Texas homeowner shoots person during possible attempted break-in, police say
Fort Worth police said officers responded to a shooting call at approximately 12:05 a.m. on Berke Road.

FORT WORTH, Texas — One person was shot twice by a Fort Worth homeowner during a possible attempted break-in, police said.

The Fort Worth Police Department said officers responded at approximately 12:05 a.m. Wednesday to the 4300 block of Berke Road for a shooting call. When officers got to the home, they located a person who had been shot twice. Fort Worth police said Wednesday they believe from their investigation that the person was shot by the homeowner during a possible attempted break-in.

“He just protected our family. Yeah, he did what he had to do,” said Christina, whose husband shot the man. “It was self-defense, what I’m afraid of is for the guy getting out maybe through bond or something and coming back.”

That lingering fear is why she asked us not to use her last name as she told us what happened.

“In this neighborhood, we see a lot of stuff going on but we never thought we were gonna go through something like this,” she said. “Something so scary.”

She says it all started just before midnight, she, her husband and three young kids had already gone to bed.

“We were already asleep. I started hearing our dogs barking,” she said. “So I woke up my husband, I’m like, hey, something is going on.”

They looked out the window and saw a man on their property acting erratically.

“He already had tore down some part of the wooden fence,” Christina said. “He was just going back and forth in the backyard to our driveway.”

She called 9-1-1 and her husband grabbed his gun.

“He came to our driveway and with a plank, a wooden plank from our fence, he broke our daughter’s bedroom window,” Christina said.

Her husband screamed at him to go away.

“Instead of him leaving, he came and tried to open the door, our kitchen door. So that’s when my husband had to fire his gun,” she said.

Fort Worth police were there minutes later.

“The suspect was taken to the hospital he was shot a couple of times,” said Fort Worth Police public information officer Tracy Carter. “This guy is lucky to be alive. The homeowner did what any of us would have done, we’d wanna protect our family.”

According to Fort Worth city jail records, Jeremy Black, 35, was booked Wednesday morning on suspicion of burglary of a habitation in connection to the incident.

Police say Christina’s husband isn’t facing any legal action, but the family is still shaken up.

“It was really scary, especially for my children,” Christina said.

“Officers are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident, and Gun Violence Detectives have been notified,” Fort Worth PD told WFAA by email.

James Woods

Physicists in 1900 basically accepted the Newtonian model of the universe. The only troubling anomaly was that Mercury, as it came into view in its journey around the sun, appeared to be in the “wrong” place. How was this possible? After much discussion brilliant scientists concluded that it “appeared” to be closer to the sun because the sun’s gravity was bending light rays reflecting off of Mercury on their way to earth.

This defied all the “settled science” embraced by classical physicists. It was to them heresy essentially, because by implication it would mean that energy and matter were interchangeable. Indeed a young physicist named Albert Einstein created the most famous equation in history, formulating that exact relationship: e=mc(squared).

The longwinded point I’m trying to make is that throughout history the most minor anomalies are often windows into a completely different understanding of the world.

Which brings me to my point.

This event where armed officers took a pet squirrel from an individual in New York opens a Pandora’s box of the horrors of leftist tyranny. The facts of the incident are disturbing enough: an anonymous instigator over 1000 miles away reported a humble man who had rescued a wounded squirrel and made a pet of him for years.

The informer’s motives in doing so can only be guessed, but the owner of the pet had made the horrific mistake in today’s America of supporting conservative thought. A cadre of armed officials got a search warrant, rummaged through the man’s property for five hours, illegally questioned his wife about her immigrant status, ultimately seizing the pet and killing it without giving the owner any recourse to save its life.

Now let’s take a look at the universe in which this macabre horrid little leftist “comedy” took place. In a nation overrun by tens of millions of illegal aliens, crushed by rampant crime and gang warfare, enduring a $35 trillion deficit, soul-crushing inflation, a culture of infanticide and child mutilation, sexual dysphoria, and insanity, and waging illegal lawfare against candidates of another party, New York State spent a full day killing a squirrel, that had been a harmless pet cherished by its owner for literally years.

The event in and of itself was just an act of petty cruelty. As a window into a larger universe, however, it is a fissure in the mantle of our world, signaling a cataclysmic eruption that may well end this nation. The tsunami of rage coming from ordinary and loving individuals was quite frankly astonishing.

Has America in the hands of the lunatic left become a powder keg about to explode? Will the power-hungry Democrats and their media minions spew enough hatred that even the most gentile among us will finally say ENOUGH? Does 87,000 newly minted and armed IRS agents offer you comfort or fill you with terror?

