Overdose Deaths Rise to Double Gun Deaths in U.S.

Drug-Related Deaths Well Over 100,000 — Gun-Related Deaths Just 45,000

According to a Pew Research study, it has been revealed the total number of gun-related deaths in the U.S. is just around 45,000 — while over 100,000 Americans lost their lives to drugs in the same 12-month period.

The CDC released data detailing drug-related deaths within the U.S., and what they found is that over 100,000 Americans have died from drugs — twice the number of those who have died from firearms.

This number is up 15 percent from the previous year, and increased by around 40,000 since 2019, according to the figures released by the National Center for Health Statistics. The tally reflects challenges exacerbated by the lockdowns imposed by state governments: lost access to treatment, social isolation, and a more potent drug supply.

To dig a bit deeper, we found that the U.S. domestic firearms sales industry is valued at $28B, according to Forbes. Meanwhile, during a 12-month period, the domestic pharmaceutical drug industry in the U.S. is valued at over $348B (billion) — over 12 times that of the firearms industry.

Continue reading “”

Double whammy; SloJoe’s antigun policy and military increases ‘going back to cold war era postures’, look to be cutting into civilian ammo availability

Biden Administration Moves to Cut Off Lake City .223/5.56 Ammo From the Commercial Market

Apparently not content with its efforts so far to make gun ownership more difficult and expensive for America’s 100 million firearm owners, a source tells TTAG that the Biden administration is taking steps to reduce the availability of .223/5.56 ammunition available to the average shooter.

A person with knowledge of the situation tells us that, more than just “considering” the move, Winchester, which operates the US Army’s Lake City ammunition plant, has been informed that it may no longer sell M855 and SS109 ammunition produced in excess of the military’s needs on the civilian market.

How would that affect the civilian supply of .223 and 5.56 ammunition? We understand that as much as 30% of the commercial market’s sales volume of .223/5.56 is produced by Lake City.

Apropos of nothing in  particular……….

That this took so long is near infuriating. It’s doesn’t take seven (7) months – unless you’re a room temperature IQ moron – to figure out if it is, or isn’t a case of self defense.

Muncie woman is found justified by prosecutors after killing intruder

MUNCIE — A prosecutor has determined that a Muncie woman will not face charges after ruling that she acted in self-defense during a home invasion in November 2021.

According to the Delaware County Prosecutor’s Office, the woman had called the police to report a home invasion. When the police arrived, they found a person who had been shot and killed along with the homeowner and her child, who were not harmed.

The prosecutor’s office released findings Wednesday that determined the homeowner was acting in defense of herself and her child when an unknown person had tried to enter her home.

In the findings, it was determined that the homeowner had called the police on two occasions, both being home invasions within six hours between Nov. 18 and Nov. 19.

After the first call, police arrived at the scene and found no one on the premises of the home.

In the second report, the homeowner reported hearing someone trying to get into her home through her kitchen window. The homeowner had an Indiana permit and legally possessed a Glock handgun, the findings said.

The homeowner raised her gun and fired one “warning shot” through the kitchen window. According to prosecutors, she immediately called 911 and reported what had happened.

After responding to the call, officers found Ke’yon Davis lying on the ground a few feet away from the kitchen window.

The Muncie Police Department conducted an investigation and found finger and/or handprints on four of the windows, a cinderblock under the window seemingly used as a stool to look inside the home and shoeprints by the window that matched Davis’ shoes.

Police found a stolen laptop and other various items in Davis’ backpack. Police do not know the motive behind Davis trying to break into the home.

If Davis had survived, police said he would have faced multiple charges including attempted burglary, attempted residential entry and theft.

Well, they’re liars, so…..

THE DUPLICITY OF GUN CONTROLLERS IS IN FULL ARRAY

There’s an interesting phenomenon occurring with those demanding gun control lately. They’ve abandoned pretenses of “common sense.” Now, it’s not gun control. It’s gun rights elimination.

President Joe Biden leads the gun control charade parade. The president chides gun owners for not supporting his gun control agenda while at the same time expanding his gun ban wish list.

