polecat news and views: May 2022

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Major New Research on School Safety: Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns haven’t seen school shootings during school hours

Major New Research on School Safety: Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns haven’t seen school shootings during school hours

May 13, 2019 | Featured

Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns are Extremely Safe: Data on the Rate of Shootings and Accidents in Schools that allow Teachers to Carry

Abstract

After the Columbine school shooting 20 years ago, one of the more significant changes in how we protect students has been the advance of legislation that allows teachers to carry guns at schools. There are two obvious questions: Does letting teachers carry create dangers? Might they deter attackers? Twenty states currently allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property, so we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed. While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018.

The paper is available here.

The Excel file with the data is available here.

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A Cabinency of Dunces

A Cabinency of Dunces

BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

As the nation sinks inexplicably into self-created crisis after crisis, debate rages whether President Joe Biden is incompetent, mean-spirited, or an ideologue who feels the country’s mess is his success.

A second national discussion revolves around who actually is overseeing the current national catastrophe, given Biden’s frequent bewilderment and cognitive challenges.

But one area of agreement is the sheer craziness of Biden’s cabinet appointments, who have translated his incoherent ideology into catastrophic governance.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has essentially nullified federal immigration law. Over 2 million foreign nationals have illegally crossed the southern border without audit — and without COVID vaccinations and tests during a pandemic.

Mayorkas either cannot or will not follow federal law.

But he did create a new Disinformation Governance Board. To head his new Orwellian Ministry of Truth, he appointed Nina Jankowicz — an arch disinformationist who helped peddle the Russian collusion, Steele dossier, and Alfa Bank hoaxes.

While Jankowicz’s adolescent videos and past tweets finally forced her resignation, Mayorkas promises his board will carry on.

In the days before the recent Virginia election, grassroots parent groups challenged critical race theory taught in the schools.

In reaction and under prompts from teachers’ unions, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed both the FBI and the Justice Department to establish a special task force apparently to “investigate threats” from parents against school board members.

The FBI recently has been knee-deep in political controversies. It illegally doctored a FISA application to entrap an American citizen. Its former directors, under oath before Congress, either claimed faulty memory or admitted lying to federal investigators.

The last thing a scandal-plagued FBI needed was to go undercover at school board meetings to investigate parents worried over their children’s education.

We are in a fuel price spiral that is destroying the middle class.

Yet when Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was asked about plans to lower gas prices, she laughed off the idea as “hilarious.”

Later Granholm preposterously claimed, “It is not the administration policies that have affected supply and demand.”

Apparently haranguing those who finance fossil fuel production, canceling the Keystone Pipeline, suspending new federal oil and gas leases, and stopping production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge all had nothing to do with high fuel prices.

Currently, supply chain disruptions are paralyzing the U.S. economy.

The huge Port of Los Angeles has been a mess for over a year. Since last fall dozens of cargo ships have been backed up to the horizon. Thousands of trucks are bottlenecked at the port.

During the mess, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was not at work. Instead at the height of the crisis, he took a two-month paternity leave to help out his husband and two newborn babies.

Such paternal concern is a noble thing. But Buttigieg is supposed to ensure that life-or-death supplies reach millions of strapped Americans.

This winter, trains entering and leaving Los Angeles were routinely looted in the Old-West style of train robbing — without much of a response from Buttigieg’s transportation bureau.

In Senate testimony Secretary of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland refused to explain why her department is slow walking federal oil and gas leases at a time when Americans are paying between $5 and $6 a gallon for gas.

Haaland was unable to provide simple answers about when new leases will result in more supplies of oil and gas. Her panicked aides slid talking points to her — given that in deer-in-the-headlights fashion, she seemed incapable of providing senators with basic information about U.S. energy production on federal lands.

The United States is sending many billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression. We rightly claim it is not a proxy war against Russia but instead an effort to help stop a brutal Russian invasion.

Why then did Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tell the world the very opposite in a fashion that could only convince Russians that our real aim in Ukraine is to destroy Russia as a superpower?

As Austin put it publicly, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Even if that description of the agenda is true, why broadcast it — given Russia has over 6,000 nuclear weapons and its President Vladimir Putin is increasingly erratic and paranoid?

The common denominator to these Biden appointees is ideological rigidity, nonchalance, and sheer incompetence.

They seem indifferent to the current border, inflation, energy, and crime disasters. When confronted, they are unable to answer simple questions from Congress, or they mock anyone asking for answers on behalf of the strapped American people.

