mass shooting a day in America so far this year, including many in schools and on college campuses, Maine legislators are taking a closer look at improving school safety by potentially expanding adult access to guns on school grounds for self-defense.

One bill that underwent a public hearing before the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee on Wednesday, LD 52, would let teachers and other school staff be armed at school following police-style training to use their guns.

Since there’s never been a school shooting in Maine, the bill’s sponsor sees lessons learned in mass school shootings in other states.

“In all of them, a quick response time would have saved lives, if we had the right person there that knew what they were doing for an active shooter situation was willing, obviously, to be that person and did so,” Rep. Steve Foster, (R) Dexter, said in an interview. “My district has one school resource officer with four buildings. So, this whole bill is about an immediate or almost immediate response in a building, and if you look at some of these past incidents around the country, the response time was a big key issue, and that’s what this is hoping to address.”

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Court Finds Geofence Warrants to be Unconstitutional

As far as potential privacy violations at the hands of law enforcement go, the so-called geofencing stands out.

It’s a dragnet-style type of mass surveillance that determines a geographical area (typically as a criminal investigation is in progress — but the authorities really could use it for anything) — and then all those who happened to be in those confines, at a given time, with their mobile device broadcasting their location and other personal data, are basically fair game for searches.

Concerning and extremely sketchy — particularly without proper legal safeguards or even proper warrants — to say the least. And to say the most, straight up unconstitutional, on account of the Fourth Amendment (protecting from unlawful searches).

The latter definition of the practice is what the California Court of Appeals has gone for when it recently ruled in the People v. Meza case, during the appeals stage of the proceedings.

While it might sound logical to observers, the court’s decision is still very significant — digital rights group EFF says — because it set a precedent, being the first time a US appellate court looked into a geofence warrant.

“Dragnet” means that instead of saying who the suspect is and going after them, their online accounts, etc., law enforcement agencies have reportedly been taking it upon themselves to go the easiest route – not to put too fine a point on it, but just “digitally round up everyone” – and then decide if any of these people were involved in a crime.

According to EFF – thanks to this vast, to say the least, database of everyone’s location – it is mostly Google who is asked to go through that data to identify users in a “geofence” delimited by law enforcement.

The Court of Appeal had problems with all this. But all is not as good as it might seem.

In the case at hand, the court found that the warrant that was operated under did not succeed in placing “any meaningful restriction on the discretion of law enforcement officers to determine which accounts would be subject to further scrutiny or deanonymization.”

The court was also not happy, to say the least, that people could be identified “within six large search areas without any particularized probable cause as to each person or their location.”

Gabby Giffords says the quiet part out loud

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords saw her political career, as it was going, put to an end by a madman. No one thinks what happened to her was justified, but it happened.

It’s not surprising that she recovered and started a gun control group. I don’t think anyone was overly shocked by that.

However, many of Giffords’ supporters have argued over and over again that people like her respect the Second Amendment, they just want what they term “common sense” gun control.

The problem is that Gabby didn’t get that memo.

As we wrap our interview in her office, I ask how she keeps coming back to a challenge so deeply ingrained in politics. She pauses for 12 pregnant seconds.

“No more guns,” she says.

Ambler, her aide and adviser, tries to clarify that she means no more gun violence, but Giffords is clear about what she’s saying. “No, no, no,” she says. “Lord, no.” She pauses another 32 seconds. “Guns, guns, guns. No more guns. Gone.”

An aide tried to say what she meant was something like Australia, but that’s not what she said.

Further, based on quotes throughout the piece, her mind is sharp enough that if it were, she’d have said it. She didn’t. She never mentioned Australia. No, she said, “No more guns.”

In fact, she apparently said it twice.

What Giffords did was say the quiet part out loud.

We’ve long argued that gun control advocates’ endgame was the complete disarmament of the civilian population. They might not be advocating for that explicitly at the moment, but that’s where the incrementalism was going to invariably lead.

We were called crazy, paranoid, and a few things not fit to print.

Yet here we are, one of the leading voices of the gun control debate–one held up as the perfect spokesperson due to her own personal experiences–saying, “No more guns.”

That puts the Giffords organization in a bad spot. They either agree with “no more guns” or they don’t. No one should accept the claim that the former congresswoman was talking about Australia when she clearly never mentioned it. They need to be pressed and pressed hard over this and any talk of Australia questioned even harder.

They either need to defend Gabby’s comments or disavow them. It’s just that simple.

But they won’t.

Further, it’s not like the media is interested in doing anything except covering for her, as the above-linked Time piece does, just accepting the aide’s explanation as if it’s all that needs to be said. They were given an excuse and they ran with it.