President Biden spoke to the American public from The White House on June 2 to explain his desire to push for expanded gun control.

“The issue we face is one of conscience and common sense,” President Biden said following the tragic murders by a madman in Uvalde, Texas. “For so many of you at home, I want to be very clear: This is not about taking away anyone’s guns.  It’s about… not about vilifying… gun owners. In fact, we believe we should be treating responsible gun owners as an example of how every gun owner should behave. I respect the culture and the tradition and the concerns of lawful gun owners.”

The Real Joe

That statement, however, stands in stark contrast to what President Biden told a private group of Beverly Hills, Calif., Democratic donors just days later. He told a story of his Senate days pushing gun control measures and gun owners confronting him on his radical agenda.

“They’d say, ‘God darn, Joe, what the hell are you doing taking my gun away?’” President Biden said according to a Breitbart report. “And I said, ‘Let me ask you a question.’ I said, ‘How many — when you go deer hunting, how many deer are wearing Kevlar vests?’”

“‘By the way, if you need 30, 40, 60, up to 100 rounds to fire,’ I said, ‘you’re a danger to yourself, man,’” he continued.

That’s an interesting stand for the president, who admits to owning at least two shotguns and once absurdly told his wife to blindly “fire two blasts” into the dark if she ever feared someone illegally entering their property. It’s not unexpected though. This is the same president that lectures America on the Bill of Rights as if it were a laundry list of government-approved needs.

President Biden told Americans in a tweet, “No one needs an AR-15. Period.” He’s continuously called for a ban on standard capacity magazines. He tried to convince Americans that no one needs 9 mm handguns, calling those too “weapons of war.”

Hollywood Hypocrisy

Liberal antigun darling Michael Moore has never been shy about disclosing his animus toward lawful firearm ownership. These days, he’s dropped any equivocation and is calling for the Second Amendment to be repealed outright.

“We need to start a movement to repeal the Second Amendment and replace it with something that says it’s not about the right of somebody to own a gun, it’s the right of all of us to be protected from gun violence,” Moore said in his podcast, according to Fox News.

Instead of guns, Moore suggests getting a dog. For concealed carry options, there are always small breeds, one might imagine. It’s also wishful thinking by Moore that criminals will suddenly drop their illegally-obtained firearms. Law-abiding gun owners aren’t the problem, but criminal actors are, since they’re already ignoring laws and harbor no respect for life. Of course, there’s a path for Moore to achieve this. It only takes two-thirds of both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, or two-thirds of the states to agree to a Constitutional convention and that new amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or state conventions.

“I make no apologies for it because I understand the history of this country and I don’t think we should be afraid to say this. Repeal the Second Amendment,” Moore said. “I said it then and I’ll say it now and I’ll keep saying it and I want you to say it with me, repeal the Second Amendment. This sentence in our Constitution, it was written 235 years ago. Repeal the Second Amendment.” So was the First Amendment, but whatever.

At least Moore is honest, if not completely out of step with America. Criminals, assuredly, would love this idea.

Pro-2A Gun Control?

David Hogg, the front-man for March for Our Lives gun control, wrote in a Fox News op-ed a call-to-action for even NRA members to join in his gun control demonstrations.

“I want to state unequivocally that I am not anti-gun. In fact, the movement I helped to start has been pro-Second Amendment from day one,” Hogg wrote.

That’s in direct contradiction with the demands from March for Our Lives, which include a national licensing and registry scheme, bans on so-called “assault weapons” or semiautomatic Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and standard capacity magazines. The March for Our Lives’ website attests that “there is a national mental health crisis,” yet Hogg was quoted telling U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) that, “Mental illness is a bulls–t talking point,” according to a Time report. That was on the same whirlwind Senate splash where he attempted to shame Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), accusing him of snubbing a meeting with Hogg because it would “trigger” the senator. The senator’s chief of staff caught him in the lie, pointing out they had a 2 p.m. meeting scheduled, which was canceled when it was clear Hogg was using the meeting to self-promote.

Hogg attempted an apology, citing a scheduling mistake.

