Tag Archives: #SecondAmendment

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The abomination of ‘red flag’ laws It's OK if we suspend your constitutional rights for just a little while, right?

Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA), who will be leaving office at the end of the year, tweeted out a nice little graphic of what happens under the so-called “red flag” laws. Due process of law, he tells us, is part of it.

But look at the graphic.

Jane’s social media contact, Randy, posts photos of guns & cryptic messages.

Followed by:

Jane calls the police to report the posts.

What does “cryptic” mean?

adjective Also cryp·ti·cal.

  1. mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous: a cryptic message.
  2. abrupt; terse; short:
  3. a cryptic note. secret; occult:
  4. a cryptic writing. involving or using cipher, code, etc.

So, if Jane simply doesn’t understand Randy’s message, Governor Wolf wants her to call the cops!

Then follow the next steps:

The police petition in court to temporarily remove Randy’s guns.

Police provide evidence that Randy is a danger to himself/others.

The court agrees to a temporary removal of Randy’s weapons.

You know what you don’t see in there? You don’t see any notification to Randy, and presumably Randy’s attorney, that he is under investigation to see if he “is a danger to himself/others,” because, just like any search warrant, the court and the police do not want the subject of the warrant to know the police are coming to enter his home and seize evidence. Due to Jane’s puzzlement over Randy’s message, the police show up, enter his home, possibly forcibly, and seize his property, all without Randy having had a chance to defend himself before the court.

Now, up to this point, Randy has committed no crime! Rather, because Jane is worried about him, she has sicced the cops on him, and don’t fool yourself: while police officers are normally more politically conservative than liberal, there’s nothing the police, or at least police chiefs, like more than a disarmed public. As they view Jane’s complaint, if they are going to err, they are more likely to err on the side of wanting Randy’s guns removed.

There’s even an incentive there: if they don’t try to have Randy’s firearms taken away, and it turns out that he does commit a crime, or even suicide, with his weapons, and it comes out that the police had Jane’s complaint and didn’t try to take Randy’s guns, they, or their city or jurisdiction, could be held liable in a civil suit. But Jane, doubtlessly, will be shielded from legal action for calling in a genuine concern, and I can see the red flag laws the left want passed keeping her identity confidential.

The police are not the only ones who do not like an armed citizenry; prosecutors don’t care for it much, either, so persuading the prosecutor or city attorney or whomever needs to petition the judge for the removal order might not be difficult. Judges, though not liable for the consequences of their decisions, might well feel their own internal pressure to prevent a tragedy.

So, what’s missing in all of this? As Jane, and the police, and the city attorneys, and the judges, several people, are all at least somewhat motivated by the idea that they could prevent a tragedy, there’s no one involved to protect Randy’s rights.

Enter Jeff Goldstein, and Robert Stacy McCain’s story on his problems:

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and the Problem With ‘Red Flag’ Laws)

Saturday, June 18, 2022

You haven’t forgotten Deb Frisch, have you? In October 2018, Frisch — whose harassment of Protein Wisdom blogger Jeff Goldstein lasted a dozen years — was finally sentenced to four years in a Colorado prison. When last we heard about her, in August 2021, she had been denied parole after ranting insanely at her parole board hearing.

This morning, I noticed I’d gotten some extra traffic to one of my posts about Frisch, and investigation led to Not The Bee: If you need a reason to oppose“red flag” gun laws, this writer’s harrowing 12-year tale of terrifying stalking and harassment might just do the trick.

To cut a long story short, the lovely Miss Frisch became obsessed with Mr Goldstein for some insane reason or other, and when things didn’t go the way she wanted, she started attacking, online, of course, not physically, Mr Goldstein and his family, in particular his then two-year-old son. Miss Frisch made baseless accusations that Mr Goldstein was molesting his son, all of which had to get the attention of local law enforcement; allegations of child sexual abuse are always things which trigger law enforcement investigations.

Mr McCain concluded:

The way our legal system operates — the built-in prejudices of courts, based on decades of precedents intended to “protect” the rights of the mentally ill — it is very difficult to get a dangerously deranged person locked up. Whenever a mentally ill person commits an atrocity (or gets shot by the cops), you’ll see commentators saying that this shows problems with our nation’s mental health system, when in fact it was liberal judges in the 1970s and ’80s who decided it should be nearly impossible to keep crazy people locked up in lunatic asylums, where they belong. These same judges, however, will probably be willing to sign “red flag” orders based on unproven claims, without due process for those targeted by such orders.

