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.

President-elect Joe Biden has issued a dire warning about the spread of the coronavirus over the next two months, predicting as many as 250,000 deaths.

Biden, who has warned of a “dark winter” ahead, did not offer details to back up his assessment, which is far bleaker than projections by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts. His transition team did not immediately respond to a request to clarify the remarks.

Biden made the remarks Wednesday in a livestreamed roundtable with workers affected by the pandemic, making an appeal to Americans to take the virus seriously.

“We’re likely to lose another 250,000 people dead between now and January,” Biden said. “You hear me? Because people aren’t paying attention.”

He added: “You cannot be traveling during these holidaysas much as you want to.”

Isn’t that a great attribute to have in a President?

BLUF Options:

Joe Biden is knowingly engaged in fear-mongering by using numbers that have no basis in reality, and the press won’t call attention to it.
Joe Biden has trouble with numbers — plausible since Joe Biden’s room-temp IQ has been a well-established fact in Washington for nearly 5 decades.
Joe Biden has dementia which makes the words he speaks meaningless in his own mind as they tumble forth from his mouth.

Pick a number.

Either the “Fear Mongering” Will Persist or Dementia Has Destroyed Joe Biden’s Ability to do Simple Math

I’ve not written much on the disgusting and wholly fallacious fear-mongering of the Democrats/media in general and the Biden campaign in particular.

From nearly the very beginning — having been “trapped” for the first couple weeks away from my family and with nothing but time on my hands to read and learn — I’ve long known that the number of “deaths” CAUSED by COVID-19 would be wildly exaggerated in that once there was a financial incentive to “ID” COVID-19 deaths every other categorized “cause of death” would dramatically decline while COVID-19 “caused” deaths would skyrocket, as that would promote the narrative in the press/campaign that the Trump Administration was incompetent.  It was simply a given, and the claims would be impervious to actual facts — like tens of thousands of people, mostly elderly, die each year from all types of other viruses because their bodies are not able to fight off the infection.  People who might have died mere weeks faster while suffering from “end-stage” cancer are being classified as COVID-caused deaths if they were infected prior to passing.  Morbidly obese individuals who were walking and talking strokes and heart attacks waiting to happen become COVID-caused deaths because they become infected with a virus that has a 99% recovery rate.

And now we are in the middle of a “second surge” that is being blamed on government policies, guidance, and/or unwillingness of people to follow the same when the truth of the matter is that back in March and April infectious disease efforts predicted the virus would begin to spread more rapidly AGAIN in Oct-Nov. when cool weather returned, people went indoors more, and the “cold and virus” season got underway.

It’s a virus.  This time of year is called the “cold and virus” season for reason. Continue reading “”

Pandemic Rules Are Only for the Little People.

We’re expected to suffer discomfort, economic pain, and emotional distress or else pay fines or serve jail time. Government officials, meanwhile, take offense when called out for violating the standards they created……………

Austin mayor stressed residents ‘need to stay home.’ He was vacationing in Cabo at the time.

In early November, as health officials warned of an impending COVID-19 spike, Austin Mayor Steve Adler hosted an outdoor wedding and reception with 20 guests for his daughter at a trendy hotel near downtown.

The next morning, Adler and seven other wedding attendees boarded a private jet for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where they vacationed for a week at a family timeshare.

One night into the trip, Adler addressed Austin residents in a Facebook video: “We need to stay home if you can. This is not the time to relax. We are going to be looking really closely. … We may have to close things down if we are not careful.”

In hosting the wedding and traveling internationally, Adler said he broke neither his own order nor those by Gov. Greg Abbott.

But at the time, the city was recommending people not gather in groups of more than 10, and, the day after Adler’s departure, Austin’s health authority warned that “it’s important that we drive the (COVID-19) numbers down in advance of Thanksgiving.” Continue reading “”

November Was 11th Consecutive Month of Record Firearm Background Checks

November 2020 was the eleventh consecutive month of record National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background checks.

FBI figures show there were 3,626,335 NICS checks performed in November 2020, which represents more checks than were performed in any November since NICS was established.

