BLUF:
The report concluded: ‘A major peer-level conflict in the 21st Century will likely play out largely in the naval theaters of operations; unlike the surface Navy’s last major war, which concluded 76 years ago, such a conflict will likely proceed swiftly and not permit significant time for organizational learning once it is underway.’

‘Unless changes are made, the Navy risks losing the next major conflict.’

But I guess that won’t matter as much as the fleet’s diversity index being up to date?

‘Every officer is up to speed on diversity training. Not so much ship handling’: Scathing official report finds US Navy is too woke for war because of risk averse, politically correct, control-freak top brass.

A scathing new report commissioned by members of Congress has claimed that the Navy’s surface warfare forces have systemic training and leadership issues, including a focus on diversity that overshadows basic readiness skills.

The report prepared by Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, both retired, came in response to recent Naval disasters, including the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego, two collisions involving Navy ships in the Pacific and the surrender of two small craft to Iran.

The authors conducted hour-long interviews with 77 current and retired Navy officers, offering them anonymity to identify issues they wouldn’t feel comfortable raising in the chain of command.

The report found that a staggering 94 percent of the subjects believed the recent Naval disasters were ‘part of a broader problem in Navy culture or leadership.’

‘I guarantee you every unit in the Navy is up to speed on their diversity training. I’m sorry that I can’t say the same of their ship handling training,’ said one recently retired senior enlisted leader.

The report focused on issues within the Navy’s surface warfare forces, as opposed to submarine and aviation, and suggested that issues in the surface fleet could be unique due to better funding and training for submarine and aviation units.

One of the key issues raised by the officers interviewed for the report was a concern that Navy leaders spend more time focusing on diversity training than on developing warfighting capacity and key operational skills.

‘Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we’ll survive a fight with the Chinese navy,’ lamented one lieutenant currently on active duty.

‘It’s criminal. They think my only value is as a black woman. But you cut our ship open with a missile and we’ll all bleed the same color,’ she added.

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The Big Lie On Gun Study Funding

For years, we were told the reason there wasn’t more research done on “gun violence” is because they legally couldn’t. See, the law stated that federal dollars couldn’t be used to advocate for gun control, and the CDC decided that meant they couldn’t conduct research on gun violence, probably because they knew what their intentions were and how that would influence results, so they just skipped the research.

And then they blamed it on a law that didn’t actually prevent research.

However, some people bought into that lie. Some still are.

So, when an op-ed tries to play the middle ground yet still repeated this Big Lie, there’s no reason to take the authors seriously.

Murder in the U.S. has become political once again, an issue for both the left and the right. But the U.S. can’t afford to bicker on this.

The nation is ranked in the global murder rate index worse than Pakistan, Sudan and Angola. Homicides in American cities rose an estimated 30% in 2020 and were up another 24% early this year. Los Angeles reported last week that shootings had spiked by half this year.

Fortunately, with decades of empirical data about what works and what doesn’t, we now know how to prevent murder. It turns out that both the liberals and the conservatives were on to something.

There are two broad ideological camps in this political quagmire: the law-and-order camp that supports more policing and tougher law enforcement and abhors gun control, and the criminal justice reform and Black Lives Matter camp that demands safety from police violence and racism and wants guns off the streets.

Republicans vilify Democrats as soft on crime. And Democrats face an internal rift between progressives who demand an end to violent and unfair policing, and those worried that such a focus would not help in the face of growing violent crime. In his response so far, President Biden has walked a fine line: emphasizing that states can use the $350 billion in COVID-19 relief funds to bolster local police departments, but also calling for better enforcement of gun control laws.

So far, so good.

But it’s later when things really go off the rails.

Preventing murder also requires a serious discussion about guns. As one study summarizes it: “More Guns, More Crime.” Pro-gun politicians seem to have known this all along, why else would they have blocked federal funding for research about the relationship between firearms and homicide for 25 years?

Enough already. End the murder politics. Dueling soundbites will lead to a rerun of the 1990s, when Democrats postured to look tough on crime to win elections. We know how that story ended: Then-Sen. Biden wrote a crime bill that ballooned the American prison population without reducing crime.

