A Curious Observation...

I can't t think anyone who has not been in a coma the last ten days doesn't know of the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a black 16-year-old, by Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white male. Thank God Mr. Yarl was  not injured as badly as he could have been. A shot to the head at close range is often times fatal with only one bullet. The young man is still alive and recovering at home, which is a great sign. 

Now I've reviewed reports on this incident, and of course it's racist. It's black and white, so of course it's racial, the race industry is fully deployed (Benjamin Crump is really preparing a lawsuit). But I find something very curious. From CNN:

Recovery of Black teen allegedly shot by White homeowner after ringing wrong doorbell is a miracle, attorney says

A Black teenager who authorities say was shot in the head by an 84-year-old White homeowner after going to the wrong Kansas City address received a positive prognosis but still faces a long road to recovery, according to his attorneys...

Also on Wednesday, the homeowner, Andrew Lester, entered a not guilty plea in court on felony charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action.

“...He’s home and looks great. Ralph is a WALKING MIRACLE with a head of steel,” (activist and family spokesperson Shaun) King wrote in the (Instagram) post, which Merritt reposted. “Had the bullet hit his head a fraction of an inch in any other direction he would probably be dead right now.”

Lester, who is out on $200,000 bond, attempted to speak with the judge throughout the proceeding but was not argumentative. Part of his bond conditions include reporting to police within 24 hours and once a month afterward. He cannot possess any weapons, must surrender his passport and remain in Missouri, and is ordered not to have any contact with Yarl or Yarl’s family members.

He is scheduled to be back in court on June 1.

“While charges have been filed, this remains an active investigation,” prosecutors said in a statement. “We are continuing to work with law enforcement to gather any and all evidence available in this case...”

...The arraignment and health update come less than a week after Lester allegedly shot Ralph in the head and arm after the teen rang the man’s doorbell. Police and Ralph’s family said he was trying to pick up his siblings but went to the wrong address.

The homeowner opened fire through a locked glass door without any words exchanged because he thought the teen was trying to break in and was “scared to death” due to the boy’s size, according to statements in a probable cause document obtained by CNN.

The incident was one of a number of shootings in the past week involving young people being met with gunfire after apparently going to the wrong place in error. In rural New York, a 20-year-old woman who was in a vehicle that pulled into a wrong driveway was fatally shot by the homeowner, and in Texas, two cheerleaders were shot in a supermarket parking lot after one mistook a man’s vehicle for her own...

...Ralph and his mother, Cleo Nagbe, spoke with President Joe Biden by phone on Monday evening, a White House official told CNN. The conversation also covered their families, their love of music and Ralph’s dream of pursuing a chemical engineering degree at Texas A&M University, the official said. Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke with Ralph on Tuesday afternoon, according to Merritt...

In all this, what is curious? Where is Moms Demand Action, Everytown For Gun Safety, David Camera Hog Hogg, Rosie O'Donnell (well, honestly, we don't need to see her), and all the others usual suspects screaming, "IT'S THE GUNS!"? In late March a transvestite with an "assault style weapon and pistol" attacked a private school in Nashville, killing 3 kids and 3 adults, And the usual suspects could not be shut up. Rosie got on her Twitter page and screeched about banning every "AR-15." The geniuses on such great intellectual shows like The View were out blaming the NRA and the GOP before the scene had been cleared. Democrats invaded the Tennessee capital, led by three radicals who call themselves legislators, demanding they "end gun violence," whatever that means this week.

Hell, it's been almost a month and we still don't have the Nashville shooter's manifesto. Like Obama's and Mrs. Bill Clinton's dissertations, secured better than they secure classified documents. You would think they have something to hide. Bit I digress. 

I know the rent-a-mobs are screaming about an old man shooting a young black man only because he's black. In all fairness, Mr. Yarl did knock late at night, and per Mr. Lester, tried to force the door open. Does this justify shooting Mr. Yarl? Let's just say we need more information. I AM NOT justifying what Mr. Lester did. I am saying this is early in the investigation, let the full story come out before everything else. Remember the greatest lie of the 21st Century, "Hands Up! Don't Shoot!"  

Back to the shooting of Mr. Yarl, no one that I've seen is screaming to ban .32 caliber "assault pistols"  or other "weapons of war" (both undefined). The usual people are screaming why Mr. Lester was initially released, then arrested later. Currently he is out on bond, awaiting his trial, and they are screeching about that. These are the people who wanted "bond reform." You wanted it, you got it.

Again, look at how the two shootings (Nashville and Kansas City) has been reacted to. Nashville, the gun is blamed. Kansas City, the shooter is blamed. Interesting, in one case, an inanimate object (a firearm) is blamed, in the later incident, the shooter is blamed. After one or another case of a nationally known shooting, I've had to explain to screeching libtards that guns do not fire by themselves (Are you listening Alex Baldwin?). They need to be obtained, loaded, a round locked  into the chamber (semi-automatic), the shooter goes to his target area, he aims and fires. In all that, I don't see anything the firearm does automatically. 