We don’t know why or how such an unimpressive cadre ended up running the government, only that they are here and the American people are suffering from their presence.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2022/05/26/a-cabinency-of-dunces-n1601011

Border Patrol tactical team arrived at Uvalde school shortly after noon -- but cops stopped them from going in

Border Patrol tactical team arrived at Uvalde school shortly after noon -- but cops stopped them from going in

ALLAHPUNDIT

AP Photo/Eric Gay

The shooter entered the school at 11:33 a.m. According to this Times report, BP and ICE teams showed up half an hour later, having made the drive north from the border when they heard the news.

I continue not to understand why a town with its own police force and its own SWAT team hadn’t already neutralized the shooter by the time the immigration agents got there. Reportedly, the agents don’t understand it either.

But as bad as it was that Uvalde had to rely on federal officers to handle this, worse is the fact that the feds weren’t allowed to handle it at first. According to the Times, the BP and ICE units were held back before finally being allowed to take the shooter down around 45 minutes after they had first arrived.

The agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrived at some point between 12 p.m. and 12:10 p.m., according to the officials — far earlier than previously known. But they did not breach the adjoining classrooms of the school where the gunman had locked himself in until a little before 1 p.m. Members of the federal tactical team killed the gunman.
The officials said that members of the Uvalde Police Department kept the federal agents from going in sooner…
The Border Patrol and ICE agents did not understand why they were left to wait, according to the official. Eventually, the specialized Border Patrol team went into the building…
The federal officers had driven up from the Mexican border, one official said. The official said it was not clear to the federal agents why their team was needed, and why the local SWAT team did not respond.

The argument for Uvalde cops holding back the parents outside is that the parents were unarmed, untrained, and therefore probably would have gotten themselves killed if they had entered the school to try to confront the shooter.

What’s the argument for holding back armed and trained federal officers?

As a local cop, wouldn’t it hurt your pride to have to rely on the feds to do the job you were supposed to be doing? Border Patrol wasn’t required to be there. They drove up to Uvalde, it would appear, in the idle belief that they might be able to assist somehow in a chaotic situation. Little did they know.

The details of the press conference John wrote about earlier are making me dizzy. “Nearly 20 officers stood in a hallway outside of the classrooms during this week’s attack on a Texas elementary school for more than 45 minutes before agents used a master key to open a door and confront a gunman,” the AP story about the presser begins. But here’s the haunting detail:

McCraw said there was a barrage of gunfire shortly after Ramos entered the classroom where they killed Ramos but that shots were “sporadic” for much of the 48 minutes while officers waited outside the hallway. He said investigators do not know if or how many children died during those 48 minutes.

What did they think the shooter was doing when he was firing? Did they assume that all of the kids inside with him were already dead by that point and that he was shooting out the window at the police?

I almost can’t bring myself to ask this but I have to: Did they hear any children screaming on the other side of the door while they stood there for 48 minutes?

They must have known that some kids in the room were alive, as a few were on the phone with 911 sporadically: “From 12:03 to 12:46, 911 dispatchers received numerous calls from within the classroom, including repeated calls from a child whispering that people were dead and begging: ‘Please send the police now,’ Mr. McCraw said.”

The only non-insane scenario I can envision for all this is that they thought it had become a hostage situation and that the shots they occasionally heard were the shooter taking potshots at bystanders out the window. In other words, he had stopped executing children and they didn’t want to scare him into executing more by trying to barge in.

But why assume that he was shooting out the window instead of killing more kids? And why is shooting at bystanders outside the school any less urgent than shooting at the children around him?

There’s destined to be a federal investigation of this police response. I think.

But I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it. Check out the White House’s surprisingly subdued reaction yesterday to the police clusterf**k in Uvalde:

That smells to me like an administration that’s deathly afraid of handing the GOP a new club to beat them with before the midterms. Some Biden staffers are Obama alumni and doubtless remember the “police acted stupidly” fiasco early in O’s first term. For sure, they all remember how badly “defund the police” hurt their party in the 2020 elections. Biden has strained ever since to counterprogram that message in order to help his moderates in Congress. If he brings down the hammer on the Uvalde cops prematurely and it turns out their response wasn’t as bad as it looks to all the world to be, Republicans will destroy him for demonizing law enforcement. It’ll be “defund the police” on steroids. So Team Joe needs to go slowly here.

