H.L. Mencken is quoted as saying: There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.
Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt. Pour yourself something strong, you’re gonna need it, this is going to be a long one.
OK, so most of this is going to be further discussions on gun control because it seems like the PTBs are in a full-court press on that at the moment. Oh and on that subject: Look, call them “the Swamp,” call them “A Shadow Government,” call them “the Deep State,” call them the “Powers That Be,” (PTB) hell call them Fred, I don’t care, but when vastly disparate pieces of the federal government all start sounding off about the same thing, using the same words, on things that are NOT part of their normal swim lane, it doesn’t matter if it’s an organized conspiracy, or an ad hoc conspiracy, the fact remains that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it isn’t a moose.
Before I hit on the whole kerfluffle on Firearms, let me take a minute or two to discuss other stuff.
First, Top Gun Maverick. See it. If you liked Top Gun, you will love Maverick. There was SIGNIFICANT fan service for the fans that know the original without making it something that you need to see the first one to enjoy. Now let me say that the actual mission was NOT as realistic as it could be because frankly there would have been a lot more cruise missile support taking out threats on the way in, but still, great flick, I give it five bullets.
Next, I have to at least mention the Sussmann trial and the vast miscarriage of justice therein. We have RECORD, both written and audio, undisputed, that Sussmann stated he was acting as a concerned citizen, not on the behest of any client when he provided information on the “secret back channel between Trump and a Russian bank. We have a record that the Clinton election campaign instructed him to do so. We also have a record that the Fearless Band of Idiots was looking for an excuse to fuck with Trump. “agent Joe Pientka texted colleague Curtis Heide: “People on 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”
The “7th floor” refers to the most senior FBI agents and officials [including then-FBI Director James Comey], who have their offices on the seventh floor of bureau headquarters in Washington.” Source: https://nypost.com/2022/05/24/fbi-brass-were-fired-up-about-now-debunked-trump-russia-ties-texts-testimony/ Go ahead and read the whole thing, if your blood pressure can stand it, and then ask yourself if you can really state that there’s no such thing as a “Deep State.” The fact of the matter is that even after all of the investigating agents said “I thought perhaps the person who drafted this document was suffering from a mental disability.”
The senior management of the FBI demanded that they keep wiretapping and digging.
If there was any justice in the world, many someones would be out of jobs and doing time. However, whether or not judges, prosecutors, and politicians would like to admit it or not, there is a thing called “Jury Nullification.” What is Jury Nullification you ask? It’s when a Jury decides that “well that’s a bad law, so I don’t care if he did do it, I’m not going to prosecute him for it.” Of note, this jury had three members who were Clinton campaign donors, an AOC donor, and a woman whose daughter is a sports teammate with Sussmann’s daughter. The judge was an Obama appointee who clerked for Clinton’s White House Counsel, whose wife has a client who is closely involved in this whole mess (Lisa Page) who not only refused to recuse himself but who, from the bench limited the evidence that could be brought against Sussmann by Durham, outlawing anything involving Clinton herself… In short, this was rigged from the outset. And of course, since he’s been tried for this and found innocent, he can’t be retried. Sigh. It pisses me off when dirty people get away with their crimes. It’s the ex-cop in me.
On the subject of justice and courts, if you’re a frequent flier here, you already know that I am of the opinion that we have been lied to in school. That it’s not elected officials, nor the voters, nor even the judges that determine what is law.
The original is behind the NYT paywall, but I refuse to give or to ask anyone to give that communist rag a red cent, so here’s a free version.
I’ve said several times that I won’t get into the morality or immorality, right or wrong of abortion as a theory. My faith doesn’t address it, and even if it did, it’s MY faith, you’re responsible to YOUR faith, not mine.
The right or wrongness of the act morally is not the question I’m prepared to discuss, it’s up to each individual. The legality or illegality of abortions in general and how late, is legal, is or should be, and I suspect SCOTUS is about to state, is up to the various states to decide. This is also not the discussion point. The question here is one of “do you do your job?” Let’s look at a few excerpts here:
“By Steve Descano
“Mr. Descano is the commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County, Va.
“Almost two and a half years ago, I took my oath of office as prosecutor, and swore to protect my community from those who broke the law. The real threat, I now realize, may stem from those who write the law.”
“What’s more, in Virginia today women who are suspected of terminating a pregnancy without the assistance of a certified medical professional can face felony charges if they miscarry.”
“When the court’s draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked earlier this month, I committed to never prosecute a woman for making her own health care decisions. That means that no matter what the law in Virginia says, I will not prosecute a woman for having an abortion, or for being suspected of inducing one.”
OK, he’s now on record as refusing to perform his duty. It is NOT his place to determine what is a “good” law, or what is a “bad” law, but he’s decided that it’s within his power.
“We local prosecutors are uniquely positioned to safeguard the rights of the women we represent, by virtue of the discretion the legal system affords us. Every day, we decide where to deploy our limited resources, making judgment calls about which cases are consistent with the values and priorities of the communities we represent, which plea deals to pursue and which crimes merit our attention. When it comes to charging individuals, we are the arbiters of the law.”
