Archive for the 'Politics' Category

The rate of gun background checks and purchases has skyrocketed.  Writers Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight explain the data, but the graph below show virtually everything you need to understand this.

But this doesn’t explain the real problem that the progressives have with all of this.

You see, the schedule got mixed up, and it’s causing no end to the hand-wringing among the social planners and elitist chattering class.

There are more guns than people in the United States (400 million are in circulation for a population of 330 million).  In just the first six months of 2020, approximately 19 million firearms have been sold, representing more than one firearm for every 20 Americans.

The presence of so many guns complicates discussions of public policy. Injustices committed by the police, and systemic racism in society more broadly need to end. It is concerning that the necessary national discussion regarding racial injustice is leading to even more firearms in the hands of Americans.

This concern is particularly relevant in the context of discussions regarding defunding the police. When public goods are not provided by the government, or are provided on a scale that some consider to be inadequate, individuals turn to private provision of these services.  For example, parents often turn to private schools when they perceive public education to be inadequate.

Similarly, it would not be surprising for some citizens to respond to perceived limitations on police services with private provision. This may include purchasing more firearms. In a society fraught with racial tension, it is not clear that dismantling the police and seeing more private citizens purchase guns will lead to a safer world. Increased firearm sales are a potential – if unintended – consequence that merits attention as we endeavor to create a more equitable society.

They said this with about as much adroit skill as can be managed, but the mask slipped down nonetheless.

To begin with, it’s always been a myth that the police were there for protection.  Regular readers, and most other educated men and women, already know about cases Warren versus D.C. and Castle Rock versus Gonzales.  There are more, but these two cases demonstrate that police are not duty bound to offer anyone protection.

But at least it’s a myth that many people have believed.  The riots, looting, pillaging, beatings and murders of late have convinced many uninformed folks that maybe they do need protection in lieu of police.  In short, that myth has been shattered.

Here is where schedule comes in.  The social planners want America to be disarmed, and see it as an impediment to their plans that men and women can defend themselves.  To these writers, this is all an obstacle to be overcome.  T. S. Furey at NRO explains a related problem.

June has been marked in recent years by a flurry of orange-clad marchers promoting National Gun Violence Awareness Month. This year’s planned gatherings, however, fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic and were overshadowed by Black Lives Matter’s nationwide protests against institutional racism within policing. But the gun-control lobby’s reticence isn’t out of respect for the lives of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor but rather concern for its own preservation.

For decades, gun-control advocates promoted greater police power as well as known practices of institutional racism within police firearms-licensing divisions. Now that there are calls to “defund the police,” many leaders of the gun-control lobby, who are mostly white, should rightly fear that their history of siding with the police and promoting policies now deemed racist by progressives may make them the next casualty of cancel culture.

Progressives tend to eat their own.  The next most progressive manifestation uses the previous generation as food.  What is a good progressives to do?

On the one hand, they are pro-police, since that is the backstop for their gun control plans.  Pushing the myth of police protection has been their staple for decades.  On the other hand, siding with the police makes them anathema to the current manifestation of wokeness.  On the one hand, most progressives have sided with the rioters, looters, thieves and arsonists, and on the other hand, as that metastasized in America it has led to even more guns in the hands of men and women who now know that they have to defend themselves.

The good news for the progressives is that this is all just a fabricated problem.  Yes, many guns have been sold in the last few months, but hundreds of millions were already in the hands of men and women who already knew or are learning how to use them.  In addition to that, trillions of rounds of ammunition are in the hands of civilians in America.

It’s far too late for the progressives to worry over a few more guns.  That battle was lost years ago, and no law or social planning can turn it around.

Here is the real worry that should be keeping the progressives up at night.  I said earlier that police protection is a myth.  Yes, to some degree, at least in theory and law.  But not in practice.  In practice, most of the police protection in the last two or three months has been for the rioters, looters and arsonists.  The police are there to protect the criminals from the otherwise peaceable men and women, not the peaceable from the criminals.

The worry for progressives is that this abates one day soon, and the police turn their backs on the rioters.  That will be an awful day for the rioters, because they have subsisted on the backs of police protection these last months.  That’s the ultimate irony.  The police have worked thus far to protect the rioters and arsonists because of local politicians.  But local politics is a fickle thing.