The mistakes here aren’t schedules. They’re a matter of getting caught up in their own duplicity.

Second Amendment still as relevant as in 1789

People are clamoring for oppressive and dangerous gun laws.

So-called common-sense laws like universal background checks and red flag laws that even proponents admit would not have stopped any of the shootings motivate their desire. All with hidden elements that will unfairly and oppressively affect the law-abiding and honest.

There are typically over 2,000 children each year who die from child abuse. There are thousands more who die of various preventable causes. Where is the moral outrage?

How about the thousands of teens who die needlessly of drug overdoses? Where is the moral outrage? Where are the demands for more laws regarding abuse, securing the border or stopping the influx of fentanyl, heroin and other drugs?

The purpose of the Second Amendment is not fighting our military, hunting, target shooting or even defense. The purpose of the Second Amendment is deterrence. Pure and simple.

A single armed individual can deter dozens of heavily armed law enforcement officials, as we saw recently in Texas, yet an unarmed individual is easily taken into custody at five in the morning by 20 or so heavily armed storm troopers while CNN films the entire affair.

There has been no gun confiscation because millions of firearms are owned by law-abiding citizens. This is the deterrence that the founders knew would be needed when corruption ultimately prevailed in Washington.

Corrupt politicians along with their naïve cohorts on both sides of the aisle are in a dead heat to make firearms ownership too complicated, too difficult and too expensive for the average individual.

If successful, only the elite will have armed security. The rest of us will be statistics for politicians to pontificate about when they talk down to the unwashed and ignorant masses, begging them for law and order.

I’m not willing to compromise on this because compromise is just losing at a slower rate. When it comes to individual liberty and rights there can be no compromise — especially when the proposed compromises do nothing to address the mentally ill, the evil, the criminal and those intent on doing harm.

Every proposed encroachment on our rights is just that — an encroachment with no net benefit.

While many have compromised on perversion, distortions of reality, acceptance of idiocy, alternate realities and indoctrination of their children, I for one will not compromise on the Second Amendment … period.

Give up your gun rights and more freedoms will fall

“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire (Psalm 46:9).”

Would-be dictators, be forewarned. In the meantime, into day’s world, those who would pound their swords into plow shares, will plow the fields for those who don’t. Never ever give up your rights. Ever.

Americans are freeborn and proof of that is our God-given rights. Any gun legislation infringing on the right to self-defense chips away at that freedom. Beware the false promise of peace through disarmament.

They’ve been ‘beginning’ since 1934….

Democrat Admits Senate Gun-Control Plan ‘Just the Beginning’

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) admitted something we all knew last weekend at the March for our Lives rally in Parkland, Florida, when asked about the gun control “framework” that a bipartisan group of 20 Senators have said they support.

It’s just the beginning, she said, and more “significant” gun control is coming.

“We were expecting moderate reform at best, I wasn’t expecting anything of significance,” Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC’s Alex Witt.  “Anything you can do to put an obstacle in the path of someone who would do themselves or someone else harm and save a life, is a step we should take while saying we should push for a lot more. This is only the beginning, it has to be only the beginning, not the end.”

Wasserman Schultz added that “extremists” will now likely target Senate Republicans and “everyone in congress.”

“We absolutely have an opportunity to move forward, and let me just be clear, Alex, for those of us who support much more significant reform, this is just the beginning,” she said. “We have to begin to make some progress, I’m glad that those 10 senators had the courage thus far.”

In Congress, Wasserman Schultz is far from being a back-bench first-termer. When she makes an admission like this – that the Senate plan is just the beginning and more gun control is coming – she is certainly not speaking out of turn. She has been in Congress since 2005 and serves as the Chief Deputy Whip of the Democratic Caucus. She was the first woman to chair the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee, and she also serves on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, which according to her website, “has vast jurisdiction over the government and private sector, and plays a key role in overseeing the Biden Administration.”

Wasserman Schultz’s comments prove that if we willingly give the gun banners a slice of bread every time we sit down with them, eventually, they’ll have the whole loaf. She just said the quiet part out loud. There will be no appeasement if we agree to let them infringe on our constitutional rights. All the Senate plan will do is whet their appetite.