Are you sick of this yet?

Lest anyone forget just exactly how they think of us, our rights and the protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that restrict their tyrant dreams

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees. —Bill Clinton

It may be artificial, but it isn’t intelligent.
The old “GIGO” Garbage In-Garbage Out, still applies

How Artificial Intelligence Is Repackaging Gun-Control Talking Points

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world in which we live—for the better, of course, say most of the developers of AI. But these systems are often fed biases, including anti-Second Amendment biases, by their creators and AI is even known to just make things up. So, how should we reckon with the inevitable impacts of this fast-emerging technology?

AI has already proven to be capable of doing a number of tasks. A relatively basic form of AI is found in the streaming service that sends out texts noting that you might like a movie that was recently introduced to a service. That text is created because an AI program decided that, based on the types of television shows and movies you’ve watched previously, this new movie should appeal to you.

Some companies are now using AI to write marketing copy, to produce manufacturing timelines, to perform product tagging and to compose product descriptions. The use of AI in this field even prompted a Hollywood writers’ strike.

When we focus on how AI might impact our Second Amendment-protected rights, however, the first thing we run into are chatbots. The chatbot is the most-popular and readily accessible form of this technology. It is known as “generative AI.” If you ask a chatbot a question, it will generate an answer. Chatbot answers are “generated” from the data the chatbot has been fed by what are known as “large language models,” or LLMs. A scientific research paper noted that the most-popular chatbot, ChatGPT, was based on one of the largest LLMs ever created, which contained tens of thousands of pages of publicly available text from books, articles, opinion pieces, websites and even works of fiction.

But AI chatbots do much more than collect information. Using sophisticated algorithms, they possess the ability to perform what seems like analysis of the data. If you ask a chatbot, “What were the main causes of the American Civil War?” it will find material in its database related to the pattern of words in this question. Then, using the above-noted algorithms, it would create a text to answer the question. In this case, the answer would likely summarize various theories as to why the Civil War happened, and note which theories are more accepted than others by current historians. It would provide names and dates and may also provide the main sources the chatbot used to compile the answer. The chatbot will usually do all this in seconds, and if you are using a public chatbot like ChatGPT, it will do it for free.

It is not just a caveat that many of these chatbots have programming that actually allows them to make up citations. AI is supposed to be all facts, but for several reasons we’ll get into, it also writes a lot of fiction.

So okay, what about Second Amendment-related questions?

It’s clear that the use of these chatbots and other forms of AI will increasingly impact journalism and the public discourse on the Second Amendment. It will thereby impact future gun-control proposals. As journalists will increasingly use chatbots to research and perhaps to write the news, any bias baked into this AI will be used to influence public opinion. And indeed, chatbots have been found to possess a pronounced, human-generated bias against pro-Second Amendment issues. Also, as previously noted, the chatbots themselves are known to generate completely fabricated “data.”

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The “Freedom From Fear” Ticket for Tyranny

The Democratic Party is championing presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a born-again champion of freedom. Earlier this year, Democrats shifted their focus from democracy to freedom, convinced that the latter word would enthrall voters on Election Day. Providing “freedom from fear” has become one of their most frequent political promises this past century.

Politicians routinely portray freedom from fear as the apex of freedom, higher than the initial freedoms buttressed by the Bill of Rights. While presidents have defined “freedom from fear” differently, the common thread is that it requires unleashing government agents. Reviewing almost a century of bipartisan scams on freedom from fear provides good cause to doubt the latest geyser of promises.

“Freedom from fear” first entered the American political lexicon thanks to a January 1941 speech by President Franklin Roosevelt. In that State of the Union address, he promised citizens freedom of speech and freedom of worship—two cornerstones of the First Amendment—and added socialist-style “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” FDR’s revised freedoms did not include freedom to dissent, since he said the government would need to take care of the “few slackers or trouble makers in our midst.” Nor did FDR’s improved freedoms include the freedom not be rounded up for concentration camps, as FDR ordered for Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Three years later, FDR amended his definition of freedom by championing a Universal Conscription Act to entitle government to the forced labor of any citizen.

Richard Nixon, in his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention, promised, “We shall re-establish freedom from fear in America so that America can take the lead in re-establishing freedom from fear in the world.” Nixon asserted, “The first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence, and that right must be guaranteed in this country.” But with the Nixon scorecard, government violence didn’t count. He perpetuated the war in Vietnam, resulting in another 20,000 American soldiers pointlessly dying. On the homefront, he created the Drug Enforcement Administration and appointed the nation’s first drug czar. The FBI perpetuated its COINTELPRO program, carrying out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” as a 1976 Senate report noted.