According to Governor Wolf, the gun owners do receive due process, even though they don’t get any chance to defend themselves until after their homes have already been invaded by the police and their legally-owned firearms seized, all on the word of someone who doesn’t like a “cryptic” message.

Now, there’s a difference between Jane, who thought Randy’s social media posting had a “cryptic” message, and Miss Frisch, who accused Mr Goldstein of child sexual abuse, but the result is the same: without any actual evidence of a crime beyond someone’s stated ‘concern,’ both “Randy” and Mr Goldstein had to defend themselves through the legal system, costing them expensive attorney’s fees — Mr Goldstein specifically mentioned that he’d had attorneys — to regain their weapons. The fictional Jane in Governor Wolf’s tweet might have had motives as pure as the wind-driven snow, but Miss Frisch’s were wholly malevolent, and (seemingly) driven by obsession and mental illness.

But the police and the courts have no choice but to take allegations of child sexual abuse seriously, and the same will be true of “red flag” law accusations. How can anyone know, prior to an investigation, whether the accuser or ‘tipster’ is being either deliberately fraudulent or simply concerned, but they’ll have to act.

It could be an estranged husband or wife, trying to gain leverage in child custody or support. It could be someone who can’t stand the thought of Bambi getting killed who calls the cops on a guy just before deer season. It could be one gang trying to get another gang disarmed. Or it really could be a concerned citizen who believes he has seen something of legitimate concern. The trouble is that you can never know unless the police actually investigate, and that means records and trouble and quite possibly a suspension of his constitutional rights for an innocent civilian, along with possible attorney’s fees.

The real secret is actual law enforcement. Remember Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting? There were continual warnings about him, and at least 23 incidents where the Broward County Sheriff’s Department had calls about him, but nothing was done. Had the Sheriff’s deputies done something really radical like arrested him and charged him with crimes, he could have been convicted, and barred from buying a weapon. The Broward County schools knew of his behavioral problems, transferred him from school-to-school, but, in an effort to keep him out of the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline,’ did not notify law enforcement when he assaulted another student.

If law enforcement had done their job, Mr Cruz would not have been able to buy, legally, the weapons he did. If the school district had done their jobs, he would have been reported to law enforcement in a manner which could not be ignored.

So, because the people who are charged, under the law, with notifying law enforcement about someone like Mr Cruz haven’t been doing their jobs, Governor Wolf and the left want ordinary citizens like the fictitious “Jane” to do the job, and to create a system where Jane’s speculation and word have legal weight. After all, it’s for people’s safety, right?

Well, there are a lot of constitutional rights which could be ignored, to improve public safety! We could do away with the need to prove guilt, and just imprison, or execute, anyone we just “knew” was a bad guy. We could suspend the rights of free speech and free association, to keep the bad guys apart. Given that half the country seemed to think that the right of free association and assembly could be suspended over COVID-19, and a bunch of state governors got away with it, well surely that right isn’t really important, right?

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” It seems that a whole lot of Americans have decided that they deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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Weak-kneed Republicans are going to assist the Democrats in restricting our constitutional rights

They’re going after our constitutional rights again!

Senators strike bipartisan gun deal, heralding potential breakthrough

By Mike DeBonis and Leigh Ann Caldwell | Updated June 12, 2022 at 5:41 p.m. EDT | Published June 12, 2022 at 11:08 a.m. EDT

A bipartisan group of senators announced Sunday that it had reached a tentative agreement on legislation that would pair modest new gun restrictions with significant new mental health and school security investments — a deal that could put Congress on a path to enacting the most significant national response in decades to acts of mass gun violence.

Twenty senators — 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans — signed a statement announcing the framework deal. The move indicated that the agreement could have enough GOP support to defeat a filibuster, the Senate supermajority rule that has impeded previous gun legislation.

“Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities,” the statement read in part. “Most importantly, our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans.”

Under the tentative deal, a federal grant program would encourage states to implement red-flag laws that allow authorities to keep guns away from people found by a judge to represent a potential threat to themselves or others, while federal criminal background checks for gun buyers younger than 21 would include a mandatory search of juvenile justice and mental health records for the first time.

The only provision of this I can support is that prospective firearms buyers have their juvenile justice records checked as well. And I cannot see why such a provision would apply solely to prospective buyers ages 18-20; the juvenile record search should apply to everyone.

