‘There’s a Remedy for Our Nation — and That Remedy Is Not Gun Control’: Congressman

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Waves of grief continue to break over Texas, as the tight-knit Allen community comes to grip with the weekend’s senseless shooting. As the names and pictures of Saturday’s victims were released by police, hearts across the country shattered at the news that two families had lost multiple loved ones. A six-year-old boy, orphaned by the death of his parents and brother, is all that remains of the Cho family. Other moms and dads reeled at the horror of losing two elementary-aged daughters as the Mendozas did. After Nashville, Louisville, and so many other devastating tragedies this spring, people are desperate for answers. When will it end — and what can we possibly do to stop it?

Congressman Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who had a front-row seat for the overwhelming sorrow that followed The Covenant School killings in March told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice that he stepped off the House floor after those murders and said, “This country needs a revival.” As a result, he pointed out, “I was mocked by the national media and across the country — and maybe across the globe, I don’t know. But I still stand by that.”

As usual, Hice said, the Left is “trying to blame the instruments of death.” “So they’re going after the guns. But as Christians,” he pointed out, “we know that evil exists in our world. We know that there’s a remedy for our nation — and that remedy is not going to be found simply in gun control. We’ve got to go to the heart of the issue, which is the heart of mankind — mankind which has turned away from the Lord.”

While Democrats like Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez blame Republicans — “We’re living in a Texas nightmare, and it’s a nightmare that [the GOP] created” — the reality, Hice insists, is that guns have been around “for hundreds of years.” “It’s just now that we’re seeing a change, a surge in violence. So it’s not the guns.”

Burchett agreed. “Well, it’s an easy scapegoat,” he pointed out. “… And it’s an election year coming up, [and] they have a weak candidate [in Joe Biden]. So [gun control is] what they’re going to go for. … [I]t’s symbolism. It’s what sells. And … these murders are just horrible.” But, he went on, “We lose 100 people a day in automobile accidents every 39 minutes. We lose somebody to a drunk driver. Yet nobody’s wanting to take alcohol or cars away from people. And so, to me it’s pretty telling about what’s going on.”

When Americans look at what happened in Brownsville, Texas on Sunday, “a man with murder in his heart [used] his vehicle to attack others,” Hice said. “[But] there are no cries to do away with SUVs, right?”

That’s because, as Bishop Charles Flowers said later, “You cannot legislate righteousness. Policies don’t change the heart of a person,” he insisted on “Washington Watch.” “But policies do set the environment in which either evil or righteousness flourish. And with respect to the right to bear arms, that is the responsibility that you and I have been given — not by men, but by God — to protect that which belongs to us.”

It’s important to remember, Flowers said, “The gun itself has never shot anybody.” It’s in someone’s hands. “And the person who has their hands on that weapon is either more or less likely to use it based on what kind of environment … that is around them.”

“Every lost life, of course, is a sad situation in any case,” he emphasized. “But it’s not the possession of guns that do[es] it. I believe in responsible gun ownership. [But if] you put the guns in the hands of somebody that … [will] aid them in their already twisted behavior, you don’t do that. That doesn’t make good sense. But at the same time, [you also don’t] pull that right and responsibility from everybody else who would rightfully use the weapons.”

As Hice mentioned, this is a “heart” problem, and that heart is molded by several so many factors. “We have this outcry to get rid of guns. Why is there no outcry to restore the family, to restore morality? Why this misguided blame for an issue that they’re trying to address with a Band-Aid rather than get to the heart of it?”

Flowers said the answer, at least from the Democrats’ perspective, is simple. “Gun control is part of a larger agenda, and that agenda is to disarm the citizens so that another power can come in and massively control the citizenship. A broken family assists that agenda, so they can’t tout the strength of a strengthening family, because it is counterproductive to what the end goal is.”

But there is hope, he insists, and it starts with prayer and action. “Pray, he says in Second Chronicles: ‘If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways …’ Turning is a prerequisite,” Flowers pointed out. “… ‘Then will I hear from heaven. I’ll forgive their sins, and I’ll heal their land.’ Secondly, don’t let passivity gulf you up like the vicious monster that it is. We have to begin to act — and act out our morals in the social environment.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Amid Rising Antisemitism, Jews Are Embracing The Second Amendment

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  • As antisemitism continues to climb in the U.S., the Jewish community has turned to the Second Amendment to protect themselves, according to several experts that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • Tzvi Waldman, leader of the NYS Jewish Gun Club, told the DCNF that many synagogues can’t afford expensive private security but they have little choice when states like New York simultaneously ban guns in synagogues and don’t curb rising antisemitism.
  • “In the last six and a half years, I have seen, unfortunately, and fortunately, a massive uptake in Jews going out and getting guns, training and starting to be a lot more vocal about how important the Second Amendment is,” Yehuda Remer, founder of The Pew Pew Jew, a Jewish Second Amendment advocacy organization located in Texas, told the DCNF.

In response to rising antisemitism over the past few years, Jews are increasingly embracing firearms as a means of self-protection, community leaders and experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Jews reported 814 antisemitic incidents in 2021 alone, while the number of anti-Jewish assaults across the country in 2021 increased by 16% from 2020, according to FBI hate crime statistics. In response, more Jews have begun exercising their rights under the Second Amendment to protect themselves and their communities, according to experts that spoke with the DCNF.

“I entered the [gun] industry about six years ago, and at the time, I was kind of disheartened to see that Jews didn’t have representation in the Second Amendment world,” Yehuda Remer, founder of The Pew Pew Jew, a Jewish gun rights advocacy organization located in Texas, told the DCNF. “In the last six and a half years, I have seen, unfortunately, and fortunately, a massive uptick in Jews going out and getting guns … and starting to be a lot more vocal about how important the Second Amendment is. I think a lot of these people never would have picked up a gun, or even given it a second thought, if it wasn’t for the rise in antisemitism.”

Rabbi Yossi Elifort, the founder of Magen Am USA, a non-profit organization that helps create armed security teams within the Jewish community, also noted the increasing amount of interest in self-defense in the Jewish community.

“I probably trained 300 first-time shooters in the last two years,” Elifort said. “So there are a lot of first-timers coming out. What’s interesting about American Second Amendment culture is that I found the people who own guns for longer and grew up shooting tend to be less interested or concerned [about] training and those that are getting into it now are more open to it.”

One study, from Americans Against Antisemitism, found that, in New York City, those who were easily identified as Jewish made up 94% of the victims of antisemitic hate crimes from 2018 to 2022. Remer said that Jews have traditionally been silent about the hate directed at them, but as the incidents have escalated, from swastikas spray-painted on synagogues to muggings and shootings while walking down the street, there has been a greater push to learn how to defend themselves.

Raziel Cohen, also known as the Tactical Rabbi, and founder of the National Defensive Firearms Training Academy, told the DCNF that many of the people they’ve helped train in recent years had never even held a firearm.

