Electrical Engineer Gets Five Years in Prison for Selling Missile Technology to China

U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt sentenced Yi-Chi Shih, 66, of Hollywood Hills, to 63 months—or more than five years—in prison for his role in the scheme. He was also ordered to pay $362,698 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the judge fined him $300,000.

Shih was arrested in January 2019 after he was found to have been involved in an illegal scheme to obtain monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) from an unnamed American company and smuggle them to the Chinese company Chengdu GaStone Technology (CGTC), which was placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2014.

He was convicted on one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Administration Regulations.

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BLUF:
For those intending to watch ABC News’ “One Nation Under Fire,” they would do well to remember that what is being presented is propaganda, not reality. It will be another part of the effort to separate gun owners from their firearms, turn local police departments into mere appendages of a national police force, and prepare the nation for the imposition of the left-wing Marxist agenda.

ABC News’ “One Nation Under Fire” Will Promote the Lie About Gun Violence in the U.S.

ABC News is launching another attack on gun rights, starting Sunday. Its project, called “One Nation Under Fire”, will join with ABC affiliates across the country as well as with Good Morning America and GMA3. Variety, which made the announcement, breathlessly rejoiced that “various ABC-owned stations may also contribute their own reports on findings in their area of coverage.”

So, what will ABC News be using as its source to back up the attack? False data from the Gun Violence Archive, long considered to be biased in favor of more gun regulations and controls.

Said Pierre Thomas, ABC News’ chief justice correspondent, “We hope this is going to give us a better sense of who, what, where and why and that people will walk away from this with a much better sense of what’s happening.” That would include, of course, according to Variety, “solutions that might help reduce gun violence.”

Those watching to the end will no doubt have their opinions formed in the cauldron of canards, misinformation, and distortions served up by Gun Violence Archive.

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Saving Our School Children from Dangerous Judges in Ohio

We do a lot to protect our children. We learn as new threats come along. The news media has bombarded us with messages saying that mass murder is common and increasing. Ordinary people like us feel a growing need to protect our families. That makes sense to me, but I’ve met some wonderful men and women who go further and put their lives on the line to save other people’s children. I listened to school staff who volunteered to protect their students. In their words, these teachers raised their hands and volunteered so they could protect “their kids”. That commitment and compassion is as serious as anything I’ve seen.

I wish you were there with me because my heart leapt when I saw these ordinary people take training so they could rush forward  and stop an attack at their school. They train themselves to put their body between our children and a murderer’s bullet. These amazing school staff and church staff care more about the lives of their students than their own lives. We are wonderfully rich that these ordinary heroes, our neighbors, care so much about our kids. Until recently, we got it right that these teachers may protect our kids the same way we would protect them if we were there. That changed when a few supreme court justices in Ohio disarmed the defenders. Now, we have to fix that. Heaven help them if these children are hurt.

Let’s put school safety into perspective. Mass murderers look for easy targets. They deliberately attack vulnerable people in locations where the intended victims are disarmed and unprotected. Schools and churches are common targets because these are seen as gun-free zones. In Ohio, they took significant steps to eliminate these gun free zones.

There are more than 1-and-a-half-million students in Ohio schools. When you add them up, there are about a hundred thousand schoolteachers in Ohio. After the horrific attacks on the staff and the students in the elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, thousands of teachers in Ohio volunteered, under then current Ohio Law to protect their students. They wanted to stop the murderer until the police arrived and took over. These volunteers wanted to stop the bleeding until emergency medical personnel arrived to take their place. That is inspiring.

Ohio voters also elected thousands of school board members. School boards get input from millions of parents. Those school boards listened to local parents and addressed the issue of protecting students. Hundreds of school boards in Ohio then worked with their sheriffs to put a safety plan in place. Together, they screened and trained volunteer staff to be armed first responders and to provide life saving critical trauma care. I’m inspired that thousands of people volunteer to protect our kids every day, not their kids, our kids.

The attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School happened over 8 years ago. Since then, the program in Ohio has accumulated over 2-million hours of real-world experience with these volunteer first responders. The program spread across 200 school districts in Ohio alone. The program did not stop at the Ohio border, the program was adopted in several other states. In Ohio, these trained first responders performed extremely well. until four justices made it illegal.

