Where Is Our ‘Freedom’ To Be Found If Not In The Armed Citizenry?

“Within the last year — ever since President Joe Biden signed his four-year lease on the White House — the word ‘freedom’ has taken on an unsavory, sinister connotation.” See report in Newsmax.

Wherefore is our freedom now if not in the armed citizenry? The U.S. Supreme Court can provide a leg-up from the United States Supreme Court.

The current U.S. Supreme Court term ends on June 27, 2022, and reconvenes on October 3, 2022, the starting date of its next term. Two major opinions are due out momentarily: Dobbs and Bruen. Dobbs is a major abortion case. Bruen is a major Second Amendment case. A leaked version of Dobbs has unleashed a furor. And an opinion in Bruen, striking down the NYPD concealed handgun licensing procedures will cause its own furor, worsened by the recent elementary school shooting incident in Texas.

Only the High Court, the Third Branch of Government, retains, at present, a modicum of independence. The Globalist puppet masters have firm control over both the First & Second Branches, but not yet, over the Third. That we know…

The Country is in a precarious state: militarily, geopolitically, economically, and societally. This is no accident. It is by design.

The seditious Press tries to explain this away partly by denial. But, knowing this to have a doubtful impact, the Press resorts to something more sinister. It tells the public it must accept the fall of the United States from its stature of preeminence. It tells the public that Nations rise and fall, and so must the United States. That is not true. The rise and fall of civilizations and nations isn’t a law of nature. It isn’t written in stone. It may appear so out of empirical necessity, but it is not one of logical necessity.

Strong nations weather any storm. Weaker nations do not.

Weak nations are doomed to eventual ruin from any force whether that force manifests inside or outside it.

Strong nations cannot be destroyed by outside forces, but only from within. Thus, was the fate of the Roman Empire.

The stooge, Biden, controlled by powerful forces, malevolent and malignant, lurking in the shadows, sputters their dictates. He is the embodiment of corruption, feebleness, and decay: what better emblem to proclaim the dying of the Nation. And he sputters about the problems with the Nation, the problems the public must bear, the dying of the Nation, isn’t his fault.

Biden implements strategies to disrupt and destroy the Nation, and yet denounces the American people for the very thing this Government fabricates, asserting that “terrorism from white supremacy” is the most serious threat to the Nation. It is not. There is no such threat, there is no such thing; but in the saying of it, Biden, the ever-compliant tool of the puppet masters, the real Tyrant, uses the lie, uses the Government, the proxy, the obedient stand-in for the Tyrant, to direct action against the American people.

But the threat is a phantom. That is all it is. That is all it ever was. But it serves a purpose.

The lie is the pretext to cull the Federal Government of those Americans it deems to be a threat against it, against the tyranny that Government imposes on the American people.

The lie becomes the pretext to harass civilians. The Tyrant suppresses all dissent. It aims to quell all perceived threats to it. And threat rests in all that disagree with the Tyrant.

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Stupid is as stupid does

New York Democrats already looking to revise just-passed ban on body armor

New York Democrats have a history of acting before they think, especially when it comes to guns and gun control measures. In 2013 lawmakers rammed the SAFE Act through the legislature, only to find that many of the elements of the gun control legislation were completely unworkable in practice. The ban on magazines that can hold more than seven rounds, for instance, ultimately had to be changed to allow for gun owners to use ten-round magazines, though they’re only allowed to load seven rounds of ammunition (a law that’s impossible to proactively enforce). The SAFE Act was also supposed to require background checks on all ammunition sales, though nearly a decade after its passage that element of the law has yet to go into effect.

New York lawmakers similarly rushed through a package of nearly a dozen new measures after the recent targeted attack on a Buffalo grocery store, including a new ban on the purchase of some types of body armor. Supposedly the new law is meant to prevent mass killers from protecting themselves against returning fire from police, but as some critics have pointed out, the type of body armor worn by the suspect in the Buffalo shooting isn’t actually covered by the new law.

