Their observations bring me to a recent newspaper op-ed in which a local columnist exercised her right to publish an above-the-fold opinion arguing that “assault weapons”1 should only be authorized for military use. (She also objected to handguns2 for self-defense.)

Predictably, her column was published in the wake of the attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

Like all of us, she was horrified by these high-profile mass murders committed by sociopathic assailants using what she called “military style” rifles. But our emotional response should be tempered and informed by the facts, chief among those being that such attacks are extremely rare in a country of 330 million people, representing only a fraction of 1% of our nation’s homicides.

Put another way, a homicide victim is far more likely to be murdered by an assailant using a knife, blunt object, or fists than by a rifle of any type.

Like me, I’m sure that this columnist considers ALL violence against innocents abhorrent, regardless of what weapon is used, particularly the epidemic of murders occurring in the urban poverty centers institutionalized by failed social policies of her Democrat Party. But like most of her demographic, she is predisposed to think violence is a “gun problem” rather than a complex cultural problem. Just take the guns away — problem solved!

So why am I rebutting a local op-ed columnist? For two reasons.

First, because her views reflect those of many influential women in affluent suburban communities. And second, because she began her column alluding to a conversation she had “sitting at the bar,” which, with its expensive boutique whiskeys and wines, is where most “enlightened” gun-control insights originate. I could not pass on the irony of discussing gun control over a glass (or more) of alcohol.

Let me start with the sobering CDC statistic that there were more than 88,000 deaths due to alcohol-related causes last year — including 9,967 traffic fatalities. Many women and children are among the victims. There is also a significant increase in alcohol-related deaths among women. As the Journal of the American Medical Association reports, one in eight Americans is an alcoholic according to the clinical definition.

Alcohol, in fact, is the third leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. after tobacco and heart disease, and just ahead of the 70,000 deaths due to drug overdoses.

By comparison, according to the latest annual FBI crime statistics, 10,982 Americans were killed by assailants using firearms (and I note that many of those likely involved alcohol). Less than 2% of homicides involved rifles and shotguns of any type. There are so few murders with “assault rifles” that the FBI data doesn’t distinguish that type of weapon in its records. Rifles and shotguns are the least likely weapon to be used in a violent crime.

As I’ve noted before, if you’re not associated with criminal enterprises, drugs, or gangs, your chances of becoming a murder victim are very low.

Now, I haven’t used alcohol in any form over my entire adult life. But despite the disproportionate number of those who die from alcohol versus those who die from firearms, I’m not opposed to the legal and responsible  sale, possession, and use of alcohol, whether it be beer, wine, or the latest fashionable “hard stuff.” The key words here are “legal and responsible,” and I fully support this columnist’s right to use the hard stuff if she chooses to do so — without an FBI background check.

For the record, what I do not support is prohibition. That didn’t work with alcohol, and it won’t work with firearms. Only law-abiding citizens abide by the law in its finest print, but alcohol prohibition made a nation of otherwise law-abiding citizens lawless. Gun prohibition would do the same.

As for how the columnist’s views reflect those of much of her demographic, she mentioned that her husband likes to hunt and has some rifles and shotguns, which she considers acceptable.

But what she and many like minded suburbanites refuse to accept is that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is not about hunting.

As our Founders intended, the restriction against government usurpation of this right is, first and foremost, about defending Liberty and the inalienable Rights of all people, as defined in our Declaration of Independence  and enshrined in our Constitution — defending Liberty from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

As our Constitution’s author, James Madison, wrote, “The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. … The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any…” There was no expiration date on maintaining that barrier.

The notion that there are tens of millions of gun-owning Americans devoted to the defense of Liberty is very  discomforting to those who are not engaged in the animating contest to preserve that “barrier against the enterprises of [government] ambition.” All Americans enjoy the protections of that invisible barrier, which generations of military and civilian American Patriots have provided since 1776, though many fail to appreciate it.

While the real purpose and necessity of the Second Amendment may cause some comfortable suburban dwellers heartburn, it absolutely terrifies most Beltway Democrats, who are building their political fortunes on “the enterprises of ambition.”

Fact is, those citizens who choose not to exercise their right to possess a firearm owe a great debt of gratitude – whether they are willing to acknowledge it or not – to the legions of today’s Patriot Minutemen who form that barrier wall.