Politics is a real consideration, and elections have consequences. Unfortunately, there were considerable forces arrayed against the low information voter. Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg made large political donations to get anti-gun judges elected. Money talks, and Bloomberg got the judges and the results he wanted in Ohio. These justices said that school staff who were armed needed to first pass through a police academy before they could protect their students at school. That seems so odd since these same school staff members are permitted to protect those same students every other hour of the day as legal concealed carry license holders in Ohio.

The Ohio Senate passed several bills to remove the legal ambiguity the justices introduced. They confirmed that school boards could authorize selected school staff members to be first responders without going through four-months of police training. After being examined by their school board and sheriff, these trained volunteer school staff members could go armed as they worked. They could provide emergency trauma care without first being licensed as an emergency medical technician or a paramedic. Does that make sense?

You don’t have to be a trained firefighter to use a fire extinguisher in your home. You shouldn’t have to pass mandatory firefighting training to use a fire extinguisher where you work, either. You shouldn’t require EMT training to apply a tourniquet. Imposing that training puts us at greater risk rather than making us safer. The reason is simple. School janitors and cafeteria workers have done a fine job protecting children without first passing a course on high-performance driving in pursuit of a fleeing suspect as taught in police academies. We need more volunteers who will help, not fewer.

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A St. Joseph woman will not be charged in the shooting death of her husband because she was acting in self-defense, the Buchanan County Prosecutor said Friday.

ST. JOSEPH (AP) — A St. Joseph woman will not be charged in the shooting death of her husband because she was acting in self-defense, the Buchanan County Prosecutor said Friday.

Dawn Applegarth admitted to shooting her husband, Mark Applegarth, 60, at their home on May 7, authorities said.

Prosecutor Ron Holliday said investigators determined the shooting occurred because of domestic violence and Dawn Applegarth was in fear for her life or serious injury at the time.

Mark Applegarth was prosecuted for domestic abuse against his wife in January, according to online court records

An autopsy found methamphetamine and THC in his blood at the time of the shooting, The St. Joseph News-Press reported.

Police: Dale City homeowner acted in self-defense in non-fatal, July 6 shooting of suspected intruder

Prince William County police will not charge a Dale City homeowner who shot a man on his front porch who he encountered after hearing what sounded like someone trying to break into his house, police said Friday.

Detectives with the Prince William County Police Department’s violent crimes unit concluded an investigation into the July 6 shooting, which occurred in the 4300 block of Glendale Road in Dale City.

A 43-year-old man was shot but not fatally wounded during the incident.

In consultation with the Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office, the shooting was determined to have been an act of self-defense, according to 1st Sgt. Jonathan Perok, spokesman for the Prince William County Police Department.

Officers arrived at the home at about 9:55 p.m. on Tuesday, July 6, to find a 43-year-old man suffering from gunshot wounds. Upon questioning the homeowner, who was initially detained by police, officers learned the homeowner shot the man after he heard what sounded like someone trying to open his living room window and then heard someone on the porch and went outside to investigate, police said in a news release at the time of the incident.

The announcement comes just one day after a fatal shooting in Dale City that was determined to be a justified act of self defense.

Early Thursday, July 22, a 44-year-old woman shot and killed a masked man armed with a handgun who approached her from the side of her house in the 4100 block of Hoffman Drive.

The woman had left her home at about 12:25 a.m. that morning to walk her dog when she encountered the man, Perok said in a July 22 email.

Police have identified the victim of the fatal shooting as Azhar Laurent Smart, 20, of Triangle, according to a police press release.

I find it’s usually better performing bullets for serious social interactions

Expensive vs. Budget Ammo: What’s the Difference?

There are a number of things to take into consideration when selecting ammunition for concealed carry. Will it deliver the level of terminal performance you desire? Will it be reliable in your handgun? And how much money should you spend?

Of all these considerations, price is the least important, but also the element that is most often deliberated. This is partly because humans are opposed to paying for things they think are overpriced, and partly because money does not grow on trees.

Before we get into how much you should spend, let’s look at what ammunition actually costs. A major online retailer lists more than 200 loads for the 9 mm Luger cartridge. Prices range from as little as $0.24 to as much as $2.00 per round, begging the question as to whether one round of 9 mm Luger ammunition can actually be worth 10 times as much as another.

