Normalizing Political Violence

Back in 2011, thousands of dirty (literally) Communists called themselves Occupy Wall Street and began squatting in their own filth in public parks in major cities all over the country. From there, they committed a long litany of crimes, including destruction of public and private property, rioting, looting, assault, rape and murder.

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And Democrats loved them.

Source: CNN

Describing the protests as “serious” and “encouraging,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) praised the sentiment motivating Occupy Wall Street and called for Congress to take heed. “It’s got a clear message, and that is frustration with the way that business is being done, the way that wealth is tilting towards the high end and the middle class is shrinking. And that message needs to be given,” Welch, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told me on Wednesday. What’s more he added, “it’s a real grassroots, citizens-led initiative. It’s not a top-down effort, it’s bottom up. In that sense, I think it’s very similar to the tea party.” 

Other progressive Democrats are even more enthusiastic. “I’m so proud to see the Occupy Wall Street movement standing up to this rampant corporate greed and peacefully participating in our democracy,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY). The co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, Reps. Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva, issued a joint statement to express “solidarity” with the movement, describing themselves as inspired by the mass movement. “We join the calls for corporate accountability and expanded middle-class opportunity,” they wrote. “The silent masses aren’t so silent anymore. They are fighting to give voice to the struggles that everyday Americans are going through,” added Rep. John Larson in his own statement supporting Occupy Wall Street. 

Even Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, agreed that there were similarities between the protesters’ message and Democratic priorities. “Certainly, there is an overlap in terms of jobs and economic opportunity, which they want and we want,” Hoyer told me. Though he didn’t go so far as his Democratic colleagues in embracing the movement wholeheartedly, he said that one “positive aspect” of the protests is that they’re “raising issues and raising concerns and asking policymakers to focus on it.”

Democrat presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, praised Occupy Wall Street.



Sanders is a decades-long Communist apologist who thinks so highly of Communism that he spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union (clearly a romantic vacation spot), praised Communist Fidel Castro and the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and to this day states on his Senate website that...

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger.

Sure, incomes are more equal in Venezuela. They're so equally bad that people are starving. The exception, is, of course, Venezuela's Socialist leadership, whose income is dong just fine. I took a screen shot, just in case he removes that travesty, but so far he seems quite proud of it.

Communism is the most murderous ideology in history. Communists murdered over 100 million people in the 20th Century alone, and the body count continues in North Korea, Cuba, China and Venezuela.

Communists are just as evil as Nazis, and their body count dwarfs that of the Nazis, so imagine if American politicians embraced and praised "protesters" who wore Hitler tee shirts...

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... or described himself as "proud" of a movement that called for "real Nazism"...

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... or if American politicians expressed "solidarity" with violent Nazi "protesters"...

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Would American politicians who expressed "solidarity" with violent Nazis ever be elected?

What if an American politician loved Nazism so much that he spent his honeymoon in Nazi Germany while the US was at war with Nazi Germany? Would such a politician take second place in a major party's presidential primary?

I'm not trying to change any politician's mind here. Politicians are - for the most part - cynical, amoral opportunists. Instead, I'd like to address those who voted for the politicians who praised violent Communist "protesters".

Would it be morally reprehensible to vote for a politician who praised violent Nazi "protesters"? If so, then why is it morally acceptable to vote for politicians who praised violent Communist "protesters"?

Let me make this as clear as I can for my "liberal" friends. By rewarding (with your vote) politicians who praised violent Communists back in 2011-12, you helped normalize political violence in the US. You're part of the problem.

Now, we've had riots at the presidential inauguration. That's now the norm.


Thanks to you, violence against political opponents is now the norm.


Political violence on college campuses is now the norm.

Violently shutting down speech with which "liberals" disagree is now the norm.

As Stanger, [Charles] Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following [Murray’s speech] they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors,” according to Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and marketing. 

Burger said college public safety officers managed to get Stanger and Murray into the administrator’s car. 

“The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus. 

“During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” Burger continued. “She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace.”

You threw out the old rules of civil discourse, "liberals". You passively stood by - or even applauded - while violent Leftists shut down free speech on college campuses and political rallies, rioted, looted, vandalized and burned. Then you rewarded politicians who praised the violent mobs by voting for them.

What you don't seem to understand is that the old rules were there to protect you just as much as everyone else, and that others can - and will - follow the new rules you created. And when they do, you won't like it.

A (dis)Honest Conversation About Race

Soledad O'Brien claims she wants to have "an honest conversation about race", then proceeds to lie to her audience.

O'Brien tells so many lies of both omission and comission that it would take too long to break them all down, so I'll focus on only one of them.

In a roughly 10-year period in New York [City], approximately five million people were stopped [and frisked] by police. Eighty three percent of them were black and Hispanic men... What does it do to people to be considered a suspect constantly in their own neighborhoods because of the color of their skin?

O'Brien believes that the only reason police officers in NYC - and the rest of the country - stop and arrest more blacks than whites is because police officers are racists. That's a lie. Heather Mac Donald explains why. 

Blacks commit over 75% of the shootings in NYC, even though they make up only about 23% of the population. Whites commit about 2% of the shootings in NYC, even though they make up 34% of the city's population. As Ms. Mac Donald explains, using 2011 and 2012 data...

Blacks are 53 percent of stop subjects, though they are 23 percent of the city’s population. Whites are 9 percent of stop subjects, though they are 35 percent of the city’s population. Therefore, conclude Stringer and others, the NYPD targets individuals for stops based on their race rather than on crime patterns and suspicious behavior.

...

The claim ignores the reality that the preponderance of crime perpetrators, and victims, in New York are also minorities. Blacks, for example, constituted 78% of shooting suspects and 74% of all shooting victims in 2012, even though they are less than 23% of the city's population. 

