Matt Bracken has written a very important essay, but before I get to that, I wanted to preface his essay with a few remarks.

Matt deals with a number of very important things, spending much of his effort in the where, what and wherefore of the vice set up for peaceable men and women across the globe.  We are under increasing pressure from many sides, and Matt explores that in his essay with his focus on (1) Islam, (2) International Socialism, and (3) Nationalism.  His essay is a treatise in history, and one which is largely unparalleled in my opinion.

But Matt’s audience isn’t necessarily theologically committed, nor is it his purpose to address the ideological underpinnings of these three nefarious movements and their common moral malfunction.  In other words, the “why” was not explored in this essay, and that I think was purposeful.  Furthermore, Matt’s exploration into the “why” of things might differ from my own.

My own views are clear to regular readers.  I am a committed Christian, specifically a Calvinist.  I do not apologize one iota for my system of doctrine.  Islam is a devilish political religion concocted by a syphilitic pedophile for the purpose of keeping a band of warlords and murderers together.  Statism in all of its forms is evil, pernicious, and a foul odor in the nostrils of God.  There is only one God, and one true religion, and our way to reconciliation with Him is through His son, Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man.  He (Jesus) demands fealty, He sits in the heavens and mocks the rulers of this age, and He will judge them in both time and eternity.

Jews didn’t cause our problem.  Bankers – for all of their evil with fractional reserve banking – are a sign of the times and have the same cause as all of the other evils I am discussing.  Statists are the same as Islamists, who are the same as the banking cabal, who is the same as the current administration and most previous ones, and (here is the hard part for readers) who is the same as the voting electorate who put them in place.  They are all servants of the evil one.

Bankers wouldn’t have power if politicians didn’t grant it to them and men avoided debt, and the politicians wouldn’t be in power if the voters hadn’t voted themselves more largesse.  The root cause of all of this is a rejection of the Son of man, the God-man Christ Jesus, and his demands for our lives, and His holy law for the governance of men.  But contrary to the demands of the false God Allah, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.  He is a God of love and light, not of darkness and death as is the false god of Allah, or the false god of mammon.

Finally, the men who forged this nation (Samuel Rutherford, John Adams, etc.) split with the English over much less than what we face.  We are a pitiful men, worthy of everything we are suffering now.  God grant us the strength to stand when it matters, and the wisdom to know how and when.

As for Matt’s essay, he is published at WRSA and Gates of Vienna.  Here is a teaser in case you haven’t already read his essay.

Right now, approximately a million new Muslim migrants are engaged in a struggle to find a warm place to sleep in a continent with nothing approaching the capacity to adequately house them. At least 75% of the migrant invaders are Muslim men of fighting age. Native-born ethnic Germans, Swedes and others are being thrown onto the street to provide emergency housing for Muslim “refugees.” Tens of thousands of migrants are currently living in tents, and in temporary shelters like school gymnasiums and underused warehouses.

There will be no means of finding or creating permanent quarters for them before the Central European blizzards come. When the snow is deep in Germany and across Europe, these men are going to enter local houses, demanding to be taken in as boarders—or else. Where it is useful, small migrant children will be held up in front as human shields for their emotional blackmail value; elsewise, they will be discarded. One way or the other, Muslim migrants will be attempting to move inside of German homes and apartments seeking heat and food, and the young Muslim men will be seeking undefended infidel or kafir women to slake their lust (which is their right, under Islamic Sharia law).

In disarmed Europe, any group of a dozen or more cold, hungry and angry Muslim men armed with clubs and knives will be able to enter any German house or business that they like. Worse, there are now reports of vast quantities of firearms being smuggled into Europe by the muhajirs, with cowed European authorities afraid to search the migrants or their baggage, lest they provoke riots. And weapons are not only smuggled in “refugee” baggage: eight hundred assault-style shotguns were just seized in a single truck in northern Italy, bound from Turkey to Belgium. How many truckloads of weapons and explosives have not been stopped?