This time we know better, and we should do better. If we burst out of the ideological bubbles, the U.S. can build an evidence-based strategy to end the killing.

How can we end the politics and burst out of ideological bubbles when the authors are perpetuating one of the biggest political lies in the gun control debate?

Federal funding for research was never blocked. As noted previously, it prevented federal money from being spent to advocate for gun control. The CDC decided that meant they couldn’t research guns, likely because they had preconceived notions of what they would find and were bound and determined to find it.

Gun research continued, some of it funded with federal money, but this was open and honest research that found what it found and reported it as they saw it.

Yet when you uncritically claim that the research was blocked for 25 years, you’re ignoring the actual facts. You’re perpetuating a lie that was popular with anti-gunners and the media, though I repeat myself, yet had no basis in reality. If you can get such a basic fact wrong, why should anyone take anything else said at face value?

Besides, at the end of the day, the discussion on gun control is about more than reducing crime. If that’s all it was about, the debate would look very different. No, in part it’s about restricting the constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms. The rights of individuals need to be protected first and foremost.

It’s not just a political question. It’s a question of civil liberties.

Then again, if the op-ed writers couldn’t even look past the Big Lie on gun research, why would I expect them to really understand what the gun debate is about?

The Truth About Handgun Stopping Power (Hint: It’s Complicated)
Which handgun caliber has the most stopping power, the 9mm, .40 S&W, or .45 Auto? Answer: No one knows

When it comes to handgun stopping power, there’s no shortage of experts, studies, theories, and anecdotes offering “definitive proof” that one cartridge is better than another.

The first murder I investigated was affected by a pellet rifle. Years later, a bad guy who shot a cop and ran through our roadblock and was perforated by multiple bullets from multiple guns—and he lived long enough to sue the police department. All the experts and formulas will tell you that these were near statistical impossibilities. But they both happened.

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Gig Harbor homeowner fatally shoots man who broke into his house

A Gig Harbor [Washington] homeowner fatally shot an intruder Sunday evening, after the man appeared to break into the wrong house, police said.

The incident began shortly after 10 p.m., when the unidentified man drove to an address near the corner of 80th Street Northwest and Rosedale Street, said Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Darren Moss.

The man drove up into the front yard of the home, broke a window, entered the residence, then began “marching up their stairs.” Asked whether he was armed, Moss said the man “had a large bottle of alcohol with him.”

“The homeowner fired and hit the suspect, who passed away right there,” Moss said. “We believe that the deceased’s family lives just around the corner somewhere, so he broke into the wrong house.”

Moss said that the man was “yelling and screaming at the people inside the house.” He said the homeowner was questioned over the shooting, adding that investigators in the early stages were treating it as an act of self-defense.

Ramaswamy: ‘Secular Religion’ of Critical Race Theory Now Taught in Schools Violates Civil Rights Act of 64

News that a left-wing author’s anti-White “picture book” is being read or assigned in public schools in a dozen states helps make the case that the “secular religion” of critical race theory is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy argued Tuesday.

Ramaswamy, founder of Roivent Sciences, told “America Reports” that it is very troubling to see school districts across the country highlight Anastasia Higginbotham’s “Not My Idea” in young childhood curriculum..

Scholar Christopher Rufo published a list of school districts in Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Montana, Oregon, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey and Maine that reportedly either recommend the reading to students or instruct teachers to read aloud.

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Well, as if anyone needed any more confirmation that demoncraps were nothing more than commie scum.

‘The Cuban People Will Be Free’: Congressman Introduces Resolution To Support Cuban Protests, Only Republicans Sign On

Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) introduced a resolution to support the Cuban people in their demands for freedom against “the brutal oppression of the Communist dictatorship in Cuba.”

Díaz-Balart — a Cuban-American — asked the international community to stand behind the recent protests against the island’s regime. Initial cosponsors for the House resolution include Steve Scalise (R-LA), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Greg Steube (R-FL), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Byron Donalds (R-FL), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Liz Cheney (R-WY).

