What Should We Do After the Election?
I know that I am not alone when I look at the second presidential term of Donald Trump. The good news is that many of my concerns can be addressed quickly and at a moderate cost. More importantly, they are a place to start. What would you add to the list? Like most lists, the words on paper are only useful when we act on them. If your list is like mine, then it is more a list of what I should do than of what President Trump should do.
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Support President Trumps nominations.
- I probably have to make a few phone calls each time I read about the next nomination. I’m already late.
Fix the border.
- Build the wall and hinder the drug trade.
- Fix immigration. Let honest immigrants and visitors enter the US quickly. Allow honest citizens to cross the border easily and with a minimum of red tape.
- Fix the tax law so that companies do not profit from breaking immigration laws. Audit companies so that paying illegal immigrants is done with post tax money rather than pre-tax money. Paying an illegal is a post-tax donation rather than a pre-tax expense.
- Sanctuary cities obviously have so much money that they don’t need federal funds. Remove all discretionary funding from sanctuary cities and states.
Repair our election system.
- Help us trust our elections again. Require voter ID and pre-election registration. Make election day a holiday. Require paper ballots. Cast the votes on election day and count them on election day. Citizens who want to vote early have to appear before a judge. Tulsi Gabbard made a similar proposal when she was a democrat representative from Hawaii.
Bring justice for all.
- Bring charges against the government prosecutors who abused and harassed January 6 protesters. Grant pardons to J6 and abortion center protesters. Open a new investigation into the murder of Ashli Babbitt. The disproportionate prosecution of peaceful protesters was obscene. While we are at it, list the FBI informants who were at the J6 ralley.
- Arrest the FBI and CIA employees who spied on US citizens. Ask journalist Sharyl Attkisson to sit on that commission since she was a victim of that hacking. Any government agent who targeted journalists, peaceful protesters, and PTA parents should be fired and barred from federal government service for life.
- Tell us what happened to cause the many factory and farm fires in the last several years.
- Tell us who shot JFK. Prosecute them.
- Tell us who was on the Epstein and Diddy client lists. Prosecute them.
- Tell us who ordered banks to cancel the bank accounts of disfavored citizens that the Obama and Biden administrations didn’t like.
Remove corruption in government.
- Stop an insane EPA from exceeding the laws passed by the legislature.
- Remove the requirement for the US Secretary of State to approve industrial pipelines. That requirement was a way for the Clinton Foundation to skim payments from the pipeline industry. Stop it.
- Restrict US the government’s association with countries that do not respect our freedom of speech. Restrict foreign investment, intelligence exchange, trade, military, cultural, and educational exchanges from those countries.
- Eliminate foreign aid until the federal debt is gone. Put America first rather than putting political bribes first.
- Rulings from the United States Supreme Court are not keeping up with government violations of the citizens’ right to bear arms. Ask the Solicitor General to request a Special Masters for Second Amendment Cases. We’ve done that before with other civil rights violations.
- Apply across-the-board spending cuts until the budget is in balance. That reduction has to apply to non-discretionary spending as well as to discretionary spending programs. Everything is on the chopping block.
I’m driven by a long list of things to do. In contrast, our politicians can only hear one message at a time. A list like this is simply so much spilled ink, so many trapped electrons. Your list might be very different from mine, but we are the ones who give it life. Democracy is a hands-on participatory sport. It is my job to contact my legislators while I might still have their attention. It is my job to write their local office and their DC office. It is my job to call their local office and speak to their staff.. time after time.
We just had an election. Now we have homework and the list is only a tool to track our progress. I will tell you how I’m doing. I hope you will share your efforts as well.
Comments appreciated. RM
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Lock N Load Radio on Monday, 25 November 2024
I was on Bill Frady’s Lock-N-Load radio again on Monday. We only talked about a few of these stories. I thought I’d share all of this Second Amendment news with you. Enjoy!
The second circuit court of appeals said that New York’s carry-killer bill may stand. In particular, the good moral character requirement may stay in law. That says that non-objective criteria may be used to license a fundamental human right. The applicant who wants a permit is burdened to show that they are honest. I expect the USSC to GVR this case. https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/11/federal-appeals-court-upholds-most-of-restrictive-new-york-concealed-carry-gun-law-next-stop-scotus/
From Slowfacts- The right to keep and bear arms saves lives. Here is the experiment. https://slowfacts.wordpress.com/2024/11/21/mass-murders-in-china-are-we-the-same-or-different/
Defensive Gun Use from Texas- https://www.ammoland.com/2024/11/texas-woman-defends-herself-shoots-armed-intruder-who-followed-her-home/
How do we want to win at the United States Supreme Court? Do we win fast and narrow, or slow and wide? https://slowfacts.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=21233&action=edit
Despite how they counted votes in the last election, Philadelphia Democrats are not a law unto themselves. Pittsburg may have to listen as well. https://whyy.org/articles/philly-gun-control-lawsuit-supreme-court/
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced his office will file a lawsuit against Jackson County over a gun ordinance recently passed by the county’s legislature. The ordinance, introduced by Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca, prevents 18- to 21-year-olds from buying pistols or semiautomatic rifles. https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/missouri-attorney-general-plans-to-sue-jackson-county-over-youth-gun-ban-ordinance
We can tax them and treat them as adults in court, but Hawaiian law says that 18,19, and 20 year olds are not adult and old enough to keep and bear arms. https://www.voanews.com/a/lawsuit-challenges-hawaii-s-gun-ownership-ban-for-young-adults-/7874305.html
When you’ve weaponized the government against the citizens, don’t be surprised when the the citizens want you gone. https://www.rawstory.com/republicans-2669986063/
According to Gallup’s annual gun ownership survey — which groups results in six-year clusters — 33% of GOP women owned guns between 2019 and 2024. That is a 14-point increase from 2007 to 2012, when 19% of Republican women owned firearms. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/how-many-americans-have-guns-new-poll-finds-spike-in-ownership-among-one-group/
The survey of adults nationwide said that only 20 percent supported a handgun ban. That was a drop of 7 points since last year. Inside that 20 percent, it was only 6 percent of Republicans, 22 percent of independents, and 33 percent of democrats. The rate for democrats fell by 16 points from last year. I guess it was Kamala Harris saying that she was a gun owner. I’m sure that did it. https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/gun-nation/support-for-a-national-ban-on-handguns-drops-to-all-time-low-among-democrats/
Buying the guns that are not in your local gun shop
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One advantage the president has is choosing his people, the executive management, who will implement his policies. You get to correct your predecessor’s errors in a very big way. Let’s look at the infringements that Biden/Harris have imposed on the Second Amendment. That seems like a narrow scope of concern, but the analysis is equally applicable to most of our other rights as well. The obvious step would be to rescind the existing executive orders. It is true that that would work, but that isn’t the best answer in every case. For example, let’s look at the Biden Administration’s executive orders that turned you into a gun dealer.
At its surface, this reinterpretation of law was put in place to stop “rogue” gun shops from selling guns to known criminals. When you dig deeper, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is now able to call you a “dealer involved in the business of buying and selling firearms” if you offer to buy or offer to sell a single gun. You don’t even have to complete a single sale to be considered a gun-dealer. The prosecution is the punishment since federal agents are spending government money to prosecute you while you have to pay for lawyers to defend you and your family after you tried to sell your gun back to your brother. Note that the BATFE considers the Washington DC police department to be a “rogue firearms dealer.” Watch what happens now that a pro-rights president is in the Whitehouse.
President Trump could overturn the most onerous executive orders. The problem with that approach is that the next gun-grabbing Democrat in the Whitehouse could simply reinstate those same orders or worse. Instead of playing games on the policy see-saw, Trump can use the administrative state against itself to enforce long standing changes.
To begin, order the BATFE to make the broadest possible claims possible under Biden’s executive orders. For example, the BATFE might declare that anyone who buys and sells a gun has to become a Federal Firearms Licensee, i.e., a federally licensed gun dealer. Use the Trump controlled Department of Justice to find a pro-rights federal district court and then bring a case against a sympathetic plaintiff. I’m thinking you want to charge a black single-mom who lives in Texas and is trying to sell her gun back to her policeman-boyfriend. The DOJ deliberately overstates the claims against her. Either the plaintiff or the DoJ appeals the deliberately crafted case to the Federal District Court. The District Court declares that the Biden orders were unconstitutional. After that decision, the Biden Executive Orders cannot be enforced in that federal district.
This is where things get interesting and we want to get the US Supreme Court brought into play. The lower circuit court has said that Biden’s law in unconstitutional. The Solicitor General and the Trump administration along with the DOJ appeal the case to the USSC in such a way that they are sure to lose. Now, the Biden EOs are declared unconstitutional across the entire US.
The advantage is the wider scope of a pro-rights decision. Those court decisions cannot be easily overturned by the next Democrat administration. The disadvantage is that our rights are violated for several additional years as the court case winds its way through our legal system. Too often, our elected representatives need to appear relevant before the next news cycle and certainly before the next election. Are they, and we, willing to wait?
We can win small and fast, or we can win large and slow. We can do that with many of the rights that Biden and his handlers took from us. That choice depends on how patient we are and how much we ask our representatives to do the right thing.. slowly.
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Who are the Republican Media and where did they Come From?
A lot of things changed after the 2024 election. The US news media used to control the public narrative. That isn’t true today. Republicans largely stopped listening. Advertisers followed them. Major newspapers and broadcasters are bleeding money. Media management had to cut staff. Why did so many of us walk away from the news media and where did we go?
This month, the Associated Press announced that they will lay off 8-percent of its workforce. Disney is bleeding money month after month. Comcast decided that MSNBC is for sale. CNN is cutting its staff and enforcing wage cuts on its major announcers. Editorial boards are being shown the door.
We walked away because the news media gave us their editorial opinion rather than reporting the news. We also have alternatives that didn’t exist before. We can keep the news from around the world in our pockets and have it at our fingertips. The mainstream media failed the market test.
Some commentors said that “right wing conservatives” now control the media and social media. That ignores the biases of the social media “fact checkers” that silenced right and center-right viewpoints. We left because we were pushed out. We were not the only ones to leave.
Podcaster Joe Rogan used to be a democrat until the extremist democrat party left him behind. Now he considers himself a moderate republican. Elon Musk used to be a democrat. He thought that free speech was so important that he had to leave the democrat party and buy Twitter. Commentator Dave Rubin used to be a democrat. He found the party’s extreme positions unworkable. Tulsi Gabbard supported Republican Donald Trump. She is a former member of the Democrat National Committee and a former Democrat candidate for president. R. F. Kennedy Junior was a life-long democrat. He supported Republican candidate Donald Trump after the Democrat Party used lawfare to keep Kennedy out of debates and off of the ballot. The democrats once controlled the mainstream media and they also controlled alternative media. That was before the party was taken over by its extreme viewpoints.
You could claim that all these prominent democrats changed their beliefs and had to leave the Democrat party. A more likely explanation is that the Democrat party left them. The party is now run by and for the elites.
The Democrat party now believes that everyone is allowed to enter the US, and that anyone can vote without identification. Democrats claim that race is more important than behavior. They claim that anyone who says they are a woman is in fact a woman. They claim that sex with children is harmless. They also claim that government spending makes us prosperous. If you believed all that, they said that Joe Biden is sharp as a tack. That sounds unbelievable to most of us. It isn’t what we see.
Most of the corporate news media let their party affiliation cloud the news. The most trusted news organization is now The Weather Channel. We turned away and looked elsewhere for our news. Having us and our neighbors called fascist-hateful-sexist-racist-garbage does that. Now, we follow our own sources on X.
We never looked back.
Your experience is different than mine. What do you see? RM
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Mass Murders in China- are we the same or different?
For most of the United States, the good news is that we are unfamiliar with violence. The obvious exceptions are the few people working in law enforcement who deal with criminals every day. Our lack of hands-on-experience with violent people lets us entertain some very strange theories. Gun-control advocates in the US have told us that we would be safer if we banned guns like other countries. That doesn’t ring true. This is what we see when we look at the news last week.
- A driver in south China deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of people. The 62-year-old driver killed 35 people. Dozens more were injured. The driver was upset about his recent divorce.
- In eastern China, a 21-year-old student stabbed eight people to death. 17 more were seriously injured.
- In Amsterdam, Holland, several groups of Jews were attacked by Muslims after a soccer game. 10 Jews were injured. 62 attackers were arrested. The Jewish soccer team and their supporters were attacked with clubs and knives.
