Good Guys Down

By Jeff Knox

November saw two highly publicized tragedies where police officers responding to the scenes of shootings, shot and killed the wrong man. In both cases, the victims were legally armed. In both cases, the victims were black, as were the perpetrators of the original shootings. Of course, the media has chosen to focus primarily on the race issue, reinforcing the idea that blacks are disproportionately victims in wrongful police shootings, and stoking the flames of outrage within the black community.

Not only does the focus on race, drive a wedge between blacks and whites, and between police and the community, it also diverts attention from the real reasons for these types of tragedies, and potential solutions.

Those of us who choose to be armed, must have a solid grasp on the real-world risks and consequences of wielding deadly force. While a gun can save lives, carrying and using one always comes with complications. Our society specifically tasks police with use of force to stop criminal violence and restrain law-breakers, and even though their authority is derived directly from “we the people,” our social structure has largely ceded the individual authority of the people, into the hands of the police, reserving only a very narrow slice for individual citizens. That authority has not always been ceded evenly, either. There are gaps and overlaps leading to conflicts between a citizen’s right to bear arms and act on his own behalf, and the duties and limits of police authority. Police also enjoy certain immunities and protections – both legally, and as a matter of generally accepted terms within our social contract.

Since it is the job of police to go into harm’s way, deal with bad guys, and use force up to and including deadly force, in the execution of their job, society generally gives them the benefit of the doubt when things get sketchy.

Armed citizens don’t get those benefits and presumptions, regardless of our level of training or experience. We also don’t usually have the benefit of a uniform or badge to readily identify us as the good guy during a hectic event. Our first challenge is surviving the initial threat, but then we have to be sure to survive the arrival of those coming to save us from the threat. Afterwards we run through the legal gauntlet of criminal and civil actions trying to blame us for defending ourselves – not to mention the emotional trauma that comes from the whole mess – without the benefit of a police union representative and “paid administrative leave.”

In both of the recent instances, the legal gun owners were put in difficult situations that made it virtually impossible for them to do much of anything differently. In the first tragedy, the good guy was working security at a bar when a group of men who had been kicked out earlier returned. One of them opened fire on patrons in the bar. The security worker tackled the gunman (or one of his accomplices) and had his gun in his hand when the police rushed in. Officers apparently thought the security guy was the assailant, about to execute a patron on the floor, and they fired, killing the good guy.

I put little credence in the claims of some of the patrons that they yelled at police that the man was bar security. As the situation was described by those same patrons, there didn’t seem to be time for them to recognize the danger to the security guard from the police before the shots were fired. Whether the security guard had time to safely holster before police arrived – or shouldn’t have drawn the gun at all – is unknown. Police seemed to have arrived very quickly, and in this case, as with the next story, that rapid response did not work to the benefit of the armed citizen.

In the second incident, a young man was at a local shopping mall with a friend on Thanksgiving evening. The friend got into a physical altercation with another man in the mall, and that man pulled a gun and started shooting. The good guy drew his sidearm, but apparently didn’t fire. Police patrolling the mall arrived at that moment, and saw a man with a gun in his hand and another man bleeding on the ground. They fired, and the innocent gun owner was killed.

So far, police have withheld release of any body-cam or security camera footage from either of these shootings, and descriptions of events from witnesses are sketchy at best, so it’s difficult to determine with any confidence exactly what happened or what could have been done differently – by the armed civilians or by the police. It is sad and frustrating that tragedies like this happen, and even sadder that people will exploit them for political purposes – some claiming that police are too anxious to open fire on black men, and others claiming that these cases prove that armed citizens just complicate already bad situations.

In truth, white people are wrongfully killed by police too, as in Colorado when a homeowner was shot after killing a home invader who was attacking his grandson. In these particular circumstances, it’s unlikely that skin color played any role at all. While tragic mistakes happen, they are rare, and armed citizens successfully use firearms to defend themselves or others, every day in this country, without being shot by police.

If the officers involved in these deaths were overly aggressive or “trigger-happy,” they should be punished, but based solely on initial reports, it appears that in these cases, the only blame lies with the original perpetrators who started the shooting, and they should be charged with felony murder for the loss of these innocent lives.

Lame Ducks: WWDD – What Would Democrats Do?

By Jeff Knox

(November 15, 2018) As the dust settles and final tallies trickle in – and recounts begin – we now know the general makeup of the 116th Congress. The election results were disappointing for GunVoters, but they weren’t the disaster that many predicted, and that was certainly a possibility.

At this point it looks like Democrats will hold a significant majority in the House, while Republicans will maintain their slim majority in the Senate. That means that we will see gridlock on the legislative front from Congress, so unless Republicans act aggressively right now, during the lame duck session pending the congressional rollover in January, the scant hope of passing national recognition of legal discreet carry, deregulation of silencers, and passage of the Lawful Purposes Act, all go out the window, dying with the close of the 115^th Congress.