Interesting. It seems guns don't kill, but people kill people. Who would have ever thunk it? 

Robert Reich and "assault weapons."

Let’s say you’re a moron. Or let’s say you’re a former Clinton cabinet member and current Berkley professor. But I repeat myself.

After  the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Robert V Reich immediately put this up on his Twitter feed: 

Researchers have estimated that if we still had a federal assault weapons ban, we would see 70% fewer mass shooting deaths. S-E-V-E-N-T-Y PERCENT. Reinstating it should be a no-brainer.

Now one thing I am very meticulous about in my writings is sources. If you’ve read my stuff, I have links to studies, online publications, etc., where you can judge for yourself my assertions. Granted, Twitter is not a full blown, “sourced,” or “peer reviewed” information source. Fair enough. 

 

But one thing I do have issue with is Mr. Reich seems to expect people to read his stuff and swallow it whole. His intellectual arrogance is what makes people despise higher education faculty.

 

A simple search will find facts of mass shootings. Mass shootings are defined as those where 4 or more people are shot and killed in one incident. From the National Institute of Justice:

Notably, most individuals who engaged in mass shootings used handguns (77.2%), and 25.1% used assault rifles in the commission of their crimes. Of the known mass shooting cases (32.5% of cases could not be confirmed), 77% of those who engaged in mass shootings purchased at least some of their guns legally, while illegal purchases were made by 13% of those committing mass shootings. In cases involving K-12 school shootings, over 80% of individuals who engaged in shootings stole guns from family members.

Granted, they, like Bobby Reich here, don’t define what an assault weapon is. Again, I started with a Web search and I found a two-decade old reference from the OJP:

The paper defines an "assault weapon" as a "civilian, semiautomatic version of a military weapon." Generally, the characteristics of an assault weapon make firearms more lethal, more accurate, and/or less conspicuous when used. 

Well, what does the Encyclopedia Britannica say about assault weapons:  

assault rifle, military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light and portable yet still able to deliver a high volume of fire with reasonable accuracy at modern combat ranges of 1,000–1,600 feet (300–500 metres), assault rifles have replaced the high-powered bolt-action and semiautomatic rifles of the World War II era as the standard infantry weapon of modern armies…

I’ve said countless times over the years, I’ve carried both a Ruger Mini-14 and a Safariland AR-15 as patrol rifles. Both fire .223 ammunition and both have “high capacity” magazines (I carry 30 round magazines). Furthermore both are semi-automatic, i.e., you must pull the trigger every time you want to fire one round, as opposed to automatic, where once your squeeze and hold the trigger, the rifle will fire rounds until you release the trigger, run out of bullets, or the rifle jams. 

 

So, compare these two rifles to a M-16. All three fire .223, all three have “high capacity magazines,” but only the M-16 A1 has full auto (M-16 A2 has burst fire of 3 rounds). Otherwise the AR-15 and the M-16 similarities are cosmetic, not functional. The Mini-14 looks nothing like the AR-15 or M-16, although it functions like the AR-15

 

Another lie put out by many politicians and other ignorant sources is the AR-15 is a “weapon of war” or a “military weapon” in civilian hands. I then ask people this one question: Which army in the world uses the AR-15? I get no answer, and in internet searches, I get no answer. I have no doubt some Guerra groups use them, but no nation’s armed forces that I can find uses it.

 

The facts are Mr. Reich put out a unsubstantiated statement. I’ll be generous and give him the benefit of the doubt he’s just ignorant of the truth. As a Berkley professor, that is very believable. But either way, it’s false, and it shows he’s not to be taken seriously. 

Some intellectual consistency here, if you please…

While looking about today, I found this gem from Vox, a leftwing “news” sight. Now I have no issue with liberal (or conservative) opinion sights on the Web, in hard copy print, whatever the method. What I despise is their lack of truthfulness. No one with a two digit IQ calls the NY Times an objective news source. Breitbart and the Washington Times are conservative. The difference is they don’t lie about it. 

Now this “news article” got my attention by its outrage that a ruling from a federal court, in this case the Supreme Court, could overrule the gun control laws of the fifty states (or in the case of Obama, 57 states). Now I checked the link to the author, Ian Millhiser, and he is listed as a senior correspondent, a person employed by a news agency, periodical, television network, etc., to gather, report, or contribute news, articles, and the like regularly from a distant place. He is not, at least openly, recognized as an opinion writer. Well, let’s see what the correspondent says about the Supreme Court and its pending review of New York’s gun laws.

The Supreme Court will hear a major Second Amendment case that could gut US gun laws

The Supreme Court could make the NRA’s dreams come true.

