“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.”
—Cesare Beccaria, recorded by Thomas Jefferson in his Legal Commonplace Book1
The topic of gun rights/control is one I assumed pretty much everyone in the anti-tyranny/pro-freedom movement would be in agreement on. A lively comment exchange at a recent el gato malo post proved otherwise, however.
Every story they present serves a narrative. Every fact that threatens those narratives is suppressed. Every journalist of integrity knows this as a certainty.
Ethics in journalism is extinct in the mainstream media. It is an absolute impossibility to publish a story that violates the iron-clad laws to serve their corporate sponsors and government masters. They are unadulterated propagandists. That is why old-school reporters who care about ethics, facts, and balance like Sharyl Attkinson, Rebecca Strong, and Sally Beck leave.
Two+ years of COVID propagandizing have made this obvious to the hypnosis-resistant. The media flood the public consciousness with fear smut by constantly reporting death and case counts based on fraudulent data from cooked PCR tests; deaths “with” not “of” COVID; and fatalities caused by lethal protocols (not COVID). Simultaneously, they hide the millions of injuries and tens of thousands of deaths proven by the Bradford Hill criteria to have been caused by the experimental injections.
This is how they control a narrative. It is absolutely no different when it comes to gun rights.
Just like with COVID, the media only reports gun crimes. It never shows the staggering numbers of instances in which victims have defended their lives from criminals, saved others’ lives by stopping mass shooters in their tracks, and defended citizens from tyranny throughout history. They also scarcely report the massive numbers of knife crimes and homicides committed by other means such as vehicles.
2) The media pushes gun control—another wedge issue created to divide us—through emotionally manipulative, triggering reporting engineered to manufacture consent for gun restrictions.
When people are bombarded with tragedy, their higher reasoning faculties shut down. Anyone who tries to calmly discuss the topic of gun rights in this atmosphere is likely to be perceived as callous. It is during this emotionally charged window that the politicians and propagandists push hardest for gun control laws. This is Problem Reaction Solution in action.
Case in point—Tyrant Trudeau has already leapt into action, right on cue, saying, “It will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada.”
The possibility that some of these lightning-rod events are LIHOP or MIHOP false-flag alphabet operations is irrelevant when it comes to the argument for gun rights, and veering off into what is considered conspiratorial territory by normies will cause people on the other side of the debate to tune out and shut down. That doesn’t mean these are invalid lines of inquiry, just that it will derail the conversation and give them an excuse to dismiss you as a “conspiracy theorist.”
Even those who have bought the narrative, however, can probably agree the media is primarily responsible for creating the psychological conditions in which tragedies such as mass murders occur and seeding the lust for notoriety among the mentally deranged.
3) Organizations like the NRA profit from the threats to take away gun rights, so they can’t be trusted, either, and are guilty of their own form of fear smut.
The Yankee Marshal provides a fairly balanced perspective on proposed gun legislation and which bills constitute genuine threats. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says. He’s wrong about his faith in the injection, for example, but he is against mandates, which is consistent with his views on the Second Amendment.
4) Every totalitarian, genocidal regime in modern history has first disarmed its citizens. It is a prerequisite to accomplishing tyranny.
5) Gun laws do not stop criminals from acquiring them. Gun laws do not stop mass murders from occurring. They only stop law-abiding citizens from being able to defend themselves. This is precisely what tyrannical governments desire.
6) The constitutional framers understood these precepts so deeply, they enshrined them in the Second Amendment as a means of preserving the First.
7) Over the past two years, the countries that ratcheted up the tyranny most rapidly were those that had predominantly disarmed its citizens.
8) Gun restrictions serve despotic regimes, not the people. If you care about defending yourself, your loved ones, your freedom, and your autonomy, preserving gun rights is a matter of life or death.
I didn’t always hold these views. Like most people, I was once carried along by the propaganda and mistakenly thought more guns = more bloodshed. It wasn’t until I woke up to the framing that I realized this was yet another lie, researched it, and discovered the data tells a very different story from what the media presents.
To further elucidate my position, I will share excerpts from an exchange I had with a reader at the original el gato thread. I don’t want to call unwanted attention to her so have only listed her initials here, but this is a person whom I’ve enjoyed positive encounters with on other occasions and who’s on my mailing list (props to her for not unsubbing over this).
She has seen through the lies about COVID, but she believes the media and government are telling the truth in this case. She took my arguments as personal attacks against her rather than her position. I understand that when one of your deeply held beliefs is being challenged, it feels like an attack on you personally; apparently, I failed to make that distinction clear. If she is still willing to re-evaluate her position, perhaps she and others like her will read this discussion thread with an open mind and heart.
One of my hopes is that, in this little sanctuary of the Internet, we can enjoy civil exchanges about points of disagreement without it devolving into defensiveness and ad hominem attacks. This discussion thread is intended to offer a space for exploring this issue in a thoughtful and respectful manner.
Dialogue with a Gun Control Advocate
MAA: The logic required to connect cause with effect is nearing extinction in the human species, and those of us who still possess that capacity risk ostracization, incarceration, and ultimately elimination for threatening the collective psychosis. A risk well-worth taking, I might add.
NE: Come on. Guns don’t cause mass shootings but they’d be less of them if guns weren’t around
MAA: And a lot more knife stabbings and truck massacres.
libertate [also responding to NE]: And?
There would be less automotive fatalities if cars weren’t around.
Perhaps “we” should ban them.
OS: Cars are not specifically made to kill people.
MAA: Neither are tools of defense.
OS: Eh?
MAA: Just clarifying that guns aren’t made to kill people. They are a tool, just like a knife or anything else that can be wielded by evil people or anyone else, and they can be used to defend the vulnerable from the psychopathic, the weak from the strong, the citizen from the tyrant. The only reason tyranny hasn’t gotten further along in America is 2A, and every people that has ever given up that right to its government has come to regret that decision bitterly.
OS: That’s a fancy way of saying that guns are made to kill only the right people, the people we don’t like. And I can assure you that in countries with better gun control we don’t walk around “bitterly regretting” it at all. Definitely is not at all the reason tyranny hasn’t gotten further in the States. How many shootouts have you had with your government lately? What you have are good constitution and laws and courts willing to enforce those laws, and you all should very well be thankful for that.
MAA: No, you’re misunderstanding my point. Guns are neutral. They aren’t “made to kill only the right people.” Mentally ill, psychopathic people will find whatever ways to kill they can, and guns help vulnerable people defend themselves against criminals. There are far more knife stabbings than gun murders. Taking away guns doesn’t prevent evil people from doing evil things, but it prevents innocent people from being able to defend themselves from criminals and tyrannical governments.
The shootouts aren’t what stop tyranny—the tyrants’ *awareness* that so many good citizens are armed and willing to defend the Constitution and our freedoms against tyranny is what stops them from overstepping their bounds into outright totalitarianism.
We do have a good constitution, thankfully, but we can no longer rely on the increasingly corrupted courts to defend our laws against those who are pushing to violate them. 2A provides a bulwark against the most egregious forms of tyranny, and that is precisely why the constitutional framers included it.
OS: Yup I know and I’ve heard it all before. This is exactly why you’ll keep getting these mass murders in the States.
MAA: History has proven it again and again and again. Every genocide requires the disarmament of the designated enemy.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur—what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
“If . . . if . . . We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more—we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure!”
OS: This, in your style, is a grand piece of rhetoric which deals with none of the actual problems you have in the States, and ignores the countries which have gun control and no genocides.
MAA: “and ignores the countries which have gun control and no genocides”—YET.
How would you defend yourself if the guards come to take you to the gulag?
You are aware of the democide that’s been underway for the past two+ years. You are aware of the escalating totalitarian laws enveloping the globe. You are aware of the countries that have already incarcerated dissenters in isolation camps. You are aware of the rights and freedoms that have been stripped in the name of “public health,” “safety,” and the “good of society.”
And yet you naively trust these governments never to overstep their bounds, as the citizens of every past totalitarian genocidal regime have done throughout history.
It’s time to flee the cult of safety and stop swallowing the propaganda you’ve been fed about guns by the tyrannical governments whose limits are inscribed by their presence:
OS: I should add, I’m not sure who you’re talking to who “naively trusts the government” and belongs to a “cult of safety”. I think you may be arguing with someone you’re imagining, but it’s not me 😆
MAA: That’s what I thought and why I am so bewildered that you have bought the anti-gun propaganda, which only serves criminals and tyrants!
I used to share your position years ago. And then I researched it and realized I was mistaken. And the past two years have solidified the absolute necessity of being able to defend ourselves against tyranny.
JP Sears went through a similar re-evaluation of his views on this subject:
OS: Because I have a different view, I must have swallowed propaganda? Interesting. I can’t have come to this position by reason? The past two years did indeed cause me to reconsider this position; I in the end remain unconvinced.
MAA: Having a different view isn’t the issue at all. Different views are fine! I am simply saying this particular position aligns with government propaganda, which serves to protect the interests of the powerful over the people.
OS: You view it as propaganda because it contradicts your point of view. I think you can’t imagine that someone might have thoughtful reasons for having a different perspective.
MAA: I view it as propaganda because it is propaganda, not because I disagree with it. Time and again, it has been proven that the media has sensationalized gun violence for political gain—all while ignoring the daily flood of stories about people successfully defending their lives against criminals and good guys stopping shooters in the act.
“German General Jürgen Stroop arrived in Warsaw ready to wipe out all opposition within a single day as a birthday gift to his Führer. Stroop had 2,100 soldiers with 13 heavy machine guns, 69 handheld machine guns, 135 submachine guns, several howitzers, and 1,358 rifles. The approximately 750 Jewish resisters had two submachine guns, a handful of rifles, and homemade explosives. But the resisters were able to fight off Stroop’s soldiers for the first few days, and they were able to hold out under siege for four weeks.
“Simcha Rotem, a survivor, later told filmmaker Claude Lanzmann: ’During the first three days of fighting, the Jews had the upper hand. The Germans retreated at once to the ghetto entrance, carrying dozens of wounded with them.’”
Imagine how the story would have ended had everyone in the ghetto been armed. Oh, I know, they wouldn’t have been there to begin with.
OS: No one is arguing that guns have never been used in self-defence. Your argument is that unorganized, scattered, private gun owners with weapons that do not come to the level of government arms, are somehow holding off tyranny in the US. Forgive me, but that seems like a fantasy. You think I’ve come to my position by swallowing government propaganda; frankly, that’s a little insulting. You may not be able to admit that people might have good reasons for having a different perspective from yours, as that would be to admit it’s a valid viewpoint.
MAA: Perhaps it’s because you don’t live in America that you fail to realize the 2A community is an enormous, highly cohesive group passionately committed to defending our rights against tyrannical encroachment. It is the size and commitment of that segment of the population that keeps the government in check. Hired goons are not going to be willing to come seize people’s guns and subsequently rights and lives when there are so many people willing to defend those rights with their lives.
