Remains Of Four Pearl Harbor Sailors ID’d as Nation Marks 79th Anniversary of Attacks.

Officially, the U.S. death toll in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor is 2,403. But the books have yet to be closed on identifying the available remains of more than 150 of those killed on what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a “day that will live in infamy.”

Ahead of remembrance ceremonies in Hawaii on the 79th anniversary of the attacks, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Dec. 1 that the remains of four more sailors from that day had been identified, including two brothers.

Navy Fire Controlman 2nd Class Harold F. Trapp, 24, and his brother, Navy Electrician’s Mate 3rd Class William H. Trapp, 23, both of La Porte, Indiana, were killed aboard the battleship Oklahoma.

Navy Chief Carpenter’s Mate Tedd M. Furr, 39, of Mobile, Alabama, also served on the Oklahoma, while Navy Seaman 1st Class Carl S. Johnson, 20, of Phoenix, Arizona, served on the battleship West Virginia, DPAA said. Continue reading “”

Mexico Proves More Gun Control Does Not Mean Less Crime

Recently The Washington Post published an article depicting the rampant organized crime crisis in Mexico. There is no question that the crime and violence fueled by drug cartels in our southern neighbor are major problems for Mexico, the United States and for the global community. However, the authors make a mistake typical of the gun control crowd; they blame the firearm rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for the problems in Mexico.

Cartels are becoming bolder, showcasing weapons and drugs in videos used to not only attract potential recruits but also threaten those who might oppose them. Mexican officials who articulate their frustration in the article are very quick to blame cartel activity on their pro-gun northern neighbor and the authors are more than eager to parrot these inaccurate sentiments in the article.

The misplaced blame is unfortunate because the right solutions cannot be implemented if the problem is not correctly identified. If firearm rights are the problem, why does the United States not face a similar level of cartel-related violence? Particularly under President Trump, crimes are prosecuted. The government enforces the law. Making the United States more like Mexico, with its clearly ineffective gun control policies, will not solve Mexico’s problem and is surely not a successful model for the U.S. to follow. Continue reading “”

I often think about giving these over-educated morons exactly what they’re asking for. Then I consider that it would also mean that there will be no one to enforce gun laws….decisions, decisions.

Ivy League librarians demand a ‘world without policing’

A group of 13 “abolitionist librarians” from Ivy League universities who call themselves “AbLA Ivy+” is demanding that their colleagues “immediately begin the work of divesting from police and prisons.”

The Association of Research Libraries released a statement in support of “protests against police brutality” in June. It called on “leaders of libraries and archives to examine our institutions’ role in sustaining systems of inequity.”

The statement demands that “material resources are procured and highlighted to chronicle the history of white supremacy, oppression of marginalized peoples, and the laws and policies that create systemic inequities” as well as attention to hiring those “who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color.”

In a more recent statement, AbLA Ivy+ claims that while these actions should be “applauded,” they “have not gone far enough.” The group wants Ivy League librarians to “explicitly name policing itself as the problem” and take actions that will lead to the “complete abolition of law enforcement.” Continue reading “”

Personal Defense During the Holidays

Here we are, once again, entering the Holiday Season—the most stressful time of the year for most folks—in a year like no other year any of us has ever experienced or expected. What that means for folks like us is that we’ve got to really increase our awareness and keep personal defense in the forefront of our minds at all times.

We know that robberies and home invasions increase during these last days of the year. But you also have to realize that ordinarily good folks are getting awfully stressed out. They’ll be letting their anger and frustrations get the best of them. They’ll do stupid things. And they will do things that place other’s lives in danger.

We can begin by recognizing that we, too, can become overly frustrated and angered. Talking with the family about finding ways to avoid stress is a really good place to start. Often, just supporting each other is a good way to keep that stress level within bounds. And we can also make a concerted effort to remain polite and courteous to everyone, strangers included. When a person loses his temper, he has also weakened his defense level.

