{What’s easier… confiscating over 300 million firearms from unwilling USA citizens or placing a few armed guards in our nation’s schools? I’ll give you a minute or two to think about it. As a lifetime member of the NRA, I find the answer quite obvious. – LS}
If we step aside from our cynicism at a time like this, we can probably assume that everyone on the planet wants to see the end of mass shootings. The few that don’t are generally the sick bastards who are planning the next ones. While there are plenty of opportunists who are seizing the moment following such horrific events, I’d like to believe that even they would prefer to see the end of such attacks.
Many people have pointed to Israel as proof of how gun control should be. The Jewish state, that is otherwise an anathema to the left, has some pretty strict gun laws, making it a role model for us to consider, some argue.
Gun rights advocates contend that the way to stop mass shootings is by ensuring that there are always well-armed citizens present who can neutralize the shooter. As NRA chairman Wayne Lapierre always says, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. A bedrock of the NRA’s philosophy is that criminals will always acquire guns illegally, and draconian gun laws only render law-abiding citizens defenseless.
Enter Israel: When the knife intifada erupted in September 2015, the Israeli government’s response was to ease the process for the civilian populace to obtain weapons. After a particularly bloody Jerusalem shooting attack that killed four, then-Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan drastically changed the gun laws in order to significantly raise the number of armed civilians on the streets. Instantly, graduates of Special Forces units and IDF officers with the rank of Lieutenant and above were permitted to purchase guns at their will, security guards were allowed to bring their guns home after work, and the minimum age for a license was reduced from 21 to 18.
Erdan explained that “civilians well trained in the use of weapons provide reinforcement in the struggle against terrorism”, while Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat called for every resident to carry a gun, and was even photographed traveling the city carrying a Glock 23.
In addition, the overwhelming majority of terror attacks in Israel are stopped by armed civilians, not law enforcement. For example, the terrorists in the 2016 Sarona market attack were stopped by armed passersby. A pistol-carrying tour guide put an end to the 2017 ramming attack in Arnona that left four soldiers dead.
In Israeli eyes, guns are a valuable deterrent against terrorism. In fact, terrorists have told the Shin Bet internal security service that they often target haredi Jews due to the high likelihood that they are unarmed.
Gun control supporters would answer that the mandatory military service that every Israeli undergoes justifies the trust Israel has of its citizens. However, this argument doesn’t hold water. The vast majority of IDF soldiers aren’t combat soldiers and are certified as 02 riflemen. To be 02 requires one to shoot between 40 and 70 bullets. The pistol course needed to obtain a license takes less than four hours. It is a far cry from the highly trained population that the Left imagines.
In other words, more guns meant fewer attacks.
This isn’t rocket science. If a would-be attacker is planning something, the last thing he or she really wants is to get there and find themselves outgunned. That’s a possibility everywhere except gun free zones, which is why more than 90 percent of all mass shootings take place in gun free zones.
Proof of that can come from the most recent attack we know of that wasn’t necessarily a gun free zone: Las Vegas. In that shooting, the killer created a plan where he would negate any number of armed citizen due to distance. He didn’t want to get shot dead early in his rampage, so he planned accordingly.
Most shooters don’t get that kind of opportunity. They have to operate differently because they lack the Las Vegas killer’s resources. So, they go for gun free zones.
Put more guns in more people’s hands and see the difference.
(Suppose there had been no good guy with a gun. If someone had had the ability and presence of mind to call the police, how many more innocents would have been murdered before they arrived? — DM)
After this latest massacre, the discussion will inevitably turn to gun control. But it isn’t guns that need controlling. People either control their worst selves. Or they don’t. The First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs shootings showed us that in the brutal collision between two men.
Some men shoot the innocent. Others risk their lives to stop them.
We often remember killers. But we take much less time to remember those who take a stand against them.
Daniel Lewin, a tech genius, was the first person to die on September 11 after he confronted the hijackers. Earlier this year, Robert Engle, a church usher, tackled a Sudanese church bodybuilder who had opened fire in a Nashville church. Then he got his own gun and held the killer at gunpoint.
There are heroes all around us. And when they are armed, they can truly make a difference.
************************************
In moments of terror, the killer in black mowed down 26 victims in and near the small white church off Old Highway 87. The victims behind the church’s red door were as young as 5 years old.
And then the killing at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs stopped.
A neighbor had found his own rifle and opened fire on the killer. Devin Kelley, the 26-year-old man identified as the gunman, dropped his weapon and fled. And at least one local resident, if not more, followed in pursuit. Kelley was later found dead with his massacre cut short by a local hero.