OS: That might be true, but again, you’re trying to prove a negative. You have a belief that this is keeping the government from imposing tyranny, but you still haven’t provided one example of that happening. The actual way tyranny has been kept in check in the States is through the courts upholding the Constitution and the laws. This is also a massive distraction from the problem under discussion: why does the US have so many mass shootings and gun deaths?
MAA: You are suggesting that the American people gamble their lives, rights, and freedoms on the premise that it is not the large sector of highly armed individuals willing to defend us that is preventing the government from escalating to full-blown totalitarianism? You seem to be unaware of history and that the progression from democracy to tyranny doesn’t happen in an eye-blink but over time.
“‘To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
“‘How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn’t, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.’”
As to your question, “why does the US have so many mass shootings and gun deaths?” Perhaps you should ask why doesn’t Switzerland, where nearly every citizen is armed, have scarcely *any* mass shootings? Why do the majority of mass shootings happen in areas with stronger gun control laws? Why does crime go down in areas where more citizens are responsibly armed? You’re only asking the “why” the media wants you to ask, not the ones that reveal the truth that they are trying to disarm us to strengthen their power over We the People.
“They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.”
OS: I don’t have time to properly answer this right now, but I will briefly say: again, you’re trying to prove a negative. “We have guns in the States and no genocides, you have no guns and no genocides BUT YOU MIGHT SOMEDAY” is not an argument. Secondly, what you are dealing with in this century is not armed warfare; you are dealing with totalitarian nanny statism which for the most part does not resort to violence to achieve its ends. Thirdly, please name me one recent example where someone or a group of people went up against the US government with guns and achieved its aims and did not end up either dead or in jail? What you *actually* have are mass shootings, high rates of gun homicides, suicides, and accidents. The rhetoric may be great on the other side, but that’s what your gun rights look like in actuality.
MAA: “which for the most part does not resort to violence to achieve its ends”—UNTIL IT DOES.
You’re locked in a cell with a psychopath. The psychopath is armed, and you are not. He hasn’t done anything to you yet, so nothing to worry about, right?
The argument is every genocide in history. Disarming the populace is a necessary step to achieve it. It cannot be accomplished overtly without that step.
You evidently fail to understand the concept of mutually assured destruction. Having a large sector of the populace armed *prevents* the necessity of using guns to defend the citizens against tyranny. As Solzhenitsyn reminds us, officers are not going to be eager to come arrest you en masse and cart you off to the gulag if they know you have the ability to defend yourself.
The mass shootings, high rates of homicides, and suicides happen predominantly in states and cities with draconian gun laws (California, New York, Chicago, etc.). Criminals can get guns no problem; it is the innocent law-abiding citizens who cannot defend themselves because their right to self-defense has been taken away.
OS: Yeah I know; like I said, I’ve heard all the arguments before. And the fact that it simply doesn’t look like that in countries without armed citizenry totally escapes the American mind. As does the fact that the idea of an armed citizenry prevailing against the government comes literally from the 18th century. I suppose all the actual deaths are the price you have to pay for that idea.
MAA: Canada. Australia. New Zealand.
I suppose the loss of freedoms and rights is the price you have to pay for your idea. Not to mention the lives of whomever a democidal government targets for elimination.
Gun laws don’t stop criminals from getting guns. Gun laws don’t stop governments from using force against you. Gun laws don’t stop “actual deaths” from occurring.
All they do is stop law-abiding citizens from having the ability to defend themselves against criminals and tyranny.
OS: No one uses this argument about any other crime - “laws don’t stop this crime from occurring entirely, therefore we shouldn’t do anything to make it more difficult to commit, or allow us to enforce those laws.” And again, you have no actual proof that guns in the States prevent “tyranny”. You do, as I mentioned previously, have evidence that your laws and courts do. Which is something we are lacking in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Forgive me if I don’t believe that the idea of a shootout with a few zealots keeps the government on its toes, sans evidence.
MAA: I can forgive you for not believing that because I have repeatedly said that your straw man argument of “a shootout with a few zealots” is not what stops tyranny. It is a broadly armed populace that is willing to defend its rights that stops tyranny.
I’m really surprised someone who sees through the lies about the injections cannot recognize that the same people are lying to them for the same reasons. Why is the media suddenly trustworthy in this one instance? Why is the government suddenly trustworthy in this one instance?
OS: Do you think the government and media are the only sources of information or the only ways anyone forms their opinions?
MAA: There are those whose opinions are formed by the media, and there are those who form their own opinions. If one’s opinion aligns with the media, the government, the politicians, and the corporations, then one’s opinion has been formed on their behalf.
OS: Well, I guess I’ll have to leave this discussion by thanking you for assuming I’m incapable of independent thought. That’s a conversation killer right there; you might want to rethink that strategy.
MAA: It’s because I know you are capable of independent thought that I have bothered to engage in this discussion to begin with. I know you are capable of seeing through the lies, so it surprises me that you are not doing so here.
OS: You believe they’re lies. You seem incapable of seeing another point of view, or understanding that any intelligent person could think differently, which is pretty par for the course for any discussions I’ve had with Americans on this issue. However, thank you for engaging.
MAA: You keep retreating into self-defensiveness and ad hominem attacks. I am providing historical evidence and the rationale for the propagandists to lie to you.
If two+ years of COVID tyranny hasn’t convinced you that you should be skeptical of the MSM’s and politicians’ drum-banging lies, then I’m sorry you are unable to see that you have fallen for a self-defeating talking point.
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This quote is often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, but it turns out it is a quotation by Cesare Beccaria that Jefferson recorded in his Legal Commonplace Book. The original is in Italian, and the quote above is believed to be from a 1963 translation by Henry Palolucci. (h/t The Good Citizen for introducing me to this quote)
On researching this quote further, I discovered it is actually Alinksy’s synopsis of Lenin’s speeches (which I suspect he advocates but don’t want to buy Rules for Radicals to confirm, although it would probably be a good idea to read under know-thy-enemy and all that):
“The essence of Lenin’s speeches during this period was, ‘They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.’ And it was.”
This is my first time publishing a discussion thread, and I ran into some technical glitches with publishing. The e-newsletter was missing a bunch of text and had disembodied links in some email apps, so I apologize to those who were confused by this oddity. Thanks to everyone for your patience, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter!
A large person, whom is violent of nature, will always dominate a smaller, weaker person. it has always been such and always will be, but a poem written many years ago, speaks to that issue,
Be not afraid of any man
No matter what his size
If danger threatens, call on me
And I will equalize.
Or, to shorten it,
"God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal."
And before someone falls back on the Freud "Quote",,,, please go and look that he never said it, in fact, what he did write, was the opposite,
Freud associates retarded sexual and emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and loathing of weapons.
I lived in Europe for many years and when I moved to the US it was mind boggling to me that so many people had guns. The past 3 years led me to understand better this debate and I lean much more in favor of the 2nd Amendment now. America was never meant to be like the rest of the world, we have our unique ways both good and bad but we are about the last country on this planet where citizens are mostly armed and that gives our government, whichever party it is, some pause before enacting policies to which the people don’t agree.
And yes, I have to mention Australia because it was utopian what happened there that it cannot be ignored.
It would so much easier to just strengthen security at schools. So many private schools have security guards and checkpoints of entrance and exiting, why can’t public schools?
It has been proven over the long haul that simply training adult staff at the schools who volunteer to serve in this way, in various aspects of defending the schools and students where they work, then allowing those who train and volunteer to carry their own defensive weapons as they perform their duties at the school, armed with their own weapons, , the very ones they alread carry everywhere else BUT school, Look into the FASTER Saves LIves programme in Ohio. It was developed as a response to the Sandy Hook incident. All volunteer, absolutely NO COST to government or taxpayers, and the best part: in the ten plus years the programme has been in place there has not yet been even ONE incident invoving misuse of guns at any school in any district that have adipted the programme. So far it has been 100% effective. WHY? Because the perps out there who wOULD do harm know that in those districts at least SOME skilled, armed, trained, dedicated, adult WILL have a gun and more importanly will NOT hesitate to use it to stop any threat that comes long to harm. In refresher drills and simulations, these armed ordinary teachers constantly best the trained lw enforcement attempting to breach the "school" (in the make believe drills) and defeat the cop trrainers more often than the trainers get the drop on the teachers.
'd say that's perfect solution: PROVEN 100% effective and successful, cost the taxpayer nothing, no one knows who has their gun on them at any given time, so no issues with "kids being scared of guns".In reality, thekids are far more seure and relaxed because they know SOME of the adult staff are armed and trained, and any of evil intent will NOT get past them to harm the kids.
I never heard of that program, that is a good approach and it should be more publicized. I think many people have this idealist view of school as s place where no doors need to be locked and all staff and people who enter the school is trustworthy. Sadly, this is not Switzerland (even they have their problems), and we would be better off admitting that increased security in schools with armed personal is an advantage to students and teachers. Wealthy parents, value this and pay for it in their kids private schools, and yet, they shout from their ivory tower that public schools should be completely gun-free. There is no consonance and often it seems like it comes down to a class argument.
I learned of the FASTER Saves LIves programme as soon as the concept was floated, shortly after Scammy Crooks. I followed the development through to its establishment.
Wanna hear a crazy? The Browsrd County school board had asked folks from the FASTER programme to come tell them about it, which they graciously did. that was a fwe weeks before the crazed punk, violating a court order to not ever be at that schoool, passed a backgorund chek he should not have been able to pass (county officials had REFUSED to file charges against the eventual killer for any of the four felony level crimes he had committed) entered the campus carrying his new rifle and a big pile of tEN rund magazines (they fit better in the new gun case he had also bought0 and begankilling.
Had FASTER been in place at the Douglas High School on that day, the perp would have been taken out before he ever got to the first classroom. And Aaron Feiss woud still be alive, haveing been able to shoot back at the perp instead of wrapping his body arund two of his students, taking their bullets and letting them live.
I read recently that that school district has no repented of their folly of rejecting the programme, and are now taking steps to implement it in that district. Four years and twenty six deaths late, but they are doing it. COlorado have also recently taken up that programme and are implementing it.
There are a number of factors that ALL these mass shootings have in common.
ALL males, (one exception had a militant warrior female sidekick)
ALL known to authorities as problems, local state federal
ALL got their weapon passing BGC or stole them avoiding BGC
ALL carefully selected venues that were "gun free" zones...... they'd have the only guns
Taking all these common factors together I see only one simple cheap effective solution to these events. ALLOW we who already carry our personal defensive weapons with us everywhere we go to ALSO carry them into those types of places. I carry mine everywhere, have for fifteen years. Never came close to NEEDING it. There are some places I am prohibited to carry it legally. I simply do not go there. Sports venues, nightclubs/bars in my state (next one south tell me I can be armed inside there as long as I don't drink. At the price of their booze I dont drink in those places anyway). Courthouses have secure gun safes where I can put my gun, take thekey, and retrieve it when I leave. But the copers are thick and armed, so it is NOT a gun free zone. Im fine wiht that. Most "no guns" zones i my stateare not properly signed, thus no violation occurs if "made". The only thing they can do is tell me to take my gun out. I can come back, but the gun can't. So I leave.
