Mamdani and His Jewish Supporters
Jewish Naïveté in the Age of Mamdani

My apologies to my Jewish brethren. But, to those who voted for socialist Zohran Mamdani this is unfortunately an exercise in deep self-deception.

First of all, Jewish naïveté didn’t begin on New York’s election night. No. Jews have been in the forefront of many campaigns for social and revolutionary change, only later to shockingly face betrayal by the very movements they helped to foster.

As many readers know, I started my Substack column looking at history, particularly American New Left history. I once was an avowed Marxist and was a roommate with Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis.

As might be expected, I personally met and collaborated with many so-called “revolutionary” New Left leaders in the 1970’s from Abbie Hoffman to Jerry Rubin. I was an idealistic romantic about the many benefits of socialism. And I’m Jewish.

History is replete with Jews who were naïve about socialism and socialist ideas.

One of the biggest Jewish leaders who embraced the Leninist Soviet dictatorship is a long-forgotten Jew named Grigori Zinoviev. That’s how he was publicly known. But his original name was Hirsh Apfelbaum. He was a Jew.

Zinoviev became one of the biggest global salesmen for communism after Vladimir Lenin appointed him as the President of the Soviet COMINTERN, known as the Communist International. He traveled to Europe and the United States to propagandize about the wonders of socialism. He also served as one of the troika with Joseph Stalin in governing the Soviet Union.

Zinoviev foolishly thought he was advancing the socialist revolution for the Russian working class. But after decades of being a loyal and an enthusiastic communist, Stalin prosecuted Zinoviev. He sent the Jewish leader before one of his despicable “Show Trials.”

Then in 1936 he sent Zinoviev – or Apfelbaum – before a firing squad. Despite claiming his innocence, he was executed in August of that year.

As the moderate Jewish organization Aish noted about Zinoviev in a 2024 article titled, “For Jewish Anti-Semites, A Cautionary History Lesson: “Yet, for all of his devotion to the cause and his role in giving Stalin the leadership position, his idealism would reveal itself to be naive. At the end of the day, as far as the enemies of the Jews were concerned, a Jew is a Jew.”

Aish further observed that, “As far as his fellow Jews, Zinoviev did not use his influence to help them. He spent his life building the regime that would utterly destroy the Soviet Jewish community.”

Zinoviev, like many of today’s progressive Jews, turned his backs on Judaism. He really didn’t care about his religion or about the Jewish people living in the Soviet Union. Today, many of the Jewish-born pro-Mamdani supporters also elevate their progressive socialist ideas over their affinity toward Judaism. Many also reject Israel outright.

According to exit polls, one out of three New York Jews were ecstatic about Mamdani and voted for him. They did so even though Mamdani is openly anti-Israel, has embraced many antisemitic tropes, along with dogmatic Islamic edicts.

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More on USPS Carry; Leaked Memo Confirmed Authentic

A federal judge found the prohibition on possessing firearms on some United States Postal Service properties unconstitutional. A leaked MEMO — confirmed authentic — outlines how USPS employees should deal with carriers.

In October it was reported that the prohibitions on firearm possession and carry on some USPS properties was ruled to be unconstitutional. The opinion said that the law “is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment with respect to Plaintiffs’ (and their members) possession and carrying of firearms inside of an ordinary United States Post Office or the surrounding Post Office property.” How the USPS would be handling potential carriers has not been made publicly known, however a leaked internal MEMO contains instructions and the USPS has confirmed the authenticity of the material.

When contacted last month, the USPS addressed a query concerning the opinion. USPS Senior Public Relations Representative Felicia Lott spoke on behalf of the Service.

“The Postal Service is aware of the recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas regarding the ban on firearms possession on postal property, which enjoins enforcement of the ban at certain Post Offices, and the surrounding Post Office property, with respect to certain postal customers,” Lott wrote. “The Postal Service is currently analyzing the court’s decision and taking necessary steps to implement the injunction.”

Via a reddit post, an alleged postal clerk leaked an internal document dated October 24, 2025. The document states the following:

A federal court order currently permits certain postal customers to carry and possess firearms at most Post Offices, including in customer parking lots. In response to that decision, and while we work to clarify the precise scope of the court’s order, we are providing the following guidance to all our retail employees at all Postal Service retail facilities, regarding all of our customers at those facilities.