It is clear based on the Congresswoman’s comments that their true goals remain “assault weapon” and standard-capacity magazine bans and restricting firearm sales to those over 21. These were their goals before the Senate “framework” agreement was announced. These remain their goals today.

Anyone who thinks that the bipartisan Senate plan will somehow stop the gun banners from trying to achieve their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament is deluding themselves. They will never stop. There will be no appeasement, regardless of what happens in the Senate.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BIDEN: TRANSCRIPT

I was looking for transcript in all the wrong places, i.e., for the official White House transcript of President Biden’s fabulations at the 29th quadrennial convention of the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia yesterday morning. The White House posted it under Statements and Releases here. I commented on it here based on the PBS video (below).

Today’s New York Post devotes a good editorial to Biden’s speech under the heading “The Post says: Biden pumps out more economic baloney.” The editorial concludes: “Until he gets his head out of … the clouds, inflation and all our other economic woes are only going to get worse.”

I found Biden’s speech a disgraceful and disgusting performance. The professional fact-checkers could have a field day with it, if only…but the stretchers, whoppers, and lies aren’t the worst of it. The worst of it would be the destructive mission on which he is gleefully bound.

The Latest Wave of New Firearm Owners Shreds Another Anti-Gun Narrative

First, I’m shocked NBC News would write a story like this about gun owners. Second, it’s about yet another hurdle anti-gunners have to scale when pushing their ‘take all the guns’ initiatives. This isn’t necessarily a new trend. Nonwhite Americans and women have flocked to gun shows and concealed carry permit classes. In fact, there are so many female concealed carry holders that they’re changing the industry. Female participation in shooting sports spiked during the Obama presidency. That alone is a problem for anti-gunners and Democrats. It’s never a good idea to go against what middle-class women like—that’s a long-established political reality. You’re gambling there.

Now, you have to factor in that the latest wave of new gun owners are black Americans—and you have to tread carefully about the silly talking points about gun ownership and the Second Amendment (via NBC News):

Two days after a white man shot and killed 10 Black people in Buffalo last month, Michael Moody reversed his thinking about possessing a firearm. He had watched the aftermath of the carnage on the news, the anguish of the victims’ families, and decided he “needed a gun. Needed, not wanted,” he said……

Moody’s sentiments represent one reason the sale of guns to Black Americans rose 58 percent in 2020 — the year George Floyd was murdered by a Minnesota police officer, sparking a nationwide social justice movement — according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association. It was the highest bump in gun sales of any ethnic group that year.

Further, in the first quarter of 2021, another NSSF report revealed 90 percent of gun retailers reported a general increase of Black customers, including an 87 percent increase among Black women.

“And you wonder why?” said Moody, who works for the federal government. “You look at Buffalo and the feeling of ‘This could have been me’ is there. We could be the next target. And when it’s you, what are you going to do? Are you going to run and hide? Or are you going to be able to protect yourself? Protect your family? I didn’t want a gun; I’m not a gun person. But this world has made me get one. Getting one for my wife next.”

The foundation said 40 percent of the overall gun sales in 2020 were to first-time gun purchasers. Black gun owners, old and new, say the rise is a byproduct primarily of a heightened fear they could be targeted like those in Buffalo or at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, when nine Black church members were killed by a white supremacist.

To that point, anti-Black hate crimes rose nearly 40 percent in 2020, the latest year available, according to FBI statistics. There were 2,755 reported incidents targeting Black people in the U.S. that year, the most besieged racial group by a large margin.

Two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol in Washington, Destiny Hawkins, a divorced mother of one who lives near Atlanta, waited in line to purchase her first gun, a Glock 43. “It wasn’t the gun I wanted because their selection was so low; people were buying guns like crazy,” she said……

This increased interest in firearms delights Philip Smith, who started the National African American Gun Association in 2015. A human resources executive in Atlanta, Smith said he owns “about 30” weapons, including the lethal AR-15-style rifles used in the Buffalo mass shooting and the Uvalde elementary school massacre in Texas on May 24.