Other provisions would prevent gun sales to domestic violence offenders beyond just spouses, closing what is often called the “boyfriend loophole”; clarify which gun sellers are required to register as federal firearms dealers and, thus, run background checks on their customers; and establish new federal offenses related to gun trafficking.

“(D)omestic violence offenders”? If they have actually been convicted of a crime, that should already be part of their records, and prevent them from buying firearms. If they have only been accused by someone, and never have actually been charged and subject to normal bail restrictions, then no, we cannot and should not prohibit a free American citizen from exercising his rights just on someone’s say-so. The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard fiasco ought to demonstrate to us that disgruntled spouses and former spouses can and will say anything to get back at their exes.

The agreement does not include a provision supported by President Biden, congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans that would raise the minimum age for the purchase of at least some rifles from 18 to 21. Handguns are already subject to a federal 21-and-older rule.

I suspect that our only hope is that the left try to festoon this ‘compromise’ with enough stupidity that it loses enough Republican support to allow it to be filibustered successfully.

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More on the South Street gunfight Businessmen want 'broken windows' policing; Philly Mayor and District Attorney don't want that at all!

Laughing out loud! Philadelphia District Attorney won’t even prosecute people for illegal firearms possession, yet business owners expect the city to enforce “anti-nuisance laws”?

Rudy Giuliani was unavailable for comment.

Business owners say weak enforcement is emboldening the violence on Philly’s South Street

Several South Street business owners cited a climate of “lawlessness” in the city. The lack of enforcement is creating a climate of impunity that climaxes in lethal force.

by Joseph N DiStephano | Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Ron Dangler served two tours in Iraq — where he was “a door-kicker,” a cavalry scout at the front of a dangerous patrol in Ramadi in 2005 and 2006.

So it wasn’t the first time the Philadelphia native who owns Dobbs, the rock club at 304 South St., had heard gunfire, when shooters blasted each other and a crowd of people in the street on Saturday night, leaving three dead and 11 wounded. Continue reading →

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The left love to blame Republicans for the actions of the Democratic base

Adopted Philadelphian Amanda Marcotte doesn’t normally write about the City of Brotherly Love, but with the gang gun battle on Sunday, even she had to pay attention. From Salon:

U.S. gun laws are causing mayhem and mass murder — and Republicans couldn’t be more thrilled

Crappy gun laws cause our crime problems. But Republicans blame liberal prosecutors and make racist arguments

by Amanda Marcotte | Monday, June 6, 2022 | 1:30 PM EDT

After reassuring multiple people by text that my partner and I had been tucked safely in bed at 11:30 on Saturday night, I finally cracked and posted a general reassurance on Facebook. No, we had not been near the shooting on South Street in Philadelphia, where we live, that resulted in 3 deaths and 11 major injuries. But people’s concerns weren’t misplaced. We had been at a party in that neighborhood just the night before. Saturday’s was the ninth mass shooting in the city this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been shootings at train stations and house parties. One group of victims was going to the prom. These things really are a matter of luck in a society that’s swimming in as much gun violence as ours.

It’s interesting that the author lives in Philadelphia, but cites The Washington Post. Perhaps she doesn’t subscribe to her hometown newspaper?

I get it: Miss Marcotte isn’t really interested in digging more deeply into a story, if the surface fits Teh Narrative she wishes to use. The “group of victims” going to prom”? There was one male targeted, because some other people wanted him dead, and the other three were simply in the way. This was gang violence, but that’s not something she wishes to discuss. Continue reading →

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It’s always the gun’s fault! For the left, the bad people using firearms can never be blamed!

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, June 2nd, the Current Crime Statistics page of the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 211 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. That page, which is not updated on the weekend, finally shows that as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, June 5th, the number of murders had soared to 218.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, had told us about the killing of a pregnant woman in her early twenties in Port Richmond, and how doctors at Temple University Hospital had managed to save her unborn child. And the gang gunfight that left three people dead being described as a “mass shooting” was all over the newspaper’s website, but that’s ‘only’ four homicides reported, four out of the seven the police department has now totaled. A search of the newpaper’s website main page and crime page on Monday morning at 8:09 AM EDT found nothing on those other three homicides.

