The Trace:

Investigators have released information on the weapons carried by the gunman who opened fire at a Florida video game tournament this weekend, killing two and leaving another nine victims with bullet wounds: He was armed with two handguns, a 9mm and a .45 caliber, both recently purchased from a licensed dealer.

The fact that the assailant wielded a common semiautomatic pistol, the staple of the contemporary American firearms market, would seem to make this most recent gun rampage an outlier among the mass shootings that have elicited opposition to the assault-style rifles that have become closely associated with such attacks. But the numbers show that it instead makes the carnage at Jacksonville Landing routine.

The Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University has studied active-shooter rampages for reports commissioned by the FBI. The FBI defines an active shooter as someone who kills or attempts to kill people in a confined or populated area. “Active shooter” is a more expansive category than mass shooting, which applies only to incidents that result in a minimum number of casualties. The term “active shooter” can apply to more targeted attacks as well as unsuccessful attempted mass shootings.

According to data compiled on 200 such attacks from 2000 through 2015, the ALERTT team found that pistols, not rifles, were the primary weapon used by the majority of active shooters …

Pistols were the most common weapon regardless of whether active shooters struck schools, businesses or churches. The perpetrator of one of the deadliest mass shootings in history, the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, was equipped solely with pistols.

Well then.  We must ban all pistols.  We mustn’t allow the people to defend themselves with – pistols.

UTT:

In Bloomington, Minnesota – Hennepin County – sharia is being enforced by police and mall security at the Mall of America.  To UTT followers, this is not surprising.

This time, however, a Christian pastor was arrested and told he was “Not permitted to discuss religion in the Mall.”

Welcome to Minneapolistan.

The pastor, Ramin Parsa, is a former muslim from an Iranian background who converted to Christianity.  Parsa provided comments to Third Rail Talk.

See and hear the full interview here.

The following is a transcript of that interview:

ThirdRailTalk.com interviewed California based Pastor Ramin Parsa on August 27th and discovered that while visiting Minnesota last week for his three day visit, and congregation presentation earlier on Saturday, Pastor Parsa was invited by his host to visit the Mall of America, for an enjoyable stroll and coffee, and for his first time in one of Minnesota’s most renowned iconic attractions.

While at the Mall, Pastor Parsa struck up a mutually enjoyable conversation with a couple of young Somali women, who appeared to be delighted to visit with he and his local host pastor.

Hearing his Iranian accent, that they were intrigued. As a result, they asked him where he was from, and hearing that he was born and raised in Iran, and into the Muslim community there, they inquired as to whether he was a practicing Muslim. He replied, no, and indicated that he had converted to Christianity years ago and paid a dear price (torture, and even hard-core and harsh interrogations, and ministry harassment) for his commitment to the Christian church, and the teachings of Jesus Christ…all due to his Christian conversion, he further replied to the interested women.

The young Somali women wanted to know more, and asked him additional questions, and appeared to be enjoying the conversation.

One Somali woman however, who was initially listening to the exchange from a distance, approached the group conversation, objected loudly, and chastised Pastor Parsa, the other pastor, as well as the Somali women, and demanded of the women, that they “not listen to this man”, and directed Pastor Parsa harshly to leave the Somali women alone. Pastor simply suggested to the clearly distraught Somali woman, that the two women were simply asking questions respectfully, and asking for some answers from him, which he was pleased to provide.

In their own language, they began to fight verbally amongst themselves, until the hostile female Somali intruder to the conversation departed – temporarily that is.

Per their request, Pastor Parsa continued to share more of his interesting life story and to explain to them why he has left Islam and why he is now a Christian Pastor, and some cursory details relating to his ministry. The conversation and exchange continued to be mutually pleasant and was apparently pleasing for the two women, and well the two pastors, as well as the fourteen-year-old son of the Minnesota based pastor.

The obviously angry Somali woman who was nearby still, overheard more of the conversation and left the area to falsely report this gathering and discussion to the nearby Mall of America Security officer, as a threat, and as “harassment.” The two Somali women engaged in the conversation with Pastor Parsa and his Minnesota host, actually spoke up in defense of Pastor Parsa, and indicated clearly to the Mall officer, that “they were just talking”.

The MOA “security officer” ignored the plea of the two Somali women, in defense of the pastors, and then told the pastors that they were “not permitted to discuss religion in the Mall” and demanded that they stop, or they would be escorted out of the Mall immediately, or they “would be arrested for soliciting and Illegal Trespass” for ignoring HIS order to cease.

There’s more at the link.  Welcome to the hell the globalists have created for us.  Directly contrary to that envisioned by the American founders.

Somewhere, George Soros is smiling.

Via Fred Tippens, this strange report.

The attorney of a Chattanooga police officer says her client intentionally shot a man who had just committed suicide – directly contradicting a previous police report claiming it was an accident.