“A big portion of what we’re dealing with is people who have never touched a firearm before,” Cohen said. “So there’s definitely a different level of training that goes into teaching a beginner so that they are confident and safe, especially since owning a firearm, in general, is obviously a very serious responsibility. There is a large amount of people who have never been involved but either had an attack happen to them or came to the understanding that it’s very possible and that’s why they’re now making the decision to go forward with it.”

Remer and Cohen noted that the number of Jewish women looking to learn how to shoot has also heavily increased. Cohen explained that women are typically more serious about training because the risk to females at home, or walking down the street, is much greater than to men.

Jewish synagogues have also experienced an increasing level of violence. In December, a man was arrested in Michigan after threatening a Jewish synagogue and preschool, and then, in February, another man walked into a San Francisco synagogue, firing blank rounds into the ceiling, during a small gathering.

Tzvi Waldman, who heads the NYS Jewish Gun Club in New York, told the DCNF that part of the reason Jews are at risk is because of laws that prevent them from carrying guns in houses of worship. Waldman said that many synagogues can’t afford expensive private security, but they have little choice when states like New York ban guns in places of worship.

“We shouldn’t have to rely on a third party nor the government,” Waldman said. “I mean the First Amendment, it’s our right to free speech, [but] I don’t have to hire a press secretary to talk and I’m allowed to get on social media, or just stand in front of my house with a microphone and say whatever I want to say. The more effective way, and the way of constitutional law, is to have [trained] citizens within the community to be there, just in case, … [but] you’re not allowed to do that under the current law.”

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Jewish Reporter Files Lawsuit After Allegedly Getting Kicked Out Of A Bar For Being A ‘Zionist Fascist’

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Anti-2A Kamala: ‘Weapons of War Have No Place on the Streets’

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Thursday on FOX’s Jennifer Hudson Show, epically incompetent Vice President Kamala Harris declared that an “assault weapon” ban is reasonable.

Kamala said, “When I look at the tragedies all over our country that have affected so many people so personally, and the senseless nature of it all. Here is the thing: first of all, we should not have to be presented with this false choice which suggests you are in favor of the 2nd Amendment or you want reasonable gun safety laws. That is a false choice. The point is to say it is reasonable to say we would have background checks. Because it is reasonable, you might want to know if someone has been found by a court to be a danger to themselves or others before they buy a gun.”

Fact checks: we already have reasonable gun laws. We already have background checks.

She continued, “It is just reasonable. It is reasonable to say weapons of war have no place on the streets of America. I mean assault weapons, weapons of war. They were designed to be weapons of war. We need an assault weapons ban. These are reasonable things to do. Also, as we look at our children, so many of us were blessed to grow up at a time where we did not have the experience what the children of America are having to experience right now. Which is as they are learning to read and write, they are being taught how you hide and be quiet if there is a rampant gunman, a mass shooting happening in your classroom.”

“Weapons of war” and “assault weapons” are propagandist words that Democrats can’t — or won’t — define when asked, because they 1) don’t know anything about guns, and 2) they want to be able to ban all guns.

Kamala concluded, “I think it is pitiful that the people in the United States Congress do not have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and the NRA and say I support the Second Amendment, but we need reasonable gun safety laws.”

Fact checks: again, we already have reasonable gun laws. And Kamala Harris does not support the Second Amendment. She and her fellow Democrats would scrap the Second Amendment in a heartbeat if they could. But they can’t, so they have to keep chipping away at it by punishing law-abiding gun owners instead of targeting gangs and career criminals.

RELATED ARTICLE: Michelle O: ‘Unfettered Access to Firearms is Not a Good Thing’

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Society-Wide Lack of Restraint a Cause of Mass Shootings: Mohler

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Only two weeks after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, another mass murderer killed six people and wounded nine at a shooting at Old National Bank in Louisville, Ky. The incident was “absolutely horrifying and frightening,” Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Theological Seminary in Louisville, said on “Washington Watch,” but that should make it a call to action for Christians.

Mohler, whose predecessor’s son-in-law died in the Louisville shooting, diagnosed the tragedy as a symptom of “restraint being lifted off” of American society; “you see it just about in every dimension of life.” “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice said that “it seems like almost daily something like this is taking place,” these “extreme acts of violence taking place across the country.”

“There’s only one explanation for this, and that is premeditated violence carried out with a murderous rampage. There is no other factor here,” said Mohler. He warned against the attempts of secular society to reduce a mass shooter’s moral culpability to either socioeconomic factors or mental infirmity; neither explanation, he argued, applied in this case. “Many people want to reduce all sin and wrongdoing, even criminal behavior to some kind of socioeconomic explanation,” he added. “That’s basically all a secular society has.”

But Mohler said the real root cause is the same affliction we all suffer from. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” said the Lord through Jeremiah (17:9). “If it turns out someone says this is ‘just this’ or ‘just that,’ I think we as Christians know that is not plausible,” Mohler summarized.

“As we’re watching more of these events take place all across the country,” Hice agreed, “we can’t blame it all on guns. We can’t blame it all on mental issues. There is a heart issue that must at some point be addressed.”

“When you look at … both the Old and the New Testaments, there’s plenty of evidence to the fact that one of God’s great gifts to humanity is restraint. And when those restraints are taken off of a society, horrible things happen,” Mohler continued. “When you look at the entire structure of biblical morality and biblical law, if you begin to unravel things over here, the unraveling is going to take place over [t]here as well.”

After recounting how a Sodom-esque crime unraveled into civil war, the book of Judges concludes, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). David’s last words poetically celebrate restraining authority, “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth” (2 Samuel 23:3-4). Paul wrote, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13:3-4).

For decades, Americans “have been unraveling the entire moral fiber, the moral structure of Western civilization … that’s based upon very clear biblical principles of morality,” Mohler went on. “Eventually, you end up with people who basically demonstrate what it looks like for a restraint to be gone, for inhibitions to be gone, and for people to follow example after example of horrifying behavior. … If God’s restraining grace is taken away from a society, the list of horrible things happening just continues.”

Mohler insisted the “break down of order and … restraint” is “not just in terms of giant crimes,” but it “gets all the way down to the way parents deal with children, the way that the schools deal with students. … Frankly, you look at America’s major cities, [and] you don’t see much restraint about anything.” Paul warned that “in the last days … people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-4).

Mohler said the digital revolution and especially social media was instrumental in creating the conditions for people to cast off restraint. “It used to be that people were told, ‘think before you say something. Take responsibility for your words. Don’t say anything you don’t want to live with the rest of your life,’” he said. But now, “it’s an unmitigated … just sheer express. It is just absolute, uncontrolled, rampag[ing] emotion.”

Hice agreed, “It’s so easy just to throw out emotions” on social media. “And that certainly is fuel to the fire of extremism and whatever other isms we want to talk about.”