Besides, they want the national debate to be about gun control, right? The more outrage there is about police incompetence, the less attention is paid to the Democrats’ pet issue. But even Biden can bite his tongue for only so long. Disgust at the police reaction is rising and bipartisan; he’ll have to speak up sometime soon. Albeit carefully.

https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/05/27/border-patrol-tactical-team-arrived-at-uvalde-school-shortly-after-noon-but-cops-stopped-them-from-going-in-n472511

Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News 5/31/2022

Incalculable loss, neglect and evil

Memorial Day recognizes the incalculable loss, to families, communities and America, of young men and a lesser number of young women of all races, regions and religions that died serving their nation in the uniforms of our military. Incalculable due to the infinite time, commitment, emotional devotion and sacrifice of the deceased warriors’ parents, siblings, spouses, children and communities.

Likewise, the lost futures of each service man or woman. Noncombat accidents, training and transport deaths aside, they result from our leaders pursuing our nation’s and allies’ self-defense or vital interests. Marginal or ill-advised military operations take nothing away from the noble sacrifices of Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard warriors. They were surely welcomed into God’s embrace and succor in the next life; we owe them our solemn remembrance.

Men and women, of any age or status in life, are untimely taken by accident, unintended neglect or malignant purveyors of wanton destruction and death. This world is rightly said to be the devil’s playground, the realm of evil acts and deeds, for which someone can only be held accountable under law for their crimes after innocents suffer.

When such evil-hearted people set out to do harm—not by passion, carelessness or misadventure, but by planning, organizing and stealthily preparing their deadly deeds—predictable and often disingenuous reactions are non-responsive to the actual events. Blame is often assigned where no such culpability exists; ill-informed partisan followers latch onto emotionally appealing but wholly phony assertions.

We should all agree and continue seeking “common sense” about the pure evil displayed in recent mass shootings. The murderous slaughter of innocent school children involves neither passion, carelessness nor neglect. Prevention and armed, trained response are the only relevant topics.

Sunday was five days after the mass murder of children in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas; sufficient time for analysis of the law enforcement response. I hold officers beyond high regard, considering the (unwarranted) stigma attached by many to that profession, which dissuades some from serving. Public safety has sadly been disrespected with knee-jerk suspicion of motives and actions even when performed admirably.

Consider a wider view of local law enforcement actions, rather than selective social media recordings of officers under intense pressure: figuring out how many shooters, where located, evacuating children from numerous buildings without losing further lives. Restraint of parents, hysterical or not, may have been prudent, much like holding back those wanting to rush into a burning building to rescue someone. They could die saving no one.

Given 1) The revising of police response to mass shooting events after Columbine, especially after the Parkland high school mass murders—that the least loss of life results when initial officers immediately pursue and attack the shooter; and 2) that Uvalde school district hosted at least two active-shooter training days, including one just two months ago—we can agree that law enforcement blew it.

I assume that leadership issued orders to officers to do just what they did (no fault in following orders) but when it’s revealed that the Border Patrol Tactical unit was restrained by local cops, under orders, as children were being terrorized while making numerous 911 calls for help—fingers righteously get pointed. Children suffered and died while bad, trepidatious decisions by leadership kept cops away from where they were needed. Although they were heroically taking lethal fire from the shooter, initial response failed.

The prevention aspect depends on where you stand; facts, data and truth matter. Irrefutably, criminals are unaffected by gun laws; their families or girlfriends with clean records buy their guns knowing it’s illegal to transfer them to a criminal. Black-market peddlers care not what laws politicians on soapboxes browbeat fellow lawmakers into passing.

Facts: 1) The 1990s “assault weapons ban” had zero effect on crime (Biden lied); most criminals use handguns; more people are murdered with fists, knives and blunt objects than with rifles, assault or not. Banning any type of gun matters not to criminals; only law-abiding people will comply.

2) Expanded, or “universal,” background checks are irrelevant if young adults with juvenile records, or those with mental problems, aren’t in the database. Guns will still find “gang bangers” hands for above reasons.

3) “White supremacists are not the most likely mass murderers,” by John Bock: “Ironically, less than 10% of mass public shootings have any ties at all to white supremacy. And whites commit less than their proportionate number of attacks” (based on 82 mass public shootings from 1/1998 to 5/2021). Those of Middle Eastern origin, 0.4% of the population, carry out 9% of mass public shootings.

4) Only 3 mass school shootings occurred from 1903 to 1966; since 1966, 13 mass shootings. Another analysis counted 14 since 2000; they are infrequent, though tragic.