- The Chief of Police in Berlin said that Jews and gays were no longer safe in areas of Berlin with a large Arab population.
Most of our corporate news media doesn’t report on public attacks and threats from overseas.
We can mistakenly assume that they are peaceful, but no-news isn’t necessarily good-news.
I want to contrast those attacks with what happened here in the US at a Halloween party in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That is when an attempted mass murder was stopped by a good guy with a gun. A 17-year-old opened fire on people attending a Halloween party. He shot people at the back door and he shot people who were visible through the windows. Nine people were injured before the attacker was shot and killed in self-defense. The attacker was too young to legally carry a handgun in Indiana. The injured people were treated and survived.
We remember these stories because they are so shocking. The real data says something both startling and important. The United States recognizes the right of armed defense. The outcome in Indiana is the rule rather than the extraordinary exception. Where ordinary citizens are allowed to go armed, they stop mass-murder attempts more than half the time. They have done so hundreds and hundreds of times.
That is important. Remember that the news told us we would be safer if we were disarmed. Most of us don’t own a gun. Most of those who own a gun don’t carry it concealed in public. Fortunately, about one-in-a-dozen of us are legally carrying in public right now. Our armed neighbors stop most attempted mass murders. The mass-murders we don’t stop are the ones in so called “gun-free” zones where honest citizens are disarmed. This has been true for years.
You didn’t know that because you were not told.
This last election showed us the extreme political bias of the corporate news media. The reason you don’t know about our wonderful neighbors saving lives every day is because the corporate media is hugely biased against reporting armed defense. Not only do anti-rights billionaires want you disarmed, so do most news editors.
That means we have to read deeply to uncover the truth.
Thank you for reading and sharing. How do you find the real news? RM
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Lock N Load Radio on Monday, 18 November 2024
Bill and I didn’t get to discuss most of these articles. I thought I’d share this Second Amendment News with you. Enjoy!
Is government failure an accidental fault or a deliberate feature? Why is there no failsafe? It has been over 12 days since the background check system failed in Washington State. It remains broken and the state continues to violate our rights.
Let’s talk about the next congress. President Trump can not fix it all. I do like that he proposed a truth and reconciliation commission to uncover past corruption. He can erase Biden’s 50 executive orders on firearms. Trump has called for nationwide reciprocity. That takes an act of congress and the senate. We can get rid of the executive orders that said a gun shop can be closed after a single paperwork error. That is a start.
He can eliminate or repurpose the Whitehouse office on gun violence. A lot of what Trump does is up to us. We are the ones who have to call our senators and congressmen.
Let’s have the FBI publish real statistics, at least until the FBI is abolished. Let’s move suppressors off the NFA list. Trump can appoint a real leader of the BATFE until the agency is abolished or restructured. Let’s prohibit the requirement for a firearms merchant code that reports our credit card purchases. Have the Postmaster General let us carry in the post office again. Withhold federal funds when states infringe on the rights of out of state gun owners or out of state police who carry like police. Repeal the Safer Communities Act. Tie education funding to armed school staff.
What would you add? Let’s disband or defund the presidents office of gun violence prevention.
I think the court needs to appoint a special master for the second amendment since the court can only look at one or two second amendment cases each year.
Donald Trump can’t do the work that we do. The media never tells us that guns save lives, thousands of them a day.
The United States was supposed to be a model of freedom for the world. That doesn’t make us the world’s policeman or their rich uncle. We can show the world that an armed society is both peaceful and free.
Canada- Justin Trudeau’s Ban on Guns is Withering on the Vine https://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2024/11/ca-justin-trudeaus-ban-on-guns-is.html
New York’s Anti-Constitution Attorney General, Letitia James is being reminded yet again that her job is to uphold the Constitution, not manipulate it to her liking. In Heeter v. James, a case out of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, Judge John Sinatra has just granted standing for a challenge to New York State’s ban on body armor. Sinatra decided that the challenge could proceed. Remember that the second amendment protects any tool that can be used either offensively or defensively. That includes body armor. That interpretation of the law is important. It means you can’t demand that gun owners clean their guns after every trip to the range, and then outlaw cleaning supplies. https://www.ammoland.com/2024/11/new-yorks-body-armor-ban-challenged-in-court/
The Ohio Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 32 on Wednesday, a measure is designed to provide civil immunity to security teams and individuals who act in self-defense or to protect others at nonprofit organizations, including churches, synagogues, and mosques. Sponsored by State Senator Tim Schaffer (R-Lancaster), the bill ensures that off-duty officers and security team members who defend congregants or others will not be held liable unless their actions constitute willful misconduct.
Senator Schaffer introduced the bill after a constituent expressed concerns about the safety of congregations in the event of an attack. “This idea was brought to me by a constituent who wants to protect his congregation if, God forbid, someone tries to attack them,” Schaffer said. “Senate Bill 32 will protect organization members who defend themselves and others in a horrific moment. We don’t want to see a security team member, who is protecting his or her family and fellow members, lose their homes and assets if they need to defend the church congregation.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Gun owners who’ve taken steps to treat their addiction and are in active recovery are getting denied concealed carry permits by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office and it’s costing some of them thousands of dollars to fight the illegal denials in court. A WCNC Charlotte investigation found the sheriff’s department has a longstanding system in place that prevents people living in sobriety from legally concealing their guns when in public. Court records show MCSO has denied concealed carry permits in recent years for people whose health records last noted addiction as far back as 1991. When someone applies for a gun permit, they give the sheriff’s office the right to review their mental health history. Under the law, if that person is found to be an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance,” they cannot get a permit.
A sheriff’s office internal document, obtained by WCNC Charlotte, concludes if mental health records show a person is addicted or has attended Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or detox, “no matter the year,” employees should deny them. https://www.wcnc.com/article/money/charlotte-mecklenburg-sheriff-wrongly-denying-gun-permits-people-recovery/275-b72b0c4b-3c5f-4e1a-a7ce-b308b6767e17
After a federal appeals court wrote AR-15s and the magazines that typically come with them out of the Second Amendment, a federal judge has written them back in.
Last November, a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel declined to enjoin Illinois’ ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines after ruling that each was too akin to military hardware to be counted as “arms” protected by the Second Amendment. Yet just last week, a US District Court judge under the Seventh Circuit’s jurisdiction struck down the exact same ban as unconstitutional.
In fact, he did so by relying on the circuit’s own words.
When the Seventh Circuit panel upheld Illinois’ ban, it set a new standard to determine whether a proposed gun law implicates the plain text of the Second Amendment–a key component of the Supreme Court’s Bruen test.
“In order to show a likelihood of success on the merits, the plaintiffs in each of the cases before us thus have the burden of showing that the weapons addressed in the pertinent legislation are Arms that ordinary people would keep at home for purposes of self-defense, not weapons that are exclusively or predominantly useful in military service, or weapons that are not possessed for lawful purposes,” Judge Diane Wood wrote in Bevis v. Naperville.
Wood drew specific attention to the “military use” prong. Relying on dicta from the Supreme Court’s Heller decision assuring other courts that the ruling did not prohibit regulation of machineguns used by the military (specifically the M16), she posited that civilian AR-15s are nearly indistinguishable from M16s. She concluded, therefore, that they are also “predominantly useful in military service” and may be banned.
Judge Stephen McGlynn came to a different conclusion regarding the “military use” of AR-15s and similar rifles when reviewing the case. While following the analytical structure handed down by the Seventh Circuit, he conducted his own inquiry into what makes a weapon “predominantly useful in military service.” Where the Seventh Circuit panel hand-waved away rate-of-fire differences between AR-15s and military service rifles, McGlynn found cause for highlighting the distinction.
“The commercially available AR-15’s external similarity to the M16 rifle and M4 carbine belies its nature, as its lack of burst or fully automatic fire fundamentally renders it a different weapon,” he wrote.
He also argued that rifles acquired for the military are subject to unique standards of “military specification and quality-insurance,” whereas civilian-market AR-15s have no such standards. Ultimately, he concluded, these differences render the AR-15 outside the scope of the Seventh Circuit’s military use standard.
If you defend yourself in Baltimore, the process is the punishment even if you are innocent. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/not-guilty-but-the-baltimore-legal-system-tried-in-self-defense-case/
Republican senators may have heard from gun owners last week. The US Senators were looking for a new Senate Majority Leader. They rejected John Cornyn of Texas and voted for John Thune of South Dakota. In other good news, a governor can replace a senator whereas replacing a congressman has to wait for a special election.
It should come as no surprise that democrat Senator Dick Durban from Illinois suddenly asked for bipartisanship. I wonder if the last election changed his tune. https://thereload.com/republicans-land-on-senate-majority-leader-with-pro-gun-record/
We’re all familiar with the old gun control argument these days. The United States has all of the mass shootings. Foreign countries allegedly have basically none. If only we’d act like those other countries and pass strict “common sense” gun laws, give up on rugged individualism, and embrace the power of the collective (and the state), we too could enjoy real peace and egalitarian prosperity. Instead of being self-indulgent wieners, we could be sophisticated connoisseurs. Champagne would fall from the heavens. We are supposed to ignore the mass murder in China and the attacks on Jews in Amsterdam. The Chief of Police in Berlin said that Jews and gays should be inconspicuous or stay off the streets. https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/gun-control/another-mass-killing-in-china-proves-again-that-gun-control-cant-stop-evil/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/18/jews-gay-people-hide-identity-arab-areas-germany/
Defensive Gun Use from Texas- https://www.ammoland.com/2024/11/texas-woman-defends-herself-shoots-armed-intruder-who-followed-her-home/
~_~_~_
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More Lies from Democrat Politicians
Let me apologize. The title should have been more specific so you could easily sort the new lies from the old lies. This particular lie is about political payback against Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard was a Democrat, then an Independent, and lately she dared to support Donald Trump. Gabbard also criticized Democrat support for the war in Ukraine. As retribution, Democrat officials now accuse Lieutenant Colonel Gabbard of being a Russian Asset. Let’s look at that claim.
There are a number of implications to being a spy or an unregistered lobbyist for a foreign government. The largest issue is that Gabbard’s criticism of Biden’s billion dollar donations to Ukraine are unfounded because Gabbard is being paid or blackmailed by Vladimir Putin. Being paid by a foreign power makes Gabbard unfit to hold office in the Trump administration. It also implies that Trump is either incompetent or compromised by nominating her.
Those claims raises a number of questions. There was no evidence that Gabbard was a Russian asset when she was nominated as a Democrat to the Hawaii House of Representatives or to the Honolulu City Council. She seemed to have a clean security record when she was elected to the US House of Representatives four times. She passed her background checks when she was an enlisted rank in the Hawaiian National Guard and later in the US Army Reserves. Was Gabbard compromised when she served as vice-chair of the Democrat National Committee from 2013 to 2016? I don’t remember any accusations back then. The accusations started later.
Gabbard left the DNC because Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was helping presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while at the same time leading the DNC. The DNC was supposed to be the referee and advisor rather than the coach and advocate for particular democrat candidates. Gabbard later supported Senator Bernie Sanders in his run for president.
The first time I remember the accusations that Gabbard was compromised was when she ran for president in 2020. Hillary Clinton said Gabbard was being groomed by the Russians to run as a third party candidate. In fact, Gabbard ran as a Democrat rather than as a third party candidate. Clinton later corrected her statement to say that Gabbard was being groomed by the Republicans rather than the Russians. That correction came in 2020 after Clinton faced a lawsuit for defamation. Now we hear the claim repeated by Congresswoman Schultz.
This extraordinary claim indicts both the Democrat party organization and the news media. The obvious question is to ask for evidence. The evidence appears to be Representative Gabbard’s desire to spend money at home rather than going deeper in debt for foreign wars. I understand that Representative Schultz would lie to injure Gabbard and Trump. I don’t respect that decision, but I do understand it. It is passing strange that the already discredited media would repeat it without question.
I didn’t hear the media ask questions when Representative, now Senator, Adam Schiff slept with a Chinese spy. Where were the questions when Representative Nancy Pelosi’s driver was found to be a Chinese spy? We’re still waiting for the press to ask questions after the Clinton Foundation and the Biden family took foreign donations for tens of millions of dollars. The selective silence from the press is probably why we stopped listening to them.
You don’t need to be a great reporter to regain our trust. We’d listen if you weren’t blatantly corrupt. It is a bad look for either the press or for a politician.