By Ian Millhiser  Apr 26, 2021

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Corlett, a case that could transform the judiciary’s understanding of the Second Amendment and lay waste to many of the nation’s gun laws.

The case involves New York state’s handgun licensing law — a law that has been in place since 1913 — which requires someone who wishes to carry a handgun in public to demonstrate “proper cause” in order to obtain a license permitting them to do so…

…The plaintiffs in Corlett include a New York state gun rights group and two New York men who applied for a license to carry a handgun in public and were denied that license. They claim that “law-abiding citizens” have a Second Amendment right to carry a gun in public — and the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, could agree with them…

The man is very incorrect on one point. The Supreme Court does not have a 6-3 conservative majority (we could only hope), we have a court with six of its nine members appointed by Republican presidents. The chief justice was originally thought to be solid choice. Time has shown he is not a conservative, but a member of the sewer that’s DC.

Indeed, Corlett could potentially dismantle more than a decade of judicial decisions interpreting the Second Amendment, imposing prohibitive limits on lawmakers’ ability to reduce gun violence.

Although the plaintiffs asked the Court to rule on a broad question — “whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense” — the justices announced on Monday that they will only resolve a more narrow question: “whether the State’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.”

Nevertheless, this narrower question is still broad enough to allow the Supreme Court to rewrite a decade of Second Amendment precedents, to unwind a consensus within the lower courts that permits many gun regulations to stand, and then to allow those lower courts to complete the process of dismantling other gun laws…

Now the author is referring to state issued gun laws and regulations, where blue states have the most restrictive. These Democratically controlled states also have the most crime. The states seem to only want to control the law abiding public’s access to firearms, not the criminal’s access to firearms. Let’s look some more.

How the Supreme Court’s current precedents approach the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment provides that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” and until fairly recently, the Supreme Court took the first 13 words of this amendment very seriously. As the Court explained in United States v. Miller (1939), the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “render possible the effectiveness” of militias. Thus, the amendment must be “interpreted and applied with that end in view...” 

But again, back to my quest for intellectual consistency here. Mr. Millhiser is concerned that only one half of a right is protected by an amendment. Fair enough. Are we going to re-interpret the First Amendment that the press is actually only hard paper pressed out by a manual machine? I mean, you’re only looking at half the text, why should such selective emphasis be limited to only one amendment? 

Besides which, the question is, what is a militia? At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, it was every able bodied man. 

Militia, military organization of citizens with limited military training, which is available for emergency service, usually for local defense...Among the Anglo-Saxon peoples of early medieval Europe, the militia was institutionalized in the fyrd, in which every able-bodied free male was required to give military service. Similar arrangements evolved in other countries…

In colonial America the militia, based on the tradition of the fyrd, was the only defense against hostile Indians during the long periods when regular British forces were not available. During the American Revolution, the militia provided the bulk of the American forces as well as a pool for recruiting or drafting of regulars. The militia played a similar role in the War of 1812 and the American Civil War…

Again, every able bodied man was required to serve if needed. And he kept his weapons for that reason. But back to the intellectual aspect, I find it interesting that a liberal, writing for a very liberal publication, is worried about having state laws overthrown by a federal court. Since the court of Earl Warren, the federal courts have made that part of their MO. For instance, in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, by a 7-2 majority, the Supreme Court created a general right to privacy, and inferred it covered contraceptives:

In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Douglas, the Court ruled that the Constitution did in fact protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on contraception. While the Court explained that the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments create the right to privacy in marital relations. The Connecticut statute conflicted with the exercise of this right and was therefore held null and void.

And this led to another abortion of law, Roe v. Wade:

In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Douglas, the Court ruled that the Constitution did in fact protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on contraception. While the Court explained that the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments create the right to privacy in marital relations. The ConnecticuInherent in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a fundamental “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s choice whether to have an abortion. However, this right is balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women's health and protecting “the potentiality of human life.” The Texas law challenged in this case violated this right… 

And Lawrence v. Texas… and Obergefell v. Hodges… and others. 

The point is, for liberals, the states are just something to get around. They want a one size fits approach in all areas of law, and if the legislature doesn’t do it, they will use the one unaccountable branch of government, the courts, to push their agenda. 

The "tolerant, emphatic and compassionate" left shows itself again.

In the days after the shooting in Sutherland Springs I got into a Facebook debate with a family memeber, who said we needed "stricter gund laws..." I asked her, multiple times, to explain how another law would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and I have yet to get an answer. The simple fact is she has no answer and that is not a knock on her. The simpler fact is there is not another law that will prevent someone from killing another person. If I am motivated, I will find the means and kill you, usless I am stopped.

I found this article later on FB and its says it better than I can. Excerpts, with some comments.