The holidays are also a good time to review the personal defense plan, especially the need for being aware of what is going on around us. We also need to make sure that we are communicating regularly with other family members and that we know each other’s location at all times. When another family member is especially stressed or not feeling well, we need to be there to pick up the slack, carry some of their load for them.

And this is also not the time to let your pistol practice wane. Yep, I know that ammunition is difficult to come by but that just means that you need to increase the time you spend in dry practice. Practicing the basics—draw stroke, flash sight picture, trigger press—can also still be honed during dry practice. And you might want to do it while wearing that heavy coat and winter gloves that you’ll be wearing when you go out.

Getting serious about our personal defense and having a solid personal defense plan does not have to hamper our enjoyment of the holidays. Once these principles become ingrained in our everyday lives, we can enjoy ourselves and still be careful. You say you haven’t gotten around to developing a personal defense plan and discussing it with your family? Well, now is an awfully good time to start it.

You can’t avoid being a target, but you can decide if you are going to be an easy target or a hard target.

So find ways to keep the stress within due bounds. Make it a point to put a smile on your face at the same time that your head is on a swivel. Focus on your family and the other stuff that really matters and you’ll likely get through these trying times successfully.

Mandatory Voting Is Authoritarian

After the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an exceptionally unpopular op-ed for The Washington Post headlined, “We must weed out ignorant Americans from the electorate.” In it, I noted that “never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.”

My assumption has always been that the Post only accepted the piece because its editors believed I was aiming my criticism exclusively at the right-wing populists who had just voted for Donald Trump. If so, they were wrong. My skepticism extends to all sides.

And to all elections. Indeed, today, the problem is even more severe. More Americans voted in 2020 than ever before even though the winner, Joe Biden, was rarely impelled to answer a substantive question on policy or even to show himself in public.

2020 might have featured the most vacuous campaigns in American history. This is what “democracy” looks like when propelled by fearmongering, ignorance, and the “common impulse of passion,” as James Madison warned. I mean that all around.

We encourage Americans to vote as if it is the only right of a citizen, without any corresponding expectations. And as if that constant cultural haranguing to vote weren’t annoying enough, after every election, no matter how many people participate, there is a campaign to force everyone to do it.

“America Needs Compulsory Voting,” writes a professor in Foreign Affairs. “A Little Coercion Can Do a Lot for Democracy.” “1 In 3 Americans Didn’t Vote. Should We Force Them To Next Time?” asks BuzzFeed.

Ideally, in a free nation, the answer to “Should we force them?” is almost always “no.” But for the folks at places such as the Brookings Institution and Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, the answer is almost always “yes.”

In July, these think tanks laid out their case for mandatory voting in a report titled “Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Duty Voting.” I wish I could whip up an equally anodyne euphemism for “ugly authoritarian instinct,” but none immediately comes to mind.

None of this is new, of course. Over the years, we’ve seen similar columns in The New York Times and Time.

Obama administration officials such as Peter Orszag, an advocate of compelling everyone to buy state-mandated health insurance, were arguing that the United States “prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults.”

Maybe the lesson here is that we should pride ourselves on how many freedoms we enjoy rather than how people vote.

“The hope is not that the United States of America tomorrow morning is going to adopt this,” E. J. Dionne, who is a Georgetown University professor of government, a Washington Post columnist, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told BuzzFeed, “but we do hope that cities, counties, states would take a look at this and perhaps adopt it experimentally, the way, say, Maine has adopted instant runoffs.”

Some of us do not share the hopes of Dionne, a longtime proponent of forcing Americans to do all sorts of things.

The Constitution makes no stipulation that citizens must vote. It doesn’t even mention voting as an individual right. We have no civic duty to vote. I haven’t voted for president since 2000. I haven’t voted at all since 2004.

For me, this is a proactive political choice. But maybe some Americans don’t vote because they are anarchists, or monarchists, or nihilists. Some Americans might not be satisfied with any of their choices. Some might rather be watching cartoons. It’s none of Dionne’s business.