According to Díaz-Balart’s statement:

For 62 years, the Cuban people have struggled for freedom and human rights under a brutal, repressive dictatorship. On this day, which also coincides with the anniversary of the Tugboat Massacre, we also remember the regime’s decades of malevolence, including the Brothers to the Rescue Shoot-Down, the firing squads, torture, arbitrary arrests, killings, human trafficking, those who fled in makeshift rafts through shark-infested waters, and the many activists who have suffered or perished for simply daring to speak against the regime. The Cuban people will be free, and they will remember those who stood with them.

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FDA adds warning to J&J COVID-19 vaccine over links to rare autoimmune disorder.

July 13 (UPI) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a new warning for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine over its association with an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder where the immune system damages the nerve cells.

The FDA announced the update to the one-shot jab on Monday in a letter to the company as well as in amendments to its fact sheets on the vaccine in response to new data showing cases of people displaying symptoms of the syndrome within 42 days of receiving the shot.

The warning states: “Reports of adverse events following use of Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine under emergency use authorization suggest an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome during the 42 days following vaccination.”

Janssen is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

The FDA said in its fact sheet for recipients and caregivers that “[t]he chance of having this occur is very low.”

Between 3,000 and 6,000 people develop Guillain-Barre syndrome each year in the United States with only about 100 people of the 12.8 million Johnson & Johnson dose recipients having shown symptoms, the FDA said. Of those who exhibited symptoms, 95 were hospitalized and there was one death.

The agency said that while there is enough evidence to suggest an association between the vaccine and the syndrome “it is insufficient to establish a casual relationship.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare disorder of the immune system attacking nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis and often follows infection of a virus or bacteria.

The CDC said men older than 50 were at greater risk of contracting the syndrome after receiving the shot.

Johnson & Johnson released a statement Monday stating it has updated its COVID-19 vaccine factsheet to include the new warning while reiterating that evidence continues to prove its vaccine protects against the coronavirus.

“Evidence has demonstrated that Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine offers protection against COVID-19 disease and prevents hospitalization and death, including in countries where viral variants are highly prevalent,” it said.

The FDA gave the Johnson & Johnson jab emergency use approval in late February.

In April, CDC issued a warning for the vaccine concerning its association with a rare blood clotting disease, ending a federal government temporary halt to the drug’s distribution.

Destroying Our Military from Within

President Joe Biden and the left are doing what no adversary has ever accomplished: destroying America’s military. What has never happened from without is now happening from within. Our armed forces’ ability to deter war and conduct military operations in defense of our nation is being undermined by those responsible for readiness to accomplish these missions.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act. It requires, inter alia, that orders for military operations must pass from the president, through the secretary of Defense and then directly to the commanders of our 11 unified combatant commands. The Joint Chiefs of Staff — the generals and admirals who head each branch of our armed forces — are not in this “chain of command,” but they are responsible for ensuring combatant commanders have adequately trained personnel, weapons and equipment to accomplish their geographic and functional missions. They are also required to provide advice to the president and Defense secretary on strategy, policy, training and readiness.

Today, the readiness of our armed forces is being adversely affected by indoctrinating our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines in politically correct tripe such as critical race theory, systemic racism and “white privilege” in the military. Retention of junior and midgrade officers is dropping like a stone. Reenlistments are down. Recruiters are waiving standards once deemed important. Yet, the Joint Chiefs are going along to get along.

In recent congressional testimony, JCS Chairman Gen. Mark Milley was asked why U.S. military personnel are being required to learn critical race theory. In his response, our most senior military officer claimed he read books by Mao, Marx and other enemies of freedom. So did we — because we wanted to know more about our adversaries.

There are two serious problems with the general’s response. First, our troops are not learning critical race theory voluntarily. They are forced to do so. Second, critical race theory is not being offered as evidence of how our enemy thinks. It is being presented as what’s wrong with our country.

Members of Congress should ask all our senior military officers how teaching critical race theory improves combat ability, preparedness or morale? If it doesn’t, why teach it? How does teaching our troops that the country they swore to serve and protect is evil and unworthy of their loyalty build esprit de corps? How can troops in combat know their fellow warriors have their backs when they have been taught to distrust each other on the basis of race?

