Every time there is a mass shooting incident in the U.S., gun control fanatics, many of whom masquerade as journalists, get on TV and start hollering about how it happened again and we've got to do something and so on, which they do because if they don't "strike while the iron is hot," the public will forget all about the incident and move on to the next issue in a day or two.  At a time when sensible people are mourning the loss of life and commiserating with the survivors, the socialists are looking for ways to make hay.  "Never allow a crisis to go to waste," one of them once said.  If there are any circumstances involved in the most recent shooting that are embarrassing to the political Left, they'll drop it like a hot potato and help you "move on" quickly.

The most blatant example of this kind of opportunism was seen after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012.  Much of the information on this page is about that incident.

As the socialists come out of the woodwork after a school shooting, they always frame gun prohibition and confiscation as "common sense" that "can't wait any longer."  Then they inevitably say it will take a lot of "courage" to pass those laws.  If they really are based on common sense, why is great courage required?

Also, why does every U.S. flag have to fly at half-mast for several days after every major shooting?  When did that start?  The flag is frequently seen at half-staff, or not, apparently depending on the political background of those who own the flagpole.  Using the flag for this kind of signaling is unnecessary, it politicizes the flag and diminishes its meaning.  (The same is true of the use of the giant flags flying at every automobile dealership on an urban freeway, but that's another topic.)

Mass shootings occur at places other than schools; for example, Fort Hood and Garland, both in Texas,  but the school house incidents carry the greatest emotional leverage.

Related topics:

News media bias related to gun control issues

Notable Gun Control Failures

Socialist Democrats are out of step with America

The inadequately-explained mass shooting in Las Vegas, October 4, 2017

The School Shooting in Parkland, Florida, February 14, 2018

The School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022

Leftist lies, misconceptions and disingenuousness

Political Opportunism After the Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

Defensive use of firearms

Socialist Democrats communicate with emotional outbursts instead of rational thoughts

President Obama's stealthy moves toward gun control

        "After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it."

— William S. Burroughs               

This is an original compilation, Copyright 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

Rep. Gerald Connelly Loses It When Secret Service Director Won't Criticize Private Gun Ownership.  Rep. Gerald Connelly (D-VA) lost it during Monday's House Oversight Committee hearing, when Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle refused to play along and criticize privately owned firearms.  Connelly began by praising "the incredible daily risks" taken by the Secret Service, then said, "Help us understand, however... how could [this assassination attempt] happen and how can we ensure it can't reoccur?"  He then criticized "AR-15s and access to them by 20-year-olds or anybody for that matter..."

Can You Guess What Democrats Wanted to Talk About During the Secret Service Hearing?  Since a would-be assassin tried to kill Donald Trump, we were wondering how quickly the Democrats would pivot to gun control.  We have our answer:  Monday morning's congressional hearing barely got underway when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) attributed the near-assassination of a former president to Congress's failure to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.  Raskin, who hasn't found an opportunity to grandstand that he couldn't resist, acknowledged that the Secret Service failed Trump, but he attributed just as much blame to a lack of gun control legislation.  He spoke for four minutes about "mass shootings" and how banning "weapons of war" could have stopped them.  "We can't let ourselves off the hook, either, dear colleagues," he began, his voice dripping with earnestness.  "What happened in Butler, Pa., was a double failure the failure by the Secret Service to properly protect former President Trump and the failure of Congress to properly protect our people from criminal gun violence.  We must therefore also ask hard questions about whether our laws are making it too easy for potential assassins to obtain firearms generally and the AR-15 specifically."

'The View' Uses Trump Assassination Attempt to Push Gun Control Agenda, Blames 'White Guys' for Shooting.  The co-hosts of ABC's "The View" weighed in on the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump but used the shocking attack to push the Democrats' radical gun control agenda.  Before condemning the attempted murder of the 45th president, the co-hosts repeatedly framed the shooter as a "white guy" who was supposedly able to buy guns and ammo due to a lack of gun control.  Liberal anti-Trump co-host Sunny Hostin said:  "So I know everybody always says, it's too soon to talk about guns, and we should, because there has been a terrible death of a father of two, that thoughts and prayers should be where we go.  "I say no.  I say now is the time to talk about the common denominator when it came to this assassination attempt, is America's fascination and obsession with owning guns."

SPLC Suggests Gun Ownership a 'Red Flag' For Violence.  Authorities still haven't released any official motive for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, but the media has already started to point the finger at "gun culture" for the crime.  At USA Today, reporters Kenny Jacoby and Lucas Aulbach spoke to a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center about the assassin's family, who was all too eager to portray the family's gun ownership as a red flag. [...] As sociologist David Yamane has emphasized, gun ownership is normal and normal people own guns, but to the Southern Poverty Law Center buying a firearm is a red flag for violence.  At a time when voices across the political spectrum are calling on Americans to take a deep breath and deescalate the political tensions, the SPLC is throwing gasoline on the fire by blithely asserting that gun ownership or "gun culture" is a warning sign that should alarm both average citizens and law enforcement.

Sick: Anti-Gunners Exploit Trump Assassination Attempt to Push Gun Control.  You will not be at all shocked to find out that members of the anti-gunner lobby have been exploiting the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump to push for more gun restrictions.  As is typical of the anti-gunner crowd, their arguments are every bit as nonsensical as usual.  Anti-gunner activist David Hogg argued in a post on X that "If this can happen to a president with secret service, if this can happen in Parkland with a cop assigned to our campus, if this can happen in Uvalde with hundreds of police. [...]" [Tweet]  It's the same argument the anti-gunners use whenever there is a mass shooting.

Gays Against Guns Uses Pulse Anniversary to Push Gun Control.  The Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando was a particularly awful incident.  It held the dubious record of the worst mass shooting in modern history right up until it was eclipsed by Las Vegas.  The fact that it was motivated by a combination of Islamic extremism and homophobia made it particularly vile, marking it as the worst anti-gay attack in US history.  As Wednesday marked the eight-year anniversary, we had to know someone was going to use this opportunity to push for gun control.  They always do.  And, as if on cue, someone did.

More about the Pulse shooting.

North Carolina Shooting:  Democrats Blame Guns While Letting Repeat Offenders Run Free.  Whatever happened to the media coverage of the mass shooting of police officers in Charlotte, NC this week?  Only moments after the attack which took the lives of four law enforcement officers and injured four others, mainstream news feeds and social media sites were flooded with calls from journalists as well as Democrat politicians demanding that "something be done" about assault weapons and high capacity magazines.  Joe Biden quickly issued a White House statement calling for swift gun control measures and (ironically) more funding for police.  Then, suddenly, everything went quiet.  Why?  We all know why; because this has happened so many times in the past and the outcome is now laughably predictable.  The eventual reveal of the alleged assailant's identity derailed progressive gun control efforts.  His race and background did not fit the narrative mold that Democrats are looking for (the unhinged white male gun nut, preferably conservative).

Australian Politicians Now Talking 'Knife Control' After Mall, Church Attacks.  The high-profile stabbings at a shopping mall and church could result in a crackdown on knife ownership in Australia, but its also prompted a wave of criticism over the country's current laws, which make it incredibly difficult for the average citizen to possess a firearm, and almost never for self-defense.  Concealed carry?  Forget about it.  If you're a rural farmer you might be able to possess a pump-action shotgun to protect your family and your livestock, but almost everyone else is out of luck; even security guards.

The Editor says...
When they get knives and guns under control, and the Islamic terrorist resort to bricks and baseball bats, you know what the government will do next.

Kamala Harris Visits Parkland to Exploit Deaths of School Shooting Victims to Push Gun Control.  Vice President Kamala Harris is paying a visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the site of one of the nation's most brutal and tragic school shootings.  The purpose of her visit is to push for red flag laws and other restrictions ostensibly aimed at curbing gun violence in America.  Her visit underscores a significant moment in the Biden administration's efforts to impose more restrictions on firearms.  She is expected to tout the White House's supposed efforts against gun homicides while trying to persuade the public to allow more laws restricting their right to keep and bear arms.

Three Shootings in Ten Days That Derail All the Media Narratives on Gun Incidents.  Most of us are familiar with the media narratives when it comes to reporting on mass shootings.  The familiar beats of coverage are so rote as to basically qualify as tropes.  Conversely, we see by now that whenever there is a deviation from the expected characteristics of a shooter the coverage is notably different.  In fact, it has become a cliched punchline that if the featured individual is found to be a member from one of the protected minority classes then the response becomes, "...And that's when the story disappeared from the front page."  That secondary reality has loomed large this month.  So much so that we have now seen that Mad Libs media narrative exposed in all its shame, as there have been a string of these gun-related incidents in just a matter of days and it has led to a blaring amount of silence from the press.  The sham of the contrived outrage from our media superiors is how there has been little in the way of outrage this week.  Beginning in Texas, where there was a shooting in Joel Osteen's church.  This proved to be a stark miscalculation on the part of the gunperson, given that after brandishing a weapon they were encountered quickly by gun-toting parishioners.

Teens with guns again.  It didn't take long for Democrats to call for "sensible gun control."  I'm sure that you've heard the same old song about passing new laws.  It happens every time we have a shooting.  These people must have their speeches written in advance and ready to be delivered.  All they have to do is fill the blanks with the name of the town and type of event.  What happened at the Chiefs parade? [...] Are we supposed to pass a new reminding adults that minors are not supposed to possess a gun?  Or another one reminding everyone that you can't sell, loan, or transfer any firearm to a minor?  This is why nothing gets done.  The media just want to talk about guns, and the Democrats want to champion a new law for something that is already illegal.  In the meantime, no one wants to talk about the culture that raises minors that bring guns to a parade or use them to settle differences.  We don't have a gun problem.  We have a criminal problem.

Gavin Newsom Predictably Tries to Cash in on KC Super Bowl Parade Shooting, 'Please Contribute $20 Today'.  Far left-wing progressive Governor Gavin Newsom has driven his home state of California into the ground, but that doesn't seem to stop him from telling other states what to do or weighing in on national issues when he should be asking for forgiveness in a church somewhere.  Instead, he's sending out fundraising emails regarding the Kansas City Superbowl shooting, which left dozens injured and one dead, ludicrously arguing that our nation's gun laws and the Supreme Court paved the way for this tragic incident to happen.  [Tweet] [...] Does the governor really think that these perps went through the normal legal procedures to obtain their weapons?  That they went to a regulated store, filled out the proper forms, did their due diligence, and were lawfully issued firearms?