House Democrats have already begun making promises to push for votes on gun control measures in the new congress, with Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the presumptive incoming Speaker of the House, saying that she will call for a vote on another Manchin-Toomey type bill criminalizing private firearm transfers. A Representative from New Jersey has also just introduced a new bill to outlaw 3D printed firearms, “undetectable” firearms, 80% receivers, and various parts kits. This proposal mirrors a bill that was introduced in the New Jersey Legislature, as that state tries to surpass California as the nation’s leading state for gun control. The federal bill isn’t going anywhere, but it does show where Democrats would like to go, and the folks in New Jersey, with their new Democrat governor, are going to have a serious fight on their hands.

We’re all in favor of Pelosi pushing for votes on gun control. As we’ve often said, guns win, and we like having record votes. There is some valid concern that this president has demonstrated a willingness to “work with” the Democrats on a variety of issues, and his commitment to the Second Amendment has wobbled upon occasion. There are also a number of Republicans in both the House and Senate, who have proven to be unreliable on rights issues, and who are likely to break ranks with their party, providing cover for Democrats from conservative states who want to avoid going on record with an anti-rights vote. That kind of chicanery hurts the Republican brand, and makes it harder to determine which politicians truly support the right to arms, and which are merely serving as political weather vanes. Still, we strongly support the idea of record votes on rights issues whenever we can get them.

Right now though, while Republicans still control both the House and Senate, as well as the White House they could at least try to push the pro-rights agenda forward before the Democrats take over the House in January.

At the top of the GunVoter wishlist is the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, H.R.38, which was passed by the House a year ago and has been sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee ever since. The Firearms Coalition urged Senate Republicans to pass this bill out of the Judiciary Committee and bring it to a vote on the Senate floor prior to the November election, but our pleas fell on deaf ears, and no effort was made to bring the bill to a vote. The votes were there in the Judiciary Committee, as long as retiring Arizona Senator Jeff Flake didn’t flake out, but getting the votes to overcome a Democrat filibuster was doubtful. That wasn’t the point though. The idea was to force the hands of supposedly pro-rights senators like Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Tester (D-MT), both of whom managed to win reelection. A vote on national concealed carry would have put a number of Democrats in a tough spot, and could have provided the ammunition needed to build a more solid, true pro-rights majority in the Senate.

That bill is still sitting in the Judiciary Committee, and could still be used to force Democrats’ hands during the lame duck session. The SHARE Act, which includes both the Hearing Protection Act, and the Lawful Purpose Act, was passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee over a year ago, but has also been sitting dormant ever since. House leadership has thus far refused to bring the bill to a floor vote, resulting in more excuses for GunVoters to walk away, voting with upraised middle fingers rather than actively working to hold a pro-rights majority in the House.

In the past, we have seen Democrats aggressively press their agenda during lame duck sessions after losing their majority, but for some inexplicable reason, Republicans never seem inclined to exploit the opportunity.

We do expect to see Senate Republicans actively working to confirm judges during their remaining month and a half, which is generally a good thing, though their majority in the next Congress will allow those efforts to continue with little delay next year. The same can’t be said for pending pro-rights legislation. When this Congress adjourns, those bills expire, and they won’t be back again for at least two more years.

Talking a good pro-Second Amendment game while actually doing little to excite and engage GunVoters is a traditional Republican approach, but has never been a winning strategy. Calls and letters to House and Senate leadership, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee, might help to wake them up to the need to take some action on these bills.

It’s always good to know where our politicians really stand, and the only way to find that out is by getting them on the record with votes. You can reach members of Congress and their leadership by calling the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Will Kavanaugh Be Enough?

By Jeff Knox

The drawn out and contentious confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t work out quite the way the Democrats had planned. The 11^th hour accusation of sexual assault during high school was intended to derail the nomination in hopes that a new, Democrat majority in the Senate might be able to block all Trump judge and justice appointments for the rest of his term. They also hoped to reinvigorate their base in advance of the November elections, to help secure that Democrat majority, putting Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in control of the House and Senate. But the invigoration of the Democrat base was barely noticeable compared to the outrage the confirmation circus generated among Republicans, independents, and moderate Democrats toward the Democratic senate leadership and the party.

The “Blue Wave” of opposition to President Trump looked unstoppable late last year, and was expected to sweep Republicans out of power in Congress in November. But the wave hit a reef in December, in the form of the President’s tax bill. The Democrat advantage tumbled from double-digits, and has floundered ever since, swelling at times on the basis of some thoughtless tweet or comment from Trump, but receding again with each strong economic report or successful international negotiation, and never recapturing the broad support enjoyed before the tax bill. Even with the good economic news and the successes in foreign policy, by September, the “Blue Wave” was regaining strength, and President Trump’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was helping it grow.

Had Democrats stuck to conventional post-Bork tactics of trying to make the nominee look bad by asking him pointed questions they knew he wouldn’t answer, and expressing deep concerns about how such an “extremist” might rule on the bench, all the while maintaining the appearance of decency and decorum, they might have actually defeated the nomination. Even if they hadn’t, they would have almost certainly come out of the process with an energized base and a claim to the moral high ground.

