Rashida Tlaib’s New Office Neighbor to Fly Israeli Flag.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D., Mich.) new neighbor in her congressional office building intends to fly an Israeli flag as a statement against Tlaib’s anti-Israel stance.

Freshman Rep. Kat Cammack (R., Fla.), who has been given the office next to Tlaib’s for the 117th Congress, says she hopes Israel’s flag will send a message to Tlaib, a frequent critic of Israel who has a history of anti-Semitic comments.

“[Tlaib] has some very strong opinions about Israel, and I have some very strong opinions about Israel, so I have made a pledge that I’m going to be planting the flag of Israel outside my door right next to the American flag,” Cammack told a Gainesville, Fla., ABC affiliate. “I think it’ll be very helpful as she walks past it every day.”

Tlaib did not respond to a request for comment before press time.

Gators for Israel, a Jewish student advocacy group, will provide the flag for display, Cammack said.

Cammack became the representative for Florida’s Third Congressional District following the retirement of her former boss, Rep. Ted Yoho (R., Fla.), for whom she served for six years as deputy chief of staff. Cammack’s support for Israel and Israeli sovereignty was a major plank of her campaign platform.

 

Taking Stock Of A Record-Setting Firearm Year

Twenty-one million. Let that number sink in for a moment.

That’s a very big number. If I told you at SHOT Show® last year that the industry would see 21 million background checks for the sale of a firearm in 2020, you would have thought I was crazy. One year later and with the benefit of hindsight, this was truly a remarkable year for the industry across the board.

The final figures for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) put all of this year’s hard work into perspective. Twenty-one million background checks were conducted for the sale of a firearm over the past 12 months. That topped 2019’s totals of 13.2 million by 60 percent. It also shattered the previous record from 2016, when 15.7 million background checks were conducted for the sale of firearms. This year’s 21 million total surpassed 2016 by 5.3 million, or 34 percent.

Here’s one more incredible number to witness. NSSF estimates that 8.4 million people bought a firearm for the first time in 2020. That’s 40 percent of all purchases. This year’s buyer is increasingly diverse too. Forty percent of 2020’s buyers were women and the biggest increase of any demographic category was among African Americans, who bought guns at a rate of 58 percent greater than in 2019.

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Suspected car burglar shot, killed after homeowner catches him in the act

HOUSTON – A suspected car burglar is dead after the homeowner caught him in the act and shot him late Wednesday night.

The shooting happened around 9 p.m. at a home on Theta Street and Marleen Street in Southeast Houston.

Police said the homeowner heard a noise in his driveway, looked out and saw a man breaking into his car. The homeowner grabbed his gun and confronted the burglar. At some point, the homeowner shot the suspect.

The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene. The homeowner called police and is cooperating with investigators. No word on if the homeowner will face any charges.

 

Enough with the outrage.

Like pretty much all conservatives, I have consistently criticized riots and other forms of political violence for many years. That includes yesterday’s Washington, D.C. riot. You can’t say the same about liberals, however. Until yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie.

You could write a book in support of that proposition, but for now let’s cite just a few examples. Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more violent and more destructive, than what happened in D.C. yesterday. The liberal rioters destroyed stores, set vehicles on fire and battled with the police. Six police officers were wounded.

I don’t recall a single Democratic office-holder denouncing the Democrats’ Inauguration Day riot, and the Associated Press came perilously close to praising the rioters.

Over the ensuing four years, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted countless times, bringing devastation to cities like Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Minneapolis. Did any Democrats denounce these riots? Not that I remember. Many Democrats endorsed them, or seemed to do so. Kamala Harris, for example, said about the riots in June:

They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.

This was after 12 people had been killed in Democrat-sanctioned rioting, and billions of dollars in destruction committed. Have any Democrats denounced Black Lives Matter for its role in the riots? Not one. Has any Democrat denounced Antifa? Not that I know of, and some, like Keith Ellison, have specifically endorsed Antifa’s political violence.

Democratic Party journalists have joined the party’s politicians in excusing riots. The New York Times, for example, published an admiring profile of Antifa. The Washington Post, likewise, has carried water for Antifa.

The litany could go on for a long time. Yesterday’s assault on the Capitol was outrageous, but let’s not forget that last time out-of-control demonstrators interrupted business at the Capitol, shouted down senators and pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court, it was Democrats objecting to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

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From last May, but as on point now, as then.
RTWT (Read The Whole Thing)

The Great UnReason of 2020: The ‘Curious, but Quite Authentic, Inability to Think’

Upon the Nazis’ rise to power, Hannah Arendt, a Jewish woman who would go on to become a considerable 20th century philosopher, had to flee with her family from her native Germany.

