Joe Biden Unleashes the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

David Solway wrote Sunday that “there is now considerable anxiety that an Armageddon scenario may have become a possibility.” That is absolutely true, but it is also true that in another sense, the Armageddon scenario is already upon us. Joe Biden may appear to be simply a dementia-ridden puppet fronting for a corrupt, America-Last administration, but his failure as president is so comprehensive, so all-encompassing, that it has taken on eschatological dimensions: Old Joe Biden has unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Armageddon, if you haven’t read the Book of Revelation lately, is the place where the forces of evil gather for the final battle with the faithful (Revelation 16:16). The same Biblical book, which is the last book of the New Testament, presents the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (the final destruction of the world) in a terrifying vision that is often understood as referring to the end times.
First there is “a white horse, and its rider had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”
The second horse is “bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another; and he was given a great sword.”
Then follows “a black horse, and its rider had a balance in his hand,” apparently for the rationing of food in a time of famine.
Finally, there is “a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him; and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.” (Revelation 6:1-8)

The four horses and four afflictions, conquest, war, famine, and pestilence, neatly encapsulate the administration of Joe Biden. Old Joe himself is to a great degree responsible for this impression, as he seems to like to sound apocalyptic notes. He certainly has done so more than once, particularly when he declared on Dec. 16, 2021, “For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.” There’s the Biden pestilence. Yes, COVID-19 came upon us during the Trump years, but Biden promised to end it, and that turned out to be yet another of his empty promises. With Anthony Fauci threatening that “more rigid” restrictions are in the offing, pestilence looks as if it’s going to be a permanent feature of the Biden era.

The Biden famine is more of a threat than reality as of yet, but it could come to us any day now. As PJM’s Athena Thorne noted, Biden said Thursday, “With regard to food shortage, yes, we did sss- re- re- s- talk about food shortages. And, uh, and it’s gonna be real. The price of these sanctions, ahem, is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

Biden’s war is obvious: it is happening in Ukraine now. However much the establishment media tries to blame Trump for Putin invading Ukraine, and pretend that Trump would be applauding his move if he were still president, the ineluctable fact remains that Putin moved against Ukraine and occupied Crimea while Barack Obama was president, did nothing while Donald Trump was president, and launched the present invasion while Old Joe Biden was pretending to be president. And conquest? Look at the people streaming into the country across what is officially known as the Southern border. If they keep coming at the rate they came in 2021, Biden’s threat to transform America fundamentally will be a reality.

Joe Biden has not just unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His entire political career as a serial liar of marginal (at best) competence, cheerfully savaging Clarence Thomas and others for political gain, parading his religiosity while going to war against actual religion, presents us once again with the age-old theological problem: why do the wicked prosper? Whatever the answer may be, Joe does prosper, and that means we don’t.

And maybe Old Joe isn’t a tool of the apocalypse at all, but just another corrupt kleptocrat feeding at the public trough and selling out the people he is supposed to be serving for his own short-sighted gain. Either way, it’s going to be tough times ahead.

Intruder shot at Kirkland home

KIRKLAND, Wash. — Kirkland police are investigating after a man said he shot an intruder at his home.

Police were called to the home on 115th Avenue Northeast in the Juanita neighborhood at about 10:45 p.m. Sunday. Police said the intruder and the resident knew each other. The person who was shot was taken to the hospital.

KIRO 7 video from the scene showed evidence markers on the porch and a car being towed from the driveway.

Investigators said they’re gathering more information about what unfolded.

 

On “permitless carry” vs “Constitutional Carry”

Recently a student of mine and reader of Bearing Arms reached out and asked me a question about permitless carry. With more and more states joining the ranks of those that don’t require any papers in order to exercise a constitutional right, the terms “permitless” and “Constitutional” get tossed around a lot.

The question he posed was rather simple:

My question is why do you use “permit-less carry” and not “Constitutional carry”?

Bringing this topic up is not to vilify, call out, or argue over semantics with any of my fellow writers, content creators, or advocates. But rather to at least put out there what the most accepted definitions and understandings are of the different terms.

FYI “Permit-less” is permitless. Regardless of different spell checkers.

Truth be told, the guy that asked me the question very much so reminds me of a dynamic I saw a friend of mine was in during his early 20’s. He worked at a fancy wine store after doing some time at the liquor department at a supermarket. He read Sideways because the store was pushing the book through some promotion and wanted to embrace wine snobbery the best he could. Embrace he did (and pretty much still does today, kudos!).  Most relevant and similar to the person who asked me the question, he became the type of guy that would talk about Champagne.