In our forthcoming book, “We Didn’t Fight for Socialism,” we asked more than 500 veterans why they volunteered to serve in uniform and go in harm’s way when necessary. Nearly all gave virtually the same response. They joined, served and risked life and limb because they love our country. For them, America means freedom, liberty, opportunity and self-determination; principles encouraged throughout their service. Now, thanks to Biden and the top brass at the Pentagon, our troops are learning just the opposite.

When we served in the Marine Corps, semper fidelis — “always faithful” — was our motto. To this day, semper fidelis is more than a slogan. For us, it is a way of life. We were taught that it meant to always be faithful to God, country, Corps and each other. Fast forward to the present. Our troops are now being asked to be faithful to a leftist belief system that denies God, tears down our country, undermines military preparedness and makes service members distrustful of each other. Biden and his leftist puppet masters are doing what no foreign enemy has been able to do: destroy our military. Sadly, they are being assisted by weak generals and admirals playing politics.

¡Grupos de Autodefensas Para Mi!

Mexico has all the strict gun control laws the steppers would swoon over if enacted in the U.S. and also is the perfect exemplar of what those laws would do to about all that eeeeeee-vil ultra-ultra gun violence;  Nothing.
So, we can make only one conclusion about their desire for gun control laws. It’s not about ‘violence’ except what might be pointed in their direction.

Avocado Farmers Take Up Arms As Mexico Violence Spikes

A convoy of vigilantes snakes along a road in western Mexico, vowing to defend their avocado orchards from gangs sowing terror in a country reeling from a new wave of bloodshed.

Armed with assault rifles and other firearms, the masked men travel between plantations and maintain checkpoints in Ario de Rosales in Michoacan state, the scene of a bloody cartel turf war.

Before they began patrolling the area, residents lived in fear of kidnapping, extortion and theft of avocados, according to a member of the self-defense group Pueblos Unidos, which says it has 700 members.

“We need to be armed to defend ourselves,” he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity, wearing a badge reading “Down with injustice, no more dead.”

Previously, criminals “came to do what they wanted to us, and that doesn’t happen anymore,” he added.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador opposes such self-defense groups — a phenomenon that dates back to 2013 — saying that some of them have become fronts for criminals.

Such comments are not well received in Ario de Rosales, where another Pueblos Unidos member says the president should “get his shoes dirty” to discover the reality of life in the area, where the Jalisco New Generation and Los Viagras cartels operate.

The police and military “feared the criminals or were paid by them to do nothing,” said another vigilante who gave his name as Martin.

It is estimated that there are around 50 such self-defense groups in Mexico, which has seen intensifying violence in recent months, notably in Michoacan and the northern states of Tamaulipas and Zacatecas.

Mexico registered 14,243 murders in the first five months of the year, and the bloodshed has shown no sign of stopping since then.

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Massad Ayoob’s ‘In The Gravest Extreme’ Still Relevant in 2021?

Most everyone in “gun land” knows who Massad Ayoob is. In the Gravest Extreme was first published in 1980. Even though it is over 40 years old, it is still available today, either new or used, for a few dollars less. It runs around $20 a copy, and I have seen it used as low as $13 a copy. Cheap enough that there really isn’t a good reason not to read it. 

Basic Overview

There are 17 chapters in the almost 130-page book. A wide range of topics are covered in those 17 chapters. Ranging from car guns (what commonly gets called a “truck gun” now), carrying guns outside of the home, using guns for home defense, and using guns to defend a business, to name a few. The book’s breadth is rather large, so the chapters tend to be short, easy reads. The common thread throughout that serves to tie it all together is the legal use of force and all of the potential pitfalls of using force.

The last few chapters get into topics like selecting a handgun for concealed carry, a comprehensive overview of defensive shooting, and the like. This is perhaps where the content has not aged as well as other parts of the book. Firearms, specifically handguns and the ammunition we feed them, have moved pretty far down the road from where 1980 was.

How Has it Aged?

It doesn’t take long to realize the age of the book when reading it. Not because the information isn’t relevant. But the word choices are just starting to show their age a bit. Ayoob’s flair for writing is clear, making the book a rather easy read despite the dated language. 

Because the laws have changed over the last 4 decades, some of the specific legal examples will not be useful anymore. Conceptually, for the most part, I think there is enough similarity that the value is not completely lost, though. It would be on the reader to know their local laws and what parts of the book are so outdated to no longer be completely accurate.