Once the war was over and some prominent Nazis were brought to justice, Arendt attended the trial in Jerusalem of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.

The experience left an indelible impression upon her, one that would shape the trajectory of her philosophical thinking.  What she observed was that, much to her surprise, Eichmann wasn’t the incarnation of evil that she expected to encounter.  His actions were monstrous, yes; but he was remarkably ordinary or “banal,” to use Arendt’s term of choice.

What struck Arendt was Eichmann’s “curious, but authentic, inability to think.”

“However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.” 

Eichmann didn’t subscribe to any “theory or doctrine,” exhibited no “particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction;” his “only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.”

Note, Arendt did not intend her characterization to be interpreted as commentary upon Eichmann’s IQ.  Nor, for that matter, did she mean to suggest that he was literally incapable of thinking critically.  Rather, her point was that Eichmann showed no will to think beyond the clichés—the memes, bumper sticker slogans, and hashtags—of his day.

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Welcome to Banana Republic, USA.

Out of all the crazy, strange, and unbelievable news items Insanity Wrap has brought you over the previous 119 editions of this column, “guns drawn in the Capitol” is the craziest, the strangest, and the most unbelievable — all in one item of just five words.

It’s difficult to be glib about the news after a day like yesterday, so today’s Insanity Wrap will be less of a wrap-up and more of a lament.

Four people are dead.

So many of us told you something like this was inevitable after Antifa/BLM was allowed for months to get away with their anarcho-communist brand of street thuggery.

Not that you, gentle reader, needed to be told.

Still, the timing and location came as a shock.

It remains to be seen whether yesterday’s deadly riot represents a one-off venting of political frustration or a sea-change in that the Right will from now on operate more like the Left does.

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Record Gun Sales and Diverse Ownership Mean Rocky Prospects for Restrictions
New gun owners are unlikely to embrace disarmament schemes from a government they distrust.

Joe Biden will enter the White House this month at the head of a political party that in recent years has been overtly hostile to self-defense rights, even to the point of advocating impossible-to-enforce bans on popular firearms. But the opportunity has passed for the restrictions he peddles as “common sense reforms.” In an era of political instability and distrust in government, Americans of varying political beliefs are purchasing guns in record numbers. And those millions of new weapons and their owners are bound to remain beyond the reach of politicians’ wish lists of restrictive laws.

Nine of the ten busiest weeks ever for the FBI-administered National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)—which performs background checks for most firearms purchases from licensed dealers—occurred in 2020. While background checks don’t directly correspond to gun sales since they can be used for other purposes or for multiple simultaneous purchases, they’re an important indicator. The year ended with a total of 39.7 million background checks, the highest annual count recorded.

The “why” of the surge in firearms purchases is no secret in a year that seems drawn from the plot of an apocalyptic novel. January of 2020 opened with a politically polarized population and the news that “nearly six in ten Americans agree that there will be protests or rioting in the United States over the next year in response to how the country is being run,” according to Ipsos pollsters. They were right, though for unpredictable reasons.

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Okay, as requested:

Think what it says about the nation when half the people give the rioters who loot and burn private property a pass, even after more than $2 billion in damage is done to homes and businesses.
The left and its antifagoon blackshirts occupied city blocks and still control two “autonomous zones”, but when a government building that is the seat of power was infiltrated and occupied, it’s the worst day in modern history.

Leftist rioters attempted to burn down a Federal building in Portland. Leftist rioters vandalized statues and Federal monuments.
When Trump deployed federal law enforcement to protect the Lincoln Memorial and Portland Federal Courthouse, he was literally called the new incarnation of Hitler.

When the right breaks into the Capitol, and doesn’t set one fire or throw one Molotov cocktail, spray paint one slogan, or destroy one statue, the call is unanimous to arrest and prosecute them to the end of the earth them lock them up and throw the key away.

We cannot have two sets of laws and two codes of behavior in this country. It didn’t work in France in the 1790s, Russia in the 1910s, or what used to be Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

We have to return to one standard or this will happen again.

What we saw yesterday was as much a ‘People’s Revolt’ as anything else.

If you want to stop such, you have to stop treating standard operational people like dirt, and the first step there is to listen to them and not just blow them off as rednecks who live in ‘flyover country’.