Given the societal ills we face, “we do not have a toolkit of policies with which to respond to this,” explained Mohler. “We as Christians understand that there is no solution for the basic problem of the human heart that comes from within ourselves, or that can be arranged by society. … Policies and laws? They can suppress, to some extent, the full expression of human evil. But the problem is in the heart and the only solution for the problem in the heart is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

So, “what we have is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Mohler said. “The gospel of Jesus Christ is first and foremost about how sinners are saved from our sin through the blood atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ and the full justification of sins that comes to those who, by faith, come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.”

This means that “we have to return to first principles biblically,” Mohler argued. “We as Christians don’t have anywhere else to go anyway. The Christian church doesn’t have some kind of ‘policy exit’ from theology. … The New Testament gives us our agenda, that is, to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to build godly families, to build churches, and through that, to help bear witness to Christ.”

“But the larger society benefits by the presence of Christians and by the influence of Christianity,” Mohler added, because Christians “also have the sure biblical knowledge that the way you build a civilization is with healthy marriages based in a mother and a father and a husband and a wife who love each other and are devoted to each other; having children and raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; building a society, a civilization based upon consistency with God’s law and God’s command; and seeking human flourishing in such a way that we know can only come by obedience to the Word of God and can only come by God blessing and providing restraint and protection.”

“As we look at a more radically secularizing society, it’s not just a challenge to us evangelistically,” said Mohler.” It’s a challenge to us just with the breakdown we see in the order around us.” Proverbs states, “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (29:18).

“The answer for Christians has to come back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and our eager witness to the fact that there is no rescue from sin but Jesus,” Mohler concluded. For this purpose, even the apostle Paul said his powers were insufficient apart from the power of God, “not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).

In keeping with Paul’s recognition of his own weakness, Mohler urged Christians to pray. “Our priority,” he said, “has to be to pray that God’s grace and mercy will be evident, especially in a situation such as this, and that Christ’s people will be deployed as agents of grace … that Christian parents will teach their children, Christian pastors will teach their congregations, and all of us will together learn by the spirit and the word what it means to be faithful Christians in such a difficult age.”

“God put us here in this time by his sovereignty for a purpose,” said Mohler. “Let’s pray we’ll be faithful to that purpose.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The GOP Should Look To New Solutions To Win Over Blue-State Voters Concerned About Crime And Mass Shootings

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

First They Come for the Sheriffs, Then They Come for your Guns

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What I have feared for the past two years is coming true: the federal government has launched a selective and politically-motivated prosecution against a conservative sheriff, to get him out of the way.

I have known Frederick County, Maryland Sheriff Chuck Jenkins for over a dozen years. Since he was first elected in 2006, he has been “the people’s sheriff,” standing up for the citizens of Frederick County against liberal politicians at the state and federal level.

He has stood for their gun rights, and their right to a secure place to live. He has fought hard against illegal immigration, and for many years was the only sheriff in Maryland to work cooperatively with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a program known as 287g, which authorizes the feds to remove and deport noncitizens jailed in Frederick County for serious crimes.

In short, Sheriff Jenkins has protected and defended We the People from the over-reaching federal government. And that’s why they want him out of the way.

Sheriff Jenkins has gone to our southern border and spoken out about the chaos reigning there under Obama and again under Biden.

He was a strong supporter of President Trump and was endorsed by President Trump in his re-election campaigns.

So no wonder a left-wing federal prosecutor, appointed by Biden, should target him with a pathetic “check the box” indictment on allegations he submitted false weapons’ import forms to the ATF.

If you live in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, go to the Baltimore federal courthouse tomorrow, Wednesday, at 2 PM, when Sheriff Jenkins will be arraigned.

Here is a link to this sham indictment. I’ve put links to some of the news coverage below.

But NONE of the news coverage tells you the real import of this phony prosecution of the People’s Sheriff.

When I learned of this today it just blew me away with a sense of déjà vu. I had been expecting exactly this type of thing to happen since the Biden regime took control of our government. To disguise their unpopularity and illegitimacy, they need to render the people without defense. They need to take our guns, and Sheriff Jenkins stood in their way.

Once they take our guns, they can take our freedom. Once they take our guns, they can take our money, replacing it with a Central Bank Digital Currency (planned for this July!!), which they can prevent you from spending on things (such as guns) they don’t like.

Friends, this is serious. This is the first step. If we don’t hold the line with Sheriff Jenkins, the feds will go after other Sheriffs who are standing between them and We the People. 

Remember what Ronald Reagan said in his now-famous speech to the RNC on Oc. 27, 1964:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Three years later, in his inauguration address as Governor of California, he added: “And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

Losing our freedom is an experiment we don’t need to undertake in America. But mark my words: this phony, political prosecution is the first step.

If you can, show up. If you can’t, speak up.

©2023 Kenneth R. Timmerman. All rights reserved.

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Biden Invites Expelled Tennessee Insurrectionist Democrats to the White House

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If you can’t see that the Democrats are engaged in a civil war, you’re already a slave.

Furthermore, it bears nothing how the most senior Democrat leadership up the the Executive branch reveres and exalts violent insurrectionists. The GOP did not stand up for peaceful protesters calling for election integrity.

Biden Invites Expelled Tennessee Democrats to the White House

By: Sarah Arnold | Townhall April 08, 2023:

President Joe Biden invited the three expelled Democrats to the White House after being ousted from the state legislature for protesting against gun violence.

His invitation extended to the “Tennessee Three” along with a statement praising them for “seeking to ban assault weapons and standing up for our democratic values.”

“Earlier today, I spoke to Reps. Jones, Pearson, and Johnson thank them for their leadership and courage in the face of a blatant disregard for our nation’s democratic values. Our country needs to take action on gun violence — and to do that; we need more voices like theirs speaking out,” Biden said in a social media caption with a video of the president speaking with Democrats Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson.

The invite came the same day Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Nashville to meet with the ousted lawmakers who violated decorum rules. According to a White House pool report, the visit will occur in the future.

On Thursday, all three Democrats faced expulsion from their Republican colleagues for taking part in a protest calling for gun control after a March 27 school shooting in Nashville killed several children and employees.

In a statement on Friday, the Biden White House called the GOP response to the protests “dangerous” and “shocking,” adding that children are paying the price for Republicans’ gun stance. The Biden Administration also accused the party of punishing and silencing “duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.”

Furthermore, CBS anchor John Dickerson criticized the GOP’s actions, calling their decision to remove the Democrats from their positions extreme, warning that Americans, primarily conservative, will turn to violence.

“Politics needs some cartilage. It needs some give. It can’t be brittle. So when you have a situation in here where, okay, Republican lawmakers thought these Democrats broke decorum and stepped out of line, there are a series of steps to punish. But when you go to the maximalist and kick them out, that’s brittle. There’s no give,” Dickerson said. “When there’s no give, the other side gets to respond only by punching back. And so when you lose those interim steps, all you get is response and response and response. And that is not only — you know where that leads. Right? That leads to violence.”

