When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada’s Insane Power Grab

On Christmas Eve, 2018, New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin published, “How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings.” Chronicling the credit card history of the man who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida Sorkin noted Omar Mateen had not merely spent $26,532 on weapons and ammo in the eight months before the 2016 attack, but had wondered if his doing so had raised red flags:

Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending…” His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”

He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.

Sorkin’s piece ended up being an argument in favor of credit-card companies, payment processors, banks, and others working together to bring about a Minority Report-style panacea in which society’s dangerous folk could be cyber-identified and stopped before they commit horrific acts. At one point he quoted George Brauchler, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Century 16 movie shooter in Aurora Colorado, James Holmes:

“Do I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?” he said of Mr. Holmes. “Yeah, absolutely.”

I’ve never owned a gun and have been sympathetic to gun control ideas for as long as I can remember. Sorkin, however, was not talking about gun control. He was theorizing a quasi-privatized vision of social control that would bypass laws by merging surveillance capitalism and law enforcement.

In a rhetorical trick that’s since become common, he described how the failure of companies like Visa to block Mateen’s purchases made them “enablers of carnage.” Clearly, someone made the mistake of letting Sorkin see Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and Cliff Robertson now whispers from the beyond to him too. If those with power to act don’t stop wrongdoing, aren’t they just shirking their great responsibility?

By the way, this same Sorkin once suggested he wouldn’t stop at arresting Edward Snowden, but go after the reporter who broke his story, too. “I would arrest him and now I’d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist… he wants to help him get to Ecuador,” he said, on CNBC’s Squawk Box. It’s amazing how selective one can be in one’s authoritarian leanings. After Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein appeared to commit perjury in 2011 when he told the Senate, “We didn’t bet against our clients,” Sorkin rushed an apologia into print saying “Mr. Blankfein wasn’t lying,” failing to remind audiences that his Dealbook blog at the Times was sponsored by… Goldman, Sachs.

Sorkin’s Visa piece is suddenly relevant again, after fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.

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To remember, when she was campaigning , she got more delegates than KamalaLaLaDingDong did.
Also remember, she was right in there pushing for a ban on the AR.

Contrarian Democrat Tulsi Gabbard to headline CPAC.

Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a 2020 presidential primary candidate who has been critical of President Joe Biden and liberal lawmakers, will be the headliner at the main CPAC dinner event this week, officials told Secrets Monday.

Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman, will speak at the annual Ronald Reagan Dinner held by the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Glenn Beck is slated to be the keynote.

Having a popular Democrat speak at the group’s main dinner, to be held Friday, is an “extraordinary event,” said a spokeswoman.

Two hours after this was posted, the dinner sold out, said CPAC boss Matt Schlapp.

Gabbard has recently roiled Democratic circles with her criticism of Biden’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis and decision to consider only a black woman for the U.S. Supreme Court. She has also blasted Vice President Kamala Harris as a weak vice president.

CPAC opens in Orlando Thursday and ends Sunday. Former President Donald Trump and virtually every conservative politician and pundit are expected to speak.

Seattle PD having trouble hiring new officers

Politicians often can’t really afford to be far-sighted. Their constituents want immediate results, not the promise of better days down the road.

Yet officials can be far too short-sighted for their own good. Seattle, for example, was another of a handful of cities that cut funding to their police department not all that long ago.

Violent crime reached a 14-year high in Seattle last year as the city’s police department deals with a staffing shortage that is straining its ability to protect the community.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said during his state of the city address this week that there is funding to hire 125 new officers this year and put more resources on the street.

“The depleted staffing we see today does not allow us to react to emergencies and crime with the response times our residents deserve,” Harrell said Tuesday.

“It does not allow us to staff the specialty teams we need for issues like domestic violence or DUI or financial crimes targeting the elderly,” he said. “It does not allow us to conduct the thorough investigations we expect to make sustainable change.”

Twenty officers left the force in January, 171 officers exited last year, and 186 officers separated from the force in 2020 amid the push to defund the police, according to KOMO. Only 137 officers have been hired in that time span.