Seen online:

Two groups of people (call them A and B) both see themselves as victims and have grievances they feel aren’t being heard.

Both resort to violence.

Dem reactions to group A:
“People will do what they do”
“Tell me where it says protests have to be peaceful”
“Don’t judge a whole group by the actions of a few”
“America is racist”

Dem reactions to group B:
“They are traitors”
“Violence is never acceptable”
“Arrest any people who agree with them in Congress”

This doesn’t go unnoticed.

Republican and Conservative Leaders Condemn Capitol Hill Violence

Contrast with leftist justification for Antifa/BLM violence all summer.

One thing that stands out at this early stage about the violence on Capitol Hill is that the right—from Republican Congressmen to prominent media personalities—is calling with one voice for the violence to stop.

The contrast between the right’s immediate calls for an end to the violence and the months-long Democrat, media, and leftist sugar-coating (remember the antifa “summer of love”?), down-playing (mostly peaceful arson), and refusing to condemn antifa and BLM violence as it swept the nation’s cities in 2020 is stark.

President Trump issues a strong request that the violence stop. He reminds the rioters, if they turn out to be Trump supporters, that “WE are the Party of Law & Order.”

Woman Shot Climbing Through Doorway inside Capitol Dies From Gunshot Wound

A young woman was shot while climbing through a doorway window in Washington DC today. It appears from the video, a woman attempted to climb through a side-door window; she was shot from inside the hallway and fell back into a small group behind her.

In the image below she is wearing a red and white backpack, climbing through a broken window next to a doorway when a shot is heard. She falls directly backward as people, including two uniformed police officers, attempt to render aid.

There were two uniformed police officers directly behind her who seemed surprised at the gunfire. [Twitter Video Here] Reports are now surfacing that the young lady died in the hospital following a single gunshot to the neck.

Resident shoots and kills suspected burglar in North Lauderdale

NORTH LAUDERDALE — An armed burglary suspect is dead and the Broward State Attorney’s Office will decide if the resident who fatally shot the intruder will be charged.

Derrick Morgan, 21, of North Lauderdale, killed Millard Thompson, 38, of Deerfield Beach, about 2 a.m. Dec. 30, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

Thompson was inside the home in the 8000 block of Southwest Fifth Street when 911 was called. Morgan confronted Thompson and fired, investigators said.

North Lauderdale Fire Rescue pronounced Thompson dead at the scene of the shooting.

Witnesses in the home told detectives that Thompson was armed with a gun at the time of the shooting and detectives found a gun in the home that they believe belonged to Thompson.

If this is determined to be a case of self-defense then Morgan is unlikely to be charged but the investigation is continuing.

Thompson was sentenced to a little more than one year in prison for a 2004 cocaine conviction, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.

His Broward County record shows seven felony arrests dating back to 1987 for drug possession, fraud, and firing a gun into a building.

Right Out of the Gate: Nat’l CCW Reciprocity Bill Introduced in Congress

Bipartisan legislation aimed at national concealed carry reciprocity has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) as the 117th Congress convened, and the bill already boasts a record 154 original cosponsors, according to a news release from Hudson’s office.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 38) has been introduced before and even passed the House by a 231-198 vote in December 2017. However, when it went to the Senate, it languished even though President Donald Trump had indicated support.

“Our Second Amendment rights do not disappear when we cross state lines, and H.R. 38 guarantees that,” said Rep. Hudson in his news release. “The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2021 is a common sense solution to provide law-abiding citizens the right to conceal carry and travel freely between states without worrying about conflicting state codes or onerous civil suits. I am especially proud to have such widespread and bipartisan support for this measure and will work with my colleagues to get this legislation over the finish line.”

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Montana: Permitless Carry Legislation Introduced in the House and Scheduled for Hearing Tomorrow Today.

House Bill 102 would strengthen Montana’s self-defense laws by allowing law-abiding Montana gun owners to carry a firearm for self-defense throughout the state without first having to obtain a government mandated permit to do so. Further, this bill would remove some of Montana’s “gun-free zones” from the list of prohibited places and stop the unnecessary disarming of Montanans as they go about their day to day lives.

Utah Lawmaker Reintroduces ‘Constitutional Carry’ Legislation

Utah State Rep. Walt Brooks (R-St. George) has once again introduced legislation to allow concealed carry without a permit, and this time he reportedly has a commitment from Gov. Spencer Cox to sign the bill if it hits his desk.