In Germany, even before the winter snows, the migrants are flash mobbing and looting shops and stores. Seeking to forestall a social eruption, police do not respond until the mobs have safely departed. For now, the German government is paying these store owners for their lost merchandise, but this cannot continue forever. Businesses are closing and Germans are retreating in fear, as the muhajirs learn that they can invade private property and rob Germans without repercussions, convincing them even further of the docile passivity of their hosts, and the inevitability of their ultimate hijra invasion success.

As attacks mount, the German police will nearly always fall out on the side of the traitor-elite politicians who pay their salaries, and they will not come to the rescue of besieged ethnic Germans. At least, not under official orders, or in uniform. This calculated disregard by the international socialist elites for the safety and welfare of ordinary German citizens will in time lead to vigilantism and death squad actions by “off-duty” German military and police personnel. They will be acting against their “hands off the Muslims” orders, which are ultimately emanating from Brussels. And in time, enough firearms will find their way from the military, police and black markets into the hands of ordinary European nationalists for them to mount an armed resistance.

Things are going to get dicey.  Never give up your guns.  You will need them.

The never-ending caliber debate can be tiresome, but then again occasionally there are good and useful additions to the body of knowledge.  Because of my son being deployed, I have always known and understood (not first hand, but second hand) the utility and superior performance of the 5.56mm in the field (and when I say “field,” I mean Fallujah, not your local shooting range where your know-nothing, tacticool weekend warrior waxes stupid in front of everyone).

I have also heard from his teammates about being shot by the 7.62×39.  Specifically, Corpsman Prince gave me details of his experience.

He was very kind and friendly, well trained, in excellent physical condition, and had absolute commitment to his fellow Marines.  He showed me his wound from Iraq within several days of returning.  A round from an AK-47 had entered through the front part of his lower thigh, ricocheted up his thigh, and exited out of the very upper part of the back of his thigh.  Entry and exit wounds (now scars) were at least a foot apart.

Corpsman Prince stayed in Iraq and did his own rehabilitation during the deployment.  The hardest thing about the experience, he told me, was getting enough pairs of clothing after each successive pair became blood stained.  The more interesting thing about what happened that day with Corpsman Prince was what happened to his fellow Marines.  He wasn’t the only one who was wounded in that engagement.  Several other Marines were also wounded, and Prince had to treat them before he could treat himself.  He did so while bleeding out.

The exit wound was small, virtually as small as the entry wound (if the scar is any indication of the wound size when it happened).  The scars I saw were identical in size.

But the specific addition I wanted to mention has more authority than anything I can muster.  It comes via Defense Review, from Tacmed Australia.  I will quote at length, and then offer up a disagreement and an agreement.

Admittedly I’d rather not be shot with either, but if I had to choose, I’d take a round from the AK47 over the M4 any day of the week. To understand why, it’s important to have a very basic look at the physics behind terminal ballistics, in this case being the science of what happens when a penetrating missile enters a human body. The first place to start is the Kinetic Energy Equation:

KE = ½ M (V1-V2)²

Breaking this equation down into its components, we have Kinetic Energy (KE) influenced by the Mass (M) of the penetrating missile, as well as the Velocity (V) of the missile. This make sense, and it is logical that a heavier, faster missile is going to do more damage than a lighter, slower missile. What is important to understand is the relative influence that Mass and Velocity have on Kinetic Energy, as this is key to understanding why I’d rather be shot by an AK than an M4. You’ll notice that the Mass component of the KE equation is halved, whereas the Velocity component is squared. For this reason, it is the Velocity of the projectile that has far more bearing on the energy that it dissipates into the target than the mass. The V1-V2 component of the equation takes into consideration that the projectile might actually pass straight through the target, rather than coming to rest in the target. In this instance, the change in the Velocity of the projectile as it passes through the target (V1 being its velocity as it enters, and V2 being velocity on exit) is the factor that is considered when calculating how much energy the missile delivered into the target. Naturally if the projectile comes to rest in the target (ie: no exit wound) then V2 equals zero and the projectile’s velocity as it entered (V1) is used to calculate the KE.

That’s enough physics for now, but you get the concept that the optimum projectile to shoot someone with is one that has a decent mass, is very, very fast, and is guaranteed to come to rest in your target, as to dissipate as much energy as possible into them, and hence do maximal damage.