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Epically Incompetent Kamala Heading to Nashville to Support the ‘Tennessee Three’

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Epically incompetent Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Nashville to support the “Tennessee Three” lawmakers who voted against a school safety bill yesterday that seeks to place an armed guard in every school, according to Breitbart News.

Reps. Gloria Johnson (D), Justin Jones (D), and Justin Pearson (D), voted against the school safety bill on the same day that votes were scheduled to remove them from office for allegedly breaking House rules.

The Tennessee House voted to expel two of the lawmakers — Jones and Pearson — while Johnson narrowly missed being expelled as well.

Kamala reportedly will travel to Nashville to support the three.

The VP airhead said, “Six people, including three children, were killed last week in a school shooting in Nashville. How did Republican lawmakers in Tennessee respond? By expelling their colleagues who stood with Tennesseans and said enough is enough. This is undemocratic and dangerous.”

That’s not what happened.

The Christian school, which was attacked on March 27, lacked an armed resource officer.  The bill Johnson, Jones, and Pearson, voted against Thursday morning would place an armed guard in every school and “allow private schools to partner with local police for school security efforts, and require Tennessee Department of Homeland Security agents to be placed in each county to evaluate and support school safety plans in both public and private schools.”

All three chose to disrupt the proceedings in juvenile ways that prompted their colleagues to vote on expelling them.

Shouldn’t Kamala be doing something useful instead like fixing the border crisis she was tasked with?

Kamala Harris

116 Known Connections

Harris Praises Texas Democrats Who Fled Their State to Derail Republican Election-Integrity Legislation

On July 12, 2021, at least 51 of the 67 Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives fled their state and flew to Washington, D.C., so as to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass new voter-integrity laws to which the Democrats objected. Harris praised those Democrats, saying: “I applaud them standing for the rights of all Americans and all Texans to express their voice through their vote, unencumbered.” “I will say that they are leaders who are marching in the path that so many others before did when they fought and many died for our right to vote,” the vice president added…

To learn more about Kamala Harris, click here.

RELATED ARTICLE: LOL: Newsom – DeSantis ‘Scared’ Because of ‘Extreme’ FL Gun Law

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tennessee House Votes To Boot Two Dem Members Who Joined With Mob In Capitol Protest

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Editor’s note: This article has been updated.

Tennessee’s Republican-held House voted Thursday to expel two out of three Democratic members for leading what House leadership called an “insurrection” at the state Capitol last week following Nashville’s school shooting.

The House voted to expel Nashville Rep. Justin Jones 72 to 25 and Memphis Rep. Justin Pearson 69 to 26 for “disorderly conduct” via HR 65 and HR 63 introduced Monday. Jones, Pearson and Knoxville Rep. Gloria Johnson joined a group of gun control protestors in the building last Thursday, and joined in chants via a bullhorn between bills; resolutions to expel the three of them were introduced Monday, according to The Tennessean.

“The world is watching Tennessee because what is happening here today is a farce of Democracy,” Jones said in his opening statement. “I was not standing for myself, I was standing for my constituents…and I was standing for those young people…who are terrified by the continued trend of mass shootings plaguing our state and plaguing our station.”

Jones claimed that the resolutions to expel him and his colleagues were efforts to remove two young black members and one of the few female members – whose expulsion resolution failed to receive two thirds majority at 65 to 30 votes – of the Legislature.

The resolutions claim the three members “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions,” according to The Tennessean.

A video of the three representatives joining in on the protests in the House chamber was shown before the vote was taken, with many Democrats opposing the viewing. The members started chanting “power to the people,” “no action, no peace,” and “gun control now.”

Protesters flooded the state Capitol, demanding for strengthened gun regulations, making their way throughout the hallways and eventually to the chamber where the three members joined in. The protests came after 28-year-old Audrey Haley, who identified as transgender and used “he/him” pronouns, shot and killed three children and three adults at private Christian institution, The Covenant School.

Hale, who was reportedly undergoing medical treatment for an undisclosed “emotional disorder” prior to the shooting, was a former student of the school and might have harbored some “resentment” there, according to Nashville police.

Earlier in Thursday’s legislative agenda, the House passed Gov. Bill Lee’s school safety bill that would strengthen school safety at public and private schools. The bill will help ensure that exterior doors remain locked when students are present, requires every school system to have “threat assessment teams” and mandates that security guards undergo active shooter training.

“Their actions are and will always be unacceptable, and they break several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor. Their actions and beliefs that they could be arrested on the House floor were an effort, unfortunately, to make themselves the victims,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton said in a tweet Monday.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

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‘No One Cares About The Rules’: CNN Panel Defends Dems Who Joined With Mob In State Capitol Protest

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Chaos Unravels As Anti-Gun Activists Swarm Inside Tennessee Capitol

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Hundreds of protesters swarmed the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday demanding gun control in the wake of Monday’s deadly school shooting.

Protesters showed up outside the capitol Thursday morning as lawmakers began their session, according to WKRN. Protesters were calling for stronger gun control following Monday’s shooting in which 28-year-old transgender Audrey Hale killed three nine-year-olds and three adults at a Christian elementary school.

One organizer told WKRN they hope “that we can make change.”

“It’s a tough state, I get it,” organizer Maryam Abolfazli said, according to WKRN.

Protesters overwhelmed the Capitol, filling the hallways and eventually making their way to the legislative session chambers.

Video shows a massive group of protesters screaming and trying to break past a group of troopers. One male protester storms through and is immediately taken into custody by authorities before being released as the crowd chants “give him back!”

Another video shows protesters in the legislative chambers chanting “no action, no peace” and “enough is enough.”

Authorities managed to clear the Capitol and resumed their session, according to reports.

AUTHOR

BRIANNA LYMAN

News and commentary writer. Follow Brianna on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Gun Rights: The Death of a Thousand Cuts

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Joe Biden played fast and loose with the truth about guns after the tragedy in Nashville this week.

We’ll get to that but, first, a little refresher on why we have the Second Amendment.  It’s not for personal protection.  It’s so that We The People can resist a rogue tyrannical government.  The Founders knew even then how often governments become tyrannical and turn on their own people.  Moreover, under our system, we are considered to be born with individual rights, including the right to bear arms, and no further explanation or apology is necessary.

Biden said AR-15s are “weapons of war”.  This implies AR-15s are fully automatic weapons, which they are not.  AR-15s are not fully automatic assault rifles, despite their looks.  Biden also claimed, “You’re not allowed to own a machine gun.”  That’s not true.  You can own a machine gun – a fully automatic weapon – if you’re at least 21, a legal resident of the U.S., eligible to purchase a firearm, pass an 8-10 month background check, pay the $200 transfer tax, and are not otherwise a “prohibited person”.