A law hastily enacted by state lawmakers after the attack restricts sales of vests defined as “bullet-resistant soft body armor.”

Soft vests, which are light and can be concealed beneath clothing, can be effective against pistol fire. Vests carrying steel, ceramic or polyethylene plates, which can potentially stop rifle rounds, aren’t explicitly covered by the legislation.

That has left some retailers confused about what they can and can’t sell — and lawmakers talking about a possible fix.

“I know you said soft vests, but what about hard armor plates, plate carriers, or armors that aren’t vests, but clothing that provide protection. Is that also prohibited? It is so vague,” said Brad Pedell, who runs 221B Tactical, a tactical gear and body armor store in New York City. He said his store tends to sell more hard-plated armor than the soft type being banned.

… Pedell says many customers at his New York City store buy the armor for their own protection.

“It’s disappointing because residents are just scared, and they come to us because they are scared, and we offer help that makes them feel more confident, that they won’t get stabbed or injured or potentially killed,” Pedell said. “The fact (lawmakers) are taking that away, for whatever purpose they have in their minds, I find that really sad and unnecessary and morally wrong.”

Yeah, well, this is what happens when lawmakers are so intent on “doing something” in response to a shooting that they don’t think about the unintended consequences of their own actions. The suspected killer in Buffalo was wearing body armor? Well then, better ban it. Never mind the fact that ban will impact law-abiding citizens who want to protect themselves far more than it will thwart criminals from wearing body armor; there is virtue to be signaled here. And rather than recognizing the errors of their ways, supporters of the new ban say they’re ready to “fix” it if necessary.

Assemblymember Jonathon Jacobson, a lead sponsor of the legislation, told The Associated Press he would “be glad to amend the law to make it even stronger.”

… New Yorkers are still allowed to own body vests and purchase them in other states, though Jacobson, a Democrat, said he would work to eliminate that option during the next Legislative session in January.

“We wanted to get things done as quickly as possible, and not let the perfect get in the way of the good,” said Jacobson. “Like all laws in New York State, we always try to make them better in the future. Of course we’ll try to make this law better.”

The only way to do that would be to scrap this law entirely, which isn’t going to happen as long as Democrats have a majority in the statehouse in Albany.

Will Your “Smart” Devices and AI Apps Have a Legal Duty to Report on You?

I just ran across an interesting article, “Should AI Psychotherapy App Marketers Have a Tarasoff Duty?,” which answers the question in its title “yes”: Just as human psychotherapists in most states have a legal obligation to warn potential victims of a patient if the patient says something that suggests a plan to harm the victim (that’s the Tarasoff duty, so named after a 1976 California Supreme Court case), so AI programs being used by the patient must do the same.

It’s a legally plausible argument—given that the duty has been recognized as a matter of state common law, a court could plausibly interpret it as applying to AI psychotherapists as well as to other psychotherapists—but it seems to me to highlight a broader question:

To what extent will various “smart” products, whether apps or cars or Alexas or various Internet-of-Things devices, be mandated to monitor and report potentially dangerous behavior by their users (or even by their ostensible “owners”)?

To be sure, the Tarasoff duty is somewhat unusual in being a duty that is triggered even in the absence of the defendant’s affirmative contribution to the harm. Normally, a psychotherapist wouldn’t have a duty to prevent harm caused by his patient, just as you don’t have a duty to prevent harm caused by your friends or adult family members; Tarasoff was a considerable step beyond the traditional tort law rules, though one that many states have indeed taken. Indeed, I’m skeptical about Tarasoff, though most judges that have considered the matter don’t share my skepticism.

But it is well-established in tort law that people have a legal duty to take reasonable care when they do something that might affirmatively help someone do something harmful (that’s the basis for legal claims, for instance, for negligent entrustment, negligent hiring, and the like). Thus, for instance, a car manufacturer’s provision of a car to a driver does affirmatively contribute to the harm caused when the driver drives recklessly.