CNN [is] Not Even Hiding [its] Anti-Gun Agenda Anymore.  Of course, how many times do we see that the mass shooters — actual mass shooters, not gang-bangers who get touted as mass shooters by biased sources — passed the background check system.  That happened in Uvalde, for example.  The killer might have been as demented as they come, but he'd never been adjudicated by a court and he'd never been convicted of anything, so he could buy a firearm without a background check.  In fact, we generally see the only mass shooters who haven't passed a background check to be those too young to do so, and they steal a family member's gun.  So here we have CNN pushing gun control, much like President Joe Biden, despite the fact that the Department of Justice itself noting that this wasn't a gun control failure but a law enforcement one.  That's the story, folks.  That's what the DOJ found and one would imagine that CNN would want to cover that.

Can we reduce mass public shootings?  The Crime Prevention Research Center has just published its annual update on the characteristics of "mass" public shooters from 1998 through 2023.  Here are some of the key findings:
  •   Biological sex matters: 96% of mass shooters are male.
  •   84% of mass murder shooters are between the ages of 16 and 45.
  •   Military veterans are overrepresented as shooters:  In 2022, about 6% of the U.S. population were veterans, while around "20% of mass public shooters were veterans."
  •   The mental health profession is failing:  "From January 1st, 1998, to October 25th, 2023, 51% of mass murderers have seen mental health care professionals before their attacks."  (A 50/50 "success" rate is a failure.)
  •   Gun-free zones kill:  Since 1998, 82% of the attacks have occurred in "gun-free zones."  Going further back to 1950, that number jumps to 94%.
  •   Political philosophies matter:  "California's per capita rate of Mass Public Shootings is much higher than the rate for the rest of the country."
  •   The majority of mass shootings are committed [with a] handgun.

Minnesota Gun Control Push Getting Everything Wrong.  We're used to seeing gun control advocates get a lot of details wrong in their push to restrict our right to keep and bear arms.  Whether it's maliciously so or just the result of incompetence is largely irrelevant.  At a certain point, the two are indistinguishable.  But in Minnesota, there's a full-court press going on with regard to pushing gun control.  And, frankly, they're tripping over themselves to get things horrifically wrong.  Let's start with Gov. Tim Walz trying to use a shooting to justify anti-gun rules. [...] The shooting in question claimed two lives at a hotel.  No one knows the motive for the shooting or whether there was one, but it was basically a double homicide.  While they shouldn't be accepted as normal, there's also no reason to believe restricting guns would necessarily have prevented the Cloquet shooting in the first place.

The Iowa attack: guns and trans.  Despite what the Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) media would have us believe, school attacks remain, thankfully, rare.  Also despite what they would have us believe, not every attack is committed with an AR-15 wielded by a white male Republican.  A case in point is the January 4th attack on Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, a town of about 8000: [...] Fox News notes "at least five people were shot," and one was killed.  This attack is already, only a day later, receiving scant media attention.  Why?  Isn't a primary media axiom "if it bleeds, it leads?"  Absolutely, unless the killer was trans or some shade of LGBTQ etc. or used a weapon other than an AR-15.

Anti-Gun Activists Hope to Leverage Lewiston Shooting.  The mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine was a terrible event.  The English language lacks the words to adequately describe how awful it was. [...] But what I had no problems imagining were how anti-gun groups in Maine would try to use Lewiston.  We already know that anti-gun lawmakers plan on using that tragic event to pass gun control but now we also know that anti-gun groups are doing the same.

The Decades of Evidence That Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) Antidepressants Cause Mass Shootings.  SSRI antidepressants have a variety of horrendous side effects.  These include sometimes causing the individual to become agitated, feeling they can't be in their skin, turning psychotic, and occasionally becoming violently psychotic.  During these psychoses, individuals can have out of body experiences where they commit lethal violence either to themselves or others.  As lawsuits later showed, this violent behavior (and the frequent suicides that followed it) were observed throughout the SSRI clinical trials, but were covered up by the SSRI manufacturers and then the drug regulators (e.g., the FDA).  Once the SSRIs entered the market, there has been a wave of SSRI suicides and unspeakable acts of violence.  Sadly, the idea that SSRIs could cause any of this has always been viewed as a "conspiracy theory" or "mistaking correlation with causation" because very few are aware of the extensive evidence linking SSRIs to violent and psychotic behavior — despite it now being on the warning label of those drugs.

Nashville Mayor Wants Legal On Trans Shooter Manifesto.  Since the March 27, 2023, shooting at the Covenant Christian School, many of us have been clamoring for release of the shooter's writing.  Many journals, a suicide note, and a memoir were left by transgender shooter Audry/Aiden Hale.  Today, three photocopied pages were obtained by a podcast host and the Nashville Mayor is incensed.  Furious.  Legal action involving possible local and Federal authorities is being looked into, according to Mayor Freddie O'Connell.  If this is beginning to sound like more tangling of the woven web, you are so right.  Without wasting anytime at all to mourn the six victims of the Christian School shooter, the media and opinion writers have blamed various aspects of Tennessee life:  Our Governor and open carry and a so called anti-Drag bill.  It couldn't have possibly been a severely mentally ill human.  It had to be the gun culture and hatred in Tennessee.  Now, a rational being might think that the dead sicko's writings might be important for the psychological community to study and for the general public in spotting signs.  A month after the shooting, we were told that the writings would not be released completely because they were too disturbing.  Which might be a reason they should be released.

Biden Heading to Lewiston to Pay Respect for the Victims (and Push for a Gun Ban).  That's not the stated purpose for his upcoming appearance in Lewiston, of course.  The president's handlers are at least politically savvy enough to avoid any direct call for gun control in announcing his trip.  Instead, the White House says Biden will visit Lewiston, Maine on Friday to "pay respects to the victims of this horrific attack and grieve with families and community members, as well as meet with first responders, nurses, and others on the front lines of the response."  I don't have any issue with the president going to a community that is reeling from an active shooter attack to provide some comfort and show his concern, but despite Biden's claim to be the empathizer-in-chief it's pretty clear that he's also using his visit to push his political agenda; specifically, a ban on so-called assault weapons.

Biden Pushes Lawsuits Against Gun Makers Following Maine Attacks.  On Thursday, in response to the Maine shootings, President Joe Biden pushed for a repeal of protections that protect gun makers from frivolous lawsuits, universal background checks, and other gun controls. [...] Biden eventually transitioned to the summer 2022 passage of the gun control he passed with Sen. John Cornyn's (R-TX) help, noting, as always, that gun control is not enough.

Biden again demands Republicans pass a ban on assault weapons after 'another senseless and tragic mass shooting'.  President Joe Biden called the mass-shooting in Maine 'another senseless and tragic' event and urged residents to 'heed the warnings and guidance of local officials' as the suspect remains at large.  He also said the federal government wasn't doing enough to deter such events and called on Republicans in Congress to work with him on legislation to ban assault rifles and expand background checks.  'Today, in the wake of yet another tragedy, I urge Republican lawmakers in Congress to fulfill their duty to protect the American people.  Work with us to pass a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to enact universal background checks, to require safe storage of guns, and end immunity from liability for gun manufacturers.

The Truth About Armed Citizens Stopping Mass Shootings.  As the nation wrestles with yet another mass shooting, this time in Jacksonville, Florida, a new report provides some troubling news for the anti-gunner lobby, which exploits these tragedies to push for more restrictions on gun ownership.  However, the numbers do provide some good news for proponents of the 2nd Amendment and those who understand that decent people with guns save lives.

A Reader Asks Why Tailei Qi And Zijie Yan Were At UNC In The First Place?  [Scroll down]  There's no scarcity of highly intelligent Americans.  Could it be UNC just wants cheaper labor or is beholden to Chinese money?  Personally, I regard the Chinese academic influx as an espionage influx for which there is already ample proof.  Peking, like the Manchus before them, regards China as the center of the universe to which all barbarians must do the kowtow.  China doesn't even regard the U.S. as a legitimate nation, merely a shopping emporium.  Domestically, on schedule, cries about rescinding the Second Amendment will go up, ignoring actual facts such as "Where did he get the gun?," "Was he legally allowed to possess a firearm?" and "What type of firearm was it?"  To bring up the question of an alien propensity for murder will be called racist and xenophobic even when the victim is the same race as the perpetrator.  That certain people should be prevented from entering the country because they may be dangerous or a threat to national security is bigotry to a Left determined to replace Americans.

It's not really a buy-back.  How many AR-15 rifles has Eric Swalwell sold?
Democrat Eric Swalwell Calls for Buyback of All AR-15s.  Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) used a Monday post on X to call for a buyback of AR-15s and firearms that Democrats refer to as "assault weapons."  He also wants a ban in place to keep future AR-15s from being manufactured or sold.  [Tweet]  The attacker that struck the Jacksonville Dollar General on Saturday was armed with a Glock handgun and an AR-15-style rifle.  Therefore, banning the rifle would not have prevented the attack from occurring.  Moreover, on October 10, 2022, Breitbart News reported FBI data showing more than twice as many people were killed with knives and other cutting tools than were killed with rifles in 2021.

Jacksonville Sheriff Slams Leftist Anti-Gun Agenda After Tragedy: 'The Problem Is The Individual'.  Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters slammed the political Left's anti-gun narrative over the weekend in response to a racially motivated shooting that killed three people at a Dollar General store that has been deemed as racially motivated. [...] "The story is always about guns — people are bad — this guy's a bad guy," Waters said. "If I could take my gun off right now, and I lay it on this counter, nothing will happen.  It'll sit there — but as soon as wicked person grabs ahold of that handgun and starts shooting people with it — there's the problem."

Lott: Gun control groups don't care what causes mass shootings.  Everytown is suing just about everyone they can think of over the Buffalo mass shooting.  They're suing social media companies, a gun manufacturer, and even the company that makes body armor.  In their mind, all are responsible for what someone not named in the lawsuit did, all despite no one having broken any laws.  It's a reach in many cases, of course, but that won't stop them from trying.  Yet when John Lott looks at what they're doing, he sees something important. [...] Yet the big takeaway is that the killer explicitly noted the role gun control played in his target selection.  He wanted an area with strict gun control laws so as to minimize his chances of being taken out before he could slaughter as many people as possible.  He didn't travel to Missouri or Texas or Georgia to carry out this attack, nor did he visit the much closer state of New Hampshire.  Instead, he opted for gun-controlled New York and says so explicitly.

Illinois Supreme Court Finds Assault Weapons Ban Legal.  The Illinois Supreme Court has found that a ban on assault weapons, passed after the hysteria generated by the July 4 mass killing in Highland Park, Ill., is legal.  A lower court ruled that the law was "facially" unconstitutional because exemptions denied the "law-abiding public" equal protections.  But the Supreme Court challenged the standing of the plaintiffs — not the unconstitutionality of the law.  They allowed the ban to take effect.