Evil knows no geography. A mass murderer can take over two dozen lives in fifteen seconds. The worst humanity is capable of can appear in a tiny town of a few hundred. And another man can save a dozen more lives in even less time. And the best humanity is capable of can also come to life in that tiny town.
Sutherland Springs, a town hastily named when the post office came calling, is a reminder that the great dramas of human life don’t just happen in big cities where millions of people swarm the streets. They can happen in the smallest and the most overlooked places in the heat of a lazy Sunday morning.
History appeared to have passed Sutherland Springs by since its days as a resort town. But there is no place so forgotten that it cannot serve as the stage for a confrontation between good and evil.
Devin Kelley, the monster in black who came through that red door, had been court martialed by the Air Force for domestic violence. The man who had abused his wife and child thought he would show the world how tough he was by gunning down unarmed women and children. But once a few shots were fired in his direction, Kelley turned and ran. Mass shooters aren’t courageous, they’re cowards.
There is a reason that they choose targets that they expect will be unarmed and unable to fight back. Devin Kelley had spent a little time in the Air Force. And had then been locked away for a year for attacking his family. At First Baptist, Kelley thought he had his perfect target. He murdered children and the elderly. But when the gun swung his way, he fled and didn’t stop until he could go no more.
After this latest massacre, the discussion will inevitably turn to gun control. But it isn’t guns that need controlling. People either control their worst selves. Or they don’t. The First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs shootings showed us that in the brutal collision between two men.
Some men shoot the innocent. Others risk their lives to stop them.
President Trump called the murders an “act of evil”. Acts of evil are all around us. As are acts of goodness.
After the shooting, Obama took a break from pushing ObamaCare to tweet, “May God also grant all of us the wisdom to ask what concrete steps we can take to reduce the violence and weaponry in our midst.” His prayer was that whatever higher power he believes in convince us to accept his agenda.
Obama had directed “weaponry” to everyone from Mexican cartels to Muslim Brotherhood terrorists. But in his mind, violence is inextricably linked to weaponry. And yet both Kelley and the man who stopped him had wielded weapons. It wasn’t the outward appearance of the weapons that distinguished them. It didn’t matter whether we called one of those weapons an ‘assault rifle’.
What truly mattered were the characters of the two men wielding the weapons.
The massacre at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and how it ended remind us that the stakes may be different, but that the choices are still the same, whether it’s in the white clapboard church of a town of a few hundred or among the granite palaces of Washington D.C.
No government solution would have stopped a spree killer in a town of a few hundred. Those who confronted Kelley understood that the solution lay not with some faceless bureaucracy, but with themselves. The sizes of big cities can cloud this simple truth while small towns reveal it in its starkest simplicity. When bad things happen, either our neighbors step up and stand by us. Or they don’t.
Government solutions poison us with the moral laziness that left Kitty Genovese to die slowly and painfully in the shadow of a New York City building. Kitty’s killer told police that he targeted women because “they were easier and didn’t fight back”. That was probably how Kelley also thought.
But none of her neighbors fought back either. In Sutherland Springs, they fought back.
In the days to come, we will doubtless learn of other acts of heroism that took place that Sunday. And even as we contemplate the bloody scene past First Baptist’s red door, we can take comfort from knowing that those scenes of heroism are not unusual at mass shootings. When evil strikes, there are those who try to confront the killer or guide the victims to safety. Sometimes their actions are futile, but their heroism is not. Doing the right thing is never futile. As evil inspires evil, heroism inspires heroism.
Mass murderers study each other’s crimes. We know that some of the mass shooters of the last decade wanted to improve on each other’s tolls. Even now there is a future killer somewhere studying the Vegas shootings and wondering how he can improve on them. But there are also future heroes.
Death is both terrible and inevitable. We all die. It is how we live our lives that truly matters.
We often remember killers. But we take much less time to remember those who take a stand against them.
Daniel Lewin, a tech genius, was the first person to die on September 11 after he confronted the hijackers. Earlier this year, Robert Engle, a church usher, tackled a Sudanese church bodybuilder who had opened fire in a Nashville church. Then he got his own gun and held the killer at gunpoint.
There are heroes all around us. And when they are armed, they can truly make a difference.
(Here is a clip from an appearance by Sharyl Attkisson before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January of 2015. She mentions Fast and Furious briefly, but devotes most of her time to the Obama administration’s apparent contempt for any media which had the audacity to report truthfully on its misdeeds.