Because of this decision, there may be instances in which members of the public who are visiting Postal Service retail facilities to pick up their mail, or conduct a retail transaction, will be carrying firearms. Postal Service Employees are directed to refrain from confronting or engaging with the customer about the fact that they are carrying a firearm.

Postal Service employees should allow the customer to conduct their business in the same manner as other customers. Once the customer leaves, immediately report the matter to your supervisor or manager.

Management employees should immediately call the Inspection Service hotline at 1-877-876-2455. The Inspection Service will determine whether the ban on firearms possession can lawfully be enforced under the circumstances, and whether further action is justified. Calls to local enforcement (911) should only be made if the person is interfering with operations or if the customer is acting in a manner that raises immediate safety or security concerns.

The court’s decision does not affect the ban on firearms possession by Postal Service employees on postal property, which remains fully in place. Employees are reminded that carrying or storing firearms on Postal Service property is prohibited and can result in discipline, up to and including removal from the Postal Service. The prohibition on employee possession of firearms also means that storing firearms in vehicles that are parked on postal property is also prohibited.

Thank you for your attention.

Bearing Arms reached out to USPS Senior Public Relations Representative Felicia Lott concerning the document. In response to the request concerning the authenticity of the document, Lott said, “USPS confirms that the Service Talk is an internal employee document and refers back to its previous statement for request of any additional comment.”

An October 28 filing from the Department of Justice requested the court clarify and/or stipulate that the ruling should apply to named plaintiffs only as a membership list would not be provided by the organizational plaintiffs: Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation. The Justice Department says the court “should accordingly clarify that its declaratory judgment and permanent injunction are limited to the individual Plaintiffs and to individuals who have been identified and verified to the government as members of the organizational Plaintiffs.”

Members of SAF and FPC should be able to simply carry membership cards and or certificates with them in order to prove their status as an affected party. The court has not addressed the DOJ concerning their request as of this time.

The USPS has yet to make a public statement about the decision nor offer any guidance to Postal Service customers directly.

Why? Simple. It’s because like all goobermint, they’re scared to death that the peons may one day get fed up enough with the blatant and open corruption (See – among other’s -Nancy Pelosi’s impossible stock portfolio performance) and decide to take care of business, along with the clear understanding that, while Mao was a murderous dictator, he was very correct when he said that political power grew from the barrel of a gun and that the party should control the guns.

Why Does SCOTUS Hear So Few Second Amendment Cases?
The right to keep and bear arms occupies a curious place in American legal history.

The Second Amendment occupies a curious place in American legal history. It has been sitting right there in the Bill of Rights since those amendments were first added to the Constitution in 1791. Yet it was not until the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller that the U.S. Supreme Court got around to recognizing what many legal scholars had been saying all along: Namely, that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not a collective right, nor a state’s right.

Two years after Heller, in 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago, the Court additionally held that the individual right to keep and bear arms that applied against the federal enclave of D.C. also applied against state and local governments.

But then the Supreme Court sort of went quiet for a while. The next truly major Second Amendment case did not arrive until 2022’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which extended the logic of Heller and McDonald to recognize “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”

The recent news that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new Second Amendment dispute later this term raises the interesting question of why it takes the Court so long to hear so few of these kinds of cases. What gives?

For a persuasive explanation of the Supreme Court’s pre-Heller silence on the Second Amendment, I recommend reading a 1989 Yale Law Journal article titled “The Embarrassing Second Amendment,” written by the liberal law professor Sanford Levinson. “I cannot help but suspect that the best explanation for the absence of the Second Amendment from the legal consciousness of the elite bar,” Levinson wrote, “is derived from a mixture of sheer opposition to the idea of private ownership of guns and the perhaps subconscious fear that altogether plausible, and perhaps even ‘winning’ interpretations would present real hurdles to those of us supporting prohibitory regulation.” In this telling, legal elites basically understood that if the Second Amendment was ever taken seriously, then some (or even many) gun control laws would necessarily fall. So they just declined to take the amendment seriously.