Bullet and Case Types

The least expensive loads will use non-reloadable steel cases and full-metal-jacket bullets. The most expensive loads will offer radical projectiles, some of questionable effectiveness, others will deliver +P levels of velocity, and some use bonded, barrier defeating bullets.

One of the most well-regarded lines of defensive handgun ammunition is the Speer Gold Dot. Forget pandemic pricing because it varies widely; the 124-grain 9 mm +P Speer Gold has a suggested retail price of $35.99 for 20, which equates to a per-round cost of $1.80 each. This load will perform well through intermediate barriers, and in 10-percent ordnance gelatin will penetrate to about 14 inches, while deforming with a frontal diameter sometimes as wide as 0.70-inch.

Federal HST ammo offers outstanding performance in the terminal performance category but is not the most affordable option.

On the other hand, Federal’s 9 mm Punch load will penetrate similarly, but will do so with less expansion, developing a frontal diameter of about 0.58-inch. The bullet Federal uses for the 9 mm Punch load is not bonded and it will not work as well after passing through intermediate barriers like plywood, wallboard, and auto glass.

However, for what most would consider general self-defense use, it should do the job. The Punch load was designed to deliver good terminal performance at a lesser expense, and it does. A 20-round box has a suggested retail price of only $22.99 for 20, or $1.15 per round.

Reliability in Your Handgun

We have and will continuously argue various levels and styles of terminal performance, as well as the importance of bullet design, bullet weight, and velocity. But let’s put all that aside for a moment. When selecting a self-defense load to trust your life to, only a fool would go out into the world with a load not proven to be reliable in their handgun.

What does it take to obtain that proof? Though some will disagree, if you can fire at least 100 rounds through your handgun conducting real-world type drills and experience zero stoppages, that’s a reasonable indication of acceptable reliability.

That means that in order to have confidence in reliability and to fill at least three defensive handgun magazines or revolver cylinders, and still have a few rounds left over, just in case, you’ll need to purchase about 200 rounds (10 boxes) of defensive handgun ammunition. If you purchase 200 rounds of Speer Gold Dots for your 9 mm you’ll spend $360. If you purchase 200 rounds of Federal Punch, you’ll spend $230. Because of the bonded Speer Gold Dot bullet and its ability to deal with intermediate barriers, most would consider it a better choice. But is it a $130 better choice?

Rotating Your Carry Ammo

If you’re like most police agencies, you’ll want to replace your carry ammo every year. I don’t think this is universally absolutely necessary, especially with the nickel-plated cases used with some of the more expensive offerings like God Dot. Still, you should at least inspect carry ammo every year and replace as necessary, probably at least every two to three years just to be safe. If you go with the expensive stuff like Gold Dots, the cost difference in replacing affordable and expensive ammo every year would only be $65 as opposed to $130, and in reality, actually a little less.

This is because you’ve already confirmed reliability with half of the initial 200 rounds you purchased. Unless you switch to a different load, there’s no need to go through that again; 100 as opposed to 200 new rounds is all you’ll need. Also, you’ll need to practice with your defensive handgun every year. When you replace your carry ammo, those 100 remaining rounds of carry ammo become practice ammo, so they’re not a total loss.

Granted, some expensive carry loads utilize gimmicky bullets that should probably only be fired at imaginary monsters. But most of the more costly carry loads are worth the extra cents per shot. Buffalo Bore ammo offers elevated velocities that can enhance terminal performance. Speer Gold Dot, Federal HST, and Barnes TACXPD loads, combine barrier defeating bonded or all-copper bullets with nickel- or Techni-Crom plated cases. They cost more because they are—even if just minutely—better.

Of course, if your budget is as tight as a banjo string, don’t feel like you have to be inadequately armed. Federal Punch and similarly priced loads like Hornady Critical Defense and Winchester USA Ready Defense, are capable of stopping the threat. And, these loads can become practice ammo too, if and when you step up to a more expensive option.

‘Thinking’?
He’s brain dead, Jim.

Biden’s Wishful Thinking On Gun Control Reveals Its Weakness

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Joe Biden would like to ban semi-automatic handguns as well as modern sporting rifles, though it is somewhat shocking that Biden would admit his desire in front of a live television audience. Maybe the president forgot where he was, or perhaps he figured if he revealed his big secret on CNN few people would be watching and paying attention, but either way, Biden’s remarks are getting a lot of traction in conservative media today.