The Chattanooga Police Department (CPD) says officers responded Sunday morning to a situation at the Cross Creek Villas involving a man threatening to commit suicide with a gun.

According to attorney Janie Varnell of David & Hoss, P.C., Officer Brian Cottell followed his extensive training in hostage negotiations and tried to talk the man into dropping the weapon.

The CPD report says the man did not follow officers’ orders, and then shot and killed himself. That is when CPD says the officer fired his gun three times, striking the man’s body with one of the bullets.

The CPD report says that the firing of the gun was an accident – the attorney’s statement disputes this.

“Contrary to previous reports, Officer Cottell did not discharge his service weapon unintentionally,” the statement reads. “He did not accidentally shoot a man who was deceased. He purposefully discharged his weapon to protect himself and other officers as he was trained to do in these types of situations.”

The statement continues that Cottell, standing about 15 feet away from the man, fired at almost the same time as the man did.

Varnell says Officer Cottell has a 20-year career in law enforcement, is a military veteran, and has extensive training in critical incidents involving suicidal parties, hostage negotiations, and high-intensity situations.

Um, what?

Let’s see if we can unpack this.  So the police officer was being protected by himself and perhaps his partner, neither of whom wanted to face the music with the public when they found out the stupidity of shooting a man holding a gun to his head, and claimed that it was essentially a negligent discharge.

But wait.  This might indicate that he nervously pulled the trigger when he heard loud noises, thus making him unfit for his job even with the goobers on the police force.  So then they amended their claim to assert that the shooting was intentional.

Highly trained, he was.  High-intensity situations.  Hostage negotiations.  A Ninja warrior all the way around.  He followed procedure, a stupid procedure that must say to shoot people holding a gun to their head.

Meaning that he perjured himself on the original police report.

And so the people of Chattanooga feel safer tonight that an “only-one” followed his procedures.  I’m not sure anyone can say for sure if the man was dead or not, or that he wouldn’t have lived through the injuries he inflicted upon himself.  But the good news is that the Ninja warrior got to go home safely that night.  That’s the only thing that matters.

In other news, you’d better not try to commit suicide in Chattanooga.  The cops will fill you full of holes.

Reuters:

Dick’s Sporting Goods reported a bigger-than-expected drop in quarterly same-store sales on Wednesday and forecast further declines this year, hit by tighter gun controls and a drop in Under Armour sales.

Shares in the company fell as much as 10 percent after it posted a 1.9 percent drop in same-store sales, bigger than analysts’ average estimate of a 0.62 percent dip.

Dick’s was one of the first retailers to stop selling assault rifles and high-capacity magazines as well as bar the sale of guns to people under age 21 following a massacre at a Florida high school in February.

The company had predicted that its hunting guns business would be pressurized by the change in policy but said the move should also attract more people to its stores.

Yep.  That’s what they said alright.  Somehow I doubt that this has anything to do with Under Armour sales.

I can’t think of a better company to be struggling.  Schadenfreude, I think they call it.

ZeroHedge:

The Constitutional Court of South Africa recently ruled that 300,000 gun owners must turn in their firearms.

This judgement came in response to the North Gauteng High Court’s ruling in 2017 which said Section 24 and Section 28 of the Firearm’s Control Act were unconstitutional.

A report from The Citizen explains what Section 24 and Section 28 entail:

“Section 24 of the Act requires that any person who seeks to renew a licence must do so 90 days before its expiry date Section 28 stipulates that if a firearm licence has been cancelled‚ the firearm must be disposed of or forfeited to the state. A 60-day time frame was placed on its disposal, which was to be done through a dealer.”

Now that the High Court’s initial ruling has been overturned, gun owners who failed to renew their firearms licenses must hand in their firearms to the nearest police station, where authorities will then proceed to destroy them.

Many naïve political observers will paint this event as a casual gun control scheme, but any astute student of politics will recognize that the floodgates are now open for further encroachments – not only on the gun rights of South Africans, but also on others facets of theirs lives.

A look at South Africa’s current political climate will give us an idea of the potential ramifications of this gun control scheme.

And is there any doubt about what comes next?

Via WRSA comes this stunning documentary.

David Codrea takes note of several comments on the state of affairs.

Double negative = a positive. Land stolen from from the natives and then stolen back … I hope this goes continent wide, including the De beers factory … I don’t feel sorry for this man at all. He profits off hunting large animals. Karma is truly at work here! … Hmmm, so, like the Dutch grabbed the land from the native south Africans … No it’s not theft. And you can defend all you like it won’t help …  Go home mate … At first I had sympathy… but then I read “hunting” farm….. A HUNTING farm??? Sorry farmer, NO sympathy here! Murdering animals for “sport” is VILE! … If you kill animals they will get you back somehow…

So I hate to be all logical and everything because I know it’s dreadfully boring.  But you know me – I don’t believe that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

If the commenter has no sympathy for the farmers because they allow hunting and charge for it (like many Americans do with their land), I’m wondering if the commenter will see the necessity of having no sympathy for the indigenous population when they, like savages, kill and steal the land from the farmers, only to starve to death in short order?

