Observation O’ The Day
Neighbors say this really is a quiet neighborhood…they say crime is practically unheard of, and they are stunned there was a deadly shooting.

Quote O’ The Day
Arthur: Where hides evil in my kingdom, then?
Merlin: Always… where you never expect it. Always.

Smyrna homeowner shoots and kills man breaking into his home

Smyrna police say a homeowner shot and killed a man who was breaking into his house Sunday evening.

First responders raced to the home near the corner of Lochlomand Lane and Highland Drive. Detectives immediately went to work. Police tape was visible along a dirt path which leads to the backyard of the house.

Police have not released the name of the homeowner or the man who was shot and killed.

Neighbors are stunned.

“That’s very terrifying to hear in this type of neighborhood,” said Paige Nowacki, who lives nearby.

Neighbors say this really is a quiet neighborhood. Just a couple of miles from Truist Park, they say this is the kind of place where everybody waves to each other. They say crime is practically unheard of, and they are stunned there was a deadly shooting.

“People protecting their houses. It happens more times than not. I’m glad the homeowners are okay and protected themselves. Still, it’s terrifying,” said Nowacki.

“There’s going to be a million arguments on why it’s a good or bad thing or surprising or not,” said another neighbor, Dakota Jarrad.

Jarrad moved into the neighborhood last year. He says he works with firearms and is trained to know how to use them to protect himself.

“You get it for a sense of protection, but you don’t want to use it,” said Jarrad.

Police say the investigation is still underway. At this time, no charges have been filed against the homeowner.

Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anyone has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.
-Alexander Hope

As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.
-Thomas Jefferson

BLUF & absolute winner of a Quote O’ The Day
Regardless, I could not care less about offending the sensibilities of the now-deceased shooter nor of the transgender movement at large. I am not bound to abide by their delusions. I do not have to pretend biological reality doesn’t exist to appease them. Certainly, I don’t have to worry about affirming the gender hysterics of a mass murderer who took the room temperature challenge after murdering six people.

Winsome Sears Smacks Down Bill Maher Guest Claiming Nashville Transgender Shooter Is Being ‘Misgendered’

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears appeared on Bill Maher’s show on Friday night. Unfortunately, she had to deal with a guest at the table complaining that the transgender Nashville mass shooter was being “misgendered” and “dead-named.”

To summarize how that went, Sears was having none of it.

On Monday, a 28-year-old woman claiming to be a man entered a Tennessee Christian school and began shooting teachers and students. Before two police officers heroically rushed to the scene and took down the deranged murderer, six people were killed including three small children. Within days, police revealed that they had found a manifesto and that there was substantial reason to believe that the shooter’s trans “identity” played a role in her motivation. Further reports appeared to confirm that was true, though we are still awaiting the public release of the manifesto.

Incredibly, despite the story clearly being that a transgender person committed a hate crime against Christians, the press immediately began to paint the shooter and the broader “trans community” as the real victims. That included the White House, which spent all week claiming trans people are “under attack” and promoting the so-called “Trans Day of Visibility.”

That ridiculous theme continued on Maher’s show when a guest named James Kirchick, who writes for something called Air Mail, decided to chide people for “misgendering” and “deadnaming” the militant transgender shooter. He then snidely and confidently proclaimed that “if someone says they’re a man, they’re a man.”

Continue reading “”

If you want a productive society that extends beyond, say, next week, you teach your kids about hard work and creativity and personal responsibility, respect for authority, but if you want to destroy a society, you funnel a ton of garbage to kids about gender, ideology and twerking.
– Tucker Carlson

Quote O’ The Day
The military is not a therapy program – Sarah Hoyt

Military Officials: Diversity Training Makes Soldiers Feel ‘Included’.

Top military officials in the Biden Administration recently attempted to defend far-left “diversity” training in the military, claiming that such sessions make all soldiers feel more “included.”

As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Air Force Chief of Staff General C.Q. Brown gave an interview for Defense One defending the practice of diversity training, claiming that “when people join our military, they want to look around and see somebody who looks like them.”

“They want to be part of a team, and feel like they’re included,” Brown added.

Brown praised the practice for its alleged efforts to build “cohesive” teams for all service members, “no matter their background.”

Similarly, General David Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, claimed that he has seen “zero evidence” of any negative impact from such left-wing policies when it comes to the end result of making stronger Marines.

House Republicans are currently attempting to cut funding for such far-left practices in the military; other examples include a program in the Army for training soldiers on how to use “gender pronouns,” and a similar training video for the Navy discussing pronouns and “safe spaces.”

Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) declared that the Biden Administration’s efforts to force politics into the military are “shaping the Department of Defense into an institution that is spearheading toxic social policies instead of restoring military strength.”

“On the House Armed Services Committee, we are laser-focused on the threats we face and the capabilities we need to defeat them,” said Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

The fight over the politicization of the military comes as most branches struggle with reaching the appropriate levels of recruitment numbers in recent years. Last year, the U.S. Army missed its minimum recruitment goal by 15,000.

I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of record keeping procedure [gun registration] is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.
—CHARLES MORGAN, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON DC ACLU

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them
— Richard Henry Lee

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
— Thomas Jefferson

Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please.
Thus, there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people. — Aristotle

The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and `is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.
Cockrum v. State of Texas 1859

Judge Kozinski’s Full Dissent

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge, dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet, see Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases—or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. See, e.g.Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc), rev’d sub nom. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997). But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms. Indeed, to conclude otherwise, they had to ignore binding precedent. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), did not hold that the defendants lacked standing to raise a Second Amendment defense, even though the government argued the collective rights theory in its brief. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 6011-12; see also Brannon P. Denning & Glenn H. Reynolds, Telling Miller’s Tale: A Reply to David Yassky, 65 Law & Contemp. Probs. 113, 117-18 (2002). The Supreme Court reached the Second Amendment claim and rejected it on the merits after finding no evidence that Miller’s weapon—a sawed-off shotgun—was reasonably susceptible to militia use. See Miller, 307 U.S. at 178. We are bound not only by the outcome of Miller but also by its rationale. If Miller’s claim was dead on arrival because it was raised by a person rather than a state, why would the Court have bothered discussing whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia use? The panel majority not only ignores Miller’s test; it renders most of the opinion wholly superfluous. As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out to lunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

The majority falls prey to the delusion—popular in some circles—that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth—born of experience—is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks’ homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process. See Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, 80 Geo. L.J. 309, 338 (1991). In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised their right to bear arms to defend against racial mob violence. Id. at 341-42. As Chief Justice Taney well appreciated, the institution of slavery required a class of people who lacked the means to resist. See Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 417 (1857) (finding black citizenship unthinkable because it would give blacks the right to “keep and carry arms wherever they went”). A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history—Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel’s mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The sheer ponderousness of the panel’s opinion—the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text—refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel’s labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it—and is just as likely to succeed.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
— Robert Heinlein