Political Demonstrations in Open-Carry States Favor Right-Wing Viewpoints

Seems like an obvious point, since open-carry states are more likely to lean right than non-open carry states, so the New York Times has got something of a tautology going on here.

But in any case, here, "At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking":

Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s.

This month, armed protesters appeared outside an elections center in Phoenix, hurling baseless accusations that the election for governor had been stolen from the Republican, Kari Lake. In October, Proud Boys with guns joined a rally in Nashville where conservative lawmakers spoke against transgender medical treatments for minors.

In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced. Among the others were rallies in support of gun rights in Delaware and abortion rights in Georgia.

Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger.

But the effects of more guns in public spaces have not been evenly felt. A partisan divide — with Democrats largely eschewing firearms and Republicans embracing them — has warped civic discourse. Deploying the Second Amendment in service of the First has become a way to buttress a policy argument, a sort of silent, if intimidating, bullhorn.

“It’s disappointing we’ve gotten to that state in our country,” said Kevin Thompson, executive director of the Museum of Science & History in Memphis, Tenn., where armed protesters led to the cancellation of an L.G.B.T.Q. event in September. “What I saw was a group of folks who did not want to engage in any sort of dialogue and just wanted to impose their belief.”

A New York Times analysis of more than 700 armed demonstrations found that, at about 77 percent of them, people openly carrying guns represented right-wing views, such as opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. rights and abortion access, hostility to racial justice rallies and support for former President Donald J. Trump’s lie of winning the 2020 election.

The records, from January 2020 to last week, were compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence around the world. The Times also interviewed witnesses to other, smaller-scale incidents not captured by the data, including encounters with armed people at indoor public meetings.

Anti-government militias and right-wing culture warriors like the Proud Boys attended a majority of the protests, the data showed. Violence broke out at more than 100 events and often involved fisticuffs with opposing groups, including left-wing activists such as antifa

Republican politicians are generally more tolerant of openly armed supporters than are Democrats, who are more likely to be on the opposing side of people with guns, the records suggest. In July, for example, men wearing sidearms confronted Beto O’Rourke, then the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, at a campaign stop in Whitesboro and warned that he was “not welcome in this town.”

Republican officials or candidates appeared at 32 protests where they were on the same side as those with guns. Democratic politicians were identified at only two protests taking the same view as those armed.

Sometimes, the Republican officials carried weapons: Robert Sutherland, a Washington state representative, wore a pistol on his hip while protesting Covid-19 restrictions in Olympia in 2020. “Governor,” he said, speaking to a crowd, “you send men with guns after us for going fishing. We’ll see what a revolution looks like.”

The occasional appearance of armed civilians at demonstrations or governmental functions is not new. In the 1960s, the Black Panthers displayed guns in public when protesting police brutality. Militia groups, sometimes armed, rallied against federal agents involved in violent standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the 1990s.

But the frequency of these incidents exploded in 2020, with conservative pushback against public health measures to fight the coronavirus and response to the sometimes violent rallies after the murder of George Floyd. Today, in some parts of the country with permissive gun laws, it is not unusual to see people with handguns or military-style rifles at all types of protests.

For instance, at least 14 such incidents have occurred in and around Dallas and Phoenix since May, including outside an F.B.I. field office to condemn the search of Mr. Trump’s home and, elsewhere, in support of abortion rights. In New York and Washington, where gun laws are strict, there were no

Many conservatives and gun-rights advocates envision virtually no limits. When Democrats in Colorado and Washington State passed laws this year prohibiting firearms at polling places and government meetings, Republicans voted against them. Indeed, those bills were the exception.

Attempts by Democrats to impose limits in other states have mostly failed, and some form of open carry without a permit is now legal in 38 states, a number that is likely to expand as legislation advances in several more. In Michigan, where a Tea Party group recently advertised poll-watcher training using a photo of armed men in camouflage, judges have rejected efforts to prohibit guns at voting locations.

Gun rights advocates assert that banning guns from protests would violate the right to carry firearms for self-defense. Jordan Stein, a spokesman for Gun Owners of America, pointed to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager acquitted last year in the shooting of three people during a chaotic demonstration in Kenosha, Wis., where he had walked the streets with a military-style rifle.

“At a time when protests often devolve into riots, honest people need a means to protect themselves,” he said.

9 MM vs. .45 ACP – A Different Kind of Comparison

At Instapundit, "LET THE COMMENTING BEGIN."

Beautiful Katie

Beautiful and rugged Katie. What a woman.

Democrats' Gun Control Agenda Not About Protecting Children

Here's the expert, Dana Loesch, "It's Not About Protecting Kids, It's About Banning Guns: Their response is to render you incapable of protecting them, took":

The Biden administration contradicted two separate commissions comprised of educators and security experts and reiterated that they have no intention of improving school security to protect students...