Every mass shooting is a gun-grabbing ghoul fundraiser.  Six were killed in a kindergarten the other day.  But the national socialist media didn't blast the details of the crime for hours at a time for the simple reason that doing so would eviscerate a few of their cherished anti-freedom tropes.  You see, it took place under their favorite form of collectivist governance:  socialism with Chinese characteristics.  That would have damaged their "U.S. is violent" and "communism is a worker's paradise" tropes.  And it was a knife attack, so they couldn't blame guns, so they had nothing to exploit and nothing to cynically gain from someone else's pain.  This example is a microcosm of the problem we face.  We have the collectivist control side of the political spectrum so obsessed with the actions of inanimate objects that they've gone off the rails.  Going in directions that endanger people instead of protecting them — that is why they have lost the argument on guns.

Philly Mass Shooting Suspect Breaks All Narratives — BLM Supporter, Wears Women's Clothes, and Some Surprising Posts.  Every time there's a mass shooting, there always seems to be this political crush to immediately politicize it to make it serve whatever the narrative is that people want to push.  It seems like there's always a combing through of the shooter's social media interactions to try to pin the shooting on a side.  And whatever the background, the anti-gun folks on the left make it a staple to attack the guns, not the shooters who just opened fire on people.  The mass shooter who shot and killed five people in Philadelphia on Monday — Independence Day eve — has been identified as Kimbrady Carriker. [...] One of the things that always seems to get overlooked in the rush to politicize shootings is that the issue of mental health, which often factors heavily, seems to get passed over.  Folks on the left are always too busy attacking the gun rather than ever addressing the real questions about the increased issues with mental health.

Cross-dressing gunman behind July 4 Philly bloodbath that left five dead is BLM supporter.  The Philadelphia gunman who left five dead has been unmasked as a cross-dressing Black Lives Matter supporter who made chilling Facebook posts about 'evil spirits.'  Kimbrady Carriker, 40, shot dead four men and a 15-year-old boy in the Kingsessing neighborhood on the eve of the Fourth of July.  He is now in custody and facing multiple murder charges after rampaging through the streets with an AR-15, a handgun and wearing a ballistic vest.

Obama Suggests U.S. Should Ban Law-Abiding American's Gun Rights.  Democrats will fight tooth and nail to keep people from indulging in their God-given rights as free Americans.  Former President Obama suggested that the U.S. follow in Australia's footsteps when combatting mass shootings by banning Americans' right to own firearms. [...] Democrats will fight tooth and nail to keep people from indulging in their God-given rights as free Americans.  Former President Obama suggested that the U.S. follow in Australia's footsteps when combatting mass shootings by banning Americans' right to own firearms.

Allen Mall Shooting Media Darling Turns out to Be Total Fraud.  On the afternoon of May 6th, 2023, 33-year-old Mauricio Martinez Garcia opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, TX, killing eight and wounding seven others.  While the families of those lost in the shooting were still reeling from the tragedy, the left and the media were already working on exploiting the tragedy for their political gain.

Weaponizing Death.  Recently, there has been a spate of horrific murders.  The killers, whether committing mass shootings or single homicides, are hard to stereotype. [...] Unfortunately, these tragedies have increasingly become politicized.  Yet our media and politicians do not apply a common standard of reporting about either the victims, the killers, or the apparent motives and circumstances of the violence.  Instead, each horror is quickly analyzed for its political usefulness.  Then its details are selectively downplayed or emphasized, depending upon the political agenda at work.  A sad example was the terrible murder spree at the private Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.  A transgender male shot and killed six people, including three 9-year-old children.  Almost immediately, three media narratives emerged.  One, semi-automatic weapons, not the killer Audrey Hale, were mostly responsible for the massacre.  Two, the shooter's transgender identity profile played no role in the killing whatsoever.  Three, the public had no need to know of the contents of the shooter's "manifesto."

Karine, Kamala and the Killers.  "Our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now."  That was Biden White House press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre, several days after Audrey Hale murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, nine years old and the daughter of Covenant Presbyterian pastor Chad Scruggs.  By any standard, this mass murder, committed in the run-up to "Trans Vengeance Day," was an act of terrorism.  Biden press secretary Karine Saint-Pierre did not name or condemn Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man.

Sen. Chris Murphy Pushes 'Assault Weapons' Ban, Says Mass Shooters Would be 'Most Affected'.  Gun control Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted Sunday that AR-15 rifles are not necessary for hunting or self-defense and suggested mass shooters would be those "most affected" by an "assault weapons" ban.  He described the AR-15 as "the mass shooter's best friend," omitting any mention that the shooting at an Atlanta hospital earlier in the week was carried out with a handgun.

Why are they hiding the manifesto?  Remember the Covenant school shooting in Nashville?  You are not supposed to.  It is supposed to fade quietly into the background because, well, the facts are inconvenient to the Narrative.  Immediately after the horrific events we learned that there was a "manifesto" left behind by the shooter making it abundantly clear why she committed the act.  In her last message to a friend, she also indicated that she left behind writings about why she committed evil acts.  So far that manifesto has been withheld from public scrutiny.  The powers that be don't want you to see it.  For a brief period, the authorities tried to reverse course and claim that there were only the ramblings of a disturbed person that made no sense.  That was their first excuse for hiding what the shooter left behind.  Nobody bought that for a number of reasons, so a fallback position soon emerged for why the tender eyes of the public must be protected from exposure to the rantings of a lunatic: the words are magically dangerous and hearing or reading them might make people spontaneously explode or something.

Why I'm Not a Republican.  When placating their base is in their political interest they placate them for a time, thereby giving the impression that they actually have some principles.  However, when they decide that betraying their voters is in their political interest, they simply betray them.  For example, following the mass school shooting in Uvalde Texas by a crazed gunman, 13 Republican senators and one Republican House member committed to a "bipartisan" piece of gun control legislation.  This includes many of the usual suspects, Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and House member, Todd Young (R-Ind.). Their "reasoning", so to speak, is that since the back door on the school was unlocked and since the Uvalde police failed miserably to protect the children, it is necessary to take some constitutional rights away from Americans who have done nothing wrong.  Brilliant!  Another important part of their "reasoning" is "Do-Somethingism."  That is, instead of trying to figure out what might actually solve the problem of gun violence, which is unpopular because that requires genuine thinking and courage, neither of which is ever in oversupply in D.C., one hears the plaintive refrain:  "We have to do something."

Mom of Atlanta hospital gunman 'blames messed-up VA prescription for shooting that killed one woman.  Atlanta police are believed to be closing in on a gunman who opened fire inside a hospital, killing one woman and injuring four others before hijacking a car and fleeing.  Deion Patterson, 24, who served in the Coast Guard for five years, was attending an appointment to get anxiety medicine with his mother on Wednesday morning. [...] Raphael Warnock, a senator for Georgia and pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, spoke on at the Capitol on Wednesday and condemned the easy access to guns.

Deion Patterson — Shooter and Killer at Atlanta Northside Hospital — Now Media Will Drop Story.  Deion Patterson is the left wing radical extremist who [shot] up gun free zone Northside hospital in Atlanta, killing at least one person.  Now that Deion Patterson can't be portrayed as some "MAGA extremist", the media will drop the story like a hot potato.  The shooting is most likely fueled by left wing rage against [...] white people.

Atlanta Police Capture Suspect In Medical Facility Shooting.  The Atlanta Police Department has announced that after an eight-hour manhunt, 24-year-old Deion Patterson, the gunman responsible for killing one and injuring four in a midtown Atlanta hospital, was taken into custody.  Patterson was reportedly apprehended in a condominium complex near Truist Park, 11 miles from the scene, on Wednesday evening.  Atlanta police announced that his getaway vehicle was recovered in a parking garage nearby.  On Wednesday morning, Patterson shot five women, between the ages of 25 to 71, in the Northside Hospital Medical Center waiting room. [...] After the shooting, Patterson fled in a vehicle that he carjacked.

Louisville Shooter Killed Five To Get Firearms Banned — And Democrats Are Happy To Oblige.  The U.S. is apparently at such a stage of degeneracy that anti-gun radicals are buying guns to shoot people and make the case for banning firearms.  The man responsible for the deaths of five at Old National Bank in Lousiville, Kentucky, on April 10 reportedly admitted that the motivation for his killing spree was to further the left's gun-control agenda.  A 13-page manifesto uncovered by the Daily Mail allegedly disclosed that the 25-year-old shot and killed multiple colleagues in part to prove his belief that guns are too easy to obtain in Kentucky.  The shooter also reportedly wanted to draw attention to mental illness, something his parents later disclosed he suffered from and took medicine for, and explicitly expressed a desire to kill himself.  The shooter died after police officers shot him.  Ironically, the shooter's death illustrates that the best way to counter a trigger-happy madman is for good guys with guns to employ that great equalizer, but that's not the message gun-control activists took away from the tragedy.  Gun-control backers latched onto the shooter's crimes to embolden Democrats to move forward with unconstitutional red-flag laws and gun grabs.

Going Beyond Feel-Good Legislation: The Truth about Gun Control Laws.  Right now, the left is desperately trying to get Americans on board with further restrictions on lawful gun owners by pretending they will be safer if they do so.  Unfortunately, the tactic can be quite effective, especially when there is a high-profile mass shooting in the news.  This reality emerged during a recent hearing on gun laws at the Texas Capitol.  "The hearing, which took place after 3 a.m., may be the only debate on gun control in the Texas Capitol this year, following the deaths of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde last May," according to Fox News.  "Gun control advocates are frustrated with the lack of action on gun violence, as mass shootings continue to occur across the United States.  Republican leaders in Texas have not announced any plans to consider or vote on gun control measures before the session ends next month."  The report notes that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, along with Republicans in the state legislature, are not too keen on the idea of using the Uvalde school shooting to impose new gun laws.

Nashville Controversy Reveals Liberals' Anti-Democracy Double Standard.  The excuse for the Tennessee Democrats' demonstration was a mass shooting at a Christian school where a woman who claimed to be a transgender male murdered three nine-year-old children and three adults.  But instead of the focus being on an anti-Christian hate crime, the corporate media and Democrats treated the tragedy as an excuse to promote anti-gun legislation.  Jones and his colleagues demanded that the legislature consider such laws.

"I don't have anything to read out".  [T]he Biden Administration is totally uninterested in their pain and sorrow, except as a tool they can use to push their agenda.  They are a backdrop, while these poseurs become the story.  We will hear all about race, equity, gun control, and all the other liberal claptrap, but nothing from or about the people who were actually victimized.  The families who lost loved ones are paper cutouts, while you get to see the political actors in living color and in 3D.  They are the focus.  This is what compassion means to the Democrats: it is to be weaponized for political purposes.  They have no compassion themselves, but they know how to pull your heartstrings.