Does that mean that modern (non-self-driving) cars must—just as a matter of the common law of torts—report to the police, for instance, when the driver appears to be driving erratically in ways that are indicative of likely drunkenness? Should Alexa or Google report on information requests that seem like they might be aimed at figuring out ways to harm someone?

To be sure, perhaps there shouldn’t be such a duty, for reasons of privacy or, more specifically, the right not to have products that one has bought or is using surveil and report on you. But if so, then there might need to be work done, by legislatures or by courts, to prevent existing tort law principles from pressuring manufacturers to engage in such surveillance and reporting.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since my Tort Law vs. Privacy article, but it seems to me that the recent surge of smart devices will make these issues come up even more.

Know the lying demoncraps infesting the White House, this can almost be seen as confirmation

White House denies claims from guns group that ammo ban is under consideration

The White House is denying a recent claim from a gun foundation that a limited ammunition ban is under consideration, which would drive the price of legal ammunition higher.

The Biden administration supposedly informed Winchester Ammunition that “the government is considering restricting the manufacturing and commercial sale of legal ammunition produced at the Lake City, Mo., facility,” a spokesman from the National Shooting Sports Foundation told the Washington Examiner on Friday.

A White House official denied the claim.

Currently, Winchester is allowed to sell surplus ammunition after meeting the military’s needs on the civilian market, but Mark Oliva, the NSSF spokesman, warned that banning the practice would “significantly reduce the availability of ammunition in the marketplace and put the nation’s warfighting readiness at risk. Both NSSF and Winchester strongly oppose this action.”

This practice now represents roughly 30% of the 5.56 mm/.223 caliber ammunition sales.

Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of senators announced they had agreed in principle to the framework of new legislation to instill additional restrictions on guns that may have a chance to be passed in the Senate. Twenty senators, 10 from each party, signed on to the legislation, demonstrating the support it would need to pass the 60-vote threshold.

A White House official told the Washington Examiner that the reports on a possible ban “are way off,” while Oliva warned that the implementation of such a policy “jeopardizes the fragile negotiations of the framework deal that was agreed to by the bipartisan group of senators.”

After mass shootings, such as the ones in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, it is typical that gun owners flock to firearm stores in order to buy weapons over fears of new gun control legislation. That fear also prompts ammunition purchases, which have led to a shortage. Both gun and ammunition manufacturers saw their stocks go up after the Uvalde shooting.

“The typical hypothesis is that this is an exogenous shock, unanticipated, and as a result of a mass shooting, the reaction is there is an expectation that legislative steps will be undertaken to potentially restrict ammunition, access to guns,” Brian Marks, the executive director of the University of New Haven’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, previously told the Washington Examiner.

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) – The lead Republican negotiator in U.S. Senate efforts to craft a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, while the lead Democrat remained optimistic that lawmakers could vote on legislation before leaving for a two-week July 4 recess.

“It’s fish or cut bait,” Senator John Cornyn said after hours of negotiations that included his fellow Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema.

“I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking,” Cornyn said.

However, Tillis and Murphy later said the talks were close to reaching agreement and added that legislative text for a bill could emerge in coming days……………..

Analysis: Guns Are Normal and Normal People Use Guns

As I hope to write regularly for The Reload, I thought my first contribution ought to say something about how I generally approach American gun culture, which bears on the fierce debates over guns taking place across the country.

I am a sociologist who has been studying American gun culture for the past decade. My approach to the topic differs considerably from most of my gun studies colleagues. Rather than focusing on crime, injury, and death with firearms, my work is based on the proposition that guns are normal and normal people use guns. This is not an article of faith or belief statement for me; rather, it is based on my empirical observations of guns and gun owners.

When I say guns are normal and normal people use guns, I mean it in two senses. First, guns and gun ownership are common, widespread, and typical. Second, guns and gun ownership are not inherently associated with deviance or abnormalities.