Whites, by contrast, committed just over 2% of shootings and were under 3% of shooting victims in 2012, though they are 35% of the populace. Young black men in New York are 36 times more likely to be murdered than young white men—and their assailants are virtually always other black (or Hispanic) males. 

Given such a crime imbalance, if the NYPD focuses its resources where people most need protection, the effort will inevitably produce racially disparate enforcement data.

Police departments that do their job concentrate their efforts in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. In NYC, those neighborhoods are largely populated by blacks. Because of that, most of the people the NYPD stops and frisks are black. But Soledad O'Brien blames that on racism.

To illustrate the audacity of Ms. O'Brien's lie, think about this for a second.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 93.3% of prisoners in the US are male. Clearly that must be the result of anti-male sexism, right? Of course not! Obviously, most prisoners are male because males commit the vast majority of crimes. Likewise, the incarceration rate among black Americans is much higher than the incarceration rate among Hispanic Americans, white Americans and Asian Americans (in that order) because the crime rate among black Americans is far higher than the crime rate among Hispanic Americans, white Americans and Asian Americans (in that order).

In her speech, Soledad O'Brien stated that...

You cannot advance good if you don't confront bad, and you cannot seek renewal if you're not willing to dig into the uncomfortable truths about how we got here today.

She's right. But she also refuses to confront uncomfortable truths about crime rates among black Americans, and the reasons for them. Larry Elder doesn't have that problem.

As I pointed out before, fatherlessness is the number one correlating factor among violent criminals...

According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes. With regard to girls in particular, those raised by single mothers are more than twice as likely to give birth out-of-wedlock, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty for yet another generation.

And as I also pointed out in that article, and Larry Elder points out in his video, our welfare system promotes fatherlessness by encouraging women to "marry the state". Soledad O'Brien can't admit that crime rates actually are higher among blacks than whites because if she did she'd have to begin asking why that is, and as every "good" "liberal", she supports the welfare state that rewards fatherlessness and therefore promotes criminality.

In his video, Larry Elder relates the following advice his hard-working, WWII Marine veteran father, who was born in the Jim Crow South, gave him.

Hard work wins. You get out of life what you put into it. You can't control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort. And before blaming other people, go to the nearest mirror and ask yourself, "what could I have done better to change the outcome?" 

Those are the words of a man who sees himself as an active moral agent, not a passive, perpetual victim. A truly honest conversation about race would ask black Americans to go the nearest mirror and ask themselves what they could do to change the out-of-control criminality in their neighborhoods, but Soledad O'Brien wants them to blame white people for all their problems and pretend that black crime rates are no higher than anyone else's.

Apparently, Soledad O'Brien doesn't see black Americans as moral agents, which means she sees black Americans as either not fully human, or as perpetual children, which is ironic, considering that she accuses others of racism. A person who sees black Americans as fully adult humans holds black Americans to the same standards to which he/she holds white Americans, not the lower, childlike standards to which Soledad O'Brien holds them.



A truly honest conversation about race in America would include discussions about how embracing a victim mentality, a sense of entitlement and fatherlessness, glorifying thug culture, and rejecting individual responsibility can only lead to violence, poverty and dysfunction.



Jason Riley, who wrote Please Stop Helping Us, converses honestly about race in America. He explains how embracing a culture of underachievement holds black Americans back (6:36 - 9:40), and much more. Listen to his whole speech and the Q&A if you have time.



Obviously, Soledad O'Brien told some truths. The most effective lies are seasoned with truth to make them more palatable. For example, it's true that the Tuskegee Institute found that 3,446 black Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968. It's also true that even one is one too many.

But even then she lied by omission, because it's also true that - according to the FBI's Unified Crime Report - black criminals murdered 4,585 black Americans between 2014 and 2015. That means that black criminals murdered more black Americans in two years than racist Southerners lynched in 86 years.

Which is the bigger, more immediate problem; 3,446 black Americans lynched over 86 years ending 49 years ago, or 4,585 black Americans murdered over two years right now? Why does Soledad O'Brien focus on a smaller problem that ended 49 years ago, and ignore a much bigger problem that is ongoing right now?

Because focusing on the current, bigger problem wouldn't help her sell her lies.

What makes me think that Soledad O'Brien is lying, and not just wrong? She worked for CNN, and CNN devotes itself to spreading the lie that blacks are perpetual victims, whites are perpetual victimizers of blacks, and therefore blacks are not responsible for any crimes they commit. For example, CNN pushed the "hands up don't shoot" lie.

Source: News Busters

Michael Brown died because he was a violent thug who stole from a store, assaulted a store employee who confronted him, then attacked a police officer, not because he was an innocent victim of police racism. But CNN pushed the lie before knowing the facts, then, even when it was clear they'd pushed a lie, they refused to admit to their part in pushing the lie and suppressing the truth.

More recently, four black suspects (two males, two females, ranging from 17 to 24 years old) kidnapped and tortured a white 18-year-old mentally disabled man while yelling "f**k Donald Trump" and "f**k white people" at him, and live streamed his torture on Facebook.



If you have the stomach for it, you can find the whole video online, but I won't link to it here.

Chicago kidnapping & torture suspects: ABC News.

CNN's Don Lemon refused to call this horrific crime evil.

I don't think it's evil. I don't think it's evil. I think these are young people and I think they have bad home training. 

When I say who is raising these young people, I have no idea who is raising these young people because no one I know on earth who is seventeen years old or seventy years old would ever think of treating another person like that.

See? It's not their fault, even though they're well above the age of conscience. Why would CNN's Don Lemon refuse to call this horror evil? One of his guests, Symone Sanders, gives us a clue.

We’ve talked about white nationalists and white supremacists and the KKK, but there also, when this inflammatory rhetoric is out there, when someone is repeatedly telling you that your community is the worst of the worst, it brings out the worst of the worst in people. 