The writers can actually take solace in the fact that their hand-wringing is to no avail, and they should just try to get some sleep rather than worrying over any of this.  These wheels were set in motion long ago, and more violence will only lead to bloodshed.  Violence can take many forms, from rioting and looting, to theft of property for so-called “reparations.”  More pressure by the social planners to change anything will eventually lead to more problems.

Uninvited, by the way.  Breaking and entering.

Over the weekend, masked antifa in Portland opened a black man’s car door during a violent protest. Watch how he responded to them: pic.twitter.com/p8gNADCkGM

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 13, 2020

Soibois with lisps, every one of them.  Using video equipment to encourage their followers when they show a cowering car owner when he gets beaten up, turned to use against anyone who doesn’t cower by telling them, “You’re being videoed.”  Hypocrites, every one.  Then when the man takes action, they call for more help from fellow rioters, hoping recover from their fright over a man defending himself.

And then there is this: “Is there a lost and found?”  Good Lord.  Lost and found?  Is this grammar school?

What you learn (again) about this crowd is that it is effeminate and frightful.  If the cops ever stop protecting the rioters and actually let people deal with them, this would all be over in a day.

But you have to admit.  That is an epic leg sweep and takedown.  Just epic.  Good job, buddy.  Nicely done.

This is an embedded tweet.  If the video doesn’t work, go to Andy Ngo’s tweet.

David Codrea.

“I’m a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson,” Salon columnist and novelist Lucian K. Truscott IV wrote in a Monday opinion piece for The New York Times. “Take down his memorial.”

[ … ]

At least in his case, Truscott claims “I grew up in an Army family, and … I never saw a goddamned human silhouette target until I was on a United States Army firing range with an Army-issue M-16 in my hands.” His Salon bio further reveals he is “a graduate of West Point.” Neither qualification claim brings up an earlier admission that he  “got a general discharge under other than honorable conditions, generally known as a ‘bad discharge’” (not quite enough to “legally disqualify” him for gun ownership, but enough to get a foreigner “denaturalized”)

Blah, blah, blah.  This sounds sort of like “I’ve been in the military, and let me tell you something about those awful guns …”  To be precise and clinical, it’s called the genetic fallacy, and it revolves around an appeal to authority.

I grant no authority to someone who has been in the military and who now wants to jettison his oaths and vows, especially one who wasn’t honorably discharged.

I’d also mention that this appeal to authority based on genetics isn’t restricted to the military.

“My name is Robert Lee IV; I am a descendant of Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general whose statue was at the center of violence in Charlottesville. We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism and hate. As a pastor it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America’s original sin. Today, I call on all of us with privilege and power to answer God’s call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on. We can find inspiration in the Black Lives Matter movement, the women who marched in the Women’s March in January and especially Heather Heyer who died fighting for her beliefs in Charlottesville.”

I really couldn’t care less about who he can cite as his lineage.  Lineage is as much or more ideological as it is blood.

These men have shamed their heritage, and thus shamed themselves.

Via PJM.

So don’t buy the lies that any of this is about race.  It’s a communist revolution intent on tearing down Western civilization.  Churches stand in their way.

You’d better attend worship services armed.  This was peaceful compared to what I’m sure they have planned.

Andy Ngo.

Seemab Hussaini, spokesperson for the Oregon chapter of CAIR, an Islamic group linked to violent extremism, expresses support for the violent riots in the city as a means to force through a political agenda. pic.twitter.com/H2aGpje10x

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 9, 2020

Color me shocked!  If only someone would have said something about this.  Or someone else, perhaps.

Must be some “woke” prosecutor.  This is the first time I had seen this video.

So the law isn’t set up to protect you from, or prosecute those who perpetrate, insult or inappropriate behavior.  But it is indeed set up to prosecute threats.

From the video, this woman (the black woman in the video) is guilty of threats.  The couple cannot but help to take it seriously.  To do otherwise would be unwise.

Joe Huffman, quoting Sir Roger Scruton.

It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.

And we all know the signal pathology of the wicked, right?

Marxism exists because of Genesis Chapter 3 and original sin.

They hate you.  You cannot bargain with them, you cannot compromise with them, you cannot appease them.  They want to control you.  They want you dead.

Work all of your life for wealth that you intend to pass down to your progeny, noted as a good thing by The Lord of the universe (Proverbs 13:22)?  Want to protect your family, home and hearth because that’s what God has ordered you to do?