Instead, Democrats went with nasty, smarmy, and whiny in the committee hearing, and then doubled-down with a low blow and faux outrage and indignation. The process was so ugly and so clearly a sham, that all but their most ardent supporters were appalled. So not only did they lose a critical seat on the Supreme Court, they woke up a whole bunch of Americans who hadn’t really been paying much attention. Polling during and after the Kavanaugh inquisition tracked the Democrat lead in House races as it toppled from 14 points to 7 points to a negative 1, putting the expected Democrat takeover of the House into question. On the Senate side, capturing a majority was never a likely option, but there was a real possibility, and had Republicans rammed through Kavanaugh’s confirmation – as many hoped they would do – Democrats might have successfully played that into a broader base and a better chance to hold and capture seats. Instead, the Republicans remained civil, considerate, and showed a commitment to fair-play, while the Democrats went full-crazy with torches and pitchforks. Now their chances of gaining seats is almost nil, and they will probably lose a few.

But will the Kavanaugh debacle be enough?

Many Americans got fired up about the way Democrats abused the process and personally attacked Brett Kavanaugh with nasty, unsubstantiated, and uncorroborated accusations, but the fact that Kavanaugh was eventually confirmed might take some of the wind out of those sails. The attention span of the average American voter seems to be pretty short, and many of them might see Kavanaugh’s confirmation as the conclusion of the matter, rather than carrying it with them into the voting booth. The core Democrat base is still fired up, still stinging with the loss on Kavanaugh, so they are still a formidable force. There are two big questions: First, will the more traditional Democrats, those who don’t support “democratic socialism” and “intersectionality,” choose to send a message to their party that the crazy has gone too far? Second, will traditional Republican “values-voters,” who never liked Donald Trump and cringe at the thought of supporting him in any way, decide that it’s time to get back into the game and put down the radicals’ power-grab.

For GunVoters, everything could be on the line over the next few elections. The current Democrat leadership has committed to anti-rights extremists and bet heavily on infringing on the right to keep and bear arms as a campaign point. That commitment has been repaid with tens of millions of dollars from self-righteous billionaires and their anti-rights foundations. Mike Bloomberg recently made a $20 million dollar donation to the Democrats’ Senate PAC, and has pledged to spend $80 million this year alone to elect anti-rights, Democrat politicians at all levels of government. This “investment” is augmented by California billionaire Tom Steyer, various George Soros front groups, and Gabby Giffords’ money machine.

Campaigning has become more negative and divisive than ever before, and that kind of money can buy a whole lot of negative campaign ads. Meanwhile, the NRA got over-extended in the 2016 election and has yet to fully recover, plus they are facing increased scrutiny over some of their fundraising and spending programs. Even so, as we’ve always said, the real power in the gun lobby doesn’t come from money, it comes from our people. GunVoters could make a significant impact in the coming election – if they’ll get off the couch and go to work for candidates. Republicans could help a lot by following through on their promises and bringing bills like the SHARE Act, National Concealed Carry, and the Hearing Protection Act to the floors of Congress for record votes.

Republican politicians need to hear from their pro-rights constituents. GunVoters need to get involved in campaigns and the candidates need to know who helped them. A couple of hours of volunteer work planting signs or sorting mailers not only helps keep an anti-rights candidate out of office, it will put some starch in the shorts of what might otherwise be a soft or marginally pro-rights candidate. Don’t look for the perfect candidate. They are scarce. Politics is about working with what you have. Make sure you get out to vote, and take someone with you. I’ll see you at the polls.

Act Fast to Have Choices

By Jeff Knox

(September 28, 2018) I screwed up, but immediate action on your part could rectify my error. My screw-up was failing to write this article two months ago – or at least two weeks ago – so now we’re almost out of time to make sure that Adam Kraut and Anthony Colandro are on the ballot for the NRA Board of Directors.

You probably know that I have endorsed Adam Kraut for the NRA Board for the past two years, and some might remember that I endorsed Anthony in an unsuccessful bid a few years ago. Both are outstanding guys who really could make a favorable impact on the NRA Board of Directors.

Adam Kraut is an attorney, working primarily in the area of firearm law, and hosts The Legal Brief, an online video series that’s part of The Gun Collective a firearms-oriented media outlet with programs on YouTube and elsewhere. Adam has come within just a few votes of winning a seat on the Board in both of the past two elections, and this year, I’m hoping to see him make the cut. If you download his petition, you’ll notice that my name is featured as his official sponsor this year. That might cost him a few votes, and will definitely earn him even more animosity from some of the Old Guard on the Board. Last year, long-time Board member and Past-President Marion Hammer sent out a nasty and misleading letter distorting my father’s legacy at NRA, and suggesting that Adam and I represent “the enemy within,” trying to somehow harm the NRA. I think she was just angry because Adam had called her out for failing to attend a single Board meeting in at least 3 years.