The next concept to grasp is that of permanent cavitation versus temporary cavitation. Permanent cavitation is the hole that gets left in a target from a projectile punching through it. You can think of it simply like a sharp stick being pushed through a target and leaving a hole the diameter of the stick. The permanent cavity left by a bullet is proportionate to the surface area of the bullet as it passes through the tissue. For instance, if a AK47 round of 7.62mm diameter at its widest point passes cleanly through a target, it will leave a round 7.62mm hole (permanent cavity). If this hole goes through a vital structure in the body then the wound can be fatal, however if the bullet passes through soft tissues only then the permanent cavity can be relatively benign. This is a slight oversimplification of the concept, as bullets will rarely remain dead straight as they pass through human bodies, as they have a tendency to destabalise, and for the heavier back end of the bullet to want to overtake the front. This concept, known as yaw, increases the frontal surface area of the bullet as it passes through tissue, and hence creates a larger permanent cavity.

Here is my disagreement so far.  I’m not certain that the author understands the distinction between cavitation and creating a cavity (or perhaps it is that he isn’t clearly delineating the difference).  Cavitation has to do with the formation of voids due to change of state of a liquid to a gas, whereas some of what he is discussing has to do with the yawing and fragmentation of the 5.56mm round in tissue.  There are both of these effects at work.

We’ve discussed the rocking back and forth in flight that occurs with the 5.56mm round, based on the very well researched paper Small Caliber Lethality: 5.56 mm Performance In Close Quarters Battle.  This rocking back and forth during flight, which occurs even with boat tail 5.56mm, causes rapid yawing when it enters tissue.  Fragmentation ensues, ensuring multiple fragments take different trajectories through tissue.  This may be what the author is referring to when he mentions permanent cavity.  Or then again, he may be referring to the high velocity of the 5.56mm round, and as I said above, both effects are at work.

But by mentioning Newtonian physics, he is on to something.  It’s not only the energy of the projectile that’s important, but the velocity term is a function of the exit velocity, which means that it’s also important how much energy gets deposited in the object.  If the bullet doesn’t stop, fragment, or otherwise leave its energy in the object, it will not do as much damage as one which does.  It’s the same way with, for example, radiation.  A high energy gamma (e.g., from N-16) can pass through a piece of tissue without ever interacting with orbital electrons and ionizing atoms.  Thus, high energy photons can pass through a body without causing dose, depending upon depth, energy, etc.

In order to demonstrate the point, he provides two videos, one of 5.56mm in ballistic gelatin, and one of 7.62 in ballistic gelatin.  But the most impressive thing the author does is convey his own experience treating wounds from 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm rounds, and then show you what an X-ray looks like of an upper thigh and femur that has been hit with a 5.56 mm round from a couple of hundred meters.

As I said, this was from a couple of hundred meters.  Ponder on that a bit.  While this article doesn’t specifically address the .308/7.62×51, some of the principles are applicable.

Breitbart.com:

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud defend a tweet he had posted in response to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump immediately following the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month. Araud described Trump as a “vulture” for a tweet Trump had made earlier in the year following the January attack on Charlie Hebdo.

Araud acknowledged he deleted the tweet, explaining it was immediately as his home country was reeling from the attacks, but doubled down on the sentiment he originally conveyed, which was using a gun to defend themselves in such a situation is something “only in the movies.”

“Well, actually I received this message just as the moment we were under the shock of the attack,” Araud said. “So I am a fighter and I am a diplomat, so I decided to respond the way you did, but actually I erased the tweet I think 10 minutes later, saying it’s of no use.”

“But of course, I am supporting of the substance of it,” he continued. “It doesn’t makes sense. It was a theater, a theater hall. Imagine a theater hall and suddenly people enter with machine guns and are really killing people … It is only in the movies someone is using his gun to defend himself.”

Meanwhile, in Aiken County, a gun was used in self defense.

Authorities say a man trying to rob a couple who thought they were going to buy a car off Craigslist has been shot and killed.