Too bad.  Contrary to the Biblical notion that sin cannot be ascribed to the innocent, and that sin is NOT collective, the revolutionaries want you in poverty and danger.

The City of Seattle held a racially segregated employee training session aimed at White staffers and instructing them on “undoing your own whiteness” in order to be held accountable by people of color, according to documents obtained by a public records request.

The session took place on June 12, as protesters took part in the so-called “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” in the Capitol Hill district.

One handout distributed in the session reportedly declared how “racism is not our fault but we are responsible.” Another said White staffers must give up “the land” and their “guaranteed physical safety” in order to be an “accomplice” for racial justice.

Do you understand?  Give up your land, give up your safety.  Be in poverty, be raped and be beaten.  Give up your guns, give up your belongings.

I don’t know what the easy thing to do is, but I know what the Godly thing is: never give up your guns, never give up the wealth you intend to pass to your children’s children.  That’s what the “good” man would do.

PJM.

“Nope the idea of 2+2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing,” wrote Marshall (HT: Disrn). Never mind that the Arabic numeral system we use is not, you know, “Western.”

Marshall goes by the pronouns “she/her” and describes herself on Twitter as a “teacher, scholar, social justice change agent, Chicagoan, PhD student, architecture enthusiast, wannabe math person, BLM always…”

2 + 2 ≠ 4 is alright if you don’t mind buildings and bridges falling down, and machines not working right, and engineers not held liable in court for calculations with errors.  As to the second comment, “Never mind that the Arabic numeral system we use is not, you know, “Western,” that’s as ridiculous as the idiotic twitter post she cites.

Numbers aren’t Arabic, or Chinese, or Western, or anything other than logic.  Mathematics is a reflection of the mind of God.  It’s the way the world works because it was made by Him and it’s how man thinks because we are made in His image.  2 + 2 = 4, sin(θ), cos(θ) and pi() are all what they are, and dN/dt = P -λN solves in closed form to (P/λ)(1 – exp(-λt)) not because someone says so, but because God says so, and thus it will always be, never to change, not even in eternity, because God is immutable.

Mathematics allows man to take dominion over the world, as ordered by a Holy God, for the glory of His son.  It allows man to create, to construct, to repair, to ameliorate, and to make life better.

So I assume that it’s okay with Brittany Marshall if she and other blacks are rolling over a bridge the moment it collapses, the bridge being designed by black engineers who do not believe in mathematics or physics.

News from just this side of hell.

ST. LOUIS – The You Paid For It Team is asking questions about a beating on the MetroLink platform in a video going viral on Facebook.

The victim, a 19-year-old woman, was assaulted and beaten Thursday afternoon by another female at the Forest Park-DeBaliviere MetroLink Station.

Bystanders did not intervene during the attack but two security guards at the scene did nothing either.

The Bi-State Development Agency is investigating the incident but admits the guards should have done more. The guards have now been fired.

Metro President and CEO Taulby Roach says the guards, who are unarmed, should have done some form of de-escalation and—after this—will likely need more training.

Bi-State Commissioner Derrick Keith Cox says the problem is Bi-State paid a million dollars for advice on how to make the system safer and got bad advice.

One of the study’s suggestions was to take away guns from security guards. Only police are armed now.

Cox says it leaves guards with very little to protect themselves or anyone else for that matter. But Roach says guns would not have helped a situation like this and may have just made matters worse.

But not if you watch the video.  The video shows the ruler of the system saying that having a firearm would have made matters worse.  The security guards should have intervened to “deescalate the situation.”

In other news in St. Louis,

… protestors marched along Kingshighway, a major north-south thoroughfare (but not actually a highway) passing right by the St Louis couple’s mansion.

“Chanting protesters on Friday stopped at the gate just outside the McCloskeys’ home for about 15 minutes,” according to the Associated Press.

The AP also reported that “one protester briefly straddled an iron gate as if he was going to jump over, but did not.”

That particular protestor may have had good cause to reconsider a second break-in.

This time, instead of being greeted by a frightened couple, protestors saw a home guarded by private security, “as around a dozen ‘men in plain clothes’ were seen surrounding the property,” according to a Summit News report.

They’ve come back for Mr. McCloskey and his wife.  They won’t be embarrassed – they’ll get even.  My only solution for this is to leave St. Louis now.

But don’t do that if you intend on bringing your asinine prog politics with you.  You fouled your own nest, don’t foul mine too.