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The Lie of Red and Blue
Every picture tells a story. This map would have us believe that we are divided. That isn’t true. The map is the result of a skewed measurement. We are far more united than we seem.
Reported results of the 2024 presidential election
This map is from the 2024 presidential election, though I’ve struggled to find its source. Let’s take it at face value for the moment. What it says is that most of the country voted for Donald Trump. Though Trump also won the popular vote, Democrat opponents would say that the map shows who won the election in each county, but it doesn’t show the true strength of the candidates. Some counties are more blue or red than others.
That is the inherent problem with majority rule. The candidate with 50% plus-one vote gets all the power. The truth is more nuanced. There are political conservatives in California and New York. There are political liberals in Oklahoma and West Virginia, thought they didn’t carry a single county in those two states. If we measured more accurately, we’d see a purple nation with shades of blue and red.
It seems true that there are more liberal voters in urban centers. It seems that there are more conservative voters in rural environments. That sorting may be by temperament or by something else. There could be other demographic factors at play. I worked in deep-blue cities before I got married and had children. I wanted room for my children to play and we moved to redder suburbs. We had democrats and republicans as neighbors in both settings. That is why I want to avoid black and white thinking.
The Biden Administration went all in for the concerns of the far left. Harris put Trans rights and DEI at the top of her agenda. She conceded the vast political middle to Trump. I expect the liberal talking heads to scream that they are being victimized as Trump rolls back from the extremes of the Biden-Harris Administration. That seems like a cynical manipulation to me since it ignores the middle ground. I want a government small enough to leave us alone.
Some states have deliberately moved to the extremes. California and New York are stunning examples. Those states imposed extreme solutions that don’t work. Those states are bleeding citizens who have to live in the real world.
VP Harris also sold fear. She said that Trump would usher in an oppressive nightmare regime taken from “The Handmaid’s Tale.” That isn’t going to happen in a purple country like the US. It is important to understand that issues, and voters, are not either-or, but more a bit of red and a bit of blue. Smaller government lets us sort out our issues at a local level where politicians actually listen to local concerns.
Most of us have sympathy for young women who suffer from gender-confusion. That doesn’t mean we should outlaw mental health therapy rather than immediately cutting them up on a surgical table. We can both close our borders and streamline our ridiculous immigration process at the same time. We can protect the environment without insane amounts of conflicting regulation. There is a sane middle ground between extremes.
I don’t see good solutions at the extremes. To attain those simple goals, both the politicians, the talking heads, and the voters must look beyond the simplistic and sensational headlines that the media will feed us. The media and the politicians advance their goals by claiming the world is black and white.. or that we are either red or blue. That isn’t true. Most of us will take good ideas from any source.
Trump said he will keep his promises. I hope he does. The republicans now control the House, the Senate, and the Whitehouse. Extreme Democrats will oppose republicans as they move back towards the middle. Both sides need to hear from and listen to those of us who live in the real world of grey.
That is bad news for my neighbors who want to tell me how to live. It is good news for the rest of us.
~_~_~_
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Why Democrats Lost the 2024 Elections
Democrats have a difficult history. They stand on a legacy of compassion but the average voter now thinks that the Democrat Party is off course. Hindsight is always sharper than our view of tomorrow. If Democrat politicians want our votes in the future then it would be nice if they said they were sorry for what they have done in the past. We don’t have far to look. Let’s see why they lost and how they can win.
- Covid lockdowns crashed small businesses across the country. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris turned their back on the small business owners and their employees from coast to coast. It seemed that Joe and Kamala cared more about state and federal employees than about us. Most of us would rather be employed than provide a convenient excuse for mail-in ballots. You could at least say that you were sorry and promise not to do it again.
- Democrat politicians released criminals from jail due to Covid. That was both stupid and avoidable. Please tell us that you see your mistake so that we can trust you.
- Covid-mask regulations were public-health-theater so that you looked like you were doing something significant. It was an embarrassment for those of us who are sharp enough to read a prescription bottle. You shut down the local coffee shop while leaving the hardware store open. Stop being stupid. Please be more concerned with our health than with masking the people who stuffed ballot boxes at 2am.
- It is a bad look that Democrat party officials are connected to Dominion Voting Machines. Divest yourselves from the machines that count the votes. That isn’t rocket science.
- Speaking of investments, Democrat politicians can put their stocks into index funds that are managed by third parties. Insider trading and the kickbacks from “build back better” makes you look like one of the robber barons. Stop that if you want our votes.
- Speaking of kickbacks, stop using foreign aid to fund your “charities” and your “foundations”. See the solution above. And stop calling your stock brokers.
- While we are on the topic of special interests, stop taking kickbacks from domestic special interests who get government money. Who were you protecting? Were the American people that interested in abortions or was it that Planned Parenthood gave tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Democrat politicians? Again, it isn’t that hard. Do the right thing so that it at least looks like you are working on behalf of the ordinary voter.
- It would be nice if you stopped writing blank checks and deficit spending. Inflation robbed from the little money we’ve been able to save. You had no answer on how you were ever going to pay that money back.
- Inflation and regulation put housing prices through the roof. That was bad enough, but then it seemed that Democrats wanted illegals to get home loans while the middle class was crushed and left out in the cold. What were you thinking?
- Close the border. I know that makes the drug lords unhappy. It is better that the drug lords are unhappy than the voters. Choose your constituents carefully.
- Please go back to the public safety model that put criminals, particularly repeat criminals, in jail. Stop letting criminals out of jail without a cash bond.
- Most parents want to protect their children. Today, any child can get attention by agreeing to mutilate their body and calling themselves Trans. Stop promoting that. It makes us cringe and then cry.
- Maybe you could worry more about the ordinary men and women who want a job, a place to live, and good schools. Worry a little less about protecting the Epstein billionaires.
- Don’t call us names. Stop calling my neighbors ignorant-deplorable-Hitler-fascist-hateful-sexist-racist-garbage. They don’t like it and I don’t like it either. We don’t like you after you do it.
- Stop lying. We can see that President Biden is impaired. You said the economy was great even though we can’t afford a home. Don’t insult us with your lies. It is hard to trust you when you lie to us like that.
- Could you please keep track of the money we give you so you don’t lose 20-million dollars in the presidential campaign again?
- This last ask might be too much. Let’s call it a stretch goal, but could you employ and sleep with fewer Chinese spies?
That isn’t a lot to ask. None of this is complex. None of this violates the core principles of the Democrat party. It also doesn’t take an elaborate study committee or a federal grant. Do a few of the obvious things and we might vote for you.. someday.
~_~_~_
What would you add to the list? RM
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Media and Dems Self-Inflicted Wounds
There is a lot to know and we are curious. That explains why an honest reporter gets an audience. In politics, compassion has its natural place so Democrats will always get some votes. Neither the corporate press nor the Democrat party advance their long-term interests when they lie. It used to be that the local paper defined the news. Those days are gone. Today a reputation for honesty and trust means everything.
We’ve seen the media spread lie after lie. They told us what they wanted to be true rather than what was true. This went well beyond the expected inaccuracy in a breaking story. We saw lie after lie about Clinton’s private e-mail server and then about Covid. We saw lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop and about the Biden family accepting muti-million dollar bribes from foreign countries. We saw the lies continue with a raft of reports on election irregularities in 2020. We saw more lies when a stadium of young men chanted “Fuck Joe Biden” and the news media refused to report it.
We are good at recognizing liars. That is why readers and viewers went somewhere else for their news. The corporate media is bleeding viewers and still they kept lying to us. Thankfully we have more independent reporters than ever before.
We saw Democrat politicians lie about foreign influence and bribes. We saw gross corruption with “build back better”. We were told that Biden-omics was working while we also had record numbers of bankruptcies and our money bought less and less. Democrats even said Biden was sharp as a tack. This week we had advertisements for Vice President Kamala Harris tell Minnesota voters that Harris was against Israel while she told Pennsylvania voters that she was for Israel. We saw political operatives lie to us time and again.
That ruins their brand for generations because we can no longer trust them even if they are not lying this moment. We are all poorer for those bad decisions.
I was a boy when my father said, “If you don’t lie then you never have to remember what you said.” It is certainly true today.
Corrupt politicians and news media demand more of us. We need to do our own fact checking. Fortunately, that too is easier than ever. It will take generations to rebuild the trust they threw away.
RM
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Can You Really Steal an Election?
I’m worried about this election. I am not worried about who wins as about how they win or lose. President Biden said that republicans were garbage. Secretary of State Clinton called republicans deplorable. Vice President Harris said that Trump was like Hitler and the people who vote for him are Nazis. The sycophant media amplified those comments. I’m worried about those comments because you would do things to Deplorable Nazi Garbage that you wouldn’t think of doing to your neighbors. Your neighbor deserves to vote, but do Nazis have the same rights? Even more than stealing an election, I’m worried that democrat politicians will throw away the legacy of legitimacy that we’ve built through centuries of an imperfect democracy here in the US. It is easy to steal an election, but it is hard to hide. You lose the legitimacy to govern once you break the contract of trust with the American people. The moral right to lead the United States is at stake. These United States are less united than the media would have us appear.
We’ve seen inflation make our money worth less as Democrat politicians ran up massive debts. We’ve seen insane regulations drive companies out of business. That caused a growing number of personal and corporate bankruptcies. We have also seen the middle class abandon the deep blue cities in deep blue states. We saw the Biden administration throw open the borders so that these failing cities wouldn’t implode and look like Detroit. That was an imperfect solution at best. We’ve seen banks walk away from multi-million dollar buildings in San Francisco since no one wants to work there, live there, or visit there.. and you don’t get much more Democrat than San Francisco. Even in Democrat controlled California, registered Democrats are in the minority and make up less than 50 percent of registered voters. All that has hurt democrat candidates.
In this election, we’ve seen people vote more than once. We’ve seen non-citizens bussed to polling places to vote. Now, we see Democrats saying that having an election is all that is required to claim legitimacy. In fact, only legitimate elections confer legitimacy. Politicians cheat when they think they can’t win an honest election. That raises the difficult questions of what we owe an illegitimate government.
When does it become their government and stop being my government?
Why do I need to pay the government’s debts if they can’t be bothered to count my vote? Why do I need to obey their laws and regulations if they don’t follow the election rules? I don’t see why my children need to pay our country’s debts in perpetuity if their vote isn’t counted in free and fair elections.
If you count the votes of illegal immigrants then let them pay the government’s debts. Maybe the failed deep blue cities need to be unplugged and restarted. Hey, it works for my PC.
When we look closer, we see that some Democrats want to steal the election and steal the mantle of legitimate power. They want the legitimacy of democracy while exploiting our citizens. That decision is ultimately up to us.
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Why DEI Fails
When reading a law, it is most important to think how this new law could be misused. That maxim is glaring in the case of new regulations on diversity-equity-and inclusion. Every job you can name takes skill and attention. Being a surgeon or aircraft captain is obviously a critical position. If you’ve watched closely, then it is also clear that being a short-order cook, a plumber, a carpenter, an office manager, or a salesclerk also takes skill. If you think those positions don’t take critical skills then remember the mess that happened when someone in those positions failed at their job.
It is obvious that we don’t want to lower the standards to be a commercial pilot who is flying a large passenger plane in bad weather. It is equally obvious that every job is important. When you are flying, you don’t want your drink dropped in your lap or your luggage sent to the wrong airport. There really is no trivial job.
Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal.
If they are equal, then they are not free.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978
Let me make this personal. I had my hair cut by a student barber. The manager said I was her first customer. Now, I am one of the easiest haircuts on the planet so that experience worked out well for both of us. I’d prefer a new student to cut my hair than have someone who wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing. Learning a new job is the study of what particular things need your attention at each moment. Most jobs also require some reflection. Things seldom go exactly as planned. Time and again, you ask yourself how you could recognize a problem and what options would fix it. That level of concentration paves the road to continuous self-improvement and mastery.
That is a winning formula, but that doesn’t mean the solution is easy even for a barber. There are a world of jobs at which I would do badly. Fortunately, there are a few jobs I both do well and that I also enjoy. Now we run into the mess of DEI.
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times,
no sane human being has ever given his assent.
Aldous Huxley, 1927
Inclusion was sold to us as accepting people of other colors and religious beliefs. It is practiced to stop our complaints that a transvestite pedophile wants to teach children or be a priest. We were told that foreign drug gangs are simply engaging in alternative forms of commerce. Both claims fail the test of common sense.