Picture a bunch of people celebrating and someone declares “Get the Champagne” in a gleeful exclamation. Scene in that one guy that has to step in and say “Actually, that’s sparkling wine. Since it does not come from the Champagne province of France you can’t call it Champagne.”

My answer to the question about permitless carry was a quick one talking about what it really looks like if a state or jurisdiction actually followed the Constitution. In essence, that would mean very few, if any, infringements (requirements, prohibitions, etc.) on our right to keep and bear arms. The response I garnered in reply was being told that some content creator (not any Salem Media contractors or personalities) I know prefers “Constitutional carry” over permitless. I’m like “Great. That YouTuber uses that term. I generally don’t.”

But, ya know what? That really did tick me off. This is a teachable moment though, perhaps for both of us.

Words and terms do have meanings. Personally, I try to describe things the best I can, as accurately as possible (often with too many words). Even the most astute writers won’t please all people all the time. I was once accused by a reader, who took the time to write to me, of being “woke”, and caving to progressive ideologies because I used non-gendered pronouns to describe another person. The person I was describing in the article was an anonymous source. Call me old fashioned, or maybe too cautious, but I assumed the anonymous person should also have their gender masked as well. That explanation was not good enough for a followup response or even a “thanks”. Haters gonna hate.

In the spirit of meaning, we need to define what these two dynamics are the best we can. The United States Concealed Carry Association defines these two terms in a very specific way (the accompanying video on their page is worth a watch).

Although the terms constitutional carry, permitless carry and unrestricted carry are often used interchangeably, definitions of the terms differ.

Constitutional carry: Constitutional carry means that the state’s law does not prohibit citizens who can legally possess a firearm from carrying handguns, (openly and/or in a concealed manner) thus no state permit is required. Sometimes, constitutional carry may be conditional such as in those states that have no laws prohibiting the open carry of a handgun but which require a permit to carry the handgun concealed.

Permitless carry: Permitless carry includes constitutional carry states as well as states where an individual must meet certain qualifications, e.g., no DUIs in the last 10 years, in order to legally carry (Tennessee). Some states are fully unrestricted, meaning no permit is required for open or concealed carry. Others allow the open carry of a firearm/or handgun without a permit but require a permit for concealment.

The analogy would be that all Constitutional carry states are permitless, but not all permitless carry states are Constitutional. All men are humans, but not all humans are men.

US LawShield has their own way of discussing the nuance of the definitions.

Constitutional carry refers to the legal carrying of a handgun without a license or permit.

Stated differently, in a constitutional carry state, if you can legally possess a handgun, you can legally carry that handgun without the need for a license or permit. Keep in mind, even though constitutional carry states allow for permitless carry, age, location, and residency restrictions may still apply.

Those “age, location, and residency restrictions” are what separate these two terms.

Tennessee was mentioned as one state that has certain restrictions which would classify it as “permitless” v “Constitutional”, as does Maine. There are areas which one must have a permit in order to carry concealed in Maine, such as State Parks and Acadia. Handgunlaw.us covers Maine, noting:

The following locations are off limits to those carrying under Permitless Carry in Maine. You have to have a Maine permit or a resident permit from a state Maine honors to carry in the below listed areas.

  • Acadia National Park (Permit required; (12 M.R.S. 209 §756)
  • State Parks (Permit required; open carry not permitted; (12 M.R.S. 220 §1803) (7)
  • Regular archery hunting-deer only (Permit required; (12 M.R.S. 915 §11403)
  • Employees’ vehicles on work premises (Permit required; vehicle must be locked and firearm  must not be visible; (26 M.R.S. 7 §600)
  • Allagash Wilderness Waterway (Park Rule 2.19D) Open Carry Not Allowed.

The reason I’ll personally use the term “permitless” over “Constitutional carry” is simply because I don’t know all the laws in all the states that are permitless. I’d rather be inclusive and accurate by describing the lack of a scheme as being permitless, instead of being super technical and accurate by drilling down the classification to “Constitutional carry”. The risk of being wrong or inaccurate is too high in my opinion, even if having just a casual conversation on the subject.