But if that explains some or all of the pre-Heller period, what explains the more recent era? One explanation may be found in an oft-quoted passage from Justice Antonin Scalia’s Heller decision. “Nothing in our opinion,” Scalia wrote, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

I recall several Second Amendment advocates grumbling to me at the time that this passage by Scalia was both unnecessary to the outcome of the case and potentially quite injurious to the broader gun rights cause. Those advocates feared that the gun control side would immediately grab hold of the “sensitive places” exception and run with it, leading to more regulations on guns instead of less.

And the federal courts would, of course, have to deal with Scalia’s language, too. In fact, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, invoked that very language by Scalia in a notable concurrence filed in the Bruen case. “Properly interpreted,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the Second Amendment allows a ‘variety’ of gun regulations.”

Why did Kavanaugh feel compelled to emphasize that particular point in a separate concurrence that managed to garner the support of only the chief justice? I speculated at the time that Kavanaugh “may be signaling to the lower courts that, in his view, many such gun control regulations are presumptively constitutional, and lower court judges should therefore act accordingly.”

In other words, Kavanaugh and Roberts might be less hawkish on gun rights than some of their colleagues. And there might be a small but growing fissure among the Court’s “conservative bloc” over just how broadly the Second Amendment should be interpreted and enforced. That fissure, if it exists, might also explain why the post-Heller Court has not exactly been in a hurry to take up new gun rights cases.

We’ll learn more when the Supreme Court takes up this latest gun rights case, Wolford v. Lopez, in earnest later this term. For now, we’re still left to ponder the Second Amendment’s curious position.

Farewell to the Penny

The last penny was minted today [yesterday] in Philadelphia:

The last penny ever to be made was finally struck at the US Mint in Philadelphia on Wednesday — after President Trump cancelled production of the costly copper coin after 232 years.
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And just like that, the coin that’s been in production since 1793 will never again be made.

It is, I think, a sad occasion.

Penny production was cancelled by Trump for the 2026 year after the coin started to cost about four times more to make than the 1 cent it is actually worth in US currency.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that pennies are a bad idea. A single penny may be used for hundreds or thousands or transactions. The nickel, for what it is worth, costs 14 cents to produce.

This, though, is more significant:

Trump and other critics have also argued that the penny has become an obsolete denomination with little use in modern markets – and that there are already billions in production to tide America over for the foreseeable future.

You could see that the penny was on the way out when gas stations and other retail establishments set up “take a penny, leave a penny” signs. The pennies were no longer worth worrying about.

Why do I think the demise of the penny is sad? Because it is a tangible marker of the steady inflation that has eroded the value of our currency. In 1900, the dollar was worth $38.57 in today’s money. So a penny was worth more than 38 cents–well over the value of today’s quarter. Let’s hope the dollar is not on its way to becoming like the yen; a single yen is today worth $.0065, or 65/100 of one penny. Literally not worth printing.

And, while it is true that there will be pennies in circulation for years to come, there will not be any shiny new ones. A new copper penny’s shine is different from, and vastly superior to, that of the silver (or “silver”) coins. A shiny new penny heralds the beginning of a new year.

Quite a few years ago, when I was a kid, I got a shiny new 1957 penny. The older pennies were, by contrast, dull. It struck me as the symbol of a new age dawning: 1957 was modernity, everything before then was a somewhat misty past. I still feel that way. For me, 1957 was the beginning of the modern world.

The humble U.S. penny, RIP.

Everytown Misfires in Attack on Defensive Gun Uses

When Everytown for Gun Safety announced it was holding online gun “training” classes, many anti-gun activists and volunteers with the organization were sharply critical of the move, declaring it was akin to the group normalizing gun ownership instead of advocating for a gun-free future.

Of course, the so-called training has proved to be mostly anti-gun talking points, but if the group’s anti-2A critics have any doubts that Everytown is still as opposed to our right to keep and bear arms as ever they just have to look at the organization’s latest report for reassurance.