A comparative analysis of President Obama’s and President Trump’s relationships with the press would be interesting.– DM)
Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz subpoenaed two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to appear before his committee in connection with the Obama Administration’s gun-running program, Fast and Furious. Firearms from the former president’s scheme were allegedly involved in the 2011 murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico.
ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata
Chaffetz, who serves as chairman of the House Oversight Committee issued the subpoenas after the two ATF agents failed to appear voluntarily before the committee.
“I’m tired of hearing from just [Justice Department] management, I want to hear from the people that actually are on the front lines doing this,” Chaffetz told Fox News.
Chaffetz wants to hear directly from ATF Agent William Temple, special agent in charge of the Dallas Field Division, and Associate Director Ronald Turk. The hearing marks the first effort by Congress to re-open the investigation into President Obama’s Fast and Furious gun trafficking scheme since he left office in January. ICE Agent Zapata was killed by one of the guns involved in this program, and Special Agent Victor Avila was injured during the attack in Mexico.
Following the attack on the two ICE agents, Breitbart News reported:
Agent Zapata’s partner Victor Avila spoke out about the attack that left Agent Zapata dead and him wounded. His twin sister Magdalena Avila-Villalobos spoke for him in the Univision special on Fast and Furious. Avila is so scared and hurt by the attack he did not speak out until he knew he was in a secure location.
No one knows for sure why Agent Zapata and Agent Avila, assigned to the US Embassy, were asked to travel on road 57, a road controlled by the Zeta Cartel and extremely dangerous. They didn’t even know why they were given the mission to retrieve electronic surveillance equipment. The urgency made it even more suspicious.
Agent Zapata and Agent Avila met with American consulate agents in Monterrey and received 14 boxes of equipment. They did stop for something to eat on road 57 before heading back to Mexico City. About a half hour after leaving the restaurant they noticed two cars closely following them. Within seconds the vehicles surrounded them and 14 heavily armed men formed a circle around their car.
Unfortunately, Agent Zapata put the car in park, which forced the doors to automatically open. Agent Avila said they thought their diplomatic plates would protect them and the screamed they were American agents. The men didn’t care and demanded them to exit the vehicle.
The agents refused to leave their vehicle. They frantically tried to relock the doors, but instead Agent Avila accidentally lowered his window. A rifle and handgun came in through the small opening and the man opened fire. Agent Avila pressed the emergency satellite button, but it did not work. He also tried to place an emergency call to the embassy, the Mexican capital, and the First Post of the Regional Security Command. They told Avila a Mexican Federal Police helicopter would be there in 40 minutes.
90 bullets were fired. Five hit Agent Zapata and three hit Agent Avila in his right leg. Agent Zapata turned to Agent Avila and said, “I am going to die.” Agent Avila responded, “No, you are not going to die. Be strong, help is on the way, you are not going to die.
While in the rescue helicopter Agent Avila was informed Agent Zapata did, in fact, die.
On Thursday, the two ATF officials failed to appear before the committee looking into the assault on the agents. ATF Acting Director Thomas Brandon, an Obama Administration holdover appointed in 2015, claims he did not order the two ATF officials to skip the hearing Fox News reported. However, he said he agreed with their decision to bypass the Oversight Committee’s hearing.
The failure of the two ATF officials to voluntarily appear before Congress sparked the issuance of a subpoena and sharp rebukes from both sides of the aisle.
“That puts us in a kind of awkward position. We got the boss, ‘OK guys, you don’t have to show up.’ And that sends a hell of a message. That’s a problem,” Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the committee, said.
Chaffetz complained that the ATF “continues to insist” that his committee should not speak directly with the two officials.
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas John Craft also failed to appear. Chaffetz said his committee issued the invitation to Craft late and he would not be issuing a subpoena for him at this time.
Fox News reported on an ATF Inspector General report that was completed in 2012 but not released until March 1, 2016. Fox reported:
The IG said the ATF were aware in 2010 that Osorio and his brother might be trafficking firearms to Mexico, but they did not follow up or further investigate until after Zapata’s death.
Otilio Osorio and Riendfliesh were arrested in late February 2011 after the ATF confirmed weapons used in Zapata’s murder had been purchased by them.
The report faulted ATF for its handling of the case, saying there was “probable cause” to arrest Osorio and his brother “after ATF witnessed the Osorios complete a transfer of 40 firearms on November 9, 2010.”
The IG said: “Overall, we found numerous problems with ATF’s assimilation of information concerning [the suspects] … and the timeliness of ATF’s response to mounting evidence that they were committing firearms offenses.”