This is not to say that I’m going to go out of my way (or that I advocate for people doing the same) to correct or undermine someone that uses one term over the other. Or someone that uses the terms synonymously. I’m just stating the why I use the term that I do.

This is not my Champagne. My Champagne is calling magazines clips and .45 Colts .45 Long Colts. That’s a whole other fun debate we can have another day.

As freedom marches on in the United States, and more and more states adopt the policy of not needing a license to carry, just keep in mind, like a good sweepstakes, some restrictions may apply. The headlines may read Constitutional, but the devil would really be in the details of the law. Besides, true “Constitutional carry” would mean every man, woman, child, felon, criminal, addict, mentally defective person, etc. would be allowed to carry a firearm. No?

17 Inconvenient Facts For the Gun-Control Movement

Imagine if you only read The Washington Post and only watched MSNBC and like-minded media outlets. If you did that, you might be deceived into thinking America is a regular Wild West Show of daily mass shootings. You might think guns themselves are evil and that crime is the fault of people who legally own firearms. You might even believe that an American citizen could simply go online and buy a machine gun, as former President Barack Obama (D) once told us. You might also think that suppressors are the tools of assassins, and that semi-automatic rifles with pistol grips are commonly used by criminals. Perhaps you’d even surmise that President Joe Biden (D) was making a good point when he suggested a ban on pistols chambered in 9 mm.

At best, many of these gun-control narratives are simply based on ignorance of firearms. At their worst, a considerable percentage of the mainstream media’s storylines regarding the Second Amendment are outright falsehoods meant to convince people to vote away their freedom.

Every issue of America’s 1st Freedom is filled with sourced facts and honest perspectives designed to arm citizens with the truth, but sometimes these kinds of list articles are needed to refute the shotgun patterns of anti-Second Amendment propaganda coming from the mainstream media and gun-control groups.

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BLUF:
Veteran pollster Jim McLaughlin observed, “Unfortunately, Americans are seeing first hand through Vladimir Putin’s brutal, military invasion of the Ukraine the importance of our cherished Second Amendment rights. The brave Ukrainian citizens have been able to thwart Putin’s military aggression by arming themselves against the Russian invaders. Americans clearly associate the importance of their Second Amendment rights with maintaining a safe, free and democratic nation.”

‘Strong 2A Support Due to Ukraine Invasion’: McLaughlin Survey

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine one month ago has stirred strong support for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, according to the results of a new survey by McLaughlin & Associates, the nationally-known polling firm.

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Question O’ The Day
‘If gun control works so well, how does this happen?’

Violent Crimes Up 60% in LA According to Latest LAPD Data Since 2019
There has been an increase in the levels of violence and and firearm use during robberies

During a Los Angeles Board of Police Commission meeting earlier this week, LAPD Chief Michel Moore revealed that violent crimes have risen exponentially in the past year, moving the city closer to San Francisco in terms of the highest crime rates in the country.

According to the LAPD, citywide robberies are up 18% compared to this time last year, and up 5% compared to 2020. City wide robberies with a firearm also went significantly up, climbing 44% from this time last year, 57% from 2020, and 60% compared to 2019. While 36% of robberies and 74% of all robberies as part of the increase from last year used a firearm, the LAPD also got into specifics, such as noting that those who wore expensive jewelry in  public have been targeted more often in armed robberies.

“Over the course of this year, the Department has experienced an increase in robberies taking place in various communities in the City of Los Angeles,” the LAPD said in a press release on Tuesday. “Most concerning is that there has been an increase in the levels of violence used during these robberies and the frequency in which a firearm was used. During the Board of Police Commission meeting on March 22, 2022, Chief Moore discussed citywide robbery statistics, crime prevention techniques, situational awareness, and mitigation.”

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The Embarrassment In Chief

Genuine leaders never have to draw attention to how good their quality of leadership is.

Likewise terrible leaders almost always have crutches they lean on to hoist themselves upon to look like they’re  leading.

This weekend was a case study in both.

After ending the somewhat mystical trip *President Biden made to NATO this week he decided to pay the troops a “surprise visit.”

He immediately gave a bizarre speech to men and women in uniform, broke all military protocol and insulted them in the mess hall, and issued a proclamation about regime change.

Meanwhile a former uniformed Captain in the US Army was busy in another struggle to pursue excellence, chase improvement, and to conduct one’s self with such discipline and effort that they literally slept that night with no regret.