The media care only about mass shootings that agitate white women.  On Saturday, in Dadeville, Alabama, a Sweet Sixteen party turned into a bloodbath when one of the guests shot 32 people, leaving four dead and 28 injured.  This was the kind of mass shooting that ought to have been the topic of news stories for days, even weeks.  Except, it wasn't.  Sure, the media covered it, but it was maybe a four out of ten on the outrage scale.  There's a reason for that: The shooting seems to have occurred within the black community in a red state, and there's no political hay to be made from that fact.  Initially, the race of the shooter and victims wasn't immediately clear, so you could feel the media getting ready to spring.  Then, it became apparent that the shooter and victims involved in the mass shooting in this small southern town were black.  The first hint was the media's disinterest.

Progressives [are] Not Interested in the Good of the Country.  Predictably, progressives always go right to their favorite boogeyman: Gun control.  "When will we learn?  How much more will it take?"  No new gun laws would have prevented any of these shootings.  The cause is far deeper, having more to do with the shifting/diminishing sense of personal responsibility, the distorted and totally unjustified feeling of entitlement amongst the young, and the growing dissolution of the traditional two-parent nuclear family that is no longer present to impart the time-tested values of right-and-wrong the way they did two or three generations ago.  These are the major deep-rooted causal reasons of mass violence and band-aid gun law "fixes" will have no effect.

Biden is the most amoral President in US history.  This President's obsession with LGBT issues, especially the transgenderism of children, proves his evil intent beyond all other issues.  Neither he nor Kamala Harris could be bothered to visit or even speak to the grief of the families of the victims of the Nashville murder of six people, three of them children.  Instead, they used the tragic event to boost support for transgendered persons, all of whom suffer from mental illness in one form or another.  Numerous school shootings have been committed by trans kids who suffer from gender dysphoria and almost always on drugs, legal and/or illegal.  Both Harris and the White House spoke of their pride and support of the "trans community" and the "Tennessee Three," who mounted a nearly violent insurrection in their State House to ignominiously screech for gun control, as if taking guns away from good people would prevent such mass attacks.  They nearly always occur in gun-free zones.  These idiotic activists know this and do not care.  They seem to be determined that only criminals have guns, as they most assuredly will if in a gun-free zone.

The media's role in mass shootings.  The past few years have seen long stretches of calm, despite the propaganda from the biased and suspect "Gun Violence Archive," which seeks to label almost every petty crime incident as a "mass shooting" in the mind of the public.  On occasion, the peace is interrupted, with mass shootings taking place at predictable intervals after each miscreant from the previous shooting is elevated in the media to anti-hero status.  This is the well known and well studied phenomenon of media contagion, with each subsequent attack being predictable as clockwork.  So why aren't the nation's socialist media taking responsibility for its actions in causing these tragedies?  Why does it appear that they would rather exploit other people's pain for their political gain than save lives?

Nashville flower shop refuses service to Republican event, blames GOP for Christian school shooting.  A flower shop near Nashville refused to provide decorations for a GOP event featuring former President Donald Trump, and urged other businesses to deny future services to the Republican Party in a call for stricter gun laws.  Owners of the FLWR Shop in Belle Meade, Tennessee, said they "immediately declined" service for the upcoming Republican National Committee (RNC) fundraiser and encouraged "others in the Nashville event industry to say no to taking money or jobs from the Republican Party until they begin to make the changes to gun laws that most Americans are calling for."  In a lengthy response to the RNC, owners Alex Vaughan and Quinn Kiesow claimed that while they "respect" the views of their conservative customers, the speakers featured at the RNC event go "beyond our comfort level."  The lineup of GOP speakers includes Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.

Bank Shooter Identified, Employee Who Used He/Him Pronouns.  A shooting at a bank conference room in downtown Louisville, Kentucky on Monday left 5 dead and 6 injured, including the shooter.  The shooter has reportedly been identified as 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon, an employee at Old National Bank.  Sturgeon had texted a friend that he was suicidal and "would shoot up the bank," and had left an ominous warning on social media, according to Intel Point Alert.  [Tweet]  Sturgeon's LinkedIn profile shows he used "he/him" pronouns indicative of a leftist.  And because that's the case, the mainstream media likely won't provide much coverage on the shooting, but they'll still likely use the shooting to call for more gun control.

Groomed to Kill.  After the horrific massacre in Nashville, the Democratic Party is hellbent on feeding the malignant narcissism of the "trans community," in which they see a reliable, perpetually aggrieved voter base and a tool with which to terrorize society.  This isn't "Christian nationalism."  Virtually every institution is sending a message that murderous violence toward Christians is acceptable, or at least less bad than exposing the "trans community" to obloquy.  Law enforcement is obstructing the release of the manifesto.  Merrick Garland won't call it a hate crime, and neither will Joe Biden, who apparently thinks this is all a big joke.  Like Barack Obama, who was diffident about radical Islam, Biden's Democrats are far more concerned with backlash against a politically favored group than the fact that six people, including three children, are now dead at the hands of an anti-Christian cultist whom they encouraged.

Anti-Gun Protesters Count Transgender Shooter Among the Victims During Moment of Silence.  Some protesters inside the Tennessee State Capitol counted transgender shooter Audrey Hale among the victims during a moment of silence.  Protesters in the capitol held a moment of silence for those who lost their lives at Nashville's Covenant Academy, but some disagreed on exactly how many victims there were.  While some protesters held up six fingers, commemorating the three children and three adults whose lives were taken at the horrific school shooting, others held up seven fingers, counting transgender shooter Audrey Hale among the victims.

The Editor says...
After any other mass shooting, when was the shooter counted as one of the victims?

Mass Shooting Statistics.  When a mass murderer shot her way into a Nashville school on Monday and killed six people, most Americans reacted with horror.  Gun control advocates, however, viewed it as an opportunity.  President Joe Biden, for example, saw the crime as a chance to promote an "assault weapon" ban.  Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, responded with a call for gun confiscation.  The corporate media pitched in with a spate of stories claiming that mass shootings literally occur on a daily basis in the United States.

Left-Wing Violence Chic.  A transgender Tennessee mass shooter this week executed three adults and three nine-year-old children at a Nashville private Christian school. [...] Yet in about a nano-second after the news was disclosed, the left-wing activist machine kicked in, led by politicians, entertainers, and the media.  Three predictable themes surfaced.  The first was led by none other than President Joe Biden.  He lectured that guns were the cause of the mass deaths, not the free will of a psychopathic killer.  Few noted that the shooter illegally purchased firearms by hiding her documented record of emotional disorders.  Second, America was told that it would serve no purpose to publish the shooter's manifesto.  Apparently, this exception to the usual practice was due to fears her manifesto would hurt the transgender cause.  Third, some in the activist media claimed that, while such murdering was regrettable, it was also understandable — given supposed Christian, conservative America's intolerance of transgender people.  In our sick society, the targeted victims became the political victimizers.

Anti-liberty leftists are ghouls in the worst sense of the word, exploiting death and tragedy.  Gun-grabbing ghouls have become experts in quickly exploiting other people's pain for their political gain.  Most people are repulsed by this kind of crass political manipulation, but the far-left has elevated the practice to a ghoulish art form to the point of normalcy.  Perhaps, that explains why they don't want to take any serious steps that would work in solving the problem. [...] They are ghouls because of the techniques they use at every opportunity, rhetorically feeding on death and destruction for their crass political power.  Which leads to the second part of the definition.  Most normal people don't have a morbid interest in exploiting a tragedy, or always infuriatingly accusing their political opponents of what they are doing.  By the same token, most normal people are repulsed by those who waste little time in racing out in front of the cameras to proclaim inanimate objects or innocent people to be the villains every time.

Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman SCREAMS at Republicans as They Leave House Chamber.  Democrats want your guns.  They've turned ALL of our cities into violent [places] and now they want YOU to give up your only protection!  These people are just crazy.  Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York screamed at Republican lawmakers as they exited the Capitol building on Wednesday evening [3/29/2023].  Rep. Bowman was captured on video screaming "They're cowards!  They're all cowards.  They won't do anything to save the lives of our children at all.  Cowards."

How the Media Doubles Down on Falsehood.  [Scroll down]  And now we have another shooting of adults and children.  The media and the administration immediately jump on the gun control bandwagon.  Most legal gun owners are responsible citizens.  The NRA tells us that no NRA member has been involved in any of these murders although NRA members have repeatedly stopped some from happening.  But wait, was it a "MAGA extremist" doing the shooting?  No, it was a transgender woman claiming to be a man (maybe trying to prove her manhood by killing innocent children).  Just like most of these incidents, the perpetrator was from the Left.  Ask Rep. Steve Scalise about the Bernie Sanders (i.e., leftist) wacko who shot four Republicans.  Maybe we should prohibit progressives from having guns.

Randi Weingarten calls for gun confiscation: Must 'have the courage to do' what Australia, New Zealand did.  Teachers union president Randi Weingarten called for gun confiscation Tuesday, saying the U.S. must follow "what other great democracies" have done to ban guns, following the shooting at a Christian Nashville school.  Weingarten addressed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Tuesday morning regarding the aftermath of the school shooting that killed three children and three adults.  After having a moment of silence for the victims, she reignited calls to ban "assault weapons."  "Today, we renew our call for common sense gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons.  This is an epidemic," Weingarten said.

Police Reveal 'Detailed Manifesto' to Nashville Attack, Yet Media Shamefully Try to Blame People on Right.  A trans person [...] has been identified as the shooter.  We may find that the story disappears quickly because of that.  The police are working on theories for the shooting.  As we noted there was a manifesto.  The police are now giving some information about that.  They're saying that it was a detailed manifesto to attack the academy, that there were maps, and that [the shooter] was planning more than what happened. [...] So it sure sounds like [the shooter] was targeting the Christian school.  But the media is already working the spin even before all the facts are known.  Even if the attacker might be trans, it is somehow and always the fault of people on the right.

Gun Control Activist Takes Over Nashville Police School Shooting Briefing.  A gun control activist took over the Nashville Police's briefing and began ranting about the problem with guns after the officers had concluded giving initial details about a school shooting at Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school that has left three students and three adults dead.  The woman walked up to the microphones and asked the journalists if they were tired of reporting on school shootings.  She revealed she is currently on family vacation with her child but she came down to the scene when the news broke.  "I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July.  I have met with over 130 lawmakers.  How is this still happening?  How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?  Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens.  It has overtaken cars," the woman said.

