Don's Tuesday Column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   3/26/2019

Republicans celebrate the 2^nd Amend’t

The time approaches for the premier event of the year, the Annual Red, White and Blue Tehama County Republican Dinner and Silent Auction. It is April 13 at the Veterans Memorial Hall; it’s always a rewarding night of camaraderie and fellowship with your fellow conservatives. The doors open for a meet and greet at 5 PM; the dinner and program will commence at 6:30. Tickets are $45; a table for 8 is $360. Proceeds fund youth scholarships.

This year’s theme is celebrating the Second Amendment, a cause close to our hearts at a time of renewed attacks on our right to “keep and bear arms” for self-defense, sport and hunting. Guest speakers: Daniel Reid, Western Regional Director for the National Rifle Association, and Sam Parades, executive director of California Gun Owners. I’ll have more next week; call 530-865-2666, or 200-0091. See www.tehamagop.org and www.tehamarwf.com (Republican Women Federated) and their Facebook pages.

The massacre in New Zealand was by a deranged fanatic whose ideal leader was a British fascist, not Donald Trump, whose ideal country was Red China, and who emulated the Scandinavian mass murderer of dozens of young people on an island summer camp. Ironically, the world paid scant notice to the slaughter of more than twice that many Christians by Islamic militants, the so-called Fulani jihadists, in Nigeria. They used machetes, guns and fire to kill over 120 Christian men, women, and children, burning over 140 houses, spreading terror.

It lacks usefulness to the media and political left, who care only for tragedies that advance their policy preferences. That’s sad and contributes to the justified cynicism of many Americans for the media. It is remarkable that the killer of 50 Muslims carries more weight in the debate over gun violence and religious intolerance than the death of many thousands of Muslims by bombs and other means simply because the Sunni and Shia sects hate each other. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered with mostly machetes (bullets cost money, you know) because the Hutus hated the Tutsis.

The relative ease of New Zealand leaders to ban so-called “assault rifles” and most other semi-automatic weapons is a sobering reminder of the timeless wisdom of our Founders, who placed the Second Amendment in our Constitution, not as a limiter of our inherent rights but as a statement of the God-given right to self-defense. Fact: 42 Muslims died in the first mosque; only 7 died at the second mosque because a worshipper fired back with a shotgun.

American liberals like Obama and Hillary Clinton praised the Australian gun confiscation/buyback, also cited by the NZ prime minister in approving their gun prohibitions. Know this: Australia’s gun confiscation is misleadingly used to support the theory that fewer guns mean less crime. Murders were declining throughout advanced nations in the 1990s, before Australia’s gun ban; the trend in Australia’s murder rate showed no greater decline after their confiscatory gun laws, proving nothing. Look up “The Science is Settled: Research Shows Gun Control Laws Do Not Reduce Violent Crimes or Suicides,” by Dan Zimmerman.

Anti-gun foolishness reached its logical extreme in British efforts to constrain murderous human nature. Their obsession with taking away guns to stop violence has led predictably to waves of knife attacks, which have only inspired calls for “safe” knives and “knife control.” It’s true. Their deluded policies have reduced homeowners to having to run from their homes rather than fight to protect their lives and possessions. Ironically, repairing bodies from knife wounds has challenged doctors, who’ve seen damage to organs not previously encountered in gun injuries.

Observations: The college admissions scandal renewed criticism of advantaged children of rich alumni in admission to elite schools. While there are valid complaints about that, it is also true that those applicants are generally well qualified for acceptance, perhaps due to higher economic advantages. The cheaters, bribers and phony athletic resumes, however, show a plain attempt to acquire undeserved admission.

What was roundly ignored—even as hard-working students rightly decried the fact that the cheaters were taking spots that should have gone to more deserving students—was the same injustice of race-based admissions. In other words, the excessive effort given to admitting minority students for the questionable purpose of “diversity” has had a similar cost.

Many white, particularly Asian American, applicants must have far higher scores on standardized tests to be admitted over less qualified black or Hispanic students. That is an indisputable fact. Sadly, minority students, who certainly deserve admission somewhere based on merit, then find themselves struggling, even failing, due to the intense demands and workloads in the best schools, for which they were not prepared.

It is not a safe, comforting task refuting, even disputing, the ongoing theme of hate crimes committed by white supremacists. First, know that the Southern Poverty Law Center, currently going through some well-deserved scandals, firings and resignations—together with credible accusations of sex assaults and racism by former women and black employees—has zero credibility in this area.

Next, I quote Heather Mac Donald’s use of FBI hate crime statistics: “The number of reported hate crimes—and we don’t know how many of those are Jussie Smollett hoaxes—last year was identical to what it was 10 years ago when there were 25 million fewer people in the United States and many fewer reporting agencies. And if you go 10 years before that, you have 3,000 more hate crimes reported. The idea that there has been some surge in hate, much less white supremacist hate, is completely ridiculous.” That should settle it.

Finally, I share President Trump’s sentiments re: the late Senator McCain, who eagerly peddled the hoax of Trump/Russia collusion out of spite and hatred for his party’s leader. We now know Mueller turned up zero Russia collusion and McCain should have known that from the start. Between Mueller, A.G. Barr and Rosenstein, Trump is “exonerated” (CNN) and “vindicated” (MSNBC).