In other words, Seattle treated officers like crap, demonized them, and then are absolutely and completely shocked that they can’t hire officers.

Yep. The whole thing is an absolute mystery. Not a soul could have seen this one coming, now could they?

I mean, other than every person with a functional brain, that is.

Look, cops are people. Not only does that mean some will be good and some will be bad, it also means they want to be appreciated for what they do and know they’re supported by their leadership.

Additionally, when you’ve demonized them in the press, you can’t really expect applicants to flock to fill the void. It’s just not going to work that way.

“You know, the media and the city have been treating police like crap. I just can’t wait to get me some of that!” said no one ever.

This is of Seattle’s own making, much like what’s going on in San Francisco right now. You can’t demonize the police then be surprised when things don’t go well in the aftermath.

I get that they shouldn’t be lionized and shielded from liability for their mistakes, but there’s a middle ground that most people can understand and respect between those two extremes. Most people want that middle ground, even.

Unfortunately, public officials are too short-sighted to see that appeasing a mob one day might come back to bite them in the backside in the not-so-distant future.

So, here we are. Seattle can’t get enough police officers and seems genuinely confused as to why. Frankly, were it not for good people who are going to get hurt, I’d just sit here and laugh at them.

TPTB want the ‘unwashed’ disarmed because we’re a long term threat to their controller dreams. They’re not ignorant of history where the pitchforks, rope & torches have often come out in response to their tyranny.

Is the Gun Dangerous, or is it the Criminal?

The world is fascinatingly complex yet important truths are often simple. We shouldn’t take that too far since most simple answers are also wrong or incomplete. That tension helps make life so interesting as we try to understand the world around us. For example, we saw violent crime increase in the last few years. Should we try to keep violent criminals away from guns, or should we try to keep violent criminals away from us? Is the tool dangerous or is the person dangerous? Let’s look at both ideas and see if there are any simple answers to be found.

When we look for simple solutions we see that criminals use guns to commit violence. That sounds like the case is closed but there is more evidence to uncover. If we keep looking then we find that innocent victims also use firearms to stop violence. That means the answers are not black and white but shades of gray.

When we look at all firearms we see that a vanishingly small fraction of the guns owned by civilians were used in violent crime each year (1 in 1400). Now we look deeper and find out that honest citizens used a firearm for self-defense over 1.6 million times a year. That is more people than live in New Hampshire or Hawaii. Each year, more people use a firearm for self-defense than the population of Wyoming and Vermont combined. Armed defense is common.

Proportions matter when we’re looking at shades of gray. We use a firearm for self-defense six times more often than a firearm is used in violent crime (5.98). Good guys with guns save lives. That is both simple and true.

Is safety that simple?

Despite the facts that guns overwhelmingly stop crime, New York State legislators passed a law to lets the public sue gun manufacturers because criminals used a “dangerous” gun that the manufacturers released into the public. That obviously misses the target of reducing crime. Either those New York lawmakers missed the facts or they didn’t care about honest citizens who defend themselves. Politics is obviously complex.

When we look at how criminals behaved, we see that most violent crimes (85%) didn’t involve a firearm at all. Said another way, if we would magically disarm everyone, that wouldn’t hamper the vast majority of violent criminals. Instead of reducing crime, disarming the innocent victims makes it easier for the criminals and would lead to more violence.

Young men commit most violent crimes. Young men are stronger than old men, and far stronger and faster than most women. Disarming women and the elderly makes them much more vulnerable to violent criminals.

Few of us want that. Disarming the good guys hurts honest citizens who want to protect their family. That isn’t an abstract theory, but common practice as we use a gun for self-defense over a million times a year.

Let’s step away from the soundbites. Look at human nature instead and think of the people you know. Some of the people you know are completely trustworthy while others are not. Some resist any temptation while others can’t be trusted with a penny. We are not all the same. When it comes to violence, some of us are a danger to others and most of us are not. It is the person who is a danger to others rather than the tools they use. Again, that is both simple and true.

