NY Times Says Most Gun Owners are Law-Abiding, AR-15s are in Common Use, and Confiscation is Futile…Then Calls for 1st Amendment Limits on Gun Makers

It is important, of course, to distinguish between the large majority of law-abiding gun owners and the small number of extremists. Only about 30 percent of gun owners have owned an AR-15 or similar rifle, a majority support common sense gun restrictions and a majority reject political violence. …

Democrats, while they may hope for stricter gun laws overall, should also recognize that they do share common ground with many gun owners — armed right-wing extremists and those who fetishize AR-15s do not represent typical American gun owners or their beliefs. That’s especially true given the changing nature of who owns guns in the United States: women and Black Americans are among the fastest-growing demographics.

This summer, for the first time in decades, Congress passed major bipartisan gun safety legislation — a major accomplishment and a sign that common ground is not terra incognita. It should have gone further — and can in the future: preventing anyone under 21 from buying a semiautomatic weapon, for instance, and erasing the 10-year sunset of the background-check provision. States should also be compelled to pass tougher red-flag laws to take guns out of the hands of suicidal or potentially violent people. Mandatory gun-liability insurance is also an idea with merit.

States and the federal government should also pass far tougher regulations on the gun industry, particularly through restrictions on the marketing of guns, which have helped supercharge the cult of the AR-15. New York’s law, which allows parties like victims of gun violence and the state government to sue gun sellers, manufacturers and distributors, is a good model for other states to follow.

Federal regulators should also do more to regulate the arms industry’s marketing practices, which are becoming more deadly and deranged by the year. They have the legal authority to do so but, thus far, not the will to act.

Americans are going to live with a lot of guns for a long time. There are already more than 415 million guns in circulation, including 25 million semiautomatic military-style rifles. Calls for confiscating them — or even calls for another assault weapons ban — are well intentioned and completely unrealistic. With proper care and maintenance, guns made today will still fire decades from now. Each month, Americans add nearly two million more to the national stockpile.

But even if common-sense regulation of guns is far from political reality, Americans do not have to accept the worst of gun culture becoming pervasive in our politics. The only hope the nation has for living in and around so many deadly weapons is a political system capable of resolving our many differences without the need to use them.

— New York Times Editorial Board in America’s Toxic Gun Culture

This is l-o-n-g, but you really need to read it.

Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • In his new book, “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,” former BlackRock fund manager Edward Dowd details data showing the COVID shots are a crime against humanity
  • Insurance industry research in 2016 concluded that group life policyholders die at one-third the rate of the general U.S. population, so they’re the healthiest among us. Group life policyholders are those employed with Fortune 500 companies, who tend to be younger and well-educated
  • In 2020, the general U.S. population had higher excess mortality than group life holders, but in 2021, that flipped. Ages 25 through 64 of the group life policyholders suddenly experienced 40% excess mortality, compared to 32% in the general population. In short, a far healthier subset of the population suddenly died at a higher rate than the general population
  • American disability statistics are equally revealing. In the five years before COVID, the monthly disability rate was between 29 million and 30 million. After the COVID jabs, the disability trend changed dramatically. As of September 2022, there were 33.2 million disabled Americans — an extra 3.2 million to 4.2 million — a three standard deviation rate of change since May 2021
  • Since May 2021, the overall U.S. population has experienced an 11% increase in disabilities, while the employed — which is about 98 million out of a total population of about 320 million — experienced 26% increased rate of disability. So, something was introduced into the workforce that caused working age people to die

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Chicago shooting: Concealed carry holder shoots 2 men during possible car theft attempt

CHICAGO (WLS) — A concealed carry holder shot two offenders during a possible attempted car theft early Saturday morning, Chicago police said.

Police are still investigating the attack as it joins the growing number of incidents where armed residents are shooting their alleged attackers to avoid becoming victims of a crime.

The moment Kyle Jorgensen heard it, he said he knew it was gunfire.

“Fell asleep with the window open and I woke up to gunshots, and my dog’s looking out the window, freaking out. Probably heard eight or nine shot,” he said.

The gunshots rang out early in morning in the heart of city’s Loop .

A 31-year-old man was walking toward his parked vehicle in the Loop’s 0-100 block of West Randolph Street at about 3:37 a.m., police said. A red SUV passed him, and someone fired shots in his direction.

The victim, who holds a FOID card and concealed carry license, took out his gun and fired several rounds, police said. The SUV then fled the scene. The victim, who was not injured, saw someone get out of his parked vehicle and run away.

Investigators said minutes after the shooting, the same red SUV involved in the shootout pulled up to the emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital with a man in his 20s seeking treatment for a gunshot wound to his left knee.