I’m the only guy that ever got passed legislation, when I was a senator, to make sure we eliminated assault weapons. The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon, whether — whether it’s a .9 millimeter pistol or whether it’s a rifle, is ridiculous.

I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things. But I’m not likely to get that done in the near term. So here’s what I’ve done. The people who, in fact, are using those weapons are acquiring them illegally. Illegally.

And so what happens is, I’ve got the ATF… Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms, I have them increased their budget, increased their capacity along with the Justice Department, to go after the gun shops that are not abiding by the law and doing background checks. For real.

Biden’s right that he’s not likely to get a gun ban “done” in the near term. He’s also apparently forgotten that the Supreme Court has said that bans on classes of firearms like handguns violates the Constitution. Maybe he should read up on the Heller decision and skip his afternoon nap today. Even before the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns, however, the vast majority of the country never considered taking such a step. D.C. banned handguns in 1976, the same year voters in Massachusetts rejected a statewide ban on pistols. Chicago and a couple of its suburbs imposed their own handgun ban in the early 1980s, but the idea never really caught on in even the most Democrat-dominated cities.

The president isn’t just out of step with most Americans in his anti-gun extremism, he’s lying to them by demonizing federal firearms licensees and blaming them for the actions of criminals.

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Missouri Teachers, CRT Advocate Plotted to Hide Social Justice Curriculum from ‘Trump Country’ Parents.

Teachers questioned how they could teach history and social studies through a social justice lens without rankling parents in the ‘highly conservative county … in the middle of Trump country.’

The curriculum-writing team in a suburban St. Louis school district plotted with a critical race theory advocate on how to keep parents in the dark about their efforts to inject leftwing social justice advocacy into their classrooms, according to a video of their meeting leaked online.

The video, posted on rumble.com in early July, is alleged to be a condensed version of a September 2020 webinar that members of the Francis Howell School District’s curriculum-writing team participated in. The webinar was hosted by their equity consultant, LaGarrett J. King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University of Missouri. He was described on the call as a specialist in the study of “race, critical theories and knowledge.”

It’s unclear who edited the video, which appears to have been posted anonymously by someone with the online moniker “wokeatfhsd.”

During the webinar, King told the predominantly white team members that “This is not a safe space,” but rather a “racialized space,” because “In many ways a safe space is a space where white people tell us how not racist they are. And this is not that space.”

King said “the first thing we have to understand is that our social studies and our history curriculum is political and racist,” and “there is no such thing as neutral history.” He then asked the team members to question whether they are developing black history curriculums through the historical lens of the oppressor. “We have made those who have oppressed people, the oppressor, we have humanized them,” he said.

The nation’s founding “means nothing to black people,” he said, calling history “psychologically violent” but one-sided. He also seemed to justify violence in the name of racial justice.

“All of our wars was about freedom, violence,” King said. “But yet, when black people say, ‘Hey … we need to take over, man. We need to burn this place down, we need to do this, we need to do that.’ ‘Oh no, you should do non-violence to achieve freedom.’ It’s silly. It’s prejudice.”

During a question-and-answer portion of the webinar, teachers and staff on the call questioned how they could reframe their classes to look at history and social studies through a more racialized social justice lens without rankling parents in the “highly conservative” community, which one teacher described as “the middle of Trump country.” King agreed that teachers could do away with verbiage like “white privilege,” while still getting the progressive message across to students.

“Kids are way more open,” she said, “but then they go home and they tell their parents, and then their parents get upset. I don’t advertise to my students when I’m teaching U.S. history that sometimes I would consider myself the anti-U.S. history teacher.”

Another white teacher said because they teach in a conservative county, “Sometimes I think we have deferred to letting that stop progress. We let noise keep progress from moving forward.”

In a paper he co-authored in 2018, King acknowledged that critical theory was developed in the 1920s by German thinkers who “sought to extend Marxist theory into the changing social, political, and economic landscape of the twentieth century by talking about how culture and ideology encourage and sustain social inequality.” In order to “remain true to critical pedagogy,” the authors wrote, “teachers should work to identify questions that are important to students’ lives and that encourage them to reflect on the ways that they are either privileged or oppressed by social dynamics.”