The Uvalde killer accessed the school through an unlocked door at Robb Elementary School. There was no outside force multiplier against unlawful entry, no known security system, and no SRO on campus.

The commissions recommended numerous security measures, including controlled ingress/egress, locking doors, SROs, and more. Democrats oppose improving security and instead stated that they were also focusing on basic 9mm handguns while again falsely proclaiming that people were disallowed cannon ownership during the Revolution. He made this remark to the press pool yesterday. Last week Senator Chuck Schumer tanked a school safety proposal instead choosing to advance only gun control measures.

Authorities admitted during Friday’s presser with Texas DPS that they were hesitant to enter the school for fear they’d be shot.

Meanwhile, more details about the Uvalde killer’s violent behavior are spilling into public. The killer tortured animals. He was known to cops, he drove around randomly shooting people with a bb gun and tried to fight random people in the park. He threatened online women with rape and murder. He stopped coming for work and dropped out of school. Through his job at Wendy’s he was able to save $4k for two rifles and ammunition (should we also boycott Wendy’s?). No one in his family seemed engaged enough to see the obvious troubling signs. No one said anything, just like in Buffalo. Just like in Parkland.

TWO REASONS WHY AGE RESTRICTIONS AND UBCs FAIL

The Uvalde killer had murderous intent. As his violent behavior escalated, are we really to believe that a proposal like an age increase would have removed his murderous intent? The killer in Las Vegas’s 2017 tragedy was 64 years-old. The Virginia Tech killer was 23 years old. Where is the guarantee that the Uvalde killer would simply wait — instead of going to the black market where the majority of criminals get their guns?

Our respondents (adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby) obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft. *Only about 60% of guns in the possession of respondents were obtained by purchase or trade. Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others.

Gangs continue to play some role in Chicago in organizing gun buys and in distributing guns to members as needed.

More: Washington Post: Four out of five criminals obtain their guns illegally

More: Chicago Tribune: Survey: Crooks get guns from pals, don’t keep them long

70 percent said they got their guns from family, fellow gang members or through other social connections. Only two said they bought a gun at a store.

A study from the DOJ — Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016:

About 1.3% of prisoners obtained a gun from a retail source and used it during their offense.

Handguns were the most common type of firearm possessed by state and federal prisoners (18% each); 11% of all prisoners used a handgun.

Among prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 90% did not obtain it from a retail source.

More from DOJ: Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms — the vast majority of felons obtain their weapons on the black market.

“ASSAULT WEAPONS” BANS

Are we to believe that a ban on a commonly-owned rifle responsible for the fewest number of homicides (even when compared to hands feet and fists?) would work? ...

Yet still Democrats propose another “Assault Weapons” ban when the first one didn’t work.

RAND:

We found no qualifying studies showing that bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated.

Propublica: “The senator says ‘the evidence is clear: the ban worked.’ Except there's no evidence it saved lives – and the researcher behind the key statistic Feinstein cites says it's an outdated figure that was based on a false assumption.”

LA Times: No, the assault weapons ban didn’t work: Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994

The New York Times: “The Assault Weapon Myth”

School shootings are, thankfully, rare tragedies. Defensive gun use — when guns are used to protect and save lives — outnumbers criminal usage even by the most conservative estimates.

GUN-FREE ZONES

Schools have been gun-free zones since the 1990 passage of the Gun Free School Zones Act. The video of parents howling after they were blocked from going and saving their children is gutting. I read one mom broke free and hopped the fence to get into the school, totally unarmed, with nothing but her fierce nature as a mother to protect.

The people allowed to have the guns stood outside. If the government is going to demand a gun free zone anywhere they need to guarantee the safety of the people being disarmed — if at a school they should protect those kids with the same ferocity as that desperate mother and have the ability to do it — especially considering police have no legal obligation to protect your life...

Keep reading. 

Focusing on Cultural Pathologies That Lead to Mass Shootings Reveals Difficult Truths…So Instead, We Talk About Guns

From Grace Stephens, at The Truth About Guns (via Instapundit):

[G]un control policies, even if they could be effective, would be little more than a Band-Aid solution. People don’t shoot each other just because there are guns around. The Uvalde shooter wanted to shoot up a classroom full of children — that’s the real problem.

This, ultimately, is the heart of the debate. Why are so many young men being driven to commit such heinous acts of violence? Why do they always seem to have no one in their lives paying attention to the signs of mental instability and aggression? What is wrong with our systems that they keep failing to identify and help people who are desperately in need of an intervention?