The report states that two weapons used in the murder of Agent Zapata and wounding of Agent Avila traced back to a Dallas-area gun show purchase by Otilio Osorio, and a purchase by Robert Riendfliesh at a gun store in Beaumont, Texas. The report continues, stating the ATF suspected the two men were trafficking firearms to Mexico but failed to further investigate the purchases until after the murder of Agent Zapata. ATF agents eventually arrested the two men in connection with the purchases.
Despite the length of time since the incident, the creation of the report, and its issuance, ATF Inspector General told Chaffetz he was not prepared for the hearing. “That’s a bunch of crap,” Chaffetz snapped at the ATF official. Chaffetz responded that he received a draft of the report in December.
Murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
The murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010 is also connected to the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme. Two guns involved in Fast and Furious were found at the scene of his murder. Terry and other members of his elite Border Patrol BORSTAR team engaged a group of Mexican bandits. The bandits opened fire. Terry was shot in the back and died before reaching the hospital.
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
The Terry family met with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump several times during the campaign. In an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas, the Terry family expressed hope that President Trump would get to the answers their family has been searching for over the past six years.
“I want people to grow a conscious and come clean as to what transpired, what was covered up and what the hell were they thinking,” Terry’s sister, Kelly Terry-Willis told Breitbart Texas.
She said she had heard many promises by many people. “If Mr. Trump can get those skeletons out and expose the truth then my family can finally get closure and justice for Brian,” Kelly explained. “I think there are a lot of people scared that just might happen. It may take time, and we will be patient, but the truth always reveals itself. I hope Trump can make that happen.”
On Friday, Terry’s brother, Kent Terry, spoke out about the new hearing and the subpoena issued to the two ATF officials.
“We have the House, Senate, and the White House now,” Kent Terry said. “There should be absolutely no reason we should fail to get the answers and accountability for the deaths of Agent Zapata and my brother. Their mothers have been put through Hell since these murders occurred. They deserve to know why their sons, who served every day, were killed by criminals armed by our government.”
“Enough time has gone by,” an exasperated Kent Terry explained. “I respect their hands were tied with the Obama Administration’s executive privilege taken on the Fast and Furious documents. But why hasn’t the Oversight Committee gone after the ATF agent who no longer works there? Why hasn’t the committee asked why who has been fired in connection with the program?”
The full report on the hearing held by the committee on March 9 is available on the Oversight Committee’s website. The committee is expected to hear from the two ATF officials under subpoena later this month.
The Washington Post, as one would expect from a key outpost of the establishment propaganda media, is appalled: “Never mind that there are fewer than 4,000 Muslims in this country of 10 million people — gun purchases spiked. One shop owner in East Bohemia, a region in the northern center of the Czech Republic, told a local paper that people were scared of a ‘wave of Islamists.’”
Only 4,000 Muslims! Such a small number couldn’t possibly mount a jihad terror attack, now, could they?
This is a common sense measure against a rising threat. The threat is rising because of Europe’s suicidal immigration policies. If Europeans don’t start defending themselves soon, it’s only going to get worse.
“Czech government tells its citizens how to fight terrorists: Shoot them yourselves,” by Amanda Erickson, Washington Post, January 6, 2017:
A couple of months ago, Czech President Milos Zeman made an unusual request: He urged citizens to arm themselves against a possible “super-Holocaust” carried out by Muslim terrorists.
Never mind that there are fewer than 4,000 Muslims in this country of 10 million people — gun purchases spiked. One shop owner in East Bohemia, a region in the northern center of the Czech Republic, told a local paper that people were scared of a “wave of Islamists.”
Now the country’s interior ministry is pushing a constitutional change that would let citizens use guns against terrorists. Proponents say this could save lives if an attack occurs and police are delayed or unable to make their way to the scene. To become law, Parliament must approve the proposal; they’ll vote in the coming months.
The Czech Republic already has some of the most lenient gun policies in Europe. It’s home to about 800,000 registered firearms and 300,000 people with gun licenses. Obtaining a weapon is relatively easy: Residents must be 21, pass a gun knowledge check and have no criminal record. By law, Czechs can use their weapons to protect their property or when in danger, although they need to prove they faced a real threat.
This puts the country at odds with much of Europe, which has long supported much more stringent gun-control measures. In the wake of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, France pushed the European Union to enact even tougher policies. The European Commission’s initial proposal called for a complete ban on the sale of weapons like Kalashnikovs or AR-15s that are intended primarily for military use. Ammunition magazines would be limited to 20 rounds or less.