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Gainesville Spree Shooter Used Stolen Guns

The media tells us mass shootings are on the rise, that such shootings are happening several times a day. We just can’t keep up with all of these shootings. This, we’re told, is evidence that we need more gun control. However, what about the number of these shooters using stolen guns?

See, I ask because I wrote about a shooting in Tucson over the weekend where the shooter was a felon and couldn’t legally own a firearm. That weapon was most likely a stolen firearm bought off the black market. We don’t know for certain about that yet.

We do know about a shooting in Gainesville, Florida, though.

Shortly after five teens were shot during a party at Gainesville’s American Legion hall June 24, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office recovered a gun used in the shooting.
It had been stolen in Alachua, yet another filched weapon to be used in the ongoing gun violence committed by teens or young adults.
“These kids can’t go into a gun dealer, put their ID on a table and say ‘I want to buy that gun.’ And felons cannot possess guns. Because of that, they have to get them illegitimately,” Gainesville Police Chief Tony Jones said. “We know several guns were used (in the American Legion shooting). They could be out on the street now.”……..…
Everytown For Gun Safety, a nonprofit gun control advocacy group, reports on its website that theft does play a sizable role. It cites several studies.
“Gun thefts often divert guns into an underground market where people with dangerous histories are easily able to obtain firearms without restriction,” Everytown states. “That is why stolen guns are often recovered at crime scenes, including at the scenes of homicides and other violent crimes.”
Gainesville attorney Robert Rush, who is representing one of the children wounded at the American Legion, said his experience shows that stolen guns are often used in crimes and often get resold or passed around to be used in other crimes — an observation backed up by police.
Rush said he has found data that a stolen gun will be used in a homicide within a year — which has been borne out in cases he has taken on.

In other words, even Everytown agrees that stolen guns represent the lion’s share of the problem. However, as I noted with the Tuscon story on Tuesday, the media uses statistics like those found at the Gun Violence Archive and presents those uncritically, as if they tell the whole story. However, many of those so-called mass shootings aren’t. They’re criminal shootings like this and they use stolen guns.

Meanwhile, some will try and use those statistics to justify more gun control when even Everytown admits that many of these firearms are stolen from lawful and law-abiding gun owners.

Remember that when the subject comes up.

The truth of the matter is that the majority of crimes are committed with firearms that were obtained illegally. That’s why so many of us are skeptical of the idea that gun control will somehow impact criminals rather than us, the law-abiding gun owners and gun buyers. After all, it never has before, so why would it now?

Even when talking about the supposed hundreds of mass shootings reported in the media, gun control didn’t stop many of those, as we can see here.

Remember; he has the launch codes.

How does he not know this is completely untrue?
He’s brain dead, that’s how.

Question:
When will children under 12 be able to get ‘vaccinated’?
Answer:
Duuuuuuuhhhh

 

McCarthy Pulls His Five Republicans From Riot Commission After Pelosi Rejects Conservative Reps

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s five choices to sit on the select committee that will investigate the riot at the Capitol on January 6.

Pelosi said that Ranking Judiciary Committee Member Jim Jordan — a close ally of Donald Trump — and Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks cannot be on the committee because they might jeopardize “the integrity of the investigation.”

She said it with a straight face so I guess she thinks it’s true.

For his part, McCarthy threatened to pull all the GOP members from the Committee unless Pelosi changed her mind.

“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision.”

The appointment of Trump supporters would ruin everything. No one is supposed to defend Trump or the Republicans. The GOP members will be present in order to give a patina of “bipartisanship” to the proceedings.

As CNN points out, because there is one Republican who has agreed to be on the committee — Liz Cheney — it will still be “bipartisan.” McCarthy won’t be able to pull her off the committee.

The committee will still have Republican representation from one member: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump who was one of Pelosi’s eight choices to serve on the committee. Cheney’s participation keeps the committee bipartisan even without anyone appointed by McCarthy.

It’s still bipartisan even though no real Republicans will be there because CNN says so.

So there.

McCarthy issued his own statement, taking the high ground and saying, “We will not participate.”