I should note here that, as an advocate of gun ownership, I have trained a lot of women on the safe handling and use of handguns in preparation for obtaining their “right to carry” permits. Tennessee mandates proper training regarding the safe and legal use of handguns — as I think all states should do before issuing permits.

I’ve also provided many women who had never before fired one of those “assault rifles” the opportunity to do so. While most were apprehensive at first, to a person they were ultimately thrilled to fire these weapons and generally unable to conceal their smiles.

I have extended that invitation to our local columnist, if she’s interested. And, regardless, I’ll support and defend her right to her opinion every day – even though her opinion may not be right.

Footnote 1: Just to be clear, what Democrats and the mainstream media call “assault weapons” are not that. An assault weapon is a select-fire weapon that can cycle rounds in fully automatic fashion. As for “military style” weapons, scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton banned the sale of those in 1994, but that ban was not renewed 10 years later when it was determined the ban had no effect on crime reduction. According to Rand Research, “We found no qualifying studies showing that bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated.”

Footnote 2: As for handguns and self-defense, the columnist also enjoys the protection of her neighbors who do own handguns — because criminals don’t know which homeowners have the ability to defend themselves. Convicted violent felons indicate that the number-one deterrent when choosing a victim is that person’s ability to defend himself or herself. However, if she wants criminals to make that distinction, I have offered, free of charge, our “Gun Free Household” sticker, which she can apply to her doors and windows!   ~The Patriot Post

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Merriam-Webster publishes the modern version of the first American dictionary, compiled by Noah Webster. According to Wikipedia, “In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster learned 26 languages. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used somewhat different vocabularies and spelled, pronounced, and used words differently.”

We note that history so as to emphasize Webster’s hope “to standardize American speech.” His purpose was to unify Americans around common spelling and definitions of words, as well as our understanding of language itself.

The iconoclasts of today’s Left want the opposite — to divide Americans by destroying the meaning of words, along with tearing down statues and renaming buildings. And then they wonder why Americans are so divided. Perhaps it’s because some of us still know what words mean and prefer to stick to age-old definitions, even when we’re labeled “bigots” by the wokes colds who live in an alternate reality.

It’s “newspeak” in all its, er, glory. What is newspeak? Coined by George Orwell in his novel 1984, no less than Merriam-Webster defines it thus: “Newspeak was characterized by the elimination or alteration of certain words, the substitution of one word for another, the interchangeability of parts of speech, and the creation of words for political purposes.” That pretty much sums up what Merriam-Webster has succumbed to.  

~The Patriot Post

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dinky-Warren laments, “In 1958, the National Election Survey first asked Americans a simple question: Do you trust the government to do the right thing most of the time? That year, 73% of Americans said yes. In 2019, that number is just 17%. Five out of every six Americans do not trust their government to do the right thing. Why have so many people lost faith in government?”

The senator blames “right-wing politicians” for spending “a generation attacking the very idea of government,” before launching on her tired refrain about the “wealthy and the well-connected” — of which dinky-Warren herself is a prominent member. But we can think of two answers to her question that are intimately related. The first is this admonition from Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address: “A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

The second is that the warning issued by James Madison, author of the Constitution we celebrate today, has come to pass: “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

Why don’t Americans trust the government? Because it’s doing things poorly that it was never constitutionally empowered to do in the first place. Power, meet abuse. To say so is not “attacking government.” It’s advocating a limited and constitutional one.

Virtually the entire Democrat platform since, oh, about 1958 has been along the lines of the so-called “Great Society” — unconstitutional and failed welfare programs that “take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned,” only to give it to someone who didn’t earn it. Of course, Democrats really began traveling down the “progressive” road with Woodrow Wilson’s income-tax-funded administrative state and stomped on the accelerator with Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” socialism.

Naturally, dinky-Warren only doubles down on the Democrats’ top-down, government-control approach. Regulate this, outlaw that, tax the other thing. That’s why it’s almost comical that her plan echoes Barack scumbag/liar-nObama in its call for “big, structural change to fundamentally transform our government.” How is it fundamental change to do more of what government has spent the last century doing?