I avoid Certified Defenseless Victim Zones s the danger zones and plagues they are. WHY can't we simply do the same with the schoolsour kids attend? (my kids will never attend gummit skewlz, one main reason being they are death traps. The other being what they pour into their heads all day long inside those places.
There IS a simple free answer that will END these school massacres. FASTER is only one version of it. I underatand that in the State of Texas each district can decide whether adult staff in that district are able to go about their daily tasks armed. The district that includes Uvalde had decided AGAINST allowing that. Perhaps surviving parents might want to rethink that vote? Had that teacher whose classroomwas first invaded been armed and triained that school shooting may have had two victims.. the first child shot, then the perp himself who got terminated by that teacher whose room he chose to invade. And WE would all be doing something more profitable with out time instead of reading this stuff here.
I saw the number of armed police in Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy. The week after I was there they and many other armed police and military came and violently pushed back defenseless people because of a group of peaceful protesters who were looking for a dialogue with the government. The government who now is banning all hand guns ownership. These are the incremental steps that only get worse, these governments don't one day say, "oh, thats enough, we don't need to continue to take away peoples rights anymore we have done enough."
There is a breakdown in rule of law certainly in the states and more and more in Canada. Enact 'The Emergency Act' so that peoples rights can be taken away for no reason. So, laws are not going to protect us when the government ignores them when they chose.
I would like to see a much stronger gun lobby in Canada, as Canadians I think we will just roll over, as we did for Covid, as so many did to criticize 'freedom', as we are doing by spending our money in Ukraine where it is very apparent that it is necessary to spend it here. Roll over because of what the government says. When a government stops serving its people and starts telling them what they need to do, we are in trouble.
And there won't be anything we can do if we cannot defend ourselves when it becomes necessary.
Excellent bullet points, MAA! And you're right - Naomi Wolf's piece a few hours earlier was exquisite. I cannot improve on your points because I share all of them. TBH, I've not read the antagonist thread. I can't deal with any more irrationality at the moment. The leftist wife responded to my email yesterday (apparently she didn't think her husband's caustic response was enough) and I've refused to read it so far. Think I'll have my husband go through it first.
There are over 370 "mental disorders" listed in the latest version of the DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.) The list includes "Tobacco Addiction Disorder" among other equally mundane and ridiculous so-called "mental illnesses." If the DSM is the standard by which politicians wishes to remove our rights to own guns, then I'd guess 90% of the American people could probably be classified with a mental disorder of one kind or another. BEWARE.....
Great point, Rick, and we have already seen how neuropsych evaluations have been weaponized against physicians of conscience like Dr. Meryl Nass for daring to prescribe life-saving early treatment protocols and failing to subjugate their conscience to comply with tyrannical and democidal edicts.
We know that when the world is in a state of mass hypnosis, those of us resistant to that hypnosis are deemed “insane,” so we must remain weary of any such gaslighting measures used to disarm and discredit the sane.
There are four key components needed for an environment to experience a mass formation psychosis: lack of social bonds or decoupling of societal connections, lack of sense-making (things don’t make sense), free-floating anxiety, and free-floating psychological discontent. Free-floating anxiety is a general sense of uneasiness that is not tied to any particular object or specific situation.
When followers start to participate in a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, new social bonds typically emerge and people change from a highly aversive negative mental state and isolation, to the exact opposite to the extremely high-level of connectedness that exists.
YES ITS A THEORY.. but the truth is that its all propaganda, guess work thrown out to also FOOL the masses.. people are lied to by most in power or even out of power now.. I HAVE A COUPLE OF FRIENDS THAT KNOW THIS!
Prove yourself spot on, go and find a copy of DSM three or earlier. I remember when verion five came out, how radically different it was. Yo see right through their smoke screen. Well done
It seems obvious to me that the repeal of the original Smith Mundt Act opened the floodgates for propaganda from every angle. I do not think it is a happy circumstance that our ‘News’ went south right about when the government passed a law making it legal for the government to propagandize the public. Great article!
....in light of the massive vote fraud of the 2020 elections, which will only become more pervasive and cemented into place, the only thing that now stands in the way of totalitarianism
is gun ownership.
I have a dream.
That Chuck Schumer will personally supervise attempts to go door-to-door in the mountains of Arkansas, Western Montana, the rural South, the Deer Hunter area of western Pennsylvania, West Texas, and other parts of real America, including the inner city "hood", to announce that "I'm from the government and I'm here to confiscate your firearms".
Thanks for sharing this discussion thread. I am for private ownership of guns, and switched to this view about 7 years ago when I recognized the US government no longer represented the people.
I think you began with a weak argument that may have affected the rest of the interaction. Guns ARE made to kill people, and arguing otherwise seems like nonsense, seems like you're not arguing honestly. Guns were invented to kill, and then have been used either for defense (whether you fire your gun or not), and/or to injure or kill in defense or aggression. A counter-argument about knives is also weak, because there's no comparison between the effort and ability needed to kill on a mass scale with knives vs guns. Admitting guns are made to be lethal bolsters what I found was the strongest sentence in your argument, "It is a broadly armed populace that is willing to defend its rights that stops tyranny." This is directly related to the fact that guns can easily kill as they are designed to do, so people, police forces and governments think twice before violating the space of gun owners.
The downside of widely available gun ownership is that some people will use it to injure and kill innocent people. This is a heartbreaking and heart-wrenching downside, and weighs heavily on every caring person. People need to realize that since guns are widely available, we are experiencing the downside of this situation, vs not experiencing the downside of guns not being available to the citizenry. For example, if guns were not widely available, we would be experiencing less mass shootings, but could also be experiencing the downside of that situation; mass harm to our citizenry due to our government and police force overrunning and killing the citizens that interfere with their agenda (as you pointed out).
Thank you for sharing your journey, Nova123. I see your point about the intention behind manufacturing guns and your conclusion makes sense.
What I perhaps failed to make clear is that I meant the object itself is simply a neutral tool that can be used for a variety of purposes (defense, sport, hunting, etc.). Only a minuscule number of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens have actually been used to kill humans, and in the cases where they have been used in self-defense, it has saved the lives of the innocent.
I also see your point about widely available gun ownership, although according to criminologist John Lott (author of “More Guns Less Crime: Understanding Crime & Gun Control Laws”), a higher rate of gun ownership correlates with lower levels of crime (as one reviewer says, ”I wanted to disagree with this book, but the data speaks for itself”).
I appreciate your sensitive approach to this topic and agree there are complexities. I would certainly like to see greater emphasis on addressing the root causes. If we could eradicate mainstream media, for example, that would eliminate the primary cause of mental illnesses. Short of that, getting people to stop paying attention to the MSM is probably the biggest step we could make toward restoring mental health/balance/perspective on reality and saving lives.
Brilliant on two counts: 1) calling them “news readers” (since none are actual journalists or reporters these days) and 2) requiring disclosure of political affiliations—although, honestly, if they’re in media, I think we can guess in 99% of the cases :-)
Thanks. I agree that "we" can guess the reader's affiliation but the people who rely on and trust the TV news personalities need to be told. Otherwise, they will continue to believe the "news" is agenda/politically neutral.
Some will when they finally put it together that the "news" is not only biased but is lying to them either directly or by ommission. My Mom passed away a few years ago at 88 but I vividly remember watching the local news with her. She believed everything they said. She trusted Walter Cronkite because he sold the news as the truth and her generation (mostly) took it that way ever since.
BTW, very much appreciate your writing, even in the rare occurrences that we disagree. You help me think clearer. Thank you.
Thanks for your reply. I so agree with you, that mainstream media is a primary cause of mental illness and division amongst people in this country. People would do well to turn it off! I always wonder about violent video games and violent movies having an impact too. I haven't looked into the studies about video games so I don't know how rigorous they are. And on top of that, I'm aware of possible mind control operations that may be contributing.
I think it surprises some people that crime has gone down with the availability of guns. It makes sense. Guns do save lives, and some of those stories have real emotional impact. The mass murder of people, and especially children, is so emotionally upsetting that it's hard to counter with stories of guns saving lives. It's interesting too, that there are two mass shootings that I know of where "good guys with guns" were on site, and did nothing out of fear for their lives. Uvalde is one example, and the other was in Southern California in an office building years ago where a person outside with a gun did not go in. That really weakens the argument that the answer to bad guys with guns are good guys with guns. That seems to apply to personal situations but not to mass shootings.
I don't consider guns a neutral tool. Maybe that's a cultural perception I have. Or maybe its objective that they're not neutral. Human-created objects are made for their usefulness, they're not neutral. Candles are made to burn, chairs are made to sit on, art is created to look at. And guns were created to kill, and then are sometimes used to shoot at flying discs or targets.
I think many people don't consider guns a neutral tool. You site one example of their neutrality in sport, but in hunting and defense they are used for their ability to kill. And then there's the military, either organized military or militias of different kinds around the world, where guns are used because they were created to kill. But perhaps what you mean by neutral is that a tiny number of guns out of all the guns available are used to kill people. In which case we're not using the word neutral in the same way. On a side note but related, I was surprised that a vast majority of police officers have not fired their guns ever in their career.
I was just reading Dr Robert Malone's latest post and comments, but I can't comment there because I'm not a paid subscriber. I'm sorry that people unsubscribed because of your post on guns. You are always thoughtful and honest, and it's so good for people to practice disagreeing well without walking away. (Unless there are attacks that aren't worth engaging in). I appreciate you! 💕
Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Nova123! I have heard that blaming video games for violence was contradicted by the research, but I haven’t had a chance to investigate it thoroughly. My feeling is they are unlikely to be a direct instigator as millions of kids play video games without issues. It is the ones with mental illness who are subjected to other destructive influences (e.g., abuse, addiction, bullying, etc.) and who lack a creative outlet and purpose in their lives who tend to enact these brutal crimes.
That said, Nature Deficit Disorder has a damaging impact on kids’ mental health, and urban at-risk youth who participate in nature programs experience radical transformations. If kids and teens spent time in nature instead of playing video games, watching television, surfing the Internet, texting on their phones, etc., they would be both physically and psychologically healthier and far less likely to commit such heinous acts.
“That really weakens the argument that the answer to bad guys with guns are good guys with guns.”
I would argue that they weren’t really good guys if they were too cowardly to act when the need arose. There are numerous instances where good guys have stopped tragedy in its tracks by acting quickly. The YouTube channel Active Self Protection (https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveSelfProtection) has thousands of security camera videos showing criminal acts, many demonstrating acts of self-defense and courage.
Regarding your comment about cops not firing their guns in their careers, there is actually a serious problem with many cops not getting adequate training and regular practice with their weapons, so in an emergency situation, they do not always have the muscle memory to respond as quickly as needed.
Thank you for your closing note, Nova123. I am grateful to those who are willing to engage in respectful dialogue about matters of disagreement. I try to encourage open-minded debate and discourage personal attacks, and for the most part, I think everyone here has been very well-behaved :-) I’m sorry some people felt so strongly about the issue that they left as they missed out on an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about a difficult topic.