Biden told the troops he leads that “When they go to Ukraine soon, and some of them had already been there, that they were going to see women stand in the middle of… er in front of a damn tank… and say ‘I’m not leavin’, I’m holding’ my ground… they’re incredible.”

Aside from the fact that our policy is that we are not sending our troops into Ukraine, it’s likely he pulled the rest of that made up imaginary scenario from stuff he saw on TV and or was from a dream that was caused by some undigested beef from the night before.

The other leader, when a camera was on him early in the week, had taken the moment to acknowledge the effort of those he labored against. “They were really tough,” he admitted. He then proceeded to give 100% of the credit to the people he leads, “but my guys, they worked so hard, and they’ve grown up so much in the past 10-12 days, and I just couldn’t be prouder. I kept thinking to myself ‘Holy Mackerel! I get to lead these guys.”

 After Biden’s speech it was time to eat and upon entering the mess hall, he wandered over to a table, saw a box of pizza, proclaimed “hey look the pizza’s here.” He then opened it, his shaky grip waving a piece back and forth he lifted it to his lips and scarfed it. The only problem being that in the military the officers eat last and the higher the rank the longer you wait. And as the commander in chief no one out-ranked him. The shock and dismay by the troops in the room was captured on video and in pictures that flooded social media.

Meanwhile as the other leader was preparing his young men for their next challenge, the most serious they had faced yet, they were effusive to the camera about their leader’s example to them. They spoke of his personal commitment to helping them become better men in all of life—not merely the pursuit of their established goal. And to a man each of them said that the success in their present challenge was driven by a desire to honor him, for his lifetime of pouring out that good example to generations of men.

Before boarding Air Force One to return to the United States, speaking on Polish soil, Biden free formed this proclamation, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” It was a reference to Putin and openly disputed current policy. But even if it is or was in the process of becoming policy one would think it pretty stupid to openly say it. Especially so when the named paranoid dictator already suspects it to be the aim of the US.

Meanwhile the other leader, former United States Army Captain, and the winningest coach in college basketball’s history, Mike Krzyzewski, when asked his strategy to defeating Michigan State, Texas Tech, and Arkansas in back to back difficult tests in this year’s March Madness, would only talk publicly about the need to respect their opponent and to use grit and smarts to out play them.

The fact of the matter is that “Coach K” has on every occasion his team has won the national championship given all the credit to his players. And in every major loss on the national stage he’s shoulder all of the blame and responsibility for not preparing them well enough.

With Biden every tiny success comes from his own genius, his storied toughness, his impressive ability to do things that no one else has ever seemingly done. (Even if most of them never happened.)

And in the middle of one of the most miserable administrations we the American people have lived through he blames everyone except the very policies he’s put in place that has created the national malaise he ushered in.

Sadly we are losing the humble faithful soldiers like Mike Krzyzewski on the national stage. His enduring excellence has produced 15 ACC Tournament Championships, 13 Final Fours, 11 Coach of the year honors, 9 Gold Medals and 5 national championships with one more shot dangling before him.

Instead we’re stuck with a man who’s been in politics roughly the same length of time that the Coach has been coaching and as his own former boss would say should never be “underestimated when it comes to the ability to ‘mess’ things up.”

Character, humility, and service to others.

I know which of these two men I want my sons to emulate.

Well, until the next one. Because if there’s one thing learned, it’s that the next war will be different than can be imagined, or ‘properly’ prepared for. That’s why you always hear ‘they trained to fight the last war’

Ukraine Changes the Face of War Forever

There’s a powerful David vs. Goliath lesson emerging from Russia’s brazen, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that should give deep pause to global superpowers who still think they can simply muscle the world into any shape they want.

Every Russian tank that gets fried in Ukraine is sending the message that traditional armies can no longer expect to dominate simply because they have more troops, weapons, and money. Russian armored vehicles are falling victim to Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons (NLAWs), which can be carried by individual soldiers, unslung in seconds, and deployed with little training and fatal accuracy. There are credible reports that Russia has already lost $5 billion worth of military equipment in a month of fighting in Ukraine. The human cost for Russia is even more staggering: Nearly 10,000 soldiers have been killed in action, including at least five generals.

That’s the reality of contemporary warfare: Smaller, nimbler groups fighting back effectively against lumbering, dumb relics of the past. Despite being the fifth largest fighting force on the planet and starting the war with five times the number of active military as Ukraine, Russia has been stymied in what virtually all observers expected to be a cakewalk.