Violent criminals are not like us. Most of us will never commit a violent crime, yet we know that a few people will victimize others. Most murders are committed by a few hitmen in drug gangs. 64 percent of felons who served time for a violent crime were re-arrested. 41 percent of violent criminals were later re-convicted of subsequent crimes. 34 percent of them were re-incarcerated. Some people practice a life of violent crime.

Shades of gray matter and a violent criminal is 500 times more likely to re-offend than a firearm is likely to be used in a violent crime.

In contrast, firearms manufacturers built a product that we overwhelmingly use to save lives in armed defense. If we’re looking for people who increase the risks for all of us, then let’s sue New York politicians, judges, and prosecutors who put dangerous recidivist-criminals back on our streets. Now that will save lives

How Joe Biden Created The Ukraine Crisis.

The liberal media won’t admit it, but the reason Russian forces are entering Ukraine can be explained in two words—Joe Biden. In fact, thanks to Biden, the U.S. is paying for the Russian invasion. His energy policy of reducing American production, stopping the almost completed keystone pipelines, no drilling on federal lands, new regulation regarding oil and gas drilling, and much more spiked the price of energy. For example, in 2020 the price of natural gas was $4.36/1,000 cubic feet, 2021 prices averaged $9/1,000 cubic feet.

Before Biden became President, the U.S. was energy independent and an exporter of energy. The lower American production and removing Trump’s restrictions on the Nordstream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. His policies made other countries more reliant on Russian gas. Giving Putin leverage on other countries such as Germany and doubling the price. All that extra money went straight into Russia’s pockets. Those new profits helped Russia raise the funds to continue Putin’s dream of the greater Russia of the USSR.

On top of the higher prices and the increased dependence on Russian energy, the mishandling of the Afghan withdrawal and removing some of the Iran sanctions showed Biden to be a weak President. Putin is no idiot. All of Biden’s flawed policies and feeble foreign policy made the Russian president understand that if he was ever going to get Ukraine back in Russia’s clutches, this was it.

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The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West
Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.

As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau — the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West’s nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the numerous occasions when marred by blackface) — invoke and then harshly impose dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:

Reuters, Aug. 8, 2019 (left); BBC, Feb. 15, 2022 (right)

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Suspect shot, another arrested after break-in at Deep Ellum business

DALLAS — One suspect was shot and another was arrested after a reported break-in at a business in the Deep Ellum area early Monday, according to the Dallas Police Department.

Based on preliminary information, officers responded to a shooting in the 3000 block of Canton Street, near South Malcolm X Boulevard.

A business owner was asleep inside his own business, according to an officer on the scene.

The officer said two men kicked in the door and went inside, and the business owner shot one of the men. That man was transported to the hospital in critical condition.

The other man who broke into the business was not injured and was arrested, according to police at the scene. Police said the case would be referred to a grand jury to determine if it was self-defense.

Police were still investigating the shooting Monday morning, and more information was not available.

Canada’s Hoax of a Democracy & Tyrant Trudeau : #TruckersForFreedom protesters treated like animals.

  • An Ottawa gelato shop owner who was revealed to have donated to the Freedom Convoy claims she has since been doxxed and had her information posted online

  • Tammy Giuliani, who owns the Stella Luna Café, received constant abusive phone calls calling her a Nazi, and a sign saying ‘Tammy supports terrorists’

  • Giuliani spoke of the backlash she’s faced since news came to light of her donation to the group of Canadian truckers protesting against COVID mandates

  • ‘You know, we have been called terrorists. For the first 60 to 36 hours, we were inundated with hatred, with threats of violence,’ she said

  • Giuliani is among roughly 92,000 supporters of the Freedom Convoy that had their information hacked after donating to the cause through GiveSendGo

  • The crowdfunding website, which describes itself as the ‘number one Christian crowdfunding site,’ had raised more than $9 million of the $16 million goal

  • The website Distributed Denial of Secrets said it was given donor information that included including names, email addresses, ZIP codes and IP addresses.