Even though dated, there is plenty of application left in the larger message Ayoob is trying to get across with this book. First and foremost, avoidance is preferable. Ayoob does a good job of showing both sides of the scale. The potential costs of a defensive action weighed against being able to avoid the need outright. It serves more to temper the often overly aggressive misunderstandings about the use of force to protect self and others than it does to encourage the use of force at all. If there is another way out, take the other way out. This is an idea that sometimes is lost in the bravado of the modern “gun culture.” 

Wrapping it Up

Overall, I think this sums up the purpose of the book well.

“The man who wears a gun carries with it the power of life and death, and therefore the responsibility to deport himself with greater calm and wisdom than his unarmed counterpart…”

It is about being prudent and good decision-making. Do not do the things that would be expected to put you in a bad position.

For something written so long ago, I was surprised to find a significant amount of alignment with what is considered best practice currently. At least partially proving true that “what is old is new again,” I suppose. While I probably wouldn’t call In the Gravest Extreme timeless, I do think there are still plenty of lessons to be learned from it, and it is certainly thought-provoking. It’s worth the read.

OK, Terry, You’re Crazy

One of the more common tactics of anti-gun extremists is to make some dramatic statement comparing our nation’s gun laws with some other aspect of everyday life. Every time—not usually or often, but every time—the comparison is wildly inaccurate. One of the more outrageous claims was made in 2016 by then-president Barack Obama (D), who claimed, “We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.”

Obama’s statement ignored many obvious facts, including that it would be illegal for any teenager to purchase a Glock, such firearms are far more expensive than books (even when purchased through illegal channels), and books are available through innumerable legal outlets—including for free at the more than 100,000 public libraries in America. Even PolitiFact, the “fact-checking” website many consider to favor liberals and Democrats, gave Obama’s statement a “Mostly False” rating.

Last week, Virginia Democrat gubernatorial nominee, Terry McAuliffe, got in on the game of comparing guns to other activities by making a ridiculous, and false comment that puts him in the company of Obama.

“Call me crazy, but I think it should be easier to vote than to buy a gun,” McAuliffe tweeted.

For a response to candidate McAuliffe, please refer to the title of this article. And based on the response to his ill-informed message, we are not alone.

So, where to begin with this latest entry in the competition for stupidest comments about guns?

First, when comparing two constitutionally-protected rights, neither should really be considered “easier” to exercise than the other.

But what of McAuliffe’s implication that it is currently easier to buy a gun than it is to vote? If he truly believes this, then maybe he is crazy.

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Socialists Communists in Congress Silent as Cubans Rise Up Against Communist Dictatorship

Protests erupted yesterday in all of Cuba’s major cities against the nation’s ruling Communist dictatorship following over six decades of oppression. Protesters chanted “freedom,” “enough” and “unite,” and demanded the dissolution of their nation’s communist dictatorship.

Protesters had specific complaints about the nation’s food shortages, high prices, and handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which were correctly attributed to their government.

The Biden administration was initially silent on the protests, and only commented that they’d vow to condemn any violence in Cuba. Biden himself waited until this morning to say that the U.S. stands with the Cuban people.

Meanwhile the socialists in our Congress – Bernie Sanders in the Senate and all members of “The Squad” in the House – have remained completely silent. The Squad includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush.

According to Fox News:

Critics will likely say that these Democratic socialists are remaining quiet in the early stages of the protests because there are so many unknowns. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who heads the Communist Party, has already called on the country’s revolutionaries to counter the demonstrators. “We are prepared to do anything,” he said during a national address. “We will be battling in the streets.”

The National Review reported that these legislators have never even denounced Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Sanders, I-Vt., once defended some of the policies of Cuba’s previous communist dictator Fidel Castro.

Following his win during Nevada’s caucus in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Sanders was asked by Anderson Cooper during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” why the Cuban people didn’t rise up and help the U.S. overthrow the Castro regime. Sanders replied that the dictator “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed the society.”

If or when our socialists in Congress do address the protests in Cuba, it’s more likely they’ll end up siding with the regime.