5) Out of 97 countries with data, the U.S. is 64^th in frequency of mass shootings and 65^th in murder rate. Most European countries have higher rates, with stricter gun laws. America: 1.15% of the world’s mass shootings but 5% of the world’s population.

6) Strict gun-law states have high murder rates; conversely, low gun-law states have low rates.

7) Armed school resource officers coincide with low shooting incidents and fatalities. “Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns haven’t seen school shootings during school hours” (crimeresearch.org).

Suggestion: Limit gun purchases for 18- to 21-year-olds to those who have a background-check-passing adult “cosign” for their purchase, like they would for a loan. In the military they would be supervised and trained; why not for young civilians? It would’ve stopped the Texas killer.

Here's a Three-Word Policy That's Been Effective in Stopping School Shootings

Matt Vespa

@mvespa1

The border city of Uvalde, Texas is mourning. Salvador Ramos, 18, shot and killed 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. They were all in one classroom. It’s a heinous crime. It’s a Sandy Hook-like situation. Ramos shot his grandmother before this rampage. The grandmother is said to have survived. We’re going to hear an earful about gun control, so-called assault weapons bans, and other anti-gun talking points from Democrats. And the result will always be the same—Americans will not torch their rights to appease a political class lusting for more power and control, especially after the COVID lockdown fiasco. NONE of the COVID protocols were effective. The lockdowns did next to nothing to reduce the mortality rate. The one policy that has been effective is having police officers at schools.

School resource officers is not a new policy. Sandy Hook adopted it after Adam Lanza’s equally evil shooting in Newtown back in 2012. It’s backed by the National Rifle Association. It has a proven track record. For years, we’ve had stories of these brave officers stopping would-be school shooters. Does it stop all of them? No, some manage to pop off a few shots but the level of carnage is not catastrophic when SROs are present.

In 2018, a school shooting in Ocala, Florida was limited to only one student being injured thanks to a school resource officer (via CBS News):

A Florida school resource officer is being praised for quickly confronting the gunman during a shooting at a high school that injured one student ... The shooting happened … at Forest High School in Ocala, which was put on lockdown. The wounded student, a 17-year-old boy, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of a non-life threatening injury to his ankle.
The suspect,19-year-old Sky Bouche, was quickly taken into custody by the school resource officer, Marion County Sheriff's Deputy James Long, officials said.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said Long heard a loud bang about 8:39 a.m. and immediately rushed to the source of the sound. Within minutes, at about 8:42 a.m., Long reached the shooting scene and the shooter was in custody, officials said…

At Dixon High School in Illinois, also in 2018, a school resource officer was able to shoot a gunman before anyone else was harmed (via NYT):

A school shooting may have been narrowly averted … — thanks in part to the quick response of a school resource officer, who shot a gunman before anyone else was harmed.
The authorities in Dixon, Ill., said the officer, Mark Dallas, was on duty at Dixon High School near a gymnasium, where students were gathered for a graduation rehearsal, when he heard gunshots at 8:06 a.m. He confronted the gunman, chased him out of the school and pursued him down a nearby street, the police said.
The gunman, a student at the school identified as Matthew A. Milby, 19, of Dixon, shot at the officer but missed, the police said. Mr. Dallas returned fire and struck Mr. Milby, who was taken to a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

Another would-be shooter in Maryland was stopped by a school resource officer. This also occurred in 2018 (via Baltimore Sun):

As school systems across the country debate arming staff, state and local officials praised the actions of the school resource officer who fired at a gunman at Great Mills High School.
“He responded exactly as we train our personnel to respond," said St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron of school resource officer Deputy First Class Blaine
Gaskill. Police said Austin Rollins, 17, shot at two other students who were injured. Gaskill fired at Rollins, who almost simultaneously fired his handgun, Cameron said. Investigators are still trying to determine which bullets struck which individuals.
Rollins died at a hospital.
Gaskill was not injured during the incident, which unfolded in less than a minute.

In 2021, a school resource officer stopped a shooting at Hinkley High School, keeping the suspects in the parking lot. Three teenagers were injured in the attack, but no fatalities (via 9News):

The Aurora Police Department (APD) said three suspects have been arrested in connection to a shooting in the Hinkley High School parking lot that left three teenagers injured…
APD said in a release that dispatchers began taking 911 calls about a shooting at Hinkley High School just after noon Friday. An APD school resource officer and an Aurora Public Schools (APS) security officer were already there and were the first to respond, according to police.
Officers found a teenager in the parking lot who had been shot, police said, and they were taken to the hospital. The other two teenagers who were shot got themselves to hospitals soon after that, according to APD. Chief Vanessa Wilson said in a media briefing that their injuries did not appear to be life-threatening.