That is not a hate crime. Hate crimes are because of a person’s racial ethnicity, their religion, their gender, a disability, it isn’t your political leanings, because someone doesn’t like you’re political leanings and they do something bad to you, that is not a hate crime.

See? It's white people's fault. No matter what four black criminals did to a mentally disabled white man, it's not their fault, because the black criminals are victims of racist whites. Clearly, neither Don Lemon nor Symone Sanders see these four black criminals as active moral agents, like Larry Elder's father saw himself and taught Larry Elder to see himself. Don Lemon and Symone Sanders both display the same refusal to hold black Americans responsible for their own actions that Larry Elder, Chloe Valdary and Taleeb Starkes referenced in their videos.

Clearly, CNN is devoted to pushing lies about race in America, and it stands to reason that they hired Soledad O'Brien because she too is devoted to pushing similar lies.

There's another reason that Soledad O'Brien is clearly lying, and not just repeating a lie she believes. Soledad O'Brien is a professional investigative journalist with the resources of one of the world's biggest news organizations at her disposal. What's more likely; that her investigation never uncovered the facts I presented here, or that she omitted them deliberately? Is it more likely that I'm better at her job than she is, or that she omitted facts that contradict the narrative she wants to push?

The answers are obvious.

Why take the time to expose these lies?

First and foremost, because the truth matters... always. Second, because the lies that CNN and Soledad O'Brien are spreading have gotten hundreds of people killed, the majority of them black.

As Heather Mac Donald states in her video, crime rates - especially murder rates - skyrocketed in many US cities when the "Ferguson Effect" - spurred by media lies about endemic racism among police officers - caused police departments to pull back from high crime, inner city, majority black neighborhoods.

University of Missouri at St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld has had "second thoughts." Like many academic criminologists, he had pooh-poohed charges that skyrocketing murder rates in many cities in 2015 and 2016 result from a "Ferguson effect" — a skittering back from proactive policing for fear of accusations of racism like those that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. 

Now, after looking over 2015 data from 56 large cities, he tells The Guardian that he has changed his mind. Homicides in those cities were up 17 percent from 2014. And ten cities, all with large black populations, saw homicides up 33 percent on average. 

"These aren't flukes or blips, this is a real increase," Rosenfeld told reporter Lois Beckett. "The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect."

It gets worse when you look at specific cities. The murder rate in DC increased by 54%. In Baltimore it was 56%. In Cleveland, 90%.

In Chicago, 768 people were murdered in 2016 (as of 27 Dec 2016), compared to 468 in 2015, and 416 in 2014.

How many hundreds (thousands?) of people - most of them black - are dead today because of the lies that Soledad O'Brien, CNN and the mainstream media in general spread?  We'll never know. And Soledad O'Brien, Don Lemon, Symone Sanders and the rest will never care.

You're Stuck In This Country With Us

If you've ever watched the movie Watchmen - or better yet, read the comic - you probably remember the following scene. If you're squeamish, skip the video.

Rorschach, one of the heroes, gets locked up with many of the criminals he put in prison. After defeating an attacker in a fight, Rorschach yells at his fellow inmates, "I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me!"

Prof. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit alluded to that scene when explaining one of the basic functions of government.

Police don’t actually protect law-abiding citizens from criminals so much as they protect criminals from the much-rougher justice they’d get in the absence of a legal system. Burglars would be hung from lampposts, and shoplifters would be beaten and tossed into the gutter if there were no police, as in fact happens in countries where there isn’t a reliable justice system and a civil-society culture that restrains vigilantism. Reminder to the criminal class: Ultimately, we’re not stuck in this country with you. You’re stuck in this country with us.

The following day (3 Sep 2015), Prof. Reynolds linked to a story about the rising trend of street "justice" in Venezuela.

When a man they believed to be a thief sneaked into their parking lot in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, angry residents caught him, stripped him and beat him with fists, sticks and stones. 

They tied him up and doused him in gasoline, according to witnesses, in one of what rights groups and media reports say are an increasing number of mob beatings and lynchings in a country ravaged by crime.

Almost a year later, the trend has not abated. In fact, as Venezuela continues its death spiral under the crushing weight of Socialism, it seems to be getting worse. Why? Caracas city councilman, Jesús Armas, explains...

This year will without a doubt be the most violent in the history of our city...  

The insecurity has three roots. The first is associated with levels of poverty and inequality that we see in the city. Today Venezuela is the country with the highest inflation in the world, with shortages that force people to line up for hours to buy food. For decades neighborhoods have sprung up outside the city, and now more than 50 percent of the city's population lives in places where houses are built with low-quality materials, and where they don't formally have access to basic public services and are without roads or consolidated public spaces. 

Poverty, inequality and no basic public services in the Chavista Socialist paradise? Unpossible!

The second element has to do with a culture of lawlessness. In the country, a habit of disrespect for most basic laws - those related to transit, shoplifting, even the ways the authorities and the rest of the population interact with these laws, has resulted in a collective indifference toward much larger crimes because the law is simply a dead letter. 

When the government officials who are supposed to enforce the law are the biggest thieves, how can anyone else be expected to respect the law? Chavez died a billionaire, and his daughter is the wealthiest person in Venezuela.

Finally, there is the reaction of the national and local government in terms of managing the violence. The truth is that we have a mayor who, through hate speech and a series of acts of violence promoted by groups related to his party and his administration, has over the years exhibited excessive permissiveness toward huge criminal groups that dominate vast and populous parts of the city, either because they handle drug trafficking or because they have a monopoly on violence and illegal activities that generate income. 

Likewise, the state has implemented a policy that has nothing to do with protecting life, liberty and property of citizens, but on the contrary, has driven a socialist model that seeks to limit those freedoms, using crime as a way to maintain power and control of the population. But the truth is that today things are out of control and we are left with a failed state in which the so-called peace zones are micro-states controlled by gangsters and not by constitutional institutions.