I’ve known Anthony Colandro for many years. He is the epitome of a brusk, straight-talking New Jersey native, and he’s been a staunch defender of the right to keep and bear arms for decades. He pulls no punches and calls things as he sees them. He owns a gun range and training company deep inside enemy territory, where he’s an NRA certified Master Training Counselor, radio host, and Executive Vice President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs.

The NRA is the single most important organization in the gun rights war, and every gun owner and lover of liberty should be a member. My regular readers know that I often object to some of the things that come out of the NRA headquarters, just as my father was often critical of the organization, while always fighting to correct its course, not sink the ship. I have continued that legacy strongly supporting the NRA, while diligently working to make it better.

Too many gun owners refuse to join the NRA because they either think the NRA is either too radical, or not radical enough. The fact is that the NRA can only be what the members demand it to be. If you’re not a member, then you have no voice in the organization. If you are a member, you have an obligation to participate and make your voice heard. Electing strong, fearless defenders of liberty to the NRA Board of Directors is the most effective tool the members have to steer the organization.

Only Life Members and Annual Members who have been members for at least 5 consecutive years, are eligible to vote in the regular Board of Directors elections, and only those Voting Members are eligible to sign candidate petitions to get good candidates’ names on the ballot. Two years ago the Board pushed through a series of changes to the bylaws, which make it much more difficult to qualify a candidate for the ballot. Each petition candidate must acquire over 650 valid signatures of Voting Members in order to get on the ballot, and that’s not an easy task.

That’s why I’m asking readers who are Voting Members of NRA to take immediate action to ensure that Adam Kraut and Anthony Colandro’s names appear on your 2019 ballot. The deadline for getting petitions turned in is fast approaching. Adam and Anthony need your petitions mailed to them this week to have any hope of having them count, so don’t delay. Download their petitions from the links here, or from their respective websites: http://www.adamkraut.com and https://gunforhire.com/colandro-for-nra, sign them following the instructions included with Adam’s petition, and mail them to them as quickly as you can – even if yours is the only signature on the petition.

Don’t delay. There are only a few days left to get signatures turned in, and it’s better to have your lone signature before the deadline, than to have yours and a dozen more after the deadline.

NRA members deserve a better, stronger, more principled NRA, but they’ll only get it if they are willing to work for it. If you’re a Voting Member of NRA, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to download both petitions, sign them and include your Membership Number, and mail them to Adam and Anthony right away.

Stay tuned for a full rundown of all of the candidates that will be on your ballot and my thoughts on them as soon as that information becomes available.

Together we can make the NRA the organization that it has the potential to be.

New Tube?

By Jeff Knox

(September 7, 2018) Anyone who watches videos on YouTube is well aware that the video hosting service, owned by Google, has been slowly choking off channels and content providers who don’t comport with the Google leadership’s leftist worldview. It started a few years ago when “traditional media” – particularly newspapers – began going after some of YouTube’s biggest stars by publicizing their incomes, and highlighting examples of them presenting off-color and potentially racist content, with major advertisers like Coca-Cola appearing as the content’s sponsor.

What this actually boiled down to was “traditional media” trying to recapture some of those advertising dollars by scaring the advertisers away from the new frontier of unregulated content.

It worked, to a degree. Major sponsors, who were actually sponsoring the platform, not specific content, backed away, costing Google hundreds of millions of dollars, just as the platform was moving into a position of profitability. Instead of standing by their policy of offering an open hosting service with few restrictions on content, and offering their advertisers ways to more selectively tailor their ad placement, Google blocked and “demonetized” wide swaths of channels that they deemed “inappropriate” for commercial sponsorship – including most channels with any sort of firearm-related content.

After months of wrangling and policy shifts, the YouTube universe began to settle in and normalize somewhat. Many channels that had been riding on the ragged edge of YouTube’s loose guidelines, like channels offering “health videos” of young women demonstrating yoga “au natural” and those presenting overtly racist content like neo-nazi channels, were either barred altogether, or were placed under tight restrictions that made them difficult to find or view, and kept them far away from any advertisers’ dollars or commercials. But other channels with content that most people would consider non-controversial, were also “demonetized,” moved out of the main viewing areas, and left with far fewer viewers and far fewer advertiser dollars, if any. These included gun channels, along with all sorts of channels that present “conservative” views.

Even channels that are funded by direct sponsorship have been hurt due to shifts in the way YouTube presents options to viewers. Originally, the platform would track a viewer’s channel preferences and at the end of each video, the system would offer up a dozen other videos that matched that viewer’s apparent interests. If you watched a lot of shooting or hunting videos, the system would suggest more shooting and hunting videos for you to look at, along with a few “trending” videos that the system determined were popular with other people with similar viewing preferences. If you watched conservative news channels like Bill Whittle and Ben Shapiro, the system would suggest other conservative news videos that might interest you, and if you subscribed to particular channels, those channels’ new offerings would always be at the top of your menu list. But as YouTube shifted their suggestion system, gun channels and conservative news channels became less and less likely to show up in a viewer’s suggestion list, resulting in fewer and fewer new viewers. And of course, fewer views means less money from advertisers, even if they are direct sponsors.