In 2013, at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, Karl Pierson tried to commit a mass casualty event. It only lasted 80 seconds after he was confronted by a school resource officer. Tragically, he was able to kill one student. Pierson intended to kill as many as possible according to authorities at the time. In 2022, officers present in this school district appear to be not as frequent due to staffing issues.

Matt Vespa

It's a deterrent. It works. These RSOs either stop shooters before they’re able to open fire or severely restrict an attacker’s ability to commit a mass casualty event. There is a years-long track record of police stopping would-be school shooters within seconds of trouble. Marjory Stoneman Douglas is a different situation since the school officer assigned did nothing, which led to his firing. Every other officer in this position has responded and neutralized the threat.

Also, there are other issues like authorities not enforcing the law prior to known troubled persons when it comes to firearms purchases but that's a tale for another time.

In all, three words that describe a good policy to keep our schools and students safe from would-be killers: school resource officers.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/05/25/one-policy-that-seems-to-work-when-it-comes-to-protecting-our-schools-n2607781

Monday, May 30, 2022

Squishy Republicans Want Trump to Go Away

Squishy Republicans Want Trump to Go Away

Will Alexander

Political psychopaths who jerry-rigged scraps from Trump’s unorthodox style to create the illusion of the most hideous, racist, misogynist, homophobic, Putin-loving, Hitlerian monster that ever lived, have convinced squishy Republicans that the real Donald Trump shouldn’t run in 2024.

“This is one of the greatest political scandals in history,” Trump told Fox News on Saturday about Hillary Clinton being the likely mastermind behind the Russian Collusion hoax. “For three years, I had to fight her off and fight those crooked people off, and you’ll never get your reputation fully back. … Where do I get my reputation back?”

But Russian Collusion was only one of a never-ending list of filthy tricks Democrats and their collaborators used to destroy Trump’s reputation since the day he was elected: the Charlottesville lie, two phony impeachments, the coverup of Hunter’s laptop, and a constant barrage of woke politicos and pundits twisting the definition of racism to flippantly smear him as a racist. None of it was true.

Trump’s view on the border, fossil fuels, the economy, COVID lockdowns, the Supreme Court, and so many other consequential issues have created one of the most ignored phrases in recent political history: “Trump was right.”

But these people never stop. For being right, they hate him even more.

When the 82-year-old speech-ripper Nancy Pelosi was asked by CNN, last week, about the leaked opinion that signaled the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, she exposed herself as the main spigot for the strategic vitriol against Trump.

“I mean, the point is – who would have ever suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States,” spewed the person who, in March, praised Biden for his extraordinary leadership. “… waving a list of judges that he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far right and – ah – appointing those anti – dis – freedom judges to the court.”

Democrats desperately need the hideous version of Trump to keep the party glued together, and to make Trump a political virus for knee-knocking Republicans. It’s working.

Establishment Republicans are so traumatized by the Democrat-created boogeyman of Trump; so embarrassed by Trump’s unorthodox style; so nostalgic for the superficial dignity of the good ol’ days and desperate for approval, that they’ll do anything to distance themselves from him.

They waiting to get back to “normalcy and stability” as opposed to “lability and extremism,” as Peggy Noonan put it in her column Donald Trump and His Elusive Base in the Wall Street Journal, Thursday. She believes a good chunk of Trump’s supporters are quietly distancing themselves from him, too.

“But there’s another, larger mood shift going on, and to me it’s the real headline,” wrote Noonan as she assessed “a real sense” of things after last week’s primaries. “Something is changing among Trump supporters. … They won’t tell pollsters, they may not even tell neighbors, but there was a real sense of: We need Trump’s policies, but we don’t need him. … as a major backer and donor told me, it’s time to think of the future. Mr. Trump brings ‘chaos’.”

Karl Rove, who in January chided Republicans for not coming down harder on the Jan. 6 rioters and those who “encouraged and aided the attempt to overthrow our democracy,” wrote on Wednesday that last week’s primaries confirmed that angry factions are increasingly defining both parties, and as a result “America’s politics continues to polarize. … Buckle up.”

