Tag: 2nd Amendment

Spree Shooter Shot Dead

handgun, self defense, freedom, 2nd Amendment

We need to be reminded every now and then that shooting rampages can often be stopped as soon as they start — if only a good guy with a gun is on site and willing to use it.

Or good gal.

Dennis Butler, a 37-year-old with an “extensive criminal history,” recently targeted the attendees of a party in Charleston, West Virginia.

Earlier, someone at an apartment complex had asked Butler to drive more slowly because there were children around. This made him feel explosive rage. So he fetched a semi-automatic weapon that he owned illegally and started firing into a crowd of party-goers at the complex.

A woman with a gun and presence of mind happened to be at the party.

“She’s just a member of the community who was carrying her weapon lawfully,” says police spokesman Tony Hazlett. “And instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives.”

No one in the crowd was reported to be injured.

I hope that if this heroic woman had been carrying her weapon unlawfully, relevant authorities would have cut her some slack. But it’s good that she didn’t have to deal with such a complication.

Butler is dead — shot multiple times by the woman with a gun. Police haven’t reported her name.

Just as well. We wouldn’t want her to become a target of gun-control groups upset that she used a pistol rather than sharp words to dissuade Butler from killing everybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Not Saving Lives

Virtue signaling won’t stop a mass shooter.

Nor will scoring political points.

If we earnestly want to focus on preventing these horrific attacks, let’s stop wasting everybody’s time advocating new laws that we already know, had they been in effect, would not have stopped the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.

Or the recent massacre in Buffalo.

Or virtually any other murder spree.

“On the specifics,” Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D‑Conn.), “how would your federal background check have stopped either of these two shooters in Buffalo and in Texas? Neither of them had criminal records.”

“I just don’t get into the trap of having to write a law for the last mass shooting that captured the nation’s attention,” the senator responded, arguing that “on the same day of the shooting in Uvalde, there were 100 plus other people in this country who died.”

Sen. Murphy was anything but frank, certainly, but it was an admission that his proposal is clearly not geared toward stopping massacres by gunmen.

Americans should ignore the political circus, realizing that the politicians are working on other agendas while these killers have serious and often completely untreated mental health issues. Let’s concentrate public policy — and everyday neighborliness — there.

Lastly, while some dismiss the value of “thoughts and prayers,” I do not. There is a social, emotional, spiritual element that I think we totally discard when all we can talk about is what a bunch of corrupt folks in Washington “must do” to solve our problems.

On the other hand, a return to a culture of mourning, thoughts and prayers might at least sober up those drunk on power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

The Right to Bear Toy Guns

Post author By Editor
Post date December 23, 2020
4 Comments on The Right to Bear Toy Guns

Elizaveta Zlatkis could be jailed for up to a quarter century.

What heinous crime has she committed? Prepare yourself: she kept a stash of guns in her home.

Well, toy guns … used as props.

Not real armaments, pretend armaments.

New York City police confiscated 21 starter pistols and toy replicas that, according to the NYPD’s own lab reports, cannot fire bullets. And “one actual firearm” that the police acknowledge “was rendered ‘inoperable’ because the trigger, hand grip and internal components were all missing.”

“We do videos with them as props,” attests a rapper named Crucial.

“That’s wild,” he says of the prosecution. “They’re fake.”

NYPD cops acted on a tip — standard prelude to many a dastardly home invasion by putative officers of the law — in raiding her home in December 2019.

It’s been a nightmare for Ms. Zlatkis ever since.

She thinks she’s innocent, refusing a plea deal. Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney, Melinda Katz, won’t drop the charges.

What’s next? Raids of toy stores and movie studio warehouses?

BearingArms.com stresses one aspect of the lunacy: Zlatkis is facing decades behind bars for heaping toy guns while thugs arrested “for actually shooting someone are quickly returning to the streets.”

The guns are fake, and the charges too — if only this story were fake! Unfortunately, it is the believable kind of unbelievable. In the increasingly creedal crusade against guns, the kookier, more cultish element appears to dominate.

The DA and everyone else pursuing this case after the guns had been examined are the ones who should face charges for hounding this woman — not that exercising the right to keep and bear fully functional arms should be a life-destroying offense, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

Tulsa Shooter Stopped Dead

Post author By Redactor
Post date April 1, 2020
4 Comments on Tulsa Shooter Stopped Dead

Some killers are easier to stop than others.

The coronavirus pandemic is proving very hard to stop.

But one good guy with a gun and presence of mind can stop a different kind of would-be killer — an active shooter — instantly. This is what happened last week outside of a Tulsa marijuana dispensary.

Apparently angered by some earlier altercation with somebody, a woman started shooting at customers. By the time the Tulsa Police arrived, she was dead. A bystander with a concealed carry permit had returned fire, stopping her before she could hurt anyone. He was questioned and released by police, who reviewed video of the scene.

At BearingArms.com, Cam Edwards decries the under-reporting of the story. One local news station even “completely miss[ed] the fact that an armed citizen saved lives,” instead making it sound as if the guy just walked up to the woman at random and shot her.

“Journalistic malpractice,” Edwards calls it.

It’s easy to see why a story like this might get lost in the shuffle given everything else that’s going on now. But even in (relatively) normal times, many in the media tend to strenuously ignore — sometimes even willfully distort — the facts about how persons bearing arms have used deadly force to stop others wielding deadly force from killing innocent people.

What we always hear is true: guns are not independent agents.

Persons wield weapons for good or ill.

And it is decidedly good when an armed civilian draws and fires a weapon to stop an evil shooter from doing criminal harm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people Second Amendment rights

Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 21, 2020
2 Comments on Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Last week, Virginia’s infamous black-face governor claimed to possess “credible intelligence … of threats of violence surrounding” Monday’s “Lobby Day” gun rights rally in Richmond, including “extremist rhetoric similar to … Charlottesville in 2017.”

Major media outlets went on a rampage, repeating his linkage between gun rights supporters and “white nationalists” faster than semi-automatic fire.

“Big media and mainstream media be damned,” announced a Virginia man recorded at yesterday’s event, and tweeted by social media entrepreneur Michael Coudrey.

The unidentified but obviously black demonstrator jested, at first, that he was “out here because I got roped into it by the group of guys you see standing to my right.” But then he explained his opposition to “Governor Northam and the Democrats’ gun control” as well as “every news piece you’ve seen on this this weekend.…”

He objected especially to the incessant race angle — “as if it’s nothing but white rednecks and hillbillies out here who care for the Second Amendment. I work at a gun store part-time and I can’t tell you the number of customers I see of all races, all colors, all creeds who care about the Second Amendment.”

His account was corroborated by Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall.com, who tweeted “pictures of people carrying rifles at the #VirginiaRally and more evidence that debunks the narrative that the rally is filled with racists and white supremacists.”

Yesterday, more than 22,000 pro-gun people of all races descended on the capitol in a completely peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights in defense of Second Amendment rights … making Richmond the safest city in America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: There was only one arrest at the rally, a woman charged with violating a 1950-era law against wearing face masks (like Hong Kong’s law). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY) voiced her displeasure that there weren’t more arrests.

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Second Amendment rights

Poked, Stoked and Woke

“Let’s have an honest conversation based on fact,” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam chided in his annual State of the Commonwealth speech before assembled legislators last week.

“Not fear.”

Last year, fear was more popular. In the frightful aftermath of a Virginia Beach city employee shooting and killing 12 co-workers, Northam was quick to call a special session of the legislature to pass gun control legislation.

Republicans said no, however, and adjourned.

With Democrats newly in control of both chambers of the state legislature, the governor now runs interference for “a package of eight gun-restricting measures, including universal background checks; banning assault-style weapons; requiring owners to report lost or stolen guns; and a ‘red flag law’” — along with raising the legal age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21.

“When the General Assembly passes new guns safety laws,” proclaims Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, “they will be enforced, and they will be followed.”

In response, Virginia’s many Second Amendment defenders are stepping up. Already, more than 110 cities and counties have declared their status as Second Amendment sanctuaries.

“These resolutions have no legal force,” informs the AG, adding, “and they’re just part of an effort by the gun lobby to stoke fear.”

Oh, yes, unmistakable stoking has occurred. On January 20, the Virginia Citizens Defense League is organizing a massive lobby day at the capital, where the stoked will politically poke their delegates.

Join us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* You may recall Northam as that fellow whose personal medical school yearbook page contained a photo of a man in black-face next to someone donning a KKK robe. First, the governor apologized, then reversed course, claiming he had no idea how the picture mysteriously materialized into the yearbook — though he acknowledged other instances of wearing black-face in the past. A limited investigation by a law firm hired by the medical school came to no conclusion and the media seemed to move on.

** Herring apologized for his own blackface past.

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