Observation O’ The Day

President’s Day: A Liberal Homogenized Celebration Of Nothing.

While officially a celebration of Washington’s birthday, after the bill took effect in 1971, it morphed into President’s Day, tearing down an American hero and replacing it with a meaningless day off work (for some). It became a bogus holiday…Suggesting President’s Day is a bogus holiday isn’t about putting down a particular president. It’s tossing out wokeism and teaching an understanding of the country’s greatness.

Or, maybe 4 cups…just to be on the safe side?

This Is the Exact Amount of Coffee You Should Drink, According to a Harvard Brain Expert.

Scientists agree: Drinking coffee is good for you. That’s good news if, like most Americans, you enjoy coffee and perhaps rely on it to help you wake up in the morning or stay alert during the day.

In the last couple of years, more detailed research on coffee has sought to zero in on just how much coffee you should drink every day for maximum health and brain benefits. They’ve found the answer–you should drink three cups………….

CDC quietly lowers the bar for early childhood speech development.

This is a story that first surfaced earlier in the week but hasn’t gained a lot of traction yet. (This is perhaps understandable given the situation in Ukraine, but also likely by intention.) For the first time in decades, the CDC has changed many of the recognized milestones for childhood development in terms of speech and cognitive functions.

These markers are considered important in terms of recognizing when children aren’t progressing quickly enough, suggesting the potential need to determine if some sort of impairment is being observed and if the child may require greater medical attention. The curious thing about the changes instituted by the CDC is that in a majority of the cases, they have lowered the standards rather than raising them. I first noticed this news on Twitter, as so often happens these days.

You can read the new guidelines here. One of the big changes that many critics are focusing on is the former guideline saying that children should normally know approximately fifty words by 24 months or two years of age. That benchmark has now been stealthily raised to 30 months. That’s not insignificant at all. It’s a 25% increase from the previous standard.

The Postmillennial examines the context in which these changes are taking place. It’s hard to ignore the growing body of reports showing that childhood development has been suffering as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from “virtual learning” environments to forcing children to wear face masks.

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These proggies voted their proggie goobermint in.
They sowed the wind, and we know what you reap from that…
The Whirlwind!

San Francisco residents report police doing nothing

During the push to “defund the police,” San Francisco was knee-deep in things. In fact, while few places actually reduced police funding, they did.

Eventually, due to soaring crime, the city reversed that. They really didn’t have a choice at that point.

However, it doesn’t seem to be helping. Why? Because the police don’t seem interested in actually arresting anyone.

After weeks battling the bewildering bureaucracy of San Francisco’s criminal justice system, Danielle Kuzinich finally has some answers in the strange case of the thrashed parklet and the do-nothing cops.

Just before dawn on Dec. 31, firefighters witnessed a man wrecking the charming parklet outside the San Francisco Wine Society in the Financial District and notified police. Security camera footage from a nearby hotel shows police arriving, chatting with a firefighter, talking to a man sitting next to piles of parklet debris and leaving. It then shows the man continuing to trash the area.

Now, a man police believe is the culprit is in jail — busted only because he allegedly went on to commit more vandalism days after the Wine Society mess. But the episode spotlighted an issue bigger than one arrest: a pattern of some officers on the San Francisco force seemingly uninterested in dealing with crime.

Numerous readers shared stories of police indifference after reading last week’s column about Kuzinich’s frustrating experience — and how it adds to their feeling that San Francisco city government, and its criminal justice system in particular, is broken.

They had questions. Is property crime in some ways allowed in our city? Are police on an unofficial strike or work stoppage?

In a visit to The Chronicle newsroom Tuesday, Police Chief Bill Scott promised that’s not the case.

“I can confidently say that’s not happening,” he said. “I get a report every morning of last night’s activities, and there’s a lot of great work being done.”

Not officially, in any case.

However, if this is a recurring problem, there’s probably a reason for it. Scott knows this, too.

He acknowledged, though, that the department has “serious morale issues” because of understaffing, intense scrutiny amid the police reform movement and tussles with District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Still, he said, that’s no excuse for not addressing crime.