Six Facts the Left Doesn’t Want You To Know About Global Warming

President Biden implores us that climate change is an “existential threat” to humanity. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry preaches to us that “[t]he climate crisis as a whole is a national security threat because it is disruptive to the daily lives of human beings all over the world.” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warns us that in 2030, “the world is going to end … if we don’t address climate change.”

Hold on to your wallet. The Left’s global warming Chicken Littles insist that the sky is falling but don’t want you to know six key facts.

First, in his new book “Unsettled,” Obama Administration Department of Energy chief scientist Steven Koonin shows that the models relied upon by the Left to predict future global warming are so poor that they cannot even reproduce the temperature changes in the 20th century.

If these models cannot reproduce past temperatures already known when the models were developed, how can they possibly reliably predict temperatures decades into the future?

Second, Koonin’s book also documents that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s own analysis indicates that any negative economic impact that global warming eventually may have will be so modest that it warrants no action.

Third, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UN IPPC do not claim that a link has been established between global warming and natural disasters.

Most people don’t know this company exists. That’s why Tim Plaehn wants to share this private information with you before other investors catch on.

In 2020, the NOAA stated: “it is premature to conclude with high confidence that increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities have had a detectable impact on Atlantic basin hurricane activity,” and “changes in tropical cyclone activity … are not yet detectable.”

The UN IPPC, the Wall Street Journal reported, “says that it too lacks evidence to show that warming is making storms and flooding worse.”

Fourth, as the earth’s temperature has risen, natural disasters have become far less deadly.

Since 1920, the planet’s temperature has risen by 1.29 degrees Celsius and world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to over seven and half billion – yet EM-DAT, The International Disaster Database, reports that the number of people killed by natural disasters has declined by over 80 percent, from almost 55,000 per year to less than 10,000 per year.

Fifth, some of the world’s best scientists believe that global warming will be beneficial rather than harmful.

In 2017, a group of eminent scientists – such as Richard Lindzen of MIT, William Happer of Princeton, and Judith Curry of Georgia Tech – wrote that “[o]bservations [over the last] 25 years … show that warming from increased atmospheric CO2 will be benign.”

Carbon dioxide, they noted, “is not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earth.”

Sixth, global warming saves lives. A study published in 2015 by the British medical journal The Lancet found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat.

This study by 22 scientists from around the world – which examined over 74 million deaths in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States in 1985-2012, “the largest dataset ever collected to assess temperature-health associations”– reported that cold caused 7.29 percent of these deaths, while heat caused only 0.42 percent.

And small changes in the temperature matter: “moderately hot and cold temperatures” caused 88.85 percent of the temperature-related deaths, while “extreme” temperatures caused only 11.15 percent.

We must not let the Left bully us into draconian action with unfounded claims of a looming climate catastrophe. Know the facts. Global warming is not a problem.

The Politics of Gun Ownership Change as Millions of First-Time, ‘Anti-Gun’ Americans Bought Firearms.

According to this Washington Post article, the percentage of Americans who own guns has jumped from 32% to 39% in the past year. That’s due to huge waves of new, first-time gun owners, of all political and cultural persuasions, deciding that owning a firearm is a good idea.

For many new gun owners, though, the decision to arm themselves is a political pivot — an accumulation of anxieties that led them to discard long-held beliefs. It’s a decision that is particularly difficult for people who belong to groups at higher risk of being on the wrong end of gun violence.

Jabril Battle, a 28-year-old account representative at a financial services company in Los Angeles, had always believed that “anyone who had a gun was a gun nut,” he said. “I really bought into the whole idea that the more people have guns … the more likely it is for people to start killing each other.”

But as the pandemic paralyzed the nation, Battle said, “I just saw how crazy people got.” He found himself conjuring the worst scenarios: “I was like, if my block has 10 houses, how many people in these houses have guns? If the food and water gets cut off, [if] supplies run out … what does that look like? Is this going to be a ‘Mad Max’ situation? Like ‘The Walking Dead,’ but not with the zombies?

“I was just, like, ‘Do I want to be the person who has a gun or doesn’t have a gun?”

Battle bought a Beretta 92FS, then added a Glock 34 pistol.