In all honesty, we do indeed need a fundamental transformation — one that returns the federal government to its proper, constitutionally limited role. That means things like prioritizing national defense while ceasing the income redistribution that consumes two-thirds of the $4 trillion budget and feeds the very lobbying problem Warren claims to want to eradicate. Warren and her fellow socialists demand even more redistribution programs that would only exacerbate the corruption they claim to want to solve.

But as a final thought, the Founders thought the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (i.e., lobbying) was important enough to place in the First Amendment. Yes, lobbyists can be corrupt, but no more so than the politicians and unelected bureaucrats crafting reams of rules dictating everything from what kind of light bulb we use to how much water our toilets flush. Warren’s plan to gut the First Amendment simply because she doesn’t want to hear from lobbyists who oppose such things isn’t removing corruption; it’s adding tyranny.

The late, great Charles Krauthammer wrote this of lobbyists in 2008:

Everyone knows the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. How many remember that, in addition, the First Amendment protects a fifth freedom — to lobby?

Of course it doesn’t use the word lobby. It calls it the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so that you can actually stay home with the kids and remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.

To hear the candidates in this presidential campaign, you’d think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding, a black art practiced by the great malefactors of wealth to keep the middle class in a vise and loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants.

Lobbying is constitutionally protected, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it all. Let’s agree to frown upon bad lobbying, such as getting a tax break for a particular industry. Let’s agree to welcome good lobbying — the actual redress of a legitimate grievance — such as protecting your home from being turned to dust to make way for some urban development project. …

Good lobbying … is a cherished First Amendment right — necessary, like the others, to protect a free people against overbearing and potentially tyrannical government.  

~The Patriot Post

 

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Now, let’s get one thing straight: The United States of America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. While there are many features of a democracy, like our elections and statewide referenda, there are other features that temper its control over policy and laws. The Constitution also established a breakwater. However, the term democracy is often used as a term for countries that have free and fair elections and free people — with the United States and the United Kingdom being among them. Part of the principles of democracy also include accepting the results of elections. This last part, though, is proving difficult on both sides of the Atlantic.

For instance, let’s look at recent events in the United Kingdom regarding whether that country would remain in the European Union. In June 2016, the Brexit referendum passed with nearly 52% of the vote. It was a 3.78% margin of victory — one that pre-referendum polling did not see coming. The British people decided that they wanted out of the EU.

What has happened in the three years after the referendum should be very concerning to those who loudly proclaim to believe in democracy. In essence, while a majority of the people of the United Kingdom wanted out of the European Union, the opposite was true when it came to the political establishment, not just in London, but in Brussels (EU headquarters) as well.

In fact, to keep other countries from trying to follow the “Brexit” path, the European Union has tightened the screws on the United Kingdom, pour encourager les autres. This extortion plan was in place months before the Brexit vote.

Meanwhile, there have been efforts to either force a second referendum (with the hopes that the bullying and blanket press coverage in favor of repudiating the 2016 vote), to cancel Brexit entirely, or to come up with a supposedly “soft Brexit” that would not really be a Brexit. Boris Johnson was elected as leader of the Conservative Party on the promise that the UK would be out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal. Yet various opposition parties in Parliament, with the aid of “Remainer” Conservatives, blocked a “no deal” Brexit. Then, they blocked a snap election.

It’s pretty obvious here that the will of the British people is being thwarted. Would Brexit be painful? Voters assumed there would be some pain involved, yet they made the decision that the pain of Brexit was worth being free from Brussels bureaucrats. Now, they are seeing the majority of their elected officials try to thwart it any way they can. So, who is really killing democracy in the United Kingdom?

We now turn to America to face the same question. The Brexit referendum would rank as the biggest political upset of the past decade, if not for Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, we’ve seen serious questions about abuse of power, which included turning the intelligence community on the presidential campaign of the political party not in power. There is a search for some accountability for Spygate, but getting it is like pulling teeth.

In addition, there are many other abuses that need to be addressed. New York Democrat Gov. scumbag-Andrew Cuomo is openly trying to suppress the political activity of groups like the NRA that represent citizens who speak out against his anti-gun agenda.

Democrats have long claimed that “voter suppression” caused the defeat of Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Brian Kemp, her Republican opponent in the gubernatorial race and secretary of state at the time, denies he suppressed votes. Abrams and her supporters haven’t offered evidence to support her opposite claim, yet they are allowed to repeatedly make it, and to claim that her defeat is a sign that democracy in America is dying.