Life, liberty and property? Where have I read that before? Mr. Armas hit the nail on the head. A government's sole purpose is to secure the people's rights to life, liberty and property. As Thomas Jefferson stated in his first inaugural address:

... a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Unfortunately, Venezuela's Socialist government - like all Socialist governments - busies itself primarily with "[taking] from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned", secondarily with buying votes with the bread it took from the mouth of labor, and not at all with its actual responsibility of "[restraining] men from injuring one another".

The result is what we now see in Venezuela. We may not see it for long, not because it'll stop any time soon, but because Venezuela's government - embarrassed by its own impotence and incompetence - banned media coverage of the lynchings. Venezuela's government won't crack down on crime, much less unshackle the people and economy from the disastrous Socialist policies that led to the disintegration of Venezuelan society. They'll just prevent news outlets from talking about it, thereby accomplishing nothing of value.

As European governments refuse to protect their citizens from Muslim migrant criminals and conspire to cover up their negligence, homicide rates in some American cities skyrocket due to the Ferguson Effect, and insurmountable federal debt leads us towards Venezuela-style hyperinflation, lessons abound. The decent among us need to learn those lessons quickly and prepare accordingly. Criminals won't. After all, criminals aren't known for prudence or self-control.

Source: Fox News Latino

Illinois Concealed Carry Fails to Reenact "Tombstone"

In January 2014, Illinois finally became the 50th state to issue concealed carry licenses to law abiding people living within its borders.  Predictably, hoplophobes predicted that Chicago's streets would run red with blood, as crazed concealed carry permit holders reenacted the shootout at the O.K. Corral. 

Source: IMDB

Sadly, for bloody-shirt-waving hoplophobes, but fortunately for everyone else, the hoplophobes' fantasies failed to materialize.  Again. 

Opponents of the concealed carry law in Illinois — which State Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) said passed with "overwhelming support" — feared that it would increase rather than decrease crime, putting more guns into the streets that could fall into the wrong hands.

They always do.

In the year of concealed carry permits in Illinois, there have only been a couple incidents involving legal gun owners that have created headlines. In July, a concealed-carry permit holder in Crestwood tried shooting at a fleeing armed robber, hurting no one but forcing a police officer to duck for cover. In Chicago a member of the military who had a concealed carry permit shot and wounded an armed man who fired into a crowd on Chicago's Far South Side. 

Nevertheless, Hayes said he stopped opposing the concealed carry law when he realized that the past year has not resulted in the level of violence some anticipated. 

In fact, just the opposite happened.

Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year, the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the first quarter, the city’s homicide rate was at a 56-year low.  

Those of us who've been paying attention are not the least bit surprised.  After all, we've seen the same trend throughout the United States since 1993.  But those facts don't matter to hoplophobes.

But Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's office has not changed its overall stance against the concealed carry law and its implementation, which as the Chicago Tribune reported recently, requires applicants to be vetted by a controversial state licensing board. 

"Sheriff Dart has been very vocal about his opposition," said Ben Breit, Dart's spokesman, adding that "it's a tough spot," because "the courts have spoken" to legalize concealed carry. 

"Gun violence is gun violence, whether it's in the suburbs or the city of Chicago," said Cara Smith, a Dart spokeswoman, acknowledging that the Sheriff's officers help police many of the county's suburbs.

Sheriff Dart and his fellow hoplophobes opposed concealed carry - supposedly - because they believed it would result in more crime.  The facts demonstrate that the opposite happened.  Crime rates dropped with concealed carry, just as they did throughout the US, yet Sheriff Dart and his fellow hoplophobes obstinately continue to oppose concealed carry.  Why?  Because Sheriff Dart and his fellow hoplophobes fear law abiding armed citizens more than they fear criminals.  Thus the term hoplophobe.

The next time a city or state considers relaxing gun laws, hoplophobes will again predict blood in the streets, because no matter how many times their prediction fails, it's the only trick they have.  Don't fall for it.

By the way, Tombstone still rocks, especially Val Kilmer's portrayal of Doc Holliday.

Yemen Gets Worse, But It's Still a Model For Success?

Source: BBC

I wrote about the imminent collapse of Yemen just six days ago, and it's already gotten much worse.  The situation is so bad that the president got out while the getting's good, Saudi Arabia has been leading air strikes against Shia rebels, and according to the AP, an invasion is next. 

Once the airstrikes have weakened the rebels and their allies in the military forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a ground invasion of Yemen is planned by Egyptian Saudi and other forces. 

The assault will come from Saudi Arabia and by landings on Yemen's coasts along the Red and Arabian seas, according to three Egyptian military and security officials. 

Three to five Egyptian troop carriers are stationed offshore, they said, although the number of troops was not specified, and the timing of the operation was not given. 

The aim is not to occupy Yemen but to weaken the Houthis and their allies until they enter negotiations for power-sharing, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plans with the press.  

But fear not!  Yemen is still a model for counter-terrorism success.


You can read a transcript of the exchange from ABC News here.  Here's a bit of it.

QUESTION: You know, that -- that's astounding. You're saying that you still see Yemen as the model? I mean, the central -- building up the central government, a central government which is now collapsed; a president who has apparently fled the country. You know, Saudi troops massing on one border; the Iranians, you know, supporting the rebels. You consider this -- this as a model for counterterrorism? 

EARNEST: Again, John, what the United States considers to be our strategy when confronting the effort to try to mitigate the threat that is posed by extremists, is to prevent them from establishing a safe haven. And certainly in a chaotic, dangerous situation like in Yemen, what the United States will do and has done is worked to try to support the central government, to build up the capacity of local fighters, and use our own technological and military capabilities to apply pressure on the extremists there.

If White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest's response sounds like nonsense to you, it's probably because you're not high.  If so, a move to Washington State or Colorado may be in order.