This isn’t to say that Russia isn’t also inflicting massive, horrific violence against Ukraine—or that it won’t prevail in this conflict, especially the longer things drag on. But this war underscores what James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg called the changing “logic of violence” and “the diminishing returns to violence” in their prophetic 1997 book The Sovereign Individual.

As weapons have become smaller, cheaper, more effective, and more widely dispersed, it’s harder and harder for old-style militaries and countries to quickly and effectively achieve their objectives through brute force as they meet resistance at every turn. That resistance includes “information warfare”—which includes hacking and cyber attacks—but also the use of social media, which Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has excelled at to project an aura of invincibility and to cast the conflict in stark terms of good vs. evil.

This lesson shouldn’t be new to Americans, as our failures over the past two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq underscored the new reality that old-school invasion and occupation is more expensive and temporary than it is quick and effective. But Russia’s incompetence drives home in graphic detail to us—and, one hopes, to the Chinese officials supposedly eyeing an invasion of Taiwan—that even if Goliath does take out David, the price is too high and the victory too transient to bother undertaking.

If the collapse of the Soviet Union—that gargoyle incarnation of belief in top-down authority, power, and decision-making—was the beginning of the end of the 20th century’s romance with the nation-state, then Russia’s blundering in Ukraine and the United States’ disasters in central Asia and the Middle East may be its epitaph.

The future belongs not to the ignorant armies of the night who seek to command and control but to those who embrace and empower the decentralization of weapons, technology, information, currency, and individual ingenuity and courage.

Lasting COVID legacy: a nation of rulers, not laws

SACRAMENTO – “The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced,” noted the late musician and satirist Frank Zappa. I often think of that snarky comment as I write about the sausage-making process in city councils, state legislatures and the federal government. Did I mention that California’s state government has 518 agencies, boards and commissions?

Our system of checks, balances, more checks, additional balances, impact reports, legal challenges, voter initiatives, regulatory rulemakings and administrative hearings frustrates people who want to “get something done.” Americans spent $14 billion on the 2020 election cycle to influence political outcomes – and that was just for the presidential and congressional races.

I once ran a modest state bill to reduce the insanely onerous licensing regulations for people who shampoo hair at salons. After months of hearings and debate, the Assembly defeated it for going too far. That explains the public’s desire to cut through the red tape and, as Arnold Schwarzenegger once promised, “blow up the boxes” of government.

Yet after COVID-19, it’s obvious our democratic system of lawmaking is, as Winston Churchill put it, “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Given the choice between a system resembling a Rube Goldberg cartoon (with his bizarre and overly complex contraptions designed to complete simple tasks) and one that’s streamlined and efficient, I’ll take Goldberg’s vision any day.

As we saw throughout the country but in California in particular, governors were happy to dispense with the usual checks and balances and impose rules by executive order and fiat. Some initial rules were defensible during a public-health crisis, but it wasn’t long before elected officials operated like czars – imposing illogical and contradictory restrictions that made no rhyme or reason.

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The Spread of Constitutional Carry Has Dealt the Moms and Everytown Their Biggest ‘L’ Yet.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the amazing progress constitutional carry had made, though not without a number of failed efforts. The total at the time was 18 states, something that seemed unimaginable just a few years earlier. It wasn’t long ago that there were still fights to move no-issue states into the may-issue column, and may-issue states to shall-issue. No-issue is now ostensibly down to just a single state.

In other words, in the not-so-olden days, being able to carry, even with a permit, was a fight. Now an amazing amount of headway has been. With Indiana’s governor signing constitutional carry into law this week, we’re up to 24 states, making constitutional carry the most common model in the United States (it now far outnumbers shall-issue, may-issue, and no carry).

About this time last year, though, things didn’t quite look as optimistic. Yes, a few states, including “better late than never” Texas, had barely passed permitless carry laws. But Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown civilian disarmament subsidiary was only too happy to gloat about defeating constitutional carry bills in 15 states . . .

 

Now, a year later, things aren’t nearly as much fun for Everytown. We “gun extremists” managed to get the legislatures and the governors of ten of those fifteen states to pass constitutional carry either later last year, or this year. And, the legislative season isn’t over. Georgia seems poised to be next, and others may yet follow this year.

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The White House staff has to continually ‘Clean Up’ after SloJoe.
So, who’s really in charge and running things?
It sure appears that Biden isn’t.