The normality of guns runs deep in human history. The use of projectile weapons is behaviorally normal for Homo sapiens as a species. Today’s widely owned civilian firearms are part of an unbroken thread of what Randy Miyan calls “the human-weapon relationship,” stretching back to rocks in the uniquely evolved hands of our prehistoric ancestors. As paleoanthropologist John Shea concludes, “Projectile weaponry is uniquely human and culturally universal. We are the only species that uses projectile weaponry, and no human society has ever abandoned its use.”

Although most societies today – consensually or not – give over to the state a monopoly on legitimate violence and hence the ability to restrict civilian ownership of projectile weaponry, the United States is an outlier in having a significant portion of the population insist upon their right to own firearms independent of the state, a right written into the U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions. In early American history, guns were widely owned by those who could legally do so. One reliable estimate found guns in 50 to 73 percent of male estates and even 6 to 38 percent of female estates. These rates compare favorably to other common items listed in male estates like swords or edged weapons (14% of inventories), Bibles (25%), or cash (30%).

Even as the nation has become more settled, more industrial, and more urbanized, levels of firearms ownership remain exceptionally high. Accounting for under-reporting of gun ownership in surveys, a reasonable estimate is that 40% of all American adults personally own a gun, over 100 million people. According to the Small Arms Survey, there are some 400,000,000 privately owned firearms in the United States. Actually, if the average gun owner owns 4 to 5 guns, then the actual number of civilian firearms could be closer to half a billion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, shooting guns is also very normal in the United States. In 2017, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center asked, “Regardless of whether or not you own a gun, have you ever fired a gun?” Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72%) said YES. In population terms, nearly 180 million adults in America have fired a gun. Pew also asked, “Just your best guess, at what age did you FIRST fire a gun, whether you owned it or not.” 63% of respondents answered that they were under 18 years of age when they first shot a gun.

None of this denies that there are what Claude Werner calls serious mistakes and negative outcomes with guns. These range from unintentional discharges to mass public shootings. But huge denominators in terms of gun owners and guns owned means the absolute risk of accidental injury or death, homicide, or suicide is quite small.

I have previously illustrated this using conservative estimates of guns and gun ownership and broad estimates of negative outcomes (including accidental and intentional deaths and injuries as well as non-fatal criminal injuries and victimizations with firearms). I found that just 0.15% of guns and 0.79% of gun owners are involved in fatal or non-fatal injuries or victimizations involving firearms annually.

Looked at the other way around, 99.85% of guns and 99.21% of gun owners are NOT involved in fatal or non-fatal injuries or victimization involving firearms annually.

Of course, the normality of guns and gun owners is not just an academic question. It is reflected in the way many gun control activists and politicians approach guns. At a time when people use terms like “insane” and “addiction” — or worse — to characterize gun culture in America, it’s important to remember that guns are both commonly owned and generally non-problematic here.

Unfortunately, normality is unremarkable. It is not headline news. It is not of concern to social scientists. And yet it is my dominant experience of guns and gun owners.

Will We Choose Hard Work to Protect Our Children in School?

Set aside what you imagine about guns and protecting students at school. Keeping our kids safe is hard work. It is ugly and almost always unappreciated. We don’t want appreciation for what we’ve been forced to do if a murderer comes to school. It is far better to be known for what we prevented. Defending our students from media-fueled narcissistic psychopaths is a dull job. Being present every day so you can stop a murderer is easily ignored because it is out of sight. Contrast that grinding job with the one-click solution of “gun control”. Gun-control politicians say they can put a few more words on paper, hold a few press conferences, and it will be as if evil simply went away.. or did it? We’re conducting several large-scale social experiments at the same time. Our children’s lives depend on what we do.

Each day brings us something new. Our children live in a world where they are exposed to millions of online “friends” they’ve never met. Many of these friends might not even be real people. These online identities influence how our children think and feel. I’m not sure about the benefits, but the downside has been a surge in both narcissism and anorexia. Today, our children constantly compare themselves to an image on a small screen.