Yet the actions of scumbag-Cuomo (who has admitted publicly that he seeks to bankrupt the NRA) did suppress the political activity of the NRA in the 2018 midterms, and arguably tilted a governor’s race in Wisconsin and a Senate race in Arizona (among a number of close House races) in favor of candidates more receptive to his agenda. There is no small chance we could see similar suppression in the 2020 presidential race. scumbag-Cuomo doesn’t even bother to deny it; he proudly proclaims that such suppression is what he wants to see happen.

So is democracy dying? Well, one key aspect is clearly not in good shape: The acceptance of election results. The efforts to stymie Brexit and the investigations of President Trump are not good signs — and you can bet that these actions will see reciprocal ones in kind should better angels not prevail. Worse, in America, the string of abuses we have seen in recent years are endangering the concept of free and fair elections.

Benjamin Franklin famously told someone who asked what had come from the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, if you can keep it.” This next election cycle could wind up being very decisive in determining if America keeps its republic.   ~The Patriot Post

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“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” ―Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky

Last Wednesday, America once again commemorated the most devastating domestic attack in the history of the nation. Eighteen years ago, while the rubble was still smoldering where the World Trade Center once stood, Americans learned that a then-largely unknown terrorist group called al-Qaida, led by a man named Osama bin Laden, was responsible. They also earned that the government of Afghanistan, run by Islamist extremists called the Taliban, had allowed al-Qaida to use their country as a staging ground for the attack.

Only hours before the attack, former President scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton spoke at a business meeting in Melbourne, Australia, addressing his administration’s approach toward bin Laden. “I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” scumbag/liar-Clinton said. “I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”

scumbag/liar-Clinton made it sound like the opportunity to capture the terrorist mastermind was a one-off. It wasn’t. “President scumbag/liar-Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year,” wrote Council on Foreign Relations member Mansoor Ijaz on Dec. 5, 2001. “I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.”

Subsequently, scumbag/liar-Clinton’s stance became known as the “law enforcement” approach to terrorism. It was embraced by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and his administration, which engendered the contemptible reality that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will finally be tried on Jan. 11, 2021. In 2008, the scumbag/liar-nObama administration rejected his willingness to plead guilty before a military commission because of their “ideological insistence on treating terrorists like common criminals and trying them in federal courts,” as columnist Marc Theissen explained in 2010.

Politics was also part of the equation. Mohammed had been “waterboarded,” which was subsequently defined as “torture” when it became expedient to do so — even though it was once part of the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (S.E.R.E.) training program. Yet many of the same Democrats and media personalities who condemned the “barbaric practice” to bash the Bush administration’s approach to terror abided the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s summary  execution of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike on Sept. 30, 2011. In fact, scumbag/liar-nObama bragged about it, calling it a “major blow to al-Qaida’s most active operational affiliate.”

The U.S. military quickly ousted the Taliban government and al-Qaida in what was often referred to by the Left as the “good war,” for no other reason than to contrast it against the “bad war” that subsequently occurred in Iraq. That would be the Iraq war overwhelmingly authorized by both Houses of Congress in December 2002, including “yea” votes from loose lips liar-Joe Biden, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, hanoi-John Kerry, and John Edwards. One month earlier, President George W. Bush won a unanimous vote from the UN Security Council for  Resolution 1441, stating Iraq was in material breach of ceasefire terms related to WMDs, prohibited missiles and the purchase of prohibited arms. All of the attention directed at Saddam Hussein was based on the assessments of British and American intel that Hussein either had, or was in the process of developing, WMDs.  So soon after 9/11, the thought of a brutal dictator possessing nukes — nukes he could give to terrorist groups to which his nation provided support — was untenable.

Thus a multinational coalition force invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, and ousted Saddam Hussein’s government in just three weeks. While most media to this day insist no WMDs were found, 550 metric tons of “yellowcake,” a component of higher-grade nuclear enrichment, was airlifted from Iraq to Canada in 2008.

During the 2004 presidential primaries, anti-war activist Howard Dean initially vaulted into the lead. Shortly thereafter, candidates hanoi-John Kerry and John Edwards “discovered” they were against the war they initially voted for. “Bush lied, people died” — a throughly discredited lie in and of itself — became the vehicle the Left used to ignite war weariness among Americans.