“Denying the voices of members who have served in the military and law enforcement, as well as leaders of standing committees, has made it undeniable that this panel has lost all legitimacy and credibility,” he said. “Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”

Washington Post:

A senior Democratic aide familiar with caucus deliberations said many Democratic members were concerned about Banks and Jordan sitting on the committee, based on their past actions and statements. Particularly, members expressed outrage with Banks’s statement in which he blamed “the Left’s authoritarian agenda” for politicizing the committee’s scope. Reports that Jordan had aided then-President Donald Trump in strategizing about how to overturn the election, and the possibility of him testifying before the committee because he spoke to Trump on Jan. 6, made him an unreliable panelist, according to the aide.

Like CNN, the media will claim the proceedings are still “bipartisan” because Cheney — who was appointed to the committee by Pelosi, not McCarthy — will continue to serve. It’s one thing to stand up for your beliefs but quite another to actively seek to undermine your own political party.

This is not about impeachment. It’s about the integrity of Congress, which is threatened by this partisan attempt to destroy Trump and the Republican Party. That Cheney can’t or won’t see that should result in her being kicked out of the Republican caucus.

Would-be robbers shot by armed shoppers in Los Angeles

A man armed with a handgun defended himself during an attempted robbery in Los Angeles, and left two suspects with bullet wounds to the legs, police say.

“Words were apparently exchanged, and the victim ultimately produces a handgun, apparently to defend himself and others in his group from the would-be robbery suspects. The victim fired his weapon towards the suspects and then all parties immediately fled the location,” the Los Angeles Police Department recounted in a press release Tuesday.

The attempted robbery unfolded Monday on Melrose Ave. when two men exited an idling Dodge Avenger, with one of the men producing a handgun.

Video footage shows the men confronting a man with a shopping bag and two women who were standing on the parking lot.

The male victim, who was reportedly the target of the robbery, produced his own handgun and sent the two suspects running as he opened fire.

Police arrested and identified the two suspects as Nicholas Brown and Markeil Hayes, both of Los Angeles, and said they were both booked on attempted robbery and are currently on parole.

Brown sustained a gunshot to the upper left thigh while Hayes was shot in the right calf. Police are still searching for the third suspect and asking the public for help tracking him down.

“The Los Angeles Police Department is aggressively addressing a rise in violent crime in the Melrose area over the past year and is pursuing all leads involved in this and other crimes,” police added in the press release.

Police did not immediately return Fox News’s request for additional comment on the crime.

Homicides in Los Angeles are up 25% this year, with South Los Angeles seeing a 50% increase in killings.

The LA Times Gets It Wrong on Gun Rights

The Los Angeles Times had an editorial yesterday whose title pretty much says it all: “18-Year-Olds Shouldn’t Have the Right to Buy Guns.”

So, let me see if I correctly understand the Times’s position. An 18-year-old woman is walking down a dark street at night. She is accosted by a much bigger, stronger man who violently grabs her. He is armed with a gun and threatens to kill her if she resists. She isn’t armed because of the Times‘s gun-control law that prohibits 18-year-olds, including women, from buying guns. He proceeds to tear her clothes off and rape her. Hoping that she won’t be killed, she submits to the rape. 

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, in its editorial the Times failed to answer an important question: How is that 18-year-old woman supposed to defend herself against that rapist?  

What the Times is essentially advocating is a law that prevents people from defending themselves against rapists and murderers. That 18-year-old woman might not be physically strong enough to resist that rapist, but with one Glock 19 that she pulls out of her purse, things are now equalized. Now it doesn’t matter how much bigger and stronger her rapist is. She can stop him from raping her with just one bullet fired into his abdomen.

Why shouldn’t that 18-year-old woman have the right to defend herself against that rapist? Why should she be required to submit to the rape or else be murdered?

The Times writes:

True, the right to puff on cigarettes or drink alcohol is not written into the U.S. Constitution. But neither is a guarantee that the right to bear arms goes with being a particular age.

Lamentably, those two sentences reflect a woeful lack of understanding of people’s rights and the Constitution. Rights don’t come from the Constitution. They preexist both the Constitution and the federal government that the Constitution called into existence. 

Remember: We just celebrated the Fourth of July, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was published in 1776. That document expressed the revolutionary truth that people’s rights come from nature and God, not from government and not from some document that calls government into existence.