Barack Obama Falsely Claims Guns Are Number One Killer of Children.  On Monday evening, former President Barack Obama tweeted his response to the Nashville Christian school shooting by repeating the left's false claim that guns are the number one killer of children.  On March 23, 2023, Breitbart News reported that actor Billy Porter made the same false claim, screaming that "the leading cause of death in children are guns" during an appearance on ABC's The View.

Sadly, we've become an idiocracy.  Do I need to list all the stupidity currently being presented as fact?  It'd be a very long list.  It's hard even to pick out a few points to address.  I'll try to keep the list manageable:  What makes me most angry daily is "gun violence."  Living in the SF Bay Area, we seem to have a lot of guns causing a lot of violence. [...] It's so much easier to talk about preventing "gun violence" than addressing who is doing the shooting and what societal norms have been trampled to allow such things to fester and grow. [...] If we want to change things, we need to acknowledge that much of the violence comes from Blacks (who prey mostly on each other) and illegal aliens (any violence from them is unacceptable).  Reality, folks! Around here, it's generally the same unhinged, gangbanger cohort doing the shooting.

The Democrats' Anti-Gun Manual Exposed.  A shocking new report reveals a deliberate plan by Democrats to exploit incidents of gun violence to their advantage.  As Rahm Emanuel said, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste.  And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."  In other words, forget the facts of cases, the circumstances surrounding them, or even the victims themselves; just take advantage of circumstances and current events to push your agenda.  Or, as the manual puts it:  "The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak."

Shot to the Heart.  Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner has uncovered a fascinating document:  an 80-page "talking points" monograph titled "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging," written by a trio of Democratic political operatives.  The document, as Bedard writes, instructs politicians and advocates "to hype high-profile gun incidents like the Florida slaying of Trayvon Martin to win support for new gun control laws."  Essentially it's a how-to book on inciting a moral panic.

Democratic anti-gun 'guide' urged using Trayvon Martin's death to hit NRA, guns.  "The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak," said the 80-page document titled "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging," and produced by three Democratic firms led by the polling and research outfit Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

Joe Biden and Racial Demagoguery.  Joe Biden has had a long history of racist outbursts. [...] So it was ironic but predictable that Biden went to Buffalo on Tuesday [5/17/2022] to leverage the recent carnage from the deranged, eco-fascist, racist, and insane lethal mass shooter of 11 African-Americans. [...] For Biden, as his midterm rendezvous looms ominously, the Buffalo shooter was useful in smearing his own political opponents.  So Biden saw a trip to Buffalo as an opportunity, in a way other mass shootings were not, and made a rare excursion out of his secluded compound.

A friendly reminder that many gun control groups routinely inflate school shooting numbers.  [Threat reader]  [Scroll down]  Are these all instances of gun violence?  Yes.  Are they all problematic in their own right?  Yes.  But packaging these as part of some "school shooting" epidemic is dishonest nonsense.  [Indeed], they literally count a cop who shot himself in his own vehicle vaguely near an elementary school.  Presumably overnight.  In mid-JULY. We've got a 25-year-old fatally shot [and I quote here] "near a school playground."  On a Sunday evening.  A 17-year-old fatally shot outside of an elementary school... on Veteran's Day, when school wasn't in session.  It doesn't get less absurd.  They include an instance where, after a night game for an adult league flag football league, a man fatally shot a member of the opposing team because of an on-field dispute... solely because it happened behind an elementary school. [...] We've got an instance where a stray bullet struck a window of an elementary school while no one was inside the building.  We've got "a couple shots fired near a middle school baseball field on a Friday evening while a 20 year old and friends were taking batting practice," apparently not directed at anyone associated with the school, and as far as anyone can tell there were no injuries.  There are bullets hitting the outside wall of a middle school gym in the early morning before anyone was on the campus, likely during an unrelated drive-by shooting.

Media has No Standards for Phrase "Surge in Gun Violence" but Loves using it Anyway.  Whenever mainstream outlets use the phrase "surge in gun violence" or "surge of gun violence" you can be relatively assured that they are arguing via left-wing meme rather than any useful statistic.  Most importantly, when someone hears 'gun violence' they are likely thinking criminal use of a gun, when that phrase is deliberately vague so as to overinclude many gun uses that most readers would not intend, such as suicides, defensive gun uses, and accidental discharges.  But this phrase, 'surge in gun violence' is so commonplace that it appears in many mainstream outlets, even when they provide no evidence for the statistical rise in violence, no theory as to why it is rising, and no causal allegation of any kind.

Hard Truths About School Shootings and Gun Violence.  In response to the tragic shooting at a Santa Fe, Texas high school earlier in May, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan tweeted, "What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe?  My family is all in if we can do this at scale.  Parents, will you please join us?"  Duncan's shoot-from-the-hip reaction embodies the "action for the sake of action" mentality that so often follows in the wake of heartbreaking school violence.  Duncan, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, served as secretary of education under President Barack Obama.  Apparently, Duncan is taking advice from Chicago's mayor and former Obama chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, who infamously quipped, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

Biden confident gun control legislation will pass.  President Biden is confident Congress will pass gun control legislation in the wake of multiple mass shootings that happened over the last few weeks.  Biden told reporters on Sunday he believes Congress will greenlight "rational gun control" measures.  "The only gun control legislation that's ever passed is mine.  It's going to happen again," Biden said.  President Biden confident on passing "rational gun control."

The Editor says...
Maybe you could start by sending people to jail when they make deliberately false statements on ATF Form 4473.

The Contemptible American Left.  The American left, whose enthusiasts traffic constantly in victimhood and noble intentions, are once again exploiting and manipulating a tragedy.  They are now shamelessly claiming not only that teenagers who have been victims of or witnesses to a shooting must be the recipients of the nation's sympathy, but that whatever they say — however inane or uninformed, as long as it conforms with the left's anti-gun orthodoxy — cannot be questioned.  Their unfortunate experience gives rise to their newly minted status as unassailable spokespersons in any debate regarding gun control.  Therefore, anyone who has the temerity to question or criticize these newly anointed voices of reason is an insensitive brute who favors continued and unabated gun violence.

The Normalization of Gun Violence Lies.  It takes six months in America to get an x-ray, but you can buy an AR-15 immediately.  That is one of the lies pushed by gun control advocates in the United States.  It is easier to buy a gun in the United States than vote.  Never mind that one needs photographic identification to do the former and, in still many places, not the later.  But again, this is a lie pushed by gun control advocates.  The very people who tell us Donald Trump is a fascist would have us hand over all our guns to him.  The very people who demand Christians provide goods and services to certain weddings or be put out of business tell us we can trust them with our freedom if we give up our guns.  The problem with gun control arguments in the United States is that so many of the gun control advocates lie.  Having never touched a gun, let alone fired one, they make stuff up.  We see this routinely in the news media.

Obama moves to 'shame' Congress into approving gun control package.  President Obama moved Thursday to put the muscle of the White House and his network of supporters behind a gun control package tracking toward the Senate floor, calling on voters to pressure Congress into backing it as the proposal runs into resistance on Capitol Hill.  The president, in a set of brief remarks from the White House Thursday [3/28/2013] surrounded by the mothers of shooting victims, raised concern that the shock from the Newtown elementary school shooting could soon fade.

Keep your guns, keep your freedom.  It's not about guns; it's about keeping control of your life.  The gun control "war" launched against American citizens and the Constitution this past week by the elites in Washington, D.C., is most certainly not about keeping little Bobby and Mary Jane safe in school.  Newtown was the perfect "crisis" that the Obama elites don't want to waste in neutralizing opposition to their transformation of America into a utopian fantasy land.

Democrats See Political Opportunity in Newtown Deaths.  Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania Governor and influential Democrat, drew no gasps of surprise or shocked response from his fellow liberal travelers when he recently articulated the left's position that "the good thing about Newtown is, it was so horrific that I think it galvanized Americans to a point where the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side."  Approving nods and continued conversation ensued.

Obama plans to surround himself with children during gun control announcement.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced this afternoon that President Obama will unveil a "concrete package" of gun control proposals including assault weapons bans, high capacity ammunition magazine bans, and closing loopholes on background checks.  Carney said that the president will be joined by Vice President Joe Biden as well as children who wrote to the president after the Newtown shootings.

Big Government Can't Fix Immorality.  After the wickedness at Newtown, true to their "never let a crisis go to waste" mantra, Obama and his subordinates all across the U.S. have engaged in a full-on press to enact significant gun control legislation.  This continues in spite of the Senate's defeat of a bill in mid-April that would have increased background checks and banned certain "assault" weapons.  For President Obama, this allows him to carry on his never-ending campaign and give more speeches on the matter.  Whether speaking in Mexico (where his administration is responsible for placing thousands of untraceable weapons in the hands of criminals) or before police officers, Obama has vowed to keep fighting for gun control.

Kaine Tweets OSU 'Senseless Act of Gun Violence' — Updates After No Gun Involved.  With early reports of an "active shooter" on the Ohio State University campus Monday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) tweeted about the "senseless act of gun violence" before updating the campus attack was performed with a car and a knife.  "Deeply saddened by the senseless act of gun violence at Ohio State this morning.  Praying for the injured and the entire Buckeye community," Kaine tweeted at 11:58 AM.  The Associated Press reports authorities are saying nine people were injured at Ohio State University when an attacker purposely drove over a curb and into pedestrians and then got out of the vehicle and began stabbing people with a butcher knife.

Showman-in-Chief.  It was beautifully choreographed, like a great ballet, and performed with consummate skill and understated eloquence.  First of all, the scene was set with a room full of people who had lost loved ones to gun violence.  A father whose son had been gunned down made a long introduction before the president showed up, walked down the aisle and up on to the stage to growing applause.  As political theater, it put Donald Trump's rantings in the shade.  As for the substance of what Obama said, there was very little substance, and much of it false, but one of the signs of great artistry was that the presentation overshadowed the substance.

OMalley: A single life 'worth more than all the guns in the United States'.  Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley may not be doing well in the polls, but he's putting in a concerted effort to make his voice heard on gun violence in the wake of the recent Charleston massacres.  "A single American life is worth more than all the guns in the United States," O'Malley said while giving a speech at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco.  "How many senseless acts of violence do we have to endure as a people before we stand up to the congressional lobbyists of the National Rifle Association?  How many more Americans have to die?"  While governor of Maryland, O'Malley instituted laws banning assault weapons and high capacity gun magazines that "exist only to inflict human casualty."

Rev. Michael Pfleger: NRA 'Will Pay for the Murder' of Chicago Children.  On June 6, Reverend Michael Pfleger listed recent shootings in heavily gun-controlled Chicago then said the NRA "will pay pay for the murder of our children."  He was joined by Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence president Dan Gross.  Pleger [sic], Jackson, and Gross rallied outside of Chuck's Gun Shop, where Jackson recently rallied for the ban of guns already banned in Chicago.