Gun policies are just one part of the debate, and they usually only scratch the surface. But it’s easier to focus on firearms than it is to talk about the other cultural factors at play, which we tend to avoid because they reveal difficult truths about our society and the ways in which it has failed.

Why is it, for example, that 75% of the most recent school shooters, including the 18-year-old in Uvalde, were raised in broken homes without fathers? Indeed, this background is so common among perpetrators that criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi concluded after the Sandy Hook school shooting that the absence of fathers is one of the “most powerful predictors of crimes.”…

RELATED: "We overlook a significant factor in mass shootings: fatherlessness."

Ryan Busse, Gunfight

At Amazon, Ryan Busse, Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America.

The Real Reason America Doesn't Have Gun Control (VIDEO)

From Ronald Brownstein, at the Atlantic, "The basic rules of American democracy provide a veto over national policy to a minority of the states":

After each of the repeated mass shootings that now provide a tragic backbeat to American life, the same doomed dance of legislation quickly begins. As the outraged demands for action are inevitably derailed in Congress, disappointed gun-control advocates, and perplexed ordinary citizens, point their fingers at the influence of the National Rifle Association or the intransigent opposition of congressional Republicans. Those are both legitimate factors, but the stalemate over gun-control legislation since Bill Clinton’s first presidential term ultimately rests on a much deeper problem: the growing crisis of majority rule in American politics.

Polls are clear that while Americans don’t believe gun control would solve all of the problems associated with gun violence, a commanding majority supports the central priorities of gun-control advocates, including universal background checks and an assault-weapons ban. Yet despite this overwhelming consensus, it’s highly unlikely that the massacre of at least 19 schoolchildren and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, yesterday, or President Joe Biden’s emotional plea for action last night, will result in legislative action.

That’s because gun control is one of many issues in which majority opinion in the nation runs into the brick wall of a Senate rule—the filibuster—that provides a veto over national policy to a minority of the states, most of them small, largely rural, preponderantly white, and dominated by Republicans.

The disproportionate influence of small states has come to shape the competition for national power in America. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party had done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828. Yet Republicans have controlled the White House after three of those elections instead of one, twice winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. The Senate imbalance has been even more striking. According to calculations by Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political-reform program at New America, a center-left think tank, Senate Republicans have represented a majority of the U.S. population for only two years since 1980, if you assign half of each state’s population to each of its senators. But largely because of its commanding hold on smaller states, the GOP has controlled the Senate majority for 22 of those 42 years.

The practical implications of these imbalances were dramatized by the last full-scale Senate debate over gun control. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, the Senate in 2013 voted on a measure backed by President Barack Obama to impose background checks on all gun sales. Again assigning half of each state’s population to each of its senators, the 54 senators who supported the bill (plus then–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who opposed it only for procedural reasons) represented 194 million Americans. The remaining senators who opposed the bill represented 118 million people. But because of the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires the backing of 60 senators to move legislation to a vote, the 118 million prevailed.

That impassable opposition reflects the GOP’s reliance on the places and voters most deeply devoted to gun culture...

More at the link.

And my response to Brownstein here:

Thread: 👇👇👇 #Texas #TexasSchoolMassacre #TexasMassacre #Uvalde #UvaldeMassacre #SalvadorRamos #Democrats #Leftists #GunControl #GunViolence #Election2022 https://t.co/yYVEHWvx2I

— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) May 27, 2022

Laguna Woods Attack Highlights China-Taiwan Tensions (VIDEO)

This is a bizarre story, more so than usual with heinous events like this. 

Here, "Why Laguna Woods? Mysteries still loom in Taiwanese church shooting."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Laguna Woods shooting highlights growing tensions between Taiwan and China":

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The man accused of opening fire inside a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods on Sunday is believed to have been driven by hatred for Taiwanese people and the political belief that Taiwan is a part of China, highlighting the increasingly fraught geopolitical situation in the Taiwan Strait. David Wenwei Chou, a 68-year-old man from Las Vegas, is accused of shooting six people and killing one of them at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said Monday that the attack appeared to be a “politically motivated hate incident,” and that Chou had left notes in his car stating he did not believe Taiwan should be independent from China.

Cross-strait relations have grown strained in recent years, as Beijing has ramped up calls for unification, while more Taiwanese oppose the mainland’s aggression and influence. Officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles — Taiwan’s de facto consulate — said Chou was born in Taiwan and was a “second generation waishengren,” meaning his parents were from mainland China.

Here’s a look at the issues bedeviling the two rivals across the Taiwan Strait.

Is Taiwan a part of China?