President George H.W. Bush told the National Baptist Convention on September 8, 1989, “Today freedom from fear…means freedom from drugs.” To boost public fear, a DEA informant arranged for a knucklehead to sell crack cocaine to an undercover narc in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Bush invoked the sell a few days later to justify a national crackdown. He informed the American Legion, “Today I want to focus on one of those freedoms: freedom from fear—the fear of war abroad, the fear of drugs and crime at home. To win that freedom, to build a better and safer life, will require the bravery and sacrifice that Americans have shown before and must again.”

Foremost among the sacrifices that Bush demanded was that of traditional liberties. His administration vastly expanded federal power to arbitrarily seize Americans’ property and increased the role of the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement. In a 1992 speech dedicating a new DEA office building, Bush declared, “I am delighted to be here to salute the greatest freedom fighters any nation could have, people who provide freedom from violence and freedom from drugs and freedom from fear.” The DEA’s own crime sprees, corruption, and violence were not permitted to impede Bush’s rhetorical victory lap.

On May 12, 1994, President Bill Clinton declared, “Freedom from violence and freedom from fear are essential to maintaining not only personal freedom but a sense of community in this country.” Clinton banned so-called assault weapons and sought to ban thirty-five million semi-automatic firearms. Gun bans in response to high crime rates mean closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Citizens would presumedly have nothing to fear after they were forced to abjectly depend on government officials for their own survival. During Clinton’s first term, public housing authorities began mass warrantless searches of apartments to confiscate guns and other banned items. Clinton slammed a federal court ruling blocking the unconstitutional raids. When he visited the Chicago housing projects, Clinton declared, “The most important freedom we have in this country is the freedom from fear. And if people aren’t free from fear, they are not free.” In Clinton’s view, public housing residents had no right to fear the federally-funded housing police storming into their apartments.

In February 1996, Clinton, seeking conservative support for his reelection campaign, endorsed forcing children to wear uniforms at public schools. Clinton justified the fashion dictate: “Every one of us has an obligation to work together, to give our children freedom from fear and the freedom to learn.” But, if mandatory uniforms were the key to ending violence, Postal Service employees would have a lower homicide rate.

Senator Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, repeatedly promised voters “freedom from fear” via crackdowns on crime. How did Dole intend to provide “freedom from fear”? By proclaiming that “we must…untie the hands of the police.” Dole did not specify exactly how many no-knock raids would be necessary to restore domestic tranquility.

George W. Bush, like his father, alternated promises of “freedom from fear” with shameless fearmongering. Prior to election day 2004, the Bush administration continually issued terror attack warnings based on flimsy or no evidence. The New York Times derided the Bush administration in late October for having “turned the business of keeping Americans informed about the threat of terrorism into a politically scripted series of color-coded scare sessions.” Yet each time a terror alert was issued, the president’s approval rating rose temporarily by roughly three percent, according to a Cornell University study. The Cornell study found a “halo effect”: the more terrorists who wanted to attack America, the better job Bush was supposedly doing. People who saw terrorism as the biggest issue in the 2004 election voted for Bush by a 6-to-1 margin.

The most memorable Bush campaign ad, released a few weeks before the election, opened in a thick forest, with shadows and hazy shots complementing the foreboding music. After vilifying Democratic candidate John Kerry, the ad showed a pack of wolves reclining in a clearing. The voiceover concluded, “And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm” as the wolves began jumping up and running toward the camera. At the end of the ad, the president appeared and announced, “I’m George W. Bush and I approve this message.” One liberal cynic suggested that the ad’s message was that voters would be eaten by wolves if Kerry won. The Bush ad spurred protests by the equivalent of the Lobo Anti-Defamation League. Pat Wendland, the manager of Wolves Offered Life and Friendship, a Colorado wolf refuge, Colorado, complained, “The comparison to terrorists was insulting. We have worked for years, teaching people that Little Red Riding Hood lied.”

Bush’s campaign to terrify voters into granting him four more years to rule America and much of the world did not deter him from announcing a few months later in his State of the Union address, “We will pass along to our children all the freedoms we enjoy, and chief among them is freedom from fear.” This was back when the mainstream media was continuing to hail Bush as a visionary idealist, prior to the collapse of his credibility on the Iraq war, torture, and other debacles.

President Joe Biden milked “freedom from fear” in a Pennsylvania speech earlier this year on what he labeled “the third anniversary of the Insurrection at the United States Capitol.” Biden revealed plans to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler, accusing Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported that Biden campaign aides planned to go “full Hitler” on Trump. Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This was the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.