Titled “Disarming Fear: Debunking Myths of Defensive Gun Use”, Everytown’s report starts with several incidents that they allege were reported as defensive gun uses even though there were elements of each incident that were immediately known that undercut any self-defense claim. One incident highlighted by Everytown, for example, was the shooting of teenager Ralph Yarl in Kansas City after he knocked on the wrong door of a home when he went to pick up his little brothers from a friend’s house. While Andrew Lester Lester told police that he believed that Yarl was trying to break in to his home and was “scared to death” of Yarl’s size, it only took prosecutors four days to file charges against him.

Everytown asserts that legitimate defensive gun uses are “exceedingly rare,” and that they are “often deployed against unarmed perpetrators, and often accompanied by underappreciated personal and social risks, including loss of life and property.”

How rare? Everytown says it used National Crime Victimization Survey data and came up with a figure of about 69,000 DGUs every year between 2019 and 2023. That’s far below the estimates of 1 million or more DGUs from researchers like Gary Kleck and William English, but even so, that’s about three times the number of homicides in the United States. If DGU’s are “rare”, then murders involving firearms are even more rare, which undercuts Everytown’s entire ideology.

Everytown also takes issue with using a gun to defend yourself against someone who doesn’t have a firearm.

In the majority of these uses, suspected perpetrators are unarmed. In fact, 58 percent of perpetrators are not armed with any weapon. In eight out of 10 DGUs, the suspected perpetrator is not armed with a gun.

So what? An unarmed individual can still pose a threat to life and limb. Just look at the recent DGU in Los Angeles where a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran shot and killed a man who had thrown him to the ground and broke both his legs and continued to assault him while he was writhing in pain. Does Everytown believe George Karkoc should be charged for acting in self-defense since his attacker wasn’t armed with any kind of weapon?

If not, it sure looks like they at least believe Karkoc would have been better off without a gun.

Crime victims who responded with a gun were less likely to get away from the offender than those who responded without one (7 percent with a gun compared to 18 percent without) and less likely to avoid injury (39 percent compared to 44 percent).

So… in either case the vast majority of individuals who were the victim of a violent crime were unable to get away from their attacker, and the difference in the injury rate is honestly negligible. If that’s true, then I would definitely prefer to be armed if someone decides to invade my home, carjack my vehicle, or assault me on the street.

Everytown also notes that violent crime is trending down across the United States, but as FPC’s Rob Romano notes, they still claim that an armed society is a more dangerous place.


Giffords has also recently complained about the number of justifiable homicides, which makes me wonder if this going to be a new talking point for the gun control lobby. “Too many people are defending themselves from violent attackers” doesn’t sound like a great argument to me, but maybe their focus groups are telling them differently.

Everytown’s conclusion, of course, is that you’re better off not owning a gun at all. I’d say the gun control group gave us 69,000 reasons to disregard that advice. In reality the number of defensive gun uses is likely much higher than what the anti-gun org is wililng to admit, but even using their numbers hundreds of people are protecting themselves with firearms each and every day across the United States; proof positive that DGUs aren’t uncommon or unnecessary.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”  —Robert Heinlein

FPC Calls on President Trump to End Defense of Federal Gun Control Laws

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) today issued the following statement condemning the Trump Administration’s ongoing defense of federal gun control laws and calling on President Trump to take immediate action to restore the integrity of his pledge to protect Second Amendment rights:

Since President Donald J. Trump signed the “Protecting Second Amendment Rights” executive order in February, his Department of Justice has done exactly the opposite—relentlessly defending the federal government’s unconstitutional gun control regime. Instead of using the Justice Department’s vast power to secure Americans’ right to keep and bear arms, the Trump DOJ has used it to fight against the People—even taking extreme positions in court to resist injunctions that block the government’s enforcement of gun laws that federal judges have already found unconstitutional.

Last month, the Administration’s Solicitor General, D. John Sauer—the government’s top appellate lawyer, often called the “10th Justice” for his influence with the Supreme Court—urged the Court to deny review in a case challenging the National Firearms Act’s (NFA) registration and taxation scheme for short-barreled rifles. The Administration argued that the NFA’s intrusive requirements are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” effectively endorsing the very federal overreach the Second Amendment was written to prevent.

In an effort to convince the Court to dodge the question of unconstitutional federal restrictions, the Trump DOJ suggested that the Court should focus on “laws banning AR-15 rifles.” Yet, when the opportunity arose for the Administration to support exactly such a case—a challenge to an AR-15 rifle ban out of Illinois—the Trump DOJ was silent.