No one else should accept this, though, because either Giffords is cogent enough to speak on behalf of gun control or she’s not. If she is, then her words should be taken at face value as anyone else’s would be.

If not, then she probably doesn’t need to be making the rounds advocating for a policy that she’s not cogent enough to adequately define her position on before a member of the press.

Second Amendment clear and concise

Editor:

Bonnie Jean Feldkamp recently made some observations about the Second Amendment and AR-15 style firearms. Observations that need some clarification.

The Second Amendment is clear and concise in guaranteeing the Constitutional right of an individual to keep and bear arms. Court rulings and case law have upheld that since it was first tested. It is also clear that arms means firearms. It is not open to progressive’s interpretations, and Congressional clarification of the word “arms” would make no difference as to its meaning.

The AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle is the most popular and widely owned rifle in the U.S. It is patterned after the M-16 but is not a weapon of war. To take the AR-15 on the battlefield would be folly. The term “assault weapon” is an erroneous and manufactured term made up by people who know nothing about guns, but who know a lot about control.

Handguns are used in the overwhelming number of murders in the U.S. Rifles, however, are used less often in murders than are edged weapons, blunt force objects, or even personal weapons — fists and feet. And the AR-15 style rifles are used in less than 1% of all murders. These are FBI statistics.

Why are the Democrats so focused on a firearm that is used almost exclusively by law abiding citizens for target shooting, hunting and self-defense? Because it represents freedom, individual rights, and is an easy scapegoat to promote more gun control and eventual gun confiscation schemes.

Tom Overman, Woodstock

Intruder rushed resident before being shot multiple times Monday night

BATON ROUGE – Police said an intruder was shot and killed while forcibly entering a home off North Acadian Thruway Monday night.

The Baton Rouge Police Department said someone was shot multiple times after forcing themselves into a home on Ontario Street near N. Acadian around 10 p.m. Monday. Officers later said that Lawrence Bajoie, 37, reportedly banged on the door multiple times before the resident opened the door.

Bajoie allegedly charged the resident and hit him before the resident shot him multiple times. Police did not specify whether there was a connection between Bajoie and the resident.

“They feared for their life, and I feel like it was what it was,” said Herbert Treece, who lives nearby.

Police are still investigating but say they think it was a justifiable shooting. Others disagree.

“It’s never a good time for someone to die. There’s always a better way to handle something,” Treece said.

Ontario street isn’t the only one littered with crime scene tape. Just a few streets over, two sisters were shot by their own brother on Sunday. One is in the hospital, the other died immediately.

“You know stuff is going on, but I never noticed anything bad about it until now,” Treece said.

Police say the shooting is justifiable.

Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Against The ATF’s Bump Stock Ruling

CINCINNATI, Ohio – A three-judge panel for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) bump stock rule in Hardin v. ATF.

The case centers around a rule made by the ATFs at the urging of then-President Donald Trump after the 2017 tragic attack on country music concertgoers in Las Vegas. The rule reclassified bump stocks as machineguns. The new rule was an about-face by the ATF, which held for years that bump stocks were not machineguns. Initially, the ATF claimed that bump stocks were not machineguns because the user pulls the trigger each time the firearm fires.

The rule change caused multiple challenges to be filed against the ATF in federal court in various circuits. The Tenth Circuit and DC Circuit Court ruled in favor of the ATF’s bump stock rule. A previous Sixth Circuit case split 8-8 on a legal challenge to the Bureau’s regulation. Because of the tie, the District Court’s decision stood, which ruled in favor of the federal government.

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New Mexico store owner shoots, kills burglar tunneling through wall

A would-be burglar tunneling into a smoke shop was shot dead by the store’s owner, who had taken to sleeping in the store to prevent break-ins, police said.

Albuquerque Police Department officers responded to a shooting call Saturday at around 4:30 a.m. and found the deceased burglar, KRQE News reported.

The owner of the store told KOB 4 News that there had been a previous break-in attempt before the store had even officially opened for business.

The owner said he was woken by a strange sound and found that the burglar had tunneled through the wall and began waving a large hammer and a chisel causing the owner to fear for his life, the outlet said.

According to the owner, he warned the burglar to leave the premises, or he would shoot, but he claimed the burglar walked toward him swinging causing him to open fire.

The suspected burglar was declared dead when police arrived at the scene.

Police said they are investigating the incident as a “justifiable homicide” and the owner was released after speaking with detectives.

The store owner told KOB 4 News that he has boarded up the hole and would soon be installing cameras.

The Albuquerque Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Biden Administration Paves Way for Confucius Institute Affiliate Schools to Receive Federal Funding

The Defense Department in late March announced that it would grant waivers to allow schools to host chapters of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese Communist Party-backed program that Beijing uses to peddle influence and steal intellectual property from American universities. The department’s waiver program is a response to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which barred American colleges and universities from receiving federal dollars if they maintain Confucius Institute chapters.