Diversity puts inclusion into practice. It was supposed to mean that we would test for racism and include people of all colors in the public square. It is now practiced as a loyalty oath to have men in women’s bathrooms, women’s prisons, and women’s sports. Anyone who objects must be a sexist-racist-homophobe. We don’t ask why so few women sign up to work on high-power electrical lines. Note that diversity is based on class but never on viewpoint. Despite DEI, we are still told that a conservative black woman “isn’t really black.”
It is not true that equality is a law of nature. Nature has made nothing equal.
Luc de Clapiers, 1746
Equity was sold as equal opportunity to advance according to your personal talents. In practice, it means equality of outcome. Equity is used as a tool to bludgeon the public into accepting the talentless. We’re told that we must be sexist if we don’t want to see a fat transsexual dance in a ballerina outfit. We are bigoted if we don’t want to see women destroyed by a men competing in women’s sports. We’re xenophobic if we want to take care of US citizens before illegal aliens. We have a painful example in the news today.
Our innate sense of fairness wants to make sure that the recent victims of flooding are taken care of. Time is critical so we want the seriously injured to be treated first. If all someone needs is a case of clean water to carry on their self-rescue/recovery, then let’s get them some water. That isn’t how DEI is written into law and practiced.
Politicians and activists interpret the law so that you can wait until the special class has everything a politician can promise. Usually, the special class are the constituents that will get the politician re-elected. As a bonus, it also gets the political activist more money for their pet programs. That isn’t what we had in mind when we wanted everyone to have a fair chance at success.
People are flawed. It is insane to replace our individual flaws with the whims of a DEI coordinator and a politician. When reading a law, it is most important to think how this new law can be misused. DEI has been abused time after time. As I see it, you have an infinite number of characteristics. That means all of us are a minority since so few other people are exactly like us. It isn’t obvious at all how our characteristics, our abilities, and our talents should be ranked and combined. If you don’t believe me then please ask the wonderfully talented Asian students who are rejected from schools because they don’t fit the required minority stereotype.
Please leave a comment. RM
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Looking at Violence in California
We’ve seen pictures where gangs openly gathered in the streets. We’ve seen armed gangs take over apartment buildings at gunpoint. The police looked the other way until there was video on social media. We have ignored violence too, but that is changing slowly.
California politicians admit that they discriminate against honest gun owners. We can’t charge money when we register people to vote because voting is a right rather than a privilege. That is why a poll tax is illegal. Those rules don’t apply to other “rights”. California politicians charge us thousands of dollars and days of our time so that honest gun owners can get a government permission slip. That permission slip allows the honest gun owner to carry their firearm down to their mailbox and pick up their mail. Let’s note that criminals don’t bother with permission slips and background checks. Criminals get guns the same place they get their drugs.
Nationwide, about one-out-of-a-dozen adults are legally armed in public. That is about how many ordinary citizens carry each day even though more of us have our carry permits, our government permission slips. I think the number is closer to one-in-ten adults if we exclude New York and California in the averages. As you would expect, that number varies depending on where we look.
Half of the adults in some up-state Pennsylvania counties have their carry permits. Some counties in California didn’t issue permits at all. They might issue a few today given recent court rulings against them. That matters because there were about 700-thousand violent crimes in California each year. About 28-thousand of those violent crimes were sexual assaults.
California Democrats claim that we were safer because the victims of violent crimes were disarmed. The politicians make that claim even though you and I seldom have to shoot our attacker as we defended ourselves. In fact, we seldom have to kill our attacker, and we almost never shoot an innocent bystander. It is true that criminals might shoot innocent victims, but our armed neighbors don’t. Like us, our neighbors feel the moral weight of the gun.
Do honest citizens ever make mistakes? Of course we do. Is it common? No. Would we save tens of thousands of lives if we were armed? Of course we would, but we have to both trust our neighbors and be willing to look at violence in order to let that happen. Let me explain what that means.
Many states allow armed school staff to protect students. California made it illegal for school staff to defend students with guns. Instead, the adults are supposed to call the police when a murderer comes to campus. The politicians claim that bad things will happen if school staff are armed.
That sounds plausible if you have not studied violence. It isn’t commonly known, but we have conducted the experiment. We’ve trained thousand upon thousands of school staff to be first responders. They have carried a firearm to school over three-million days as part of a program to defend their school. We’ve had neither a murder by armed staff nor a serious injury from an armed staff member.
You might be worried because there could be a problem with armed school staff. Remember that California leads the nation in mass shootings. We have to pick our problem. It is foolish to sacrifice our children to a real problem in order to protect them from a theoretical problem that hasn’t happened. Our students are like our politicians in that they are safer if they have armed defenders. The facts are out there if we’re willing to see them.
Most of us want to close our eyes and pretend that violence won’t affect us and our children. That might change as more and more of us can now go armed every day in public. Practice speaks louder than words, and much louder than a California politician.
~_~_
Would this article change anyone’s mind? Please let me know what you think. RM
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Lock N Load Radio on Monday, 28 October 2024
Bill and I hardly talked about Second Amendment News so I thought I’d share the stories with you here. Enjoy!
I voted. (I hope you will too.)
We’ve lost our trust in the media, in our politicians, and in government officials. That is a deep concern in the age of headline surfing and deep fakes. It will take time to earn our trust again. On the plus side, more of us listen to Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson’s podcasts than tune into the mainstream news.
It turns out that poor people have the right to keep and bear arms in New York State. I know that shocks some Democrats, but a judge in New York again said that people who have to use public housing are also allowed to own guns. The judge used a permanent injunction to strike the gun ban from the housing agreements that tenants have to sign. Thank you SAF. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/federal-judge-issues-permanent-injunction-against-ny-public-housing-gun-ban/
Young black men want to protect themselves just like the rest of us do. A recent study told us the obvious. They asked young black men who attended historically black colleges if they had owned a gun. All of the participants were gun owners. The men from violent democrat controlled cities said of course they owned a gun, and they bought it for personal safety. More than two out of three of the study’s participants described their home cities with negative terms, like “violent,” “dangerous,” or “crazy” and said that there were few opportunities if they stayed in their city and didn’t move. Less than 10 percent of the black gun owners said that legally owned firearms contributed to violence in their city. That isn’t the headline that Bloomberg’s anti-rights media outlets ran with. https://www.thetrace.org/2024/10/gun-safety-study-young-black-men-cities/
You and I know that Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris works for Billionaire Michael Bloomberg. She is a San Francisco democrat for goodness sake. She goes where the campaign contributions are. Only the Democrat supporting media pretend that Kamala is a black gun owner. Fortunately, the internet can be forever. I saw a news story out of Hawaii that itemized Kamala’s gun grabs. The article was written by Amy Schwere from the Heritage Foundation headquartered in Washington, DC.
- It’s not just that Harris previously supported seizing semi-automatic rifles from millions of peaceable law-abiding Americans through “mandatory buybacks” —support Harrisonly recently (and only slightly) walked back.
- And it’s not just that Harris defended D.C.’s complete ban on the civilian possession of handguns and argued to the Supreme Court that none of us has a right to keep and bear any firearms in the first place.
- And it’s not just that, in 2007, Harris threatened to violate the Fourth Amendment rights of San Francisco’s gun owners by sending police officers to conduct random, warrantless searches of their homes to ensure compliance with the city’s “safe storage” laws.
- And it’s not even just that, as President Joe Biden’s gun control czar, she’s overseen the administration’s assault against ordinary gun owners through the unprecedented weaponization of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
- No, it’s because as San Francisco’s District Attorney, Harris co-sponsored a successful ballot measure that, but for a technicality of state law, would quite literally have taken handguns away from every lawful gun owner in the city.
I’ve met democrats who say they support the second amendment. I think they vote democrat in spite of the second amendment. How can you vote for candidates who have a record of violating our rights and then say you support those rights? I don’t get it.
The US second circuit court of appeals accepted most of New York’s new gun control laws. The judges got most of their 250 page ruling wrong, but here are a few things they got right.
- The appeals court struck down restrictions on carrying firearms on private properties open to the public, such as grocery stores and gas stations. If you want your store to turn away honest gun owners then you have to post a sign.
- The court allowed carrying firearms in public parks and zoos.
- The court rejected a search of social media.
- The court said that the burden could not be on the applicant for a carry permit to show that they had “good moral character”, but that the state could only reject an applicant by citing evidence that they were a danger to themselves or to others. https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2024/10/24/second-circuit-court-keeps-key-parts-of-concealed-carry-law/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Court%20of%20Appeals,the%20Antonyuk%20v.%20James%20case.
Democrat politicians lost their mind after the US Supreme court gave us a little more freedom. Last week, Illinois Democrats said that banning modern firearms was legal since the guns that we have are military firearms. The Democrat lawyers hid behind language that said civilian firearms are “essentially similar” to the firearms that the military uses. They completely ignored the Heller methodology. The law asks if a firearm is both dangerous and unusual. It can not be unusual if it is in common use. Semi-automatic firearms are the most common guns purchased today. That means they can not be “unusual”. We will see if judges in Illinois even bother to follow the law instead of playing politics with our rights.
Democrats said that modern rifles were the cause of mass murders. They ignored that handguns are the usual weapon. They ignored that guns owned by honest gun owners save lives ten times for every time a violent criminal uses a firearm. More to the point, the arguments assume that disarming honest citizens will stop violent criminals from going armed. It certainly hasn’t so far. Gun-control has yet to disarm violent criminals who break our laws. Now we will see what Illinois Judges decide. https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/state-cook-county-use-similar-arguments-to-defend-assault-weapon-bans/
An attempted mass murder was stopped by a good guy with a gun. A Halloween party in Fort Wayne, Indiana last weekend turned into a real-life horror show when a 17-year-old opened fire on attendees. Nine people were injured, but prosecutors now say the one person who was fatally shot was the initial aggressor, and he was killed in an act of self-defense.
The homeowner told police that partygoers were being patted down as they entered the home, but Ivy and several friends tried to sneak around to the back of the house so they could get into the party without being frisked for weapons.
It seems they were caught and confronted about it and when things escalated, investigators say it was Ivy who pulled out a gun and started shooting first. He fired nine shots into the windows of the kitchen and living room injuring nine people in the process. Another person then shot and killed the attacker.
“Physical and ballistic evidence, medical records, autopsy reports, and witness statements showed that nine of the shooting victims were struck by gunfire from Ivy’s handgun,” said a news release from Allen County prosecutors. Two of the victims were allegedly shot by Ivy as they tried to stop him from entering the home, with the other seven individuals injured as Ivy fired into the house. Note that the attacker was 17 years old so was underage to own a handgun or a carry permit. https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/10/25/indiana-prosecutors-say-mass-shooting-at-halloween-party-stopped-by-armed-citizen-n1226687
A guns store in North Carolina put up a 10-thousand dollar reward to recover the firearms stolen when power was out and roads were closed during hurricane Helene. Criminals don’t go through background checks. They don’t need to. https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/guns-stolen-from-carolina-guns-and-gear-west-asheville-during-hurricane-helene/83-e0621695-636c-44a6-95ce-81333a478146
You may have noticed that this is an election year. The US Department of Commerce revised its reports and said that fewer of us could actually find jobs. The US Department of Justice revised its data on crime and said that crime actually went up, not down. I doubt that the mainstream media will report those revisions. This is relevant because Candidate Trump said crime is going up, and some media “fact checkers” disagreed. https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/crime-and-punishment/fed-gov-gaslighting-fbi-quietly-revises-crime-stats-upward/
They said that violent crime would go up in New Orleans, Louisiana when honest citizens were allowed to carry concealed without a permit. They lied to us. It turns out the police were arresting the wrong people, and now the police arrested fewer legal gun owners. Violent crime went down by 24 percent since the law took effect. We don’t know if that was because the police now focused on violent criminals when they were not arresting honest gun owners, or were criminals convinced they might get shot if they tried to rob someone. Maybe it was both. https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/10/25/new-orleans-constitutional-carry-n1226685
~_~_~_
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What We Forget About Technology Can Get Us Killed
Walk over to the light switch and turn on the lights. The largest part of this miracle of electricity is that it works. It works almost every time. The power you probably use is generated at redundant power stations that are each extremely reliable. The electrical power is carried over a redundant network. The least reliable part of powering your home, your business, or your hospital is the last mile of distribution from the substation. Your neighbor’s tree can take down your powerlines, but it won’t knock out the entire town. This is what we forgot when we turned on the lights. The national power grid in Cuba failed again last night. This is what we can learn, and it is better to learn from others than from our own experience.