Great point about violent video games possibly only affecting those who already have mental problems. Makes a lot of sense. And thanks for letting me know about that channel active self-protection. I watched a lot of the videos, so good to be aware. Take good care. 💕
There have been mass killings with cars and trucks. So are they deadly weapons? Yes. When a car and human body come into contact they are deadly. However, when used with care they are not, but merely have that potential. Some people don’t own cars and some don’t own guns. Both are licensed and it’s one’s individual choice.
I think it's a weak argument to compare cars, which are not made to kill people, and guns which are. Yes, they can both be used to kill people, but they are made for fundamentally different purposes.
Maybe so, but both can be used as weapons, as can knives. I'm sure most gun owners have never used their weapons to kill and some that I know have not even fired a weapon. They are only collectors. The human behind any device has the potential to kill, including the Covid technocrats. They are killing a different form, as are abortionists.
Go and study how things went down in Australia as the government there stood firm and declared "Mr. and Mrs Austalia, turn them ALL in". Read how crime began to climb once "everyone' was disarmed. Then read about the INCREASE in gun use in crimes. No not everyone turned them all in s commanded. There were a number of incidents where guns were still used defensivley. Of course, the gun got dropped and left as the intended victim was simply on about surviving, and did not tarry to chat up the gendarmerie. Housebreakings increased, as I recall some thirty five ercent in the fist year after the massive takeup. The louts KNEW the residents would not be armed, as everyone had turned them all in as commanded.
Of course, THIS sort of important news never was seen in OUR lamestream media. Why? Because THIS side the Big Puddle there were "certain factions" lready bent upon disarming THIS nation.
Yeah, I already know that gun availability reduces crime. I learned that years ago, but it was a surprise to me when I learned it. And I think it's a surprise to a gun control advocates because they equate guns with crime, and think lower guns means lower crime.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro private gun ownership. I just want to help sharpen the arguments so they are more effective. 👍🏽
Isn't it interesting that the government would enforce their tyranny with the exact tools that they want to take away from law abiding citizens who want to be left alone and live free?
As far as these idiots who claim a citizenry can't fight the government cause "tanks and airplanes".... how would you explain Vietnam and Afghanistan (both places I've been). Smaller, less educated and greatly out classed in weaponry, these third world backwaters defeated the most well equipped military in the history of mankind. Now the big question is...does the American public have the same commitment as the Vietcong or the Taliban? I think that's a solid no.
For OS to write "Your argument is that unorganized, scattered, private gun owners with weapons that do not come to the level of government arms, are somehow holding off tyranny in the US. Forgive me, but that seems like a fantasy." is itself a fantasy IN REAL TIME.
See: Australia, New Zealand, Canada to name but three countries being swallowed by government tyranny TODAY, and with their People mostly unarmed. No connection? THAT is fantasy.
In a way these debates are so very odd. Before the late 1950's mass killings were quite rare. We certainly had the tools, even machine guns for a time before they were banned. But semi-automatics have been around since the early 1900's. Now it is true that the current AR type rifles are quite easy to use but semi-auto pistols are also quite easy to use particularly in the smaller calibers of the AR type rifles. And we do see that most mass killings are usually by pistol. Magazine capacity seems to also be an issue but several of whatever size can easily be carried.
A lot of social changes erupted in the late 50's that seem most appropriate to debate - the degree in which we tolerate immorality. We ought to all agree that killing another human is something that is quite wrong except under dire circumstance. We can agree that anger toward others is OK except when it results in violence, or do we?
We have always had some deranged people including down and out addicts who have given up hope. In the past we would try to help the deranged and the addicts but most of that has devolved from groups trying to make a difference to assigning that task to government who cannot help at all. At best the government can remove people from society and place them in uncaring institutions. But only communities can really help by caring individuals trying. We once did have community helpers, sponsored within the communities but in the main we now count on an ineffective government and try in ignore the issues. Any dependency on government to resolve human failures is likely to disappoint.
While religion and religious institutions are rejected by many, in the past they served a powerful purpose of organizing the community. Believers affected even non-believers by their charity. As a society we generally were tolerant of the bible thumpers thinking them well intended. In the rejection of that entire segment of society by mockery and other tools created to instill doubt we have thrown the baby out so to speak. Being anti-religious became cool. After all who is to tell you how to live? But in the process we have been net losers.
If you watch documentaries like “Century of the Self,” you see that television is used to induce states of desire, envy, greed, lust, fear, anxiety, and every shade of mental illness to manipulate us to consume and obey.
I think a very strong argument could be made for a direct correlation between television and other mechanisms of mass control (MSM, Big Tech) and the increase in violent crimes and mass shootings. If we want to reduce violence, increase societal cohesion, and strengthen individual ethics/morality, the best thing we could do is get everyone to turn off their hypnosis machines.
The early days of television included shows representing ideal families and an idealization of the mundane common to all. That seemed to change over time maybe because few ever were able to match those ideals and perhaps we desired conflict and drama to draw viewers. I suppose the social scientists set about research in how to acquire more viewers for those ads and tricks to manipulate thought much as we had 'nudge' theory to drive us into the covid delusions.
Education has long departed from an effort to teach ways of thinking into ways to think. Those hypnosis machines won't be turned off but we can teach skills to avoid being manipulated. Once you become aware of the tools, you become somewhat less susceptible to being controlled. Just as we now must ignore all those frightfully annoying ads on web pages in order to read the content, so must we ignore what we are fed by much media.
Great points, HardeeHo. If I recall from “Century of the Self,” public-opinion engineering was definitely present in television programming from the outset, but the focus was more on driving consumption and sales. There was also an underlying aim to mold morality, but it emphasized positive, constructive values rather than destructive ones. Once the programmers shifted to a more debased POV, society degenerated accordingly.
It is definitely one of my aims to equip people with the skills and knowledge to detect and deflect propaganda (as in https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-menticided-a-12-step). I do think the people who are awakening are starting to turn off their television and live life instead, and I hope that could become a widespread trend the more people become aware of the manipulation.
The revolution can't happen fast enough but entrenched interests are not going to give up easily. Much current programming has been engineered around certain social issues that are intended to nudge behaviors. The only way to counter such influence is a more aware public and forces exist in media to ensure that doesn't happen. I am pleased that the public is much more aware of the destructive nature of "The Trusted News Initiative". I do hope the thinking people are enough to help others see through what is forced upon us.
Thank-you for that link. I enjoyed the story immensely. I read most of it to my husband and he found it enjoyable also. Knowing many, many Tennesseans really helped see and hear this in our minds. Thanks again for the smiles and laughs. 🤗
Civics have been taken out of school curriculums decades ago, but my impression is that in families, where children learn how to shoot at an early age, the Constitution is well and alive.
Even psychopaths and criminals are more reserved under such circumstances.
Kentucky, where I live, is about the fifth poorest state in the Union, when it comes to personal income, but it has the 5th lowest crime rate. When I moved here eight years ago, somebody explained it to me: "People are nice here, because everyone is armed to the teeth." :)
In the current process of mass murder, I don't think that disarming the populace will come before martial law is introduced. Once the food riots start, the monsters will be watching with glee as looters will roam the land and the previously law-abiding citizens murder each other for a bowl of thin soup... People will do the favor for the tyrants...
The only chance people have is that the enforcers realize that their money will not be worth a penny a few years from now and their very survival will depend on complete compliance until they wear out their usefulness and will be lined up on the roads to the death camps.
Anyone working under the premise that these school shootings are somehow organic and not part of a continuing PYSOP to garner support for the elimination of self-defense via guns is likely to come to a different conclusion. How many times does one of the alphabet agencies have to be "familiar" with a perpetrator before the public realizes these events are "Made to Happen" or "Allowed to Happen." The idea that the only government agencies should be the only people allowed to have weapons is a non-starter. We all have a natural right to self-defense, whether that be from individual or government action. That is particularly so when the latest "school shooting" clearly indicates that the law enforcement won't protect you. And anyone depending upon the Criminal Injustice System to combat tyranny or markedly reduce crime is going to be greatly disappointed.
The point of being armed isn't even about winning against the government; it is the idea that they are walking into a nightmare - one that they really don't won't to face as we are really led by cowards. That is why they spend so much time on propaganda and deception. So, yeah, start using nuclear weapons against the public. Watch what happens next when it is made clear that people have nothing more to lose.
"Allowed to have weapons" is a big signifier that the person doesn't understand natural rights. No 2A advocate is arguing that they be "allowed" anything. A right does not spell out what you are "allowed" to do. It spells out what a government may not infringe upon.
First you could have answered their question - why does America have so many mass shootings?
0) There are more people in the USA so there are more shootings. France had an extremely deadly shooting (Bataclan), New Zealand had Christ Church, etc. Many countries with much stricter laws have a higher rate per capita than the here- the US makes up about 1.15% of the world's mass shootings while having almost 5% of the world's population.
A better question is "why does the US seem to have a problem with young men who become psychological messes and want to kill classmates:"
1) America has higher rates of single parent households than any other country
2) America has higher rates of prescription psychological medication of children than any other
Mass shootings weren't common before those two, even though guns were (arguably even more) common.
Second, i usually ask them to expand their argument and see where it breaks down. "Pretend that the deaths of innocents actually could have been prevented if the government were to take away the 2nd amendment from everyone just to stop psychopaths from being able to kill children with rifles. If that's OK, then which other rights should we give away to save other innocent lives?"
Certainly freedom of press has to go. If the press were not allowed to share manifestos and glorify the killers, it's proven repeatedly that that would curtail future acts. So if the 2nd is guilty and must be axed, the first is at least as guilty and must be disposed of as well.
The fourth amendment as well must go - quite obviously, if police could search homes and vehicles of every known drug dealer and suspected criminal, they would be able to protect at least some innocent lives that will otherwise be brutally victimized in the future.
The fifth is extremely problematic and should be curtailed too - the vast majority of shootings are never solved because individuals refuse to talk to the police, which leads to more innocents being shot. If police could force criminals to confess, surely it would save childrens lives.
Jury trials? probably not worth it anymore, since juries can let killers go even if the experts in government know the killers are guilty.
Due process and bail are absolutely responsible for the murder of many many innocent people. So those must be given up as well.
Remember, it's for the children. Or are you a monster?
People put on sanctimonious airs, making sweeping claims about mass shootings being "only in America".
This reflects the bad state of journalism.
Looking at the data for the US, Canada and Europe from 2009 to 2015, America was ranked 11th in "Average annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings"
Whilst arguments on both sides have some merit it might be worth considering the nature of the society at large. For example, in UK gun control is extreme and yet we have few shootings but do have a constant drip of mainly knife attacks.
The UK, Australia, Japan and Germany have all taken measures to reduce gun homicides. Can the US learn anything from them? America's gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than other high-income countries, according to a recent study. In USA many people see the ownership of guns as a crucial check on government tyranny. The country’s highest court has ruled that outright bans on civilian ownership of handguns are unconstitutional. But civilised enforcement and culture may also play important roles in preventing violence.