“Despite the reason that an officer may be in that mental state where they might think it’s not a big deal for them to bother with it, it is a big deal,” Scott said. “And when they don’t do their job, I have to hold them accountable.”

The problem, though, is that they were thrown under the bus for something that didn’t even happen in their city.

Following the death of George Floyd during an arrest, departments all over the nation felt the heat. A few, like San Francisco, saw their funding cut by politicians who were essentially blaming them for something that happened in Minneapolis.

As a result, one shouldn’t be surprised when the police are less inclined to engage with someone committing a crime.

After all, any criminal offense can result in someone dying under certain circumstances. Is it any wonder that these guys would opt not to do much?

I’m not excusing it, mind you, just understanding it. They’re paid to do a job and they’re supposed to do it. Failure to do that should result in some degree of punishment. That’s simply not a matter up for debate in my book.

But the leadership in San Francisco needs to accept their own role in this. They need to understand that while the officers on the street need to step up, they’re not doing so as a result of their own actions.

Police officers aren’t mindless myrmidons who simply do as they’re told without thought or feeling. They’re people who are trying to do the best they can in most cases, and they don’t appreciate being vilified by their own leadership.

There already is a proven solution to this. Richmond Virginia tried it out awhile back and it worked very well;  Project Exile.
Among those 500 people, I’m betting about half of them have evidence that can lead to more arrests. DC has about 3400 officers, so why can’t they round up about 2000 officers to pick them all up simultaneously?

Study: DC gun crimes involve ‘small number’ of people

A study finds that suspects in violent crime in the District share a lot of characteristics.

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform looked at the numbers for homicides and nonfatal shooting in D.C. in 2019 and 2020, and found that “most gun violence is tightly concentrated on a small number of very high-risk young Black male adults that share a common set of risk factors.”

Those factors include involvements in street crews, a previous criminal justice history and connection to a recent shooting. Often, they’ve been the victims of crime themselves. While the motive for the shooting “may not be a traditional gang war,” the report says, “often shootings are precipitated by a petty conflict over a young woman, a simple argument, or the now-ubiquitous social media slight.”

The homicide rate in D.C. rose by 18% in 2020 compared to 2019, the study found, and about 500 identifiable people are behind 70% of the 863 incidents involving gun violence. The studies also showed that about 200 people are driving a majority of these incidents at any one point in time.

More than 90% of victims and suspects in 2019 and 2020 were male and about 96% were Black.

The study also found that another 86% of victims and suspects have been involved with the criminal justice system and the average age of victims is 31, while the average age of suspects is 27 years old.

They found that, in terms of prior arrests, “victims and suspects were remarkably similar.”

NICJR is now recommending a clear, citywide strategic plan and is working with the District and community members to create a path forward, stressing that “a small number of very high-risk individuals are identifiable; their violence is predictable and therefore it is preventable.”

The study says the strategy will require intervention for people at high risk, which “requires frequent and regular assessment of recent shootings and identification of individuals likely to retaliate based on the findings of this report.”

You can read the report online.

New firearm owners shaking up gun culture and American politics

HARRISBURG — Richard Reisinger, of New Bloomfield in Perry County, leaned in as David Walker of Savage Guns, a Massachusetts-based firearm company, showed him how to work a new innovation that allows the owner to adjust a gun for right- or left-handed users.

“I have grandchildren; some of them are left-handed, some are right-handed, so now if you purchase a gun, all you have to do is place this on the handle and it accommodates either, so you buy one gun and multiple kids can shoot it,” Mr. Reisinger said, admiring the practicality of the design.

“It is really nice.”

Mr. Reisinger — who was visiting the Savage booth at the Great American Outdoor Show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex recently — said he comes from a long line of hunters, a tradition he now enjoys with his grandchildren.

“I do a lot of whitetail hunting at the moment — but with grandchildren, I’ll take them out to hunt pretty much anything that they’re interested in. I love coming to the outdoors show because I get to see, and touch, and feel a lot of different firearms that I might be interested in down the road,” he explained.