Without reliable power, we don’t have a refrigerator full of food in our kitchen. The leftovers from your last meal are only safe to eat for a few hours. Even our fresh foods don’t last as long if they have to be kept at room temperature. Keeping our food safe to eat was one of the greatest inventions of public health. It saves millions of lives a year. We take it for granted now, but safe food is one of many miracles that let us live so long and so comfortably. That is one of the things you notice first as you lose electrical power, but let’s look deeper into the darkness.
Remember that your city water supply has to remain pressurized to be safe. Ground water from outside might leak into the system if the water system loses pressure. You may have a few hours to a few days of city water before you have to boil the water from your faucet. Our clean drinking water and the ability to easily clean our hands has done more for our health than the entire history of anti-biotics.
Boiling water can be hard if there is no power. It is easy to forget the simple things that keep us alive.
Your public sewer system relies on pumps to move and treat the wastewater. That stops when the power isn’t there. That means the sewage backs up. It either backs up onto the street or into your home. It also leaves the sewage untreated at the wastewater plant. That raises the health risk to the people who live downstream as raw or only partially-treated sewage again flows into the local waterway. The ability to treat sewage was an enabling technology that let us live in larger cities and not die when our hands and feet became contaminated. The plagues that historically decimated city dwellers were real. Young children were the first victims. Disease is only a few days away when technology fails.
Those huge cases of frozen food at your supermarket cannot be sold after a few hours. Yes, the meat and ice cream might be edible, but every lawyer in the country wants to sue the store if even one of the customers gets sick. The store cannot afford to give the food away even if it is desperately needed. We created that system of legal liability that works when civilization is fully functioning. I’ve lived through several severe storms that left us without power for weeks. Few politicians think ahead to when things go wrong. Even if the store is open, it can’t accept your credit card unless it has power to run the terminal. I hope you have cash.
Many medicines have a shelf life. The medicines have been certified as safe and effective when they were stored either frozen or at least refrigerated. These medicines get thrown into the trash when the cold storage room at your hospital or pharmacy heats up. I hope there are reserves of medicine in nearby areas that were not affected by the loss of power. In the case of the recent Cuban blackout, the entire island went dark. When my town lost power, we sent sick people who were in the hospital to medical facilities that were a hundred miles away. We were lucky to have that option.
Gasoline and diesel fuel are pumped from underground tanks using electrical pumps. A delivery truck can only deliver fuel and food if the truck has enough range to drive back to the next fuel supply. Civilization and its technology creeps back in from the edges of the affected area.
The police stop responding during an emergency. Cell towers have battery backup that will last a day. Central switching facilities will last a few days before they go dark. Your credit card stops working once that happens. You can’t call the police for help. Many of the police officers have families to take care of and they can’t report for duty. In my experience, many of the single officers slept at the station so they were available after the storm. I hope you have enough of them and the will to use them. Some cities don’t.
We’ve seen law and order break down when honest citizens were disarmed and police became ineffective here and here. We’ve seen neighborhoods barricade their roads so that outsiders can’t enter. I’ve been there and seen that.
Civilization is both fragile and robust. That is simple history rather than rocket science. I want us to have reliable power. Adding solar panels or wind turbines makes electricity more expensive and less reliable. I also want our laws to work all the time. I grant you that civilization is expensive. It is a bargain compared to living without it.
I gave you 900 words and a lot of thought. What do you have to say? RM
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On the Radio with Lock N Load Radio and Bill Frady
I’m normally on the Lock n Load Radio podcast with Bill Frady every Monday afternoon. Bill Frady had been without power like millions of other people who were hit by Hurricane Helene. That took up most of our conversation. Here is the news about armed defense we would have talked about.
First, the audio with Bill
- Link to Listen Notes
- Link to Audacity
- Link to Apple podcasts
Here are the articles from my show notes.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. You and I both have been through a major storm and flooding. Both of us were hit by hurricanes, though my storm was four years ago. Both of us have been without power for over a week. In my case, we were without power for 17 days. Internet service was down for more than a month. Cell service was intermittent. I bought a generator and was able to get water again. The next hurricane only cost us about a week without power and I think the internet stayed up. Our police and emergency services were overwhelmed. I carried concealed and I carried openly when national guard jeeps were protecting our stores that sold guns. Unlike you, we had an army of rescuers arrive in days. Unlike you, we didn’t have gangs of illegal immigrants loot abandoned stores and homes.
We live in flat country that doesn’t drain well. We had 15 inches of rain with nowhere for the water to go. You had over 20 inches of rain in hilly terrain. Rivers took out entire towns. You are your own first responder, and it helps to have friends.
Lessons learned- have fuel, oil, cables, a rack to service the engine.
Rumors, now, we don’t control hurricanes.
Gas heat. Natural-gas generators?
2A news.
We saw that President Biden was too mentally handicapped to run for re-election. We left him in the WhiteHouse where his handlers passed more executive actions on gun-control. One point of view is that this is bad news for gun owners. The other attitude is that Anti-Gun Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is in a hurry to pass more gun control since he thinks he won’t be able to do so after the election. https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/content/biden-s-swan-song-more-executive-orders-on-guns/
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has accepted a petition from US gun maker Smith & Wesson’s to decide whether Mexico’s lawsuit against the gunmaker should be tossed out.
The SCOTUS granted cert in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico on Friday. The case centers on the foreign government’s claim that the American firearms industry writ large, and Smith & Wesson in particular, is responsible for cartel violence south of the border. The Court will decide whether that claim is viable under the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
Mexico claims that guns from the US are the cause of violence in Mexico. Technically, that isn’t a second amendment case, but the case clearly touches the right of US citizens to buy commonly used firearms.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is holding firm on its stance that medical marijuana users should not allowed to own a gun, citing safety risks.
In a recent filing, federal attorneys argued that the ban on gun ownership for cannabis users is constitutional and should remain in place.
This aligns with federal regulations barring gun access for individuals considered potentially dangerous, such as those who are mentally ill or under the influence, reported Marijuana Moment.
This filing responds to a lawsuit by Robert Greene, the District Attorney of Warren County, Pennsylvania, who is a registered medical marijuana patient. Along with the Second Amendment Foundation, Greene filed suit against the DOJ, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal agencies, arguing that the ban infringes on his right to bear arms for self-defense.
The DOJ’s filing, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, seeks to dismiss Greene’s suit.
“Marijuana’s physical and mental effects impair a person’s judgment, including judgment about whether to use firearms,” it says.
The next step for Robert Greene’s case involves a federal court decision on his request for a preliminary injunction against the law.
-District Attorney Greene challenged DOJ’s gun ban for medical cannabis users by saying it infringes on rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
The US Fifth Circuit Court that covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi already ruled that cannabis users cannot be barred from owning firearms. This is wonderful news for gun owners. If they win in Pennsylvania, then medical cannabis users get their rights back. If the district court in Pennsylvania says that marijuana users have no rights, then that forms a circuit split where two different district courts have opposing rulings. The next appeal would be to the US Supreme court to resolve the difference. https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/24/10/41193293/justice-department-defends-ban-on-gun-ownership-for-medical-cannabis-users
The issue of marijuana is important in another way. The US DOJ says you can’t own a gun if you have used drugs. The larger issue is when are you a prohibited person. The broadest interpretation is that we are barred from gun ownership if we have ever used drugs to any extent. The narrowest interpretation is that we could carry a firearm while using drugs or alcohol, but we can’t use the gun while intoxicated. That interpretation draws from a strong historical record. We’re allowed to own a car if we have alcohol in our home. We are allowed to have car keys in our pocket when we are intoxicated but we are not allowed to operate a car on public roads when we’re drunk. Likewise, we should be able to carry a gun, but not use it. Some states treat gun ownership and intoxication the same way they treat car ownership. This issue will come before the Ohio court this year. The law isn’t done with this issue yet. https://www.cleveland.com/letters/2024/10/guns-and-alcohol-do-not-mix.html
Let me remind you that licensed concealed carry holders are less violent and more law abiding than the police. https://www.fox29.com/news/off-duty-atlanta-detective-shot-killed-while-breaking-douglas-county-home-deputies-say
A US District court judge had to spank some DOJ lawyers last week. The judge ruled against an Illinois law that said that all public transportation was a gun free zone. The judge said that is ridiculous and issued an injunction against an Illinois law blocking the carrying of firearms on public transportation. The judge said the law is unconstitutional. Lawyers for the US Department of Justice objected and said that the judge’s ruling got people killed on public transportation. The judge did not take kindly to the lawyers saying that the actions of criminals was the same as the actions of legal gun owners who were covered by the court ruling. As expected, Lawyers for the Illinois Attorney General and the US Department of Justice said they would appeal the judge’s ruling.
Last month, in a case brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that the Illinois law banning firearms from being carried on public transportation by concealed carry holders was unconstitutional. The judge granted an injunction to the plaintiffs, blocking the enforcement of the law. Illinois vowed to appeal the judge’s ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Democrats have argued that public transportation is just like the public sidewalk, and that honest gun owners should be disarmed in both places. At the same time, the US department of homeland security admitted that tens of thousands of known violent criminals were allowed to cross our border. Some south american countries emptied their jails and sent the criminals here. An airplane ticket is cheaper than keeping the criminals in their jails. https://www.ammoland.com/2024/10/judge-refuses-to-block-concealed-carry-on-public-transportation/
Gun sales surged after Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democrat nominee for president. Move over Barack Obama. https://thereload.com/gun-sales-grow-as-election-day-approaches/
Governor Gamin Newsome was called a Hypocrite again. That is hardly news, but the reason is enlightening. Newsome vetoed a bill that required a picture ID to vote. He said that requiring identification violates our rights. In contrast, Newsome demanded that we have a picture ID to apply for a permit to buy a gun. I expect that Newsome will run for president in four years. Is he really the best that the Democrats can offer us? https://www.newsweek.com/gavin-newsom-bans-california-requiring-id-vote-1961685
Another slice of freedom in Utah. Utah Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, the House majority whip, is introducing a measure that would allow 18- to 20-year-olds to openly carry firearms in most public spaces in Utah. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/utah-lawmaker-proposes-young-adult-open-carry-measure/
Crazy ATF loses at trial of former gun store owner in Alaska. Selling his own guns did not make him “in the firearms business” https://www.ammoland.com/2024/10/atf-loses-at-trial-gun-store-owner-acquitted/
Thanks for reading. RM
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Rain and Politics in North Carolina
Why are people in North Carolina suffering after the latest storm? The answers are both obvious and unusual. We are responding to both acts of nature and acts of human nature. Both are predictable. Getting re-elected was more important than helping US citizens in need.
Hurricanes happen. While the rains may not have been extraordinary where you live, rivers concentrate rainfall into narrow basins or floodplains. That means the wall of water arrives at your doorstep even if the rains were miles or hundreds of miles away. We’ve seen that before, so why were people hit so hard this time?
(Image from CBS news)
Civilians are usually the first responders. We help our neighbors grab their things and go. Lots of us did that, but there were some people left behind. Your neighbor with a truck has a hard time helping you if the road is washed out and impassible.
I’ve seen individuals with private helicopters save lives. Usually, state officials are eager to clear up the bureaucratic problems so that rescue flights can take place. It certainly looks bad when victims are left behind asking for help. We owe our neighbors a debt of thanks, but they can only give so much.
The national guard and the army have utility helicopters. They have the equipment, the training, and the personnel to fly into remote areas. Many of the guys and gals in green want to help their neighbors. Unfortunately, politics got in the way.
The Biden Harris administration spent a boatload of cash on blue states and blue cities after Covid. They gave money to Ukraine, and spent money to fly illegal immigrants into purple states. The put the US military on the border, not to defend the border but to process illegals who crossed it.
Now we are complaining about inflation since the federal government diluted our money and prices surged. FEMA already spent its budget on housing illegals. That was a political choice, and now the citizens of North Carolina don’t get the aid they need because Biden/Harris already spent the money that was set aside for emergencies.
Money talks. Following the money tells us the truth about what a politician thinks is important. Biden and Harris want illegals to vote in this election. They think getting reelected is more important than helping US citizens in need.
Yes, money talks. In this case, the money trail shouts, but will independent voters listen?
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Matt Taibbi- My Speech in Washington: “Rescue the Republic”
Please read Matt Taibbi speak to our soul. RM
“H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere is happy.” That streak of our early European settlers unfortunately survives in us and keeps surfacing through moral panics. Four hundred years ago it was witches, then it was Catholic immigrants, then “the devil’s music,” comic books, booze, communists, and now, information.”