As long as America retains a militarised police force and a predatory government engaging in global violence around the world using black propaganda to justify regime change and a weaponised dollar - the people with respond accordingly. QED these mass shootings events are the result of a tyrannical government invoking fear of the government in the people who feel they need to defend themselves against these dark internal forces.
This zeitgeist is not present in UK - yet, but we are getting there as the recent illegal lockdowns illustrate. However, public petitions, most notably by the Snowdrop Campaign, founded by friends of the bereaved families, called for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the UK. Signed by 750,000 people it was symbolic of the weight of public opinion in the aftermath of the Dunblane school massacre.
Nine years before Dunblane, there had been Hungerford, where Michael Ryan went on a rampage through the Berkshire town, killing 16 people in a series of random shootings before turning the gun on himself. He had been carrying a handgun and two semi automatic rifles, for which he had firearms certificates.
The aftermath of Hungerford brought to an end the right to own semi-automatic firearms in Britain; they were banned along with pump action weapons, and registration became mandatory for shotgun owners. But it was the weight of public opinion that energised this response - you don't have this in USA.
I don't think USA will ever resolve this dilemma. The state is rotten to the core and Americans know it and fear their own government. Only destruction of the Deep State and putrid swamp of corruption and graft will allow America to rise again as its former shining example of true freedom and liberty.
Thank you for this nuanced perspective and historical background, Peter, and what an amazing feat that would be to achieve your concluding sentence.
Interestingly, according to this source (https://safeatlast.co/blog/gun-self-defense-statistics/), there are 466 violent crimes per 100k Americans versus 2,034 per 100k Brits, so more than quadruple the number of violent crimes in the UK. And as you noted, knife crimes are high in the UK, as are attacks with other weapons such as acid.
WOW, that's an amazing stat Margaret. I will need to do some research on this one as a quick Google doesn't yield meaningful results. But no mass shooting events in UK since 2010, so that is a positive.
A good reason to keep your guns against the Feds' attack is on ZH today:
I believe that as our economies gradually fail the trend will be towards localisation and in the case of America this could mean the avoidance of the Fed interventions which I read somewhere recently as States take more control. Perhaps this is a realistic reason for hope? Secession?
There are immense cultural differences between nations that can account for radical differences in the public. In the UK the police can enter your house when they are justified. While the UK police have powers well beyond the US police, they are remarkably restrained in use of those powers. Still, there are estate areas in the UK where the police do not enter without an armed team. Armed police teams in the UK are quite a big deal. And regardless of the laws, criminals in the UK do have weapons. They are rarely used on citizens because the effort to find them reaches extremes.
The UK social mores are quite different than the US mores expressing a different culture. Similarly other nations differ as well. Some conduct accepted in the US would be considered bonkers elsewhere. And other nations often worry a lot about retaining their traditional values as the Yank culture arrives.
Good observations thanks, and I do agree. But the pressing issue is random mass shootings which haven't happened in UK since 2010. As the US government violently threatens their own people, the patriots have every reason to retain their defences regardless of the individual acts of homicide.
I think it's all about fear levels which seem to be high in the US whereas most Brits don't feel as threatened by their government - well not yet anyway but that could change.
There is something to be said about trust in local councils even in the largest cities where government attempts to be closer to it's citizens. In my work with the UK police I felt they were quite well trained compared to my work with US police. And I felt a respect for the force part of law enforcement in the UK police. The level of frustration with government seems to be quite different between the two nations although the effort at polarization seems about the same. I'm not able to judge differences in how troubled youth are managed between the two nations. But I did observe that UK teens can access beer readily and few adults seem overly concerned as long as the kids behave. Don't know how far that tolerance really goes.
Thank you for your valuable insights into the two police forces. It seems that they are both attempting to do a good job of keeping the peace in their own way. Yes, teens tend to be unruly wherever they are and the drinking culture in UK doesn't seem to impact society any more here than elsewhere - most of them in my experience generally behave well.
I spend time on this American website where I post my weekly 'Letter from Great Britain' and the comments give me good feedback especially about the way the Feds are viewed as opposed to state or county governance:
My view on gun control is that everybody should have one and know how to use it. As collapse intensifies it will become more obvious that police and others are not going to protect us. I think most of the shootings that are highlighted by the media and used to push the wedge issue of gun control were in some way facilitated or helped along to further the narrative, whether the person was groomed by the FBI, police were asked to stand down, or it was all a made for media production. https://sukwan.substack.com/p/did-police-in-the-uvalde-texas-school?s=w
This entire gun argument is really so simple. “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
SHALL
NOT
BE
INFRINGED
And yes you could buy a cannon back in the time of our founding fathers. And the fact that I cannot by an M1 tank is an infringement on my 2A rights. George Washington said, “they should have arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government”.
If you don’t like the foundational laws of this country as it pertains to firearms then you can move to literally almost any other country on Earth and not live around people who have guns, I mean there are just so many other options. But for the rest of us, this IS our option.
Margaret, Thank you for sharing this stomach churning mis-adventure. The "footedness" and staunch defense by the uninformed never ceases to astound me. I hope that it is not a violation of some unwritten internet protocol to use the my response to Naomi Wolf for you as well:
Naomi, great work and thank you for sticking it out! You are the modern day version of John in the woods wrapped in skins and eating wild berries and insects, screaming....REPENT FOR THE LORD IS COMING! Like you he persevered. God worked it out early that it is up to the individual to gain the knowledge and make the decision. You are blessed for being one who brings knowledge. Now we wait.
In addition I would like to share with you the following:
If they can't be trusted to protect our free speech,
If they can't be trusted to protect the lives of our unborn children,
If they can't be trusted to protect our right to freely assemble,
If they can't be trusted to protect our boarder from illegal aliens,
If they can't be trusted to tell us the truth about our current financial situation,
If they can't be trusted to protect our energy independence so we are not dependent upon nations that despise us for the energy resources needed to maintain our jobs and homes,
Then why would we trust them for our personal protection?
It's illogical at best and dangerous at worst.
-Pastor Allen Jackson, World Outreach Church, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
"NE: Come on. Guns don’t cause mass shootings but they’d be less of them if guns weren’t around"
I remember asking her, "Wait - if you get rid of guns, then why would there only be "less" of mass shootings? Why would there be any mass shootings at all? I mean, you just got rid of guns, didn't you?"
Or words to that effect.
What she doesn't contemplate is that which cannot be known but can be deduced: what would unopposed bad guys do, and what would an unopposed government do, if they all knew that the People were unarmed and defenseless?
I mean, just look at what they do KNOWING that there are 300 millions guns out there. Imagine if NONE of the People were armed ... well, you don't have to imagine.
You only have to open a history book. (Or pay attention to what's happening in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, among others, these days.)
This is my first time publishing a discussion thread, and I ran into some technical glitches with publishing. The e-newsletter was missing a bunch of text and had disembodied links in some email apps, so I apologize to those who were confused by this oddity. Thanks to everyone for your patience, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter!
when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns
A large person, whom is violent of nature, will always dominate a smaller, weaker person. it has always been such and always will be, but a poem written many years ago, speaks to that issue,
Be not afraid of any man
No matter what his size
If danger threatens, call on me
And I will equalize.
Or, to shorten it,
"God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal."
And before someone falls back on the Freud "Quote",,,, please go and look that he never said it, in fact, what he did write, was the opposite,
Freud associates retarded sexual and emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and loathing of weapons.
Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/2058932-sigmund-freud-a-fear-of-weapons-is-a-sign-of-retarded-sexual-and/
Well-summarized, nymusicdaily!
There is also an old adage from ancient China:
"When laws multiply, crime will abound."
Agreed.
Whatever anyone says either way on this subject won’t sway my mind. Nobody is taking my means to defend myself without killing me first. End of story.
A hill to die on, if one needs one.
My preference would be to live out my life peacefully and I hope our government doesn’t screw that up.
🙌
I lived in Europe for many years and when I moved to the US it was mind boggling to me that so many people had guns. The past 3 years led me to understand better this debate and I lean much more in favor of the 2nd Amendment now. America was never meant to be like the rest of the world, we have our unique ways both good and bad but we are about the last country on this planet where citizens are mostly armed and that gives our government, whichever party it is, some pause before enacting policies to which the people don’t agree.
And yes, I have to mention Australia because it was utopian what happened there that it cannot be ignored.
It would so much easier to just strengthen security at schools. So many private schools have security guards and checkpoints of entrance and exiting, why can’t public schools?
Thank you for sharing your nuanced views on this topic, Laura!
It has been proven over the long haul that simply training adult staff at the schools who volunteer to serve in this way, in various aspects of defending the schools and students where they work, then allowing those who train and volunteer to carry their own defensive weapons as they perform their duties at the school, armed with their own weapons, , the very ones they alread carry everywhere else BUT school, Look into the FASTER Saves LIves programme in Ohio. It was developed as a response to the Sandy Hook incident. All volunteer, absolutely NO COST to government or taxpayers, and the best part: in the ten plus years the programme has been in place there has not yet been even ONE incident invoving misuse of guns at any school in any district that have adipted the programme. So far it has been 100% effective. WHY? Because the perps out there who wOULD do harm know that in those districts at least SOME skilled, armed, trained, dedicated, adult WILL have a gun and more importanly will NOT hesitate to use it to stop any threat that comes long to harm. In refresher drills and simulations, these armed ordinary teachers constantly best the trained lw enforcement attempting to breach the "school" (in the make believe drills) and defeat the cop trrainers more often than the trainers get the drop on the teachers.
'd say that's perfect solution: PROVEN 100% effective and successful, cost the taxpayer nothing, no one knows who has their gun on them at any given time, so no issues with "kids being scared of guns".In reality, thekids are far more seure and relaxed because they know SOME of the adult staff are armed and trained, and any of evil intent will NOT get past them to harm the kids.
I never heard of that program, that is a good approach and it should be more publicized. I think many people have this idealist view of school as s place where no doors need to be locked and all staff and people who enter the school is trustworthy. Sadly, this is not Switzerland (even they have their problems), and we would be better off admitting that increased security in schools with armed personal is an advantage to students and teachers. Wealthy parents, value this and pay for it in their kids private schools, and yet, they shout from their ivory tower that public schools should be completely gun-free. There is no consonance and often it seems like it comes down to a class argument.
I learned of the FASTER Saves LIves programme as soon as the concept was floated, shortly after Scammy Crooks. I followed the development through to its establishment.
Wanna hear a crazy? The Browsrd County school board had asked folks from the FASTER programme to come tell them about it, which they graciously did. that was a fwe weeks before the crazed punk, violating a court order to not ever be at that schoool, passed a backgorund chek he should not have been able to pass (county officials had REFUSED to file charges against the eventual killer for any of the four felony level crimes he had committed) entered the campus carrying his new rifle and a big pile of tEN rund magazines (they fit better in the new gun case he had also bought0 and begankilling.