About the same time, another man in his 20s walked into Lurie Children’s Hospital with a gunshot wound to the lower back.

Both were subsequently taken into custody.

Police said they are seeking a third offender, whose age is unknown.

“You see all the smash and grabs that happened in broad daylight, so you can be a victim any time of the day,” said Denise Arnold.

“When we first moved, there was nothing like for almost a month, then it got on and off. It got really bad,” said Laurel Protexter, who has lived in neighborhood almost three years. “You never know what’s going to happen. It’s very unfortunate.”

Area Three detectives are investigating the incident. Police did not immediately provide further information.

This latest incident is at least the second time in about a week that a legally armed resident in Chicago has shot an alleged attacker to avoid becoming a victim of a crime.

BLUF
By every measure – economic, national security, militarily, culturally and electoral integrity – the Biden administration has been a disaster of incalculable proportions.   All of this has occurred in just two years.  Ben Franklin was right when he noted that the Founders created “a republic, if you can keep it,” and Reagan’s warning that  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”  

One of the most important things Trump accomplished was that the left, so deranged by hatred of the man, revealed who they really are: Ideological totalitarians who actually embrace communism of the Chinese variety.

They have to be stopped.

The terrible, horrible, no-good consequences of stolen elections and government corruption

Elon Musk was true to his word, as far as we know, with regard to his promise to release Twitter documents, first by Matt Taibbi and then by Bari Weiss.

Thus far, he has exposed that social media site’s calculated censorship of any and all information that might silence conservative voices, including President Trump’s, as well as information that reflects badly on the Biden family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, and vaccines.

He has done exactly that, probably not to the fullest extent, but he’s released enough to prove how much Twitter, the mainstream media, and all the other social media sites interfered with the 2020 election.

Their interference amounts to both fraud and treason.  The Democrats engineered the Biden victory and subsequently bragged about it.

Twitter’s big part of the game has finally been revealed for all to see.  Twitter, on their own or often due to orders from the Biden White House and/or the FBI, de-platformed anyone who posted anything remotely critical of the Biden regime and/or its horrific policies, especially those related to COVID lockdowns and vaccines.

The left cheats; they can’t win if they don’t cheat, so they regularly cheat.  Nothing makes that clearer than the 2022 midterm elections in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Polls show that about sixty percent of the American people believe the 2020 election was stolen; those people are not all Republicans.

Chances are that in their heart of hearts, ninety percent of Americans know it was stolen.

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Just to clarify.
This requirement isn’t for concealed carry. It’s to simply BUY a firearm.
I think this monstrosity isn’t going to make it through the court system, but it does illuminate just how mindless a lot of people are, which isn’t a new thing, as the Framers recognized the malady even back then when they demanded a Bill of Rights.

Measure 114’s live fire training component leaves trainers in limbo

While Oregon’s new voter-approved gun control measure is getting worked out in the courts, there remains uncertainty among local gun shops and firearms instructors in Central Oregon.

Sharon Preston, owner of Ladies of Lead in Redmond — and an instructor who specializes in self-defense training for women — says there are a lot of questions that still have not been answered about the implementation of Measure 114.

Preston says business has been through the roof. But she says she’s had to stop firearm sales, not knowing what is next with the measure. But she says selling guns is only part of what she does.

“Selling guns is a very small portion of my business. I do it as an added value to my clients, so it’s educational based gun sales. But my main focus is always going to be in training,” said Preston.
She’s been forced to find alternatives as 114 is in limbo.

“I’ve heard too many stories in this store from women, locally. The brutality and violence they have been through, survived through. They want a tool that will allow them to live their lives large again, and they’re not going to be able to get on. That’s why I’m switching to crossbows, pepper ball guns, tasers, knives,” Preston said.

Preston’s biggest concern with the measure lies in the required live fire training — meant to prove shooting proficiency. As of now, she says no guidelines have been spelled out as to how the state will facilitate the training courses. And no one knows who will be authorized by the state to lead those courses.

And there are other unanswered questions.

“They don’t know how many rounds we have to shoot, at what distance we have to shoot, at what target we have to shoot. They don’t know what firearm we can use. So there’s so many questions out there,” said Preston.

The next hearing on Measure 114 will be held Tuesday at Circuit Court in Harney County. Those who support the measure will be able to argue against the temporary hold set in place by Judge Robert Raschio.

Key House Republican says gun rights bills will be on 2023 to-do list

Key backers of the gun rights amendment Iowa voters have just added to Iowa’s Constitution say they’ll introduce a series of gun-related proposals in the 2023 Iowa Legislature. House Republican Leader Matt Windschitl of Missouri Valley has been involved in gun-related issues since he was elected to the House in 2006.