The Czech Republic came out hard against the directive. Officials warned — somewhat ominously — that the measure would limit the country’s ability to build “an internal security system” and make it nearly impossible to train army reservists. And a total ban on military-style rifles that can fire large numbers of rounds would make illegal thousands of weapons already owned by Czech citizens, potentially creating a black market for terrorists to exploit. Finland and Germany offered their own reservations; Europe’s pro-gun groups also mobilized against the bill with the support of politicians on the extreme right….
With his initiative for tighter gun laws, to prevent weapons getting into “the wrong hands,” Justice Minister Maas does not mean to target the Islamists who pose an existential threat to Germany, but an obscure German group called the “Reichsbürger.”
As the German newspaper Bild describes the law proposed by Maas, “a 13-year-old child bride would have to testify against her husband, saying that her well-being as a child is under threat. If neither the child nor the Child Welfare Service lodges a complaint, for all practical purposes the marriage would be declared legitimate.” This law clearly does not take into account the possibility of private coercion against a child, let alone the blinding likelihood of outright threats.
Justice Minister Maas evidently cares more about “gender image” than he cares about truly oppressed women and vulnerable children. In a recently drafted new law by his ministry, Mass refused to ban child marriage.
With both France and Germany going to polls next year, there is the possibility of a democratic, peaceful “European Spring.”
In her first message to President-elect Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel lectured him on gender, racial and religious equality. As the New York Times put it, Merkel “named a price” for Germany’s cooperation with the Trump-led administration, namely the “respect for human dignity and for minorities from a man who has mocked both.”
If this was anything more than political posturing, and Chancellor Merkel truly cared about “human dignity” or the rights of those most vulnerable, she might have started closer at home.
After a year-long investigation into the mass-sexual attacks in Cologne, where an estimated 2,000 migrant men — mostly from Arab and Muslim countries — molested at least 1200 women, almost all the men have managed to walk free.
Last week, the Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ralf Jäger, confirmed this outcome when he said that “most of the cases [of rape and sexual assault in Cologne] will remain unsolved.” Similar coordinated sexual assaults by migrants also took place in other German cities, including Hamburg, where over 500 such cases were reported. They are expected to remain “unsolved” too.
Merkel, who lectured Trump on gender, did not even bother to visit the women who were raped and assaulted in Cologne or other German cities — even though these women were victims of her own failed open-border policy.
As New Year’s Eve approaches again, Merkel’s “Multikulti” paradise looks more and more like a police state. According to leaked, confidential police reports published by Germany’s Expressnewspaper, Cologne will be turned into a fortified city to avoid a repeat of last year’s mass sexual assaults. Security forces will monitor the streets with helicopters, surveillance cameras, observation posts and mounted units. The city of Hamburg has also reportedly taken similar steps.
While the Merkel government arms the police, efforts are underway to tighten gun laws for the citizenry. As the German state-run broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported on November 28: “Justice Minister Heiko Maas called for tighter weapons laws to prevent guns from falling in to the wrong hands.” With this latest initiative, Minister Maas does not mean to target the Islamists who pose an existential threat to Germany and the rest of the Western World, but an obscure German group called the “Reichsbürger.”
The Justice Minister apparently shares Merkel’s skewed worldview. After the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Germany, Maas, to “cure” the country’s rape epidemic, proposed a ban on “sexist advertising.” In April, Deutsche Welle reported:
The aim of the proposal – which is reportedly in response to the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve – is to create a “modern gender image” in Germany… In future, posters or ads which “reduce women or men to sexual objects” could be banned. In the case of dispute, a court would have to decide.
Justice Minister Maas evidently cares more about “gender image” than he cares about truly oppressed women and vulnerable children. In a recently drafted new law by his ministry, Mass refused to ban child marriage. Official German statistics estimate the number of married children in Germany at 1,475, of whom 361 are under the age of 14 — a rising trend thanks to uncontrolled migration from Muslim countries.
As the German newspaper Bild describes the law proposed by Maas:
“a 13-year-old child bride would have to testify against her husband, saying that her well-being as a child is under threat. If neither the child nor the Child Welfare Service lodges a complaint, for all practical purposes the marriage would be declared legitimate.”
This law clearly does not take into account the possibility of private coercion against a child, let alone the blinding likelihood of outright threats.
In Merkel’s Germany, the rights of an able-bodied migrant man trump the rights of a sexually assaulted woman and subdued child.