Biden made these claims in the service of more gun control, as if taking guns away from law-abiding citizens is going to accomplish anything.  These arguments come out every time there’s a tragedy, but the gun grabbers in the government are becoming increasingly brazen.  They’re assaulting gun rights in ways that would have been unthinkable even five years ago.

Joe Biden went around Congress and directed the Attorney General to take the U.S. as “close as possible” to universal background checks without legislation.

The ATF adopted a “zero tolerance” policy against gun stores that violate federal firearm licensing requirements, meaning licenses can now be taken away for minor infractions even without a prior history of violations.  Sixteen ATF agents swooped down on a gun store in Georgia for a surprise inspection, but left after learning a member of Congress was watching.

The ATF recently expanded the gun registry by administratively declaring pistol owners who add stabilizing braces must register.

The ATF is also using income data to conduct warrantless tracking of gun purchasers with low income who, the bureau figures, should not be able to afford to buy guns.

The FBI massively underreported the number of active shooting incidents ended by good guys with guns.

Congressional Democrats introduced legislation that would further restrict the sale of ammunition and require sellers to report purchases in some instances.

A Maryland bill would require embedded trackers in some guns sold in the state.

New York passed a law last year requiring gun owners who apply for a concealed carry permit to submit their social media history to the state.

That’s a lot of hostility to gun rights, but the gun grabbers aren’t done.  Did you ever hear them say ‘we promise to stop after this – this far and no farther’?  Of course not.  They want ALL our freedom, so I’m not willing to give them ANY of it.  Don’t doubt me when I say they want all our freedom.  Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers union, just called for a complete ban on guns.

So the gun grabbers have put me in the position of saying ‘no compromises’ because I know their incessant demands are never going to stop.  They’re already showing the kind of tyrannical tendencies the Second Amendment is intended to deter.  Even if you don’t like guns, the forces of liberty must band together to stop the gun grabbers from taking any more of our freedom.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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If the Mentally Ill ‘Mustn’t Own Guns,’ What About ‘Trans’ People?

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The timing of the tragic Nashville shooting, in which a MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) individual killed six at a Christian school, is a bit odd. National Public Radio had just recently done a piece on how MUSS and other “LGBTQ” people are buying guns because, the story goes, they believe they’re imperiled by conservatives. As one sexual devolutionary NPR quoted put it, “If the world is dangerous, then you have to be dangerous back, and that very much has pushed me into where I am now.”

As for what pushed 28-year-old Audrey Hale into opening fire Monday at The Covenant School, which she once attended, the media largely pretend to have no clue. They don’t want you to have one, either. This is why, shamelessly, they often hide Hale’s MUSS status and instead focus on guns. Here’s how brazen it is, too:

With jihadist-like zeal and as a rule, the media will use a MUSS individual’s “preferred pronouns” and chosen opposite-sex name and seek to “cancel” anyone not following suit. Yet now, they not only happily “deadname” Hale, but identify her as a “female suspect” or “female shooter” and reference her using feminine pronouns.

Newsweek did this, making no mention whatsoever of Hale’s MUSS status. Metro at least noted that the woman “identified as transgender,” though it still used feminine pronouns even though the killer had embraced he/him ones. (The deadnaming is perhaps understandable, as reports that Hale was going by first name “Aiden” are unconfirmed.) I mean, you’d almost think these articles were written by Selwyn Duke — except for one thing:

The media hide Hale’s MUSS status because, if they didn’t, you just might suspect the shooting could’ve been an anti-Christian hate crime.

Second, it might occur to some people that maybe, just perhaps, society has more to fear from MUSS individuals than they do from society.

This is reality, too. Contrary to media myth and as I reported in 2020, studies have shown that MUSS individuals are less likely to be murdered than normal people are and are more likely to kill than be killed. (They’re also overrepresented among pedophiles.)

This raises a question, given “Red Flag” laws’ popularity: Do we need Rainbow Flag laws?

For the record, I’m skeptical of such legislation, to say the least, and know that removal of Second Amendment rights is not the real remedy for crime. The issue, though, is hypocrisy.

Red Flag laws have been sold with the idea that guns “must be kept from the mentally ill’s hands.” We’ve heard this continually. Yet how, then, does it make sense giving a whole category of mentally ill individuals a special dispensation from this prohibition by reclassifying their psychological disorder as an “identity” or “lifestyle choice”?

As I’ve pointed out for years, the MUSS phenomenon is not a biological matter requiring a biological remedy, but results from serious psychological issues. Audrey Hale isn’t the first MUSS mass shooter, either. WND cited other examples in 2019 and, quoting a report by website National Justice, related that MUSS individuals’ “small population is well represented among murderers, serial killers and pedophiles.”

Personally speaking, I cannot think of another group with so many hostile, unstable members. Coming to mind is the MUSS individual who commented, after I wrote an article criticizing the MUSS agenda, that he wanted “my head on a platter.” Then there was the 2015 Dr. Drew program incident in which Robert Tur (aka “Zoey” Tur), a large, muscular man in a dress, grabbed commentator Ben Shapiro’s neck and threatened to send him “home in an ambulance” (video below).

When was the last time you saw someone threaten this kind of violence during a political/social discussion?

Such behavior is hardly unfathomable. MUSS individuals are very troubled, generally unhappy people uncomfortable in their own skin. And the lie they’re living — that they can be the opposite sex — is so grand and fragile that Truth’s slightest utterance can burst their bubble. This can be enraging. They may externalize, too, attributing their unhappiness to others’ failure to affirm their delusion. They then may lash out at those they believe are making them miserable.

There also are the drugs MUSS individuals often take. Given the studies indicating steroid use can cause increased aggression, one could wonder: Was Hale on testosterone?

Hormones are powerful substances. How does putting people on a cross-sex hormone regimen, along with perhaps other drugs, affect their mentality? Is giving an already disturbed individual a cocktail of medications designed to induce opposite-sex physical changes really a good idea?

The bottom line, however, concerns whether we’re serious about keeping guns out of the mentally ill’s hands. If so, then “mentally ill” mustn’t be defined based on political will.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on MeWe, Gettr or Parler, or log on to SelwynDuke.com

©Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.

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How a Truly Catholic President Would Speak

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Michael Pakaluk: All Americans must take responsibility for the common good, which is our nation’s culture. You cannot change the world.  But you can change your own life.

Off the record – before his speech begins – to the press corps:

“I would ordinarily be enjoying an ice cream cone right now – you know how much I love the stuff; I’ve got a whole freezer full.  But I take my Catholic faith seriously, as you know.   It’s Lent.  I’ve been fasting. – (Laughs ) Yeah, me too! – Can I offer a personal confession? As president, I get briefed on a lot of bad things that the nation never hears about.  I have no idea how I’d be able to do this job without the graces that come from prayer and fasting, even outside of Lent.”