Source: My Speech in Washington: “Rescue the Republic”
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Do I Have the Right to Enter and Inspect Your Home?
Vice President Kamal Harris said she has the duty to enter your home and inspect your firearms. Do Democrats and Independents approve of that?
If I get to demand that you “live responsibly,” then what else can I look for when I inspect your home without a warrant?
I’d love to read your comments. Thank you to Colion Noir for publishing this clip.
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How to Make Real News Disappear
If it bleeds, it leads. We have all heard that claim before, and part of it makes perfect sense. We have also heard the phrase “All things in moderation.” That phrase asks us to keep things in perspective. In the age of click bait journalism, we need to understand both ideas at the same time. Taken together they help explain how we make some news stories disappear.
All of us carry a bias toward bad news. Danger rivets our attention. Sure, we’d like to make our life better but first we must avoid serious injury. Said another way, to win the game of life you have to stay in the game. That explains why we are wired to notice the things that will get us killed. The corporate news media knows and exploits the stories we feel compelled to read. That is why they will run a story about a distant car crash or armed robbery but ignore the local story about the citizen who saved a life with first-aid even though both stories were a matter of life and death. The news organizations have a financial incentive to run the stories that deliver our eyeballs to advertisers.
That bias is only half of the problem. The other half is that we often confuse what we see in the news with what is really going on in the world. The media feeds us a distorted view with their biased reporting. Let me give you a concrete example of that bias.
Pretend for a moment that you are working in a convenience store. Someone comes in to rob you. They threaten you with a knife. You open the cash drawer. You run to the back room. You lock the door and call 911. That story makes the news.
Oddly enough, there is something you could have done that would make the story of the robbery disappear from the daily news cycle. Let’s again pretend that you are working behind the checkout counter.
Someone comes in to rob you. They threaten you with a knife. You open the cash drawer and step back. The robber won’t let you move out of the way and you are trapped behind the counter. As the robber advances, you shoot him until he drops his weapon. You call 911. That story almost never makes the news even though convenience store robberies are common. That story of armed robbery becomes a thousand time less likely to be reported because you defended yourself.
Instead of being statewide news, that story of armed defense might not even make it onto the back page of your local paper. That is true despite the fact that legally justified armed defense occurs over 76-hundred times a day. The bias in the newsroom makes the story of armed defense disappear. I think that is a poor journalistic decision since fewer and fewer crimes are reported to, and solved by, the police even as more crimes are committed each year.
To misquote Samuel Clemens, ‘If we don’t watch the news then we are uninformed. If we only watch the news then we are misinformed.’ From the large news stories to the small ones, we have to read beyond the headlines to discover what is real. We have to build our own perspective rather than settle for the false reality the media sells us.
Thank you for giving me a read. Please leave a comment and share. RM
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The High Cost of Lies
I had a hard time watching the presidential debate. I was offended when both Harris and ABC lied to me. Their lies were not subtle, but more of an “are you going to believe a TV personality and a politician or are you going to believe your own eyes.” I trust myself enough to know what I’ve seen. So do you. We are seeing a society commit suicide.
The Economy- Despite what VP Harris said, you and I have sees that our economy is hurting. There are fewer jobs in most areas of the country. The costs of everyday goods have soared. Most of the businesses that closed for the Covid lockdown never recovered. We are still looking at record bankruptcies. We have record debts as Biden spend our tax money to fly illegal immigrants into the US so he could use their votes.
Economic Collapse and Immigration- The California legislature passed a bill to provide $150-thousand dollar discount home loans to illegal immigrants. Democrat politicians had to do that so illegal immigrants would move to California. They had to pass that bill so Democrat congressmen could keep their jobs while working Americans were busy leaving the left coast. It hurts that Democrat politicians want to pay an illegal immigrant to buy the house that most US citizens can’t afford.
The state of California doesn’t have the cash to pay for those home mortgage loans. The state would have to borrow the money. California Democrats have no intention of every paying back the bond holders for that new debt.
Public Service- Despite our poor economy, the US military is having a hard time meeting its recruiting goals. That makes sense to me. We are living in an unprecedented time. We have seen stadiums full of young men chanting “Fu*k Joe Biden.” I’ve never seen that before, but that is the expected result when you have questionable elections and partisan lawfare. You can’t fool most of the people for very long.
Image from Scripps News
These young men saw that politicians and the media lie about President Biden’s declining mental condition. More young men and women are unwilling to fight and die for Joe Biden and what he has done to their future.
A nation dies when it plans to spend money it can never repay. A nation dies when its citizens refuse to defend it. Elections have consequences. Please choose wisely.
Author’s notes- I probably told you what you already know. Maybe I gave you words that express how you feel. I wish I had better news to share. RM
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Our Problem With Public Violence
We all have problems. Some of us have larger problems than others, and some of us let our personal problems grow out of control. Keep that in mind as we discuss public violence. We have always had crazy people in society. We stopped institutionalizing them in the 1960s. In theory, local community hospitals were supposed to provide the supervised care that was no longer available from state institutions. That obviously did not happen. We also know how to protect our students from mass murderers. We are not doing it even though the attack at Columbine High School was 25 years ago. We continue to ignore the lessons we should have learned. The good news is that lots of people at many levels want to help protect our kids. The bad news is that we often pretend that our children’s safety is someone else’s problem. It is easy to turn away once the violence stops.
The chain of events usually starts with the murderer and his family. The future murderer and his family ask for medical help. The doctor and school counselor report the problem to the police and the courts. The police collect further evidence and report they might have a future murderer. The future murderer gets a psychiatric evaluation. The judge recognizes a problem that requires mandatory treatment or incarceration.
A lot of things must take place so that we finally stop the murderer. Each one of those is a hard decision we have to get right. The murderer is left on the street if any one of these steps fails or is delayed. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and each link is a potential source of failure and delay.
When the problem grows, the future murderer’s family and friends usually ask for legal help. They call the school, the church, the FBI and/or the police. Again, the law enforcement agencies have to do their job and recognize an immediate threat to public safety. We’ve seen each step succeed and we’ve seen them fail.
Time after time the murderers was a known wolf rather than a lone wolf. The police had been to the murderer’s house over a dozen times before he attacked the High School in Parkland, Florida. The murderer who attacked the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee had been under mental health counseling for years.
Schools have changed as well. Many schools now have a safety plan including counselors, an armed police officer on campus, armed school staff, and a safety committee that screens the information they receive from the community. Ideally, the safety committee recognizes a threat and then reports it to the counselors and armed staff. That usually works and the attacker is stopped before he attacks students.
When none of that works, then the armed staff are left to defend their students until the SRO arrives at the scene. We have several million days of experience with armed school staff. We have not seen serious problems with them.
We have also seen the murderers change over time. They used to be narcissists who murdered for attention. They recognized that the corporate media would give them a multi-million dollar publicity campaign if the murderer kills enough innocent victims. Beyond killing for attention, we have recently seen murderers use their publicity to air their grievances. Murderers now kill for all sorts of “causes.” They typically blame overpopulation, immigration, and sexual orientation. The media complies and gives them the attention they want unless the murderer is in a protected class. Then the story grows cold in hours rather than weeks.
One way to stop murderers who kill to become celebrities is to pass laws letting the injured victims sue any news organizations that publish the murderer’s name or his picture. Another line of defense is to stop the murderer before he kills enough people to receive the notoriety he wants. That is why mass-murderers deliberately attack victims in gun-free zones where the attacker can kill many victims. Each murderer wants a shooting but to avoid a gunfight where bullets are going both ways.
Our armed neighbors have done a remarkable job at protecting all of us. Our armed neighbors have stopped over half of the attempted mass murders when the attacker chose to attack a location where ordinary citizens are allowed to go armed. They stopped over a hundred attempts. So far, the celebrity-murderers have avoided schools that have armed staff guarding their students. Again, their desire for easy victims explains why mass murderers avoid armed defenders.
We could reduce the risk to our students overnight. We should change our laws so that victims can sue the news agencies that enable mass murderers. Change our laws so school staff may go armed. At least take down the “no-guns-allowed” signs that attract mass murderers. Yes, the murderer might go elsewhere looking for easy victims, but let’s protect our children before we’re distracted.
Please leave a comment. RM
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Armed Defense at an Ohio Convenience Store
Millions of us bought a firearm in the last few years. I think that is good news. Buying the tools for self-defense is a good first step. Some of those new gun owners have gone on and learned how to protect themselves and their family. Others are a bit behind or out of practice. Here is a news article that gives us some things to remember.
A store clerk in Ohio recognized that they had a dangerous job. They worked at a convenience store in the early morning. A man came into the store just before 3am and demanded the money from the cash register. The clerk complied and opened the cash drawer. That was when the robber demanded that the clerk get on the floor. The clerk refused and the robber tried to force the clerk onto the ground. The two men fought. The clerk retrieved the firearm he kept behind the checkout counter and shot his attacker. He called 911 for help. The attacker was transported to a hospital and later died.
The attacker had a criminal record. He had served two sentences in prison for violent crimes. He had also been re-arrested several times in the last few years.
From a self-defense perspective, this news report is a mixture of good and bad choices. Some of these details are guesses because we only know what we have been able to read in the news and in the police reports.
There should be security video inside the store that shows the attack. The employees in the store should be trained on how to deliver that video to the investigating police officers. That video also protects the store employees and the store owner from later lawsuits.
There are a few reasons for the employee to have his self-defense tool on his body rather than have it tucked into a drawer behind the checkout counter. The first reason is that the clerk is defenseless when he is not behind the counter with the drawer open and the firearm within reach. My concern is that the firearm is not secure from the public if it is easily accessible behind the counter.
The clerk made the correct decision to fight when the robber told him to lie on the ground. Part of being a defender is to know how criminals have acted in the past. Attackers often move victims into a hidden location because they do not want witnesses to see what is going to happen. It is time to run or fight if your attacker tries to move you or have you face away from them.
That said, it is often a good choice to give the attacker an easy path to run away. The attacker will often fight so that they can escape.
Our goal is to not get hurt. We are allowed to use force to defend ourselves when that is the safest thing to do. Rather than struggling to evaluate these urgent situations, we want to study them ahead of time so that we recognize what is happening. You do something like that every day. For example, you already know what to do when you see a red light at a traffic intersection. During an attack, we don’t have time to think, but we do have time to identify a situation we have already considered.
State laws vary. Learn when you are legally allowed to use lethal force to defend yourself or other innocent individuals. Typically, the justification for lethal force requires that an innocent party face an immediate and unavoidable threat to life or great bodily injury. Also, your actions must be proportional to the threat. You may have to fight your attacker with your bare hands until the threat escalates and justifies the use of lethal force. There are exceptions.
Did the store clerk lock the front door and get customers out of sight? If there were other customers in the store, have you checked on them and determined if they need help? (Lots of people get cut as they dive to the floor and knock down a glass jar.) You should have the training and materials to help them. Win the race to 911. Know what you should say and what you should not say to the police.
One great feature of a holster is that it gives you a place to put your gun after you’ve used it.
I’m glad the clerk recognized that they had a dangerous job. Unfortunately, crime happens everywhere so none of us are perfectly safe. We defend ourselves with a firearm over 7-thousand times a day. We do a better job when we think ahead and build a plan.
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This Silent Candidate is Everything
Vice President Kamala Harris can easily run another basement campaign like Joe Biden did. There is no need for the Democrat party to risk seeing a small turnout at Harris’s appearances. She can avoid controversy about her policy positions. She doesn’t need to speak at all since the corporate news media will gladly speak for her.
She can be all things to all people because she never needs to speak for herself. The media will claim that she has every virtue and ignore their own contradictory claims. That isn’t an exaggeration since the media has already ignored the contradictory policy positions we’ve already seen from VP Harris. All the media has to do is to pick the policy position they think well sell the best at the moment and claim it came from Harris herself.
- She can be for open borders when Hispanics and liberals are listening. She can be for closed borders when tradesmen and factory workers are listening.
- She can be against government spending when young home buyers are listening, and yet be for higher government spending when government employees are in the audience.
- She can be against oil exploration, fracking,, and coal when she is talking to New York City liberals, and for all of those things if she campaigns in rural Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
- She can stand by her extremely liberal voting record in the Senate, or pose as a moderate at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
We would normally call a politician who proposes contradictory positions a liar, but we don’t have to do that in this case. Harris will never be held to account by the media, and the media will tell the local audience exactly what they want to hear about the elasigirl candidate. Her history of word-salad can be stretched into any policy position that is useful in the moment.