Following the electoral victory of Donald Trump, liberals all over are pinning all their hopes on Merkel. The “orphaned” liberals, in essence actually authoritarian, are probably looking for a new leader behind whom to rally. Many in the mainstream in the West are already calling the German Chancellor the “Leader of the Free World.” Following Clinton’s loss, the U.S. online magazine Politicodescribed Merkel in almost messianic terms as “Global Savior.”
As Merkel seeks re-election to a fourth term in the autumn of 2017, she is counting on extremely favourable media coverage and glowing celebrity endorsements to enable her to win again.
(Image source: Tobias Koch/Wikimedia Commons)
After Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid went south, President Barack Obama flew to Germany to endorse Merkel’s re-election bid. After Britain’s Brexit vote and Trump’s White House win, the liberal establishment and its rank and file in the mainstream media seem frantic to keep Merkel in power. Merkel’s defeat at the hands of a resurgent nationalist party such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) would strike their “globalist project” right at the heart of Europe.
Next year’s German elections will be first and foremost a referendum on Merkel’s open-border policy. It was her suspension of border controls — or the Dublin Protocol — in September 2015 that opened the floodgates for Arab and Muslim mass-migration in the first place.
If Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) emerge as the largest party and she manages to head the next ruling coalition, it will be sold by the media and the elites as a vindication of her “Refugees Welcome” policy.
An upset defeat for Merkel, however, could spell doom not only for her policy of mass-migration but for the entire Brussels-based “European project” — a German “Brexit” (“Dexit”?).
With both France and Germany going to the polls next year, there is the possibility of a democratic, peaceful “European Spring.”
On August 9 the Hillary Clinton campaign spun Donald Trump’s Second Amendment comments as a threat and Clinton surrogates quickly pounced, calling for a Secret Service investigation.
Trump was speaking in Wilmington, North Carolina.
He said, “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment.” He added, “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook misinterpreted Trump’s statement and responded, saying, “This is simple–What Trump is saying is dangerous. A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”
Mook’s response is intended to take away from Trump’s main point–that Clinton wants to win the White House so she can fill Supreme Court vacancies with people who will help her “abolish the Second Amendment.” Mook’s response is basically a bait and switch–don’t worry about Clinton and the Supreme Court, worry about Trump suggesting violence.
Two things MUST be addressed here:
First, in the short of excerpt of the Wilmington speech–which the Clinton campaign isolated and pounced upon–Trump did not suggest violence. Rather, he spoke in a way that reveals he recognizes the role an armed citizenry plays as a check on tyranny. This is James Madison 101. In Federalist 46, Madison observed that Americans are exceptional because armed and the benefit of being armed is the ability to repel tyranny. Repelling a tyranny is a defensive action, not an offensive one. In this sense, Trump’s words–based on Lockean resistance–pales in comparison to the talk of political violence we heard in 2008 when Obama said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
Secondly, examining Trump’s statement in light of the full text, rather than the isolated excerpt, shows that his concern is with the danger gun rights and gun rights supporters will face if Clinton gets to pick Antonin Scalia’s replacement. The full text follows:
Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But — but I’ll tell you what. That will be a horrible day. If Hillary gets to put her judges — right now, we’re tied. You see what’s going on.
You see what’s going on? We [are] tied because Scalia – this was not suppose to happen. Justice Scalia was going to be around for ten more years at least and this is what happens. That was a horrible thing.
So now look at it. So Hillary essentially wants to abolish the Second Amendment. Now, speaking to the NRA folks – who are great…and I’ll tell you, they endorsed me.
They endorsed me very early. My son’s a member. I’m a member.
…We can add I think the National Rifle Association, we can add the Second Amendment to the Justices – they almost go – in a certain way, hand in hand. Now the Justices are going to do things that are so important and we have such great Justices, you saw my list of 11 that have been vetted and respected.
Donald Trump is concerned about America’s future with an liberal, activist court–which is what Clinton would create. Robby Mook wants to distract from that concern by trying suggest Trump was urging violence.
♦ President Obama has surrounded himself not with military strategists but rather with fiction writers, wide-eyed diplomats whose strategy is “don’t do stupid shit,” and law enforcement officials who believe that “Our most effective response to terror and hatred is compassion, unity and love.”
♦ Only “rightwing extremism” is obvious to the Obama Administration. Everything else is apparently too complex and nuanced for labels. Even Micah Xavier Johnson, who said that he was motivated by “Black Lives Matters” rhetoric and hatred of white people, is a conundrum to the president, who bizarrely asserted that it is “hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.”