Aiken County deputies said in a news release that officers are looking for the second robber after he ran away following the shooting Wednesday afternoon.

Investigators say the would-be robbers pulled out a gun and demanded money when they met the couple at an Aiken gas station where they planned to buy a car listed on the Internet site.

Deputies say while the gun was pointed at the man, his girlfriend pulled her own weapon and shot at the robbers.

Coroner Tim Carlton says 23-year-old Frank Frazier Jr. died at the scene of the shooting.

The couple was not hurt.

It’s always nice to have empirical data to substantiate your assertions when your assertions pertain to empirical data.

David Codrea:

True to form, and consistent with Rahm Emanuel’s advocacy to never let a serious crisis go to waste, citizen  disarmament swindlers and other totalitarian lobby shills have taken to social and “regular” media to lay blame for Friday’s Colorado Planned Parenthood murders on groups that stand in the way of their goals. Those include gun owners, right to life activists, Republicans, Christians, white males, and others “progressives” view as impediments and threats to their objective of total control.

[ … ]

… he may be a peeping tom/cruel to animals … [and apparently doesn’t understand gender differences].

See also Mike Vanderboegh’s comments.  Look folks, this is a broken record.  The next criminal who wields a gun is the justification du jure for more control over people who didn’t do the act, wouldn’t do the act, who could be reliably depended upon to stop people who do the act.  It matters not to the controllers, and it needs to matter not to us.  Molon labe.

I hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving.  I know I did.  I appreciate it as being not just some amorphous holiday to be thankful to who knows what or who knows who for whatever, but to a sovereign God to has favored us with His kind providence.

David Codrea’s thanksgiving essay is here.

Fast-forward to present-day Boston, a place of sacred tradition, the literal forge for our heritage of individual liberty. Except Boston is now a place where traditions have been betrayed. Its current overlords have succeeded in disarming the whole people in a way that General Gage could never have conceived possible.

So successful have these rulers been that the city that gave us Sam Adams and Paul Revere is now a city under siege, and this is fittingly ironic if you think about it, by wild turkeys. So helpless and hapless are Boston’s modern-day patriots, they can do little except retreat from the aggressive gobblers, escape, hole up and plead for rescue from the very authorities that enforce public impotence.

Read it all.  Well, my reaction is that I would be surprised if the king’s men don’t hunt them down, since it is, after all, the king’s royal forest and men can only hunt by permission of the king.

Mike Vanderboegh links Strategy Page on the proliferation of personal defense weapons.  I haven’t developed a strong opinion on the value of these guns (or for that matter, pistol-caliber carbines).  I would be interested in reader reaction and opinion.

Gateway Pundit:

Seventeen people, allegedly belonging to specialised committees of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, were arrested Friday on charges of planting two explosive devices and attempting to block rain drainage in Alexandria.

The Interior Ministry said, in an official statement, one bomb exploded near the Al-Atareen police station, but the other one was defused before exploding in the same area.

The statement added that defendants dumped a cement mixture into the drainage canals to block the water and cause floods, consequently causing the repeated flooding in the city. The cabinet allocated EGP 6bn to maintain drainage infrastructure in Alexandria and Beheira in a bid to contain the damages resulting from the floods.

The drying of concrete is an exothermic reaction, one that occurs chemically rather than thermodynamically.  In other words, the presence of water doesn’t stop the drying of concrete.  This is a clever ploy to cause damage and vandalize infrastructure.  See how easy it is to cause terrorism?  The existence of a relatively peaceful America is a consequence of it having been primarily a Christian nation, with men who observed Biblical law towards other men.

As John Adams observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  I don’t consider Muslims in that category “moral and religious,” since it is a political religion intended for domination over other men, crafted by a pedophile for keeping his band of warlords and fighters together.

Redflagnews.com:

Sweden is in shock: A 34 year old immigrant from Somalia was arrested for savagely attacking a woman next to the parking garage of a Sheraton hotel in Sweden. The woman died while being raped. Police say the perpetrator continued to rape the woman’s corpse well after she had died. The Somalian was apprehended by police while still in the act of raping the murdered woman. Sweden and Norway are in the middle of a massive epidemic of violent rapes. Crime statistics show that rapes in both countries are overwhelmingly perpetrated by Muslim immigrants.