Breitbart News reported that January through October already witnessed ten consecutive months of record checks. This means January 2020 saw more NICS checks than any January prior, February 2020 saw more than any February prior, March 2020 saw more than any March, April 2020 more than any April, and so on, all the way through October.

Now November 2020 brings the consecutive streak to 11 months.

In addition to the monthly records, 2020 as a whole is breaking the record for the most NICS checks in a given year. On November 9, 2020, the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) reported that the number of checks conducted January 2o20 through October 2020 alone represented “13% more checks than the previous busiest year for the NICS office.”

For example, 28,369,750 NICS checks were performed in all of 2019, but 35,758,249 have already been performed in 2020, and the month of December may yet bring millions more checks into the mix for this year.

TYLER GUN WORKS .22 MAGNUM RUGER BEARCAT
BUILDING MEMORIES PAST AND FUTURE
WRITTEN BY JOHN TAFFIN

Bill Ruger apparently always looked back into history to find inspiration for many of his projects. In 1958, probably after studying the Remington .31 cap-n-ball pocket pistol, Bill did the same thing as he had done with the Single-Six. He brought out an up-to-date .22 version and called it — this also came from history, cars not guns this time — the “Bearcat” after the Stutz Bearcat automobile. It was fitting such a beautiful car would lend its name to Ruger’s second .22 revolver. Continue reading “”

McDonald’s fries used to be a treat. Now, in Germany (at least in the Germany of 30+ years ago) they’re still fried the ‘old fashioned’ way.
And I did a comparison ‘taste test’ – with about a 20 hours time lag – between the two when my Battalion re-deployed to the U.S.
I hit the McDonalds at Frankfurt/Rhine Main airport just before we left and the one in Lawton Oklahoma’s downtown mall when our trip finally ended.
2 things told me I was back home. The 1/4 pounder & fries’ taste reminded me of cardboard, and the prices on everything were posted in dollars.

My Hunt for the Original McDonald’s French-Fry Recipe.

From Julia Child to Paul Bocuse to James Beard, some of the biggest names in food history are also people who have professed their love for the same french fry—a french fry that, in no exaggerated manner, birthed an empire. A french fry that no one has eaten in more than 30 years.

McDonald’s original french fries were cooked in beef tallow. For that fact, they were bullied out of production by a well-funded, well-intentioned businessman and self-proclaimed health advocate named Phil Sokolof, who unknowingly dethroned what many fans claim was the greatest french fry to ever meet mass production. “The french fries were very good,” Child said in a 1995 interview, “and then the nutritionists got at them … and they’ve been limp ever since … I’m always very strong about criticizing them, hoping maybe they’ll change.”

Child never lived to see McDonald’s fries return to their former glory, and sadly, and there’s no indication they ever will. That’s why I set out on a quest to find the original recipe.

My hunt for the lost McRecipe took me up the corporate ladder and to obsessive corners of Reddit. I spoke to fast-food experts, super-fan museum curators, and a 79-year-old former employee of the very first McDonald’s. After weeks of digging, I procured a recipe for the original fries that one fast-food historian believes to be the real deal, one I recreated several times to ensure its legitimacy. I sweat over hot tallow, bled from cutting perfect shoestrings, and literally got pulverized salt in those wounds. But according to at least one expert, I have reason to believe the recipe I’ve uncovered is authentic.

Before you recreate a masterpiece, it bears knowing from whence it came. Continue reading “”

Carjacking victim shoots, kills 14-year-old suspect in Jennings

JENNINGS — A 14-year-old boy suspected in an attempted carjacking has died after being shot by the car’s owner, police said Monday. The boy was identified as Damaurio Thomas of the 5100 block of Lexington Avenue in St. Louis.

The attempted robbery occurred at 9301 Lewis and Clark Boulevard in Jennings, on the parking lot of a gas station. Police were notified about 3:45 p.m. Sunday and found the car’s owner and Damaurio near Jennings Station Road and Lewis and Clark Boulevard. Police said the man who fired the fatal shot was 53 years old. He was taken into custody by police and was cooperating with investigators, St. Louis County police Sgt. Benjamin Granda said.