We also have millions of children growing up in broken homes. Many of these children are raised by the entertainment media and by electronic games. That isn’t good for healthy children, let alone the children who lack a healthy mom and dad. We also know that we are not all the same and that electronic games are catastrophic for some people. These gamers already feel alienated to an unusual degree. They think they deserve more recognition. Immerse these fragile youngsters into hundreds of hours of violent first-person roll-playing games, and something happens. The psychopaths eventually think to themselves, ‘I’d kill to get this much attention.’ Our voracious news media is ready to oblige. That is new.

In contrast, firearms have been a part of society for a relatively long time. We have lived with guns for at least the last four centuries. We’ve lived with semi-automatic rifles for over a hundred years. The so-called “assault rifle” is over 80 years old. What changed is that we’ve never grown up with mass media in our pocket 24-7 starting when children are 6 years of age. We don’t know what that does to people, and we’re conducting the real-time experiment on our children and on our society. We learn new things every day.

We’ve seen the mass media turn the last murderer into an instant celebrity by giving him a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign. The next murderer notices the attention poured on the last murderer. That creates a new generation of “celebrity-murderers”, a term that didn’t exist as little as two decades ago. We’ve seen over 80 copycat murderers after the attack on Columbine High School, but that data is now several years out of date.

Not only are our children ill-prepared to deal with the media, but adults and politicians do only a little better. The public is influenced by the most outrageous claim that can be taken from a situation or statement. The media and unscrupulous politicians feed us a series of false choices. Please consider each of these claims for more than a minute and you can easily see a context in which each statement is clearly right. You can also see a context in which the claim is clearly wrong.

  • You don’t care if our children die since you won’t disarm everyone,
    • but we’ve seen mass murders where firearms are banned.
  • It doesn’t help to put mental health counselors in school because we have to insure patient privacy and confidentiality,
    • but we’ve seen mental health counselors help, and we’ve also seen counselors be completely ineffective at identifying and treating violent patients.
  • Violence isn’t the answer,
    • but we have to use violence as necessary to stop the attacker or else we’ll perpetuate the next cycle of media-fueled murderers.
  • Don’t turn the murderer into a media celebrity,
    • but we have the right of free speech and freedom of the press.

Let me say it again that we are not all the same. Psychopaths are part of our population and always have been. We’ve seen the behavior of psychopaths change in our modern media environment. Today we see psychopaths target innocent victims in gun-free zones because that behavior rewarded by the mass media. Examined in hindsight, the murderers spent years happily planning their attacks. The threat of celebrity-violence is increasing as a greater number of fragile children are immersed in electronic media, and news outlets reward the latest murderer with greater and more sensational coverage.

We should be hungry for facts about protecting our children. Of course, we worry about what would happen if we allowed volunteer staff to be trained and then to go armed at school. But we already know what happens. We already have millions of man-hours with trained and armed-school staff on campus. Despite what we imagine, these staff have not had firearms accidents at school. More importantly, we have not seen a successful attack at a school when trained and armed school staff were present. We need to set our fantasies aside.

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Well, it can backfire on them

BLUF
The Left clearly intends to gain full control, and will not settle for less. If it cannot achieve its ends via ballot boxes (no matter how stuffed or harvested they might be), then agencies will connive with print, electronic and social media – in clear violation of First Amendment prohibitions against government abridging freedom of speech. Failing that, it will resort to cartridge boxes and Molotov cocktails.

Unless, that is, We the People stop this assault on Americas’ democracy and personal freedoms.

Leftist Intimidation – and Assassination?

One year ago, ProPublica published illegally leaked IRS data on America’s wealthiest taxpayers. The “newsroom” said it obtained the information from “an anonymous source,” thanks to the ease with which people with access to information can secretly copy and transmit it with a few mouse clicks.

ProPublica piously claimed its actions were meant to advance “tax fairness” and help Congress and the Biden administration pay for all the trillions of dollars lavished on Covid and Build Back Better, by making it harder for the über-rich “to avoid tax burdens borne by ordinary citizens.”