The last thing we should do is make those who aren’t interested, motivated, or feel unprepared to make sound decisions act against their will.

Whenever I mention that compelling people to participate in the political system is authoritarian, someone will ridicule me by noting that voting is the hallmark of “democracy.”

One wonders if citizens of, say, Hong Kong, who had no real vote as British colonial subjects for 150 years, feel freer today than they did 30 years ago.

Sure, mandatory voting exists in Australia and Belgium. But it also exists in Bolivia, Congo, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, and Lebanon. In fact, historically speaking, authoritarian states often adopt compulsory voting as a way of creating a false sense of democratic legitimacy. If you’re compelling people to participate, you’re not doing “democracy.”

2020 saw record turnout—though calling it a “turnout” is a bit misleading since the involvement was largely a function of states’ haphazardly mailing out paper ballots to everyone.

All mandatory-voting advocates are doing is further degrading the importance of elections and incentivizing more demagoguery.

If they truly believed democracy was sacred—rather than a way to accumulate power—they’d want Americans to put more effort into voting for the president than they do in ordering Chinese takeout. And they certainly wouldn’t want to force anyone to do it.

 

First-time gun buyers projected to top 8M: Smith & Wesson
Women are making up 40% of new buyers

Background checks, a metric for gun sales, are hitting an all-time high in 2020, and nearly half of the purchases being made this year are by first-time firearm owners, firearm manufacturer Smith & Wesson said Thursday.

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To date, nearly 8 million Americans have already decided to “exercise their Second Amendment rights for the first time,” chief executive Mark Smith told analysts in an earnings call.

For their findings, the company cited data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which estimated that 40% of the tens of thousands of firearm purchases in 2020 are coming from first-time owners.

Smith noted that these new purchases are further “broadening and diversifying” its consumer base and are an indicator of the long-term vitality of the industry as a whole.

Smith said NSSF data indicated that “women are making up 40% of new buyers and overall firearm purchases by African Americans are outpacing all other demographics with 58% growth in the first half of the year alone through June.” Continue reading “”

Lawmakers set to expand gun rights in Ohio, DeWine’s reform plan unlikely to pass

Gov. Mike DeWine’s package of gun reforms appears unlikely to pass the Statehouse this session, but lawmakers are poised to permit armed Ohioans to stand their ground in public settings and use deadly force in self-defense.

Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp, R-Lima, said he plans to move House Bill 796 “as soon as possible,” which could be as soon as next week.

Currently, Ohioans have a “duty to retreat” from dangerous situations, if possible, before using force in self-defense. HB796, sponsored by state Rep. Kyle Koehler, R-Springfield, would eliminate that duty. Continue reading “”

Well, it appears to me that all those ‘new guns’ in the hands of all those ‘new gun owners’ hasn’t resulted in much, if any, increase in the ooltra-ooltra violence some people believe guns – in and of themselves – cause.

The impact of Pierce County’s pandemic-related gun sales may surprise you


The bulk ammunition shelves at Columbia Gun Rack in downtown Kennewick, Wash. are mostly barren from a continued surge in purchases during the coronavirus pandemic.

Not all businesses have been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the nation gun stores are doing brisk business, and here in Pierce County, firearm sales have more than doubled in 2020.

Inventory is flying off the shelves, according to Damien Wongwai, owner and operator of Bull’s Eye Indoor Range in Puyallup. He told a member of the Editorial Board that first-time buyers, fueled by pandemic fears, make up a large percentage of his sales.

It’s important to remember that behind every gun purchase is a real person, with a real family, and due to the fallout of COVID-19 restrictions, they’re potentially going through a life altering experience. Gun safety measures have never been more important.

Pierce County recorded 20,181 firearms transfer applications (FTAs.) in 2019. To date, that number is well-past 44,000, and according to South Sound 911, those FTAs don’t reflect the total number of new firearms in circulation. There can be multiple weapons transferred under one application.