As surely as the sun rises, a religion of peace.  So we are told.

Chicago cops stand behind one of their own.

The main Chicago police union is standing behind the white officer who was charged this week with first-degree murder for gunning down a black teenager. It is facing a backlash from leaders of the city’s black community as a result.

On its website, the Chicago lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), has posted a bail fund appeal for the officer, Jason Van Dyke, who is accused of shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times just six seconds after emerging from his patrol car on a street in Chicago on Oct. 20, 2014.

Why doesn’t this surprise me?

Obama issues threats to states blocking immigration.  The states won’t do anything about it, and they’ll all cave.  There are other options as I’ve pointed out, but their too cowardly to avail themselves of those options.

The Federalist:

Read the rest by Sean Davis.  The whole thing is a very bad idea for increased federal government surveillance and control, except it’s on steroids.  In this case, the federal leviathan would use this bill, if passed, as a tool to circumvent due process rights.

As I have said before:

I’m a Christian who believes abortion is murder, who supports secession, who has a negative view of the U.N., who stockpiles ammunition (as his budget allows), who believes in the right to bear arms, who is deeply concerned about immigration (and not just illegal immigration), who believes in the militia, who opposes the “new world order,” who believes that Islam is a fairy tale concocted by an evil pedophile for the purpose of keeping his roving band of murderers and thugs together, who believes that the American way of life is under attack and has been for a very long time …

I am either on such a list or should be, according to the federal leviathan who wants to control the souls of all of its subjects.  As for really bad people who should purchase guns, Form 4473 should stop that, in specific question 11k.  And if terrorists aren’t in the country illegally, then what’s the real problem here?  Me and the rest of America, or our open border policies?

Oh, and gosh, looky here at just who in the GOP field of candidates likes the idea of a database of “terrorists who aren’t allowed to buy guns?”  You guessed it.  It’s Trump.  Why do you need a database if you are going to seal the borders and make everyone go home like Trump claims?  ‘Nuff said.

Mike Vanderboegh poses the following question: How many of you are willing to kill a Muslim infant because his or her parents are Muslim?  He adds, “I am not arguing about the validity of their faith. I am a Christian, but I also understand that absent the burden of protecting the innocent — ALL innocents — from attack by collectivists of any ilk, including Muslim religious collectivists, it is not up to me to execute God’s judgment upon someone simply because of their faith, however mistaken it is.”

Well, this poses a complex set of issues that isn’t fertile ground for talking points or rapid fire exchange.  This is a thinking man’s territory.  He later links (but does not comment on) Ralph Peters and his view that “The generals who won World War II would start by leveling Raqqa, the ISIS caliphate’s capital. Civilians would die, but those remaining in Raqqa have embraced ISIS, as Germans did Hitler. The jihadis must be crushed. Start with their “Berlin.” Kill ten thousand, save a million.”

This is enough to keep us busy for a while.  Reader and commenter BluesStringer1955 also links Mike’s piece, and with absolutely no basis whatsoever charged me with wanting to kill all Muslims around me (this wasn’t even the point of the article), and continues that Mike and David make a mistake to link to anything I write.  Mike and David will have to decide if it’s a mistake for them to link to anything I write, and I never said anything about killing all Muslims.  I think BluesStringer1995 was having a bad day.

But I did assert that making the decision to kill ISIS fighters should be an easy ethical decision for us.  I would sleep well if I flew an A-10 and got the chance to blow a convoy of ISIS fighters into oblivion (but this would only happen in my dreams – flying the A-10, that is).  So let’s fill in the blanks a bit.  For BlueStringer1955, I don’t take you by the hand and lead you to simplistic conclusions.  My goal is to force you to ponder, to make you think.  Even if you end the process disagreeing with me, that’s okay if you have spent time pondering the hard issues we will all face.