But as I’ve noted previously, their approach is hideously complicated. Assets that increase in value from some retroactive mythical or arbitrary acquisition price would get taxed whopping amounts. If assets later depreciate, the wealthy will require credits or refunds for billion-dollar unrealized losses. Worse, the initial 700-1,000 ultra-rich would likely balloon to millions of taxpayers, as happened with the Alternative Minimum Tax, under this accountant, appraiser, auditor and lawyer appreciation legislation.

The IRS and Justice Department say they are deeply concerned, devoted to protecting taxpayer information, and committed to getting to the bottom of the data theft scandal. But the perpetrators have yet to be identified, prosecuted or punished – and ProPublica certainly hasn’t been canceled by or banished from Facebook or Twitter.

Indeed, ProPublica published more stolen confidential data this year. Again, no accountability for the perps – any more than there was for Lois Lerner, who used the IRS to target conservative groups and obstruct their tax-exempt certifications, so that they could not engage in activities that might have affected the outcomes of multiple elections.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) says the ProPublica saga is just “one more example of the government being weaponized” against the American people. However, only the chairs of relevant committees can demand that the IRS Inspector General brief Congress, the IRS told Jordan, and those Democrat chairs have little interest in doing so.

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Biden Is Blaming You, America, for His Rotten Economy.

“The World According to Joe Biden” is an interesting place. It’s full of unicorns and rainbows, cotton candy clouds, and magical gnomes who cause all kinds of mischief.

According to Biden, the gnomes have been busy. How else do you explain the worst inflation in 40 years or the baby formula crisis, or supply chain woes, or the other economic disasters that the president has visited upon us?

You explain it by blaming the American people. “People are really, really down,” Biden told the Associated Press in an interview on Thursday.

“Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset,” Biden said. “Everything they’ve counted on upset. But most of it’s the consequence of what happened, what happened as a consequence of the, the COVID crisis.”

Biden says America needs a mental health intervention. And he is dutifully following the first rule of politics: deny reality. Biden spoke of the warnings by some economists that a recession was on the way.

“First of all, it’s not inevitable,” he said. “Secondly, we’re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”

As for the causes of inflation, Biden flashed some defensiveness on that count. “If it’s my fault, why is it the case in every other major industrial country in the world that inflation is higher? You ask yourself that? I’m not being a wise guy,” he said.

The president’s statement appeared to be about inflation rising worldwide, not necessarily whether countries had higher rates than the U.S. Annual inflation in Japan, for example, has risen in recent months though it’s still at a yearly rate of 2.4%, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Biden said he was still optimistic about the economy, given the 3.6 percent unemployment rate. But with interest rates rising — the largest increase since 1994 — unemployment will once again become an issue, along with inflation, and tightening credit.

About the only thing that’s missing from the 1970s is “malaise.” Oh, wait.

Yet Biden’s remedy is not that different from the diagnosis made by former President Jimmy Carter in 1979, when the U.S. economy was crippled by stagflation. Carter said then the U.S. was suffering from a “crisis of confidence” and “the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

The president said he wants to endow the U.S. with more verve, fortitude and courage.

“Be confident,” Biden said. “Because I am confident. We’re better positioned than any country in the world to own the second quarter of the 21st century.”

Brave words. Empty words, but brave. Sometime in the next decade, China will surpass America as the number one economy in the world. And the Chinese government has a lot more confidence in their Communist system than Biden and his woke advisors have about American capitalism. If you’re looking for a reason for America’s decline, that’s a good place to start.

The similarities between Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter are eerie. Both men had no faith in the genius of America — its capitalists, its workers, or its ability to compete. The people aren’t inspired by leaders who whine about how unfair the criticism is, or how circumstances beyond the president’s control are the real cause of our problems.

For Carter, it was the Arab oil embargo that was the proximate cause of our economic woes. He, too, blamed the American people for not being inspired by his very existence. In a way, Biden and Carter are pathetic historical figures, lashed by forces they don’t understand. And like Carter, Biden will exit history in disgrace, leaving behind a prostrate nation needing to be inspired.