Lawmakers say the Defense Department is subverting federal law.

“The Chinese Communist Party is subverting U.S. institutions and Joe Biden is sabotaging legislation to stop them,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Select Committee on China, told the Washington Free Beacon. Banks added that the Biden administration has essentially “greenlit China’s espionage and malign influence operations on college campuses.”

The workaround comes amid warnings from the intelligence community that American colleges are a “soft target” for Chinese spies. China has opened at least 100 Confucius Institutes in the United States since 2008, with China pouring more than $158 million into them. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that these outposts are “ultimately beholden to the Chinese government” and pose an espionage risk.

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Man Kills Gunman Who Tried to Rob Him

An armed man shot and killed a gunman who tried to rob him in Philadelphia on Tuesday, police said.

The 25-year-old man was walking along the intersection of 15th Street and 70th Avenue shortly before 7 p.m. when another man approached him and announced a robbery, police said.

The would-be robber then pulled out a gun and aimed it at the 25-year-old man, according to investigators.

The 25-year-old man, who police say has a permit to carry, then pulled out his own weapon and fired at least ten shots, according to investigators. The would-be robber was shot at least three times in the torso. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7:23 p.m. Police have not yet determined his identity.

The 25-year-old man remained at the scene and is cooperating with the investigation, police said. The man told investigators he saw a woman inside a car with the would-be robber prior to the shooting. He also said the woman drove off in the car during the incident.

Responding police officers later found the vehicle the man described a few blocks away from the shooting at 17th Street and 67th Avenue. The vehicle was unattended and riddled with bullets.

Police continue to search for the woman who was inside the car and are looking for surveillance video.

BLUF
That mastermind of the Kabul airport attack is now dead, so we are told. Yes more than a little too late for those injured and killed in the attack. But the question must be asked. What else is at play here that we don’t know about? The skepticism is warranted.

A dead terrorist is ALWAYS a good thing. But we do need to be cautious about what else is at play here.

Taliban Kill ISIS Leader Behind Kabul Airport Bombing.

Well, better late than never. It seems the Taliban killed the ISIS leader who was the mastermind of the Kabul airport bombing that killed thirteen U.S. soldiers and wounded scores of others.

The ISIS-K leader who planned the deadly 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul international airport’s Abbey Gate was killed by the Taliban, according to the National Security Council.

The administration didn’t name the ISIS-K leader, but John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, called him “the mastermind of the horrific attack,” which was carried out in the final days of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Kirby did not specify when the Taliban killed the ISIS-K leader, but called it one in a “series of high-profile leadership losses” that ISIS-K has suffered this year.

The terrorist who carried out the suicide bombing, Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri, had been released from prison only days earlier when the Taliban took control of the area. The attack left 13 US service members and more than 170 Afghans dead.

Keep in mind, as Toni noted here in her post, that terrorist who actually detonated the bomb was in our sights. Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews testified before Congress that they KNEW Al-Loghri was a bad guy and our military command sat on their damned hands instead, which led to Sgt. Vargas-Andrews dealing with massive injuries he will be dealing with for the rest of his life. To this day, no one in charge has faced any repercussion for their refusal to act.

Yes, it’s very good that this one very bad terrorist is now deader than a doornail. But it is very much a case of too little too late.

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April 27

711 – Moslem troops led by Tariq ibn Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.

1521 – In the Philippines, Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives on Mactan island.

1539 – Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastián de Belalcázar found the city of Bogotá, New Granada (now Colombia)

1667 – John Milton sells Paradise Lost to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers’ Register.

1813 – During the War of 1812, American troops capture York (now Toronto, Ontario) the capital of the colony of Upper Canada.

1861 – Claiming powers given by Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution, President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus which is overruled a month later by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ex parte Merryman.

1945 – Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.

1953 – The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff authorize Operation Moolah, which offers $50,000 to any pilot who defects with a fully mission capable MiG-15  to South Korea. The first pilot to defect would receive an additional $50,000. North Korean pilot Senior Lieutenant No Kum Sok, NKA (now Kenneth Rowe) later defects with his jet fighter on September 21st, after the armistice was signed, having not even heard of the reward offer.

1976 – American Airlines Flight 625, a Boeing 727 overruns the end of Runway 9 when landing at Harry S. Truman (now Cyril E. King) Airport in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, killing 37 of the 88 passengers and crew aboard

1978 – In the deadliest construction accident in United States history, 51 construction workers are killed when a cooling tower under construction collapses at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia.