Had FASTER been in place at the Douglas High School on that day, the perp would have been taken out before he ever got to the first classroom. And Aaron Feiss woud still be alive, haveing been able to shoot back at the perp instead of wrapping his body arund two of his students, taking their bullets and letting them live.
I read recently that that school district has no repented of their folly of rejecting the programme, and are now taking steps to implement it in that district. Four years and twenty six deaths late, but they are doing it. COlorado have also recently taken up that programme and are implementing it.
There are a number of factors that ALL these mass shootings have in common.
ALL males, (one exception had a militant warrior female sidekick)
ALL known to authorities as problems, local state federal
ALL got their weapon passing BGC or stole them avoiding BGC
ALL carefully selected venues that were "gun free" zones...... they'd have the only guns
Taking all these common factors together I see only one simple cheap effective solution to these events. ALLOW we who already carry our personal defensive weapons with us everywhere we go to ALSO carry them into those types of places. I carry mine everywhere, have for fifteen years. Never came close to NEEDING it. There are some places I am prohibited to carry it legally. I simply do not go there. Sports venues, nightclubs/bars in my state (next one south tell me I can be armed inside there as long as I don't drink. At the price of their booze I dont drink in those places anyway). Courthouses have secure gun safes where I can put my gun, take thekey, and retrieve it when I leave. But the copers are thick and armed, so it is NOT a gun free zone. Im fine wiht that. Most "no guns" zones i my stateare not properly signed, thus no violation occurs if "made". The only thing they can do is tell me to take my gun out. I can come back, but the gun can't. So I leave.
I avoid Certified Defenseless Victim Zones s the danger zones and plagues they are. WHY can't we simply do the same with the schoolsour kids attend? (my kids will never attend gummit skewlz, one main reason being they are death traps. The other being what they pour into their heads all day long inside those places.
There IS a simple free answer that will END these school massacres. FASTER is only one version of it. I underatand that in the State of Texas each district can decide whether adult staff in that district are able to go about their daily tasks armed. The district that includes Uvalde had decided AGAINST allowing that. Perhaps surviving parents might want to rethink that vote? Had that teacher whose classroomwas first invaded been armed and triained that school shooting may have had two victims.. the first child shot, then the perp himself who got terminated by that teacher whose room he chose to invade. And WE would all be doing something more profitable with out time instead of reading this stuff here.
I saw the number of armed police in Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy. The week after I was there they and many other armed police and military came and violently pushed back defenseless people because of a group of peaceful protesters who were looking for a dialogue with the government. The government who now is banning all hand guns ownership. These are the incremental steps that only get worse, these governments don't one day say, "oh, thats enough, we don't need to continue to take away peoples rights anymore we have done enough."
There is a breakdown in rule of law certainly in the states and more and more in Canada. Enact 'The Emergency Act' so that peoples rights can be taken away for no reason. So, laws are not going to protect us when the government ignores them when they chose.
I would like to see a much stronger gun lobby in Canada, as Canadians I think we will just roll over, as we did for Covid, as so many did to criticize 'freedom', as we are doing by spending our money in Ukraine where it is very apparent that it is necessary to spend it here. Roll over because of what the government says. When a government stops serving its people and starts telling them what they need to do, we are in trouble.
And there won't be anything we can do if we cannot defend ourselves when it becomes necessary.
Excellent bullet points, MAA! And you're right - Naomi Wolf's piece a few hours earlier was exquisite. I cannot improve on your points because I share all of them. TBH, I've not read the antagonist thread. I can't deal with any more irrationality at the moment. The leftist wife responded to my email yesterday (apparently she didn't think her husband's caustic response was enough) and I've refused to read it so far. Think I'll have my husband go through it first.
This is a link to a Federalist article from years ago about what is used in other countries to kill people instead of guns. http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/21/gun-control-across-world-leads-acid-knifings-bombings/
P.S. JP has a recent video about banning all guns that is good, but his "How to Think Like a Leftist" flow chart is superb! https://rumble.com/v174pyj-why-guns-must-be-banned-now.html
https://rumble.com/v16vykx-how-to-think-like-a-leftist.html
Thank you, Birdingmom, and I’m sorry you’re being cannonaded for simply trying to share eye-opening information.
Those links look valuable—thank you! I haven’t seen JP’s latest yet.
There are over 370 "mental disorders" listed in the latest version of the DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.) The list includes "Tobacco Addiction Disorder" among other equally mundane and ridiculous so-called "mental illnesses." If the DSM is the standard by which politicians wishes to remove our rights to own guns, then I'd guess 90% of the American people could probably be classified with a mental disorder of one kind or another. BEWARE.....
Great point, Rick, and we have already seen how neuropsych evaluations have been weaponized against physicians of conscience like Dr. Meryl Nass for daring to prescribe life-saving early treatment protocols and failing to subjugate their conscience to comply with tyrannical and democidal edicts.
We know that when the world is in a state of mass hypnosis, those of us resistant to that hypnosis are deemed “insane,” so we must remain weary of any such gaslighting measures used to disarm and discredit the sane.
as many have said "evil plans murder weeks or months in advance" as do most of these ghouls.. btw - define sane!
Haha, sane = still in possession of one’s mental faculties and not menticided by mass formation
A THEORY! ----that can be used against anyone??
There are four key components needed for an environment to experience a mass formation psychosis: lack of social bonds or decoupling of societal connections, lack of sense-making (things don’t make sense), free-floating anxiety, and free-floating psychological discontent. Free-floating anxiety is a general sense of uneasiness that is not tied to any particular object or specific situation.
When followers start to participate in a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, new social bonds typically emerge and people change from a highly aversive negative mental state and isolation, to the exact opposite to the extremely high-level of connectedness that exists.
Mass formation is the theory; mass media is the weapon of implementation. And yes, it can be and is used against everyone, but not everyone succumbs, especially if they’re cognizant of the mechanisms of menticide (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-menticided-a-12-step).
YES ITS A THEORY.. but the truth is that its all propaganda, guess work thrown out to also FOOL the masses.. people are lied to by most in power or even out of power now.. I HAVE A COUPLE OF FRIENDS THAT KNOW THIS!
Prove yourself spot on, go and find a copy of DSM three or earlier. I remember when verion five came out, how radically different it was. Yo see right through their smoke screen. Well done
It seems obvious to me that the repeal of the original Smith Mundt Act opened the floodgates for propaganda from every angle. I do not think it is a happy circumstance that our ‘News’ went south right about when the government passed a law making it legal for the government to propagandize the public. Great article!
Thank you, Trace, and excellent point re: the Smith-Mundt Act!
From Thomas DiLorenzo 5/31/22:
"Now that voting no longer matters:
....in light of the massive vote fraud of the 2020 elections, which will only become more pervasive and cemented into place, the only thing that now stands in the way of totalitarianism
is gun ownership.
I have a dream.
That Chuck Schumer will personally supervise attempts to go door-to-door in the mountains of Arkansas, Western Montana, the rural South, the Deer Hunter area of western Pennsylvania, West Texas, and other parts of real America, including the inner city "hood", to announce that "I'm from the government and I'm here to confiscate your firearms".
😂👏
Thanks for sharing this discussion thread. I am for private ownership of guns, and switched to this view about 7 years ago when I recognized the US government no longer represented the people.
I think you began with a weak argument that may have affected the rest of the interaction. Guns ARE made to kill people, and arguing otherwise seems like nonsense, seems like you're not arguing honestly. Guns were invented to kill, and then have been used either for defense (whether you fire your gun or not), and/or to injure or kill in defense or aggression. A counter-argument about knives is also weak, because there's no comparison between the effort and ability needed to kill on a mass scale with knives vs guns. Admitting guns are made to be lethal bolsters what I found was the strongest sentence in your argument, "It is a broadly armed populace that is willing to defend its rights that stops tyranny." This is directly related to the fact that guns can easily kill as they are designed to do, so people, police forces and governments think twice before violating the space of gun owners.
The downside of widely available gun ownership is that some people will use it to injure and kill innocent people. This is a heartbreaking and heart-wrenching downside, and weighs heavily on every caring person. People need to realize that since guns are widely available, we are experiencing the downside of this situation, vs not experiencing the downside of guns not being available to the citizenry. For example, if guns were not widely available, we would be experiencing less mass shootings, but could also be experiencing the downside of that situation; mass harm to our citizenry due to our government and police force overrunning and killing the citizens that interfere with their agenda (as you pointed out).
Thank you for sharing your journey, Nova123. I see your point about the intention behind manufacturing guns and your conclusion makes sense.
What I perhaps failed to make clear is that I meant the object itself is simply a neutral tool that can be used for a variety of purposes (defense, sport, hunting, etc.). Only a minuscule number of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens have actually been used to kill humans, and in the cases where they have been used in self-defense, it has saved the lives of the innocent.
I also see your point about widely available gun ownership, although according to criminologist John Lott (author of “More Guns Less Crime: Understanding Crime & Gun Control Laws”), a higher rate of gun ownership correlates with lower levels of crime (as one reviewer says, ”I wanted to disagree with this book, but the data speaks for itself”).
I appreciate your sensitive approach to this topic and agree there are complexities. I would certainly like to see greater emphasis on addressing the root causes. If we could eradicate mainstream media, for example, that would eliminate the primary cause of mental illnesses. Short of that, getting people to stop paying attention to the MSM is probably the biggest step we could make toward restoring mental health/balance/perspective on reality and saving lives.
"News" readers should be mandated to disclose their political affiliations when reading about political topics.
"News" readers should be mandated to state their personal stance on whatever topic they happen to be reading about on air.
Otherwise I could just read it myself.
Brilliant on two counts: 1) calling them “news readers” (since none are actual journalists or reporters these days) and 2) requiring disclosure of political affiliations—although, honestly, if they’re in media, I think we can guess in 99% of the cases :-)
Thanks. I agree that "we" can guess the reader's affiliation but the people who rely on and trust the TV news personalities need to be told. Otherwise, they will continue to believe the "news" is agenda/politically neutral.
True. Even better if they stop watching altogether.
Some will when they finally put it together that the "news" is not only biased but is lying to them either directly or by ommission. My Mom passed away a few years ago at 88 but I vividly remember watching the local news with her. She believed everything they said. She trusted Walter Cronkite because he sold the news as the truth and her generation (mostly) took it that way ever since.
BTW, very much appreciate your writing, even in the rare occurrences that we disagree. You help me think clearer. Thank you.
Thanks for your reply. I so agree with you, that mainstream media is a primary cause of mental illness and division amongst people in this country. People would do well to turn it off! I always wonder about violent video games and violent movies having an impact too. I haven't looked into the studies about video games so I don't know how rigorous they are. And on top of that, I'm aware of possible mind control operations that may be contributing.