Rather than support good Supreme Court vehicles, the Trump DOJ has chosen to game the system and throw its weight behind bad cases likely to strengthen the government’s power and weaken individual liberty, such as United States v. Hemani, which the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.

The Trump DOJ’s continuing adversarial posture to the Second Amendment doesn’t end there. In United States v. George Peterson—an FPC-supported Fifth Circuit criminal appeal that challenges the NFA’s unconstitutional registration and taxation of firearm suppressors—the Trump DOJ opposed a petition for rehearing en banc, doubling down on its defense of oppressive federal gun laws.

The Trump DOJ’s sustained pattern of anti-Second Amendment litigation cannot be dismissed as bureaucratic inertia—it reflects deliberate choices.

FPC calls on President Trump to immediately direct his Department of Justice to end its defense of federal gun control laws and to begin using the full power of the executive branch to actively protect and advance the Second Amendment rights of the American people.

In Minnesota, Leftist Gun Owners Identify Problem with Dems

By Dave Workman

Buried deep in a feature about three left-tilting college guys who have started a company which builds speed loaders for AR-15 magazines is a revealing observation about Democrats and why there may never be a rational conversation about the Second Amendment.

The feature, published in the Minnesota Reformer, focuses on Sid Allen, his fledgling company MangaBerry West, and his colleagues Riley Dahlberg and Tarik Alduri. All three of these guys are still in their 20s. According to the story, “Allen is the president, and Dahlberg vice president, of the St. Cloud College Democrats even though they are left of the party establishment on most issues.”

But one has to read almost to the end to reach the red meat.

“Despite being in favor of higher taxes for more robust social services,” the story says, “which is at the core of Democratic identity, the MangaBerry West guys said they’ve been told by Democrats that they aren’t real Democrats because of their support for gun rights.”

At another point in the feature, Alduri was quoted observing, “I think it’s sad that we have gotten to this point where the left thinks that they’re not allowed to own guns in order to stay aligned Democratic Party.”

Minnesota is home to Gov. Tim Walz, a former “A”-rated politician who did such a 180-degree shift on guns he’s almost persona non grata at the National Rifle Association. It’s a state where extremist Democrat gun control measures are currently held in check by the virtually even split in the legislature between Democrats and Republicans.

This year has seen tragedies linked to guns. There was the murder of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. She served as House Speaker until January of this year and was a leader in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party (DFL), which is the state Democrat party.

Then came the attack at the Annunciation Catholic Church, which left two students dead and 21 others wounded.

As KMSP Fox9 News is reporting, Democrat state Sen. Judy Seeberger, who is reportedly a gun owner, is talking about gun control in the 2026 legislative session. She, along with others in her party, wants a ban on so-called “assault weapons.”

This is where MangaBerry’s Alduri acknowledged his understanding of capitalism and how the gun ban Democrats want would “be a massive hit to our business.” At some point, idealism invariably collides with reality.

Also, if court rulings ultimately undo many if not most restrictive gun control laws around the country because they violate the Second Amendment, it will mean Democrats, as described by the MangaBerry West crew, will have to acknowledge their prejudices and admit gun owners have rights, too.

Veterans Day 2025: Giffords Pushes More Gun Control for Veterans

On Veterans Day 2025 Gabby Giffords’ gun control group, Giffords, is pushing more gun control for veterans who avail themselves of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) services.

Giffords posted to X:

Since 2006, veterans have died by suicide nearly 20 times more often than soldiers have been killed at war. Veterans deserve more than empty words. They deserve leaders who work to protect them.

But many in Congress are stopping the VA from flagging when a veteran is at a heightened risk of harming themselves or others, and therefore shouldn’t have access to a gun.

Giffords is complaining about the efforts Republicans have undertaken to end the VA’s decades-long habit of blocking veterans’ gun rights by reporting said veterans to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for actions as benign as needing help handling finances.

Through the years, Breitbart News has warned of the situation wherein veterans who use a fiduciary to handle their finances face the threat of being reported by the VA and subsequently prohibited from gun purchases. The need for help in balancing finances — even for a time — is equated with mental health problems, and gun rights are revoked.