Perhaps previously wounded people expired since early Friday morning; we just don’t know from the Inky. But we do know that the same failed and tired leaders of the city are making the same failed and tired statements: Continue reading →

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Why won’t anybody tell the truth about South Street

There were fourteen people shot, three of whom died as of Sunday afternoon, in what is being called a “mass shooting” by just about everybody, and The Philadelphia Inquirer was kind enough to give us their definition:

The Inquirer defines a mass shooting as one that occurs in public and kills three or more people. Definitions of mass shooting vary, with no single consensus. The FBI has classified mass murder as four or more deaths in a single incident; Congress has used the definition of three or more.

The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks mass shootings, defines them as any incident in which four or more people are injured or killed, a classification some national media outlets also use.

But “mass shooting” invokes images of the Uvalde or Parkland or Sandy Hook school massacres, especially with Uvalde and the Buffalo shootings fresh in people’s minds.

However this was not some kook with an AR-15 who set up and planned to kill a bunch of people. No, this was a gun battle between at least two groups “beefin'” with each other. To the right is a screen capture from the Inquirer taken at 4:20 PM EDT, one which happened to occur in a large crowd, and in which innocent bystanders were wounded and killed.

Commissioner Danielle Outlaw on Sunday called Saturday’s mass shooting on South Street an “atrocity,” and police said at least five guns were fired in the incident as dozens of people tried to flee or navigate chaos that spanned several blocks.

At least one of the slain was an innocent bystander: Kris Minners, 22, a second-grade boys’ resident adviser at Girard College, a well-known Philadelphia boarding school, died from his injuries at Jefferson Hospital.

Officials said the investigation into the incident remained in its early stages, and several questions remained unclear. Police officials said no one had been taken into custody, and investigators were still seeking to piece together video, ballistics, and other evidence.

Outlaw said officers assigned to the 200 block of South Street heard gunshots on the 400 block around 11:31 p.m. When the officers arrived, Outlaw said, they saw several people with gunshot wounds and began giving first aid.

One of the officers then noticed a man on the 200 block, near an intersection with American Street, firing into a crowd, Outlaw said. The officer fired several shots, some of which Outlaw said likely hit the suspected shooter, but the man ran away.

Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said all of that likely came after a fight on the 200 block of South Street. Police believe that brawl, which began as a fistfight, may have been the incident that initiated much of the gunfire. As the fight progressed, two men pulled guns and shot each other, police said. One of the men died.

In the aftermath, Vanore said, another three guns were fired along South Street across several blocks. The officer also shot at the man near American Street.

Well, it’s good that at least one of the dead was one of the instigators!

Video shows gun drawn before fistfight erupted between men on South Street

by Max Marin and Aubrey Whelan | Sunday, June 5, 2022

Cell phone footage circulating online, and corroborated by The Inquirer, shows a fistfight that led to gunfire on South Street on Saturday night.

In one video, two men appear to exchange words with a third man in front of Rita’s Water Ice between Second and Third Streets. The two men then slowly descend on the third — one of them drawing what appears to be a handgun as they advance. A fistfight ensues.

People standing nearby begin to panic when they observe the drawn handgun. “They about to shoot!” a woman said.

The men trade blows and wrestle with each other for less than 15 seconds, moving into the middle of South Street, when a volley of gunshots rings out, at which point the video cuts away. The footage conforms with another video of the events viewed by The Inquirer.

More than two dozen gunshots ring out in quick succession.

A trail of blood snaked along the sidewalk outside Rita’s after the shooting. On Sunday morning, the police chalk outlines for more than a dozen shell casings were still visible on the nearby sidewalks.

In a separate video posted online, which occurs sometime after the shooting ended, a group of women is seen huddled above a bleeding woman who lies in the southside crosswalk of Third and South — the same spot a nearby bar owner told The Inquirer he saw a woman collapse last night.

Blood had stained the white striping of the same crosswalk when a reporter arrived on scene around 1 a.m.

Of course, the Inquirer, which said it “corroborated”, was quickly made public, and Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News tweeted it:

Naturally, the Inquirer didn’t want to tell readers that it was two black men appear to exchange words with a third black man.

Of course a race-baiter styling herself PJ had this to say:

#WhiteSupremacist attacked downtown #Philadelphia last night.

Over 14 people shot, by a fully automatic #AR15 machine gun.

Yet this is normalized in #america thanks to the GOP and NRA. Time to abolish and confiscate! #GetOutTheVote

#Pennsylvania #Pittsburgh #BLM #Pride

I regret that I sometimes take too seriously an account that simply has to be a parody, because no one could really be that stupid.