China’s claim on the island of 23 million people dates back to the Qing dynasty, though today’s Communist Party has never ruled over Taiwan. The Republic of China, founded in 1912, took the island from Japanese forces at the end of World War II, in 1945, and the Kuomintang, China’s Nationalist Party, fled there in 1949 after its defeat by Mao Zedong’s Communists. Taiwan became a democracy in the 1990s, though the Kuomintang, or KMT, is still one of the island’s dominant political parties.

Members of the KMT in Taiwan favor closer ties with mainland China and potential unification, while the ruling Democratic Progressive Party leans toward independence. Increasingly, Taiwanese people, particularly younger generations, oppose unification and consider their culture and identity as separate from China.

What is the threat from China?

For Chinese President Xi Jinping, reuniting Taiwan with the mainland is a priority of his rule. While he has called for reunification through peaceful means, he hasn’t ruled out the use of force. Beijing sent record numbers of military jets into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone last year, and has used sand-dredging ships to wear down defenses on Taiwan’s islands off the coast of mainland China.

Rising nationalism in China, encouraged by Xi and state propaganda, has spurred enthusiasm for reunification with Taiwan among Chinese citizens. China has embarked on a broad military buildup as part of Xi’s vision for China’s modernization and growing international might.

Dwarfed by China’s People’s Liberation Army, Taiwan’s military has begun to bolster its defenses as well. Taiwan plans to spend another $8.6 billion in defense on top of a record $17-billion budget this year. Lawmakers are also considering increasing the duration of mandatory military service for Taiwanese men. Conscription used to be two years, but has since been pared down to four months.

Where does the U.S. fit in?

The U.S. maintains economic and political ties with Taiwan, but does not have formal diplomatic relations. The U.S. adheres to the “one China policy,” under which it acknowledges that China considers Taiwan a part of its territory, but doesn’t take its own explicit stance. The U.S. also sells arms to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act.

The balancing of different policies is part of an attempt to maintain stability in the region. The “strategic ambiguity” means that the U.S. has remained deliberately vague on whether it would interfere if China were to attempt to take Taiwan by force. A declaration that it would not come to Taiwan’s aid could hearten Beijing, while an outright guarantee of support could provoke military action.

In recent years, the relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan has strengthened as U.S.-China relations have deteriorated. While the U.S. still maintains strategic ambiguity, it has shown support for Taipei through diplomatic envoys at times of heightened tension, defense discussions and assistance with military training...

 

Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle

Small-arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov created this weapon in 1947, the Avtomat Kalashnikov (Автомат Калашникова), thus the AK-47.

History's most popular weapon of war, the AK's an avatar of revolutionary movement across the Third World. If you've been watching, they're everywhere in Ukraine. Seems like everyone's totin' one, even civilians. 

More, from Phillip Killicoat, "Weaponomics: The Global Market for Assault Rifles":

Existing data on aspects of the small arms market are extremely limited. Since 2001, the In the case of small arms there isan obvious choice: the AK-47 assault rifle. Of the estimated 500 million firearms worldwide, 100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK47s (Small Arms Survey 2004). The pervasiveness of this may be explained in large part by its simplicity. The AK-47 was initially designed for ease of operation and repair by glove-wearing Soviet soldiers in arctic conditions. Its breathtaking simplicity means that it can also be operated by child soldiers in the African desert. Kalashnikovs are a weapon of choice for armed forces and non-state actors alike. They are to be found in the arsenals of armed and special forces of more than 80 countries. In practically every theatre of insurgency or guerrilla combat a Kalashnikov will be found. The popularity of the AK-47 is accentuated by the view that it was a necessary tool to remove colonial rulers in Africa and Asia. Indeed, an image of the rifle appears on the Mozambique national flag, and “Kalash”, an abbreviation of Kalashnikov, is a common boy’s name in some African countries.

The AK-47’s popularity is generally attributed to its functional characteristics; ease of operation, robustness to mistreatment and negligible failure rate. The weapon’s weaknesses - it is considerably less accurate, less safe for users, and has a smaller range than equivalently calibrated weapons - are usually overlooked, or considered to be less important than the benefits of its simplicity. But other assault rifles are approximately as simple to manage, yet they have not experienced the soaring popularity of the Kalashnikov.

The AK-47’s ubiquity could alternatively be explained as a result of a path dependent process. Economic historians recognize that an inferior product may persist when a small but early advantage becomes large over time and builds up a legacy that makes switching costly (David 1975). In the case of the AK-47 that early advantage may be that as a Soviet invention it was not subject to patent and so could be freely copied. Furthermore, large caches of these weapons were freely distributed to regimes and rebels sympathetic to the Soviet Union - more freely, that is, than weapons were distributed by the US - thereby giving the AK-47 a foothold advantage in the emerging post-World War II market for small arms.