Using Gun Violence to Get Elected.  Because "using" crises is so valuable to the liberal ruling class, even if they had a solution to anything, they wouldn't apply it.  After all if your entire political strategy consists of using crises and problems to paint your adversaries as villains and enemies in order to get people to vote for you, the last thing you want to have happen is for a problem to be solved.

Nancy Pelosi coins a new term for gun control.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has adopted a new term for gun control, "gun violence prevention," in hopes that the euphemism will make it easier to marshal public opinion in favor of new gun laws as well as other policies designed to prevent shootings.

There Have Been 13 Mass School Shootings Since 1966, Not 27 This Year.  For many people, the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting — which claimed the lives of at least 19 children and two adults — seemed all the more horrible after they learned it was the 27th school shooting so far this year.  That fact makes it harder to view Uvalde as any kind of isolated incident.  An NPR article highlighting this statistic has been shared frequently on social media.  The headline, "27 school shootings have taken place so far this year," probably gave many readers the impression that gun-related killings in schools have been especially high this year, even before Uvalde.  Naturally, the prospect of 26 other previously unnoticed mass shooting events in schools should provoke alarm.  It should also raise eyebrows.  The problem here is that three very differently defined terms are being used somewhat incautiously and interchangeably:  school shooting, mass shooting, and mass school shooting.  Uvalde was a mass school shooting; the 26 previous tragedies at schools this year were not.

Media has No Standards for Phrase "Surge in Gun Violence" but Loves using it Anyway.  Whenever mainstream outlets use the phrase "surge in gun violence" or "surge of gun violence" you can be relatively assured that they are arguing via left-wing meme rather than any useful statistic.  Most importantly, when someone hears 'gun violence' they are likely thinking criminal use of a gun, when that phrase is deliberately vague so as to overinclude many gun uses that most readers would not intend, such as suicides, defensive gun uses, and accidental discharges.  But this phrase, 'surge in gun violence' is so commonplace that it appears in many mainstream outlets, even when they provide no evidence for the statistical rise in violence, no theory as to why it is rising, and no causal allegation of any kind.

Joe Biden Claims A Whopping 150 Million People Have Been Killed By Guns Since 2007.  Former Vice President Joe Biden made an egregious claim during Tuesday's Democratic debate, saying that a whopping 150 million people have been killed by guns since 2007.  Biden was asked how he would stop gun violence, with the moderator noting that "Congress has not been able to pass a major gun legislation in a quarter of a century."  The former vice president said that he is "the only one who ever got it done nationally" before making the false claim that 150 million people have been killed by guns since 2007.  "One hundred fifty million people have been killed since 2007, when [Vermont Sen.] Bernie [Sanders] voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability," Biden claimed.  "More than all the wars, including Vietnam, from that point on.  Carnage on our streets."

Democrats Demagogue Death.  Every candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, for example, has echoed the familiar refrain that the number of mass shootings is on the rise and that more stringent federal laws regulating the sale of firearms will ameliorate the "crisis of gun violence."  The problem with these claims is that mass shootings are not increasing in frequency.  Nor is there any objective evidence that new gun control laws would reduce their number.  This may be difficult to believe, considering the self-confident certitude with which gun control advocates make their assertions about the allegedly worsening state of affairs.  Nonetheless, a little research will reveal that there isn't even a settled definition of "mass shooting" among the people who produce the statistics anti-gun activists so glibly repeat.

Ilhan Omar slammed for blaming NRA for Virginia shooting that left 12 people dead.  National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch ripped Rep. Ilhan Omar after she blamed the gun rights group for the deaths inside a Virginia Beach municipal building on Friday [5/31/2019].  The embattled Minnesota Democrat took a swipe at the NRA just hours after a disgruntled city employee went on a shooting spree that left 12 people dead and four more injured.  "I am outraged and heartbroken," she wrote in a tweet.  "How much longer will we ignore the pain of our communities?  We need to immediately confront the power of the NRA and end the epidemic of gun violence in this country."

Senator Durbin Blames GOP For Chicago Gun Violence.  Actor James Woods slammed Sen. Dick Durbin after the Democratic Illinois Senator blamed the Republican Party in a tweet for Chicago's gun violence problem.  Durbin shared an ABC News report on his Twitter account about a 19-year-old "anti-violence activist" who was shot while standing outside a store in Chicago's South Side.  "This is heartbreaking," Durbin wrote.  "Chicago has lost far too many aspiring young people to senseless gun violence.  When will Republicans in Congress finally decide to act?"

Mayor Eric Adams to Resurrect NYPD Anti-Gun Unit amid Shooting Spike.  Following the fatal shooting of a police officer in Manhattan last week, Mayor Eric Adams on Monday unveiled his new strategy to combat rising gun violence in New York City, starting with the deployment of an anti-gun crime unit next month.  "We will not surrender our city to the violent few," Adams said.

If Gun Control Stops School Shootings, There Wouldn't Be A Santa Clarita.  With Santa Clarita not even a distant memory, anti-gun voices are already using it to demand more gun control.  Even before the facts were known, Sen. Dick Blumenthal demanded the Senate capitulate to his whims and pass a universal background check bill that wouldn't have done anything to prevent the shooting as far as anyone can tell.  This is normal for anti-gunners.  They routinely prattle about how we need more gun control after a mass shooting.  However, Santa Clarita is in California, the most gun controlled state in the nation.  There's virtually no measure being seriously discussed by lawmakers at the federal level that hasn't been on the books in California for years.  If gun control worked, Santa Clarita wouldn't have happened.

Beto O'Rourke reaffirms dark gun control plan — and says it won't be voluntary.  Democratic presidential contender Beto O'Rourke reaffirmed his vision for gun control Sunday in the wake of another shooting tragedy in Texas that left seven people murdered and nearly two dozen others injured.  "What we've been saying, the rhetoric we've been using, the policies and practices and politics of this country has not been as urgent enough as needed.  Doesn't meet this crisis," O'Rourke said on MSNBC.  "So let's speak clearly and bluntly and then take decisive action:  Universal background checks, red flag laws, ending the sales of weapons of war, but also importantly, and politically difficult to say, buy those weapons of war back.  Mandate that.  Not voluntarily," O'Rourke continued

We Don't Need Red Flag Laws, We Need More Good Americans To Get Guns.  Name the civil liberty that has ever been returned to the citizens after government took it away.  Let me save you some time:  It does not exist.  Governments take away liberties and never return them outside of a political revolution.  The American people are not the ones in need of a "cooling off" period when they purchase weapons.  It is the U.S. government that should be restricted from passing knee-jerk laws in the wake of tragedy to satiate media cries of "SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!" That includes the fresh call for "red flag laws" that allow for confiscating people's guns if someone else tags them as mentally ill or a danger to others.  I don't care who is calling for these laws.  I don't care about their motivations.  These calls for new "red flag laws" are horrid, and Americans of every political persuasion should stand firmly against them. [...] Government employees are not your betters, and they do not have your best interests at heart.

What Law — Specifically — Would Have Prevented Yesterday's UCLA Shooting?  Yesterday, at UCLA, a Ph.D. student shot his professor dead.  Not too long afterwards, he turned the gun on himself.  As soon as the story hit the news, the usual suspects began cranking themselves up.  Americans, they said, need to "do something."  It was time, they argued, for "more laws."  And the NRA? It was, of course, to blame.  Forgive me for being a broken record, but I have some questions in response to these reactions:  Namely, "what something?"; "which laws?"; and "what, specifically, did the NRA do wrong here?" Rolled into one, these congeal into a single, simple inquiry:  "What law — specifically — would have prevented yesterday's shooting?"

Who Decided David Hogg Is Newsworthy?  David Hogg was trying to thrust himself into the media spotlight long before the infamous 2018 shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  His first brush with fame came in 2017 when he recorded a friend having a minor confrontation with a lifeguard at Redondo Beach in California.  Hogg's video went viral.  As a result, he tasted his first thirty seconds of fame.

Anti-Gun Activist David Hogg Declares Virginia Gun-Rights Rally Is Full of White Supremacists.  David Hogg has been in the public eye since the horrendous shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida. [...] Ever since then, Hogg and his then newly minted activist classmates have been in support of removing guns from law-abiding people.  Now Hogg is back from his hidey-hole at Harvard to proclaim the Virginia gun rally a "white supremacist" affair.

March For Our Lives founder leaves the group, regrets trying to 'embarrass' Rubio.  Cameron Kasky became one of the most recognizable faces of the March For Our Lives Movement after he helped raise millions of dollars in a matter of days for a gun-control rally and confronted Sen. Marco Rubio on television after the nation's deadliest high school shooting.  The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior spent weeks organizing a massive march in Washington that morphed into a nationwide movement and summer bus tour, with an eye toward the upcoming November election.  Now, Kasky is leaving the group.

The Stupidity of the 'March For Our Lives'.  They have sucked up nearly every available second of possible air time on CNN & MSNBC (while obviously avoiding actual journalism.)  They've also had ample amounts of cash and exposure thrown their way.  Saturday's march was to be the pinnacle of this outrage movement that has largely been propped up by false pretense.  These young people — immediately thrown into one of the most manipulated controversies of our time — are angry, opportunistic and — just a month after their classmates were needlessly lost — now instant celebrities.  Even though they have little more than a junior high level of education under their belt.  The political left, driven by a leftist media, and financed by uber-rich and hard-left celebrities are willing to use them, and to continue to use them to advance their socialist utopia ideals.

Since the current laws work so well...
Mayor of Chicago Seeks to Further Tighten Gun Laws.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel outlined a plan on Wednesday [5/28/2014] to make Chicago's gun laws, already some of the strictest in the country, even tougher.  Calling gun violence Chicago's "most urgent problem," Mr. Emanuel, who has said the issue is one of his administration's top priorities, introduced a proposal to the City Council that would impose tighter restrictions on gun retailers and buyers.  Under the proposal, all gun sales would be videotaped, an effort to deter buyers from using false identification.  Gun buyers could make only one purchase each month, and gun shops would not be allowed within 500 feet of schools or parks.

Who to Scapegoat?  Guns or Muslims?  Democrats go after gun owners the way Trump targets Muslims.  [Hillary] Clinton pronounced Monday [6/13/2016] as "not a day for politics."  Then she called for a ban on "assault weapons."  The Orlando shooter did use an AR-15 rifle, but, as gun owners have convinced me, a ban on one weapon only steers gun aficionados to weapons with similar firepower.  Calls for such bans do not hinder criminals and do radicalize resourceful gun enthusiasts.  Congratulations go to Clinton.  She just sold thousands of AR-15s.  Clinton made another suggestion:  "If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn't be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked."  Problem:  Such a law would not have prevented the Orlando shooter from purchasing guns.