There isn’t another writer who has covered more about rules of engagement than have I, from news reports, to AR 15-6 investigations, to private communications from deployed NCOs and others on the situations they are facing.  I won’t rehearse the quotes I am using or the examples I cite.  There isn’t enough time to find the many references I supply in my rules of engagement category, and it would break the flow of what I want to say.  So bear with me, and if you want proof, please visit my prior posts.

I’m willing to listen to just about any argument you wish to make, and I’ll respect your opinion if it’s well researched and well reasoned, and that last point bears repeating.  Well reasoned.  If you cannot bear to face the logical conclusions of your own views, I might show pity, but I won’t be persuaded in the least by emotion, accusations, shouting or hurt feelings.

There are things to which you should stipulate as you ponder these hard issues in order to have the respect of your colleagues and family.  They will listen with a critical ear and they know when you are being irrational.  If you claim that the U.S. shouldn’t have dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end WWII, then you must stipulate either that (a) it was acceptable to lose half a million Americans in a land invasion of Japan, or that (b) the U.S. should have just stopped, potentially leaving WWII to continue ad infinitum.  If you claim that Marcus Luttrell and his team should have done what they did and leave those goat herders alone, then you must stipulate that it’s acceptable to you for Americans to perish by leaving enemy spotters alive since they weren’t armed at the time.

If you assert that no one can be ethically killed who isn’t armed, they you must stipulate, along with one American general in Afghanistan who wanted to charge two Army snipers with murder for killing an unarmed known Taliban leader with a long distance shot, that many if not most American sniper kills were unethical.  Furthermore, most sniper shots can never be taken under such a rule, or at least, you must stipulate to that.

If you claim that under no circumstances can non-combatant casualties be tolerated, then you must stipulate that when Hezbollah ensconced their artillery among the citizen homes in Lebanon, the Israeli military cannot target those same installation in return.

There are many more examples in my rules of engagement category, but you can see that the issues begin to be complicated.  Only moral and thinking men need apply for the job.  As for me, while I won’t bore you with the details of my own responses to all of the above, I will try as best as I can to answer Mike’s question.

First of all, I am a Calvinist, and there is no one who is innocent.  We are all guilty by virtue of being born of the seed of Adam and equally deserving of damnation, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, or gender.  Those of us who believe were saved because of God’s sovereign choice, by His grace, and through faith alone.  You may disagree, and I’m okay with that.  But I won’t apologize for my beliefs.  They are incorrigible and there will never be a time when I don’t believe those things.

I prefer to speak of non-combatants rather than “the innocent.”  In the entire history of warfare, notwithstanding whether non-combatants were targeted, no war has ever been fought without non-combatant casualties.  The question is whether they should be targeted.  I understand the decision made by the generals in WWII, who knew that Germany wouldn’t be defeated as long as its war machine was supplied by its industry.  I didn’t say I would have made the same decision, and I didn’t say I wouldn’t have.  I said I understand it.  But that’s quite a bit different than killing a Muslim infant simply because his parents are Muslim.

As the choice stands, my answer is no, not just for being children of Muslims, and not at all if I don’t have to.  Let’s use Ralph Peters’ approach to Raqqa to illustrate.  I will no more assert that we should turn Raqqa into a sea of glass that I will assert that we shouldn’t be allowed to shoot Iraqi insurgents who are throwing cinder blocks off of bridges into American convoys.  The goal is to “stay between the ditches” in our decisions.

Turning Raqqa into a sea of glass is a profoundly bad idea for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with there being Muslim infants there.  First of all, al Baghdadi might be away and avoid death, thereby adding to his mystique.  This would be a terrible outcome.  Furthermore, bombing Raqqa would be likely to create more haters of America than it killed.  Again, this would be a terrible outcome.

As to there being infants there, God is the only sovereign and decisions of life and death are His alone if we don’t have to make that choice.  And herein lies the crux of the issue.  Ralph is playing the devil’s game.  He wants to bomb Raqqa into dust, but that wouldn’t solve the problem and we don’t have to make that choice.  The administration doesn’t want to solve the problem, which is open borders.

It isn’t necessary to kill the enemy or his children thousands of miles away, when the answer is to seal the borders, completely and immediately.  It’s like the game my fifth grade teacher wanted the class to play.  We were supposedly all aboard a life boat, and there was only enough food and water for four of us, whereas there were five on board.  What do we do?