There you have it. “I AM the law, I decide what I will prosecute, and what I will ignore.” He said out loud what has been true forever, but no one wanted to admit it.
“For hundreds of thousands of American women, access to an abortion soon will depend not only on which state they live in, but also on how hard-line their local prosecutor is. That’s why I hope prosecutors across the country will join me in choosing to lead on behalf of the women we represent.”
Now I’m not a lawyer, nor am I a Judge, but I know one or two of those who read this particular rag, and I welcome their opinion on this. Seems to me that he is stating he will violate his oath of office and is encouraging others to do the same. I BELIEVE this is not one, but two separate crimes. He goes on later to talk about how he’s already done this on a subject, and not only got away with it but got the legislature to take the crime off the books. It seems he felt that “black and brown marijuana users” got charged more often than white people, so he just decided “I won’t charge for Simple Possession.”
Look I’m not now nor have I ever been a fan of prohibition, including marijuana. Honestly, we usually just made them dump it out in the storm drain, crushed their pipe, and sent them on their way unless it was part of a larger charge, then we charged it too, as something the DA could use as a “throwaway charge” (as in “look, cop to this, and we’ll lose the possession charge.”) I know how the sausage is made. Still, this is a couple of steps too far for me, and by submitting it for publication in a paper with international circulation, our boy has made it impossible to ignore. Imagine if cops said, “you know what, burning crosses in front of black people’s homes really isn’t a crime, we’re not going to arrest for it.”
Hopefully, a judge will decide to “take official notice.”
Moving on, we see that the NYT isn’t happy with just attacking the Second amendment, now they want to go after the first as well: https://news.yahoo.com/racist-violent-ideas-jump-webs-114857457.html There once was a time that “the solution to bad speech, is good speech.” Apparently, that’s no longer the case, they are now formally advocating for censorship. Of course, the trouble with censorship, is, as always, “WHO DECIDES?” Who gets to say “this is true and may be published, this is a safe opinion, and may be spoken, and this is not safe, not true, and must be shut down?” If you don’t get the danger inherent in this decision-making process, you’re in the wrong place, maybe you should go read the Huffington Post.
Now, let us go on to the main event, gun control. Of course, the left is now screaming for a ban on “High-capacity Magazines,” “Assault Weapons,” and even, in Biden’s case, pistols of “high power, you know, like 9MM, those things will tear your lungs out of your back.” Although that got walked back almost as fast as “we are going to replace Putin” did.
(Speaking of which, it seems that Biden is put out that his staff is walking back his various gaffs, which makes it look like he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Of course, he doesn’t, but he doesn’t like it looking like he doesn’t.)
The right doesn’t like this and is saying that Mental health is the issue, and the mental health people don’t like being targeted as possible shooters, so around and around we go.
Well, one of the best ways to lie is to get the statistics to say what you want them to, and this article is full of it. (No, full of lying with statistics. Well it’s full of it in other ways too, but that’s another story.) So, let’s take a look at this:
We’ll start with “Linking violent gun attacks and mental illness can stigmatize people with mental health conditions, despite the fact that those with mental illnesses are extremely unlikely to be perpetrators of violence.” OK, that’s true so far as it goes, but here’s the thing:
EVERYONE is “extremely unlikely to be perpetrators of violence.” Take, for example, Chicago. Last year, the most violent on record in Chicago, which is the most violent city in America, there were 3,561 shooting incidents. There are 2,671,635 people in Chicago, not counting visitors which may be some of our shooters, but for the sake of argument we’ll ignore that. So that means that less than .14% of Chicago is a “perpetrator of violence!” Note: this assumes that each shooter was a different person, that each “perpetrator of violence” perpetrated only once. This is a ridiculous assumption, but hey, even with my thumb on the scale, it’s “EXTREMELY UNLIKELY for a Chicago resident to be a perpetrator of violence.”
Starting to see how this game is played?
Now let’s go on: “Multiple research studies have found that the vast majority of people with mental health conditions are not violent toward others. It is far more likely that a person with a psychiatric disorder, like depression, will use a gun to hurt themselves than someone else. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010, suicide accounted for 61% of gun-related deaths — and most people who died by suicide used a firearm.”
OK, this statistic is often used as a “reason to ban guns!” (Note, for all of this I’m going to try and use apples with apples, so I’m using 2010 data throughout.) Oh my, 61% of the gun violence was suicide! If we get rid of guns, we’ll save all those lives! Well, let’s look at the source data: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Related_Injury_Deaths_2010-a.pdf
Looks like Suicide by firearm is the fourth leading cause of VIOLENT DEATH, at 19,392 with that being as they mentioned, 61% of the total suicides.