The Best Defense Against Two Bad Guys With No Guns...

... is a good guy with a gun.  Even if that good "guy" is an 11-year-old girl. 

An 11-year-old girl used the shotgun she normally keeps to go hunting with her father to scare off a robber in her home, police said. 

The girl was alone at her North Branch Township home on Five Lakes Road about 3:45 p.m. on Jan. 30 when police said she surprised burglars who had broken into the house.
The girl hid in a bathroom closet, where she grabbed her shotgun that police said she stores in a gun safe. 

When one of the burglars opened the closet door, police said the girl -- whose parents were due home from work a short time later -- pointed the shotgun at him and he ran off. 

The accused

"The 12-gauge shotgun is her weapon," said Lapeer County Sheriff Detective Sgt. Jason Parks. "She and her father are into hunting and avid sportsmen. She was familiar with that weapon." 

Parks praised the girl's responsibility, poise and composure. 

"She is fully capable of staying there by herself as we can clearly see based on this situation," he said. "She was able to defend herself from an intruder and be able to resolve an event even most adults would be taken aback by." 

Added Parks, "She is fully capable of making sound, good decisions," he said. "And be a protector of her home."

First, I echo Detective Parks' praise of the young lady.  She behaved prudently and courageously in a possible life-or-death situation.  I'll also praise the girl's father for teaching his daughter to shoot safely.

It's also necessary to point out that the only reason an 11-year-old girl was able to defend herself from two criminals is that she was armed with a gun.  No other tool can give such a small person the power to defend him/herself from multiple assailants who are bigger, heavier and stronger than their intended victim.

Finally, please note that this is yet another scenario that hoplophobes claim doesn't happen.  The criminals ran as soon as they saw the shotgun barrel pointed at them, which is how most defensive gun uses go.   There was no bloodshed precisely because the girl was armed.  And although the girl is a hunter and familiar with her shotgun, there is no reason to believe that she had any tactical training, which disproves the hoplophobes' assertion that one requires Navy SEAL training to effectively use a gun in self defense.  Again.

What would've happened to this young lady if the hoplophobes would've succeeded in disarming her, and/or rendering her ignorant of guns, shooting and hunting?  Fortunately, we'll never need to find out.

That Was Then, This Is Now: Yemen Edition

Via Instapundit:

Six months ago, Yemen was - supposedly - a rare foreign policy success.



Today...

The last US special forces have been withdrawn from Yemen without exciting much notice from the US press.  Max Boot tweets: “All US SOF evacuating Yemen. Huge win for AQAP, huge defeat for US. How many foreign policy disasters can we handle?” Reuters reports, “the United States has evacuated its remaining personnel, including about 100 special operations forces, from Yemen because of the deteriorating security situation there, U.S. officials said on Saturday.”  This means that the last vestiges of what the Obama administration only recently touted as their model counter-insurgency operation are gone.  The collapse has flown largely under the media radar. 

Last week Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post reported that $500 million dollars in American supplied weapons are now in the hands of “Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda”.  The Islamist blitzkrieg is living off huge quantities of captured US materiel.

In other words, the same thing happened in Yemen that happened in Libya and Syria.  Read the rest, if you dare.  It gets worse.

Along these lines, it appears that the world is becoming more violent.

According to an analysis of data from the world’s 20 most lethal wars last year, at least 163,000 people died in conflict. That compares to just under 127,000 in the 20 worst wars the previous year, a rise of 28.7 percent. 

That’s a pretty disturbing spike by anyone’s terms. And if you look at the first few months of 2015, the violence doesn’t seem to be waning. 

What’s even more worrying is that this seems to be part of an ongoing trend that now goes back eight years. According to the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), global violence — as defined by a range of measures from conflict deaths, to displaced persons, to homicide rates — has been rising since 2007.

It's a good thing a Nobel Peace Prize recipieant has been leading the free world since 2009, otherwise, who knows what could've happened?  

American Sniper Movie Review (Sort Of)

I watched the movie American Sniper almost a week ago, so if you've been living under a rock and haven't heard of it, or are somehow on the fence about the most controversial film in years, allow me to make things clear as mud.  You're welcome!

American Sniper brought to mind two movies.  The first is fairly obvious - Lone Survivor.  Unlike Lone Survivor, I haven't read the book on which American Sniper is based, thereby violating my own rule (I'll get to it, dammit!), so I can't say how closely the movie follows the book.

The second movie American Sniper brings to mind is - shockingly - The Deer Hunter, minus the anti-war, anti-American propaganda.  It left me wondering what movie American Sniper's "Liberal" critics saw, because the movie I watched is a realistically brutal portrayal of the price war exacts from the people involved in it.  Obviously, the movie deals with the price Chris Kyle paid fighting in Iraq, but it also portrays the damage done to his family (especially his wife, Taya), his friends, his brother, fellow servicemen and - to a lesser, but dramatic degree - Iraqi non-combatants.

In fact, I'd say it's the most personal and realistic portrayal of one human cost of war - the price paid by the living - that I've ever seen.  This is truly a great movie.  It was also very difficult for me to watch.

Bradley Cooper, by the way, was outstanding in the lead role.  He put on a lot of weight, grew a beard, changed his voice and mimicked Kyle's accent.  He pretty much disappeared into the role.  I never once thought, "oh yeah, that's the dude from The Hangover".

Like most books made into movies, I suspect some of American Sniper is embellished.  For example, Mustafa, the sniper, was a real person.  You can probably still find - in the darker corners of the internet - the videos he and his associates made of Mustafa shooting American servicemen.  I doubt, however, that there was a snipers' duel (like Zaytsev vs. König in Stalingrad, or Carlos "The White Feather" Hathcock vs. "The Cobra" in Vietnam) between Mustafa and Kyle in real life.  Unfortunately, embellishment is always a part of Hollywood movies.