2 Countries In America: Those Who Cherish the RKBA & Those Who Don’t

It is time for us to think outside the box and form two countries. Instead of civil war I propose civil separation. We are two countries, so ideologically opposed that each feels victimized and dominated by the other. Political leaders need to step up and brainstorm next steps. Clearly lay out the two ideologies and give each state a vote as to where they belong.” ~“Opinion Letter” from reader of The New York Times posted on June 5, 2022, responding to May 27, 2022 “America May Be Broken Beyond Repair,” by the Political Progressive Columnist for the Times, Michelle Goldberg. The letter writer, Dawn Menken, a Psychologist, from Portland, Oregon, is the author of “Facilitating a More Perfect Union: A Guide for Politicians and Leaders,” published in 2021*

If the American public didn’t know the truth before, it knows it now: the battle for the very Soul of the Country is on the line, and Ground Zero of that battle isn’t Uvalde, Texas. It’s New York City, New York, with the Bruen case shortly coming down the pike.

The Nation is indeed “two Countries,”—no less so now than at the time of the American Civil War: friend against friend, brother against brother, uncle against cousin, father against son. But what is different today is that ideologies cut across and into the very notion of what it means to be an American. There are those who hold to the meaning and purport of our Nation as set forth in our Constitution and especially in the Nation’s Bill of Rights. And there are those who wish to jettison all of it in the erroneous belief that our Nation is at its core, immoral, even evil. They wish to destroy the very fabric of a free Constitutional Republic.

But the salient difference between these two Countries rests on this:

Those Americans who embrace and cherish their fundamental right to keep and bear arms, and others who do not.

Those who embrace and cherish their fundamental right to keep and bear arms also recognize and embrace their sovereignty over Government. They understand that government exists to serve the interests of the people. They recognize that Government is the servant and the American people are the sole master.

Unfortunately, many Americans are of a different mindset. Such Americans have bought into the psychological conditioning programmed into them that guns are awful and gun owners are to be despised. Such Americans care not that Government is their servant, not their master. They recognize not and care not that by ceding their God-Given right to keep and bear arms, they have laid the foundation for their own demise: loss of Selfhood, loss of Dignity, loss of Self-Reliance, loss of mastery over their own destiny.

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4 charged in Salt Lake home invasion that left 1 intruder dead

SALT LAKE CITY — Four people have been charged in connection with a chaotic incident in which police say they attempted to commit a home invasion robbery that ended in an exchange of gunfire and one of the intruders being killed.

About 7 p.m. on June 6, police were called to the Seasons At Pebble Creek apartment complex, 1616 W. Snow Queen Place (1675 South) in the Glendale neighborhood, on a report of a shooting. Anthony Wheatley, 19, was found with multiple gunshot wounds inside one of the units and died at the scene. Two handguns and several bullet casings were found “scattered across the living room,” according to charging documents.

Three injured people also drove away from the scene in two vehicles. Two of those victims, an 18-year-old man and a 19-year-old man, had been shot. A third man, 21, was also treated at a local hospital after being hit with a gun.

Five people, including Wheatley, participated in a plan to rob and assault two brothers living at the apartment, according to newly released information in charging documents.

One of the brothers had been communicating with Malibu Rose Mawson, who “was adamant about seeing him,” charging documents state. Police later said they learned that Mawson was pretending to be romantically interested in the man so she could get in the door and then let the others in the apartment.

The brother told police he was at first hesitant, but later invited Mawson to come to his apartment. Shortly after she arrived, there was a knock at the door and three men wearing masks — later identified as Wheatley, Erik Virgen, and Preston Luke Olson, entered, the charges state. A fifth person, Jaron Andersen, waited outside the apartment in a car, police say. Wheatley and Virgen are accused of pulling guns out of their waistbands after they entered.

“At least two of the males pointed guns directly at (the brother) and began yelling at him,” according to the charging documents.