Press conference begins:

Good afternoon, fellow Americans. It’s common for politicians to use violence like the horrific crime this morning to attack their opponents for not supporting gun control or assault rifle bans.  I am not going to treat this tragedy that way. Because it would be exploitation.  About 500 people die in mass shootings every year.  While lamentable, a far larger number, 25,000 commit suicide each year with guns.  I’d insult you if I said the problem of suicide was a problem of guns.

Another 25,000 are murdered in our cities with guns.  Guns make it easier to murder, but for centuries criminals killed with knives.

The colonists all owned pistols and rifles. But mass murders of random people were relatively unknown in our country until recently.  One of the first was in 1949, the “Walk of Death” in Camden, New Jersey, by a decorated veteran.  He shot 13 at point blank, including children. Since 2000 these incidents have skyrocketed.  A bar chart would show a trend going sharply upward.

Guns do not rise up of their own volition, place themselves in people’s hands, and begin firing at school children.  They are instruments, for bad and sometimes for good.  Our country has a problem romanticizing guns. Surely, it’s easier to ban imaginary guns than real guns, no? I propose this, then: just as we did with cigarettes, let’s ban all guns from movies, tv shows, and video games.  Not sure that you’re in favor?  Well, until you stop wanting to entertain yourself by watching murders with guns, I won’t take seriously your talk of banning guns.

Let’s be honest that these shootings especially in schools disturb us because we take them to stand for our society as a whole.  In economics, we learn that, although each of us has freedom, when numbers are large, individuals will invariably display the motives that to some degree are affecting many.  The causes of these mass shootings are likely to be found there.

There are two kinds of mass killers.  One hates himself and wants to destroy himself.  He often begins by murdering his family and ends by killing himself.  Another hates everyone else.  Sometimes the two kinds of killers are combined in one.  And often a mass killer aims to “make a statement.”

So what kind of society produces citizens who want to make statements like that?

A story in the Wall Street Journal last weekend carried the headline, “America Pulls Back from Values that Once Defined It.” The report begins, “Patriotism, religious faith, having children. . .are receding in importance for Americans.”  In 1998, when the survey began, 70% said patriotism was important.  Now it’s 38%.  Religion used to be important for 62% of Americans; now it’s 39%.   Having children was 59%; now it’s 30%.  Another statistic won’t surprise you, if you’ve been paying attention to universities: tolerance has declined as a value from 80% to only 58%.

A pollster commented, “these differences are so dramatic, it paints a new and surprising portrait of a changing America.“  I remind you that these numbers were dropping precipitously over the two decades when mass shootings were rising precipitously.  So, that is the first thing I want to say – culture abhors a vacuum.  If good recedes, we cannot be surprised if evil asserts itself.

The dramatic differences in that poll didn’t come from just anywhere.  In large part, they are the effect of our system of schooling, as many of you learned during the pandemic, when you could inspect your children’s curriculum.  Therefore, I am announcing today a whole-of-government effort to support school vouchers and parental choice, and to facilitate homeschooling.

Then there is the ideology of “the unencumbered self.”  The Supreme Court in Dobbs overturned Roe v Wade, which was based not on our Constitution but on this destructive ideology of autonomy.  Ask yourself: If it’s not so important what we choose, as that we are the ones who choose it – on what basis do we criticize someone’s choice to destroy rather than to build?  Why couldn’t malice express a person’s autonomy as much as love?

Culture abhors a vacuum.  Although several states have admirably acted to affirm the dignity of each human person from conception, I also announce today a whole-of-government approach to support women in carrying through their pregnancies.  I want to see a bipartisan effort to have all medical expenses of prenatal care, birth, and early childhood supported as a public good.  And I pledge to you that I will work to take up once again a Human Life Amendment.

Also, henceforth, the executive branch of the Federal government will in no way lend support to transgenderism, which is simply the latest expression of the destructive ideology of the “unencumbered self.”

Following President Washington’s example, I wish to give a warning.  I want all Americans to take responsibility for the common good, which is our nation’s culture.  You cannot change the world.  But you can change your own life.  If shooting down children in cold blood strikes you as “demonic” – not my words, but what you yourselves say – then reject anything occult and demonic, anything that even hints at it, in your own lives.  Have no part in it.

Finally, following President Lincoln’s example, 160 years later to the day, I hereby proclaim tomorrow, March 30th, as a National Day of Prayer and Fasting.

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AUTHOR

Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His acclaimed book on the Gospel of Mark is The Memoirs of St Peter. His new book, Mary’s Voice in the Gospel of John: A New Translation with Commentary, is now available. Prof. Pakaluk was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas by Pope Benedict XVI.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing article is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The ATF Expansion of the Gun Registry Turns Law-Abiding Gun Owners into Felons

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Despite decades of warnings from crime prevention and law experts, the Biden administration has taken a page out of FDR’s book to crack down on legal gun owners.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has followed through on their plan to turn millions of lawful gun owners into felons in the name of “public safety” by reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, effectively expanding the unconstitutional national gun registry.

Stabilizing braces are devices that can be attached to pistols to aid the user in balancing their arm. Originally created to help people with disabilities, the accessory is now more popular amongst mainstream shooters who use them to adapt pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, which has been legal to do in the past. Now, there’s a big hoop to jump through if you don’t want to be hit with fines and/or jail time.

As the Department of Justice first proposed on June 7, 2021 and put into practice on January 13, 2023, those who wish to add stabilizers to their pistols “must comply with the heightened regulations on those dangerous and easily concealable weapons.”

Under the new rules, any pistol modified with such a brace is now considered to be a short-barreled rifle. As the DOJ explained themselves, the National Firearms Act (NFA) has, since the 1930s, “imposed requirements on short-barreled rifles because they are more easily concealable than long-barreled rifles but have more destructive power than traditional handguns.”

“Beyond background checks and serial numbers, those heightened requirements include taxation and registration requirements that include background checks for all transfers including private transfers,” the statement reads. The tax required for anyone making or buying a short-barreled rifle is $200.

The Biden administration has generously granted all of the impacted manufacturers, dealers, and individuals a 120-day period to comply—by registering the firearm, removing the brace, surrendering the firearm to ATF, or destroying it.

Attorney General Merrick Garland “directed” the ATF to “address the issue of stabilizing braces” within 60 days at an April 2021 event with President Joe Biden, prompting the swift action taken by the DOJ in announcing the proposed rule the next month.

Biden had also previously selected former Obama advisor Steven Dettelbach to serve as the head of the ATF, who helped the administration reach their goal of passing yet another gun control law.

While the bureau claims the new rule won’t impact stabilizing braces “that are objectively designed and intended as a ‘stabilizing brace’ for use by individuals with disabilities, and not for shouldering the weapon as a rifle,” there is no “objective” standard listed for what disabled people are allowed to carry, or what is “intended” as an aid.