But do guns, guns and more guns also mean an increase in gun-related injuries and deaths? Call it the great unintended experiment of 2020, because we’re about to find out.

A study conducted this year by the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center concluded that “During the coronavirus pandemic, an acute increase in firearm access is associated with an increase in firearm violence.”

But that’s not the calculus playing out in Pierce County, not yet, anyway. Continue reading “”

Employee at Akron Metro PCS store shoots robber who pulled out gun

AKRON, Ohio (WOIO) – A man who pulled out a gun during a robbery at an Akron MetroPCS store Tuesday night was shot by an employee who pulled out a gun of his own, Akron police said.

The robbery happened just before 8 p.m. at the MetroPCS store on Main Street in Akron.

According to Akron police, the suspect entered the store, pulled out a handgun, and took money from the cash register.

The suspect then tried to get access to the safe.

That’s when a MetroPCS employee pulled out his own handgun and fired multiple shots at the subject before running from the store.

Officers took the suspect into custody when they arrived on scene.

The suspect had been hit by at least one shot and is in the hospital where he is in serious, but stable, condition, police said.

‘Hillbilly Elegy’ critics show they still despise ‘deplorables.’

Elites won’t allow any sympathy for poor whites

Netflix’s new adaptation of JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” is devastating for the left’s political narrative. How do I know that? Because so many leftists are trying to keep people from watching it.

Critics complain that the movie has too many noble country folk — though neither Vance’s 2016 memoir nor the film version is exactly focused on nobility as such. They even gripe that the autobiography of a white guy from the hill country doesn’t have any major black characters. Well, yes.

For a film made out of a bestselling book by a well-known liberal filmmaker (Ron Howard) and featuring Glenn Close, Amy Adams and Gabriel Besso, the movie seems surprisingly controversial. And why? Because, as I mentioned above, it’s devastating for the left’s political narrative. Continue reading “”

Is Left Starting To Understand Where NRA Stances Come From?

The National Rifle Association is the boogieman for the anti-gun left in this country. During the recent campaigns, plenty of politicians talk about how they were going to stand up to the NRA, how they were going to put the NRA in their place.

This is the same NRA that’s embattled at every flank, of course, yet still apparently managed to pose enough opposition to prevent a $100 billion effort by Micahel Bloomberg and company from yielding any fruits. At least, that’s what happened if you believe the NRA is the only barrier to anti-gun Utopia.

However, it seems that some on the left are starting to brush up against the understanding that the NRA isn’t what they need to worry about. Continue reading “”

Interstate shootings don’t surprise police, who say streets are flooded with guns

ST. LOUIS – Two interstate shootings Monday have people wondering if they’re safe anywhere. But they are just the beginning of the violence police say they’re seeing every day.

“The streets are absolutely flooded with stolen guns,” Maryland Heights Police Chief Bill Carson said.

The chief said many of them are coming from legal gun owners who are carrying them in their cars. Carson said it’s so prevalent now that criminals are confident they’ll find a gun when breaking into a car. He said the criminals are “looking specifically for guns. They’re finding guns and a lot of times when we encounter them, they are armed with guns they’ve stolen out of cars.” Continue reading “”

I’ll take: Why do lawyers always seem to find ways for their fellow lawyers to make a living?

Why Does the ABA Have a Standing Committee on ‘Gun Violence’?

Darin Scheer is a general commercial litigation attorney in rural Casper, Wyoming, where he lives on a small cattle farm with his wife. As a volunteer firefighter, he has responded to suicides and accidental shootings.

He is an [American Bar Association] delegate for his state. At the 2020 midyear meeting in Austin, Texas, he objected to a resolution in favor of stricter rules for gun permits.

“I don’t think that the ABA should be in the business of recommending one-size-fits-all, top-down requirements for an issue like this that is constitutional,” Scheer said before the House passed the resolution.