The man told police the intruders were “asking him for something and (he) did not know what they wanted.” The gunmen also said they were going to kill him and proceeded to punch, kick and pistol-whip him, the charges state. Police say Olson told them he looked around the apartment for items to steal while Wheatley and Virgen assaulted the man.

A short time later, the man’s brother arrived at the apartment. He recognized Mawson, who was his former girlfriend. He then saw the intruders pointing guns and recognized Virgen from a youth group home. The brother told police that he rushed at Virgen and tackled him, but not before being shot in the chest, according to the charges. Both brothers then fought with the group and were able to take a gun away from one of the intruders.

Shots were then exchanged, including the brothers firing at the intruders with the gun they had taken, according to court documents. Wheatley was killed in the exchange.

The two brothers ran from the apartment after the shooting and drove away. They got lost going to the hospital, however, and pulled over at 1150 S. Redwood Road to flag down another car.

A second car with Olson, who was also shot, was found at 60 S. Redwood before he was also taken to a local hospital. Mawson and Virgen fled to Cedar City, according to charging documents.

On Thursday, Andersen, 19, of Herriman; Olson, 18, of Washington; Virgen, 18, of Springville; and Mawson, 20, of Springville, were each charged with aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony; and aggravated assault, a second-degree felony.

No charges have been filed in connection with Wheatley’s death.

Leaving a garage door opener in the car and parking it outside ranks right up there among the most stupid things not to do for home security

Homeowner holds burglar at gunpoint after awakening to find him inside home in Ingleside

A homeowner held a burglary suspect at gunpoint after finding him inside their home next to their baby’s bedroom in Ingleside Thursday morning, police and prosecutors said.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office responded around 12:10 a.m. Thursday to the 25800 block of West Marquette Drive in Ingleside for a burglary in progress.

Lake County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli said responding sheriff’s deputies were informed the victim was holding the burglar at gunpoint.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived and found James J. Rizzo, 34, of the 100 block of Windward Road in Lakemoor, being detained by the victim.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested Rizzo.

Covelli said further investigation revealed Rizzo burglarized the victim’s car, which was parked in the driveway.

Rizzo allegedly used the car’s garage door opener to open the garage and enter the home.

Victim shoots robbery suspect at The Domain

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin police said a man shot someone trying to rob him Tuesday afternoon at a north Austin outdoor shopping center. The suspect then got in a car, which drove a short distance before someone called 911 to get him medical help.

Jaylyn Reed, 17, faces an aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon charge. According to the affidavit, he was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound that threatened his life. KXAN reached out to his attorney and will update this story when we receive a response.

UPDATE: Suspects in string of Austin robberies arrested after Domain shooting, APD says
According to the arrest affidavit, Reed has an “extensive criminal history of aggravated robbery” and is a suspect in robberies that happened in the last few weeks.

At 4:11 p.m. the suspect came up behind two people who were walking through a parking lot at 3400 Palm Way, which is in The Domain shopping center, according to an arrest affidavit. The victims told police he had a black shirt wrapped around his face and pointed a gun at the two as he took a shopping bag and a backpack from one of them.

The suspect started getting into a car and pointed a gun at one of the victims who was yelling and walking toward him, the other pulled out a concealed pistol and shot the suspect.

According to an affidavit related to one of the people accused of being in the car, Reed dropped the gun he had at the scene. Police later said it was stolen.

The suspect left in the car, but didn’t get far before a passenger called 911 for help and police responded. The victims’ property was found in the vehicle, the affidavit said.

“Reed had been ordered by a Travis County Judge to wear an ankle monitor, which has been removed from his person,” the affidavit said.

On Tuesday, a portion of Burnet Road near Esperanza Crossing closed after a shooting, Austin police said. A police spokesperson confirmed Wednesday afternoon this was a separate shooting investigation and not related to the robbery investigation, but an affidavit filed Thursday morning indicated detectives determined they were related.