The history of tyrannical politicians attempting to force every gun owner to register their weapons with the government is long. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered implementing a ban on fully-automatic firearms, but was faced with pushback from the DOJ, which argued that it would violate the Second Amendment.

To compromise, the administration instead pushed for legislation to require the registration of fully-automatic firearms, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and firearm sound suppressors. This idea became law in the form of the National Firearms Act of 1934, which is what the current-day DOJ and ATF have used to justify their expansion of the national gun registry for law-abiding citizens.

Roosevelt was set on creating a national firearm registry for every gun, demonstrated by his appointment of Homer Cummings to the position of Attorney General, who helped draft the NFA.

“Show me the man who doesn’t want his gun registered and I will show you a man who shouldn’t have a gun,” Cummings wrote in 1938, the year he pushed for separate handgun registration legislation.

Fast forward by approximately 50 years, and then-President Ronald Reagan signs the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, which federally prohibits national gun registries. Though Reagan faltered on the Second Amendment at times (see: the Mulford Act), this was a good policy that was unfortunately ignored by anti-gun politicians.

Experts have been warning about the dystopian consequences of criminalizing stabilizing braces, which are used by disabled and able-bodied individuals alike to increase balance and accuracy.

Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote for Real Clear Politics: “Few seem to realize that stabilizing braces for pistols were originally designed to allow wounded and disabled veterans who may have lost the use of part of their hand to hold handguns. They are essentially a strap attached to the gun. Disabled individuals are often viewed as easy targets by criminals, and stabilizers make it easier to defend themselves.”

He cites Rick Cicero, a disabled veteran who lost his right arm and leg in an explosion while serving in Afghanistan 13 years ago.

“If they take this away, they’re violating their own law because this is designed and employed for people like me,” Cicero told Spectrum News 9 after the DOJ proposed the rule in 2021.

Cicero, who teaches fellow injured veterans on how to shoot again, added that “the most important thing to me about this brace, this whole aspect, is another avenue of getting injured veterans out of the house.”

According to Dr. Lott, the two instances that Biden cited to garner support for the new ATF policy weren’t even valid examples of braces being used to better commit a crime.

“All this started after President Biden cited a crime in 2021 in Colorado – where a shooter used a pistol stabilizing brace when attacking shoppers in a grocery store – to justify calling for classifying such brace-affixed pistols as machine guns,” Lott wrote. “Ahmed Al Alwi murdered 10 people at close range in a Boulder, Colo. grocery store. A previous shooting in 2019 by Connor Betts, in Dayton, Ohio, also involved a pistol brace. These are the only two cases of their kind and, more importantly, neither of them had any difficulty holding their guns and all their shots were fired at a short distance. There is no evidence that the brace made any difference in their ability to carry out the attacks. And there has been no surge in crime by the disabled or others using these braces.”

This all stems back to the inherent right that Americans have to self-protection through gun ownership. As FEE’s Brett Cooper wrote at the time of the rule proposal, James Madison condemned a governmental structure in which overarching entities can rewrite the law as they see fit.

In Federalist No. 48, the founding father warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

“This is exactly what is happening today,” Cooper wrote. “This stealth power grab should concern all Americans, even if they are outside the immediately-impacted gun community.”

AUTHOR

Olivia Rondeau

Olivia is a 21-year-old political commentator, strategist, and journalist hailing from the Washington, DC area, and currently based in Los Angeles.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Biden Gun Order Fails Background Check

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Like most grandmothers, Carolyn Pettiford thought she was done raising children. A horrible February night in 2022 changed that forever. Her daughter, Ashley, had been parked on a Kansas City street when a man walked up, leaned into the car, and fired a gun twice. When police arrived, they found Ashley and her boyfriend dead, and Carolyn’s terrified five-year-old grandson alive, but shot badly in the face in the backseat. “He’s a pretty strong kid,” Carolyn says. But “to have to tell a five-year-old that he won’t be able to talk to his mother… that he will never be able to see his mother or to hug her, it’s hard.”

There are 20,138 families like Carolyn’s, who started 2023 with an empty seat at the dinner table because gun violence killed someone they loved last year. And while everyone’s stories are different, they all have one thing in common: There isn’t a single gun control policy that could have prevented them.

President Joe Biden, standing in front of a California dance hall where 11 people were mowed down in January, claims otherwise. Last Tuesday, by executive order, he announced a series of new attacks on the Second Amendment — all under the guise that stricter gun policies will somehow end the violence. It’s time, he said emphatically, to “do something. Do something big.” The trouble is, Democrats don’t seem to care if that “something” is the right thing.

Under Biden’s latest congressional end-run, he aims to move America “as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation” — which, as conservatives know, is just his lawless way of pushing the country closer to a national firearms registry that could facilitate totalitarian control. Like most Republicans, Congressman Greg Murphy (N.C.) is outraged by the idea, since a) Biden has no constitutional authority to impose these policies without Congress, b) it’s an invasion of Americans’ privacy, and c) it won’t do anything to prevent the bloodshed on our cities’ streets.

“The sad thing is,” Murphy told me on “Washington Watch,” “this is an absolute aberration and misunderstanding of who commits crimes with guns. It’s not law-abiding people, but that’s who he’s after.” So what purpose does any of this grandstanding serve? “I don’t know of one,” the congressman replied. “I don’t know that [there’s] any need for … the government to know who owns a gun and who does not own a gun. I’d love for them to know which criminals own guns — I could probably get behind that. But … law-abiding citizens? That’s not the right of the government. We have a right to own a gun for hunting, for self-protection. And the government has no right to intrude upon that privacy.”

Among other things, the order also weaponizes the DOJ to crackdown on gun sellers they believe aren’t policing buyers strongly enough. But gun sellers aren’t the problem, the data argues. Criminals are.

Josiah O’Neil, a former deputy sheriff in southern California who just ran for Congress, believes there’s a major flaw in the Left’s thinking, which is that gun control laws always assume someone who’s willing to commit murder would hesitate to break gun laws. “I’ve never met a criminal, whether in my local law enforcement or federal work, that respected laws. By definition, criminals don’t,” he explained on “Washington Watch” after the Uvalde massacre.

If anything, these knee-jerk reactions — these supposed “gun control” efforts — turn innocent citizens into sitting ducks. “When places adopt stricter gun control laws, there tends to be an increase in violent crime,” explained scholar John Lott. His research at the Crime Prevention Research Center found that “every place in the world that’s banned, either all guns or all handguns has seen an increase in murder.” Domestically, “over 94% of the successful mass public shootings that have occurred in the United States since 1950 have taken place in areas where citizens weren’t allowed to … have guns.”

Just look at Chicago and Baltimore — cities with some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Gun-related violence is through the roof. That’s because the same criminals who break the law to shoot someone are breaking the law to get the guns to do it with.