What’s often lost in the decades-long fight over gun rights and laws is that Americans’ relationship to guns differs depending on where they live, Scheer says. He says people in his community do not buy guns just for self-defense. There is a tradition of fathers passing rifles down to their sons and teaching them how to hunt. Scheer says it sometimes appears to gun owners that constitutional rights are trampled because of the “irresponsible behavior of the few.”

Is there space in the middle to meet? J. Adam Skaggs, a special advisor to the ABA’s Standing Committee on Gun Violence and chief counsel and policy director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, says it is hard to find common ground when the gun rights side is pushing “an extremist agenda in the courts.” On the other hand, he says gun control advocates have much in common with Americans who support reasonable regulations.

“I think the central argument is that like all other rights, the Second Amendment is not unlimited and has always coexisted with strong regulations and laws,” Skaggs says. “That’s no different today than it was at any other point in history.”

SKYROCKETING MURDERS IN MAJOR CITIES UNDERSCORE GUN CONTROL DISASTER

BELLEVUE, WA – Skyrocketing murder rates in several major American cities with strict gun laws offer hard evidence that gun control isn’t just a failed policy, it’s a disaster, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

More than 700 people have been murdered in Chicago so far this year. Baltimore’s total is above 335, and Philadelphia has logged more than 450 slayings. Even relatively benign Seattle has nearly doubled the number of homicides it reported for all of 2019, a fact not lost on CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. So far this year, the Jet City has seen 55 murders, while 2019 produced 28 slayings.

“Seattle is a textbook example of horribly failed policies,” Gottlieb said. “The city council just slashed the police department’s budget following months of civil unrest, vandalism, property destruction and rising crime. Five years ago, the city adopted a gun and ammunition tax to finance a so-called ‘gun violence reduction’ program that drove business out of the city and obviously hasn’t prevented any violent crime. The city adopted a ‘safe storage’ mandate for gun owners. It has also obviously failed, and is currently being challenged in court by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association.

“Ironically,” he noted, “the city is headquarters to a billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group that has bankrolled two extremist gun control initiatives. The rising body count is proof positive their anti-gun-rights crusade has been an unmitigated failure.”

CCRKBA checked Seattle homicide data back more than a decade. Over the 12-year period from 2008 to 2019, the city averaged just over 24 slayings annually.

“It’s time for the gun control lobby to admit its schemes have all failed, and for the city, and the state, to change course dramatically,” Gottlieb said. “Laws that penalize honest citizens while being ignored by criminals don’t accomplish anything and they should be scrapped.

“Seattle anti-gunners like to boast about how progressive they are,” he observed. “If doubling the number of murders is their idea of progress, maybe we should all go back to living in log cabins.”

CCRKBA Director of Operations Julianne Versnel said there may be a “silver lining” to Seattle’s foolish response of cutting police funding and pushing stricter gun control.

“People living in adjoining communities will see criminals going into Seattle to commit crimes,” she said, “and leave suburbs alone.”

Resident of Home Shoots and Kills Armed Suspect in the 17600 block of Fenton

DETROIT, MI – On Monday, November 30th, 2020, at approximately 7:00 p.m., in the 17600 block of Fenton, the 22-year-old male suspect, armed with a long gun, entered a home without permission.

Once inside, he confronted an occupant of the home at gunpoint. At some point during the incident, the resident, who is a CPL holder, produced his handgun and fired multiple shots at the 22-year-old male suspect, striking and fatally wounding him.

Medics responded to the location and pronounced the 22-year-old man dead at the scene. Officers recovered both weapons from the scene.

The homeowner was detained for questioning. The circumstances surrounding this incident are still being investigated.

Detroit woman shoots home invader in attic after warning

Detroit — A 19-year-old man was shot in the leg Tuesday night on Detroit’s east side by a homeowner who allegedly found him in her attic, police said.

Shots were fired about 9 p.m. in a home on the 16600 block of Fairmont, said Latrice Crawford, a spokeswoman for Detroit Police Department. That’s north of East State Fair and west of Kelly.