White House Rushes To Clean Up Disastrous Remarks Biden Made About Putin During Speech.

The White House was forced to once again clean up highly problematic remarks made by Democrat President Joe Biden during his trip to Poland this week.

“A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people’s love for liberty,” Biden said on Saturday at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness. For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The White House had to quickly clean up the president’s remarks after they were widely interpreted in reports as him calling for regime change in Russia.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

The administration also had to clean up remarks that Biden made in Poland on Friday when he appeared to tell U.S. soldiers that they would be getting deployed to Ukraine, which would represent a serious escalation in the ongoing conflict, and would draw NATO into the war against Russia.

ABC News reported that Biden “raised eyebrows when he appeared to tell the group that American troops will be going into Ukraine, though he has repeatedly said that he will not send troops there.”

“You know, with the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian people have a lot of backbone, they have a lot of guts and I’m sure you’re observing it,” Biden said. “And you’re gonna see when you’re there, and some of you have been there. You’re gonna see, you’re gonna see women, young people standing, standing in the middle, in front of a damn tank, just saying I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground. They’re incredible. But they take a lot of inspiration from us.”

The Biden administration had to swiftly clean up after the president by issuing a statement claiming that his position on deploying U.S. soldiers had not changed.

“The president has been clear we are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position,” the administration said.

The administration also had to clean up remarks that Biden made on Thursday when he said that if Russia were to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, “it would trigger a response in-kind.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the U.S. has “no intention” of using chemical weapons and that what Biden meant was that Russia would pay a “severe price.”

“And I won’t go beyond that other than to say the United States has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstances,” Sullivan said. “I will just say, with respect to any use of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical, biological — Russia would pay a severe price.”

First-time ‘Pandemic Gun Buyers’™ support gun rights just as much, if not more than pre-pandemic gun owners

One in Five American Households Purchased a Gun During the Pandemic

Survey: First-time gun purchasers during the pandemic were more likely to be younger and People of Color, compared to pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners, but they share similar views on gun control.

CHICAGO, March 24, 2022 – Eighteen percent of U.S. households purchased a gun since the start of the pandemic (March 2020–March 2022), according to new survey data from NORC at the University of Chicago, increasing the percentage of U.S. adults living in a household with a gun to 46%. Over this period, one in 20 adults in America (5%) purchased a gun for the first time.

According to the FBI, an average of 13 million guns were sold legally in the U.S. each year between 2010 and 2019, increasing to about 20 million annual gun sales in both 2020 and 2021.

[large images linked]

Pandemic Gun Buyers Compared to Pre-Pandemic Gun Owners by Select Characteristics

“Increasing gun sales during the pandemic were driven in nearly equal parts by people purchasing a gun for the first time and existing gun owners purchasing additional firearms,” said John Roman of NORC at the University of Chicago. “New gun owners during the pandemic were much more likely to be younger and People of Color compared to pre-pandemic gun owners in America.”

Despite demographic differences between first-time and pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners, NORC’s experts found that the two groups have similar views on gun-control policies. Both first-time and pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners support more permissive gun policies than non-gun owners. These included policies such as expanding concealed carry, shortening waiting periods before gun purchases, and allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in schools.

Support for Permissive Gun Policies

“First-time gun buyers’ attitudes toward gun control look remarkably similar to those of the pre-pandemic U.S. gun owner,” said John Roman. “Whether they bought a gun because of existing beliefs about gun control—or owning a gun changed their policy views—is unknown, but it is notable that the policy positions of new gun owners are so different from non-gun owners.”

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The lies the media refuses to call out

The media isn’t exactly friendly towards gun ownership. We all know this, so I’m not exactly breaking news here.

However, they will still occasionally take issue with outright lies, even if they ultimately agree with the position.

There are some lies they won’t bother to call out, and this is one of them:

What is known about the links among gun prevalence, gun purchasing trends and gun violence?

We’ve known for a long time that the more access there is to firearms in a society, the more firearm violence there is likely to be. It’s been shown in comparisons of societies and U.S. states with different levels of firearm ownership.

During the pandemic, as purchasing picked up across the country, we learned there was – at least early on – a relationship between an increase in gun purchases above expected levels and a later increase in violence above expected levels.

As 2020 went on, that signal was lost, except for domestic violence, because many other things were contributing to increases in violence.

We’ve known no such thing about access to firearms.