In Kansas City, where Ashley was killed, federal investigators say there are more than 2,000 stolen and illegal guns “floating” around the area. In fact, the man who ended her life and blinded her son used one. That’s also in keeping with the Justice Department’s findings from 2019 (the most recent data available). Only 10.1% of the inmates the government surveyed got their guns from a retail source. The other 90% either stole their firearms, bought them from an underground store, took them from their victims, received them as a gift, had someone else buy them, or bought, borrowed, traded, or rented them from friends or family. Barely 7% bought the gun in their own name and just 6.7% underwent a background check.

Last month, a blockbuster report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms confirmed the trend, pointing out that more than a million guns were stolen from private citizens from 2017-2021. “Crime guns may change hands a number of times after that first retail sale, and some of those transactions may be theft or violate [firearm laws]. But what we know is from the large numbers of gun sales, there are lots of ways that legal guns end up in the hands of prohibited persons.”

And unfortunately, thanks to the Democrats’ other failed policies — defunding the police, for one — there’s a serious shortage of law enforcers to track those illegal guns down. From small towns to big cities, National Police Association spokesman Betsy Branter Smith warns that the “anti-police rhetoric of 2020 and its political fallout” has put departments at their lowest populations in 30 years. “I think this could be a generational problem,” she warned. “This could go on for years. Even if, let’s say, I could flip a magic switch tomorrow, and everyone loved the police and every kid in America wanted to be a cop … it takes nine months to a year from the date of hire for a person to become a police officer.”

But it isn’t just the reduction in force, it’s the reduction in penalties too. When people do commit crimes, Democrats are seeing to it that they aren’t punished. In Washington, D.C. right now, two-thirds of the arrests (67%) aren’t even prosecuted. The city’s criminal code has been so relaxed that “about half the people charged with murder typically have a prior gun arrest, according to police, though not necessarily a conviction.”

Even on routine traffic stops, The Washington Post reports, police are finding and seizing illegal guns. It’s a regular occurrence, officers say. In a single week last year, D.C. arrested 23 people for gun offenses, and “prosecutors did not pursue charges against 13 of them.” The city’s police chief, Robert Contee, fumed that the refusal to punish offenders is “very frustrating,” especially since so many of these people who are released from custody could be “picking up another gun.”

“[I] want to see people going to jail and being held accountable when they violate our community and go out there and use illegal firearms in our city.” Until then, Contee argues, nothing will change. The Left can scapegoat legal gun owners and sellers all it wants, but that doesn’t solve the deeper problems their policies are creating.

As plenty of people have pointed out, nothing the president has done would have stopped a single shooting we’ve witnessed — not Uvalde, not Monterey, not even Ashley Pettiford. This latest order isn’t action; it’s political theater, designed to play on people’s emotions and fears. Biden isn’t “accelerat[ing]” the work “to save more lives.” He’s distracting Americans from the border crisis, growing national security threats, and the economy — and wiping his feet on the Constitution as he does it.

Carolyn — and every parent who’s buried a child — deserves better.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Poses For Photo With Member Of Alleged Chinese Intel Front Group At Los Angeles Gun Control Rally

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President Joe Biden posed for a photo with a member of an alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence front group after delivering a speech on gun control this week, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of video footage of the event found.

Biden announced an executive order aimed at “increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales” in Monterey Park, California, on Tuesday, before taking a photo with Ma “Derek” Shurong, Fox News’ footage from the event reveals. Ma is listed as a member of the China Overseas Exchange Association (COEA) between 2017 and 2019, according to the group’s website. Ma is listed as starting a five-year position with the related China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA) in 2019, the Daily Caller New Foundation recently revealed.

In addition to COEA and COFA’s publicly available membership rosters, which both list Ma as a “director,” footage from Chinese state-run media outlet CCTV shows Ma in attendance at COEA’s Beijing council meeting on September 28, 2017, the DCNF determined.

Multiple Chinese intelligence experts recently told the DCNF that both COEA and COFA, which merged in 2019, serve the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a CCP “intelligence service” which conducts “influence operations” and “intelligence collection” abroad, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC).

At the Los Angeles rally, Biden moved through the crowd when he stopped and exchanged a few words with Ma and smiled while photos were taken, Fox News’ footage shows.

California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu also delivered a speech during Tuesday’s event, Fox News footage shows.

“It feels as though the attack on Monterey Park was an attack on Asian America,” Chu said in her speech, though she omitted the fact the Monterey Park shooting was perpetrated by an Asian man.

Chu recently came under scrutiny for her ties to alleged UFWD front groups and their respective members, including Ma. Since 2013, Chu has awarded Ma at least five certificates of “Congressional Recognition,” according to multiple Chinese-language news reports.

In October 2022, Ma donated $900 to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ campaign, according to campaign finance records.

Ma also participated in a press conference with Bass and Rep. Chu on September 10, 2022, according to AMTV footage of the event. During the press conference, Ma stood smiling beside Bass while she promised to “increase the representation of Asians in the Los Angeles Police Department,” among other things.

Before Tuesday’s event in Monterey Park, Bass met Biden at LAX airport when he landed, NBC News reported.

Bass’ interactions with alleged UFWD front groups recently drew criticism after a Washington Free Beacon report revealed the Los Angeles mayor met with representatives from the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) in February. In 2020, the State Department designated CPAFFC as a UFWD “affiliate,” characterizing it as an organization “tasked with co-opting subnational governments” that seeks to “malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the [China’s] global agenda.”

During the February meeting with CPAFFC, Bass and the alleged front group’s president, Lin Songtian, reportedly discussed “stabilization and improvement of Sino-U.S. relations,” The Washington Free Beacon reported.

In addition to CPAFFC, Bass also has ties to alleged UFWD front group member Dominic Ng, the CEO of East West Bank. Bass appointed Ng an honorary co-chair of her Mayoral Transition Advisory Team on Dec. 6, according to the City of Los Angeles’ website.

Similar to Ma, Ng was listed as the “executive director” of COEA between 2013 and 2017 and was listed as holding the same title at COFA beginning in 2019, the DCNF reported on Feb. 9.

An East West Bank spokesman claimed that Ng merely served in an “honorary” position at the “executive-director level” at COEA, and left in 2014 citing “non-participation.” East West Bank also claimed that Ng “was later invited to join” COFA, yet “declined the invitation and was not aware his name was listed as a member on the association’s website until revealed by the recent media coverage,” according to a Feb. 25 statement from the bank.

As with Ma, Ng donated $1,500 to Karen Bass for Mayor 2022, campaign finance records show.

Ng also donated $100,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and $35,500 to the Democratic National Committee in 2020, the year before Biden appointed the banker to serve as U.S. representative to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), according to campaign finance records.

The White House, Chu and Bass did not respond immediately to the DCNF’s request for comment. Ma didn’t respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Investigative reporter.

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