♦ The Obama era is one of willful blindness to the jihadist movement that has declared war on America. CIA Director John Brennan purged the word “jihad” from the agency’s vocabulary. Obama’s two Attorneys General have done the same at the Department of Justice.
♦ The federal government has spent the last 8 years pretending that “rightwing extremists” are more numerous and dangerous than the careful and intelligent jihadist attackers, whom it insists are just “madmen” or “troubled individuals.”
Anyone surprised by President Barack Obama’s recurring attempts at exploiting jihadist attacks in his efforts to restrict gun ownership should read the earliest known document concerning terrorism assembled by his administration. The unclassified assessment by Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” is dated April 7, 2009 — a mere 77 days after Obama’s inauguration.
The document was leaked shortly after its release to law enforcement officials across the country and made public by Roger Hedgecock on April 13, 2009. It laid out the new president’s legislative and executive priorities on terrorism, guns and immigration. Uniquely combining these three issues would become a predictable, coordinated pattern during Obama’s two terms in office.
The assessment boldly delineated the Tom Ridge and Janet Napolitano eras at the DHS. As Eli Lake wrote the day after the document was leaked, “Since its inception in 2003, the department has focused primarily on radicalization of Muslims and the prospect of homegrown Islamist terrorism.” Under Obama’s leadership, attention was directed away from Muslims and Islamist terrorism and redirected towards limiting the Second Amendment, scrutinizing military veterans and expanding both legal and illegal immigration.
Contrary to criticism of the Obama administration as uninterested in the plight of military veterans, the DHS assessment shows that vets were very much a priority. The document’s authors, in fact, were worried that “military veterans facing significant challenges returning into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists.”
The only significant acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by veterans lately have not been inspired from the right, however: Micah Xavier Johnson and Gavin Long are products of a “left wing,” anti-police, anti-establishment ideology. The assassinations they carried out fit the pattern of the so-called “New Left” wave of terror carried out in the 1970s by the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers.
The language of the document also foretells the Obama story. In its brief seven pages of text there are 25 references to gun control, weapons and ammunition-hoarding. Terrorists motivated by “anti-immigration” and “white supremacist” ideologies are mentioned 11 times, and veterans returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq are mentioned 9 times. Variations of “extremism,” which would become Obama’s preferred euphemism, occur 42 times.
Timothy McVeigh is the model terrorist in the document. DHS spokeswoman Sara Kuban said a goal of the report was “to prevent another Tim McVeigh from ever happening again.”
The 1990s figure prominently in the DHS prognostication, meriting 17 references. The “poor economic climate,” the Clinton “assault weapon” ban and “a perceived threat to US power and sovereignty by other foreign powers” are envisioned as parallel to the situation in 2009. Looking back at the 1990s and predicting similar troubles in the age of Obama, Napolitano’s DHS made no mention of the most significant development in the evolution of political violence to occur in the 1990s: the rise of Al-Qaeda.
Military strategists worth their pay will recognize the DHS version of “preparing to fight the last war,” but then Obama has surrounded himself not with military strategists but rather with fiction writers, wide-eyed diplomats whose strategy is limited to “don’t do stupid shit,” and law enforcement officials who believe that “Our most effective response to terror and hatred is compassion, unity and love.”
In a passage about “the historical election of an African American president and the prospect of policy changes,” there is a reference to “the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009.” The shooter in question was Richard Poplawski, who ambushed the police called to his home to investigate a domestic disturbance. The DHS concludes that “his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories” led to his “radicalization,” though years later, after Poplawski was convicted and sentenced to death, reporters and even the jury were still unsure of his motives.
The Poplawski shooting occurred just three days before the date on the document. Compare that remarkably speedy conclusion to the way the Obama Administration has handled jihadist attacks. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s November 5, 2009 attack in Fort Hood, Texas, and Alton Nolan’s September 24, 2014 ritual beheading of a coworker at the Vaughan Foods plant in Moore, Oklahoma, are described as “workplace violence.”
FBI Director James Comey expressed confusion over Omar Mateen’s motives for the recent Orlando jihad attack, even though Mateen’s attack was accompanied by the jihadist’s battle cry “Allahu Akhbar” and a pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Caliph of the Islamic State during a 911 call. Before that it was the San Bernardino husband-wife jihadist team whose motives were ostensibly a mystery to the FBI.
Only “rightwing extremism” is obvious to the Obama Administration. Everything else is apparently too complex and nuanced for labels. Even Micah Xavier Johnson, who told Dallas police that he was motivated by “Black Lives Matters” rhetoric and hatred of white people, is a conundrum to the president, who bizarrely asserted that it is “hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.”