Brooks’ House Bill 60 will be on the table when the Utah Legislature convenes Jan. 19. An earlier effort to allow permitless carry was vetoed by former Gov. Gary Herbert in 2013, according to the Deseret News. A similar bill was also filed last year near the end of the legislative session.

“We are living through a gun violence crisis in America, and some politicians in Utah not only don’t seem to care about it, they are running bills that will make it more likely that people will shoot each other,” asserted Katie Matheson, spokeswoman for the left-leaning Alliance for a Better Utah, as quoted by the Deseret News. “We shouldn’t wait until we have a crisis in Utah. We need our representatives to wake up — these bills are tragedies waiting to happen.”

But is that an accurate forecast? Not according to Brooks, who spoke with Ammoland News via telephone.

“This is a good step,” the veteran lawmaker said. “This is the same bill I ran in 2013, but Gov. Herbert vetoed it…I reintroduced it at the end of last year’s session, knowing it wouldn’t go anywhere, but that it would give people a chance to look it over and give it some thought.”

Brooks said the legislature meets for 45 days, but since this bill is already on people’s minds, it could be one of the first to be considered during the opening days of this year’s session. He expects HB60 to move quickly and perhaps be through the process by Feb. 1.

He said there are plenty of laws on the books that are supposed to prevent the wrong people from carrying guns, but “as you know, criminals don’t obey the law.”

The key to his permitless carry proposal is in the last two lines of the three-page legislation. There, the bill simply provides that “Subsection 76-10-504(1) does not apply to a person 21 years old or older who may otherwise lawfully possess a firearm.”

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The new version of the Horse Pistol

KELTEC: THE 5.7MM P50 PISTOL IS REAL AND ON THE WAY

Other features include a bottom accessory rail, a top Picatinny rail for optics, and a 1/2x28TPI thread pitch barrel for suppressors and muzzle devices. Meanwhile, the trigger pull is listed as 5 pounds while height is given as 6.7 inches.

MSRP on the KelTec P50 is set at $995 with shipping to commence in the first quarter of 2021.

At that point, it will join other new 5.7mm pistols on the market such as the Ruger 57, a corresponding model of the CMMG Banshee, and the Diamondback DBX. To help meet the growing demand for the cartridge, which for years was virtually an FN-only impetus, Federal has recently introduced a 40-grain Speer Gold Dot load that probably cannot get here soon enough.

Deputies identify suspects wounded in home invasion near Summerville

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) – The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office says two suspects in a home invasion who were shot by the homeowner will face charges in the incident.

Deputies say the suspects, whom they identified as Daniel Moon and Shawn Cook, will face charges of first-degree burglary and third-degree assault and battery. Moon is still hospitalized following the shooting but has active warrants, according to Deputy Carli Drayton. Cook will face the same charges, she said.

Booking photos were not yet available for the two suspects.

The investigation began on Dec. 29 at 1:35 a.m. when Berkeley County deputies responded to a home on Mosby Court. When deputies arrived they spoke to the victim who said his gun was on the floor and reported that he had shot two male subjects who had attacked him when he opened the door.

The victim said it all started when he heard someone knocking on his front door and heard someone say‚ ”It’s Hal, your neighbor.”

The report states when the victim opened the door the two male subjects pushed through the door with one of them grabbing the victim and slinging him across the room.

The victim said he reached into his pocket, took out a gun and fired four rounds at the suspects. They ran from the scene, and he told his girlfriend to call police, he said.

The victim said he then observed a car running in the nearby area with a female subject standing outside of it and a male subject sitting in the driver’s seat. The victim said he yelled out the door that he was calling the police at which time the vehicle left.

The victim’s girlfriend said she was in a back room of the home when the incident happened, and heard someone knocking at the door, her boyfriend going to the front door and then heard “banging around” followed by gunshots.

The sheriff’s office then responded to Roper St. Francis on Carnes Crossing Boulevard for two gunshot victims that arrived shortly after the incident.

According to deputies, it was determined the two were the suspects involved in the home invasion.

Epidemiologist Says Influenza Cases Are Being Counted as COVID-19

Top epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski says that the massive drop in influenza cases can be attributed to the fact that many are being falsely counted as COVID-19 cases.

Wittkowski, former Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design at Rockefeller University, cautioned that, “Influenza has been renamed COVID-19 in large part.”

According to CDC figures, the cumulative positive influenza test rate from late September into the week of December 19th was just 0.2%, compared to 8.7% from a year before.

According to Wittkowski, this is because many flu infections are being incorrectly labeled as coronavirus cases.

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