Mr. Reisinger — like dozens of other people interviewed that day — said gun ownership is about a lot of things: “Putting food on the table and providing for my family, self-protection and the motor and dexterity skills it sharpens when you go target practicing. You meet more and more new gun owners all of the time; most of them said they bought their first gun for those exact same reasons … they found all of it personally empowering.”

This is a truth that conflicts with our culture’s misconceptions about who “the American gun owner” really is and what his or her motivations are for enjoying firearms. If you turn on the national news or log onto social media, you’re likely to find lawful gun owners portrayed as cultish, backwoods white males who have a gluttonous appetite for violence.

Gun owners see themselves quite differently — and their demographics and motivations don’t fit neatly into the stereotypes.

Despite the millions spent in digital advertisements by gun control advocates like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the appeal of gun ownership is only increasing. Of all the firearms sold last year, 30% — 5.4 million purchases — went to new gun owners, according to a retailer survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

A new interest in self-sufficiency, caused by collapses in our supply chain, has also led to an explosion in applications for hunting licenses.

According to Stateline, a Pew Trust initiative, many states across the country saw a dramatic rise in both men and women taking a hunter safety class for the first time — with states like Michigan seeing a 67% hike in new hunting license buyers in 2021 compared with 2019, including a 15% increase in female hunters.

People who would never have considered owning a gun were now curious about hunting to provide for their families — and about target practice to learn how to defend themselves and their homes.

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Arizona: House Passes School Pick-Up Drop-Off Bill

A number of pro-gun bills have continued to advance in Arizona.

On Thursday, the House passed House Bill 2414 by a vote of 31-27. It allows law-abiding citizens to store their loaded firearms in their locked personal vehicles while parked on school grounds. This ensures that parents are able to pick-up and drop-off students without first having to stop and unload their firearms before driving onto school grounds, or deviating from their route to park off-campus. So-called “gun-free zones” are arbitrary boundaries that only disarm law-abiding citizens and leave them defenseless while doing nothing to deter criminals. HB 2414 has been transmitted to the Senate for further consideration.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed House Bill 2166. It exempts firearms and firearm safety equipment, such as gun safes and gun locks, from state transaction privilege and use taxes. This recognizes that the government should not be placing additional cost barriers on citizens who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights, and who wish to safely store their firearms. HB 2166 will next be considered in the House Rules Committee.

The House Judiciary Committee passed House Bill 2473. It prohibits public entities from entering into contracts worth $100,000 or greater with businesses, unless they certify that they do not discriminate against firearm businesses. Anti-gun banks and their executives have expressed interest in denying services to the firearm industry as a way to further their political agenda and impose gun control by making such business impossible when legislatures won’t bend to their will. Banks should evaluate firearm businesses like any other business and consider financial risk, rather than ideology, in their decisions on providing services. This ensures that Arizona taxpayer money does not go to such businesses. HB 2473 will next be considered in the House Rules Committee.

The House Military Affairs & Public Safety Committee passed House Bill 2448. It requires school districts to offer age-appropriate firearm safety instruction to students in grades six through twelve. This legislation will help empower youths with this basic knowledge of respecting firearms “from a qualified individual with a focus on safety rather than from popular culture and various forms of media.” HB 2448 will next be considered in the House Rules Committee.​

FYI; All data pulled from massshootingtracker.site which freely and openly admit their definition of ‘mass shooting’ isn’t what the FBI uses for its Uniform Crime Report (and which just happens to increases the number of incidents)

Here are a few tidbits according to the data provided for 2021:

California has the 3rd highest number of mass shootings (54 by their definition).

New York was 5th with 41.

Both have had magazines and AR bans for 28 and 9 years respectively.

Inversely Alaska, Idaho, New Hampshire, and South Dakota have had only 1 mass shooting with no such gun control laws.

Hrmmm. I think I see the possibility of a pattern emerging. It’s like gun control doesn’t just not work, it makes the problem worse!