Even columnist Kimberly Strassel, whose work I respect, seems to prefer Glenn Youngkin’s “focusing on a fix and the future” approach to politics than Trump’s combative style. Especially when it comes to looking back at the 2020 election.

“He [Youngkin] acknowledged Mr. Biden as the legitimate president while also promising to shore up election integrity,” she wrote in her column The Limits of ‘Stop the Steal’. Mr. Youngkin ran on a forward-looking agenda to address schools, the economy and crime – and won in a state that has leaned Democratic in recent years. That tried-and-true formula remains the path for GOP midterms success.”

Bill Barr is reported to have said that the country doesn’t need a lame-duck president settling scores for another four years. Two-term Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison said at the National Governor’s Association’s winter meeting that “I do not believe Trump is the one to lead our party and our country again, as president.” And Jacquie Baly, a political science professor at the University of Houston believes that “the insurrection” closed the 2024 window for him.

When you consider what Democrats are doing to fundamentally transform the country, “chaos,” “polarize,” and “a very harsh tone” is not extreme, but a natural reaction for a man, Trump, who loves the country, and is using every tool in his box to oppose those who are literally weakening and destroying America as we know it.

We support him, not to be part of some idiot cult, but because he sees exactly what we see: They’re demonizing whites and American history through CRT; opening up the border in violation of federal law; normalizing an extreme LGBTQ ideology in all sectors of American life; strategically exposing school children to explicit sexual content; normalizing crime and criminalizing normal behavior; destroying the fossil fuel industry under false pretenses to stuff green policy down America’s throat; destroying the lives of people and businesses with China-inspired COVID lockdowns, mandates, and restrictions; looking to institutionalize lockdowns with the impending WHO treaty, transforming election rules, regulations and laws to get and keep power; and abusing technology to restrict speech that’s unfavorable to Democrat government policies.

This stuff is very extreme, and the establishment’s obsession to get back to “normal” – to get back to politics as usual – unfortunately, not only falls short but is misguided and very dangerous for the situation we’re living through. “Normal” normalizes the arsonists who are letting the fire burn things to the ground, and these people need to be held accountable. If a Youngkin-type, or even a Ron DeSantis runs and wins the presidency in 2024, these people will not stop.

This may not be the Civil War, but this country is, no doubt, at war. And establishment Republicans, with their misguided worship of orthodox politics, are completely oblivious to the situation.

They are, as journalist Walter Lippmann wrote in the 1940s, politicians who are “insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle … The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular – not whether it will work well and prove itself, but whether the active-talking constituents like it immediately.”

Through lies, deception and outright fraud, Democrats have made Donald Trump extremely unpopular among the “active-talking” people. Squishy Republicans keep their distance and whisper their objections as the country burns to the ground. Until someone else comes along – given the country’s dire situation – I will continue to support Trump. He’s an axe in America’s tool kit that we set aside for emergencies.

We’re in an emergency.

https://townhall.com/columnists/willalexander/2022/05/23/squishy-republicans-want-trump-to-go-away-n2607636

BRAD SMITH ON EARLY VOTING

BRAD SMITH ON EARLY VOTING

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN ELECTION LAW

Brad Smith, the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Ohio, is an expert on federal election law (having served as chairman of the Federal Election Commission at one point), and moreover a certified Power Line reader. He has a good Twitter thread up today on the matter of early- and mail-in voting that is sober and sensible:

I believe that we should have options for absentee and early in-person voting for those who need them. However, voting on election day should be the presumptive norm.
Here’s why we should be discouraging absentee voting and encouraging in-person voting on election day:
Absentee balloting is more prone to fraud. Fraud is rare, but it is more common among absentee ballots. Absentee ballots are more likely to be rejected due to voter error. Most ballots will be counted, but there is a higher rejection rate for absentee ballots.
People who vote in person report a higher degree of confidence in the legitimacy of the election and electoral results. Early voting and no-fault absentee voting have not been shown to increase turnout. Absentee balloting creates greater opportunities for coercion, intimidation, and influence, and can jeopardize the secret ballot.
Early in-person voting creates more opportunities for misconduct (deliberate or accidental) by election officials and increases the burden of protecting ballots and voting equipment from tampering or damage. It places extra pressure on chain of custody procedures.
Early voting raises the costs of campaigning with little or no corresponding benefit.
It is good for voting to be a public act (secret ballot, but public act). It is good for us to have a day where we come together to participate in the great act of self-governance.
“A person who must go out of his or her way to vote is likelier to pause for reflection. A voter who stands in line with his or her fellow citizens at a polling place is likelier to keep their needs—and, more important, the common good—in mind.” – Greg Weiner.
Again, we should have options for absentee and early in-person voting for those who need them. However, voting on election day should be the presumptive norm.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/05/brad-smith-on-early-voting.php

Data Shows White Supremacists Are Not The Most Likely Mass Murderers

Data Shows White Supremacists Are Not The Most Likely Mass Murderers

BY: JOHN R. LOTT, JR.