The increased number of Black gun ownership represents “an awakening,” Smith said. “It’s a value-add to their family household, as opposed to, let’s say, 10 years ago or six years ago. This is a movement in a certain direction, and I think it’s a good direction.”

His organization has 48,000 members nationwide, he said, and has gained more than 1,000 or more each month since 2020. It has nearly 107,000 followers on Facebook.

Sure, there are differing opinions about possession in this piece, but it’s clear that Black Americans are exercising their Second Amendment rights which is a good thing. Ideally, everyone should. Ideally, every household should have a firearm.

Whether the reasoning is a stalker, Antifa, terrorism, a spike in crime, and yes—a crazy white nationalist shooting up a market, you have the right to own a firearm in this country and use it for self-defense. That’s what is so great about the Bill of Rights. They’re all connected. They’re all equally important with regards to upholding the other amendments. There is no graduated scale here; only liberals think that way. There’s no cafeteria support for the Bill of Rights either. It’s either you support them or don’t. There’s no filleting of the first ten amendments. The notion that the Second Amendment is for white Americans only is dead. The notion that the Second Amendment was meant to maintain white supremacy was never real, but it’s obviously not an old white man’s game anymore. Women and minorities are all packing heat. Americans of all stripes are buying guns.

It’s a homemade American apple pie, with a side of 9mm I guess. That’s fine. What we need to worry about is Democrats and Republicans now working to set the foundation that could strip those rights down the line.

Scalise: We’re Not Having the Tough Conversations We Need to Have About School Shootings

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) pointed to a lack of school prayer when talking about gun violence.

“We had AR-15s in the 1960s. We didn’t have those mass school shootings,” Scalise said during a press conference Wednesday.

“Now, I know it’s something that some people don’t want to talk about. We actually had prayer in school during those days,” Scalise continued. “We had other things going on in our society where we took a different approach to our young kids. And let’s look at that. These are tough conversations we should be having that we’re not having about why we’re seeing more young kids go astray.”…………..

Man killed in Germantown shooting; Police investigating as possible self-defense

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A man was killed and a woman was taken into custody following a shooting in the Germantown area of Nashville Tuesday evening.

The shooting happened around 7 p.m. in a parking lot near 3rd Avenue and Monroe Street.

Metro police reported Carlos Washington, 47, was shot and killed at a storage unit.

The woman told officers Washington put her in a chokehold during an argument in their car. She then retrieved her firearm and shot Washington once before getting out of the vehicle, according to Metro police.

Detectives are investigating the shooting as a domestic-related self-defense claim and findings will be presented to the District Attorney’s Office.

I bet he’s weighing the political negatives of the deal vis-à-vis the number of calls he’s getting telling him where to go and how to get there.

Cornyn says “issues” remain in Senate gun deal

It doesn’t sound like Texas Sen. John Cornyn isn’t ready to throw in the towel on the Senate negotiations, but some hangups are apparently starting to emerge as Democrats and Republicans move from a “framework” to actual legislation.

Wednesday morning Cornyn met with a group of reporters to give them an update on the status of the bill, and Cornyn suggested that a deal might not be done this week because of a couple of “issues” that are popping up, starting with the language around giving

Continue reading “”

Plot Against Guns Is Not About Safety, but Tyranny

It’s Not About the AR-15

Gun grabbers have a peculiar tendency to invoke guns’ use as sporting devices as a rationale for gun control.

Take actor Matthew McConaughey, who just last week seems to have charmed the pants off of some Americans, and even some gun rights proponents when he argued in favor of gun control intervention to stop gun violence, such as raising the minimum age requirement to purchase an AR-15 to 21.

A few years back, however, he wasn’t so measured and likable in his approach to gun control, calling for an outright ban on “assault weapons for civilians,” saying that doing so is “a no-brainer.”  “And to my friends out there,” he continued, “that are responsible owners of these recreational assault weapons that they use for recreation, please let’s just take one for the team and set it down.” He immediately went on to tackle magazine capacity, claiming that “Texas has a three-shell limit to hunt migratory birds. Do the math.  You get my point.”