Jeh Johnson:  Gun Control Is Now 'Part and Parcel of Homeland Security'.  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday that passing gun control laws is now "part and parcel of homeland security" in an interview on CBS This Morning [6/14/2016].  In the segment which was flagged by Politico, Johnson said this was the first time he had vocalized such a belief publicly.  President Obama and congressional Democrats have made a renewed push for gun control laws in the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack on a gay nightclub that left 49 people dead.  Johnson, who made a series of media appearances Tuesday, was asked by left-leaning host Gayle King what it would take to get gun control laws passed in the United States.

Orwellian Fear Reigns in Vermont.  Vermont is the national Petri dish for the Orwellian fear-mongers.  Visceral quaking by overwrought Vermont "progressives" over firearms was well funded by out-of state interests, and Vermont swiftly shifted from one of the least restrictive Second Amendment havens to one of the most oppressive, employing a "thoughtcrime" that was perfectly timed (post-Sandy Hook) to dupe the electorate:  a student was charged with an "attempted" attack on a public school, when there had never been any attempt.

In the wake

See if you can find an overworked newsroom cliché in most of these news items:

Gun Control Groups Aren't Letting This Crisis Go To Waste.  In the wake of the violence in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, anti-gun groups are throwing gas on the fire by demanding that Congress and state legislatures immediately pass a host of new gun laws in the name of "fighting insurrection" and public safety.  They're not just trying to push new restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms, however.  Groups like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence are trying to poison the well of public opinion against Second Amendment supporters as well.

Kamala Harris [is] willing to send [police] to people's homes to confiscate banned firearms.  California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris gave details about her gun control proposals in the wake of the deadly El Paso, Texas shooting after she addressed union members at the AFSCME forum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Saturday [8/3/2019].  When asked by the Washington Examiner if her plan would include legal gun owner databases or gun confiscation via law enforcement visits to residents who own banned firearms, she replied, "I'm actually prepared to take executive action to put in place rules that improve this situation."

New Zealand's Gun Owners Have So Far Voluntarily Surrendered 37 Firearms — Of An Estimated 1.2 Million — Since The Mosque Shootings.  A few New Zealand gun owners have begun voluntarily surrendering their firearms to local police in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings last week that left at least 50 people dead.  New Zealand police said that as of Tuesday night [4/2/2019], 37 firearms had been surrendered to police nationwide.  They did not provide a breakdown of how many people owned those guns, the types of firearms, or the districts where the guns were surrendered.

In New Zealand, a Democracy Turns Against Itself.  One of the oldest criticisms of democracy is that it's prone to degenerating into little more than mob rule, driven by the latest panic, hatred, or revulsion to consume people's attention.  When it comes to stoking such strong emotions, it's difficult to top the effect of the brutal mass murders committed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.  In the wake of that crime, the country's government has succumbed to blind reaction by restricting speech, depriving innocent people of arms, and heightening domestic surveillance — intrusions into individual rights that are inherent whether or not governments and majorities formally respect them.  It's a grim illustration of just how vulnerable the "liberal" element of liberal democracy can be — as our own country has itself demonstrated in the past.

US House passes sweeping gun legislation.  The Democrat-led House on Wednesday broke a years-long stalemate over gun control legislation, approving a bill to expand background checks to nearly all firearms sales and transfers.  The measure is unlikely to survive the Senate, but House Democrats said at least they made good on vows to aggressively push the issue in the wake of a spate of high-profile mass shootings.

DA Warns Pittsburgh City Council That They Can't Make Gun Laws.  Pennsylvania has a preemption law on the books.  That means individual communities can't pass gun control laws.  As a result, the state has a unified framework of gun regulations so that those traveling within it know them wherever they go.  It keeps people from being arrested for complying with the rules in 99 percent of the state, but crossing the wrong line somewhere and now suddenly being criminals.  That hasn't stopped the Pittsburgh City Council from wanting to pass gun laws in the wake of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, though.

NRA hits back:  LaPierre, at CPAC, says 'opportunists' exploiting Florida tragedy for 'political gain'.  The leader of the National Rifle Association on Thursday [2/22/2018] pushed back hard against the latest efforts to enact new gun control measures in the wake of last week's school shooting rampage in Florida, accusing liberals of exploiting the massacre "for political gain."  "As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain," Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, said here in a fiery speech to conservative activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference.  LaPierre railed against "the elites" renewing calls for restricting gun ownership in the United States since the Parkland, Fla. shooting.  "Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms," he said.

The Problem Isn't Gun Laws, It's Government Incompetence.  Obviously, in the wake of the Texas church shooting, Leftists (who often refuse to give up their own guns and/or their armed security) are again calling for lots and lots of gun control, right up to draconian restrictions and even a repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

NRA spokeswoman:  Dems want to ban 'every single part of a rifle'.  Conservative pundit and National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch warned that any new gun control measures in the wake of the Las Vegas mass shooting could lead to a total ban on guns.  "Dianne Feinstein is looking to make a Christmas tree out of the gun control bill," Loesch said Friday in a speech to the Values Voter Summit, a Christian conservative conference hosted by the Family Research Council.  "If they get their way, it's going to be like Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time," Loesch continued.  "They are going to ban every single part of a rifle — period — your regular hunting rifle, until the whole thing is banned.  It was made perfectly clear last week and it was made perfectly clear the week before that — no bans, no bills, period.  None."

GOP Senate Debates Gun Control Instead of Real Measures to Fight Terrorism.  In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Orlando — the largest in the United States since 9/11 — lawmakers on Capitol Hill have yet to introduce one piece of legislation that would actually fight terrorism.  Not one.  Instead, the Republican-controlled Senate has not only allowed Democrats to define the debate and make this an issue about gun control, but they've joined the tour de farce.  That President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats once again called for more gun control in the wake of the tragedy is no surprise.  It's completely predictable.

There Is No Bipartisan Gun 'Compromise' In The Works, Just GOP Capitulation.  Democrats and the corporate media like to call it a "compromise" when they get exactly what they want and Republicans get nothing.  Just witness the bipartisan talks underway in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on new gun control legislation.  These talks, which reportedly involve four GOP senators led by Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, are focusing on two new gun control proposals: universal background checks and red flag laws.  Whatever one's opinion about the merits of these policies, it's a fact that Democrats have long wanted to make it harder for law-abiding Americans to purchase guns and easier for the government to take them away.  Both of these proposals would do just that, while arguably doing almost nothing to prevent the sort of mass shooting we saw last week in Uvalde.  One of the policy ideas, so-called "universal background checks," isn't a policy so much as a slogan meant to convey an inchoate desire that bad guys not be allowed to buy guns.

The Promise and Pitfalls of Universal Background Checks.  Much as we did after Sandy Hook, we find ourselves debating background checks in the wake of killings that would not have been prevented by one.  More than 60,000 Americans died by gun homicide between 2013 and 2017, but our attention is drawn only to the rarest, most spectacular, and most unusual incidents, those where a half-day or so's worth of fatalities happen all in one place — and in those, it is usually the case that the deranged killer bought his guns legally or took them from someone else who did.

Manchin, Toomey both interested in reviving gun control push.  In the wake of the Charleston shooting, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) are considering ways to renew their failed push to expand meaningful background checks on gun purchases.  In separate interviews Tuesday night [6/23/2015], at a reception before a ceremony hosted by Sandy Hook families where Toomey was honored, the senators discussed their desire to find a new way forward.

Appeals court blocks bump stock ban.  During the Trump administration, a ban on bump stocks was passed in the wake of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.  That law has been the target of multiple challenges, almost all from gun rights groups.  On Friday, a federal appeals court in Louisiana struck down the law, finding that under the plain language of the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act, a bump stock "is excluded from the technical definition of 'machinegun' as defined" in those statutes.  The BATFE and the Biden administration disagree and are fighting to keep the ban in place.  This ruling does not mean that the ban is now lifted.  It just means that the lower court who originally ruled in favor of the ban will have to revisit its decision.

Manchin, Toomey both interested in reviving gun control push.  In the wake of the Charleston shooting, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) are considering ways to renew their failed push to expand meaningful background checks on gun purchases.  In separate interviews Tuesday night [6/23/2015], at a reception before a ceremony hosted by Sandy Hook families where Toomey was honored, the senators discussed their desire to find a new way forward.

FBI Director Says Charleston Shooting Not Terrorism.  In the wake of the Charleston church shooting in South Carolina, two particular phrases have been used in the media to describe the attack — "hate crime" and "terrorist act."  Soon after the initial reports of the tragedy, the authorities threw both around when discussing the matter with reporters, sometimes letting their emotions get the better of them.  That is, what Dylann Roof did was terrible, but until the official investigation is complete, the use of either descriptor won't be completely accurate.  But that hasn't stopped FBI Director James Comey from discounting the use of "terrorism" and "terrorist act" to describe Roof's crimes.

N.Y. 'Safe Act' Strips 34,500 of Constitutional Rights, Stops Not One Mass Shooting.  In the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary slaughter in Newtown, CT, New York state passed an "an expansive package of gun control measures" which read like a progressive fantasy:  ban "assault weapons," create a list of dangerous mental patients and confiscate their guns.  As today's New York Times details, several problems arose on the road to peaceful Utopia.  But, progressives can delight in the news that they've compiled a list of 34,500 Americans who no longer have 2nd Amendment, 4th Amendment or 14th Amendment rights.  For these folks, New York state is a Constitution-free zone.

The Bloomberg Backlash.  Colorado rushed out its new regulations in the wake of the massacre at Newtown, Connecticut.  It passed laws to require background checks on private guns sales and limit the size of ammunition magazines.  It did so over the objection of Republicans and as gun control measures were failing in the U.S. Congress.  Voters, at least in some districts, were furious.  One senator who was just recalled, Angela Giron, was from a working class district that was solidly Democratic.  The other, John Morse, was president of the state senate.

Feinstein: Reinstate assault weapons ban.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein rolled out sweeping legislation that would ban more than 150 types of military-style semiautomatic rifles on Thursday, kicking off the congressional debate on a new assault-weapons ban that both sides say faces a steep uphill climb on Capitol Hill.  The measure is by far the most ambitious of the number of gun-control bills introduced in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., last month.