I think it surprises some people that crime has gone down with the availability of guns. It makes sense. Guns do save lives, and some of those stories have real emotional impact. The mass murder of people, and especially children, is so emotionally upsetting that it's hard to counter with stories of guns saving lives. It's interesting too, that there are two mass shootings that I know of where "good guys with guns" were on site, and did nothing out of fear for their lives. Uvalde is one example, and the other was in Southern California in an office building years ago where a person outside with a gun did not go in. That really weakens the argument that the answer to bad guys with guns are good guys with guns. That seems to apply to personal situations but not to mass shootings.
I don't consider guns a neutral tool. Maybe that's a cultural perception I have. Or maybe its objective that they're not neutral. Human-created objects are made for their usefulness, they're not neutral. Candles are made to burn, chairs are made to sit on, art is created to look at. And guns were created to kill, and then are sometimes used to shoot at flying discs or targets.
I think many people don't consider guns a neutral tool. You site one example of their neutrality in sport, but in hunting and defense they are used for their ability to kill. And then there's the military, either organized military or militias of different kinds around the world, where guns are used because they were created to kill. But perhaps what you mean by neutral is that a tiny number of guns out of all the guns available are used to kill people. In which case we're not using the word neutral in the same way. On a side note but related, I was surprised that a vast majority of police officers have not fired their guns ever in their career.
I was just reading Dr Robert Malone's latest post and comments, but I can't comment there because I'm not a paid subscriber. I'm sorry that people unsubscribed because of your post on guns. You are always thoughtful and honest, and it's so good for people to practice disagreeing well without walking away. (Unless there are attacks that aren't worth engaging in). I appreciate you! 💕
Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Nova123! I have heard that blaming video games for violence was contradicted by the research, but I haven’t had a chance to investigate it thoroughly. My feeling is they are unlikely to be a direct instigator as millions of kids play video games without issues. It is the ones with mental illness who are subjected to other destructive influences (e.g., abuse, addiction, bullying, etc.) and who lack a creative outlet and purpose in their lives who tend to enact these brutal crimes.
That said, Nature Deficit Disorder has a damaging impact on kids’ mental health, and urban at-risk youth who participate in nature programs experience radical transformations. If kids and teens spent time in nature instead of playing video games, watching television, surfing the Internet, texting on their phones, etc., they would be both physically and psychologically healthier and far less likely to commit such heinous acts.
“That really weakens the argument that the answer to bad guys with guns are good guys with guns.”
I would argue that they weren’t really good guys if they were too cowardly to act when the need arose. There are numerous instances where good guys have stopped tragedy in its tracks by acting quickly. The YouTube channel Active Self Protection (https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveSelfProtection) has thousands of security camera videos showing criminal acts, many demonstrating acts of self-defense and courage.
Regarding your comment about cops not firing their guns in their careers, there is actually a serious problem with many cops not getting adequate training and regular practice with their weapons, so in an emergency situation, they do not always have the muscle memory to respond as quickly as needed.
Thank you for your closing note, Nova123. I am grateful to those who are willing to engage in respectful dialogue about matters of disagreement. I try to encourage open-minded debate and discourage personal attacks, and for the most part, I think everyone here has been very well-behaved :-) I’m sorry some people felt so strongly about the issue that they left as they missed out on an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about a difficult topic.
Great point about violent video games possibly only affecting those who already have mental problems. Makes a lot of sense. And thanks for letting me know about that channel active self-protection. I watched a lot of the videos, so good to be aware. Take good care. 💕
There have been mass killings with cars and trucks. So are they deadly weapons? Yes. When a car and human body come into contact they are deadly. However, when used with care they are not, but merely have that potential. Some people don’t own cars and some don’t own guns. Both are licensed and it’s one’s individual choice.
Guns are only "licensed" where guns are highly restricted by nanny state NONE of mine are, and I hvave every one of them legally.
I think it's a weak argument to compare cars, which are not made to kill people, and guns which are. Yes, they can both be used to kill people, but they are made for fundamentally different purposes.
Maybe so, but both can be used as weapons, as can knives. I'm sure most gun owners have never used their weapons to kill and some that I know have not even fired a weapon. They are only collectors. The human behind any device has the potential to kill, including the Covid technocrats. They are killing a different form, as are abortionists.
Go and study how things went down in Australia as the government there stood firm and declared "Mr. and Mrs Austalia, turn them ALL in". Read how crime began to climb once "everyone' was disarmed. Then read about the INCREASE in gun use in crimes. No not everyone turned them all in s commanded. There were a number of incidents where guns were still used defensivley. Of course, the gun got dropped and left as the intended victim was simply on about surviving, and did not tarry to chat up the gendarmerie. Housebreakings increased, as I recall some thirty five ercent in the fist year after the massive takeup. The louts KNEW the residents would not be armed, as everyone had turned them all in as commanded.
Of course, THIS sort of important news never was seen in OUR lamestream media. Why? Because THIS side the Big Puddle there were "certain factions" lready bent upon disarming THIS nation.
Yeah, I already know that gun availability reduces crime. I learned that years ago, but it was a surprise to me when I learned it. And I think it's a surprise to a gun control advocates because they equate guns with crime, and think lower guns means lower crime.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro private gun ownership. I just want to help sharpen the arguments so they are more effective. 👍🏽
Isn't it interesting that the government would enforce their tyranny with the exact tools that they want to take away from law abiding citizens who want to be left alone and live free?
As far as these idiots who claim a citizenry can't fight the government cause "tanks and airplanes".... how would you explain Vietnam and Afghanistan (both places I've been). Smaller, less educated and greatly out classed in weaponry, these third world backwaters defeated the most well equipped military in the history of mankind. Now the big question is...does the American public have the same commitment as the Vietcong or the Taliban? I think that's a solid no.
For OS to write "Your argument is that unorganized, scattered, private gun owners with weapons that do not come to the level of government arms, are somehow holding off tyranny in the US. Forgive me, but that seems like a fantasy." is itself a fantasy IN REAL TIME.
See: Australia, New Zealand, Canada to name but three countries being swallowed by government tyranny TODAY, and with their People mostly unarmed. No connection? THAT is fantasy.
👍
In a way these debates are so very odd. Before the late 1950's mass killings were quite rare. We certainly had the tools, even machine guns for a time before they were banned. But semi-automatics have been around since the early 1900's. Now it is true that the current AR type rifles are quite easy to use but semi-auto pistols are also quite easy to use particularly in the smaller calibers of the AR type rifles. And we do see that most mass killings are usually by pistol. Magazine capacity seems to also be an issue but several of whatever size can easily be carried.
A lot of social changes erupted in the late 50's that seem most appropriate to debate - the degree in which we tolerate immorality. We ought to all agree that killing another human is something that is quite wrong except under dire circumstance. We can agree that anger toward others is OK except when it results in violence, or do we?
We have always had some deranged people including down and out addicts who have given up hope. In the past we would try to help the deranged and the addicts but most of that has devolved from groups trying to make a difference to assigning that task to government who cannot help at all. At best the government can remove people from society and place them in uncaring institutions. But only communities can really help by caring individuals trying. We once did have community helpers, sponsored within the communities but in the main we now count on an ineffective government and try in ignore the issues. Any dependency on government to resolve human failures is likely to disappoint.
While religion and religious institutions are rejected by many, in the past they served a powerful purpose of organizing the community. Believers affected even non-believers by their charity. As a society we generally were tolerant of the bible thumpers thinking them well intended. In the rejection of that entire segment of society by mockery and other tools created to instill doubt we have thrown the baby out so to speak. Being anti-religious became cool. After all who is to tell you how to live? But in the process we have been net losers.
What a thought-provoking and moving analysis, HardeeHo. And you make an excellent point about the historical patterns.
Consider this statistic in light of your statement:
“In 1950 only 9 percent of American households had televisions; by 1959 that figure had increased to 85.9 percent.” (https://www.britannica.com/art/television-in-the-United-States/The-late-Golden-Age)
If you watch documentaries like “Century of the Self,” you see that television is used to induce states of desire, envy, greed, lust, fear, anxiety, and every shade of mental illness to manipulate us to consume and obey.
I think a very strong argument could be made for a direct correlation between television and other mechanisms of mass control (MSM, Big Tech) and the increase in violent crimes and mass shootings. If we want to reduce violence, increase societal cohesion, and strengthen individual ethics/morality, the best thing we could do is get everyone to turn off their hypnosis machines.
The early days of television included shows representing ideal families and an idealization of the mundane common to all. That seemed to change over time maybe because few ever were able to match those ideals and perhaps we desired conflict and drama to draw viewers. I suppose the social scientists set about research in how to acquire more viewers for those ads and tricks to manipulate thought much as we had 'nudge' theory to drive us into the covid delusions.
Education has long departed from an effort to teach ways of thinking into ways to think. Those hypnosis machines won't be turned off but we can teach skills to avoid being manipulated. Once you become aware of the tools, you become somewhat less susceptible to being controlled. Just as we now must ignore all those frightfully annoying ads on web pages in order to read the content, so must we ignore what we are fed by much media.
Great points, HardeeHo. If I recall from “Century of the Self,” public-opinion engineering was definitely present in television programming from the outset, but the focus was more on driving consumption and sales. There was also an underlying aim to mold morality, but it emphasized positive, constructive values rather than destructive ones. Once the programmers shifted to a more debased POV, society degenerated accordingly.
It is definitely one of my aims to equip people with the skills and knowledge to detect and deflect propaganda (as in https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-menticided-a-12-step). I do think the people who are awakening are starting to turn off their television and live life instead, and I hope that could become a widespread trend the more people become aware of the manipulation.
The revolution can't happen fast enough but entrenched interests are not going to give up easily. Much current programming has been engineered around certain social issues that are intended to nudge behaviors. The only way to counter such influence is a more aware public and forces exist in media to ensure that doesn't happen. I am pleased that the public is much more aware of the destructive nature of "The Trusted News Initiative". I do hope the thinking people are enough to help others see through what is forced upon us.
"Show me were owning guns overcame a tyrannical govt in the US"
here you go,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
Wow! What a story that I was not aware of.
Thank-you for that link. I enjoyed the story immensely. I read most of it to my husband and he found it enjoyable also. Knowing many, many Tennesseans really helped see and hear this in our minds. Thanks again for the smiles and laughs. 🤗
The incremental steps started with the muzzle...
Civics have been taken out of school curriculums decades ago, but my impression is that in families, where children learn how to shoot at an early age, the Constitution is well and alive.
Even psychopaths and criminals are more reserved under such circumstances.
Kentucky, where I live, is about the fifth poorest state in the Union, when it comes to personal income, but it has the 5th lowest crime rate. When I moved here eight years ago, somebody explained it to me: "People are nice here, because everyone is armed to the teeth." :)
In the current process of mass murder, I don't think that disarming the populace will come before martial law is introduced. Once the food riots start, the monsters will be watching with glee as looters will roam the land and the previously law-abiding citizens murder each other for a bowl of thin soup... People will do the favor for the tyrants...
The only chance people have is that the enforcers realize that their money will not be worth a penny a few years from now and their very survival will depend on complete compliance until they wear out their usefulness and will be lined up on the roads to the death camps.