Moreover, on February 21, 2016, Breitbart News reported that combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who needed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were increasingly hesitant to pursue treatment because they feared a PTSD diagnosis would be used to deny their gun rights under the Obama administration.

A combat vet confined to a wheelchair spoke to Breitbart News anonymously at the time, saying, “I was diagnosed with PTSD. What’s being done to be sure my guns aren’t taken away?” He said he lived with the added anxiety of questioning his every trip to the doctor, fearing that he was one visit away from having his gun rights snuffed out.

Earlier this year, Rep. Eli Crane (R)–a former U.S. Navy SEAL–told Breitbart News that Democrats who support the status quo on bureaucrats being able to strip away gun rights often claim they do so in order to help reduce suicide among veterans, particularly combat veterans. But Crane rejected this line of thinking, saying, “When it comes to suicide, a lot of these individuals, a lot of veterans….who are struggling with PTSD and have some of these issues, one of [their] biggest issues is fear and trauma because [they] thought [they] might lose [their] life in battle against other people with guns.”

He suggested that taking away their guns now only serves to increase the feeling of defenselessness, thereby increasing feelings of fear and fueling the very suicides which Democrats claim they are trying to stop.

Yet on this Veterans Day, Giffords is urging more gun control for veterans.

“No matter how brilliant a man may be, he will never engender confidence in his subordinates and associates if he lacks simple honesty and moral courage.”
-GEN J. Lawton Collins, Chief of Staff of the Army 1949-1953

Don’t worry, unlike what was part of what caused the crash in 2008, I’m sure this time around it will work just fine.

Fannie Mae removes minimum credit score requirements from DU.

The current 620 minimum representative or average median credit score will be removed for new loan casefiles created on or after Nov. 16, 2025

Fannie Mae‘s November 2025 Selling Guide, released on Wednesday, detailed several updates, including expanding Fannie’s Day 1 Certainty offerings to include representation and warranty relief for undisclosed non-mortgage liabilities, expanding the eligibility for the age of credit document exception for single-closing construction loans and removing minimum credit score requirements from Desktop Underwriter (DU).
As a result of the latter update, Fannie Mae will remove minimum credit score requirements for loans submitted through its DU system starting Nov. 16. This means that the current 620 minimum representative or average median credit score will be removed for new loan case files created on or after that date.
Other related updates will apply to files submitted or resubmitted beginning the weekend of Nov. 15, 2025, an announcement from Fannie Mae said. Instead of applying a minimum score, DU will use its own analysis of borrower risk factors to determine loan eligibility.

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The Armed Awakening of America’s Radical Left
When moral outrage meets live ammunition.

Unless you live under a rock — or teach gender studies — you won’t be surprised to find that people with strong left-leaning political attitudes score far higher on traits like neuroticism and psychopathy than many of their conservative counterparts. These psychological signatures — emotional volatility, heightened threat sensitivity, and explosive aggression — are more pronounced the further left you go. Add to that the recent murder of Charlie Kirk, the attempts on Donald Trump’s life, and a surge in gun purchases by self-styled progressive activists, and the picture turns even darker.

The same movement that once mocked the Second Amendment is now shopping for suppressors.

The same movement that once mocked the Second Amendment is now shopping for suppressors. From trans shooters to queer collectives and “rainbow rifle clubs,” the left’s new hobby isn’t mindfulness and manifesting — it’s marksmanship. Conservatives tend to buy guns to defend their families; leftists now seem to buy them to prove they can. The mood has shifted, from preachy to predatory.

It wasn’t always like this. During the George Floyd riots of 2020, the radical left burned cities and, yes, cracked a few skulls along the way. Innocent shopkeepers were beaten, officers ambushed, and neighborhoods torched. Yet for all the carnage, most of the movement’s foot soldiers weren’t locked and loaded. They fought with fists, bricks, and stupid slogans. But times have changed. What began as “defund the police” has metastasized into “arm the resistance. The irony writes itself: the same people who argued that no one should own a firearm now brag about their “community arsenals.”