If you want to read two great, real life stories about Chris Kyle, by the way, check out this article.

Anti-war protesters in San Francisco, 2003.

The controversy:

As I stated in my Lone Survivor review, Leftists can only abide portrayals of American servicemen as either victims or monsters, often simultaneously.  American Sniper, presents us with a deeply flawed - but undoubtedly heroic - Chris Kyle making split second, life and death moral choices in the worst possible circumstances.  That is unacceptable to the Left.  American servicemen must only be portrayed positively when killing their superiors, deserting their units or committing treason.

That's why this movie is controversial.

Why American Sniper Is Important:

You've probably heard of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.  You may not know that they've been around a lot longer than the talking heads on TV let on.

The enemy portrayed in the movie is Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.  Later in the war, they began calling themselves The Islamic State in Iraq.  Their stated goal was to create an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, starting with Iraq.  AQI/ISI members that survived the war in Iraq went to Syria to fight in that civil war and began calling themselves The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (or the Levant, depending on whom you believe).

Apparently, they hate the name Daesh, so that's what I'll call them from now on.

Daesh is nothing new.  Any defense, intelligence or diplomatic official who "didn't see [Daesh] coming" is either lying or incompetent.

AQI Torture Manual

The movie portrays their brutality accurately.  The mutilations, the use of power tools in torture, the murder of children, the use of children as cannon fodder - it all happened.

Such a lead brought soldiers earlier this month to the hidden room in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Thursday. Graffiti on the building proclaimed "Long Live the Islamic State" - a reference to the Islamic governance, or caliphate, sought in Iraq by Sunni extremist groups that include al-Qaida. 

Scrawled in white paint above a bed in the torture area was a Quranic phrase in Arabic normally used to welcome a guest. But the context suggested only sadistic mockery: "Come in, you are safe." 

The floor was littered with food wrappers, plastic soda bottles and electric cables that snaked to a metal bed frame, presumably where detainees were shocked, according to the U.S. account of the discovery during a Dec. 8-11 mission. 

The rooms "had chains, a bed - an iron bed that was still connected to a battery - knives and swords that were still covered in blood," said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq. 

Nearby were nine mass graves containing the remains of 26 people, he said.

Elsewhere in Diyala...

Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.

In Baghdad...

A raid on a major al-Qaida hideout north of Baghdad has uncovered evidence of a network of child suicide bombers who have been coerced into launching terror attacks across Iraq. 

... 

The use of children had been seen as a way to bypass security checks that have gradually become more stringent nationwide.

And it's all happening again.  Because it's the same people doing it all over again.

In reference to Iraq, at least, the U.N. report found that the terrorist group is resorting more and more to brutal acts such as enslaving, raping, beheading, crucifying and burying people alive. Some of those affected are children. 

"We have had reports of children, especially children that are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding what has happened or what they have to expect," said Renate Winter, an expert with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child. 

Some as young as age 8 are getting training to become soldiers, she said.  

Son of Australian Muslim, Khaled Sharrouf, holds the decapitated head of a soldier in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

"Children of minorities have been captured in places where the so-called ISIL has its strength, have been sold in market with tags, price tags on them, have been sold as slaves," Winter said. 

People of the Yazidi faith -- which draws from Christianity, Judaism and the ancient monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism, and which some Muslims consider devil worship -- have long faced persecution, though by comparison ISIS' cruelty to them has been extraordinary. Kurdistan Regional Government adviser Nazand Begikhani, for instance, has said Yazidi "women have been treated like cattle, ... subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery." 

Yazidi children haven't fared much better at the hands of ISIS. An earlier U.N. report described how militants rounded up all Yazidi males "older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pickup trucks, and shot them."

In light of current events, American Sniper serves as a stark reminder of what happens when we knock an enemy down, then fail to follow through.

I highly recommend American Sniper, although I don't know if I'll ever watch it again.  Be warned, it's tough to watch, especially if you fought in Iraq or Afghanistan.  If you have loved ones there now, you may want to wait until they're home safe.  Or, like my wife, refuse to watch it... ever!

The Best Defense Against a Bad Guy With a Gun...

Is a good guy with a gun.  Even in Canada. 

By all accounts, the white-haired grandfather, a decorated veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, kept cool amid the chaos as dozens of bullets flew in the corridors, went to his office, retrieved his weapon and with a firm hand and a steely eye shot a killer before he could kill again. Vickers, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall, then walked away, gun-in hand, having “taken care of business,” as one news outlet put it. 

And then he called his mother to say he was safe.

The National has a pretty good breakdown of the shootout.



This is the man himself.

Doesn't quite look like the stereotypical Hollywood hero, does he?  That's okay.  Most heroes don't.  Anyway, this is my favorite online tribute to Mr Vickers.

@evansolomoncbc The name is Vickers, Kevin Vickers. What an awesome hero #cdnpoli #ottawa #OttawaShooting pic.twitter.com/l133md4u2K
— Brent Kelly (@bklly) October 23, 2014

Hell yeah!

Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant Supports "Gun Control"

Totalitarian regimes of all stripes have many things in common.  The one feature they share most ardently is a pathological obsession with restricting their subjects' behavior.  In that spirit, the terrorist organization currently taking over Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, AKA the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham; ISIS), released a set of rules they imposed on the people of Mosul (Nineveh) in northern Iraq. 

Firstly it tells "anyone who is asking," who its members are and what it is about: "We are soldiers of Islam and we've taken on our responsibility to bring back glory of the Islamic Caliphate."

Obviously, they understand the utility of a mission statement.

It confirms that it seized up to half a billion dollars from the Mosul branch of the Bank of Iraq but states it can be trusted with the funds.

"Comrades, turn in your arms!"

Stealing coupled with assurances of moral purity - another common feature of totalitarian regimes.  Here's the best part.