But wait, they only list suicide by gun, poison, and suffocation. Those numbers turn up a total of 35,484 suicides. It seems to be a little more difficult to get the total number of suicides in the US, they want to give you a “rate” instead of a number, because it’s scarier. I can’t find a straight number, best I can find is “age-adjusted rate of 12.1/1,000,000” which multiplied by the population of the US gives us 37,390 total suicides. (to put that in perspective, 32,000 people die each year in car accidents.) HUMM, that comes out to 51% of the total suicides being gun related… someone is ignoring any suicide not listed as gun, poison, or suffocation. (Other possible mechanisms include fall/jump, stepping out in front of a truck or train, exsanguination via slitting your wrists, and many others.)
Now, let’s look at the suicide rate here in the US compared to other countries. Well, according to Wiki (which I know is a garbage site, but in this case, they are giving me a link back to the original source, WHO data, and it matches closely for the US so I’m going to run with “it matches closely everywhere.”)
Wow, it looks like the US is #72 for suicides in 2010, with a rate a little lower than what was quoted by the CDC: 11.4, instead of 12.1… OK let’s run with that! Who is above us? IE, who has more suicides per capita? (it’s also worth noting that our numbers for the decades climbed sharply from10.0 to 14.5 for the years 2000-2019.) Anyway, who is above us? Japan, where it’s probably illegal to think about a gun, much less own one. Russia, where if you want a gun you better join the army. South Korea, same there, Finland, where rifles for hunting are the only gun you’re going to get (hint, hunting rifles are almost never used in suicides, you have to pull the trigger with your toe.) India, again, no guns. France, where guns are something you drop as you surrender. New Zealand, guns are effectively illegal, Iceland, guns are illegal there too… Well, I’m not going to look up all 71 countries above us on the suicide stakes, because that’s more work than I see value in, but you get the picture, gun possession rate has absolutely not a fucking thing to do with suicide rate. Nice try gun grabbers, but NO, you don’t get to claim that outlawing guns will save suicides, they will obviously find another way! (Cue Jeff Goldblum: “death… Finds a way.”)
Well. Now that we’ve dealt with that stupid idea, let’s go on.
Ah, here’s another nice little lie with statistics, in this case using apples to oranges:
“But the overall number of crimes committed by people with a mental health diagnosis makes up a tiny fraction of total violent crimes. According to a widely cited 1990 report from the National Institute of Mental Health, people with mental illness committed only 4% of violent crimes.
The likelihood someone commits a violent crime rises to about 10% when an individual also has a substance use disorder. However, when people with mental illness engage in violent behavior, it’s often for the same reasons as people without a mental health diagnosis: People may feel hopeless and harbor grievances related to work, school, finances, or interpersonal relationships.”
SO, just in case you missed it, suddenly we went from “mass shooting events” or even “murder by firearm” to “total violent crimes!” Remember, “total violent crimes” includes every mugging, every home invasion burglary, every assault, and every spouse or child abuse case… Oh my, how we play games with statistics, ST. In other words how you LIE.
There are some valid points in here, YES most mass shootings, whether spree killings like we are actually talking about, or gang on gang violence, or… are men, you got that correct, and yes, they tend to be younger, with a history of trauma, bullying, feelings of rejection… I note that you left out “fatherless/ no male role model” in your little piece, that was a telling mistake but OK. Yes, the population curve matches, with 52 percent white, 21% black, and 8% hispanic (numbers are rounded) the actual population curve is 63% white, 12% black, 16% hispanic… well that’s interesting, it looks like the whites and hispanics are actually UNDER ACHIEVERS… yet, the article would lead you to believe that the white men are the big problem overall. (well we are, but not compared to how many white men there are to go around… and again we lie with statistics, by not bringing the full story to the table.)
Finally they go into “red flag laws.” There is some initial apparent reasonableness to “red flag laws” but here’s the thing. Texas has something that is basically a red flag law… Didn’t do SHIT to stop the shooter.
This study was performed by a whole staff of PHDs and MDs, three PHDs and an MD listed, who knows who “helped” for college grad school credit.
Jama is usually Anti-gun, the study focused especially on San Diego, whose city attorney was a strong proponent of Red Flag Law use, and looked at what changed when California’s Red Flag law went into effect. Using data from hospital reports they studied injuries due to aggressive use of guns. They looked as well at self-harm using guns, again reviewing hospital reports. Yet the findings are summarized as:
Question: Has implementation of the gun violence restraining order law, beginning in 2016, been associated with a reduction in firearm assault or firearm self-harm in San Diego County, California?
Findings: In this cross-sectional study, the gun violence restraining order law was not significantly associated with a reduction in firearm violence of any kind during its first 4 years of implementation, 2016 to 2019.
In fact, they found that after the introduction of the law the number of acts of self-harm involving firearms exceeded the prediction, although this result was not statistically significant.
Sorry, gun grabbers:
Red Flag laws looked promising, but as it turns out, they are worthless.
Oh, but here’s a thing, on 27 May 2022, in Charleston West Virginia, a dude with an AR-15 tried to shoot up a graduation party. Mr. Butler, a 37 YO black male opened fire on “dozens of people” according to WCHSTV. He didn’t hit anyone. A woman drew a pistol from her purse and shot him dead. Maybe, just maybe, that might be a solution, or part of one?
Another excellent piece of work, sirrah! I salute you!
Thank you Sir.