According to a path dependence interpretation, inferior durable capital equipment may remain in use because the fixed costs are already sunk, while variable costs (e.g. ammunition, learning costs for new recruits) are lower than the total costs of replacing Kalashnikovs with a new generation of weapons of apparently superior quality. Whatever the exact causes, it remains that for the last half-century the AK-47 has enjoyed a near dominant role in the market for assault rifles making it the most persistent piece of modern military technology. Since the technology used in the AK-47 is essentially unchanged from the original, one may be confident that the prices observed across time and countries are determined market conditions rather than changes in the product...

SOURCE: Foreign Policy, "Looking for a deal on AK-47s? Go to Africa."

The U.S. Constitution Is Trash (VIDEO)

This is one bitter motherfucker.

Watch, Elie Mystal, a writer for the Nation, at "The View."

If you want to know how leftists will finally destroy the United States --- which is exactly what they want --- this is it:

Armed Citizen Defends Himself in Los Angeles Robbery Attempt

Regular folks are packing heat --- and this is in far-left Los Angeles, dang.

At Fox News, "Would-be robbers shot by armed shoppers in Los Angeles: Victim in Los Angeles was standing in a parking lot when the would-be robbers rolled in."

Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides

Murders are up since last year.

At LAT, "Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides":

A bloody Fourth of July weekend that left a dozen people dead across Los Angeles accelerated an already troubling increase in homicides and shootings in 2021, with some of the city’s poorest communities suffering the heaviest toll.

Homicides are up 25% so far this year across Los Angeles, although the brunt of the increase has been felt in South Los Angeles, where killings have jumped 50% over the same time last year.

Shootings citywide, meanwhile, have spiked by half this year. Police and community activists are bracing for tough months ahead as the summer traditionally brings with it a rise in bloodshed.

Like with the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise in violence has not been spread evenly in Los Angeles. Watts, Westmont, downtown Los Angeles, Westlake and other largely poor neighborhoods have endured much of the upheaval, though there have been some exceptions. The Los Angeles Police Department’s Wilshire division had recorded no homicides this time last year. It now has at least 10.

“Black and Latino communities are suffering,” said Najee Ali, a community activist.

The worrisome trend is playing out in cities other than Los Angeles. After experiencing decades of historic declines in homicides, many big cities nationwide saw that crucial bellwether sharply reverse course in 2020 and have been helpless to stop the surge in killings in 2021. Last weekend, at least 189 people were killed in violent incidents across the U.S., according to gun violence archives that gather data from police and media reports.

Los Angeles police officials say guns are fueling the rise here.

The percentage of homicides that involved a firearm has climbed from 66% in 2019, to 70% last year and currently is running at about 75%, said Los Angeles Police Capt. Paul Vernon, who is soon to retire from his job tracking crime trends as head of the LAPD’s CompStat program.

“There are too many guns in too many hands,” said Capt. Stacy Spell, the department’s main spokesman who once oversaw its South Bureau Homicide Division.

Officers are finding guns at significantly higher rates as well. As of last month, the department had seized 661 ghost guns — unregistered weapons that cannot be traced to an owner — compared to 813 in all of 2020. “At that rate, we could collect 1,500 ghost guns in a year,” Spell said.

Spell echoed recent comments by LAPD Chief Michel Moore, who has argued the increased violence is inextricably linked to the pandemic. The lockdown restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the virus, Spell said, further eroded already fraying social safety nets and devastated families’ finances. Gang intervention workers, for example, were unable to break cycles of retaliation by visiting shooting victims or calming mourning family members in hospital emergency rooms.

A man was fatally shot and a woman was wounded in a car-to-car shooting that occurred as their vehicle was being followed through a Venice neighborhood, police said. The incident began about 2:30 a.m. near the intersection of Brooks and 6th avenues. CALIFORNIA

While gangs have undoubtedly played a role in the killings, police point as well to what they say is a newfound willingness to settle disputes with a gun that goes beyond any gang affiliation.

Police say it’s impossible to know where the numbers are going. If the current pace of killings continues, L.A. would end the year with about 433 homicides — a sharp increase over the 254 killings recorded in 2019. Vernon cautioned, however, that 2020 — with 349 killings — was a very unusual year for homicides with a small increase in killings in the first half of the year, followed by a dramatic rise in the second. The volatility makes it difficult to project what might happen in the remaining months of 2021, he said.

And while the ongoing rise is troubling, Spell noted the current numbers still pale in comparison to the early 1990s, when more than 1,000 killings in a year were common.

Police also took some solace and hope in the fact that the spike in homicides has not been matched by a rise in other types of crime. Overall, violent crime is down slightly from 2020 and property crime is up only by a small amount. Violent crime arrests are down by nearly 10% compared to 2019 levels for the same period, while homicide arrests are up for that time by 60%.