Left: The 2009 Department of Homeland Security assessment titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” Right: Micah Xavier Johnson, who murdered five Dallas police officers and injured nine others, said that he was motivated by “Black Lives Matters” rhetoric and hatred of white people.
After the 2009 DHS assessment was widely and rightly criticized, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) complained that the administration “let its team devoted to non-Islamic domestic terrorism fall apart in the aftermath of… [the] controversial leaked report.” But while the “Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division” may have been dropped, but the principles that led to the document were not.
Even more so than the Bush era, the Obama era is one of willful blindness to the global jihadist movement that has declared war on America. CIA Director John Brennan purged the word “jihad” from the agency’s vocabulary. Obama’s two Attorneys General have done the same at the Department of Justice.
The federal government has spent the last eight years pretending (maybe even believing) that “rightwing extremists” are more numerous and dangerous than the careful and intelligent jihadist attackers, whom it insists are just “madmen” or “troubled individuals.”
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Obama plans to nationalize State and local police forces to make them focus on fighting white “racism” in much the same way that his “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) farce focuses on attacking “Islamophobia” rather than Islamist terrorism. Under Obama’s plan, black violence and its causes will be ignored if possible; if they can’t be ignored, they will continue to be minimized.
In response to public concerns about potential Islamist terror attacks, Obama turned the nation’s “war on terror” into a “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) farce, the focus of which has been largely on promoting the agenda of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist organizations. To that end, the Department of Homeland Security has stricken the study of Islam from its teaching materials and banned the use of words such a “jihad” from the lexicon of Federal law enforcement officials. Its primary focus has been on combating “Islamophobia,” rather than on preventing Islamic terror attacks.
As I also noted in the same article, The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is closely allied with Black Lives Matter and other racist Black groups.
It seems quite likely that CAIR, et al, are assisting Obama in structuring His program to federalize State and local law enforcements to make it focus on white “racism,” while continuing to encourage or at least to ignore black racism and violence.
President Barack Obama is warning his angry supporters that more violence and “rhetoric” by the Black Lives Matter movement could derail his campaign to federalize state and local police forces. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
For the moment, Obama and his deputies are simply pretending that the Dallas attack had nothing to do the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the killer’s decision to explain his anti-cop, anti-white motives to Dallas police. “The shooter is not reflective of the large movement to bring about change that was out in Dallas to peacefully demonstrate,” Jeh Johnson, Obama’s loyal head of the Department of Homeland Security, told a CBS interviewer on Sunday. [Emphasis added.]
But the growing wave of attacks on cops has put Obama on the political defense, and his supporters may spin further out of control to create more riots or attack that would delegitimize his campaign to federalize state and local police forces — and also damage Hillary Clinton’s election chances. [Emphasis added.]
Although Obama condemned violence against law enforcement personnel, he said this as well:
The flip side of that … [I] would hope that police organizations are also respectful of the frustration that people in these communities feel and not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness, or as politics or attacks on police. There are legitimate issues that have been raised, and there’s data and evidence to back up the concerns that are being expressed by these protesters. [Emphasis added.]
Victor Davis Hanson, in an article titled Have we reached a point of no return? published today by National Review, traces Obama’s promotion of and reliance on racial disharmony to suit His political ambitions.
“Punish our enemies” characterized Obama’s approach to race and bloc voting. Each time an explosive racial confrontation appeared on the national scene, Obama — always in his accustomed academic intonations — did his best to exploit the issue. So the Skip Gates farce was leveraged into commentary about police stereotyping and profiling on a national level. The police officer in the Ferguson shooting was eventually exonerated by Obama’s own Justice Department, but not before Obama had already exploited the shooting for political advantage, as part of a larger false narrative of out-of-control racist cops who recklessly shoot black suspects at inordinate rates to the population (rather than in the context of their national incidence of contact with police). [Emphasis added.]
Yep.
When the full video of Obama’s Dallas address is available at YouTube, I’ll update this post. In the meantime, here’s a summary from The Washington Times.
President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement Tuesday at a memorial service for five slain Dallas police officers, saying bigotry remains in police departments across the U.S.
While paying tribute to the fallen officers for sacrificing their lives to protect others from a sniper, Mr. Obama also called on law-enforcement agencies to root out bigotry.
“We have all seen this bigotry in our lives at some point,” Mr. Obama told an audience of several hundred at a concert hall in Dallas.
“None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.”
Here’s the only video I have found thus far; it focuses on gun control.
WarSclerotic 
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