1981 – Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center introduces the computer mouse.

2005 – The ‘superjumbo’ Airbus A380 aircraft is taken on its maiden test flight.

2006 – In New York City, construction begins on the Freedom Tower, later renamed One World Trade Center, to replace the 2 main towers that were destroyed on 9/11.

2007 – Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great, south of Jerusalem.

2011 – A ‘Super Tornado Outbreak’ devastates parts the southeastern U.S., especially Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee with 360 tornadoes killing 348 people and injuring 3100 more.

2018 – The Panmunjom Declaration is signed between North and South Korea, officially declaring their intentions to end the Korean conflict.

People can lie all they want. I’m not disarming, and I’ll call such liars, a liar to their faces.

Lies Aimed at Disarming You

Lies come in many shapes and sizes. Some are simple exaggerations. Some are absurd falsehoods. Unfortunately, we tend to believe a bald lie if it is expressed with enough emotion. That outrage also keeps viewers watching and clicking so the press is often more interested in outrage than in the truth. A lie doesn’t become the truth if it is repeated, but the lie may help politicians get re-elected if it is repeated by enough likely voters. We need to call out every lie we see even if that means calling “respected elected officials” liars. Congressman Jamaal Brown, you lie. Representative Jimmy Gomez, you lie. You lie because you say you want to save lives, yet you pretend that more gun-control laws will actually protect our kids. That is a lie and I’ll prove it right now.

Why would politicians hide the truth behind their emotional outbursts? The simple answer is that politicians lie to get what they want. They want press coverage and campaign contributions. Democrat Congressman Jimmy Gomez of California said that Republicans should resign from office if they are not going to pass more gun-control legislation. Democrat Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York yelled at reporters that “Republicans won’t do sh-t when it comes to gun violence.” Implied is the lie that gun-control laws actually save lives, and that anyone who won’t pass more gun-control laws is either corrupt or heartless. Both claims are a lie. Maybe if their Democrat controlled cities weren’t so corrupt then there would be fewer young men shooting at each other on the streets of the congressman’s districts. I think gun control is a distraction from their many failures.

Gun-control costs lives and endangers our children in school. Before you can believe that you need to know that armed defense by ordinary citizens is common. We use a firearm to stop death or great bodily injury about 2.8 million times a year. That is over 4600 times a day. In addition, ordinary citizens with a gun prevented several million more crimes than that. Your armed neighbors probably stopped tens of thousands of murders. Armed citizens probably stopped over a hundred-thousand sexual assaults. These armed good guys stopped an immense about of harm. That is good, but our virtue doesn’t stop there.

We started to train and arm volunteer school staff a decade ago after the mass-murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. We have accumulated several thousand man-years of experience with these armed volunteers. You might have missed that their efforts worked in the best possible way: their mere presence prevented attacks at their school. Let me underline that for you.

We have never had a mass-murder at a school that had a program of trained and armed school staff.

Perspective is everything when we want to understand the truth. Only one-criminal-out-of-six uses a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. Criminals use firearms about a quarter-million times each year and they violate our “gun-control” laws millions of times each year. That means that gun control is a failure. In contrast, we defend ourselves with a firearm about 2.8 million times every year. Mass murderers take about 600 lives a year. We protected hundreds of thousands of our children with armed school volunteers. If you haven’t heard it before then I’m telling you now, armed defense is much more common than the criminal use of a firearm.

Gun-control politicians say their laws disarm criminals. In fact, their 23-thousand gun-control regulations disarm far more honest citizens than criminals. Mass murderers deliberately attack us in gun-free zones where we are disarmed by law.

Politicians and the news media don’t tell us everything we need to know to make a reasoned decision. It is deadly public policy to solve a small problem by creating a larger one. We can’t save hundreds of lives by sacrificing tens-of-thousands. If we really want to save lives, then we’d repeal our gun-control laws rather than passing more of them. That won’t work for gun-control politicians who need to shout in public to get reelected. If gun-control advocates really wanted to save lives, then they would stop lying.

How many more innocent lives should we sacrifice on the altar of gun-control?

I’m giving you facts, but facts don’t matter to gun-control ideologues. For them, the ideal of gun-control is an end in itself rather than an instrumental means to save lives. Mass murders are simply an excuse to disarm more honest citizens.

I am not running for office, but I am trying to influence your opinion. Lies matter when we want to deceive. Facts matter when we want to save lives. Time and again, Democrats and Socialists in the USA have said that only Democrats care about children, and everyone else doesn’t care if kids die. I’m calling that a lie. Lives matter to me and they matter to you.

It is uncomfortable to call someone a liar but it gets easier with practice. I did it this time. I’m asking you to do it the next time you hear them lie about us.