We’ve been told that such a link exists, but when you look at the studies that claim this, you can see serious problems with every single one of them.

For example, when comparing societies or even different states, it’s impossible to truly control for other variables that may somehow impact violent crime. While the prevalence of guns may exist, so do numerous other factors that can easily contribute to the problem.

Issues like jobs, education, population density, and a host of other factors all have been argued to contribute to crime. So why wouldn’t they also be a factor where guns are easily accessible?

That’s a question the media never answers.

Nor do they seem to consider why this knowledge is so unquestionable despite crime skyrocketing someplace like Los Angeles, which doesn’t have easy access to firearms?

It’s because the media simply doesn’t care about the truth.

They’ve pushed the gun control narrative with every fiber of their being. They’ll have a gun-control advocate on the primetime talk shows to calmly discuss their point of view, but gun rights advocates are often paired with another gun-control activist so they can debate the issue, tilting the balance so people are really getting inundated with one side.

Media personalities have to know what they’re doing, just like they have to know that this idea that we know definitively that increased access to guns somehow makes violent crime higher is bogus.

They know and they don’t care.

They like these kinds of lies because they can hold up those flawed studies and say they’re only spitting facts, trusting that most people wouldn’t understand why those studies are complete and utter BS. They’re hoping you’re too stupid to learn how to read a study, learn to find the flaws in a given study, then criticize it for being what it is, an attempt to push a narrative.

Frankly, I’m kind of sick of seeing this nonsense from our media. The thing is, I don’t expect to ever see them do better, either.

No, only the proggies in Oklahoma are ‘tired’.
I think they’re tired of their losing streak.

Propaganda O’ The Day

Advocate: Oklahomans tired of lawmakers catering to gun lobby

Public Radio Tulsa | By Elizabeth Caldwell elizabeth_caldwell.jpg

(Again, nice for the author to provide positive ID for future use )

A bill allowing people to carry guns at state fairs and into government buildings is paused in the state legislature.

Don Spencer of the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association said he “worked” on HB 4138 and he’s very excited about it. He published a video on Saturday boasting to his club that one intent of the proposed law was to let people carry rifles into traditionally quiet places.

“The concern was that when we have this bill passed, the question was, would a person be able to carry an AR-15 rifle into a library? My answer was yes,” said Spencer.

Spencer said as a concession the bill was altered to allow concealed handguns in libraries. But he reassured his club it was just a first step.

“Remember folks, 2012, we couldn’t even see guns in Oklahoma. In ten years we’re going from not just seeing them to no license required.”

Beth Furnish of Moms Demand Action said legislators betray Oklahomans when they pass laws for lobbies instead of citizens.

“Oklahomans started paying attention to what our lawmakers were doing after they passed permitless carry, which was opposed by a strong majority of Oklahomans, even gun owners and Republicans. Oklahomans are getting tired of our lawmakers passing the wish list of the gun lobby,” said Furnish.

HB 4138 was written by Sen. Warren Hamilton of McCurtain and Rep. Sean Roberts of Hominy. A long list of coauthors has also been added.

It was not heard in the House before deadline Thursday. Neither Roberts nor Hamilton responded to requests for comment on their plans for their bill.

Clear Thinking About Taxing Guns

We are strange creatures. We see the world and build mental models of how the world works. Soon, those models become more significant to us than reality itself. That is dangerous when so much of our “experience” is from the news and entertainment media. We think our tiny screens show us what is really happening. We want to be carful about what we put into our heads.

Here in the USA, there are over a million violent crimes a year. The vast majority of them do not involve the criminal using a gun. At the same time, honest citizens like us defend ourselves with a firearm over a million times. Each year criminals also kill a few thousand people with a firearm. Mass murderers kill a few hundred of us. That isn’t what we see on our small screens.

The media inverts those proportions. We might think that mass murder is common and armed defense is rare. That lets special interests with a political agenda play on our distorted view of reality. That distortion is dangerous for all of us.

Three states recently passed constitutional carry legislation. That means that people who legally own a gun are allowed to carry their gun in public without asking for a permit and paying a tax. The new law won’t change how armed criminals behave since criminals who were not allowed to own a gun were already carrying their guns illegally. Breaking the law is what criminals do every day. Our gun laws disarmed the people who obey the law, and now we’ve reduced those infringements on honest people in three more states.