What, exactly, is a “recreational assault weapon?”  It’s the silliest description imaginable from someone that, somehow, the public seems to take so seriously on this issue.  It’s at once both oxymoronic and incoherent.  If it’s an “assault weapon,” after all, its purpose is to inflict violence upon other people.  If it’s a “recreational weapon,” its purpose is for recreation, and not to inflict violence upon other people.

What he means to achieve with this deceptive language, as all gun control activists do, is to obscure the purpose of the Second Amendment and to establish a distinction between types of gun owners.  The Second Amendment exists, of course, solely for the purpose of Americans having weapons that can kill other people in defense of life and liberty, and has precisely nothing to do with recreation.  But this narrative framework suggests that those who wish to use guns as recreational devices are good, while those who believe the primary purpose of their gun is to kill other people are bad.

Guns, like any tool, have myriad uses, based on the user’s desire.  A hammer, for example, is equally useful in driving nails into wood as it is in fatally cracking a person’s skull.  The distinction is that a hammer’s primary purpose is to drive nails into other objects.  A gun’s primary purpose, for most people, is not to kill migratory birds, but to kill people who might do them harm.

According to a Gallup survey in October 2021, a full 88-percent of gun owners say that “protection against crime” is a reason for their owning a gun.  That is to say, nine-out-of-ten gun owners keep their guns so that they can potentially kill other people if the need arises.

Continue reading “”

You’re being lied to about “mass shootings”. Here’s the truth. – and it’s loaded with USDOJ-funded research.

The latest data on mass shootings from the National Institute of Justice of the US Department of Justice and the Rand Corporation.

There are no standard definitions of mass shootings. There are no easy answers.

Source

National Institute Of Justice-Rand

Article

I was interviewed on a national television show about research-based answers to mass shootings. Beyond condemning those involved, I stumbled. I knew that there were few (if any) firm answers or guidance.

That’s not the case for some doing similar interviews. Many are quick to promote firearm controls or red flag laws or suggest that there are effective answers. That’s simply not the case. The complexities and price tags for the proposals are immense.

For example, we within the justice system acknowledge our inability to keep track of convicted-fingerprinted felons and maintain accurate records. There are vast inaccuracies. Now, we want to do national or state databases for those with ever-changing mental health conditions?

It will be a logistical and financial nightmare with probable ACLU challenges. It’s not going to work beyond those committed to institutions and even then, conditions change.

As of this writing, the latest Congressional proposals are available via CNN.

It’s time to examine the best available data on the subject. Note that varied definitions of mass shootings and whether they were public (inferring unknown victims) or private (inferring known victims) will be difficult to follow. Previous research suggests that most victims of mass shootings were known to the shooter.

There are few firm conclusions based on research. Policy issues are elusive. The emphasis is on assault weapons when the overwhelming majority of mass shootings involve handguns (while noting that many mass shooters carry a variety of weapons).

You’re going to get different policy perspectives from different groups, see Politico.

Policy Solutions to Address Mass Shootings was offered by the National Institute of Justice and Rockefeller Institute of Government in August of 2021.

The Best Available Data

What “is” useful is a 2021 document from the National Institute of Justice of the US Department of Justice and the Rand Corporation (one of the best crime-related research organizations in the nation) summarizing what we know and don’t know about mass shootings. What’s below is from that document. It’s a tool kit for understanding “and” responding to mass shootings.

Most will be a bit frustrated by the lack of clarity as to what constitutes a mass shooting, who commits them, their mental health issues, and what can be done.

Those in law enforcement are exasperated by the national call for cops to be guardians, not warriors which seem wildly misplaced because law enforcement is expected to enter a mass shooting and stop the shooter, which requires endless tactical training and equipment.

In an earlier article, I point out that the great majority of what we call gun violence is street-level violent crime, not mass shooters. I suggest that the explosion of media coverage of mass shootings is somewhat misplaced; the vast majority of victims of gun violence are people of color and society has become immune to that violence.

Continue reading “”