The best thing that Candidate Harris can do is be quiet and let the corporate media do the campaigning for her. Consistent policy is only for the rigid types who still believe in the archaic notions of right and wrong. Consistent policy is also attractive to those of us who like to live indoors.
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Something About These Democrats is Different
We saw two very prominent Democrats endorse the leading Republican for President. I don’t remember it happening before. These two Democrats have both run for president. Tulsi Gabbard ran in the Democrat primary election for president against Joe Biden back in 2020. Robert Kennedy Junior ran against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2024, first as a Democrat and then as a political independent. Why are we seeing this political shift now?
Robert Kennedy Junior clearly was a Democrat. He supported his father, Robert F. Kennedy Senior, in his campaigns. Kennedy Junior was and is a passionate environmentalists. He supported both species and habitat conservation. He is a lawyer and was instrumental in bringing lawsuits against Mobil Oil and the US Department of Defense for their environmental practices. Kennedy questioned the role of chemical contamination affecting the health of children. He was considered for a role in the Environmental Protection Agency by President Obama. Kennedy long questioned the safety and effectiveness of medical vaccines. He was against mandatory vaccination for Covid19. Kennedy recently complained at the lawfare committed by the Democrat Party to keep him off the primary ballot and out of candidate forums.
Congressman Tulsi Gabbard was elected to the Hawaii State House of Representatives as a Democrat. She was later elected to a seat on the Honolulu City Council. She was a US Congressman as a Democrat and served for four terms. She was the Vice-Chairman of the Democrat National Committee under Chairman Deborah Wasserman Schultz.
Gabbard joined the Hawaii National Guard in 2003. She was deployed to Iraq as an enlisted man. She graduated from Officer Candidate School and was later deployed to Kuwait and the Horn of Africa. She describes herself as a political progressive and an international isolationist. When Gabbard ran against Hillary Clinton in the 2020 political campaigns, Democrat operatives accused Gabbard of being a Russian spy. President Biden’s TSA put her on a security watch list so federal air marshals kept Congressman Gabbard under surveillance whenever she flew.
Both Kennedy and Gabbard would have called themselves committed Democrats. Rather than campaign openly against them, both Democrats were attacked by the Clinton and Obama political machines. The ‘big tent’ of the Democrat party has become extremely small. There is no tolerance for debate if the viewpoint doesn’t match the approved party line or the machine-approved candidates.
Both Kennedy and then Gabbard came out in support of Donald Trump in his second run for President. Now I think I know why. Obamacare and the vaccine mandates wedded the Democrat Party to the pharmaceutical companies. Robert Kennedy Junior questioned that alliance. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris continue to support the Obama interventionist foreign policy. Congressman Gabbard thinks that foreign wars don’t benefit the United States.
When a politician speaks, are we hearing their ideas, the opinions of the voters who elected them, or the interests of the donors who funded them?
Political parties go through cycles. The party makes affiliations with special interests so those interests then receive special treatment. When they say that Donald Trump is a ‘threat to Democracy as we know it’, they mean he threatens those relationships with special interests. Those special interests can’t co-exist with Trump. Many of them couldn’t exist with Kennedy or Gabbard either. The political parties are more affiliated with the special interests than with the candidates or their voters. Those special interests tried to drive Trump out of the Republican Party and to drive Gabbard and Kennedy out of the Democrat Party. In Donald Trump, both Gabbard and Kennedy found a natural ally against the entrenched special interests. That is an easy step for populists to take. I like it.
How else do you explain these endorsements?
Please leave a thoughtful comment. RM
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2A News for the 26th of August
I am usually on the air each Monday with Bill Frady’s Lock and Load Radio. Bill is sick this today so I thought I’d share the articles I collected. RM
Last week, about a million doctors went out on strike in India after another medical doctor was assaulted in her hospital. I don’t know if the Indian politicians listened to those protests, but their courts did.
The Madras High Court recently observed that even if someone kills to protect themselves or others from a sexual crime, they will be exempted from prosecution and will not be punished.
Investigators said the woman heard noises and found her drunk husband lying on top of their daughter and choking her. When she tried to pull him off her daughter, he did not stop. The mother first used a wooden knife to strike him on the back of the head but he continued the assault. Consequently, she took a hammer and struck him on the head causing his immediate death. https://lawbeat.in/news-updates/amp/killing-defense-against-sexual-crimes-protected-law-no-punishment-madras-high-court
About 55 percent of Nigeria is Muslim. The other half is Christian. A popular muslim cleric commented on the terrorist violence in the northern part of the country. He told citizens to get weapons and arms so they can protect their family and their property. Northern Nigeria is plagued with Islamic extremists who joined with criminal gangs. That is why the cleric’s condemnation is so important. The right of self-defense is recognized around the world, even if Michael Bloomberg doesn’t like it here in the US. https://9newsng.com/get-guns-and-other-weapons-for-self-defense-against-terrorists-islamic-teacher-begs-nigerians/
A Kansas Judge made history, but it might be bad news for gun owners. A federal judge has dismissed charges against a Kansas man for possessing a machine gun (a Glock switch), saying prosecutors failed to establish that a federal ban on owning such weapons is constitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Judge John Broomes in Wichita on Wednesday appeared to mark the first time a court has held that banning machine guns is unconstitutional after the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 issued a landmark ruling that expanded gun rights.
In that ruling, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court established a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The Supreme Court clarified that standard in June as it upheld a ban on people subject to domestic violence restraining orders having guns, saying a modern firearms restriction needs only a “historical analogue,” not a “historical twin,” to be valid.
Broomes, an appointee of Republican then-President Donald Trump, said prosecutors in Tamori Morgan’s case failed to identify such a historical analogue to support charging him with violating the machine gun ban.
The U.S. Department of Justice can appeal the decision, which the gun safety group Everytown Law in a statement called “extreme and reckless.” Prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment. Morgan’s lawyer declined to comment.
Morgan was indicted last year on charges that he illegally possessed a machine gun and a machine gun conversion device known as a “Glock switch.” https://kfgo.com/2024/08/23/us-judge-tosses-machine-gun-possession-case-calls-ban-unconstitutional/
Colt firearms is expanding production of CZ in Hungary. Colt holds a majority interest in CZ. The Government owns the other 49 percent. The news release does not explain which particular brands or parts will be manufactured by CZ. Colt turned its back on US civilian firearms sales. https://www.guns.com/news/2024/08/23/colt-cz-expands-production-in-hungary
Remember that the US Supreme court recently refused to look at court decisions until all legal remedies had been exhausted. Well, we’re there. The full court of the fourth circuit said that Maryland can make it difficult to purchase a firearm so long as it does not discriminate against particular individuals. Said another way, it can restrict the right to buy a handgun so long as it infringes on that right equally. The only appeal is now to to the US Supreme court. The USSC could hear the case or simply overturn it and return the case to the 4th circuit. As expected, the Democrat Attorney General of Maryland said the regulations were only common sense gun safety. How many criminals get a background check and take a class? I guess a right delayed is not a right denied if we’re talking about the right of self-defense. It seems like the Maryland court used a balancing test again. https://marylandmatters.org/2024/08/23/federal-appeals-court-upholds-maryland-handgun-licensing-law/
Lots of news crews were in Chicago this last week for the Democrat National Convention. They were told that the city is dangerous. Delegates were robbed if they went outside the venue and connected hotels. It was hard to hide that Democrat rule and gun-control made the city more dangerous rather than making it safer. That didn’t stop the national party from advocating for gun control and Bloomberg bucks.
A four judge panel of the 8th federal circuit court ruled that 18 year olds are adults and have the right to bear arms in Minnesota. Recently, the full eighth circuit court refused to rehear the case. That means that the Democrat Attorney General in Minnesota can only appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court. https://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/24/07/232248P.pdf
We heard Kamala Harris say that she would dictate the price of food and fuel if she were elected. Let me point out what that means to us. It means we won’t have enough food or fuel.. Or ammunition or guns. If you say that beef can’t cost more than a dollar a pound then no one will raise beef and bring it to market. If you say that ammunition can’t cost more than a dime per round, then the only ammo on the shelves will be 22 long rifle. What if kamalla says that Gun Manufacturers are price gouging the public. That they can’t charge more than $100 dollars for a gun and that the feds will add a 200 dollar excise tax. There won’t be any guns on the shelf. Even pro-gun democrats should be able to figure this out.
According to the platform, the Democrats want:
- Universal background checks.
- “Assault weapon” and standard-capacity magazine bans
- Mandatory safe-storage laws
- Repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act
- Increased red-flag laws
- Increased funding for the ATF
- Increased funding for the FBI, to conduct more background checks
- Increased funding for the CDC, “because the gun violence epidemic is a public health crisis.”
Harris also said she wants to confiscate modern rifles. What is a pro-gun Democrat to do?
School is back in session in West Virginia. We were told that blood would flow in the streets now that people with a concealed carry license were allowed on state college campuses. I checked with the US weather bureau to see if there were any flood advisories for the new river of blood. I’ll keep looking, but I didn’t see any.
New Mexico Governor Grishsam issued an executive order that honest citizens couldn’t carry firearms in parks or playgrounds. Of course the law is being appealed, but the obvious question is if judges would actually sentence the gang-members who violate that law. The only reason the law exists is because judges returned criminals to the streets of Albuquerque. Shame on them, and we won’t have peace until those judges are replaced.
A judge ruled that police have wide powers to come into your home nad kill you if you have a gun in your hand. This judge needs to be replaced. https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2024/08/24/judges-ruling-in-breonna-taylor-case-alarming-for-gun-owners-n1226042
Federal District Court Judge Reed O’Connor for the Northern District of Texas denied the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) request for a stay on his ruling that blocked the ATF from taking enforcement actions over force reset triggers (FRT). Earlier, Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the ATF exceeded its authority when it determined that FRTs were machine guns in the National Association for Gun Rights v. Garland. FRTs use the bolt carrier group (BCG) of an AR-15-style firearm to reset the trigger of the gun. This reset allows the shooter to increase the rate of fire of a firearm. The ATF claimed that since the rate of fire approaches that of a machine gun, it made the device a machine gun conversion device. Under federal law, any device that converts a semi-automatic firearm to a machine gun is itself a machine gun. https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2024/08/22/atf-loses-bid-to-get-stay-issued-on-forced-reset-trigger-case-n1226018
New Orleans is stuck on stupid. https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/08/22/louisiana-mayor-backtracks-says-permitless-carry-prohibited-in-downtown-spaces-n1226012
Remember that I told you about a school in New Orleans who brought concealed carry classes onto campus so their students would learn Louisiana firearms law and be safer on campus.
What do we do when governments fail? Perhaps the biggest win for CRPA and the other Second Amendment groups was a California judge’s recognition that out of state residents must have the ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights in California. Yes, even in Los Angeles. Though the judge refused to require California to recognize out-of-state permits, he did at least instruct the plaintiffs and defendants to figure out how to make that happen. They have to report back to the judge in 30 days. Quote- “the State bears the burden of showing whether California’s residency requirements for a CCW license is ‘consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The judge also declared that an 18-month wait for a concealed carry permit is excessive, though he also left the door wide open for licensing authorities to take far longer than the 120 days required under California law to process applications. That gives agencies like the LASD far too much leeway to drag out the permitting process, and the delays are likely to continue as a result. https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/08/21/2a-groups-get-partial-victory-in-challenge-to-california-carry-permits-n1226000
In the category of Wow, I’m glad I left California, a court ruled that knives are not arms so the state is free to regulate them.
We saw British citizens assaulted, and then jailed if they objected to muslim demonstrations. That sounds a lot like what we did to people who sat on their porch during Covid. I hope we learned from that experience. I appreciated alternative media after CNN cut away from Robert Kennedy Junior when he criticized the news media. CNN turned off his audio feed and validated everything Kennedy was saying.
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Predictions for the 2024 Elections
We’ve had the Democrat and Republican national conventions. With what we’ve seen already, I’m going to make a prediction about the 2024 election results. We will have the contest between two opposing candidates running two different campaigns as they reach out to very different voters. You might follow the news and think we’re talking about liberals, conservatives, and independents. I’m more interested in daytime voters versus nighttime voters and 2am ‘voters’. Who votes and who counts the votes makes a larger difference than how you and I mark our ballots.