No, it’s not likely.  What is more likely is this (here, I’m making a prediction for my progressive readers on which you can test me – I do have at least some progressive readers don’t I?).  When people begin starving to death because they have no civility, cannot run farms, cannot operate machinery, cannot supply power and fuel because they have no idea how to run power plants, etc., it will become a litmus test and a point of doctrine for the progressives that the U.S. must send aid, even if it means increasing taxes on Americans.  Watch it in the upcoming debates.

Furthermore, they will even demand that a Marine Corps MEU be dispatched to “keep the peace” and supply “much-needed aid.”  They will make these same demands of the United Nations, who will lean on America for this responsibility.

But starve they will.  And they will deserve it.

Via WRSA, GoV has a sobering take on the choices Europe (and eventually we) face.

Over at UTT, John explains why work to reform the FedGov is wasted effort.

Eleven years ago I sat in the FBI Washington Field Office with the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Counterterrorism Division and one other agent.  I asked the SAC what she would do when the average American came to a deeper understanding of the Islamic threat than agents in the CT Division, and then those Americans, realizing they were left to fend for themselves, took matters into their own hands.

She froze, turned slightly pale, and told me she never thought about it before.  I had…a lot.

Today, America stands at that place.

The U.S. Islamic jihadi leadership displays gross animus towards America.  Islamic leaders:  openly call for jihad against our President; build weapons training camps for children to learn how to kill people in schools and hospitals knowing judges will let them walk; publicly call for the holocaust of all Jews and then feign shock and surprise when their comments make it into the public realm; teach jihad in Islamic elementary schools then sue the county school board if citizens dare protest; and on it goes.

In response to this, the Marxist party of America – Democrats – defend, support, and collaborate with these enemies while the U.S. Department of Justice sits on its hands.

Colleagues in the Counter-Jihad movement are threatened with death from sharia-adherent muslims (jihadis) while police and the FBI not only do nothing, they threaten the victims for daring to point the finger at muslims, despite facts and evidence.

Thousands of Americans are dead, killed by sharia-adherent muslims in places like Arlington (VA), New York, Shanksville (PA), Little Rock (AR), Boston (MA), Fort Lauderdale (FL), San Bernardino (CA), Orlando (FL), Denver (CO)….

The perpetrators of these acts of violence unanimously tell us they do what they do because Islam commands them to do it, yet most of our leaders tell us Islam is not the problem.

Our military generals/admirals and civilian leaders display no recognition they have a clue about the Islamic threat despite fighting – and losing – wars for nearly 17 years.  Some of our top military leaders – General John Allen for instance – apologized to our enemies for “offending” them when “Islamic religious materials” were mistakenly destroyed.

As of this day, the United States has still not defined the enemy in the global war in which we are engaged.

Catastrophic failure and criminal negligence.

Americans who still possess the ability to reason, discern, and process facts in reality realize the U.S. federal government is incapable of winning this war.

As Understanding the Threat (UTT) has said for over six (6) years, this war will be won or lost at the local level.

The goal is to get as many Americans to understand the threat as quickly as possible so local jurisdictions can organize and begin to dismantle the jihadi networks in the local area.

The infrastructure is crumbling, the inner cities are sewers crawling with drug addicts, homeless and criminals, hard working Americans are watching their ever dwindling wealth be raped by the government (remember that “The good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children”), and the printing presses in Washington roll off more paper money as if they can create wealth by fiat.

Prepare.  You know what’s coming.

NPR:

How many times per year does a gun go off in an American school?

We should know. But we don’t.

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.

We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.

In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.

“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin, a researcher and program director at Child Trends.

I want to be very deliberate and careful here in how I analyze this report.  First of all, good for NRP for the research.  Perhaps they’re capable of good reporting after all if they push their politics out of the way?

Second, I have never argued, nor do ever intend to argue in the future, that school shootings, or the lack thereof, proved anything at all or justified gun rights.  Similarly, I have never argued, nor do I ever intend to argue, that negligent discharges in the home are justification for gun lockup laws, or that Chicago inner city shootings are a justification for more gun control, or that the lack of shootings in a gun-rich locale are reason for believing that gun rights reduces crime.

I do not argue that way about things dictated by the Almighty, and my right to self defense and the amelioration of tyranny is based on His Holy decree, and is not function of other data or the vicissitudes of men or the machinations of politics.  But what we do learn from this report is that there are no limits to which the controllers will go to ensure that their agenda reigns supreme.