Still, he had reservations: “Being Black with a gun is a very high risk, a way higher risk than other races,” he said. “You are seen as a threat without a gun, and with a gun you are seen as a super threat.”

He kept imagining the scene if he were stopped by a White police officer.

“It’s still in my head, honestly, when I go to the gun range and I have my gun in my car,” he said. “If I get pulled over, and they ask, ‘Are there any weapons in the car?’ [and] I say there’s a gun, and then I hand in my registration, will they shoot me?”

But he’s enjoying the new world that guns opened to him — classes, an organization of Black gun owners, shooting competitions.

“Once I started being around guns more, and I kind of saw the culture and the environment, I’m falling in love,” he said.

In Battle’s family, guns were “not a good thing,” he said. “It kind of represented crime, especially for Black people. It’s just different for African Americans.”

But his family has accepted his decision, he said. His grandmother and two aunts came to the range with him and are considering returning to take lessons.

— Marc Fisher, Miranda Green, and Andrea Eger in ‘Fear on top of fear’: Why anti-gun Americans joined the wave of new gun owners

Yes, I do notice something. It sounds like the symptoms of a head cold.

The Experts Say These Could Be New Symptoms of the Delta COVID Variant…Notice Anything Peculiar Here?

The COVID panic porn peddlers are still at it again with this Delta variant that no one should really fear, but the experts and the media are still treating like the Andromeda Strain. It is more contagious, but it’s not more lethal and it doesn’t make you sicker. Instead of peddling images of body bags, it’s being used to ensure we vaccinate everyone. No doubt the Democrat-media complex is going to use this to push for mandatory vaccination, even suggesting door-to-door measures to ensure the nation reaches that 70 percent threshold. Oh, wait—that’s already been tossed around by some folks.

As we debate the ‘ver are your papers’ protocols about vaccinations, let’s check in with The New York Times who reported these could be new symptoms of the Delta variant. I’m sure you’ll have a good laugh (via NYT):

The spread of the super-contagious Delta variant is prompting new lockdowns around the world and spurring new warnings from public health officials.

The World Health Organization, citing the rise of Delta, the dearth of vaccines and high rates of community transmission in many parts of the world, has encouraged fully vaccinated people to continue wearing masks.

[…]

Does the Delta variant cause different symptoms?

It’s not clear yet. “We’re hurting for good data,” Dr. Osterholm said.

In Britain, where the variant is widespread, reports have emerged that Delta may cause different symptoms than other variants do. Researchers conducting the Covid Symptom Study, which asks people with the disease to report their symptoms in an app, have said that the most common symptoms of Covid have changed as the variant has spread through Britain.

“What we’ve noticed is the last month, we’re seeing different sets of symptoms than we were seeing in January,” said Tim Spector, a genetic epidemiologist at King’s College London, who leads the study.

Headaches, a sore throat, and a runny nose are now among the most frequently reported symptoms, Dr. Spector said, with fever, cough and loss of smell less common.

These data, however, have not yet been published in a scientific journal, and some scientists remain unconvinced that the symptom profile has truly changed. The severity of Covid, regardless of the variant, can vary wildly from one person to another.

So, nothing has changed. We’re acting as if sore throat, headache, and runny noses are new ailments never seen in medical science. There is nothing peculiar about these symptoms. Nothing. First, all three have been around since the time of Hammurabi’s Code. Second, they’re the same freaking symptoms when COVID first escaped from a Chinese lab, I mean—they’re the same when this virus first appeared. ………….

Texas silencer law, NFA, No Commandeering, Commerce Clause, Test Case

Texas recently passed HB 957 into law. It will become effective on 1 September, 2021. The law repeals the Texas state ban on the possession of silencers/suppressors/gun mufflers, puts into effect a “no commandeering clause” for federal enforcement of the National Firearms Act (NFA) for silencers, and sets up a federal test case of the NFA in federal court.

In a previous article the repeal of the Texas law and the anti-commandering section were discussed. The likely federal test case was not.

HB 957 came from the brain of Representative Oliverson of Texas District 130, north of Houston. Dr. Oliverson is not a lawyer.  This correspondent was able to talk to Representative Oliverson about how he formed the idea for the law.