In recent months the restrictions and limitations have been escalating again. New restrictions on types of firearm-related content allowed on the platform have been implemented, barring any links to firearm or ammunition sales, forbidding any demonstrations of firearm manufacture, assembly, or modification, and labeling most firearm-related content as inappropriate for viewers under 18 years of age. They are also “cracking down” on “hate speech,” which can include anything from racist rants and Holocaust denial to scientific discussion of sex and gender, or Biblical discussion of homosexuality as a sin. Some, such as videos from PragerU.com, have been restricted on what appears to be purely political grounds. There also appears to be a new shift in the way the system makes viewing suggestions, feeding “conservative” viewers more “conservative” content, but only after they have demonstrated a strong leaning in that direction. This feeds an echo-chamber effect, providing “conservatives” with only “conservative” content, and presumably providing “liberals” with only “liberal” content, while continuing to suppress “conservative” content from the masses.

Various efforts have been put forward to provide a platform for “conservative” and firearm-related content, but most of these efforts are misguided, because they are designed to only reach audiences that specifically seek out that type of content. The magic and power of YouTube was that one interest could lead a person into new areas that they had never considered before. Watching a video on blacksmithing could trigger a suggestion of a video on engraving, which could lead to viewing a video on classic firearms, leading to a video of Jerry Miculek firing 12 shots from a 6-shot revolver in under 3 seconds (reload included), which might lead to a series of videos on IDPA and USPSA competition and a new firearm enthusiast is born. Those viewers might never bother to seek out a shooting channel, but when the shooting video is presented next to some other interest, they have the opportunity to explore that new idea. That’s why the rapid deterioration of YouTube is such a problem, and why single-focus alternatives are not a solution.

Instead of various marginalized groups trying to create narrowly focused platforms for their content, these groups should be teaming with other liberty-minded groups and individuals to create a truly open, lightly regulated, free speech platform where content creators can be judged by the public, not by the political whims of a few San Francisco billionaires.

Firearms groups and creators, conservative and libertarian groups and creators, gamers, wrench-benders, homesteaders, fabricators, free speech advocates, religious advocates, and others concerned with liberty, need to join together to build an open-source, video hosting platform that’s dedicated to freedom of speech. It would be a massive undertaking, but something needs to break the grip of Google and YouTube.

“Above the Law” Goes Beyond Stupid

By Jeff Knox

I just read one of the most idiotic rants I think I’ve ever encountered. It was written by a fellow named Elie Mystal, whose arrogance is only exceeded by his ignorance, at least where the constitution and gun laws are concerned.

The article was titled “The Rare Gun Regulation I Think Was Actually Stupid.”

Let’s begin by clarifying that he’s not lamenting a stupid regulation against rare guns, but rather declaring that, while he rarely comes across a gun regulation that he disagrees with, he recently happened upon one that he thought was actually stupid.

To make his point, after that brilliant headline, Mr. Mystal opens up with a broadside of stupid to set the tone for the piece.

“I support the government’s right to regulate firearms, since that right is enshrined in the Constitution, but this regulation failed to appreciate human weakness.”

Excuse me? The government’s right to regulate firearms is enshrined in the Constitution? Is that what they’re teaching at Harvard these days, that the Constitution enshrines the rights of the government?

I ask about Harvard because Mr. Mystal received both a degree in Government, and a Juris Doctorate from that prestigious institution. I’m sure Alan Dershowitz must be thrilled to have this guy representing his school. Perhaps he was out sick the day they went over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, or maybe the rest of us are just confused, and the reality is that when the Constitution says “the people,” that really means the government.

Stunningly, the article actually goes downhill from there. Who would have imagined that there was room to go down from such a low starting point? But Mr. Mystal managed to do it.

The ordinance he’s referencing in the title and opening paragraph was one issued by a town in North Carolina in advance of Hurricane Florence, which forbid the sale, purchase, or carry of a firearm during their declared state of emergency. While that is indeed a stupid regulation – and an illegal one at that – Mr. Mystal’s rationale for calling it stupid isn’t based on rational arguments such as the threats posed by looters and thugs during times of crisis, when there are no police to come to one’s aid. Nor was he concerned about the problem of leaving guns unattended in homes that were likely to be targets for those same looters and thugs. No, the reason Mr. Mystal thinks the ordinance is stupid, is that it was silly of the City Council to think that ignorant, knuckle-dragging gun owners, who can’t be convinced to divest themselves of their dangerous weapons during good times, are certainly not going to give them up during a crisis, when they are feeling threatened and vulnerable, so it was stupid of the Council to try.