I refused to play the game, pissing her off but standing my ground.  There are worse things than death, one of which would be throwing someone overboard in order to stay alive.  Someone wanted Ralph to play this game, perhaps Ralph.  But what they don’t want to do is what is necessary to make the decision unnecessary in the first place.

Look folks, this example is a fairly easy one, but I honestly think that things aren’t going to go down so easy for us.  I think the answers are going to be much tougher, much more involved, and much murkier than this example.  Again with commenter BluesStringer1955, he believes that Muslims ought to be free to practice their religion in America.  I don’t think BluesStringer1955 understands what it means for Muslims to practice their religion.

No civilization in more than a millennia has been able to peaceably coexist with Islam.  BluesStringer1955 sees the world through Western eyes, not through the Islamic world view.  In order to assist here, I wanted to convey a little short story.

This is a story about a man we will call Mark, who lives in Boiling Springs, S.C.  He lived far enough from the center of urban problems that he didn’t figure that any of this would come his way.  But then resettlement of Syrians happened in Spartanburg, S.C., right down the road from him.

At first it was all benign.  But soon enough a few Muslim families moved into his neighborhood – on the government dime, and problems started.  They began to demand that the school system get Arabic translators, and his taxes were going up in order to pay for the translators.  Furthermore, it was said that there might be more days in school in the summer to make up for the Muslim holidays that they were demanding.  No, they weren’t demanding those holidays for themselves, but that everyone observe them as well.

Next, they demanded footwashing stations in the airports, malls and stores, and prayer rooms with arrows towards Mecca, complete with prayer rugs.  All of this was going to cost money, and while he thought that no one would give this kind of thing the time of day, state senator Larry Martin of Pickens, along with others from Greenville and the lower part of the state, were considering actual changes to the law to allow Sharia courts for the Muslims for certain things.

But there was a more immediate and personal concern for Mark.  One Muslim family near him had been eyeballing his dog, who had gotten lose and was playing with their younger children.  Not biting, but playing.  It happened only once, but now every time Mark goes out to walk the dog, the Muslims say something to him and the teenagers even make obscene gestures.  They hate dogs.  They consider them unclean.

Mark was weeping this particular day.  Mark has no fence, and while his dog did not leave the yard, while he wasn’t watching someone had apparently shot the dog’s eyes out with a pellet rifle, or so the vet thinks.  The dog, who had been with him for ten years, had begun to nip at anyone who came near in self defense because he was blind.  Understandable, but Mark couldn’t let that go on with his own children.  Mark was headed to the veterinarian to put his dog down.

As he was driving, he pondered what he was going to do?  The Muslim teenagers had been ogling his own daughter, and had even yelled that she was a whore and daughter of a whore since she isn’t Muslim, dressed unseemly and didn’t wear a hijab.  He wanted his wife and daughters to have weapons and carry them, but the government had cracked down on the purchase of guns since the advent of the heavier Muslim immigration to America.

America, Mark thought, wasn’t the same country in which he grew up.  And this wasn’t even Dearborn, Michigan.  It was Boiling Springs, S.C.

Now, as for the little short story, Mark is fictitious, but Mark’s saga is just beginning.  And if you haven’t pondered long and hard about the borders, Muslim immigration, Hispanic and Latino immigration, government intrusion, and what you will and won’t allow yourself to do, including the broader moral rules you will follow and down to the tactical level, then you need to.  Mike’s question is a good one, but folks, this is only the beginning.  You’d better seek for clarity of thought and a strong moral compass.

For the record, so-called just war theory was constructed for centuries old models for warfare with great armies lining up in fields of battle against other armies, fought in the daylight, with non-combatants left out of the mix, with hand-to-hand tactics using implements that didn’t act as standoff weapons.  Christian theologians, as I have pointed out many times, have let us down.  You don’t see papers written in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society on modern warfare and its ethical exigencies.  They haven’t updated their theory of warfare for modernity, with weapons that kill large numbers of people, and with non-combatants being brought into the mix (along with or against their will).  Much less have Christian theologians pondered fourth or fifth generation warfare and its implications for mankind.  We have been let down, abandoned, and ignored.  Perhaps because of ignorance, perhaps because of cowardice, but abandoned nonetheless.  As you ponder these issues, you are on your own, you and your conscience and your copy of the word of God.