Democrats are lying to Americans about the most likely motivations for mass murderers and the prevalence of guns in violent crime.

JOHN R. LOTT, JR.

No one can defend white supremacists. But with violent crime soaring and this latest attack in Buffalo, people want something done. Yet Biden’s agenda won’t make people safer.

“Look, we’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas; in Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta. This week in Dallas, Texas, and now in Buffalo. In Buffalo, New York,” Biden said. “White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison. It really is. Running through our body politic. And it’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. I mean, no more.”

Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9 percent have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. Many of the anti-immigrant attackers, such as the Buffalo murderer, hold decidedly environmentalist views that are more in line with the Democrat agenda.

Other groups commit mass public shootings disproportionately more than whites do. While non-Middle Eastern whites make up about 64 percent of the population, they make up 58 percent of the mass public shooters. Another 9 percent are carried out by people of Middle Eastern origin, who make up only 0.4 percent of the country’s population. That makes Middle Easterners the most likely ethnic or racial group to carry out mass public shootings.

Blacks, Asians, and American Indians also commit these attacks at a slightly higher rate than their share of the population. Hispanics commit them at much lower rates (11 percent lower) than their share of the population.

Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views. But you would never know this from watching TV police dramas or listening to Biden’s constant claim that white supremacists pose the biggest threat of domestic terrorism.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed in testimony in April that white supremacy is the top terrorism-related threat to the homeland. But when pressed, Mayorkas couldn’t name a single white supremacy case that his department referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.

White supremacists with guns are not the threat that our government would have us believe. It’s not just that white supremacy is rare. So too are gun crimes. The number of gun crimes has been falling dramatically, and they now make up less than 8 percent of violent crimes in America. Yet we constantly hear the opposite from politicians who support gun restrictions.

“We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We’ve done it before. I did it when I passed the crime bill last time, and violence went down, shootings went down,” Biden falsely claimed in Buffalo. “We can’t prevent people from being radicalized to violence, but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just need to have the courage to do that, to stand up.”

Biden’s focus on guns, and particularly assault weapons, is misplaced. Last Tuesday, Biden again bragged about how wonderful his 1994 assault weapon ban was in stopping mass public shootings, but even studies paid for by the Clinton administration couldn’t find evidence of its effectiveness.

If the federal assault weapons ban really drove the changes in the rate of mass public shootings, attacks with assault weapons should have become less common during the ban. Then they should have become more common, at least as a share of total shootings, after the ban ended in 2004.

But that isn’t what happened. Comparing the ten years before 1994 to the ten years after, we find that the percentage of mass public shootings with assault weapons rose slightly when the ban was in effect (going from 22.2 percent to 23.5 percent) and then fell in the ten years after the ban ended (23.5 percent to 18.2 percent).

Biden’s “guns first” approach ignores a basic fact: More than 92 percent of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms. In addition, although Biden blames guns for the increase in violent crime, the latest data show that gun crimes fell dramatically.

A new McLaughlin and Associates survey of 1,000 likely voters from April 20 to 26th for the Crime Prevention Research Center shows how misinformed people are. People across the country, of all races and incomes, have wildly inaccurate beliefs about how frequently violent crime involves guns.

The average likely American voter is way off, thinking that more than 46 percent of violent crimes involve guns. The people who had the most inaccurate views that the rate of violent crime with guns was the highest were the ones who most strongly supported gun control.

It might not be easy to accept, but based on the evidence, focusing solely on guns and white supremacy isn’t a wise use of resources.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/23/data-shows-white-supremacists-are-not-the-most-likely-mass-murderers/

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns are Extremely Safe: Data on the Rate of Shootings and Accidents in Schools that allow Teachers to Carry

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Monday, May 30, 2022

In his Buffalo, New York speech last week following a mass shooting, President Biden showed he still has only two things on his mind regarding crime: guns and white supremacists.