Part of that rationale is very true; it is foolish to think that people who regularly go armed would forego doing so during a crisis, but his characterization of gun owners was pretty insulting, especially when wrapped in the incredible ignorance he displayed about guns and gun owners throughout the article. The whole piece can be summed up as follows:

Mystal knows nothing about guns, and probably doesn’t know anyone who even owns guns. He takes as gospel, everything ever put out by the Brady Bunch, Bloomberg, or any of the various “researchers” on their payrolls, which claim that guns do only harm, put their owners and their families at greater risk, and serve no useful or positive purpose in civilian hands. And he dismisses out of hand any research or opinion which differs from his own. According to Mr. Mystal, anyone who chooses to own – much less carry – a firearm is stupid. People who oppose gun laws are stupid and/or evil, and politicians who pass gun laws like the town in North Carolina are stupid for not recognizing how stupid gun owners really are and not understanding that passing such laws is futile in the face of such stupidity.

This Harvard-educated, New York City former attorney turned self-proclaimed “online provocateur,” thinks the Constitution protects the rights of the government, and “the people” are too stupid to make decisions for themselves. He celebrates his ignorance with a level of arrogance and self-importance that’s simply stunning, even for a Harvard-educated, New York City dweller.

But even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then, and this pompous ass offered up this one:

“We shouldn’t make laws and interpret the Constitution based on the unrealized fears of the dumbest and most resistant to facts among us.”

But of course, he is unable to see that he’s talking about himself with that statement. His hollow insults about the lowly, gun-loving trailer-trash of the hinterlands provides a strong argument against leaving such important matters in the hands of coastal elites like Mystal.

The Self-Defeating Republican Strategy

By Jeff Knox

(September 7, 2018) As we pass out of Primary Season here in Arizona, and enter General Election Season nationwide, I’m struck by the lack of any sort of cohesive election strategy on the part of the GOP. While Senate Republicans are focused on confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the House Republicans are milling about doing little beyond throwing rocks at each other and the President over accusations of misconduct on the part of a couple of their members, and a pair of unsourced, but sensational portraits of chaos in the West Wing.

Republicans keep following a non-strategy of just reacting to the latest media attacks, and their strategists appear to be as disdainful of their own base as the Democrat elites are. They show no signs of having a plan for winning in November, so here’s a suggestion for them. For years I have encouraged state grassroots groups to adopt a double-pronged legislative agenda. The first prong is their Action Agenda – the legislation they really want to get passed – while the second prong is their Political Agenda – legislation that might not be passable, but which will force legislators to take a stand prior to reelection season.

Congress should be taking a similar approach. The confirmation of Kavanaugh is pretty good election season fodder for Republicans, but it is also firing-up the Democrat base. Rather than dragging it out as they are doing now, the Republican leadership should dispense with the kabuki theater of drawn-out hearings, and simply move forward with a confirmation vote. No new information about Judge Kavanaugh or his positions will be revealed in these hearings, and the hearings are not going to change any minds or votes. The only purpose the hearings serve is a forum for showboating on both sides, and an opportunity for a lot of whining and outrageous accusations flowing from the left and their media allies. Senator Grassly should abbreviate the committee hearings, going through the proforma motions as quickly as possible and moving straight to a vote of the Judiciary Committee. Then Mitch McConnell should act similarly, moving the confirmation debate quickly and getting straight to a vote. We all know that this will be a straight party-line vote, and that it is not Democrats who will decide whether Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, but Republicans, specifically Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

The slim, one-seat majority Republicans hold in the Senate was, until last Monday, in reality a 49-49 split, since John McCain was still holding a seat, even though he hadn’t been present for a vote in months. That meant that one Republican defector would have been able to sink the Kavanaugh nomination. Collins and Murkowski want to keep their seats for a few more terms, and being the Republican who kept the Supreme Court in play for more anti-rights leftist abuse, would be a hard label to live down. Flake on the other hand is retiring from the Senate, and he’s demonstrated a nasty vindictive streak where President Trump is concerned, so there was some real worry that he might take his war with the president to a new low by voting against Kavanaugh, or simply not show up for the vote. Thankfully that shouldn’t matter now that Jon Kyl has been appointed to fill McCain’s seat. While Kyl falls far short of being a reliable conservative, he has been shepherding Kavanaugh around to Senate offices and is unlikely to undermine his own work.

So why are Republicans drawing out the confirmation process? The Democrats wrote the new rules, and Republicans should play be those rules. Drawing the process out does nothing to help Republican prospects in the midterms, but it is serving as a rallying point to activate the Democrat base. Instead Republicans should get the confirmation process done, and move on to an issue where there is strong bi-partisan support – among voters – and serious vulnerability among Democrat incumbents: Guns.

A dozen Senate Democrats are vulnerable in the coming midterms. At least 10 of those would be significantly damaged by a record vote against a popular gun bill. Voting for a gun bill would do no harm to the electoral prospects of any Republican senators, and would help most.