New York passes bill making it illegal for anyone under 21 to buy — or even HAVE — a semiautomatic rifle.  New York's legislature voted on its last day of session Thursday to ban anyone under the age of 21 from buying or even possessing a semi-automatic rifle.  The bill also requires anyone buying a semi-automatic rifle to get a license — which is currently only required in New York State for handguns.  But it is just one part of a larger package of gun control measures announced earlier this week by Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. Kathy Hochul to bolster New York's already strict gun laws in the wake of a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo.

Beware America — Here's What Happened The Day After Canada Banned Handguns And Legalized Meth.  Canada moved to make the sale of handguns illegal under a sweeping new bill introduced in Ottawa Monday in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas school shooting.  Flanked by government officials and advocates, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a "national freeze" on firearms in the country as he referenced increasing homicides in Canada and alluded to recent mass shootings south of the border.  "It will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada.  In other words, we're capping the market for handguns," Trudeau said.  "People should be free to go to the supermarket, their school or their place of worship without fear."

Sandy Hook

The material below pertains to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, December 14, 2012.

Never Let a Crisis go to Waste.  The Sandy Hook tragedy presents yet the latest example of the liberal political strategist's adage "Never let a crisis go to waste."  This slaughter of young children occurred in a "gun free zone," not merely under the jurisdiction of a ban on "assault rifles."  The result was that there existed no means of self-defense.  Perhaps this a reason why such vulnerable targets are chosen.

Revealed:  Obama WH Emails Plotting Strategy Two Days After Sandy Hook.  Former President Barack Obama's education secretary and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel were planning how to turn a national tragedy into a legislative victory for the administration two days after the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.  That's according to emails obtained under a Freedom of Information request from a reporter from the Baltimore Post.

None of Obama's Own Gun Control Proposals Have Anything to Do with Today's Shooting in Charleston.  It didn't take too long until we heard the oh-so-predictable calls for more gun control.  Speaking this morning during an emotional press conference, the Mayor of Charleston, Joseph P. Riley, expressed his disappointment that the massacre at Sandy Hook had not yielded a "major national effort" to restrict the right to keep and bear arms.  Later, he signaled his intention to "push on" toward that goal.  He was quickly joined by the President of the United States, who used his remarks as an opportunity to propose that Something Needed to Be Done.

Just say no to executive-action gun control.  In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Obama seized the moment to push for legislation expanding federal gun control laws.  As it turned out, his proposal could not make its way through Congress quickly enough for public opinion to remain on his side.  The Democrat-controlled Senate could not muster the votes for his plan.  This was in large part because nothing Congress considered at that time could have prevented the bloody school shooting, committed by a mentally disturbed man who had actually been turned down when he tried to purchase a gun.

ATF Proposed Bullet Ban Has Been Fast Tracked.  Following the Sandy Hook shooting, the Obama administration tried to ban several kinds of firearms, including the AR-15.  Now it seems that he may have actually found a way to do it, albeit slowly.  He isn't going to outright ban the gun itself; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) is just going to ban the most commonly sold bullets for the gun instead.

Bloomberg on Unarmed Sandy Hook Principal: "I Don't Know What A Gun Would Have Done".  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg [...] was asked by a reporter to respond to Rep. Louie Gohmert's comments over the weekend that he wished the principal of the school, who died trying to take down shooter Adam Lanza, had a gun.  Bloomberg responded by saying, "There are dumb statements and then there are stupid statements... I don't know what the gun would have done."  With this logic, I'm sure Bloomberg feels the same way about his armed body guards; that the guns they carry to protect him "do nothing."  If sane and trained people with guns are capable of "doing nothing," then why do police and security guards carry them?

Sandy Hook: Obama's Latest Crisis To Exploit.  Liberals have an uncanny knack for designing solutions that do not address the problem at hand, and they're doing it again in their current effort to use the Sandy Hook shootings as fodder for promoting stringent gun control measures.  It's as if President Obama and his fellow travelers lie in wait for the unfolding of big events that they can use to incite the public's passions and thereby gain popular support for otherwise unpopular government action.

The great guns debate: Grabbers rise anew.  Post-Sandy Hook, the great debate over guns has sunken to new levels of deceit and misrepresentation, all in the name of unconstitutional gun-grabbing.  Consider legislation being proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  The California Democrat seeks to dishonestly redefine "assault weapons" — heretofore machine-gun-type weaponry banned nearly 30 years ago — to be just about any weapon that liberals think looks especially menacing or they simply don't like.  She proposes measures clearly in violation of the Second Amendment.

Obama on Gun Violence: No Other Developed Country Would Put Up' with This.  Obama described the resistance to expanding background checks for gun purchases his "biggest frustration" as president, adding, "There is no advanced developed country on earth that would put up with this."  While he said he "respects" gun rights, he lamented the fact that Congress could not pass a bill strengthening gun laws following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Obama, Democrats Misfire on Guns.  President Obama made gun control a priority after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.  After months of speeches that demonized the National Rifle Association, the gun bill failed in the U.S. Senate last month. [...] A poll released by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center one week later showed only 47 percent of respondents were "disappointed" that the Senate failed to advance a bill to expand background checks to gun shows and online sales.  Part of the problem is how the bill was pushed by Obama and his political arm, Organizing for America:  People who own guns were condemned in shrill, strident terms that puzzled people who own guns, and even those who don't.

Obama Exploits Grieving Sandy Hook Mother in Weekly Address.  It is [Francine] Wheeler's choice to appear on camera. But it is President Obama's choice to exploit her tragedy, perversely hiding behind her grief rather than making actual arguments as to why gun control would lower the rate of incidents like those in Sandy Hook.  Nothing Obama is pushing will make any child in America safer; calling on shooting victims' family members to avoid making a rational case for legislation is the hallmark of a political bully.

In gun control push, Obama abandons logic and facts.  After December's Sandy Hook massacre, Obama has reached deeper than usual into his bag of debater's tricks and rhetorical ploys.  He assigns evil motives to those who disagree with him on policy.  He tries to pre-empt cost-benefit analysis with facile assertions that any policy is mandatory if it will save "only one life."  And the most contentious policy he seeks — a ban on so-called assault weapons — has near zero correlation to the problem he claims to be addressing.

Will Obama Exceed His Authority — Again?  Charged by President Obama with forming a task force to examine possible solutions to senseless shootings as we saw at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut last month, Vice President Joe Biden mentioned one tool available to the president is the Executive Order (EO).  It is a viable tool for a president to specify how established constitutional precedent or statutes will be enforced, but it cannot be used to create law.  If the president uses the EO to limit the Second Amendment, or to raise the debt limit, as has also been suggested, he would clearly be acting unlawfully.

Obama Exploits Sandy Hook to Push Gun Control Agenda.  The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are launching a massive gun control campaign as the President begins his second term and a divided Capitol Hill returns to work.  Billed as a response to the Sandy Hook shootings in December, the campaign includes ten gun control bills that were introduced on the first day of the 113th Congress — none of which would have prevented the shootings from taking place.

Obama To Go For Guns in 2013.  Actually, Barack Obama has been against the 2nd amendment for all of his political life, and has sought to ban private ownership of guns long before he ever darkened the halls of Congress or the White House.  Sandy Hook merely provides him with an excuse to once again argue for the disarmament of the American people, a long-time Marxist goal.

Progressives using Sandy Hook Tragedy to Rewrite the Narrative.  There is nothing [...] that makes kingpin Marxists like Obama more bitter than the knowledge that the citizenry he is trying to force into hopeless serfdom cling, against all odds, to their religion and guns.  For if there is one thing that Marxists know it is that religion and guns are the only things that will save the masses from their final capture.

Sandy Hook families secure settlement with gunmaker Remington over 2012 school shooting.  The families of nine victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting secured a $73 million settlement Tuesday against Remington Arms, the gun manufacturer that marketed the rifle used in the deadly rampage.  The families' attorneys hailed the move as a victory that allows others to sue gun-makers in the aftermath of mass shootings.

Connecticut gun-control law prompts Second Amendment lawsuit.  Gun rights supporters are suing Connecticut officials over part of a 2013 state gun control law passed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, saying it unconstitutionally bans people from loading more than 10 rounds of ammunition into their firearms.  The lawsuit filed Tuesday [3/10/2020] in U.S. District Court cites the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the ability of people to better defend themselves with more bullets in their guns.

Kyrsten Sinema Running for Senate in Gun-Friendly Arizona, Co-Sponsored Gun Control Just Last Year.  Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is running for Senate in gun-friendly Arizona but staying mum on the fact that she backed a gun control bill just last year.  The bill, known as the Public Safety and Second Amendment Protection Act of 2017, was little more than a reconfigured — and regurgitated — version of the gun control bill Barack Obama unsuccessfully pushed following the December 14, 2012, attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School.  (The bill pushed in response to Sandy Hook was also called the Public Safety and Second Amendment Protection Act.)

Clinton Vows to Spend 'Every Single Minute' as President to 'Change Gun Culture'.  At a meeting with families of gun-violence victims in Hartford, Conn., today, Hillary Clinton vowed to use "every single minute of every day" to "change the gun culture" in America.  Participants at the event included Erica Smegielski, daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung, and Nelba Marquez-Greene, whose 6-year-old daughter, Ana Grace, was also among the Sandy Hook victims.  Clinton, who has been hammering at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) over gun control, said "if anything else were killing 33,000 Americans a year... we would be fully mobilized, doing everything we possible could to save lives."

Americans Are Ignoring Radical Gun Laws.  Both Connecticut and New York rammed through blatantly unconstitutional gun laws in the wake of Sandy Hook.  Both states banned entire classes of firearms and magazines, and demanded citizens register their firearms.  Citizens in both states reacted with blatant civil disobedience.  More than 85% of Connecticut's gun owners refused to register their weapons.  When spokesmen for the Connecticut State Police made rumblings that they knew who had at least some of these firearms, and that they might attempt to start arresting some of the 80,000-100,000 non-compliant gun owners, Connecticut's gun owners noted that there were only 1,100 State Police, and dared them to try.  Governor Dannel Malloy hasn't dared rattle that cage since.

The FBI's Work in Mass Shootings Is Not Pretty.  The shooting at Sandy Hook has been widely used as a prime example of the damage that most outlets and politicians tout as "gun violence."  A November 2013 report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's Office concluded that David Lanza acted alone and planned his actions but provided no indication why he did so, or why he targeted the school.  A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had Asperger's syndrome and as a teenager had depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder but concluded that these conditions had "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts."  The FBI curiously made no headway into that, either.  The FBI's gaping investigation holes include 1) a failure to investigate the ties to the treating psychiatrist of Adam Lanza and 2) the internal corruption of the Newtown Police Department with Operation Juice Box.  In a nutshell, Operation Juice Box involved selling long guns and drugs, from China, directly from the Newtown police station in Connecticut.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart