Chicago police blame increased gun violence on warm weather

CHICAGO (INTELLIHUB) — Chicago police have installed ShotSpotter technology and cameras throughout parts of the city to help reduce gun violence which officials claim has increased with the warm weather.

“The problem with warm weather is there is always more people out on the streets […] so that brings more crime,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told NBC News.

Now officers can monitor a series of cameras and gunshot detectors from inside a command center located in Chicago’s Inglewood District where they can detect trouble before 9-1-1 is even called.

Responding officers can then locate shots fired on there smartphones and devices to speed up and aid in the apprehension of criminals.

Welcome to 1984.

Featured Image: vivek jena/Flickr

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EXCLUSIVE: Cops Confiscate Innocent Dad’s Guns, Kidnap Son — for Trolling on Reddit

A college student was arrested, forced to stay in a mental hospital, and his family was targeted by police after he was accused of making anonymous comments about mass shooters on Reddit.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Cops Confiscate Innocent Dad’s Guns, Kidnap Son — for Trolling on Reddit appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Chicago commissioner requests U.N. troops patrol, fight violent crime, ‘genocide,’ on the streets

Full-fledged martial law may be coming to Chicago in the near future, county commissioner requests the United Nations to police city streets

CHICAGO (INTELLIHUB) — Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin and his team meet with the Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations on Friday to request the organization deploy armed troops into the streets in an effort to curb violent crime and sidestep Posse comitatus which bars the U.S. military to be deployed on domestic soil.

Such a measure would be the first in a new era of globalization and militarization inside of the United States and sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Not to mention, proponents of such a deployment feel the current level of gun violence and ‘genocide’ has become far too expansive and dangerous for state authorities to handle alone as the problem continues to spiral out of control with “horrific levels of shootings,” as pointed out by the commissioner.

“There is a quite genocide taking place in too many of our communities,” Boykin told the press Friday. “Eighty percent of those who are being killed by gun violence are African-American and are often killed at the hands of another African-American.”

Commissioner Boykin said that he feels the U.N. would be a good fit for “peacekeeping efforts” inside of the city to help make sure that residents are safe and says that “we can’t afford to wait.”

“We have had over 600 people killed by gun violence this year alone,” he said. “In my community of Austin, we have had 450 people shot and 80 people killed in this year alone.”

The commissioner said the bottom line is if local authorities can not protect the minority population then something has to be done about it.

“We are loosing to many of our young people, we’re losing too many senior citizens and we quite frankly we have people in this neighborhood that are afraid to walk down the streets,” Boykin explained. “We can never let this become the norm.”

Related:

Executive Order — United States Policy on Pre- and Post-Strike Measures to Address Civilian Casualties in U.S. Operations Involving the Use of Force — WhiteHouse.gov

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"Deadliest Year Ever" - Baltimore Eclipses 2016 Homicide Total

As of 11:20am ET. Thursday morning, the wave of violent crime continued in Baltimore with the death of a 21-year old man by gunfire.

The significance of this latest death in Baltimore’s urban war zone, is that total homicides in 2017 have now topped 2016 levels at 319, and there is still one month to go. 

Homicides in Baltimore have averaged 29 per month, which could indicate Baltimore is now on track for the deadliest year ever to be recorded. The all-time per-capita record was set back in 2015, with 344 homicides, said Fox News.

Throughout the year, we have pointed out Baltimore’s rapid deterioration into chaos (see: America’s Urban War Zone: Baltimore Doubles Chicago’s Homicide Rate In 2017).

 Baltimore is on track to exceed 400 homicides in 2017 for the first time in the city’s history and has more than doubled Chicago’s homicide rate on a per capita basis. 

Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh has called the city’s gun violence “out of control.” Earlier this year she begged the Federal Government for help as 2017 murders soar to a 20-year high.

“I’m calling on all the assistance we can possibly get because I can’t imagine going into our summer months with our crime rate where it is today, what that’s going to look like by the end of the summer,” says Mayor Catherine Pugh.

 

“Murder is out of control,” says Pugh.

 

“We are looking for all the help that we can get,” she says.

The most recent flare up to draw national attention was the November execution of Sean Suiter, an 18-year veteran of the force, who was fatally shot while on active duty. Shortly after, we reported on the 4-5 day lockdown of one West Baltimore neighborhood by police was described as ‘Martial Law’.

15 @BaltimorePolice vehicles on Schroeder alone and dozens more on surrounding blocks. All the officers are just sitting in their cars. pic.twitter.com/M9zCCltdzK

— Baltimore BLOC (@BmoreBloc) November 19, 2017

Death and despair in Baltimore comes at no surprise since the city has been run by democratic controlled leadership for over 50-years. As the death toll Skyrockets, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan has had enough and said this week that he will be issuing his own crime-fighting strategy, per CBS:WJZ.

Gov. Hogan said no need for the National Guard but ‘will reveal his own plan to stop the violence in Baltimore as soon as next week’. Back in 2015, Hogan declared a state of emergency during the Baltimore riots, where he called in the National guard to restore order in the city.

Developments in the next 30-days for Baltimore will be critical in determining government’s next step in tackling the urban war zone for the 2018 timeframe. As expected, the city is projected to further deteriorate this month and record the most homicides ever. Now it’s Hogan’s turn to offer a crime-fighting plan and what we’ve seen before… He isn’t afraid to use the National Guard.

Baltimore is an urban war zone - it should be treated like one.

Mainstream Media Now Promoting "Gun Confiscation Orders" As Solution To Mass Shootings

Authored by Alex Thomas via SHTFplan.com,

In what many saw coming a mile away in the aftermath of both the Las Vegas Massacre and the Texas Church mass shooting, liberals in the government, with the help of their mainstream media allies, are now pushing what amounts to plans for gun confiscation, outside of normal law, for Americans across the country.

The new push for gun control from the left comes courtesy of ABC News which recently published a piece promoting the use of an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) that many believe is nothing more than a thinly veiled confiscation plan that would allow a judge to “issue an ex parte order” for the direct confiscation of an American citizens firearms.

Unbelievably, the order can actually be issued without the firearm owner even being present, which would in turn end with police at the citizens door demanding he hand over his weapons or face violence from the state.

ABC’s Andy Fies, on the other hand, apparently wants Americans to see the orders differently, painting a more friendly picture of the ERPO’s while quoting two different left-wing gun control groups as seemingly unbiased experts on gun violence.

As of now, only Washington, California, Connecticut and most recently Oregon have ERPO laws (while Indiana and Texas have modified risk warrant statutes). Over the past year, however, spurred by a string of mass shootings beginning with the Pulse Nightclub attack that killed 49 in June 2016, legislatures in 19 states and Washington, D.C., have taken up 32 separate ERPO bills for consideration, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control.

 

Everytown’s deputy legal director, William Rosen, told ABC News that list will grow. “We expect to see at least as much interest in 2018,” he said.

 

“There is a growing consensus,” added Lauren Alfred of the gun violence prevention group Sandy Hook Promise, “that this is the first step we should be taking when we are talking about people who are at risk of hurting themselves or others.”

 

Current laws barring gun ownership are limited. Generally, a person with a long history of mental health issues can still legally buy or possess firearms if they don’t fall into specific statutory categories such as having been adjudicated mentally ill or under a domestic violence restraining order. But, as was the case with Texas church gunman Devin Kelley, even these restrictions may not work if the person’s troubled past is not recorded on a background registry.

 

With an ERPO, however, if family members or police can show a gun owner to be an imminent danger to themselves or others, they can force the person to surrender their weapon(s).

Keep in mind that Everytown for Gun Safety is a Michael Bloomberg funded, left-wing gun control group that was created as part of a rebranding effort by the billionaire gun grabber after his previous group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, was outed by multiple former members as actually pushing an agenda of full-scale gun confiscation.

The Extreme Risk Protection Orders scheme seems to be nothing more than another attempt at slowly eroding the right of lawful Americans to own firearms.

As AWR Hawkins reported in an April 2017 article about a similar law being pushed in Oregon, “Oregon state Sen. Brian Boquist is pushing a confiscation bill that would broaden the number of prohibited gun purchasers as well as require certain individuals to hand over any guns in their possession.”

At the time, gun rights activist and NRA member Keely Hopkins rightfully described the law as an attempt to remove your Second Amendment rights by using a third-party who would need little evidence to declare you unfit to own a firearm. (Imagine a vengeful ex-wife/husband)

“This bill allows for a protective order to remove your Second Amendment rights, not because of a criminal conviction, but based on third-party allegations using an evidentiary standard that falls far below what’s normally required for the removing of fundamental rights.”

It is also important to note that gun control advocates and the mainstream media are using The Las Vegas Massacre, which the authorities are openly lying about (there were at least 7 different shooters) as a pretext to further take away Americans right to bear arms. This is, and has always been, the modus operandi of the power elite.

Mass Shootings, Mass Psychology, And Self-Defense

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

There is an unfortunate correlation between crises and catastrophes and mass psychology.

For those with a decent long-term memory, you may have noticed that the frequency of attacks and tragedies taking place today around the world is far above and beyond what occurred 10 years ago. So much so that many in the public have moved beyond the point of outrage and have now embraced complacency.

The mass shooting issue, for example, once inspired fevered debate over gun rights. Not so much anymore. While I am happy that the relentless attempts by leftists to exploit every shooting as a tool for their gun grabbing agenda have taken a backseat, I see a trend in another direction which is equally dangerous. That trend is a move towards acceptance that "these things happen," instead of a healthy discussion on real solutions (and no, more gun control is not one of them).

A decade ago the Vegas shooting would have inspired media and social discussion for at least a year. Now, the story disappears in two weeks and is replaced with 10 others. I will be surprised if the latest church shooting in Texas in which 26 people were killed stays on the news feeds for more than a few days.

Where does this complacency come from?

It is a complex problem, but one that I think relates to the state of decline within any particular society. In Carl Jung"s The Undiscovered Self, Jung mentions a consistent element of latent sociopathy and psychopathy within most cultures. Perhaps 10% of people within a society are latent sociopaths and psychopaths, and around 1% or less represent full blown sociopaths/psychopaths. Most of the latent people will never become truly dangerous if they are living within a culture that is healthy and morally balanced. In fact, those with inherent sociopathic traits can become very high functioning human beings who are adept at careers that many other people avoid (surgeons and career soldiers are two examples).

However, in the event that there is cultural rot and a degradation of principles, environmental influences come into play and latent sociopaths/psychopaths have the potential to mutate into something far more dangerous. Jung examines this dynamic as an explanation for the sudden and accelerated decline of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s into totalitarianism and moral relativism. When the mentally disturbed 1% turns into 10% or more, entire nations can be dragged along into the abyss.

As a litmus test I find it valuable to look at popular culture when trying to determine if a society is on the brink of collapse into a singularity of moral relativism, because popular culture often reflects these elements more honestly than the supposed "experts" will. When examining Germany before its fall, I recommend studying the films of Fritz Lang; particularly his movie "M" released in 1931, which depicts a serial killer with a penchant for children being put on trial by a group of underworld criminals, not because they abhor what he does on moral grounds, but because his activities are drawing too much unwanted attention from authorities on their own criminal enterprises. If the dark world of "M" doesn"t perfectly showcase the decline of Germany, I don"t know what does.

Today, we are constantly surrounded by popular culture which leans towards the morally relative; stories in which the heroes must become monsters in order to defeat other supposedly worse monsters.

At another level, our popular culture tells us that it is only the fantastical, the super powered and the government contracted heroes that have the ability to affect change and disrupt disaster.  Underlying all of this seems to be a narrative of defeat; the notion that there is nothing the average person can do.  And, of course, we are also bombarded with stories in which gluttony and decadence are applauded while anyone that takes a more responsible path is portrayed as unhappy or joyless in the long run.

Translate this to the developing trend of mass shootings around the world and the public reaction to them. On one end of the spectrum, in the past it was the sociopathic left that saw mass death as an opportunity to enforce political control over gun rights advocates, with the goal of eventually achieving total disarmament. These people do not care about the dead, let alone logic, they only care about furthering their agenda.  They see government power as the answer to every problem.

If you were to hold up examples like the Paris or Mumbai attacks to gun grabbers and point out that disarmament only makes mass shootings EASIER for criminals and terrorists, they would not listen. Obviously, if any of the citizens including the off-duty police officers had been armed in Paris, the attack might have been stopped much sooner.

In the case of the church shooting near San Antonio, that attack WAS interrupted by an armed neighbor of the church who used his rifle to fend off Devin Kelley, forcing him to escape in his vehicle. Had that neighbor not been armed, the massacre might have gone on much longer. Had one of the people within the church been armed, the attack might have ended in seconds, as we saw in Denver in 2007.

Now, as I said earlier, there are sociopathic members of the political left that seek to take advantage of these scenarios, but these people have fallen by the wayside recently.

On the political right, sadly, I have seen another brand of sociopathy rising, with some arguing that all the people within the San Antonio church that were unarmed "deserved to die." This is just as dangerous a mentality as the exploitations of the left. If the liberty movement itself sets aside empathy and resorts to sensationalist or morally relative methods to drive forward a political agenda, then we are only hastening the fall of our culture, not protecting it. And, we become no better that the leftist disarmament thugs we abhor.

In between these two extremes sits a coagulated mass of people who simply don"t care much as long as a particular disaster doesn"t involve them. These are the folks who are uninterested in solutions and don"t really want to hear anything about it. It is these people who tend to become wreckage floating on the tides of history; their lack of concern eventually comes back to haunt them in the future.

So, if these are the wrong ways to approach the mass shooting problem, then what are the right ways?

I think it is vital that Americans in particular maintain our care and concern for the victims of these events. The solution to mass shootings is clearly a responsibly armed populace.  According to all the stats on active shooters, defense by citizens is the only factor that seems to make much difference. But to convince more and more people of this requires a level of conscience and empathy that inspires confidence, and perhaps brotherhood. When people know that you give a damn and aren;t simply pursuing an agenda like the political left does, it is more likely that they will listen to what you have to say.

As I noted in my article How To Stop All Future Mass Shootings, the Vegas attack was organized by someone who was smart enough to avoid a point-blank engagement in a city and state in which concealed-carry firearms are more common. Point-blank attacks are by far the most common because they are generally attempted by people who have minimal training or because the attackers are relatively certain that their victims will be disarmed in the area they have chosen (gun free zones).

The Vegas attacker (or attackers) chose to use sniper-like tactics to prolong the massacre. However, what this shows is that an armed citizenry is a factor or barrier in how an attack is planned. With properly trained and armed security overwatching major events along with an armed population, there may never be another mass shooting again.

This is what Americans should be talking about, yet, there is no practical discussion on solving the problem. Is this a symptom of impending collapse within our society? Possibly. If there was ever an honorable task for the liberty movement today, it is to inspire solutions and to maintain moral balance. These shootings and other crisis events should not be forgotten within a week. They should at the very least be a learning process, a means by which we evolve our way of life and become more self reliant and by extension more safe.

If you are not a conceal- or open-carry proponent, then you should be. If you understand that the majority of shooting events that are stopped are stopped by average citizens that are armed, then it should only follow that you should become one of those armed citizens. In the meantime, it is not for us who are consistently armed to admonish disarmed victims as if they "deserve what they got." Their failure is our failure as well. For if we are not working diligently to convince others of the importance of citizen self defense, then we have contributed to the conditions that led to these massacres taking place.

There are methods of stemming the tide of social collapse. There are in fact solutions. They begin with each individual acting in small ways and big ways everyday. Complacency and zealotry are the enemy, as well as those that would encourage such mentalities.

There"s No Such Thing As An "American" Homicide Rate

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In September, the FBI released new homicide data, and the overall US homicide rate rose for the second year to an eight-year high. 

According to the report, the nationwide homicide rate in the US in 2016 was 5.3 per 100,000, up from 2015"s rate of 4.9. 

The homicide rate in 2014 - 4.4 per 100,000 - had been a 51-year low, and comparable to rates not seen since the 1950s. 

Homicide rates still remain well below where they were in the 1980s and 1990s, when homicide rates sometimes exceeded 9 per 100,000. 

When it comes to making any serious analysis, however, nationwide homicide rates for a place as large as the United States are next to useless. When we look at numbers on a state-by-state basis, we find that homicide rates vary from 1.3 per 100,000 in New Hampshire to 11.8 per 100,000 in Louisiana. 

To offer some additional context, I"ve included rates from Canadian provinces (using Canada"s 2015 stats) side by side with US states:

Presented as a map: 

There are clear regional differences in many cases. States in the far north and far northeast of the United States report very low homicide rates while certain homicide "hotspots" apparently in Missouri, Maryland, Illinois, and the deep South are driving up US rates. 

These details emphasize the mistake of speaking of the nationwide US homicide rate as if it were in anyway descriptive of any single trend or legislative reality in the US. 

We often hear about homicides are rampant in "America" - presumably caused by high levels of private gun ownership - but any serious look at the numbers forces us to refine our question and instead ask why some parts of the US have some of the lowest homicide rates on earth, while the situation in other areas is considerably different. 

What Are the Important Factors in Homicides? 

Some places largely free of gun restrictions - like the Dakotas, Utah, Idaho, Minnesota, Vermont, and New Hampshire - have very low homicide rates. But other places with similar or more restrictive laws - such as Missouri, California, and most of Latin America - have much higher rates. Obviously, homicide rates are not simply a function of gun laws. 

Even researchers on the political left are increasingly coming to terms with the fact that homicide rates are not simply a matter of passing prohibitionist laws. 

One of the most recent examples of this is new research described by Leah Libresco at the Washington Times. Libresco noted that few, if any, of the gun bans being floated by policymakers is likely to be effective. Libresco notes: 

…my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence...

 

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths...

 

…no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos. … [S]ilencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless...

 

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them.

What Libresco did conclude, was that a host of societal issues are driving much of what we hear about in terms of so-called gun violence. Mental illness, suicide, gang violence, and domestic violence are all important factors that drive gun violence. The problem, Libresco admits, is that simply prohibiting certain types of guns doesn"t really address these issues. 

(For similar articles, see Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic and Justin Cronin at The New York Times.)

Other factors we"ve covered here at mises.org include sky-high incarceration rates in the United States, and how the history, residential mobility, and cultural heterogeneity of the Americas make the US and Latin America quite different from Europe and East Asia in terms of homicide and violence. 

To understand the current trends, then, we have to look beyond a few headlines about rare mass shootings and look at larger demographics and societal trends. A focus on legislation, by contrast, tends to substitute wishful thinking for an understanding of the the complex reality.

 

Democrat Senator: ‘No One Is Safe Until Congress Acts On Gun Violence’

It’s inevitable that those who committed no crime will be punished for the actions of madmen by laws designed to enslave them. After all, that’s how tyranny thrives and Democrats were quick to jump on gun control once again after the Texas church shooting.

Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who has emerged as a leading advocate for gun control, made an obviously emotional appeal on Sunday for Congress to address “gun violence” in the wake of the deadly church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Murphy’s lengthy statement pleads and begs Congress to start writing laws that won’t affect criminals or lunatics but will hinder the decent American’s ability to defend themselves.

“The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic,” Murphy said in the statement, stressing that time to act “is now.”  He continued, saying: “As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets.” The only more emotional appeal ever made was perhaps Barack Obama’s speech after the Sandy Hook massacre.

Let’s not forget that Murphy was a potential Vice Presidential pick for Hillary Clinton too, so he’s bound to be afraid of inanimate objects and manipulate feelings for support. Someone needs to tell Democrats that only people act, a gun cannot commit a crime on its own.

“Ask yourself, ” said Murphy.  “How can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents,” he said, addressing his congressional colleagues. But the government sees all Americans, left or right, as threats and will seek gun control until everything that can be considered a weapon is banned.

Can you sleep tonight, colleagues, when the price of gun lobby goodwill is this – blood soaked church and school floors, city streets?

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 5, 2017

Murphy also mentioned the mass shooting that took place in his home state in 2012, when a gunman opened fire on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 children and six staff members.

“My heart sunk to the pit of my stomach, once again, when I heard of today’s shooting in Texas. My heart dropped further when I thought about the growing macabre club of families in Las Vegas and Orlando and Charleston and Newtown, who have to relive their own day of horror every time another mass killing occurs,” he wrote, referring to the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting and the Charleston church massacre.

“The paralysis you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen – isn’t real. It’s a fiction created and methodically cultivated by the gun lobby, designed to assure that no laws are passed to make America safer because those laws would cut into their profits,” he wrote. The gun lobby didn’t create that “fiction.”  The biggest fiction, however, is that laws will protect people.  It’s safe to say there’s a ban on murder and assault with deadly weapons, yet somehow, that ink on paper isn’t stopping lunatics from committing crimes or killing innocents – and those laws never will protect anyone from a psychotic madman.

The government doesn’t care about anyone.  And since the crazy person who committed this horrific crime is dead, laws that will punish those who had absolutely nothing to do with this crime are being pushed by emotionally weak politicians who don’t care about anyone but themselves and their power over others.

Baltimore"s Weekend "Cease-Fire" Shattered As Off-Duty Cop Gunned Down

Baltimore’s second attempt at a 72-hour ‘cease-fire’ was cut short for the second time this year after an off-duty Washington police officer was killed and a women wounded on Saturday.

According to The Baltimore Sun homicide data base, Sgt. Tony Mason Jr.,40, was shot and killed on the upper west side at 2800 Elgin Avenue. Reports from NBC News, indicate Mason was struck by a fatal bullet inside a parked vehicle, where he was later transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital and died...

We regret to inform that @DCPoliceUnion member Sgt Tony Mason was shot and killed early this morning in West Baltimore. EOW 11-4-17. pic.twitter.com/KFDo2ZAojX

— Gregg Pemberton (@G_Pem) November 4, 2017

Unfortunately, Saturday’s shooting occurred just 26-hours into the 72-hour ‘Nobody Kill Anybody Baltimore Cease-Fire’ campaign empowered by community activist who seek change in Baltimore after 50-years of democratic controlled leadership and de-industrialization compounded with an opioid crisis has left the city in an utter mess. The last ‘cease-fire’ in August failed about 40-hours in, as two killings thwarted efforts by community activist. It appears that ‘cease’fire’ events will become more prevalent as the community attempts to raise awareness. The problem with Baltimore and many other cities across the United States is that democratic controlled leadership did not allow media to cover the complete mess in their inner cities. As consciousness increases across America, Americans are figuring out their empire is dying. People are now demanding change.

On Thursday, just one day before the ‘cease-fire’ started, 3 homicides pushed Baltimore’s murder count above 300 making it the third year in a row. Ever since the Ferguson effect in 2014, death and destruction has taken over the city. Sadly enough, The Economist is forecasting a record year for homicides with their models pointing to over 400.

Visualizing the Ferguson effect in Baltimore shows an increase in gun violence after events in Ferguson, Missouri (2014), Freddie Gray (2015), and Baltimore Riots (2015). These events have contributed to Baltimore’s demise, as the city is spiraling out of control plagued in gun violence and an opioid crisis. Yet, it goes unnoticed, despite Baltimore’s homicide rate is doubled of Chicago’s.

As of November 5th, Baltimore’s homicides for 2017 crested over 300. Notice how the homicides are not limited to a certain area of the city, but are wide spread. Oddly enough, homicides are contained with-in the I-95 corridor.

Last week, we warned “the idea of the second ceasefire failing is a very real possibility”, and as of Saturday morning it has.

The blackmarkets of Baltimore or specifically the opioid trade are simply not going to stop for a community led ‘cease-fire’. Listen to leaders of the ‘cease-fire’ back in August calling-out Baltimore and comparing it to a “warzone“.

Remaining events for Baltimore CeaseFire for Sunday:

 

Two Americas

Authored by Michael Owen,

No amount of statistics or facts will sway either side in the gun control debate, because they are all looking for simple solutions to complex problems.

The facts of those complex problems are uncomfortable and nobody really wants to come to grips with them.

For example, we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths.

Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries.

The tough questions are those like, why do we have these two Americas?

But that’s an uncomfortable discussion to have. So instead those on the left favor simple minded restrictions that target first world America, with its high gun ownership but very low murder rate, but don’t address the root causes of third world America’s violence at all. Meanwhile those on the right correctly feel their civil rights are constantly threatened, so they are constantly in a state of “better stock up before they finally ban it” and the guns and ammo fly off the shelves. The left’s constant gun control rhetoric is the greatest thing ever for arms manufacturers.

Meanwhile, over the past 40 years, while the number of guns in private hands has doubled, the murder rate has dropped by half. The left are constantly prattling about “assault weapons” which are almost never used to commit murders (about 1% of gun murders; all rifles combined are around 3%). More murders are committed with baseball bats than “assault rifles”; the vast majority of gun homicides are committed with handguns, but it’s easier to sell restrictions that target “assault weapons”, even though such restrictions, even if 100% effective, would make no detectable change in the murder rate (especially because of substitution effects). They favor ridiculous measures such as bans on “high capacity magazines”, as if magazines weren’t cheap and easily swapped out in a fraction of a second.

The uncomfortable fact is that roughly 80% of the US homicide rate is associated with the drug trade, and the drug trade is violent because the drug war reserves it for violent criminals.

We have a system in place where the government subsidizes poverty in urban areas, imposes economic blight in those same areas through heavy taxes and regulations, renders the residents permanently unemployable via the “criminal justice” (sic) system, and creates a lucrative black market in drugs by restricting supply (not to mention increasing demand as people are desperate to escape their circumstances by getting high), meaning the only game in town is often entering the drug trade. The drug trade is violent because those in it have no access to courts to settle disputes. Powerful industries lobby to keep the drug war going; the top spenders are law enforcement unions, the prison industry, big alcohol, tobacco, and pharma.

Guns are not the proximate cause of gun violence in the US. Childlike magical thinking and simple “fixes” to complex problems will not work. But it is comfortable, and self-righteousness feels so good. So I expect it to continue indefinitely.

After Vegas Shooting, It's Time To Take Private Security Seriously

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In the wake of the Aurora Theater shooting, I suggested that private sector establishments ought to be expected to be more concerned about the safety of their customers. In the case of the Aurora Theater, this was magnified by the fact that the theater was a "gun free zone" and did not allow patrons to carry their own firearms as self defense. At the same time, the theater owners themselves couldn"t be bothered with taking even the most rudimentary steps against allowing a gunman to casually carry multiple weapons from his car into one of the theater"s back doors. 

The issue came up again with the Orlando shooting in 2016, when the perpetrator simply walked into a private establishment with a rifle and started shooting. Again, we find ourselves with a situation in which the owners of a private establishment refused to take simple steps such as checking entrances for people with rifles, or employing reasonably well-trained security personnel to be present inside the club. 

I wasn"t the only one to suggest that maybe, just maybe, private establishments such as the Orlando nightclub and the Aurora Theater may share some responsibility in preventing violence on their own premises. 

In response to this position, numerous commentators - mostly conservative and libertarian - took the position that it is outrageous to expect private owners to take steps to prevent events like these. At the time, I noted Reason magazine"s response as representative of this type of thinking:

Reason magazine has ... hopped on the bandwagon of pre-emptively and unconditionally absolving the theater owners of any possible responsibility. Reason writer Lenore Skenazy claims that a focus on worst-case scenarios is "worst-first thinking" and that such thinking "promotes constant panic. The word for that isn"t prudence. It"s paranoia."

In other words, Skenazy"s position is that private owners should simply assume terrible things won"t happen and proceed accordingly. If bad things do happen, then let"s all just throw our hands in the air and declare "who woulda thunk?" 

This sort of thinking results in what security consultant Bo Dietl calls  the "panic, forget, repeat." It"s not a serious approach to security. 

Unfortunately, this problem has become apparent again with last weekend"s shooting in Las Vegas which has so far claimed at least 59 lives, making it the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

To perpetrate the shooting, the shooter used the Mandalay Bay hotel as a sniper"s nest from which to rain down death on a crowd assembled at a nearby music festival. (Both the hotel and the venue are owned by MGM Resorts International.)

At the same time, it appears the organizers of the event did not take steps to prevent a shooting of this nature. The police response to the shooting, not surprisingly, appears to show disorganization and lack of knowledge about the situation. 

The State Protects Its Own

Some readers will scoff and say "how could anyone be expected to anticipate a sniper situation like this?"

In response, I suggest this thought experiment: imagine that a US president or any important political figure were present at the music festival. What do you think security would have looked like? There would have been well-trained security personnel stationed to keep an eye out for snipers, with spotters and "good guy" snipers all around. 

Obviously, we would have found out that looking for the worst-case scenario would suddenly have mattered when "important" people are involved. But protecting ordinary members of the public? Well, that"s just "paranoia," we"re told. The state, of course, is highly invested in protecting its own personnel and its own interests. The organizers of the music festival, however, appear to have relied on blind faith as their primary defense. 

The importance of competent professional private security in this case is also illustrated by the fact that a large number of private individuals armed with side arms would have done little to prevent the situation. Even if festival-goers on the ground had been able to quickly spot the source of the gunfire — which itself seems unlikely — a handgun would have been of little use. The often-repeated claim by gun-rights activists that conceal-carry is the answer to all shootings falls flat in this case. 

Inaction from Public and Private Police Forces 

Private security weren"t the only ones who appear to have taken a rather lackadaisical view of the situation. 

Interviewed in the wake of the Las Vegas shootings, The Boston Herald interviewed former Boston Police Commissioner — and current security consultant — Edward Davis about the situation. Davis notes: 

There"s always been a fear — not so much among the security chiefs, but by the police out here — that there would be an attack. It is their worst fear coming true.

There are two things we can take away from this claim. First of all, assuming Davis is right, we learn that the private sector security chiefs weren"t terribly concerned about this situation arising. Second, we learn that the public-sector police were concerned about it. Yet, it appears that nothing was done to address the fear by either group. 

Moreover, Las Vegas has long been recognized as a target for terrorism, given its iconic status. "This is, just on its face, a big glaring target for Islamic terrorists," Davis added. (Davis is right that it"s a target. But he"s wrong that only "Islamic" murderers are interested.) 

Davis also confirms our suspicion that the safety of government personnel in the area have been a subject of worry, in regards to security. The general public? Not so much:

Working on presidential visits and with the Secret Service, snipers are a concern for them, but you don"t think about it around a concert.

And why not consider security around a concert? Are we already incapable of remembering the Paris theater shooting of 2015? This sort of amnesia-based thinking is apparently the best that our security personnel have to offer. Had security personnel and their employers been taking the situation seriously, they might have concluded that the chosen locale for the event could not be conducted while offering sufficient security. Certainly, were the Secret Service to conclude that a location can"t offer sufficient safety for a political figure, they would recommend against that political figure accepting the risk at all. Perhaps concert organizers in Vegas should bring the same level of scrutiny to their own events. 

The Imagined Cure-All: Gun Control 

Predictably, in the wake of the shooting, gun control advocates have already seized on the tragedy to push for preferred legislation. They like to portray the US as an exceptionally violent place, and claim the reason is too little gun control. 

Forgotten, of course, is the French Bataclan Theater shooting, which resulted in 130 deaths. Forgetten, of course, is the 2016 Brussels airport bombing which took 35 lives. Forgotten is the spate of car-rammings, including the Nice, France, massacre which alone took the lives of 86 innocent people. 

Indeed, if we look at mass-murder events such as these public rammings and shootings in 2016 and 2017 - and thus excluding the 2015 Bataclan Theater shooting - we end up with a total of approximately 140 victims in Western Europe, and around 120 victims in the US (this includes the Orlando shooting.) This alleged juxtaposition between chaotic America and serene Europe appears to be rather misplaced.

Moreover, as total gun sales in the US climbed repeatedly in the 1990s and the 2000s, homicide rates fell. Stringent gun control laws are common in Latin America, yet homicide rates are much higher in that region than in the more laissez-faire United States. Clearly, gun control does not explain away differing levels of violence absent consideration of other factors. 

Government Won"t Protect Us 

Shootings in night clubs and theaters simply are not matters requiring national policy. Nor is the challenge of stopping terrorists from driving trucks through crowds of revelers, as has happened repeatedly in Europe in recent years. Prevention in these cases require that security personnel on the scene employ competent security to control what goes on inside their own buildings and venues. 

The knee-jerk appeal to national policy such as nationwide gun control, however, highlights what happens when the private sector blithely relies on a disinterested government to provide security instead. In the US, the Supreme Court has ruled (in Castle Rock vs. Gonzalez) that police are not obligated to provide protection to citizens. As a result, de facto policy is that the lives of police officers receive priority over that of members of the public. It also means that government police are protected from any liability should they be AWOL or incompetent when homicidal maniacs unleash themselves on the public. Thus, there is absolutely no reason to expect public-sector police agencies to provide security at night clubs, movie theaters, or large public events. 

Nor is there any reason to simply sit back and assume that gun control will protect us. Experience in high-gun-control zones like Latin America, Russia, and Europe suggests otherwise. 

Should Private Owners Be Expected to Provide Security? 

But, as soon as someone suggests that private owners of public-access venues be expected to take security seriously, then the very idea is denounced by many as simply a bridge too far. For these critics, apparently, it"s much better to just trust in government, and hope for the best. 

It"s easy to see why the private sector and its defenders might vehemently oppose the idea that private owners need to do more. Private security is costly and could drive up prices of goods and services. If the legal system simultaneously protects these owners from any responsibility in allegedly "unforeseeable" events, then we have no reason to expect them to do anything differently. The Aurora-Shooting lawsuits against the theater"s owners was significant because it called into question whether or not a private owner should be held legally liable for allowing a nut with multiple guns to so easily plan and set-up a mass-shooting scenario under their noses. 

In the end, the theater was found not liable, and the theater owners"s attorney claimed the event was "unpredictable, unforeseeable, unpreventable and unstoppable." This claim is obviously nonsense. Of course the shooting was preventable. It simply wasn"t preventable using the minimal amount of time and effort the theater owners were willing to devote to customer safety. 

In the future, will we continue to label shootings of this nature as "unforeseeable"? It"s true that, given the size of the population, events of this magnitude remain exceedingly rare. Yet, how many times must an event of this nature take place before it does become foreseeable? How long will it be before customers should enjoy a reasonable expectation that private owners will plan ahead to prevent these sorts of threats?

The response of some people to this revelation will be to indulge in maudlin declarations of "it"s a crying shame." "It"s a crying shame we have to live in a world where we have to worry about gunmen!" Perhaps. It"s also a crying a shame we live in a world where not everyone drives the posted speed limit in residential areas. If they did, we wouldn"t have to worry about our children as much when they play outside. It"s a crying shame we live in a world where the plane you"re flying in might malfunction and fall out of the sky. Thanks to human error, malice, and stupidity, many bad things happen every day. 

Many other bad things happen thanks to an unwillingness to plan ahead. And so as long as we continue to declare things like mass shootings on private property to be "unforeseeable" and "unstoppable" and generally not worth the effort needed to prevent them, we"ll just be left relying on the same government agencies who are under no obligation to protect citizens from anything.

The Last Frontier For Gun Control: Washington Court Rules In Favor Of Seattle's "Gun Violence" Tax

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

Two years ago, the president of the Seattle City Council offered a rather ludicrous proposition. He wanted Seattle to place a new tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition within the city limits. Ammo would cost an additional 2-5 cents per round, and a firearm would cost an extra $25.

But what was even more absurd than the tax itself, is what the money would be going toward. The tax was supposed to pay for gun violence prevention programs and research.

The way City Council President Tim Burgess explained it, this “gun violence” tax would help offset the costs the city pays to treat gunshot victims. Essentially, it was a tax levied on responsible law abiding gun owners, to pay for the actions of violent criminals.

Despite how utterly stupid that sounds, the proposal passed.

However, it didn’t have the desired effect. To the surprise of no one who actually understands the relationship between private firearm ownership and crime rates, the violent crime rate in Seattle has dramatically increased since the tax was put in place. It also brought in only a small fraction of the revenue that the city council was expecting. In short, the tax was a total failure.

So it’s no surprise that the tax has faced a lawsuit over the fact that Washington has a law that prevents municipalities from regulating firearms. Unfortunately, the Washington Supreme Court recently ruled against the lawsuit on the grounds that taxes aren’t the same as regulations, and cities are well within their right to levy sales taxes.

Regardless of whether the court’s decision was right or wrong, it certainly sets a dangerous precedent. As an article from Breitbart recently pointed out, it opens a new avenue for gun control activists to hamper the Second Amendment.

On August 10 Washington’s high court sided with the City of Seattle, which adopted a “gun violence tax” in a strategy to slither around the state preemption law that placed exclusive authority for regulating firearms in the hands of the State Legislature. And this new scheme could be coming to any city that has an anti-gun rights Mayor and City Council.

In Seattle’s case, the tax is $25 on the sale of each firearm, plus two to five cents for each round of ammunition sold. This threat takes on even more sinister dimensions when one considers the potential for cities to simply up the fee. Seattle started with $25 per gun, but what if they want to raise that to $100, $500 or even $1,000?

It opens the door wide to making gun ownership prohibitively expensive for average citizens. Essentially, Washington’s Supreme Court just handed the gun prohibition lobby and its allies in government a new strategy: If they can’t ban or regulate gun ownership out of existence, they will simply tax it into oblivion.

I think deep down we all know that this is probably the real intent behind Seattle’s gun tax.

The left has tried many times to regulate privately owned firearms out of existence, and in America they have failed far more often than they have succeeded. They’re always looking for a new underhanded approach to gun control and this is it. Firearm and ammunition taxes aren’t about reducing gun violence and saving lives. They’re about exploiting a legal loophole to make firearms too expensive for ordinary people to own.

New Law Lets Police Confiscate Guns “Without Due Process” If Someone Reports You

A new law in Oregon could lead to residents having all of their guns confiscated based on a single complaint, raising concerns about the possibility of corruption if false complaints are used to strip law-abiding citizens of their right to defend themselves.

Senate Bill 719, which is defined as one that “Creates process for obtaining extreme risk protection order prohibiting person from possessing deadly weapon when court finds that person presents risk in near future, including imminent risk, of suicide or causing injury to another person” was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown on Wednesday.

The confiscation of an individual’s firearms can be pursued through the filing of an “Extreme Risk Protection Order,” which is submitted to a judge in civil court by a police officer or a concerned family or household member.

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“Requires court to order respondent to surrender deadly weapons and concealed handgun license within 24 hours of service of initial order, and immediately upon service of continued or renewed order. Provides for law enforcement officer serving order to request immediate surrender of deadly weapons and concealed handgun license and authorizes law enforcement officer to take possession of surrendered items.”