Thoughts and Prayers for Anti-Gun Freaks Grieving Over Death of The Narrative

Kurt Schlichter

The synchronized leftist response to this latest attack on normal Christians was pre-planned, and it didn’t matter that this time it was another militant atheist weirdo instead of an ISIS-loving foreigner. The memes and the lies were all prepped and ready, and the villain was already chosen. No surprise – once again, it was you, the normal American who keeps and bears arms to protect yourself, your family, your community and your Constitution.

But this time it didn’t go the way they wanted. Sure, they were giddy at first – the liberals got to trash people of faith for praying, they got to tell NRA members that there was blood on their hands, and they got to demand some sort of unspecified action. But then their lying narrative took a bunch of rounds and bled out just like that useless little creep.

That’s what they are really mourning – the loss of what they saw as an opportunity to spread their poisonous lies in support of their effort to disarm Americans and change us once and for all from citizens into subjects.

Some still found something to cheer about. One Twitter low-life pointed out, “Sutherland Springs is in rural Texas, these were all likely 45 voters. This is karma in action. Good riddance.” Yes, that’s the kind of person who wants you disarmed, the kind that thinks it’s A-OK to murder little kids because their parents might like a different candidate.

Show of hands. Who is up to give up your ability to protect yourself because the same people who celebrate us being murdered demand it? Anyone? Hello? Bueller?...

Funny, after Dylann Roof murdered nine black people in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, I don't remember white libtards making fun of their faith. Personally I remember a woman who lost a family member saying she forgave Roof because that is what the Bible tells her. Ma'am, your are a much better human than I. If he murdered my child or parent, forgiveness would not be in me.

...Once the news hit, the ghouls rubbed their hands and started with their coordinated demands that we “do something.” But did you notice how no one said exactly what we were supposed to do? That’s their new thing – no specifics, just some sort of ambiguous, amorphous demand that we wave a magic wand and dispel evil from our midst. They’ve been burned before, hard. They always start babbling about background checks and it always turns out that the scumbag got his guns legally or passed the check when he shouldn’t have. This pudgy meat sack was barred from buying a weapon, but he passed the background check because the government – you know, the same entity the gun-grabbers want to be the only people with guns – again screwed up and failed to put his domestic violence conviction into the database. BTW, want to know how many attempted illegal gun buyers Obama’s DoJ prosecuted out of 48,000? 44...

A major issue over the last eight years has been the lack of focus on prosecution of felons and more on prosecuting cops. Hopefully the Session's Justice Department actually puts a focus on, get this, prosecution of criminals.

In a discussion over the last weekend a point I made (over scotch and cigars, solving all the words problems) is the results of aggressive policing, like "stop and frisk." You stop a know gang member or drug dealer, you approach, he's got a gun, you grab him, take him into custody, he's on parole for a felony, and just committed a felony by possessing a firearm. The direct result is he is put away for many, many moons. The unforeseen results is the murder on the other gang banger he was about to commit is stopped, and we don't have another aggravated assault/homicide for the stats.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty confident. I’m sure eventually the government will figure out how to tell if a nut or a felon is a nut or a felon. In the meantime, I don’t need the ability to protect myself or my family. Here, take my guns. Government, you got this.

Libtards, this is what you call sarcasm.

Then, of course, the killing spree got stopped by the very thing that liberals insist doesn’t exist except for all the times it has existed – a good guy with a gun. A Texan exhibiting something liberals are unfamiliar with – manhood – took his rifle and went one-on-one with that walking chamber pot and put a round in him. The tubby terrorist, confronted with an armed American citizen instead of little kids, dropped his rifle and ran, gut shot. Let’s hope he suffered good and hard before he checked himself out like the coward he was.

It gets better, though it’s hard to imagine anything better than him with a bullet in his ample belly. The hero who plugged him was not only one of the normal Americans our fern-fertilizing betters in the coastal cities are so fond of looking down upon, but he was an NRA shooting instructor. You know, the focus of evil in the world – except he actually confronted evil and defeated it...

Enjoy the rest if you want, but it brings up a critical point. Multiple active shooters have been "protected status" people: Democrats/liberals, Muslims, immigrants, mentally ill. If anyone can show me a NRA member who's gone nuts and shot up a church, please do.

I find the tribe from the iditorial page of the Houston Chronicle typical for "intelligence" coming from the left:

...But there was a modest break from the Party line by our own U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who has introduced legislation that could help prevent future massacres. He proposes to strengthen background checks by ensuring that all federal departments and agencies properly transfer criminal records to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Under current law, Kelley’s criminal conviction while in the Air Force would have prevented him from buying a gun, but the records never made it into the system. “According to the Department of Justice, the number of these records that are actually uploaded is staggeringly low,” Cornyn said.

Morons, there are multiple laws covering this, and this is (as I type this) apparently a case of a government bureaucracy failing in its mission. Piling another law over 50 already on the books will have no impact on criminal actions. Then again, disarming the criminal has never been the goal of these people. It's to disarm the general public.