Dr. Oliverson came up with the idea to reform suppressor law in Texas because he had purchased two suppressors. He personally experienced the bureaucratic insanity it takes to legally obtain a silencer/suppressor/gun muffler in the United States.

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Five Tenets of CRT: What they say vs. what they mean

One of the problems with discussing and debating CRT is that it’s a complicated set of teachings and beliefs about which people know very little and which probably vary at least somewhat according to whom is doing the trainings. The most pernicious aspects of CRT are often in the details of how the trainings and/or classes go.

Here’s a set of five supposedly basic tenets of CRT:

(1) Centrality of Race and Racism in Society: CRT asserts that racism is a central component of American life.
(2) Challenge to Dominant Ideology: CRT challenges the claims of neutrality, objectivity, colorblindness, and meritocracy in society.
(3) Centrality of Experiential Knowledge: CRT asserts that the experiential knowledge of people of color is appropriate, legitimate, and an integral part to analyzing and understanding racial inequality.
(4) Interdisciplinary Perspective: CRT challenges ahistoricism and the unidisciplinary focuses of most analyses and insists that race and racism be placed in both a contemporary and historical context using interdisciplinary methods.
(5) Commitment to Social Justice: CRT is a framework that is committed to a social justice agenda to eliminate all forms of subordination of people.

As with so much jargon, one can use these principles in a benign way or a destructive one. From what I know about CRT in actual practice, they tend to be used destructively and somewhat differently than the words in those five principles would indicate.

For example, let’s take principle #1: “CRT asserts that racism is a central component of American life.” Actually, CRT asserts that racism is the central component of American life and pervades every aspect of it.

Or #2: “CRT challenges the claims of neutrality, objectivity, colorblindness, and meritocracy in society.” Actually, CRT challenges not just the claims of those things, but also challenges the idea that they are worthwhile goals. CRT considers meritocracy, for example, to be utterly bogus and inherently racist and would like to eliminate it as a goal or standard. CRT would like to substitute color awareness and eliminate colorblindness. Same for objectivity and neutrality, which are defined as white values and inherently racist.

Or #3: “CRT asserts that the experiential knowledge of people of color is appropriate, legitimate, and an integral part to analyzing and understanding racial inequality.” Is there anyone who disagrees with that? I think you’d find very few people who don’t think that the experiences of black people and other minorities are worthwhile to hear. However, CRT actually asserts that this “experiential knowledge” is far more important than statistics in the aggregate – in other words, that anecdotal evidence (which, among other things, can be a misperception even if a sincere one) is of far more importance than anything else, and it’s only the anecdotal evidence of “people of color” that matters.

On #5: “CRT is a framework that is committed to a social justice agenda to eliminate all forms of subordination of people.” More jargon that obscures what’s happening. “Social justice agenda” is an example of what Thomas Sowell referred to in his book The Quest For Cosmic Justice (highly recommended by me) as an endeavor that is doomed to create more problems than it solves. As Sowell writes:

In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called “social justice” might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society.

The costs of achieving justice matter. Another way of saying the same thing is that “justice at all costs” is not justice. What, after all, is an injustice but the arbitrary imposition of a cost—whether economic, psychic, or other—on an innocent person? And if correcting this injustice imposes another arbitrary cost on another innocent person, is that not also an injustice?

Those who are promoting CRT leave out all the costs and are mum about the anti-white racism inherent in those costs. However, word has been getting out recently, and more people (not enough, but more) are starting to understand what CRT is actually about in practice rather than in the descriptive language that attempts to obscure that practice.

Man shot and killed during attempted home invasion in Naples [Florida] gated community

A man was shot and killed while attempting a home invasion Saturday morning in a North Naples gated community, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office says.

At around 4:30 a.m., the suspect fired a single gunshot through the front door of an occupied residence in Raffia Preserve, detectives said in a news release. A confrontation between the suspect and an armed resident ensued outside the home, which ended in the resident shooting the suspect.

The suspect, who detectives are working to identify, was transported to a local hospital where he died, CCSO said.

No arrests have been made, the sheriff’s office said.

The investigation is ongoing, but detectives said it was an isolated incident with no danger to the community.