During the legislative process, Brown expressed her support for the bill, calling it “a common-sense, life-saving bill that will help protect Oregon’s women and children by closing the ‘Boyfriend Loophole,’ preventing convicted stalkers from buying or possessing guns, and keeping guns out of the wrong hands.”

The bill passed in the Oregon State Senate by a vote of 17-11 in May, and in the House by a vote of 31-20 in July, before it reached Brown’s desk in August. Once it goes into effect, if an Extreme Risk Protection Order is granted by a judge, the resident in question could legally lose his or her right to possess or purchase firearms of ammo for one year.

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While suspects have 30 days to request a hearing in an attempt to regain possession of their seized firearms once an order has been issued, and while individuals who file fake protection orders could face up to one year in prison, gun rights advocates still are not convinced that this new law will eradicate gun violence, even in domestic situations.

In a statement, the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action argued that Extreme Risk Protection Orders “could be obtained by a law enforcement officer, family member, or household member in an ex parte hearing to deprive someone of their Second Amendment rights without due process of the law.”

“By allowing a law enforcement officer, family member, or household member to seek the ERPO, SB 719A would allow people who are not mental health professionals, who may be mistaken, and who may only have minimal contact with the respondent to file a petition with the court and testify on the respondent’s state of mind. This ex parte order, which strips the accused of their Second Amendment rights, would be issued by a judge based on the brief statement of the petitioner. The accused would not be afforded the chance to appear in court to defend themselves against the allegations when the ERPO is issued. These orders may be issued without any allegations of criminal behavior.”

The new law in Oregon was inspired by a law that went into effect in California in January 2016. Assembly Bill No. 1014 authorized “gun violence restraining orders” which allowed law enforcement to seize the firearms of an individual if a judge “finds that there is reasonable cause to believe that the subject of the petition poses an immediate and present danger of causing personal injury to himself, herself, or another by having in his or her custody or control, owning, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm.”

While there are a number of problems with the new trend of gun confiscation laws, one of the most glaring issues is that a “protection order” can be filed by a police officer who has had minimal contact with the suspect in question, and if it is granted by the judge, the suspect will have his or her firearms confiscated immediately, and the only way to return them is to go through a lengthy court process—eliminating one of the most basic principles of due process.

Violent July Leaves Chicago Murders On Pace To Exceed 2016, The Bloodiest Year In Two Decades

One month ago, President Trump vowed to "send in the Feds" after Chicago"s murder rate continued to track roughly in-line with 2016, the most violent year for the city in nearly two decades.

Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

Alas, with the month of July now over, the "Feds" don"t seem to be helping.

With 77 people killed in July alone, murders are up 4% year-over-year despite the federal assistance.  Moreover, those killed as the result of gun violence is up 9%.

Meanwhile, the month of July also recorded one of the city"s most violent Fourth of July holidays in history, with more than 100 people shot over the four-day weekend. That"s compared to 66 people shot over the holiday in 2016.

According to Chicago police, there have been 417 murders in the city so far this year on a total of 2,202 shootings.

Data Source: HeyJackAss!

As NBC points out, the soaring violence in 2017 comes despite the fact that 5,000 guns have been taken off the streets and gun arrests are up 30% YoY.

Chicago police reported last month that they have removed more than 5,000 guns this year off Chicago streets. The department has also rolled out several initiatives this year, including a high-tech ballistics van that was sent as part of the partnership with the ATF. That same partnership also sent 20 permanent ATF agents to the city, along with federal prosecutors, with the purpose of "prioritizing prosecutions to reduce gun violence, and working with our law enforcement partners to stop the lawlessness.”

"One of the things that I think people miss about this whole violence reduction is the fact that CPD - we’ve recovered over 5,000 guns this year, we’re up 30 percent in overall gun arrests - but the communities being affected, I don’t think they recognize the power that they have in the communities, their voices, to reduce this gun violence," Johnson said.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the violence remains concentrated in a few South and West side neighborhoods.

And, with 7 months of 2017 officially in the record books, here is how Chicago"s 2017 murders are stacking up against recent years.

Of course, it"s not just Chicago where violent crime is surging as the Midwestern neighbors of Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cleveland have also experienced a 68%, 18% and 33% increase in murders, respectively, compared to 2014.

Execution By Firing Squad: The Militarized Police State Opens Fire

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”—Journalist Celisa Calacal

Legally owning a gun in America could get you killed by a government agent.

While it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at and killed.

This same rule does not apply to government agents, however, who are armed to the hilt and rarely given more than a slap on the wrists for using their weapons to shoot and kill American citizens.

According to the Washington Post, “1 in 13 people killed by guns are killed by police.”

Just recently, for example, a Minnesota jury acquitted a police officer who shot and killed 32-year-old Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor, during a routine traffic stop merely because Castile disclosed that he had a gun in his possession, for which he had a lawful conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times as he was reaching for his license and registration. Castile’s girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter witnessed the entire exchange.

Earlier this year, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida police will not be held accountable for banging on the wrong door at 1:30 am, failing to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shooting and killing the innocent homeowner who answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Continuing its own disturbing trend of siding with police in cases of excessive use of force, a unanimous Supreme Court recently acquitted police who recklessly fired 15 times into a backyard shack in which a homeless couple—Angel and Jennifer Mendez—was sheltering. Incredibly, the Court ruled that the shooting was justified because Angel was allegedly seen holding a BB gun that he used for shooting rats.

What these cases add up to is a new paradigm in which legally owning a gun turns you into a target for government sharp-shooters.

Ironically, while America continues to debate who or what is responsible for gun violence—the guns, the gun owners, or our violent culture—little has been said about the greatest perpetrator of violence in American society: the U.S. government.

Violence has become the government’s calling card, starting at the top and trickling down, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents.

You want to reduce gun violence? Start with the government.

The government’s arsenal of weapons makes the average American’s handgun look like a Tinker Toy. Under the auspices of a military “recycling” program, which allows local police agencies to acquire military-grade weaponry and equipment, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies since 1990.

In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become accepted instruments of tyranny, routine parts of America’s day-to-day life, a byproduct of the rapid militarization of law enforcement over the past several decades.

This lopsided, top-heavy, authoritarian state of affairs is not the balance of power the founders intended for “we the people.”

The Second Amendment, in conjunction with the multitude of prohibitions on government overreach enshrined in the Bill of Rights, was supposed to serve as a clear shackle on the government’s powers.

To founders such as Thomas Jefferson, who viewed the government as a powerful entity that must be bound “down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution,” the right to bear arms was no different from any other right enshrined in the Constitution: it was intended to stand as a bulwark against a police state.