Damaurio had an accomplice who got away, authorities said. Police have not released a description of the accomplice. After being shot, Damaurio tried to run away but was found by officers near the scene suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest. He was taken to a hospital where Granda said he died hours later.

Granda said police recovered guns from the man and the boy. He said it wasn’t clear if the suspects fired a weapon.

The man’s car was a Cadillac CTS and officers “believe the suspects entered the vehicle but did not leave the property in it,” Granda said in an email.

Suspect in attempted carjacking dies after being shot by motorist, hit by vehicle in Compton

A man suspected in a carjacking attempt in Compton died after being shot by the intended victim and then run over by at least one vehicle Sunday night, authorities said.

Deputies responded to the intersection of Compton Boulevard and Santa Fe Avenue shortly after 8:30 p.m. when someone reported hearing gunshots in the area. A man was found lying in the intersection and pronounced dead at the scene, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department stated in a news release. The unidentified man had at least one gunshot wound and had apparently been struck by at least one vehicle, according to the release.

Investigators believe the man, who was armed with a handgun, had tried to carjack a vehicle that was stopped for a red light when he was shot by the motorist. The shooter stayed at the scene and was talking to investigators, Sheriff’s Department Lt. Alfred said.

It was unclear whether the suspect was hit by one or more vehicles. The driver or drivers did not remain at the scene, Alfred said. Officials have not determined whether the man’s death was the result of the gunfire or being struck by a vehicle.

It’s also unknown if the motorist who shot the suspect was legally carrying their firearm.

Europe Sends Its Condolences to Iran.

Ever wonder why so many Americans share President Trump’s skepticism of Europe? Look no further than its reaction to the assassination of the mastermind of Iran’s atomic-bomb project. Moshen Fakhrizadeh was a leader of Iran’s effort to obtain an atomic bomb to use on the country in which the survivors of the Holocaust found redemption. Yet the Europeans rushed out a statement calling the attack a “criminal act.”

Plus, too, the EU, in a statement from its High Representative, Josep Borrell, extended condolences to the bomb maker’s family. We don’t dismiss the cruelty of war. Yet the European Union expresses not a syllable of appreciation for the possibility that the attack might yet buy time and safety for Israel (and Europe). Nor did it acknowledge the early warnings from Jerusalem about what Fakhrizadeh was up to.

Nor was there a particle of historical reference. No reference was made of, say, the attack on Iraq’s nuclear program in 1981. That’s when Israeli F16s suddenly wheeled out of the skies over Baghdad and destroyed the reactor the French were building to help Saddam gain the capability to use atomic weapons against Israel. That attack was condemned the world over (including, in America, by the Reagan administration*).

No one has ever had any illusions about the fairweatherness of Europe’s friendship toward Israel. Just the other day, President Macron called Ben Smith of the Times to complain about the way the American press was criticizing him for his crackdown on Islamist violence. Last week at Antwerp, the trial began of Iranian terrorists who, on a tip from Jerusalem, were collared while preparing to attack France. So why is Mr. Macron silent?

Ordinarily, we might skip another editorial on this head. European hypocrisy is hardly news. Then again, too, it’s likely that America will shortly install a new administration intent on resuming the course of appeasement with Iran. It might be too soon to say who perpetrated the latest attack in Iran. It’s not too soon to mark the logic for Israel to seize its opportunities, if that is what has happened, and to do so, if necessary, alone.

This is sad.
A lot of my guys did their Deck Landing Qualifications on the ‘Bonny Dick’

Navy Will Scrap USS Bonhomme Richard.

The Navy decided to scrap the amphibious assault ship that burned for nearly five days earlier this year, concluding after months of investigations that trying to rebuild and restore the ship would take too much money and too much industrial base capacity.

The July 12 fire aboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) began in the lower vehicle storage area but ravaged the island, the mast and the flight deck as it burned its way through the inside of the big-deck amphib. The ship remained watertight throughout the ordeal and hasn’t been moved from its spot on the pier at Naval Base San Diego, but between the fire itself and the days-long firefighting effort, about 60-percnet of the ship was ruined and would have had to be rebuilt or replaced, Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage, the commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Center and the director of surface ship maintenance and modernization, told reporters today in a phone call.