Anyone working under the premise that these school shootings are somehow organic and not part of a continuing PYSOP to garner support for the elimination of self-defense via guns is likely to come to a different conclusion. How many times does one of the alphabet agencies have to be "familiar" with a perpetrator before the public realizes these events are "Made to Happen" or "Allowed to Happen." The idea that the only government agencies should be the only people allowed to have weapons is a non-starter. We all have a natural right to self-defense, whether that be from individual or government action. That is particularly so when the latest "school shooting" clearly indicates that the law enforcement won't protect you. And anyone depending upon the Criminal Injustice System to combat tyranny or markedly reduce crime is going to be greatly disappointed.
The point of being armed isn't even about winning against the government; it is the idea that they are walking into a nightmare - one that they really don't won't to face as we are really led by cowards. That is why they spend so much time on propaganda and deception. So, yeah, start using nuclear weapons against the public. Watch what happens next when it is made clear that people have nothing more to lose.
"Allowed to have weapons" is a big signifier that the person doesn't understand natural rights. No 2A advocate is arguing that they be "allowed" anything. A right does not spell out what you are "allowed" to do. It spells out what a government may not infringe upon.
That is a crucial point, James—thank you for that significant contribution!
💯
First you could have answered their question - why does America have so many mass shootings?
0) There are more people in the USA so there are more shootings. France had an extremely deadly shooting (Bataclan), New Zealand had Christ Church, etc. Many countries with much stricter laws have a higher rate per capita than the here- the US makes up about 1.15% of the world's mass shootings while having almost 5% of the world's population.
A better question is "why does the US seem to have a problem with young men who become psychological messes and want to kill classmates:"
1) America has higher rates of single parent households than any other country
2) America has higher rates of prescription psychological medication of children than any other
Mass shootings weren't common before those two, even though guns were (arguably even more) common.
Second, i usually ask them to expand their argument and see where it breaks down. "Pretend that the deaths of innocents actually could have been prevented if the government were to take away the 2nd amendment from everyone just to stop psychopaths from being able to kill children with rifles. If that's OK, then which other rights should we give away to save other innocent lives?"
Certainly freedom of press has to go. If the press were not allowed to share manifestos and glorify the killers, it's proven repeatedly that that would curtail future acts. So if the 2nd is guilty and must be axed, the first is at least as guilty and must be disposed of as well.
The fourth amendment as well must go - quite obviously, if police could search homes and vehicles of every known drug dealer and suspected criminal, they would be able to protect at least some innocent lives that will otherwise be brutally victimized in the future.
The fifth is extremely problematic and should be curtailed too - the vast majority of shootings are never solved because individuals refuse to talk to the police, which leads to more innocents being shot. If police could force criminals to confess, surely it would save childrens lives.
Jury trials? probably not worth it anymore, since juries can let killers go even if the experts in government know the killers are guilty.
Due process and bail are absolutely responsible for the murder of many many innocent people. So those must be given up as well.
Remember, it's for the children. Or are you a monster?
Damn, andrew, you are on fire!! 🔥
People put on sanctimonious airs, making sweeping claims about mass shootings being "only in America".
This reflects the bad state of journalism.
Looking at the data for the US, Canada and Europe from 2009 to 2015, America was ranked 11th in "Average annual Death Rate per Million People from Mass Public Shootings"
at 0.089.
Norway (1.888),
Serbia ( 0.381) and
France (0.347) TOPPED THE LIST.
Thank you for the illuminating data, Anna!
Whilst arguments on both sides have some merit it might be worth considering the nature of the society at large. For example, in UK gun control is extreme and yet we have few shootings but do have a constant drip of mainly knife attacks.
The UK, Australia, Japan and Germany have all taken measures to reduce gun homicides. Can the US learn anything from them? America's gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than other high-income countries, according to a recent study. In USA many people see the ownership of guns as a crucial check on government tyranny. The country’s highest court has ruled that outright bans on civilian ownership of handguns are unconstitutional. But civilised enforcement and culture may also play important roles in preventing violence.
As long as America retains a militarised police force and a predatory government engaging in global violence around the world using black propaganda to justify regime change and a weaponised dollar - the people with respond accordingly. QED these mass shootings events are the result of a tyrannical government invoking fear of the government in the people who feel they need to defend themselves against these dark internal forces.
This zeitgeist is not present in UK - yet, but we are getting there as the recent illegal lockdowns illustrate. However, public petitions, most notably by the Snowdrop Campaign, founded by friends of the bereaved families, called for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the UK. Signed by 750,000 people it was symbolic of the weight of public opinion in the aftermath of the Dunblane school massacre.
Nine years before Dunblane, there had been Hungerford, where Michael Ryan went on a rampage through the Berkshire town, killing 16 people in a series of random shootings before turning the gun on himself. He had been carrying a handgun and two semi automatic rifles, for which he had firearms certificates.
The aftermath of Hungerford brought to an end the right to own semi-automatic firearms in Britain; they were banned along with pump action weapons, and registration became mandatory for shotgun owners. But it was the weight of public opinion that energised this response - you don't have this in USA.
I don't think USA will ever resolve this dilemma. The state is rotten to the core and Americans know it and fear their own government. Only destruction of the Deep State and putrid swamp of corruption and graft will allow America to rise again as its former shining example of true freedom and liberty.
Thank you for this nuanced perspective and historical background, Peter, and what an amazing feat that would be to achieve your concluding sentence.
Interestingly, according to this source (https://safeatlast.co/blog/gun-self-defense-statistics/), there are 466 violent crimes per 100k Americans versus 2,034 per 100k Brits, so more than quadruple the number of violent crimes in the UK. And as you noted, knife crimes are high in the UK, as are attacks with other weapons such as acid.
WOW, that's an amazing stat Margaret. I will need to do some research on this one as a quick Google doesn't yield meaningful results. But no mass shooting events in UK since 2010, so that is a positive.
A good reason to keep your guns against the Feds' attack is on ZH today:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-enraged-peter-navarro-describes-being-arrested-and-shackled-over-misdemeanor-j6
I believe that as our economies gradually fail the trend will be towards localisation and in the case of America this could mean the avoidance of the Fed interventions which I read somewhere recently as States take more control. Perhaps this is a realistic reason for hope? Secession?
There are immense cultural differences between nations that can account for radical differences in the public. In the UK the police can enter your house when they are justified. While the UK police have powers well beyond the US police, they are remarkably restrained in use of those powers. Still, there are estate areas in the UK where the police do not enter without an armed team. Armed police teams in the UK are quite a big deal. And regardless of the laws, criminals in the UK do have weapons. They are rarely used on citizens because the effort to find them reaches extremes.
The UK social mores are quite different than the US mores expressing a different culture. Similarly other nations differ as well. Some conduct accepted in the US would be considered bonkers elsewhere. And other nations often worry a lot about retaining their traditional values as the Yank culture arrives.
Good observations thanks, and I do agree. But the pressing issue is random mass shootings which haven't happened in UK since 2010. As the US government violently threatens their own people, the patriots have every reason to retain their defences regardless of the individual acts of homicide.
I think it's all about fear levels which seem to be high in the US whereas most Brits don't feel as threatened by their government - well not yet anyway but that could change.
There is something to be said about trust in local councils even in the largest cities where government attempts to be closer to it's citizens. In my work with the UK police I felt they were quite well trained compared to my work with US police. And I felt a respect for the force part of law enforcement in the UK police. The level of frustration with government seems to be quite different between the two nations although the effort at polarization seems about the same. I'm not able to judge differences in how troubled youth are managed between the two nations. But I did observe that UK teens can access beer readily and few adults seem overly concerned as long as the kids behave. Don't know how far that tolerance really goes.
Thank you for your valuable insights into the two police forces. It seems that they are both attempting to do a good job of keeping the peace in their own way. Yes, teens tend to be unruly wherever they are and the drinking culture in UK doesn't seem to impact society any more here than elsewhere - most of them in my experience generally behave well.
I spend time on this American website where I post my weekly 'Letter from Great Britain' and the comments give me good feedback especially about the way the Feds are viewed as opposed to state or county governance:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/author/austrian-peter/
My view on gun control is that everybody should have one and know how to use it. As collapse intensifies it will become more obvious that police and others are not going to protect us. I think most of the shootings that are highlighted by the media and used to push the wedge issue of gun control were in some way facilitated or helped along to further the narrative, whether the person was groomed by the FBI, police were asked to stand down, or it was all a made for media production. https://sukwan.substack.com/p/did-police-in-the-uvalde-texas-school?s=w
Thank you for this compelling synopsis, Amy!
This entire gun argument is really so simple. “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
SHALL
NOT
BE
INFRINGED
And yes you could buy a cannon back in the time of our founding fathers. And the fact that I cannot by an M1 tank is an infringement on my 2A rights. George Washington said, “they should have arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government”.
If you don’t like the foundational laws of this country as it pertains to firearms then you can move to literally almost any other country on Earth and not live around people who have guns, I mean there are just so many other options. But for the rest of us, this IS our option.
Margaret, Thank you for sharing this stomach churning mis-adventure. The "footedness" and staunch defense by the uninformed never ceases to astound me. I hope that it is not a violation of some unwritten internet protocol to use the my response to Naomi Wolf for you as well:
Naomi, great work and thank you for sticking it out! You are the modern day version of John in the woods wrapped in skins and eating wild berries and insects, screaming....REPENT FOR THE LORD IS COMING! Like you he persevered. God worked it out early that it is up to the individual to gain the knowledge and make the decision. You are blessed for being one who brings knowledge. Now we wait.
In addition I would like to share with you the following:
If they can't be trusted to protect our free speech,
If they can't be trusted to protect the lives of our unborn children,
If they can't be trusted to protect our right to freely assemble,
If they can't be trusted to protect our boarder from illegal aliens,
If they can't be trusted to tell us the truth about our current financial situation,
If they can't be trusted to protect our energy independence so we are not dependent upon nations that despise us for the energy resources needed to maintain our jobs and homes,
Then why would we trust them for our personal protection?
It's illogical at best and dangerous at worst.
-Pastor Allen Jackson, World Outreach Church, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Haha, I am honored to share a comment with Naomi Wolf—and such a powerful one at that! Thank you, Mike!
"NE: Come on. Guns don’t cause mass shootings but they’d be less of them if guns weren’t around"
I remember asking her, "Wait - if you get rid of guns, then why would there only be "less" of mass shootings? Why would there be any mass shootings at all? I mean, you just got rid of guns, didn't you?"
Or words to that effect.
What she doesn't contemplate is that which cannot be known but can be deduced: what would unopposed bad guys do, and what would an unopposed government do, if they all knew that the People were unarmed and defenseless?
I mean, just look at what they do KNOWING that there are 300 millions guns out there. Imagine if NONE of the People were armed ... well, you don't have to imagine.
You only have to open a history book. (Or pay attention to what's happening in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, among others, these days.)
Great followup, ¡Andrew the Great!
I always thought Naked Emperor was a “he”—did I get that wrong?
With you again MAA! Well done.