Spend two and a half minutes watching Robert Spencer explain Hijra, or the spreading of Islam by migration.  Robert Spencer knows more about Islam that the majority of Muslims, and more than most Islamic “scholars.”

Click2Houston.com:

ROSENBERG, Texas –Alonza Gonzalez was turning right near 59 and FM 762 several months ago but just recently received the dash camera video after he filed public records requests.

“Just because I have a handgun on me and a license to carry should not be a big deal, but that is what made it the turning point,” Gonzalez said.

In the video, you can hear Rosenberg Police Officer Schnacky say, “You got your drivers license with you and insurance?” Gonzalez said, “Yeah, what’s the reason you stopped me?”

The officer then said, “I’ll tell you in just a minute.”

Schnacky continued, “You have your handgun with you today? Where is it?” Gonzalez replied, “On me, on my right side.”

At that point, the officer called for backup, seemingly because the driver had a concealed handgun.

When the backup officer arrived, he was told Gonzalez was not being cooperative and then he pulled his gun out of the holster and walked up to the truck window.

Schnacky can be heard saying, “Mr. Gonzalez, get your hands up on the wheel, both of them. Appreciate it. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to step out of the truck for me; when you do so I want you to keep your hands on the back of your head, OK?”

Seconds later, Gonzalez was arrested: “You’re under arrest for your traffic violations.”

Video is at the link.  According to Fox News, “an internal investigation concluded the officer who pulled Gonzalez over followed all proper procedures.  It also reported that the officer had resigned and was no longer on the force.”

I think the police are lying.  I don’t think this followed procedure at all.  I don’t think it’s procedural to unholster weapons for people obeying the law.  If so, the police can produce said procedure and prove me wrong.  If I’m wrong, why is the officer no longer with the department?  And if I’m wrong and the police are being honest, why do they have a procedure that orders (or allows) them to unholster weapons against peaceable citizens when there is no threat?

Frank Miniter:

Two years ago I investigated ammunition shortages in the U.S. At the time many stores and gun ranges were rationing everything from .22 LR to 9mm to .223 Rem. ammunition. The shortage became so severe that rumors spread over Internet that the federal government was buying up ammo to purposely cause the shortages. There was so much paranoia that many ammo makers felt compelled to look into it and then publish explanations. Also, the National Rifle Association (NRA) investigated and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for gun, ammo, and related businesses, looked into the reasons for the shortages. They all came to the conclusion that consumer demand—fueled by record high gun sales—was behind the shortages.

Since then, this strong demand has been fueling a transformation of the ammunition industry—and much of this manufacturing growth is taking place in America.

Last week, for example, Advanced Munitions International (AMI) announced it will build a new ammo-making plant in Maryville, Tenn., that will employee about 600 people. This is a $553 million development project that is expected to be completed in late 2018.

Tennessee’s Governor Bill Haslam said, “This is an industry leader creating jobs that require a highly skilled workforce and it’s the kind of company that makes it obvious we’re moving toward a simple goal for Tennessee: becoming the number-one location in the Southeast for high-quality jobs.”

There is actually so much growth in the ammo industry right now that Jim Shepherd, editor and publisher of the Shooting Wire, wrote, “In the past few days, we’ve seen the announcement of a massive ammunition project in Tennessee, and the industry’s been titillated by Hornady’s ‘hint’ that they’re about to announce something really significant. And those are on top of the announcements that Browning is going to be offering a full ammo line, Ruger’s now offering a technologically advanced line of ammo in the common personal-defense calibers, and Sig Sauer’s now shipping their expanding lines of ammo.”

This might be the only time I ever do this, but I would like to thank Mr. Obama for aiding in the financial health of the gun and in this particular case, ammunition industry.  We couldn’t have done this without you.