A man was allegedly spotted on surveillance camera entering the home earlier in the day, but was never seen inside or found.

That night, the homeowner, 38, heard noises. She grabbed a gun and moved toward the sound.

It was coming from the attic.

Police say she entered the attic and warned whoever was there to show themselves. When he did not, and she saw movement, she fired and struck the man.

When officers arrived, they applied a tourniquet and then medics transported him to a hospital. He is listed in stable condition and is in police custody.

When medically able, police will transport him to Detroit Detention Center.

Democracy Has Been Destroying the 2nd Amendment
If the United States truly operated as a Republic, there would be no worries about any laws being passed to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

“Save our Democracy!” editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books Roger Kimball writes in a commentary piece for The Tennessee Star. Kimball, like many of us, is anxious about the officially unresolved-at-this writing election results and believes he has a way to help President Donald Trump turn the tide in his favor.

“Donald Trump needs to mobilize the public with a series of high-profile ‘Save Our Democracy’ rallies,” Kimball declares. “I suspect that such Save Our Democracy rallies would attract tens of thousands of people, just as Trump’s campaign rallies did these past weeks.

“Save Our Democracy!” Kimball proclaims. “It has a ring to it. I hope team Trump will consider organizing a bunch of them now, today.”

It does have a ring to it, one that falls flat with those who pay attention to such matters. We are a republic, not a democracy. The “D”-word appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, and more importantly, nowhere in the Constitution, which instead proclaims “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

Kimball’s not the only well-intentioned friend who seems to think the distinction is not worth raising. Continue reading “”

Walter E. Williams 1936-2020

Walter Williams loved teaching. Unlike too many other teachers today, he made it a point never to impose his opinions on his students. Those who read his syndicated newspaper columns know that he expressed his opinions boldly and unequivocally there. But not in the classroom.

Walter once said he hoped that, on the day he died, he would have taught a class that day. And that is just the way it was, when he died on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.

He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone.

But his death is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.

As an economist, Walter Williams never got the credit he deserved. His book “Race and Economics” is a must-read introduction to the subject. Amazon has it ranked 5th in sales among civil rights books, 9 years after it was published.

Another book of his, on the effects of economics under the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa, was titled “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism.” He went to South Africa to study the situation directly. Many of the things he brought out have implications for racial discrimination in other places around the world.

I have had many occasions to cite Walter Williams’ research in my own books. Most of what others say about higher prices in low income neighborhoods today has not yet caught up to what Walter said in his doctoral dissertation decades ago.

Despite his opposition to the welfare state, as something doing more harm than good, Walter was privately very generous with both his money and his time in helping others.

He figured he had a right to do whatever he wanted to with his own money, but that politicians had no right to take his money to give away, in order to get votes.

In a letter dated March 3, 1975, Walter said: “Sometimes it is a very lonely struggle trying to help our people, particularly the ones who do not realize that help is needed.”

In the same letter, he mentioned a certain hospital which “has an all but written policy of prohibiting the flunking of black medical students.”

Not long after this, a professor at a prestigious medical school revealed that black students there were given passing grades without having met the standards applied to other students. He warned that trusting patients would pay — some with their lives — for such irresponsible double standards. That has in fact happened.

As a person, Walter Williams was unique. I have heard of no one else being described as being “like Walter Williams.”

Holding a black belt in karate, Walter was a tough customer. One night three men jumped him — and two of those men ended up in a hospital.

The other side of Walter came out in relation to his wife, Connie. She helped put him through graduate school — and after he received his Ph.D., she never had to work again, not even to fix his breakfast.

Walter liked to go to his job at 4:30 AM. He was the only person who had no problem finding a parking space on the street in downtown Washington. Around 9 o’clock or so, Connie — now awake — would phone Walter and they would greet each other tenderly for the day.

We may not see his like again. And that is our loss.