In the House, Republican prospects are not looking great. Many Republicans announced their retirements last year in anticipation of a wave of Democrats in response to the election of President Trump. That wave was growing to a tsunami late last year, but quickly lost momentum with passage of the president’s tax bill in December, and has been rising and falling like a weak tide ever since, mainly dictated by the president’s Twitter activity. Most Americans seem pleased with the direction Congress has taken over the past two years, and the condition of the country. Republicans should be in great shape, but President Trump seems determined to keep feeding fuel to the Democrat base.

Like the Senate, Republicans in the House would significantly benefit from public debate and action on firearm-related legislation. GunVoters have been seriously frustrated by Republicans’ failure to follow through on promises to pass pro-rights legislation. The National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act passed out of the House last December, but has been stalled in the Senate ever since. That bill is ripe for action in the Senate as soon as Justice Kavanaugh is confirmed. The other key bill that GunVoters have been waiting for action on in the House is the Hearing Protection Act. We thought we were going to see action on that last year, but it was successfully shot down by a crazed Bernie Sanders supporter who decided to take target practice at a Republican baseball practice.

Republicans in the House should immediately start pushing through the SHARE Act, which is an omnibus hunting, fishing, and land access bill that includes the Hearing Protection Act, along with several other much-needed firearm law reforms. The SHARE Act enjoys some bi-partisan support, and is an excellent vehicle for Republicans to regain support of GunVoters. Bringing the SHARE Act back into the spotlight would give House Republicans something positive to talk about, and passing the bill out of the House would give Senate Republicans some leverage for offering Democrats a no-win choice of voting on either the National Carry bill or the SHARE Act, forcing them to either allow one of the bills to go to a vote, or take a hard stand to block them from the floor. Either choice hurts them.

As I have said repeatedly in these pages, Guns Win, and it’s high time that Republican “leadership” figured that out.

Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance
by Stephen Halbrook

Book Review
By Chris Knox

No discussion of gun control goes for very long before someone mentions Nazis. Yet surprisingly little historical research has delved into what the Nazis actually did, both in prewar Germany, and in the countries that fell before the invading Nazi armies. With his recently-released Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France and its 2014 predecessor, Gun Control in the Third Reich. Dr. Stephen Halbrook has started mining a long-ignored vein in the history of World War II.

That historians have so carefully avoided the topic for so long is remarkable in itself. Dr. Halbrook avoids accusations, but he succeeds in gently raising the question of why the topic has been ignored. It just might be that academic backers of “commonsense” restrictions on guns find it uncomfortable to see policies they favor being modeled by the archetype of totalitarian government. Whatever the reason, the topic has gone virtually unstudied for the past seven decades. Halbrook’s work is a good start on remedying that lack of scholarship.

Working from a trove of historical source documents in French and German, and from questionnaires he sent to veterans of the French Resistance, Dr. Halbrook has produced a detailed and meticulously researched picture of how the invading Nazis viewed arms in the hands of ordinary Frenchmen, and the steps they undertook to eradicate what they considered a menace to the success of their occupation.

Despite academia choosing to avoid the topic, the Nazi policies made an impression on WWII GIs and on the folks back home. The idea of “gun control” was foreign to most American ground-pounders, but they saw and heard of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against ordinary people for the crime of keeping a gun handy – proving to those unsophisticated “grunts” just how badly those guns were needed. As the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled across the low countries into France, they followed the same procedure in each town they entered. Upon subduing a town, soldiers immediately put up posters in the local language ordering that all guns be turned in, usually including threats of execution. Where registration records were available, the Nazis referred to the records and paid visits to the addresses they found there.

It was these oft-repeated, but rarely verified stories that made an impression on the American GIs, and that led to gun registration being political poison through the postwar years. One such story, this one set not in France, but in Belgium, was related by a refugee-turned-soldier, to my late father, Neal Knox. For years Dad told the story of The Belgian Corporal, usually after dinner with friends when someone asked him how he got into the fight for the Second Amendment. Dad committed the story to print only once or twice, partly because he could not substantiate the tale, and because he did not want the story to become trite.

What is undeniable is the impact that the story had on Dad and on our family. What is now also undeniable is the outline of that story, where a registered gun that could not be found led to an entire family being machine-gunned in the town square, was repeated not only in Belgium, but in France, the Netherlands, and without any doubt, in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and elsewhere.

The French gun registration law was moved into place with the best of intentions, as all such laws are. A global depression was in full swing in 1935, and crime was high – a handy excuse for disarming the populace. The real reason however, was that revolution was in the air, and fights between armed extremists were all too common. The French government saw it prudent to register the guns in order to confiscate them if need be. The politician who pushed the French registration law was none other than Pierre Laval, who would later lead the Vichy puppet regime, and would eventually be shot as a collaborator. The German Wehrmacht would find those registration records quite handy as they moved in to administer their new puppet state.

Halbrook’s book details the almost comical swings between orders to turn in guns or be shot followed by amnesties to turn in guns with no questions, followed again by death threats against those who failed to report those who had guns, followed by more amnesties. I say “almost comical” because the matter was serious business. Thousands lost their lives. Trees that served as stakes where condemned gun owners were tied up and shot fell over, cut down by the daily barrages of the firing squads. Yet the French people, especially those in rural areas, defied the orders hiding their own guns or passing them on to the Resistance.