As I explain in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, without any one of those freedoms, we are that much more vulnerable to the vagaries of out-of-control policemen, benevolent dictators, genuflecting politicians, and overly ambitious bureaucrats.

Writing for Counterpunch, journalist Kevin Carson warns that prohibiting Americans from owning weapons would “lead to further erosion of Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, further militarization of local police via SWAT teams, and further expansion of the squalid empire of civil forfeiture, perjured jailhouse snitch testimony, entrapment, planted evidence, and plea deal blackmail.”

This is exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution feared: that laws and law enforcers would be used as tools by a despotic government to wage war against the citizenry.

Now don’t get me wrong.

I do not believe that violence should ever be the answer to our problems. Still there’s something to be said for George Orwell’s view that “that rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

The Second Amendment serves as a check on the political power of the ruling authorities. It represents an implicit warning against governmental encroachments on one’s freedoms, the warning shot over the bow to discourage any unlawful violations of our persons or property.

Certainly, dictators in past regimes have understood this principle only too well.

As Adolf Hitler noted, “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that starting in December 1935, Jews in Germany were prevented from obtaining shooting licenses, because authorities believed that to allow them to do so would “endanger the German population.”

In late 1938, special orders were delivered barring Jews from owning firearms, with the punishment for arms possession being 20 years in a concentration camp.

The rest, as they say, is history. Yet it is a history that we should be wary of repeating.

Why I’m Not Surprised There Were Two Mass Shootings Today

(ANTIMEDIA Op-Ed) There were two mass shootings in the Unites States today, and I’m really not surprised by them. Mass shootings have become commonplace in America as of late, and after every one of them, the political blame game spins round and round, even before we send out our redundant “thoughts and prayers.”

We have to ban guns. No, we need more guns. We need to put more police in public places — and even in schools to deter shooters. We need to ban gun-free zones. We need to blame all right-wingers. We need to blame all left-wingers. We need to call white violence terrorism. We need to blame psychotropic drugs. We need to ban Muslims. We need to (insert your reactionary opinion here).

Everybody thinks they know what’s wrong, but it seems nobody understands two plainly obvious causes of all this violence…

America is violent by default. It’s in our DNA as a nation. Born out of the exploitation and genocide of Natives and built off the backs of slaves, the United States has used violence to solve its “problems” since its inception. The country’s independence, itself, was obtained through years of violence — the American revolution. This violence is now venerated and enshrined in popular American mythology and perpetuated ad nauseam in public school history books.

The violence never stopped, and it has been routinely glorified. When Native Americans had something we wanted, we murdered them and took it — over and over again. America’s deft use of violence in World War II became our modern claim to moral superiority. The invasion of Iraq decades later was deemed a gift to Iraqi citizens despite the countless deaths and destruction of their homeland that came with it.

We memorialize those who commit violence for the government and hold them in the highest esteem — throwing tantrums when others express dissenting opinions or fail to bow to the people who serve these institutions.

When children misbehave, we beat them. When people don’t follow the ever-expanding number of (many times unjust) laws in the U.S., we jail them. When a country does something we don’t like, we bomb them and overthrow their government. When a leader does something the U.S. government doesn’t like, we assassinate them. Even what should be civil political discourse has been radicalized into violent rhetoric — the war on women, the war on Christmas, the war on healthcare, the war on cops. War permeates our culture.

Therefore, it’s only natural that when a person is sad, down on themselves, off their meds, or mad about something, picking up a gun to solve their problems with violence seems to be logical. Our government does it, why not them? We beat kids for being “bad,” why would they not use violence against adults? Our government bombs schools in countries we don’t like, so what is so different about an individual getting a gun and shooting up a school in the United States? Our police shoot and kill over 1,000 Americans every year, often because they are afraid of them or because they “did not comply.” Is it any surprise that many of the most atrocious mass shootings in this country were committed by individuals with a fetish for militarism (or policing institutions)?

Thanks in large part to our government, American society assumes violence solves problems, whatever those problems may be. Since this country’s founding, America has been dehumanizing others and committing mass acts of violence against them in the name of what is “right” or “good.” The Virginia shooter probably thought he was committing a righteous act by shooting a Republican who was taking away his healthcare.

Just as the concept of “Manifest Destiny” made room in early Americans’ consciences to rationalize genocide against the natives — and the post 9/11 dehumanization of Muslims allows for the ongoing war on terror, which has taken well over one million innocent lives — we now dehumanize others for disagreeing with us politically to the point where violence is becoming a regular occurrence (see: alt-right vs. antifa).

The “us vs. them” nationalism that was previously used as propaganda during major wars to get the public unified behind national conflicts has now come home to roost. The next logical step is to get out the guns and start shooting our political opponents down in the street — and now, apparently, it’s happening. And I’m not surprised.

There is another reason violence is such a default reaction, and it extends beyond the behavior and nationalism perpetuated by the U.S. government. In most of the public’s reactions to the problem of mass shootings, there is a hint of violence in their subsequent proposals to legislate away said violent acts, even if their intentions are good.

Taking away someone’s right to do something is an act of violence — political or otherwise. In the United States, we have a tendency to enact laws against things we don’t like, and if someone still does something politicians say is bad, violence is committed against them in the form of punishment, fines, incarceration, and execution. After all, government is defined by its ‘moral’ exemption to use violence — if a soldier, cop, or other government agent commits violence at the behest of politicians or ‘the law,’ it’s in the name of the greater good — regardless of whether or not it’s actually moral. If members of the public use violence, they’re criminals, even if they also believe they’re advocating a ‘greater good.’

So when you say armed guards should be put into every school, you’re endorsing an act of violence by taking someone’s tax money and spending it in a way they may disagree with. When you say “guns should be banned,” you are advocating violence by taking away someone else’s freedom because you think that particular liberty is dangerous, outdated, or arcane. Your desire to remove that freedom necessarily requires the use of violence on the part of armed government agents confiscating the gun or locking them up for failing to obey the edict.

That’s fine and dandy until the freedoms you hold dear end up in the crosshairs of political moralists who feel they know better than you. The slippery slope that starts with banning guns because they can be used for violence can slide into banning books because dangerous information can lead to dangerous thoughts or violence.

***

When a culture of violence intersects with an inherently violent government, I’m not surprised that Americans of all political persuasions are shooting each other in the street. So perhaps instead of reforming gun laws or turning our schools into fortresses, America needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. From the way we treat our children to the global war on terror, if we truly want to stop the spread of violence, maybe we should stop ingraining it into every aspect of our society.

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