“There are multiple different things we’ve been trying to get done to restore freedoms in Iowa and we’ve not been able to get across the finish line on some of those things,” Windschitl said this afternoon. “I’m not at a point right now where I’m going to discuss publicly what all of those items are, but you can expect us, after this victory, and restore freedoms to Iowans that never should have been taken away.”

Windschitl and others gathered in the statehouse this  afternoon for a ceremony to mark passage of the amendment.

“Iowans now have the best protections for their fundamental right to keep and bear arms of any state in the nation,” Windschitl said.

The amendment got a majority of votes in 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

“Iowans have made their voice loud and clear,” Windschitl said. “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”

That last sentence is the state motto, adopted in 1847, the year after Iowa was recognized as a state. Secretary of State Paul Pate said the gun rights amendment was added to the state constitution on December 1st when statewide election results were certified.

“On November 8, Iowans voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution, enshrining in it the right to bear arms,” Pate said. “In fact, 65% of Iowans supported the adoption. Congratulations to all of you for your hard work and the efforts to secure its passage.”

Richard Rogers of the Iowa Firearms Coalition lobbied for the amendment as well as recent state laws on the use of weapons and gun permits.

“However, each and every improvement in the law was subject to being reversed, or worse, by the next or any future legislature,” Rogers said during the ceremony. “Now, with the ratification of this freedom amendment, as we call it, such a course will be much more difficult.”

This is the 49th amendment added to Iowa’s Constitution. It goes beyond the wording of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and says Iowa courts must evaluate any lawsuits challenging Iowa gun laws by the toughest legal standard.

To End Climate Lunacy, Stop Treating Warming & C02 Hysterically

Those who oppose economically destructive “climate” policies – like those promoted by the Biden administration and at the recent United Nations COP27 conference – will continue to fail to stop the advance of these policies so long as they continue to accept the false claim that warming of the planet and carbon dioxide emissions are harmful.

They are not. On balance, global warming and CO2 emission are beneficial.

Before getting to why that is, however, it is crucial to understand why accepting the false climate claim is so harmful.

When the destructiveness of climate policies is shown, the response is that the policies nevertheless are necessary to address what President Biden refers to as the “existential threat” of global warming and increased CO2 emissions.

When it is noted that these climate policies will at most microscopically and insignificantly reduce temperatures and CO2 emissions, climate policy mandarins push for even more draconian policies.

The result has been that since the 1990s, climate policies have become increasingly destructive and wasteful. Even worse, their continued intensification appears unlikely to be stopped until the public and policymakers are persuaded that global warming and CO2 emissions are not harmful. As Margaret Thatcher famously said: “First you win the argument, then you win the vote.”

To win this argument, it is necessary to focus on the scientific facts.

A warming planet saves lives. Analyses of millions of deaths in recent decades in numerous countries, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, show that cooler temperatures killed nine times (July 2021 study) to seventeen times (In May 2015 study) more people than warmer temperatures. The planet’s recent modest warming (by 1.00 degree Celsius on average since 1880, as calculated by NASA) thus has been saving millions of lives.

CO2 emissions do not pollute and instead are environmentally beneficial. In 2017, over 300 scientists, including Richard Lindzen of MIT and William Happer of Princeton, signed a statement that made this point: “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. To the contrary, there is clear evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful to food crops and other plants that nourish all life. It is plant food, not poison.” Every one of us, indeed, also exhales carbon dioxide with every breath.

Since 1920, deaths each year from natural disasters have decreased by over 90 percent. And this happened, data from EM-DAT – The International Disaster Database presented by The University of Oxford show, not only as the planet has warmed, but as world population has quadrupled.

Global warming has not increased hurricanes. A NOAA report, updated on November 28, 2022, states that “there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts. The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s.”

The same report sums it up in bold: “We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.”

Global warming also does not increase land burned by fires. As environmental statistician Bjorn Lomberg has shown using data from the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, Remote Sensing of Environment, and Earth’s Future, the percentage of global land burned per year in 1905-2021 has been declining.

Sea levels are rising – but only by a small fraction of an inch each year. An EPA report updated on August 1, 2022, states: “When averaged over all of the world’s oceans, absolute sea level has risen at an average rate of 0.06 inches per year from 1880 to 2013,” including a slightly increased rate since 1993 of “0.12 to 0.14 inches per year.”

The UN climate models that President Biden, John Kerry, and other climate doomsters use to predict future global temperatures are so speculative and unreliable that they have been unable even to reproduce the 20th century’s temperature changes. This is a key point in the must-read book by Obama Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science Steven Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.