The pandemic made everything worse — politics, paranoia, and people. Isolation fermented into delusion. Online echo chambers turned into pressure cookers. Every disagreement became a moral emergency, every rival a fascist. Locked indoors and glued to screens, millions mistook outrage for purpose. Those who once feared guns now fear obscurity. For a movement built on emotion, weaponry has become the new therapy — something cold, mechanical, and finally under their control.

But something more dangerous is happening right now: ideology is mutating into insurgency.

The post-Floyd left has convinced itself it’s fighting for survival. To question its dogmas is to threaten its existence. That’s why dissent within the ranks is punished with medieval brutality. But something more dangerous is happening right now: ideology is mutating into insurgency. The left has discovered that it likes the smell of gunpowder.

And why not? The rhetoric has been primed for years. “Punch a Nazi.” “Burn it down.” “No justice, no peace.” It was only a matter of time before soundbites became strategies. While conservatives debate calibers and carry laws, progressives are turning their causes into armed crusades. The so-called “John Brown Gun Club” trains members to prepare for civil conflict. What was once fringe is now fashionable.

Again, to be very clear, the modern left is not just angry — it’s unwell. Anxiety and depression rates among self-described progressives have skyrocketed, especially among the young. To those on the far left, Trump and his supporters aren’t political opponents but existential threats. They are embodiments of evil to be eradicated, not engaged. When politics becomes pathology, violence stops feeling like a crime and starts feeling like self-defense.

For decades, the right was caricatured as paranoid doomsday preppers. Now it’s the left that’s preparing for the apocalypse. Once, revolution was an aesthetic — Che Guevara shirts and campus protests. Now it’s a lifestyle brand with tactical vests.

Meanwhile, conservatives — those caricatured as the violent barbarians — are mostly watching this unfold with disbelief. They’ve always known that guns aren’t inherently evil; intent is. What terrifies them isn’t the weaponry but the warped conviction behind it. A man protecting his family is predictable; a lunatic avenging an ideology is not.

We are entering uncharted territory. The United States has seen political assassinations, riots, and radical groups before — but never with this cultural reach. The internet ensures that every grievance finds both a trigger and a target. Fury is now networked, outrage algorithmic. And unlike the extremists of old, today’s radicals don’t hide in compounds. They scroll beside you, shop beside you, share your workspace, and sleep next door.

You can’t mix apocalyptic language with live ammunition and expect harmony. A society can survive hypocrisy. It cannot survive hysteria with high-capacity magazines. Every revolution begins with the belief that violence will heal what politics can’t. It never does. It only creates new tyrants with a taste for blood.

Perhaps, in some dark corner of their minds, the new progressives believe they’re the heroes in history’s next great moral war. They forget that history has a habit of eating its heroes. It also has an excellent memory. It remembers every bullet, every boast, every cause that mistook fury for faith. And it will remember who called it justice when they started killing the innocent.

Licensed gun owner shoots would-be thieves trying to carjack him in Belltown

SEATTLE — Seattle police are investigating an attempted armed carjacking in the Belltown-Queen Anne area that resulted in a legally armed victim shooting two suspects early Sunday morning.

The incident unfolded around 3:30 a.m. on the 2200 block of 1st Avenue.

Officers responding to the scene found one suspect suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The suspect was detained and received medical aid from firefighters before being taken to Harborview Medical Center in serious condition, where he remains under armed guard.

The victim, whom police called a “licensed gun owner,” was also detained for questioning.

According to police, the victim had parked his sports car along 1st Avenue when a white sedan with four masked occupants approached. After a brief exchange, two men armed with guns attempted to steal the sports car.

Fearing for his safety, the victim fired multiple rounds, hitting one of the suspects.

The other suspects fled in the sedan before police arrived. Later, the white sedan dropped off a second suspect at Harborview Medical Center, also suffering from a gunshot wound. This suspect is in serious condition and under armed guard as well, the SPD says.

The vehicle and its remaining occupants left the hospital before police could arrive.

Officers and robbery detectives processed the scene, collected evidence, and interviewed witnesses. The victim was taken to Seattle Police Headquarters for further questioning by detectives before being released.

The investigation remains open and active, with the Robbery Unit leading the case.