So far in 2021 the LAPD’s Southeast Division, which includes Watts, has seen the city’s largest increase in homicides —24 — compared with 10 during the same period last year.

Violence over the last week cut short lives across the city.

California Boasts the Strictest Gun Control Regulations in the Country

I knew California had some of the toughest gun control laws around, but I didn't know we were the toughest. 

But do they work? Sure. But of course, it's the guns themselves that need regulating, less so the people. The once-Golden State should get more golden on gun ownership, sheesh.

At CSM, "California has the most gun-control laws in US. Do they work?":

As of 2020, California had more gun laws – 107 – on the books than any other state, according to research from the State Firearm Laws Database. And while those laws haven’t made California the state with the least amount of firearm deaths, it does put it around the bottom quintile, says Dr. Eric Fleegler, a pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital who researches gun violence and regulations.

Crucial, Dr. Fleegler says, are California’s laws on universal background checks – a solution to “a huge loophole in the federal background check” – as well as laws on gun storage, laws relating to gun ownership for people with a history of domestic violence, and people with restraining orders. These measures are intended to help with all types of gun violence – from suicides to accidents – not just murders and mass shootings.

“They really cover a broad gambit,” Dr. Fleegler says. But, he adds, where there are guns, there will always be gun deaths, intentionally or otherwise. “While legislation on the one hand can certainly lead to some reductions in the number of guns owned at the state level, they don’t actually prohibit the purchase of guns,” he says. “[Regulations] do a more thoughtful approach to who has them, how do you store them, if someone has domestic violence as part of their history, remove them from actually owning them.”

Mass shootings have an element of surprise or randomness that can make prevention difficult, even with other gun-control measures in place. “Those [shootings] are extremely distinct” from other forms of gun violence, Dr. Fleegler says. So-called red-flag laws, which allow for the confiscation of guns from those who are deemed a risk to themselves or others, can be a good step, he says. But “it’s one thing to pass legislation, it’s a whole other thing to enforce legislation,” he adds – as was highlighted when those laws didn’t prevent a recent shooting in Indianapolis.

Gun sales in California – and the nation – surged last year, spurred by racial and political unrest, economic insecurity, and the uncertainty of the pandemic. According to state data released in March in a court case, about 1.17 million new guns were registered in the state in 2020 – the most since 2016. The buying spree continued into the first part of 2021.

In 2020, there were just two public mass shootings in which four or more people died – down from 10 in 2019, the worst year on record, according to experts on mass shootings. That’s due in part to pandemic lockdowns. However, overall shootings increased – with more than 600 incidents where four or more people were shot, up from 417 in 2019. And violence generally increased by 20% or more in many large and small cities, California’s included, writes Dr. Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine and violence prevention at the University of California, Davis. Through mid-2020, the size of the increase in violence was proportional to the size of the increase in gun sales, he writes in an email.

“There was ... social disruption on many fronts, on a scale we’ve not seen in many years. We are just beginning to experience the effects of those interacting changes,” he explains. “We are likely to have a rough summer.”

When it comes to red-flag laws, “it was California that really created the model we see today,” where both police and family members can initiate the process, says Mr. Heyne at Brady. Indiana and Connecticut were the first states to have such laws. But following California’s passage, 16 states and the District of Columbia passed laws similar to the Golden State’s – including five with Republican governors.

California is also home to the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center, the first state-funded center for such research. It’s part of a holistic approach to gun violence “that is something that we have seen other states also pick up,” Mr. Heyne says. But after the San Jose shooting, “we still have a lot of work to do.”

Part of that work, advocates like Mr. Heyne believe, will have to come from Congress. California isn’t an island, he notes, and guns can flow across its borders. But the state has leaders at the federal level who’ve long championed gun control.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the architect of the 10-year federal assault weapons ban passed in 1994, and has pushed for its reinstatement. Her home state bans assault weapons. Other California Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, have also pushed for gun-control measures, though few reforms have passed at the federal level in recent decades.

Nationally, “we do very little to screen individuals or to separate [from firearms] individuals that we know are at risk of dangerous behavior,” Mr. Heyne says. “If we want to really address gun violence in all of its forms, we need a comprehensive approach that is tactical, that is surgical, that is very specific to addressing the types of gun violence that exist in America, because it’s not a monolith. All of these different forms of gun violence require different solutions.”

9 Dead in San Jose Mass Shooting (VIDEO)

That's nine dead not counting the shooter. 