The Constitution never purported to establish people’s rights. It simply called into existence a government whose powers were limited to those few powers that were enumerated in the Constitution itself. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it could not be exercised.

Extremely leery about this new government, the American people demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights, which expressly protects the citizenry from the federal government. Contrary to popular belief, however, especially in the mainstream press, people’s rights also don’t come from the Bill of Rights. The First and Second Amendments, for example, do not give people the rights of free speech, religious liberty, freedom of assembly, and the right to keep and bear arms. Instead, they prohibit the federal government from infringing on these fundamental rights. 

In fact, what many in the mainstream press fail to recognize is that if the Bill of Rights had never been enacted, people would still have the rights of free speech, religious liberty, freedom of assembly, and the right to keep and bear arms. That’s because people’s natural, God-given rights preexist government.

Oddly, in its editorial the Times didn’t advocate a minimum age of 21 for military service. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the military permit 18-year-old men to handle guns and even orders them to use automatic weapons to kill people in faraway lands who have never committed any act of violence against the United States? Why does the Times trust those 18-year-olds with guns and not private 18-year-olds?

Finally, in its editorial the Times unfortunately failed to call for an end to the root cause of much of the violence in American society — the much-vaunted war on drugs that unfortunately much of the mainstream press continues to support, notwithstanding the massive violence it has been producing for some 50 years. Rather than prohibit 18-year-olds from defending themselves, why not end this horrific government program and then see if gun violence is still a major problem in America?

 

 

Veterans no longer required to pay fees for concealed carry

ONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) – Veterans will now have an easier time getting their concealed carry license, thanks to a new law that goes into effect next week.

Beginning July 28, veterans and active-duty military will no longer have to pay fees to obtain their concealed carry license.

Logan Lee, the owner and head instructor at 141 Shooting Range, says he has taught several veterans over his career and believes that this decision from Arkansas lawmakers is a no-brainer.

“I feel like carrying a handgun is a God-given right protected by our Constitution,” Lee said. “And that’s what our service members do. They go out there and help preserve our government, our constitutional rights, and if we can make it a little easier for them; they already paid an awesome price for us, why not extend that olive branch out a little bit and let’s take away the fee for them.”

The law is one part of the Arkansas legislature’s effort to reinforce Second Amendment rights, paired with the new Stand Your Ground law that Governor Asa Hutchinson signed in May.

Lee also said that veterans still must go through background checks and the appropriate training but hopes it will help service members across the state.

This week’s global warming predictions.

Every single day, there is something alarming in the news about climate change.  Click on any headline about a natural disaster like a forest fire or a flood or a hurricane, and there will be dire warnings in the article about how this particular phenomenon is worse than ever before because of climate change.  Google the words “climate change,” and you can learn about how it is making poison ivy itchier, glaciers smaller, and the world generally less pleasant to live in.  It is even being theorized that there could be a connection between earthquakes and climate change.

What I don’t understand is why climate change is seen as a bad thing.  It’s normal for the climate to change.  Millions of years before the dinosaurs, the Earth was a solid ball of ice.  During the time of the dinosaurs, there was no ice at all.  The planet continued to cool off and warm up, all without human intervention, and when humans did come along, they adapted to changes in the climate.  Up until the 20th century, nobody thought that a change in the weather warranted prophesying the end of the world.

Today, there is constant alarmism.  The media trumpet melting glaciers and how the rising sea levels will wipe out whole countries, ignoring the fact that 30% of the Netherlands was once underwater.  Is it only in the Netherlands that water management can maintain human habitation?  I think not.  Polar bears are seen to be of special concern, with fears that melting ice will cause them to go extinct, yet according to the World Wildlife Fund, they still exist in their original habitat, range, and natural numbers.  Such being the case, I take leave to doubt that climate change is wiping out polar bears.

In short, not a single horror that has been predicted for the 21st century because of a changing climate has come to pass.  The human race is adapting, as it has always adapted, to new weather conditions.  The planet may warm up, as it has done in the past, and after it warms up, it will cool off, as it has done in the past.  There’s nothing frightening about that simple fact of nature.  The only thing I’ve ever found disconcerting about climate change is the number of people who accept the distressing predictions, without noticing how those predictions get pushed back several decades when they don’t come to pass.