“After thorough consideration, the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations have decided to decommission the Bonhomme Richard due to the extensive damage sustained during that July fire. In the weeks and months since that fire, the Navy conducted a comprehensive material assessment to determine the best path forward for that ship and our Navy,” he said. Continue reading “”

2020’s Safest Cities in America

Half Of America’s Safest Cities Are In Constitutional Carry States

A fundamental adage of the gun control movement is that more gun laws equals less gun crime. The only problem with that belief is that it’s patently untrue. The website WalletHub recently compared more than 180 cities across the country to determine which cities are the safest for residents and visitors, and it turns out that fully half of the ten safest cities are in states that have very strong Second Amendment protections, including Constitutional or permitless carry.

The website didn’t only look at violent crime rates when determining which cities are the safest, but that was a big part of the criteria along with the number of reported COVID cases, law enforcement per capita, and some 40 other factors in three specific areas of concern; Home and Community Safety, Natural Disaster Risk, and Financial Safety. Once those risk factors were tabulated, the site ranked all 180 cities, and with one notable exception, the vast majority of the safest cities are in states that do a decent job in recognizing our right to keep and bear arms.

  1. Columbia, Maryland
  2. South Burlington, Vermont
  3. Plano, Texas
  4. Nashua, New Hampshire
  5. Lewiston, Maine
  6. Burlington, Vermont
  7. Salem, Oregon
  8. Virginia Beach, Virginia
  9. Raleigh, North Carolina
  10. Gilbert, Arizona

Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Arizona are all Constitutional carry states, while the gun laws in Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina are all fairly robust in terms of Second Amendment protections. Columbia, Maryland is the one city in the Top Ten Safest Cities that’s located in a state with restrictive gun control laws, and those laws don’t seem to be doing much to keep residents in Maryland’s largest city safe. Baltimore, Maryland is way down towards the bottom of WalletHub’s list of safest cities, coming in 155th out 182 metropolitan areas.

If gun control alone were enough to reduce violent crime, then cities like San Bernardino (ranked 180th out of 182), Los Angeles, (172), Oakland (165), and Washington, D.C. (160) would be among the safest places in the country instead of coming in towards the bottom of the rankings. In fact, it’s worth noting that California has the “best” gun control laws in the country according to groups like Giffords and Brady, but it’s also home to some of the most dangerous cities in the United States.

California’s ten day waiting periods, bans on so-called assault weapons and high capacity magazines, prohibitions on online and out-of-state sales of ammunition, background checks on in-person ammo sales, microstamping requirements, and the other onerous restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms may make gun control activists happy, but they don’t do much to keep people safe.

Conversely, some of the safest cities in the country don’t have any California-style gun laws in place. That should be enough evidence to put to rest forever the absurd assertion that more gun laws equals less crime, but you and I both know that the gun control movement is going to keep repeating the lie that we can ban our way to safety. It’s going to be up to Second Amendment activists to keep making the case that not only are these gun control laws unconstitutional, but they’re ineffective as well; promising security at the expense of our rights, but instead making us both less safe and less free.

New York: Voluntarily Waive Your Gun Rights…Legally

Maybe this one shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does. A group of New York Assembly Democrats – Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, and co-sponsored by Jeffrey Dinowitz, Fred Abinanti, Richard Gottfried, Assemblywoman Fahy, Rebecca Seawright, Assemblyman Englebright and Assemblyman Dickens – have proposed legislation that would make it possible for New Yorkers to voluntarily waive their gun rights.

Well hello, 2020, you’ve done it again.

The Post-Journal reports:

If approved, anyone would be able to file a voluntary waiver of their right to purchase a gun. The State Police would then request photo identification to verify the person’s identity before accepting the form. Waivers would include an alternate individual to be contacted if the waiver is revoked.

No sooner than 21 days after filing a waiver, an individual would be able to file a recovation of their waiver.

But don’t worry, it won’t be made some sort of mandatory deal or anything . . .

Waivers would not be able to be required as a condition of employment or for benefits or services. The proposed law also states no records required by the registry law would be subject to disclosure and would remain confidential for matters of health care, employment, education, housing, insurance, government benefits and contracting.