But what is that stupid are all of the Democratic politicians crying out for gun control, when it’s obvious that no gun control measures would have stopped this. At least one of the guns recovered had an ‘extended magazine,’ which is illegal. Eventually we’ll find out that none of the weapons was legally possessed by any of the gang-bangers who started shooting up South Street. But that doesn’t matter to the gun grabbers who want to disarm all law-abiding people, thinking that will somehow disarm the criminals. George Soros’ stooge District Attorney, Larry Krasner, tweeted:

The terrible crimes last night on South Street tell our Pennsylvania legislators it’s time for real action. Boycott NRA lobbyists, boycott NRA donations, and bring real common sense gun regulation to Pennsylvania. Now.

We remember, of course, how the distinguished Mr Krasner, who could have has Hasan Elliot locked up on a parole violation, who could have had him behind bars, just let him go, and Mr Elliot then killed Philadelphia Police Corporal James O’Connor IV. Mr Krasner has Corporal O’Connor’s blood on his hands!

The left won’t want to let this ‘crisis’ go to waste, but it’s always the same thing: their response to criminals is to assail the rights of law-abiding people.

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The math of school shootings

I know, I know, the math doesn’t match Teh Narrative, but sometimes it is necessary to do the math.

The Washington Post has published yet another school shooting scare story, but it’s entirely propaganda.

As we previously noted, the Post reported that there have been 185 people killed in schools since Columbine, 185 in 23 years, or 8.04347826 per year. With a public school population of 50,700,000, that works out to a homicide rate of 0.0159 per 100,000 population. Students, teachers and administrators are far, far, far safer when they are in school than when they are out in public.

Even the Post’s story was propaganda, because while the 185 killed number appears to be solid, they claimed that “more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine”, but were counting the entire school’s attendance when things like one student shooting another in the bathroom as “students experiencing gun violence at school”.

Philadelphia suffered through 562 homicides in 2021, with a guesstimated population of 1,576,251, yielding a homicide rate of 35.65 per 100,000, almost all with handguns. Washington DC, with a 2021 population of 670,050, saw 226 murders in 2021, for a murder rate of 33.73 per 100,000 population. Even much safer Lexington, Kentucky, with 37 homicides in 2021, spread over a population of 321,793, had a homicide rate of 11.50. Compare that to a homicide rate of 0.0159 per 100,000 for school shootings! Continue reading →

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Killadelphia At least 199 murdered in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year.

The Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, or at least its website main page, was just full of stories about firearms. Soccer beat writer and website home page editor Jonathan Tannenwald wrote “Alejandro Bedoya leads Union protest against gun violence: ‘This ain’t American exceptionalism’: ‘It ain’t freedom that we have to now look over our backs all the time,’ the Union’s captain said after his team wore T-shirts at Saturday’s game with the message ‘END GUN VIOLENCE.’” Breaking news editor and President of the News Guild Diane Mastrull wrote “2 women leaving a church funeral service were hit by stray bullets in Philly fatal shooting,” noting, almost as an aside, that there were three homicides in the City of Brotherly Love on Saturday. She did, however, scrub the story of any reference to race, even though the Philadelphia Police reported the race of the victims in each report. In that, she was following what is quite obviously the newspaper’s editorial policy under publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes’ and executive editor Gabriel Escobar’s orders.

Decades ago, the Inquirer’s masthead declared that the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper as a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People.” Those days are long gone!

But the Inquirer did publish a few stories which might not quite fit Miss Hughes’ and Mr Escobar’s editorial slant. Continue reading →

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They are doing their jobs; they are protecting our constitutional rights!

The Democrats and the left — please, pardon the redundancy — are never willing to inflate a crime into a crisis, and are using the school shooting in Texas to try to infringe on the rights of Americans who have done nothing wrong. There was District Attorney Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner, who would rather prosecute police officers and exonerate criminals chiming in with “What organization does more to enable murder by gun & mass shootings of Americans than the @NRA? Every elected official who panders to the NRA is failing. Period.”

Of course, under Mr Krasner, a defense attorney who hates cops, but who was elected District Attorney thanks to George Soros pumping money into ‘social justice’ and ‘racial justice’ candidates, while the Philadelphia Police Department were making record numbers of arrests for illegal possession of firearms, the DA’s office was winning, or even attempting to win, a far lower percentage of such cases.