No public gathering other than those organised by ISIS will be allowed at any stage. No guns will be allowed outside of its ranks. 

From Lenin, to Hitler, to Stalin, to Mao, to Castro - and now ISIL/ISIS - totalitarians agree.  Oppressing people is much easier after you've disarmed them.

Ironically, the Iraqi government, impotent against ISIL/ISIS' advance, asked Iraqi civilians to fight the terrorists in its stead.

Iraq’s embattled government urged the terrified residents of Mosul to set up armed vigilante groups and fight Islamic militants who have taken over  the city, the country’s second-largest and in Nineveh province. 

In a meeting in Baghdad presided by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, members of the Nineveh Crisis Team said the city vigilantes should help the Iraqi police and security forces in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which stormed into Mosul on Sunday, after about 24 hours of clashes with the police and army.

It's ironic because the Iraqi government already did a great deal of ISIL/ISIS' job for them.

Dhia al-Wakil, spokesman for the office of the armed forces commander-in-chief, suggested that the firearm registration scheme made sense for "organisational and statistical" reasons. 

“It is designed to limit the numbers of arms owned by civilians, and hence it’s in the interests of people's safety and security," Wakil said. 

Officials at the interior ministry, whose police will issue the gun licenses, said the process would be properly conducted. 

"The people who get gun licenses will undergo checks," deputy interior minister Ahmed al-Khafaji said. "The decision permits possession of a firearm inside houses, not outside them, and just one per home – no more.” 

By limiting gun ownership to one gun per household, the Iraqi government made it impossible for law abiding Iraqis to defend their communities against ISIL/ISIS.  And by forcing law-abiding Iraqis to register their guns, they made it easier for ISIL/ISIS to finish disarming decent Iraqis.  All the terrorists have to do is go to each local police station (most of which are abandoned anyway), take the list of registered weapons owners, then go house-to-house confiscating their guns.  With only one gun per house, there's no way a family could defend themselves against a group of armed, battle-hardened men.  An entire neighborhood, with only one gun per house, would be unlikely to defend themselves.

How do mostly-disarmed people defend themselves against this?

Las Vegas Cop Killers Were Occupy Protesters

Main stream (i.e., Leftist) media outlets did their best to link Las Vegas cop killers, Jerad and Amanda Miller, to the Tea Party...

The Wingnut Bonnie and Clyde duo, Jerad and Amanda Miller, stormed into CiCi’s Pizza and shot two metro cops, Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, at close range while shouting “This is a revolution!” They flung the Tea Party’s favorite coiled snake Gadsden flag and a swastika on the still-warm corpses and then moved to a nearby Walmart to murder a shopper before turning the guns on themselves.

...but here's a little detail they ignored.  Jerad and Amanda Miller were part of the "Occupy" movement.

While living in Lafayette [Indiana], Jerad and his wife Amanda took part in last November’s “Million Mask March” – a gathering of protesters from the Occupy movement, anarchists, and hacktivists. 

Of course, the Occupiers have nothing to do with the Millers.

Nick Wertz, one of the organizers of the Lafayette march, said it attracted many people upset over a lot of issues. 

“Everyone there just seem kind of like normal people. At least they were going to stick up with what they thought was right,” he said.
Wertz said he didn’t really know the Millers, but weeks after the march, Amanda Miller contacted him. 

“She was moving to Vegas for whatever reason and they had a dog they couldn’t take with – and I was like, ‘If I can help,’” Wertz said.
But that was the end of it, he said.

Nothing at all, right?

The Millers left a swastika and a “Don’t tread on me” flag on the body of one of the two officers they killed, and promoted an ideology shared by “militia and white supremacists,” including the belief that law enforcement was the “oppressor,” authorities said Monday.

Gosh, where have I heard that before?  Oh, yeah.  That's right.

In fact, Occupiers hate cops so much that they refused to report crimes committed in their camps cesspools to police...

...when people in Zuccotti Park become aware of crimes, instead of calling police, they form a circle around the perpetrator, chastise him or her and chase him or her out into the rest of the city to do who knows what to who knows whom

...and threatened to kill people who reported crimes to police.

"You got our friend arrested. We're gonna kill you! Watch your back!" the trio warned the young woman on Monday - two days after her complaint led to the arrest of Garfield Leslie, police said Tuesday.

And there were a lot of crimes committed by Occupiers during their nationwide reign of terror infantile, entitled temper tantrum.  You can browse a long list of their crimes at this link.  They include everything from vandalism and petty theft, to assault, rape and murder.  There's even a case of conspiracy to commit terrorism in Cleveland.

Three self-described anarchists were sentenced to prison Tuesday for trying to blow up a highway bridge between Cleveland and Akron using dummy explosives provided by an undercover FBI agent. 

Douglas Wright

Douglas Wright, 26, of Indianapolis, whom federal authorities described as the ringleader, received an 11½-year term. He apologized to his family and the community, saying he was an addict and needed help, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. 

Brandon Baxter, 20, of Lakewood, Ohio, was sentenced to nearly 10 years, and Connor Stevens, 20, of Berea, Ohio, got eight years.
... 

The five were arrested April 30 as they tried to detonate dud bombs at the base of the Ohio 82 bridge over Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The FBI said Wright recruited the group from the Occupy Cleveland movement.

Yep.  Occupiers hate cops, love crime and love, love, love cop killers.

Brandon Baxter

Dorner, who had been on the run as a suspect in a recent killing spree, was reportedly killed Tuesday during a shootout that left one law enforcement officer dead and another wounded. Dorner’s body was apparently burned in a fire that swept through a cabin he had held up in for the gunfight. 

The statement of support and solidarity was posted on the Occupy Los Angeles’ official Facebook page Wednesday. The statement came in the form of a posted picture captioned with the phrases “Rest In Power Chris Dorner” and “Assassinated By The Police for Trying To Expose LAPD Corruption.”