Right.

Is this just New York? Well . . .

Washington and Virginia have recently enacted legislation, and nine other states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin, have introduced similar bills in the legislatures.

 

Plans to disarm Portland State campus police on hold after too many quit.

Portland State University announced in August its plan to disarm campus police officers by replacing their firearms with tasers, but those plans have been put on a temporary hold.

The plan to disarm officers was announced earlier in 2020 after rallies and protesters at PSU called for justice for Jason Washington, who was killed by officers in 2018. Campus Reform reported on the efforts of PSU students and staff to disarm officers in 2019.

Campus Police Chief Willie Halliburton stated that in order for unarmed officers to be safe, the school would need two officers for every shift, which hasn’t been possible due to the retirement or resignation of several officers.

In a video message addressing the issue, Halliburton stated, “I am fully committed to transforming this police agency into a unit that will achieve these goals. We’ll do this without carrying weapons while on patrol.” Continue reading “”

Only 100 Billion Years! *gasp* And I had so much planned for the future.

Our Solar System Is Going to Totally Disintegrate Sooner Than We Thought.

Although the ground beneath our feet feels solid and reassuring (most of the time), nothing in this Universe lasts forever.

One day, our Sun will die, ejecting a large proportion of its mass before its core shrinks down into a white dwarf, gradually leaking heat until it’s nothing more than a cold, dark, dead lump of rock, a thousand trillion years later.

But the rest of the Solar System will be long gone by then. According to new simulations, it will take just 100 billion years for any remaining planets to skedaddle off across the galaxy, leaving the dying Sun far behind. Continue reading “”

Philadelphia customer walks in on robbery at takeout restaurant, shoots suspect dead

A customer who walked into a robbery happening at a Philadelphia takeout restaurant shot and killed the armed suspect and will likely not face charges, authorities said.

Police said three employees were inside the Wingstop in northeast Philadelphia Sunday when a 53-year-old man walked in wearing a mask and gloves around 10:30 p.m. The suspect allegedly pointed a gun at them and demanded the employees hand over the money from the cash register drawer.

Investigators said that’s when a customer, identified by police only as a man in his late 20s, walked in talking on the phone, likely not noticing a robbery was taking place, WPVI reported.

The suspect then turned and pointed his firearm at the customer, demanding he turn over his cell phone.

The customer pulled his own gun and fired one shot at the perpetrator, striking him in the neck, said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small. The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

The incident remains under investigation and police are reviewing surveillance video.

The customer remained at the scene and was cooperating with authorities. He is not expected to face criminal charges.

“The customer who was also a victim because he had the gun pointed at him remained on scene, did cooperate with police,” Small said, according to KYW-TV. “We do have his weapon we know that just one shot was fired from that customer.”

The Right to Own a Gun Isn’t Just for Americans

The United States is unique for its tradition of gun ownership, which often shocks foreigners and leaves them in a state of disbelief at how ubiquitous firearm ownership is. Moreover, the idea of people carrying firearms almost seems unreal to many. Indeed, gun ownership is as American as apple pie and will not go away so easily, much to the dismay of the most rabid of gun control proponents.

Just look at gun sales since the covid-19 pandemic lockdowns took place. In the first six months of 2020 alone, 10.3 million firearm transactions went through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). From January to October, 17.2 million background checks were conducted, which surpassed the 2016 record of 15.7 million.

In short, gun ownership in America won’t go away so easily. It’s a firmly established tradition that has its roots in practices that go back to the British Isles. The Assize of Arms of 1181 issued by Henry II obligated all freemen of England to possess and bear arms in service of the king.

Further, Ryan McMaken has observed that America’s militia system drew a considerable amount of inspiration from the Levellers—English libertarian-minded reformers who were advocating for a decentralized militia that stood against the British Crown’s efforts to centralize political power in the mid-seventeenth century.

The “folkway” of firearm ownership made its way to the American colonies, where it took on a more radical twist and became a unique part of the American experience. Through its codification in the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms became an integral civil liberty and a unique aspect of American political culture that has largely withstood government overreach. But now there’s reason to believe that this concept will likely be going international. Continue reading “”