I predict the voters who cast their vote on election day will vote in surprising numbers for Donald Trump and other Republican candidates. They will vote for Trump in even higher numbers in states where the voters had to show an identification at the polls on election day. The voters who had to be both US citizens AND show an ID at the polls will vote for Trump in still higher numbers. That will be true independent of age, sex, religion, race, income, or if you are urban or rural. Let’s call these people daytime voters independent of the time of day when they cast their vote. These are real people. They cast a shadow. You can see their faces. They smile back when you smile at them. They reply when you wish them ‘good day’, though their answer might include an accent. Let’s contrast these voters with a second group.
I predict that a second group will show a disproportionate bias toward Kamala Harris and Democrats. This group casts mail-in ballots. The proportion of Harris voters will be higher when the ballots envelopes are dropped off at drop boxes in batches in the middle of the night rather than being deposited into a US mailbox during the middle of the day. We will see more Harris voters who say they live at Post Office Boxes. More Harris voters will live at empty lots and at abandoned buildings. We will see more of these voters in states that don’t ask for proof of US citizenship to vote. Even more will come from states that don’t require any ID. Let’s call these “people” nighttime voters, even though we never see most of them.
We don’t know if they cast a shadow since we don’t see them during the daytime. We can’t see their faces when they go around wearing their covid masks or ski masks if we catch them on video during the middle of the night as they photograph themselves putting the stack of envelopes into the ballot drop box. They don’t smile back when the “relative” drops the large stack of ballots into an un-monitored drop box in the early hours of the morning, box after box, and night after night. Some don’t find that suspicious at all.
That sounds like fraud to me, but it isn’t the sort of voter fraud that bothers me the most. I’m worried about the ballots that are counted at 2am when poll watchers have been forced from the processing center. We will see these votes come in for Harris by a very wide margin. These freshly cast ballots will be delivered by truck after dark once the poll watchers have gone home. They will be counted in back rooms, over and over until they get the election results the elites need.
I predict we will see more of these 2am voters in cities that are controlled by Democrats. That is where Police Chiefs appointed by Democrat Mayors and City Councils won’t dare secure the polling places and the uncounted ballots. These 2am voters will cast votes in patterns that don’t match the voting patterns of any other citizens. These 2am voters will cast the votes in close races and they strangely ignored the rest of the choices on the ballot. The public will be told that is nothing strange and to move along.. or else. The or else is the threat of being cancelled for asking questions that threaten the elites.
That is a serious question. Can corrupt Democrats and the deep state allow fair elections? I don’t think they can. Think about Jeffrey Epstein and the multi-million-dollar mansions of the Democrat old-guard before you answer. The people who benefit from dishonesty on this scale cannot withstand the scrutiny that an honest election might bring. Remember that after the last election we had armed conflict over a data center in Europe. A telecom data center was blown up in the US to break the chain of evidence.
It is too late to worry about ballot verification in many states. We gave that up when we elected a Soros-funded Secretary of State. Your infant could fill in the signature box with a crayon and it would be considered a matching signature. Asking for positive identification indicates that you’re a hateful racist. It is one of the forbidden questions we are not allowed to ask.
There are things that honest citizens and elected officials can do to insure fair and transparent elections. The simplest is for local officials to not report their districts’ voting tally until after the large Democrat-controlled city finalizes their voting results. We want to force the elites to make their cheating so large that it is obvious. Sadly, you may have to hide your results for days. There also used to be news outlets who would conduct independent exit polls. Now, the corporate media doesn’t do that for fear of exposing the nighttime and 2am ‘voters’ that the elites depend on.
Yes, I’m sad that this is what our country has come to. Rather than wring our hands, we can do our part to ensure the integrity of our local elections. At least we will know we’ve done what we can do.
I don’t know which candidate will be sworn in come January, 2025. I am sure this election will be worse than the last since the elites brutally punished the people who wanted to make the election better.
One bit of good news is that I can anticipate the advertisements from red-state, and so can you.
“Move to our state where we actually count the votes.”
That advertisement is simple, effective, and it might move another million disenfranchised Republicans and Independents to red-states.
Author’s notes- I did not get a commission or other reward from a national advertising agency to write this article.
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Who is the Greedy One Here?
I heard Kamala Harris say that inflation was caused by greedy companies charging us higher prices. That is wrong on so many levels, but it also brings up a moral question. Ignoring the fact of where all the money came from to pay those higher prices, let’s look at the question of who is taking our money.
Grocery stores earn about 3-percent of their gross sales in profits. In contrast, Exxon earned about 10-percent. If you earned over 47-thousand dollars a year, then the government charges you a marginal tax rate of 22-percent. On top of that, states charge about 6-percent in additional sales taxes. You get to pay that when you spend the money they already taxed. Add property taxes and state income taxes.
Minnesota is about average on their gas taxes where the state and federal taxes are about 46 cents per gallon, or just over 15-percent on three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline.
The government keeps more of our money than the grocer or the oil company. If anyone is greedy, it is the state and federal governments. It certainly isn’t the local grocer or they guy running the convenience store.
That isn’t hard to figure out. It doesn’t take a PhD in accounting or economics to do a web search and some one-digit-math. You can do it in a few minutes if you put your phone to work. That shallow search does leave us with a deeper question. If we can figure this out, then why didn’t Vice President Harris?
Is Kamala Harris ignorant of the facts, or indifferent to them? Sadly, the media will repeat her lies as if they were the truth.
Please leave a comment. RM
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The Serious Threat of President Donald J Trump
I have heard that President Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. You have heard it too. Politicians and pundits said it many times. They claim President Trump challenges the very core of our political system. I think that is true. This is why.
The billionaire donors to the Democrat Party are threatened. The theory was that a politician would stay bought once he was paid for. What if billionaires like Soros, Bloomberg, and other bundlers had to earn their votes the old-fashioned way, by convincing a majority of the voters. What if the owners of Dominion Voting Machines reported the votes that were cast rather than inventing 2AM votes? If that actually happened, why democracy as we know it would be overturned.
If our democracy was threatened, then special interests that bought access to our economy would again have to compete with other suppliers. Warren Buffett’s railroad couldn’t sink the pipelines that supplies oil at a lower cost. That is why politicians wrote themselves into the permission process on large projects so that companies are forced to pay off the politicians. That prostitutes our State Department and our EPA, to name only a few. Corruption is woven into our “democracy,” and Donald Trump is an existential threat to that status quo.
Special interests like large unions, environmentalists, and even so called “fact checkers” fund politicians with tens of millions of dollars of cash or in-kind donations each election cycle. The politicians return the favor. No wonder Trump is seen as a threat to democracy as we know it.
We’ve seen politicians become rich to the tune of hundreds-of-millions of dollars through insider stock trading. The small investor can’t compete with Nancy Pelosi. In contrast, Donald Trump made his money by building resorts. Anyone can try and compete with him. What if Trump is elected and he delays signing a thousand-page bill? Now Pelosi’s stock options expire. My unsophisticated point of view is that laws should benefit the citizens rather than benefitting the politicians. Stopping that corrupt business-as-usual is certainly a threat to our democracy. It is about time.
We saw the deep state invent accusation of corruption against Donald Trump. We saw them invent criminal charges against Donald Trump. We saw them invent charges against citizens who protested a shady election. We saw the same deep state that hung Jeffrey Epstein let a murderer take a shot at a former president. That is proof that President Trump threatens the deep state. The corporate media ignored that attack and the corruption behind it. Donald Trump then had an interview with Elon Musk that was watched over a billion times. No wonder the Deep State and Corporate Media feel threatened. We don’t need them for our news, and that certainly changes the way democracy is practiced in the USA today.
I described how the political phenomenon that is Donald J. Trump threatens our democracy and our existing political structure. I could not cite proof of each claim in only a few hundred words. I did not provide proof of widespread corruption but the evidence of your own eyes can do that for you. In fact, your lived experience probably shows you many examples I have missed.
Yes, Donald Trump threatens our democratic structures and they need to be frightened to their core. They need to return to serving the citizens of this country rather than cutting deals for themselves and serving the elites. I hope President Trump, and the voters, continue to threaten the powers that presently corrupt our society.
I gave you 600 words and a lot of thought. Please leave a thoughtful comment. RM
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Going Beyond the Gun
A friend told me a story last week. He was comparing two handguns. One of them was lighter, smaller, and easier for him to carry. The larger handgun was slightly more accurate when he is shooting quicky. Both of them felt good in his hands. I didn’t see this choice as a problem, but my friend did. He isn’t that far away from the rest of us. Tens of millions of us have become gun owners in the last few years. I assume they bought a firearm for self-defense. Hopefully these new gun owners have been learning how to use their firearms. Here are the next steps they might consider. All these skills take practice, but it is easy to get distracted. There is a difference between a defender and a someone who shoots for sport. Let’s start with what they have in common.
Basic Firearms Safety- I’m sure the new gun owners took a firearms safety course. They learned about the safe handling and safe storage of their firearm. That information is so fundamental that it is worth reviewing or re-taking the class if it has been more than a few years. Consider retaking the class if you have not been handling your firearm and reviewing the safety rules. You want to those good habits to be unconscious.
Basic Marksmanship- You also took basic marksmanship so you know about sight alignment, grip, and stance. That is important so that you’re practicing the fundamentals correctly. The alternative is to reinforce bad habits that will hold you back. It helps to have someone else look at what you are doing. That is certainly true in my case.
Have a Gun- This is where we separate sport shooting from defense. You want to have a defensive tool with you when you need it. That is why we carry a firearm with us in a holster. Learn how to present your firearm safely and efficiently. Even if you are slowly punching holes in a paper target, you could still go to a shooting range that lets you present from your loaded firearm from your holster so you get practice drawing and shooting. The good news is that there are smaller steps along the way. I suggest you can start with an outside-the-waistband holster that is carried openly. Grabbing your firearm the wrong way can be dangerous for you and the people around you. Please get some personal instruction on how to draw.
Don’t Get Shot (basic)- The next skill to consider is movement. Learn how to move as you present your firearm. There are arguments to be made about shooting as you move. Learn to move and shoot, and to move as you shoot. We want to move so we won’t get shot.
Don’t Get Shot (advanced)- Cover stops bullets. Believe it or not, it takes practice to use cover effectively and quickly. You want to be good at not getting shot. This might include shooting from unusual positions other than standing upright while you have both of your hand on your gun. There are simple drills you can learn that don’t involve live fire.
Darkness Happens- Do you have a light so you can defend yourself at night? We always need to both identify our target and what is beyond it. That is required during the day and at night, outdoors and indoors. Darkness and low-light changes everything. Low-light means we’re shooting at much shorter distances. We’re probably depending more on feeling where the gun is pointed and less on using the sights. It also means we need to practice with a flashlight. Handgun mounted lights keep getting brighter and smaller. Will your range let you try some of these lights in the dim?
Shoot enough- Once you can comfortably hit the target, start trying to hit the target more than once and to shoot several targets. Now we are talking about what happens after the first shot. Also try to hit targets that are different sizes, or at different distances. That exercise forces you to change your visual focus and your mental focus as you shift between speed and accuracy.
Recognize the law- Learn when to shoot before you worry about how fast you shoot. That means you must study armed defense and the legal use of lethal force. When is a situation considered to be an immediate, life threatening, and unavoidable threat? You want to be so familiar with these situations that you recognize them rather than think about them. I know that sounds exacting. The problem is that you can’t shoot fast enough to get back the 10 seconds you gave away because you didn’t recognize what to do. That precious time is gone forever. In my mind, this is the area that separates the amateurs from the professionals. Professionals study this until they never get it wrong. They have a plan. Often, that extra time lets you run away so you don’t have to shoot.
Notice that we haven’t yet talked about how fast or accurate you are with any particular gun. We didn’t talk about first shot times that measure how quickly you get your firearm out of the holster. We didn’t talk about split times; the times between shots on the same target. We didn’t ask about transition times as you shift from target to target. As much fun as it is to compare different guns, we don’t want a single drill to become our goal. Our goal is to protect our family and not get shot. Everything else is a means to becoming a competent defender.
Put it all together- The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Recognizing a dangerous situation gives you time. Having several plans in mind lets you act quickly. Knowing how much time you need tells you when to wait and when to shoot. Knowing what to say to the police might keep you out of jail.
Go beyond the gun. Of course you should carry what you can. The point is to become a defender rather than simply a shooter.
SlowFacts 