Pennsylvania does not have outrageously tough gun control laws, but Mr Krasner isn’t attempting to enforce the ones they do have. We do know that Samuel Collington and Philadelphia Police Corporal James O’Connor IV would still be with us if Mr Krasner had kept previously charged violent criminals in jail when he had the chance.

Now comes Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA), calling for the state legislature to enact tougher gun control laws:

Students and leaders rally in Philly for stronger gun laws: ‘It doesn’t have to be this way’

“Our message to our legislators in Congress and Pennsylvania’s General Assembly needs to be: do your jobs,” said Gov. Tom Wolf.

by Oona Goodin-Smith | Friday, May 27, 2022

Gov. Tom Wolf rallied Friday with fellow lawmakers, clergy, students, and gun violence prevention activists in Philadelphia, calling for the Pennsylvania General Assembly to pass more stringent gun laws in the wake of the Texas school shooting that killed 19 children and two adults.

William Teach: House Democrats To Investigate….Gun Makers In Wake Of Texas Shooting

“Our message to our legislators in Congress and Pennsylvania’s General Assembly needs to be: Do your jobs,” Wolf, a Democrat, said to applause and a sea of orange CeaseFirePA T-shirts.

Wolf said the Republican-controlled state legislature for years has stymied the passage of “commonsense legislation” in the commonwealth. He urged lawmakers to: require reporting for lost and stolen guns within 72 hours, close loopholes and require background checks on all gun sales, require safe storage of firearms, and create “red flag laws” to protect those who may be a danger to themselves or others.

The renewed demand for action came days after the Uvalde massacre — the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, and the 27th school shooting in the country this year — and two weeks after 10 Black people were shot to death in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket in a killing reportedly motivated by a racist conspiracy theory.

Twenty-seventh school shooting this year?

  • May 17: Walt Disney Magnet School, Chicago: an 8 year old student discharged a gun, injuring a 7 year old. The Washington Post counted this as 1,420 students experiencing gun violence at school.
  • April 26: Aspen Ridge Elementary School, West Ishpeming, MI: Student shot himself in bathroom during school hours. Post counts this as 700 students “experiencing gun violence at school.”
  • April 11: Pine Bluff High School, in Pine Bluff, AR: Student fired shots in parking lot, no one injured. 820 students present.

Using The Washington Post’s interactive graphic of school shootings, it quickly became clear: the 26 other school shootings were gang violence involving kids who brought guns to school themselves, killing five in five separate incidents, along with security officers shooting outsiders harassing parents in two separate incidents. This is the kind of propaganda that the credentialed media use to artificially pump up numbers.

In Philadelphia, where gun violence is often unrelenting, shootings have surged in the past years with killings reaching record levels in 2021.

Well, yes, shootings have spiked in the City of Brotherly Love, but that’s because the District Attorney keeps turning loose criminals on ‘minor’ offenses, enabling them to be out on the streets to commit major ones. It is because the city and, let’s be honest here, the ‘disadvantaged communities’ tolerate and enable gang violence. So-called “red flag” laws will do nothing, because the public aren’t even providing evidence against actual shooters, and can’t be expected to report potential ones. The Buffalo shooter had posted plenty of messages on social media giving clues that he was a whacko, and New York state has a red flag law, but he was never reported or investigated. Red flag laws seem to be of more use for one enemy to get another enemy hassled by the police than stopping mass shootings.

Require “safe storage” of firearms? Philadelphians have been seeking permits and buying firearms at record paces due to the increased homicide rate; the last thing they want to do is have their weapons locked in a safe or inhibited by a trigger lock when seconds count while someone is breaking into their homes.

Governor Wolf and the ralliers shouted that they wanted the General Assembly to “Do your jobs!” but their jobs include protecting the constitutional rights of the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. What the ralliers want is for the legislators to infringe on our right to keep and bear arms. There is a certain irony involved when people exercise their constitutional rights to advocate that other people’s constitutional rights should be abridged.

In the end, the entire thing is enabled by utter stupidity: criminals are criminals because they violate the laws! They don’t care about gun control laws, because they don’t care about any laws that stand in the way of their desires. If someone is willing to violate the laws about shooting people, about trying to kill others, why would anyone expect him to care about a law trying to restrict his ability to do so?

The only people that gun control laws would affect are those who haven’t been breaking the law, those who do not intend to kill anyone, save perhaps in self-defense.