Lies are merely a tactic.  The ends justify the means for those who have no scruples.

But there were so many good ones to choose from.

Tim Lynch has some good observations.

I recently heard historian Nial Ferguson remark that “cowardice is the most powerful force in human history”. I’ve been thinking about that a lot while also contemplating the trend of regarding traditional courage and bravery as byproducts of toxic masculinity. Men of my generation (and my fathers) would have considered tasing an old woman to be so morally disgraceful that the thought of such an act is inconceivable. I often wonder what it will take to get us back to that standard of behavior.

Fred has a good answer.

Fred observes of Mr. Hayden.

Mr. (not general, you lost that distinction) Hayden, Judging by your age and your former rank it would seem that you are responsible for the losing of more wars than any nation in history. More than France, even. Has there been a time, a nation that has lost more battles, more wars than you? Certainly not in the span of a single human lifetime. And now you want a War on Guns? I suppose there is only one continent left in which you haven’t wrecked at least one country, so North America and the USA it is?

You will not find salvation in Gabby Giffords. You will find no absolution in Gun Control. You, as I, are partly responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of God’s precious souls. There will be no atonement through the sacrifice of your neighbor’s liberties. You will burn in Hell for what you’ve done or you will submit to the LORD. You can’t cleanse your own soul. You can’t wash yourself clean with more control of others. There is no other way than Christ to be Justified. Only His blood can satisfy a wrathful God.

Nobody can beat evil through the control of objects. This is a retarded understanding of the facts of Planet Earth. I suspect that that you know this. Which would make your motives complicit with evil itself. Evil cannot fight evil. You cannot fight mass shootings through the harming of God’s bestowed rights. This is Absurd. If you would like to defeat evil, only a man known of God through the LORD Jesus Christ and a rightly justified soul can join the battle to defeat this evil that you’ve recognized. Only the Spirit of God can win your war.

And Georgiaboy61 observes a parallel between Hayden and The Godfather.

Bracken recounts the scene in the “Godfather,” when Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is being cross-examined before a Senate subcommittee, and is asked what is his profession. To which Corleone replies, “I am an importer of olive oil products.” His cross-examiners pressure him – asking repeatedly if he has any connection with organized crime. Corleone sticks to his story – never relents.

“The Godfather” is useful as an analogy, because deep-state apparatchiks like Michael Hayden mirror how the mob works. Once you are a “made man,” an insider – there’s no turning back. No one “quits” the deep-state gangster government, just as no one “quits” the mob – except feet-first in a body bag, that is.

Hayden is not only sticking to his story, he is doubling down on it. He’s repeatedly told these and other lies so often, he may well believe them to be to true – to the extent that he could pass a polygraph examination. There’s no reasoning with that kind of “true believer”…

And finally, Ned lays down a challenge.

So a police officer can neglect a police dog to death without any legal ramifications other than getting an extra week vacation.

It would actually be more newsworthy if someone could find an incidence of an LEO being punished for wrongfully killing a person or a dog.

Which was the point.  The point was never the dog – it was the LEO.

David Codrea:

I’m not going to speak ill of the dead. McCain’s record in life was clear and my differences with him – and there were many — were expressed then. It’s more productive for the purpose of defending against some of those differences to look at what his ostensible political opponents, his friends across the aisle and in the media, are saying about him now.

Barack Obama recalled a “shared… fidelity to something higher.” Joe Lieberman “lost a dear friend.” Joe Biden “will miss him dearly.” Bill and Hillary Clinton noted “He frequently put partisanship aside to do what he thought was best for the country, and was never afraid to break the mold if it was the right thing to do.”

And on and on the effusive praise goes.  It’s all lies of course, but they would rather have a deep-stater like McCain than anyone else on the GOP side.

Like David, there are things I won’t criticize.  I won’t speak ill of his time in Vietnam.  If I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened in that prison in Hanoi.  And you don’t either.  And as for the torture he endured, I’m sure I would crack like an egg.  Unless I was in that position, I won’t comment on what I would do in that position.

But I will certainly speak ill of the man, life or death.  Virtually no one else had so much blood on his hands in American politics as McCain.  He is responsible, at least in part, for the North African horror we are witnessing, which leads irreversibly to the falling of Europe to Islam.

The criticism doesn’t have to stop there.  There is no reason other than spite, vengeance and hatred to come out of semi-retirement to kill a bill that might have helped to end socialized medicine in America.  He hated you, and he hated me.  We can all consider him responsible for the pain and suffering of millions of men, women and children who see their financial wherewithal to retain good medical care taken away, only to be redistributed by the state.

The catalog I’ve given above is just the beginning, and readers could add more, although the list I’ve given is sufficient.  I bid good riddance to the man.