At the San Jose Mercury News, "Victims, shooter identified in Bay Area’s deadliest mass shooting: Ten people, including the alleged gunman, were killed at a San Jose VTA light rail yard early Wednesday":

SAN JOSE — In what is now the Bay Area’s deadliest mass shooting, a Valley Transportation Authority employee known for nursing grievances and a hot temper opened fire early Wednesday morning at a VTA light rail yard building, fatally wounding nine people before taking his own life, authorities said.

“I was running so fast, I just ran for my life,” she said. “I would hope everyone would just pray for the VTA family. Just pray for us.”

On Wednesday evening, the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office identified the nine victims as 42-year-old Paul Delacruz Megia, 36-year-old Taptejdeep Singh, 29-year-old Adrian Balleza, 35-year-old Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 49-year-old Timothy Michael Romo, 40-year-old Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 63-year-old Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63-year-old Lars Kepler Lane and 49-year-old Alex Ward Fritch. Fritch was initially taken to a hospital in critical condition but later died of his injuries.

The gunman was identified by multiple sources as Samuel Cassidy, a 57-year-old VTA maintenance worker. Authorities would not say what might have led to the rampage, what type of weapon was used or whether he obtained it legally.

Sheriff Laurie Smith, whose office headquarters are near the rail yard, said deputies entered the building as shots were still being fired, but did not exchange gunfire with the gunman.

“We have some very brave officers and deputies,” Smith said.

In a news release Wednesday evening, the sheriff’s office said deputies found the suspect dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Still more.

 

Suspect Identified in City of Orange 'Mass' Shooting as 44-Year Old Fullerton Resident Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Four Killed, Including Child, in Latest 'Mass Shooting, in Orange, California (VIDEO)."

Well, first off, the suspect, Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, is obviously not a "white supremacist domestic terrorist," and thus the lying "mainstream" media --- at all the major leftist cable and network news outlets --- can't run with their continuous and despicable lying memes of this so-called epidemic of "right-wing extremist violence," which these ghouls must be hatin' to their everlasting regret. 

Lots of facts are still unknown, including the motives of the suspect Gonzalez; but it is known that the killings were completely premeditated, and the suspect knew the victims, and that he had secured bike-locks to the front and back gates to the business building complex there, and it appears, as O.C. District Attorney Todd Spitzer indicates at the video below, that the man is definitely eligible for the death penalty. 

And one thing about Spitzer --- who I don't really like, and who I never vote for --- is that while he's actually a craven career politician, he's a freakin' hardcore "tough on crime" mofo, and he will push it to the max to make sure this Gonzalez guy gets the full "justice" that's coming to him, and if it's not lethal injection, that f*cker will be going behind bars for a very long time, perhaps even for life in prison.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times (and with the KABC Eyewitness News 7 segment on yesterday's press conference here), "Orange shooting gunman knew his victims and how to trap them":

The gunman knew his victims. He knew the office park — and how to trap them.

He locked the gates to the complex with bike cables before he slipped inside a manufactured homes business called Unified Homes, backpack slung over his shoulder, gun in hand.

That’s how police Thursday described the start of a shooting in Orange the night before that left four people, including a 9-year-old boy, dead.

Officers arrived at the scene about 5:30 p.m., minutes after receiving reports of shooting. They encountered gunfire and shot through the locked gates, wounding the gunman, said Orange Police Lt. Jennifer Amat. They used bolt cutters to enter the complex.

Officers found two victims in the courtyard — the boy and a woman who was alive and taken to a hospital, where she remains in stable yet critical condition. Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said it appeared that the boy died in the arms of a woman who “was trying to save him.”

The boy is believed to be the son of one of the victims who worked at Unified Homes. It is not clear if the mother is the woman hospitalized.

Police found three more bodies: a woman on an upstairs outdoor landing, a man in an office and a woman in a separate office.

The victims’ names have not been released because their next of kin have not all been notified, Amat said. The suspect is Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, a 44-year-old man last known to be living in Anaheim who police said had a “business and personal relationship” with the victims.

“It is a horrible, horrible tragedy,” Spitzer said, “that Mr. Gonzalez made a decision to use deadly force to deal with issues he was dealing with in his life. So he will suffer and face the consequences.”

Police recovered a semiautomatic handgun and a backpack with pepper spray, handcuffs and ammunition, “which we believe belonged to the suspect,” Amat said Thursday.

The suspect had been living in a motel room in Anaheim, and arrived at the business in a rental car, police said. A photo released by authorities showed a man entering the business dressed in black and gray with sunglasses, a baseball hat and a black bandanna covering his face. He had a backpack on his left shoulder and a gun in his right hand.

Two police officers discharged their weapons, said Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, which investigates officer-involved shootings. Both were wearing body cameras.

The incident — the third mass shooting in the United States in two weeks — stunned the quiet north Orange neighborhood.