Connor Stevens

There are no riots at Tea Party rallies.  There are no assaults on police officers at Tea Party rallies.  There are no chants of "f**k the police" at Tea Party rallies.
 Nobody praises cop killers at Tea Party rallies or on Tea Party websites.

At violent, disease ridden, parasite (human and otherwise) infested, urine and feces splattered "Occupy" rallies, on the other hand...



Face it, Lefties.  Jerad and Amanda Miller have a hell of a lot more in common with your darlings, the Occupiers, than with the Tea Party.

Miss America Promotes Self Defense, "Feminists" Explode

Nia Sanchez (Nevada), the new Miss USA, just gave "Feminists" a whole new reason to hate pageants. 

Miss Nevada Nia Sanchez, a fourth-degree black belt in the Korean martial art of

Source: NYP

taekwondo, was crowned Miss USA 2014 on Sunday night.

...

Judge Rumer Willis, the 25-year-old daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, said 19 percent of U.S. undergraduate women are victims of sexual assault and asked Sanchez why she thinks this is being swept under the rug and what should be done about it.

Sanchez said bringing awareness to the issue was important, as well as women taking it upon themselves to learn how to defend themselves.

Naturally, "Feminists" - who claim that women are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing - took to Twitter to vent their rage at the idea that women are capable of learning to defend themselves.

Let's apply to other crimes - and to men - the "logic" that "Feminists'" applied to sexual assault and to women.

I'm sorry, but women shouldn't need to take self defense classes to protect themselves from rape #MissUSA—
Peter Simon (@PeterSimon12) June 09, 2014

I'm sorry, but men shouldn't need to take self defense classes to protect themselves from aggravated assault.

Miss Nevada was asked about rape at colleges and answered that women need to learn to defend themselves... OR MEN COULD JUST NOT RAPE.
Anna Garcia (@a_mariagaria) 8 Jun 2014

Miss Nevada was asked about murder in Chicago and answered that men need to learn to defend themselves... OR MURDERERS COULD JUST NOT MURDER.

Miss Nevada described how individuals need to protect themselves from rape, instead of teaching others not to rape. Stop the victim blaming.—
Haley Ploucha (@hallepalouka) June 09, 2014

Miss Nevada described how men need to protect themselves from armed robbery, instead of teaching others not to rob at gunpoint.  Stop the victim blaming.

Women shouldn't need to learn to protect themselves against rape #missnevada  educate and respect yourself as a woman #rapeculture
Anna Beth West (@annabethwest) 8 Jun 2014

Men shouldn't need to learn to protect themselves against home invasions educate and respect yourself as a man (home invasion culture).

Yes, I refuse to use hash tags in my writing.

Sexual assault is a crime.  All crimes are violations of an individual's rights to life, liberty and/or property.  Evil people who violate others' rights have always existed and always will.  Therefore, the need for individuals to defend themselves from evil people has always existed and always will.

It's why we lock our doors.  It's why we buy security systems for our houses and cars.  It's why we avoid high crime areas.  Advising people to take practical precautions to avoid being a victim is not victim-blaming.  That remains true even if the crime is sexual in nature.

It's also why our Bill of Rights includes the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment protects the individual's right to own the most effective self defense tools available - firearms - so that the individual may defend him/herself from those who would violate his/her rights - whether the violators are ordinary criminals or criminal governments.

In fact, the worst thing I can say about Nia Sanchez's response is that she failed to mention using a gun in self defense.  Nobody's perfect.

But the vast majority of "Feminists" abhor the Second Amendment.

I guess the idea of a woman having the power to effectively defend herself against her attacker(s) is just too empowering for the average "Feminist" to consider.

FBI Reports: Crime Drops As Gun Sales Soar

The FBI recently published their annual crime report for 2013, and it shows a drop in violent crime.

Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the nation reported a decrease of 5.4 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention for the first 6 months of 2013 when compared with figures reported for the same time in 2012. 

In January, the FBI reported record breaking gun sales for 2013.

The FBI has released new statistics on NICS background checks showing 2013 gun sales hit a new record. The total number of background checks conducted for gun sales last year add up to 21,093,273, beating the previous 2012 record of 19,592,303 by 1,500,970. 

"Liberals" claim that more guns = more crime, and therefore we need to ban guns.  If we do, their "thinking" goes, our country will become a gun-free, crime-free utopia.  You know.  Like Russia.  If "Liberal" "logic" was accurate, crime would have increased, in 2013.  Was that an aberration?  Not even close.

Gun ownership has increased steadily in the US for years.

Source: The Truth About Guns

Violent crime steadily decreased in the US since it's peak in the early '90s.  Homicides in which the killer used a gun dropped by 49%.

At the same time, concealed carry laws improved to the point that, today, all 50 states have some form of concealed carry on the books.

By 2014, the percentage of people living in the Red states, with no possibility of even applying for a permit, has declined to zero. Illinois’ 2013 reforms ended the problem of states not even having a process theoretically available. (The problem persists in DC, but this chart is only for states.) 

As of January 2014, about 2/3 of the population lived in a Green state, with a Shall Issue licensing statute. 

Purple states (concealed carry is allowed without need for a permit) have increased from Vermont only in 1986 to several states comprising about 4% of the population. Currently, the Purple states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Vermont, and Wyoming (residents only). 

The Yellow states (arbitrary permitting) were the national norm in 1986, but they are now outliers. Unless the 9th Circuits’ decision in Peruta is overturned, California and Hawaii will have to become Shall Issue states. 

This will leave Yellow states at less than 1/7 of the U.S. population.

I do not claim that more guns = less crime.  "Liberals" do claim, however, that more guns = more crime.  To logically make that claim, "Liberals" need to explain why crime in the US continues to decrease as gun ownership continues to increase.

I've never met one that can.