These kinds of facts should persuade the public and policymakers to stop accepting the false claim that global warming and CO2 emissions are harmful.

When this false claim is no longer widely accepted, policymakers will stop imposing climate policies that particularly impoverish the world’s poor.

They will stop holding international boondoggles like COP27 and that demand vast climate-related foreign aid programs.

They will stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars on domestic climate sinkholes.

And they will stop using purported “social cost of carbon” factors (even though the true social cost of carbon is zero) to regulatorily restrict domestic fossil fuel production, transportation, and use.

 

original:

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Reworked to fit the narrative:

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Louisiana homeowner kills man defending his home

IBERIA PARISH, La. (KLFY) — One person is dead and two others are wanted fugitives after a homeowner shot and killed a man in an attempted home invasion Tuesday night, authorities said.

The Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday deputies responded to a call at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday in the 9000 block of Old Jeanerette Road. Upon arrival deputies found a deceased male inside the home.

Police said the deceased male had entered the home with two other men and fired his gun at the homeowner, and the homeowner shot the intruder. The two remaining suspects fled the home and are still at large.

The name of the deceased is being withheld at this time pending investigation and notification of family, authorities said.

As Oregon’s Gun Litigation Diverges, a Collision is Inevitable

The legal fight over Oregon’s gun-control ballot initiative is headed in two different directions, but the paths will eventually have to crash back into each other.

In the wake of Measure 114’s adoption last month, gun-rights advocates filed multiple lawsuits against the permit-to-purchase and magazine ban provisions at the state and federal levels. They argued both provisions are unconstitutional under the right to keep and bear arms protections in the United States Constitution and the Oregon Constitution, especially under the standard articulated by the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. But they got different results at each level.

Harney County Judge Robert Raschio issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the entirety of the law. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut delayed implementation of the permit-to-purchase requirement for a month at the request of Oregon officials, who admitted they couldn’t create the system before the deadline but declined to issue a TRO

The judges’ reasoning were in stark contrast to one another. While they both agreed that requiring a permit to buy a gun that was effectively unobtainable violates the right to keep and bear arms, and the requirement would have to be blocked, at least in the short term, they differed on everything else. It’s possible either judge could change their mind, but they both seem pretty convinced of their initial conclusions. It’s more likely higher courts, likely the United States Supreme Court itself, will have to settle the contradictions in their approach–if not in this specific case, at least more generally.

Judge Immergut found Measure 114’s ban on the sale and use of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds, with limited exceptions, is not unconstitutional. She argued the Second Amendment does not protect the magazines because they are not “necessary to the use of firearms for lawful purposes such as self-defense” since magazines that hold fewer than ten rounds can be used in their place.

“While magazines in general are necessary to the use of firearms for self-defense, Plaintiffs have not shown, at this stage, that magazines specifically capable of accepting more than ten rounds of ammunition are necessary to the use of firearms for self-defense,” Immergut 

“As noted above, the ‘corollary… right to possess the magazines necessary to render… firearms operable’ is ‘not unfettered.’ Instead, the right is limited to magazines that are necessary to render firearms operable for self-defense and other lawful purposes.”

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Cue the shocked meme…..

BREAKING: New Twitter Files Dump Exposes Blacklists, Secret Cabal Censoring High-Profile Conservatives.

Independent journalist Bari Weiss took to Twitter on Thursday night to unload a second trove of internal memos and documents exposing how Twitter officials silenced the voices of prominent conservatives on the platform. Radio host Dan Bongino, Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, and activist Charlie Kirk were among those Twitter censored or blacklisted, along with the popular “Libs of TikTok” account.

“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss, a former New York Times reporter, wrote. “The authors [of the Twitter Files] have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”

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The Dry Fire Primer Paperback

Dry fire – practicing without live ammunition – is an essential tool for every gun owner who wants to learn how to handle their firearms more proficiently. It saves time and money while remaining an effective training method whether you are interested in guns for a hobby, for self-defense, or for competition. While there are many books that describe specific dry fire regimens, they don’t always give you the information you need to use them best. That’s where The Dry Fire Primer comes in. It bridges the gap between “I’ve heard of dry fire” and “I’m going to be a dry fire maniac and use it to its greatest potential.” Whether you’re brand-new to dry fire or just feel like you could be getting a bit more out of it, this book is for you.

Oregon high court won’t let voter gun control measure begin

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s tough, voter-approved gun control law remains temporarily blocked after the Oregon Supreme Court declined to overturn an earlier decision preventing the measure from taking effect Thursday.

Chief Justice Martha Walters late Wednesday denied the emergency motion to intervene, filed earlier in the day by state Attorney General Ellen Rosenbaum.