Biden did not survive the Democrats’ version of the Night of the Long Knives and Vice President Kamala Harris has been designated the party’s presidential flagbearer. Harris painted with an even broader brush than most politicians. At a Juneteenth Concert this summer, she condemned Republicans for “a full-on attack” on “the freedom from fear of bigotry and hate.” Harris implied that politicians could wave a psychological magic wand to banish any bias in perpetuity. How can anyone have “freedom from fear of bigotry” unless politicians become entitled to perpetually control everyone’s thoughts?

In August, the Democratic National Convention whooped up freedom in ways that would qualify as “authentic frontier gibberish,” as the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles would say. A campaign video promised “freedom from control, freedom from extremism and fear.” So Americans won’t have true freedom until politicians forcibly suppress any idea they label as immoderate? The Democratic Party platform warned, “Reproductive freedom, freedom from hate, freedom from fear, the freedom to control our own destinies and more are all on the line in this election.” But the whole point of politics nowadays is to preempt individuals from controlling their own destinies. Regardless, a Time magazine headline hailed “How Kamala Harris Took ‘Freedom’ Back from the GOP.”

“Freedom from fear” is the ultimate political blank check. The more people government frightens, the more legitimate dictatorial policies become. Pledging “freedom from fear” entitles politicians to seize power over anything that frightens anyone. Giving politicians more power based on people’s fears is like giving firemen pay raises based on how many false alarms they report.

Politicians’ promises of “freedom from fear” imply that freedom properly understood is a risk-free, worry-free condition. It is the type of promise that a mother would make to a young child. Freedom is now supposedly something that exists only in the womb of government paternalism. “Freedom from fear” is to be achieved by trusting everything that politicians say and surrendering everything that politicians demand. New Mexico Governor Michelle Grisham epitomized that mindset when she proclaimed at the Democratic National Convention, “We need a president who can be Consoler-in-Chief. We need a president capable of holding us in a great big hug.” And continuing to hold us until we formally become psychological wards of the state?

“Freedom from fear” offers freedom from everything except the government. Anyone who sounds the alarm about excessive government power will automatically be guilty of subverting freedom from fear. Presumably, the fewer inviolable rights the citizen has, the better government will treat him. But as John Locke warned more than 300 years ago, “I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.”

Why not simply offer voters “freedom from the Constitution”? “Freedom from fear” means security via mass delusions about the nature of political power. Painting the motto “freedom from fear” on shackles won’t make them easier to bear. Perhaps our ruling class should be honest and replace the Bill of Rights with a new motto: “Political buncombe will make you free.”

2,374,172 firearm background checks were initiated with the FBI last month, bringing the total for 2024 so far, to 22,746,273. It appear that the noted ‘ball through the python’ rate caused by the combination of COVID and SloJoe is returning to a more or less “normal” rate.

 

Massachusetts grapples with fallout from landmark Supreme Court gun ruling

A landmark 2022 Supreme Court ruling involving a New York gun law has begun to undermine Massachusetts’ gun laws, with a Boston Municipal Court judge recently ordering the Police Department to provide a concealed carry license to a man it had deemed a public safety risk.

At issue is the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in what is known as the Bruen case, which cited the Second Amendment to overturn a New York law that required applicants for licenses to carry concealed handguns to show proper cause for why they needed one.

The ruling prohibited states from requiring gun owners to have a “good reason” to carry, unraveling gun regulations in Massachusetts, New York, and four other states with so called may-issue laws that gave local authorities sweeping discretion over who receives licenses.

Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott cited the ruling in August in ordering Police Commissioner Michael Cox to grant a concealed carry license for East Boston resident Jordan Lebedevitch, who wrote in his application that he hoped to work in the firearms industry and needed to carry a gun for his job at a security company. Earlier this month, Cox sued in Suffolk Superior Court to overturn Sinnott’s decision. That lawsuit is still pending.

Police had found Lebedevitch unsuitable, a legal determination fordenying the license, citing a 2023 police report from his then-wife claiming he threatened to kill himself during an argument. State law gives gun licensing authority to local police leaders.

Lebedevitch disputed the threat of suicide in a letter to the department, writing that the situation had been a “misunderstanding.” He filed a legal petition in Municipal Court, which landed before Sinnott. The judge initially ruled in favor of the Police Department but reversed his decision the next day, ordering the department to issue the license, according to court filings.

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You are bound to meet misfortune if you are unarmed because, among other reasons, people despise you. There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed. In the latter case, there will be suspicion on the one hand and contempt on the other, making cooperation impossible.
— Niccolo Machiavelli