Tim Smith was sitting in his living room watching TV news about a commercial fire in Compton when he heard the crack of gunfire.

Seconds later, three more shots. His wife, Kim, joined him. The couple has lived in their home on Dunton Avenue since 1992, and said the most disruption they deal with on a typical day is the sound of neighbors mowing their lawns.

They looked at each other as four more gunshots sounded.

They got low in the house to shield themselves. After a moment, Smith went to the back door and cracked it open to listen.

Smith’s backyard — lined with tall cypress trees — is feet away from the office building’s back parking lot. Smith heard a male officer’s booming voice barking a command: “Don’t move or I will shoot you.”

He watched from his shed as the SWAT team moved into the building, silently, and in strategic formation. Smith says he was heartened that police arrived so fast.

Still more at that top link.

Lauren Boebert Rips 'Gun Control' Dems Who Mocked Her for 'Gun Fetish' on Zoom (VIDEO)

There's a piece up at "The American Independent," an obvious far-left website I've never heard of, slamming Rep. Boebert for her defense of Second Amendment rights, and her right, as a Member of Congress, to "open carry" her weapons in the halls of that august body.

I'm no expert on this area, but guns in Congress were extremely common in the 19th century, and in recent years the Supreme Court has ruled (twice) that the right to bear arms is an "individual right." So, I'm very interested to see gun control freaks try to "wish away" SCOTUS precedents on this matter.

Here's the piece, via Memeorandum, "2nd Amendment defender Lauren Boebert upset others might want to amend Constitution." (Safe link.)

And you can watch the interaction from some of the actual committee hearing in question, at the video:

RELATED: Again, while I'm no expert on this topic, SCOTUS returned to the Second Amendment in a case last year, in Thomas Rogers, et al. v. Grewal, where it states at the opinion:

The text of the Second Amendment guarantees that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” As this Court explained in Heller, “[a]t the time of the founding, as now, to ‘bear’ meant to ‘carry.’” 554 U.S., at 584. “When used with ‘arms,’ . . . the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose— confrontation.” Ibid. Thus, the right to “bear arms” refers to the right to “‘wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.’” Ibid. (quoting Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S. 125, 143 (1998) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting); alterations and some internal quotation marks omitted).

“The most natural reading of this definition encompasses public carry.” Peruta v. California, 582 U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 5). Confrontations, of course, often occur outside the home. See, e.g., Moore, supra, at 937 (noting that “most murders occur outside the home” in Chicago). Thus, the right to carry arms for self-defense inherently includes the right to carry in public. This conclusion not only flows from the definition of “bear Arms” but also from the natural use of the language in the text. As I have stated before, it is “extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen.”

Quite right. 

So, again, I only suggest, as a "non-expert," that idiot leftist gun-control freaks back the f*ck off, sheesh.

(And note, SCOTUS denied certiorari in Rogers, because the lower courts had already affirmed previous SCOTUS rulings holding that the Second Amendment indeed confers an individual right the bear ("carry") arms in public. But no matter, I stand with Rep. Boebert, and I hope she continues to hammer her arguments in defense of the Second Amendment.)

 

The GHM9 Gen 2: Blowback 9mm Pistol With a Plethora of Features

Cool.

At Instapundit, "REVIEW: B&T’s 9 mm GHM9 Gen 2."

Armed Congregants Kill Gunman at Texas Church (VIDEO)

At the Other McCain, "UPDATE: Texas Church Shooter Identified as Homeless Criminal Keith Kinnunen."

ABC's report, with video, is here.

Solution to mass shootings- Good guys with gunshttps://t.co/TqoeYcPsED

— GrrrGraphics Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) December 29, 2019

Santa Clarita Shooting

Terrible.

But what's also terrible is leftist exploitation of the tragedy, again.

At LAT, "Teen who opened fire at Saugus High dies of self-inflicted wound; guns are seized from his home," and "Santa Clarita shooting: Detectives probe how teen got gun as community mourns."

Suspect was in illegal possession. While you were AG CA ranked among lowest in prosecutions of fed gun crimes. Your state passed UCB, AWB, mag restrictions, waiting period, red flag, registry, microstamping, age restrictions, more. What did CA lack that would have prevented this? https://t.co/Fq6JeusaPM

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) November 14, 2019

Beto O'Rourke: 'We're Going to Take Away Your AR-15...' (VIDEO)

This is something else.

You really couldn't find a more powerful moment to fire up normal Americans. Beto's like a gift to Trump's 2020 reelection campaign. (All the Democrats are, frankly, but Beto's on crack.)

At the Other McCain, "Beto in Democrat Debate: ‘Hell Yes, We’re Going to Take Your AR-15, Your AK-47!’"