The measure includes a ban on the sale and transfer of high-capacity magazines. It also requires permits, criminal background checks, fingerprinting and hands-on training courses for new gun buyers.

Harney County Judge Robert Raschio blocked it Tuesday, just hours after a federal judge ruled in favor of the law. The Oregon Department of Justice argued in an urgent filing that Raschio got it wrong.

“Magazine capacity restrictions and permitting requirements have a proven track record: they save lives!” Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a statement. “We are confident the Oregon Constitution — like the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution — allows these reasonable regulations.”

Several lawsuits have challenged the measure, which voters narrowly approved last month. The measure’s fate is being carefully watched as one of the first new gun restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down a New York law limiting the carrying of guns outside the home.

The Oregon measure bans the sale, transfer or import of magazines over 10 rounds unless they are owned by law enforcement or a military member or were owned before the measure’s passage. Those who already possess high-capacity magazines can have them only in their homes or use them at firing ranges, in shooting competitions, or for hunting, as allowed by state law after the measure takes effect.

It would also close a federal loophole that allows gun transfers to proceed if background checks cannot be completed quickly.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut delivered an initial victory Tuesday to the measure’s proponents, ruling that the ban on the sale and transfer of high-capacity magazines could take effect Thursday. She also granted a 30-day delay before the law’s permit-to-purchase mandate takes effect, but she did not quash it entirely, as gun rights advocates had wanted.

Hours later, the Harney County judge put the law on hold. In that case, Gun Owners of America Inc., the Gun Owners Foundation and several individual owners alleged that the measure violates Oregon’s constitution and sought to have it blocked while that question was decided.

Gun sales and requests for background checks soared in the weeks since the election because of fears the new law would prevent or significantly delay the purchase of new firearms under the permitting system.

Gun rights groups, sheriffs and gun store owners have sued, saying the law violates Americans’ right to bear arms. All those lawsuits were filed in federal courts except for the one in Harney County, a gun rights group said late Tuesday.

A hearing on the Harney County judge’s order is set for Tuesday.

“We are, of course, deeply troubled by the ruling that came out of the Federal Court today. We are also grateful for the opposing ruling from the Harney County Judge this afternoon,” the Oregon Firearms Federation wrote. “But no matter what, there is a long way to go.”

The Supreme Court decision on the New York law signaled a shift in how the nation’s high court will evaluate Second Amendment infringement claims, with the conservative majority finding that judges should no longer consider whether a law serves public interests like enhancing public safety, and instead weigh only whether the law is “consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.”

To the Editor:

In the Wednesday, November 30, 2022 Brunswick Times-Gazette, page 4; Delegate Clinton Jenkins stated that “we must…pass good, safe policy regarding guns here in Virginia.” As Delegate Jenkins well knows, it is already illegal to murder a human; it is already illegal to possess firearms in the “Gun Free Zones” existing in schools, courts, some government buildings, etc.

Exactly what “good, safe policy regarding guns here in Virginia” would Delegate Jenkins suggest? I will guess that his intention is to create infringements on the lawful exercise of the Second Amendment by honest law-abiding citizens. Why would I guess that? Mr. Jenkins tips his hand with his use of good sounding, though unenlightening words, such as “good, safe policy”.

These words, like the near ubiquitous code-words “common-sense gun legislation”, serve only to lower the suspicion of the electorate to be on guard for unconstitutional infringements on Second Amendment rights of citizens. One of the most widely implemented “common-sense gun legislation” laws was the creation of “Gun-Free Zones” which, inadvertently (I hope), created large pools of unarmed “fish in a barrel” for deranged shooters.

As a Democrat, Delegate Jenkins likely never saw an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment that he didn’t like and wouldn’t support. Additionally, Mr. Jenkins is likely unaware that gun control in the United States began with the attempt to save lives (of the terrorists in the KKK, at that), by disarming newly freed slaves so that they could not defend themselves against the night riders who came to rape, beat, burn, and lynch their black neighbors.

Sir Winston Churchill once said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

Perhaps Mr. Jenkins should research the efficacy of “Gun Free Zones”, which have had the practical effect of turning schools and government buildings into “Enhanced Victim Zones”; places where shooters are guaranteed greatly increased numbers of victims due to the implementation of these foolish policies. In the twenty-first century, gun control has the exact same effect that it did when it was first foisted upon innocent black citizens in the nineteenth century: it precludes intended victims from any meaningful defense against known evil intent on doing as much harm as possible in the shortest amount of time available without suffering meaningful retaliation.

Peter Agostnelli

Alberta, Virginia