The Nazis lack of success in making France a “gun-free zone” might provide a lesson for current politicians. A good portion of Frenchmen did not give up their guns in the face of firing squads. The low rates of compliance with registration laws in California, New York, and Connecticut really should not be all that surprising.

Stephen Halbrook has again written an important book, one that deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone who holds the Second Amendment dear. The history of the Nazis and their gun control should not be buried in obscure footnotes. It should be readily available and studied for the important lessons that can be learned and applied today. Halbrook’s books are a great start.

“Murder Made Me Famous”
Media feeding the demons.

By Jeff Knox

Sitting in a fast food joint at DFW Airport, eating a breakfast bowl, while waiting for my ride, I happened to glance up at the TV. Of course it was playing CNN, and I noticed a series of almost iconic photographs flashing across the screen. Not only did I recognize most of them, I could name them, and describe their crimes. They were all famous murderers, and what I was watching was a promo for a cable series called “Murder Made Me Famous.”

Here’s the description of the series from the channel’s website:

“Murder Made Me Famous is a fact-based crime documentary series that examines killers who gained public notoriety when their crimes generated intense media coverage and made the killers household names. The unnerving psychology behind murder has long been source material for television, books and movies but why do certain killers capture the attention of millions?”

If it bleeds it leads, says the old saw about news coverage, and unfortunately, bloody massacres don’t only lead in newspapers and on TV, they also lead in ratings. People are sucked into the horror and it becomes a symbiotic feeding cycle. The attention given to murderous degenerates is so pervasive that it’s virtually impossible to get away from it. Saturation coverage, with its speculation and salacious details being rehashed every 15 minutes for weeks after an event, then regularly dredged back up for another “in-depth” look every few years for decades, makes the murderers some of the most recognizable and well–known people in the world. And that fame and notoriety is known to be a major motivating factor, and inspiration to others to seek similar fame by committing heinous crimes of their own.

Polls say that fame and celebrity have replaced wealth, power, athletic achievement, even happiness, as the most desired life-goal of the post-Baby Boom generations. Simply “being famous” is now considered a great achievement, even if the fame is based on some negative, embarrassing, or criminal event.

Media movers and shakers know all of this. They know that there is a direct correlation between the amount of coverage they give to a murderer, and the likelihood of copycats. When they were presented with a similar correlation several years ago, regarding suicides, media leaders came together and developed reporting guidelines designed to minimize the occurrence of “contagious suicide.” But the temptation – of money, ratings, and political gain – is too great, and few reporters or outlets have done anything to even attempt to address the issue of “Rampage Killer Contagion.”

All of the major news outlets are guilty of exploiting murder for ratings. They cross well beyond careless and callous, and demonstrate almost a gleeful indifference to the role they play in promoting these heinous acts, even as they point accusing fingers at innocent gun owners, gun makers, and the NRA.

Changing the way the majority of media report on suicides, has resulted in less “suicide contagion,” saving countless lives and untold tears. Their refusal to even seriously discuss adoption of similar rules for their reporting on mass murder events, is dispicable.

At its core, a mass shooting is almost always an elaborate suicide. Few perpetrators have any exit plan other than a hail of bullets. Evidence shows that some killers are literally attempting to run up a gruesome “score” to increase their notoriety by exceeding the carnage – and news coverage – of some previous murderer. This has prompted an array of psychologists, psychiatrists, social scientists, and, to their credit, a few members of the media, to call on the Society of Professional Journalists, and all media to adopt something like the suicide reporting guidelines when reporting on mass-murderers. So far these calls have fallen on deaf ears, and every time there is a mass-killing that receives heavy press coverage, we know that there will be copycats striking within days or weeks.

It is past time for mass media to stop exploiting murder for ratings. It is time for them to stop repeatedly naming suspected murderers and showing their photos – over and over and over again. Stop speculating on motives, assigning rankings, comparing one atrocity to another, and publishing lunatic manifestos. It’s time for them to adopt guidelines such as those repeatedly submitted to the Society of Professional Journalists in a petition called the “Don’t Inspire Evil” initiative, or the several other, heavily researched, scientifically backed proposals that have been put forward in recent years.

Adopting a few reasonable, sensible, voluntary changes in the way the media reports on murders would unquestionably save lives without interfering with anyone’s rights. But the media and politicians would rather blame gun owners, and demand we surrender our rights to schemes that have never worked, and have historically failed to protect anyone. That’s hypocritical and immoral.

Unfortunately, change is unlikely so long as the media can use sensational coverage to get eyeballs for their advertisers. Perhaps it is the advertisers that need to be persuaded.

By Jeff Knox

(June 6, 2018) Why are NRA, President Trump, Republican members of Congress, and commentators like Ben Shapiro advocating in favor of so-called Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or ERPO’s? Continue reading No to ERPO →