Now that constitutional carry passed, more law-abiding citizens will carry a legally owned firearm in public and at home. That makes life harder for criminals since the thugs don’t know if their intended victims are armed. The criminal’s uncertainty makes all of us safer. We are safer if we choose to carry a personal firearm and if we choose to go unarmed.

I studied the effects of concealed carry licensing across the United States. As you’d expect, fewer of us get our license to carry as that license becomes more expensive and more time consuming. What surprised and pleased me was that more of us take firearms training when the costs of a license go down.

That sounds counter intuitive from one point of view. If we drop the state mandate to take a firearms training class then more of us will take a class? I see why you could be skeptical.

Now consider another perspective. The state not only required a class, but they taxed us if we wanted to have a carry permit. No one would be surprised if more of us got firearms training if the state gave us a few hundred dollars. That is what happens when licensing fees decrease. We were able to spend our safety budget on firearms training rather than on paying state taxes and fees. We’re wealthier because the state isn’t taxing us as much, and now we can afford to take more firearms safety training.

That isn’t what the anti-gun Democrat politicians told us would happen. They said that blood would flow in the streets. They say the same thing each time a state considers removing the taxes and regulations on honest people who want to defend themselves with a personal firearm.

Whether we believe the politicians or not depends on the models of human behavior we carry in our heads.

Ask yourself if these anti-gun politicians were right. Did disarming the law-abiding victims make us safer? We already have over 23 thousand firearms regulations. In contrast, there were 21 states that already allowed ordinary citizens to carry a firearm in public without a permit. When you listen to the news and hear stories of violent crime, are those stories from states where honest citizens are armed or from states where honest citizens have been disarmed? Does the disarmament model actually make us safer?

It is nearly impossible to get a carry permit in parts of California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and in Maryland. Cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Springfield, Camden, and Baltimore are some of our most violent cities. If disarming honest citizens made us safer then we should see the results on the nightly news. What do you see?

We all want to stop violent criminals. Some people decided that guns were bad so they passed laws that disarmed the people who obey the law. I think that model of human behavior is incomplete. I like it when the good guys can defend themselves. That happens over a million times a year. I think that model of human behavior gives us better results than disarming the victims.

There is a bit of good news that we don’t see reported yet. We are not all the same. Some of us were able to pay the thousand-dollar tax in order to protect our families with a firearm. Many of us couldn’t afford that much. Removing some of the fees and regulations on armed defense means that more of us can now afford a gun and self-defense training. More of us will be armed at home and in public. Fewer of us will be unarmed victims. More poor people can defend themselves from violent criminals.

That helps the people who need help the most. I like that, and so do most of you.

Constitutional Carry in Indiana

Finally, after a dozen years of trying during which it died in House or Senate committees time and time again, constitutional carry legislation was signed into law by Governor Eric Holcomb yesterday. [the 21st]

The permit repeal, called “constitutional carry” by gun-rights supporters in reference to the Second Amendment, was criticized by major law enforcement groups who argued eliminating the permit system would endanger officers by stripping them of a screening tool for quickly identifying dangerous people who shouldn’t have guns.

Twenty-one other states already allow residents to carry handguns without permit — and Ohio’s Republican governor signed a similar bill last week.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter joined leaders of the state’s Fraternal Order of Police, police chiefs association and county prosecutors association in speaking out against the change.

Carter, wearing his state police uniform, stood in the back of the Senate chamber as the bill was being debated. He said after the vote that approval of the measure “does not support law enforcement — period.”

That bit of performative BS from Superintendent Carter was just gratuitous. “Bad guys might carry a gun without a permit!” is just an idiotic argument. Bad guys already carry guns without permits, because they’re bad guys. They don’t care about gun carry permits any more than they care about robbery or murder permits. That’s how you know they’re the bad guys. The permit process, no matter how streamlined, is only an impediment to lawful citizens who’d like a chance to shoot back.

With Ohio and Alabama having passed constitutional carry laws this year as well, that brings the total number of states with permitless carry to twenty-four, just one shy of half the country. Remember when it was just “Vermont Carry”? Heck, when this blog was started back in 2005 there was just Vermont and Alaska; Arizona didn’t become the third state until 2010, and that’s when the floodgates really opened.

Soon you’ll be able to drive from Mobile to Coeur d’Alene, Cleveland to Brownsville, Tucson to Bismark, or Harpers Ferry to El Paso, all with no permission slip for your blaster.