In reality that weariness was almost wholly engendered by the endless, expensive, and thoroughly discredited effort to “nation build” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, long after our military objectives were achieved.

That people like Tucker Carlson, and several others on the Left and Right, conflate nation building with wars fought for national security is utterly preposterous.

That kind of war weariness is a luxury, one apparently borne of the belief that if the U.S. simply minds its own business, millions of Islamic extremists, Chinese Communists, Iranian mullahs, and other bad actors in the world will follow suit. Yet as the scumbag/liar-Clinton era reminds us, treating terrorists as a law-enforcement problem didn’t stop the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, or the initial attempt to destroy the Word Trade Center.

Where Carlson and others rightfully gain traction is with the political cowardice that has put men and women in harm’s way absent the desire to achieve unambiguous victory. It has been that way since Vietnam, and has been epitomized by such despicable concepts as the Rules of Engagement, the “winning hearts and minds” strategy that consisted of unarmed coalition troops cohabiting with armed Afghan trainees in order to “build trust,” a maniacal obsession with preventing civilian casualties even if it endangers American troops in the process, and scheduled troop withdrawals. What about breaking the enemy’s will, which is the ultimate prerequisite for achieving victory and discouraging future conflicts?

Missing in Action.

It’s easy to blame people like John Bolton and others for a hawkish approach to world affairs, but where would blame be directed if America endured another domestic attack as bad — or far worse — than 9/11? Can Carlson, et al, completely assure Americans that Iran’s ruling regime, which leads chants “death to America” on an annual basis, or Chinese Communists, who steal our intellectual property with abandon even as they amplify their military adventurism with equal fervor, are simply misunderstood characters needing only a congenial word or gesture to abandon decades of contemptible behavior?

Absent the poison of political correctness that embraces the blame game, the finger-pointing — and 20/20 hindsight most of all — it is worth remembering that Trotsky’s quote remains as relevant as ever. And while men like John Bolton may be too reflexive regarding the use of force, reflexive avoidance of its use could be immensely catastrophic.

America should look for every opportunity to avoid conflict, but it should never do so at the expense of national security.

If war is inevitable? Victory should be just as inevitable — political correctness be damned.   ~The Patriot Post

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We documented one such case back in March 2017. At the time, a farmer by the name of John Duarte was handed a $2.8 million fine. His sin? Plowing and planting wheat on his own land, which was lodged in wetlands. The government concluded that Duarte had failed to obtain certain permits and was thus liable for nearly $3 million in punitive fees. This was in addition to the government’s blatantly ignoring agricultural exemptions.

It gets worse.

As The Daily Caller further reveals, “In a 2016 case … Navy veteran Joe Robertson was criminally prosecuted and served 18 months in prison because he dug ponds around his Montana home in the hopes of keeping wildfires at bay. The ponds were connected to a foot-wide ‘river,’ so the EPA determined that Robertson had been digging too close to ‘navigable water’ without a permit.”

Thankfully, sanity is being restored.

According to an op-ed published Thursday by EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Army for Civil Works Assistant Secretary R.D. James, “Today, EPA and the Department of the Army will finalize a rule to repeal the previous administration’s overreach in the federal regulation of waters and wetlands. This action officially ends an egregious power grab and sets the stage for a new rule that will provide much-needed regulatory certainty for farmers, home builders, and property owners nationwide.”

In other words, the rule is being compressed into what Wheeler and James say is “one standard that can advance economic development and environmental protection.” Obviously, ensuring that our water remains clean is a noble endeavor. But undermining property rights through onerous regulation isn’t the way to achieve it.   ~The Patriot Post

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Max Eden and Andrew Pollack (whose own daughter was killed in the shooting) have co-authored a book entitled  Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students. The book spells out in chilling detail how school officials turned a blind eye to behavior that should have spurred them to action many times over.

Let’s be clear: The adolescent murderer of 17 innocent people didn’t snap in a moment of rage. And nothing he did on that fateful day surprised anyone who knew him. In fact, it’s likely that many were surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

Eden and Pollack write at The New York Post, “[His] records suggest that his reign of terror at Westglades Middle School began halfway through his seventh-grade year, in February of 2013. For the next calendar year, [he] was suspended every other day. Why did the school allow him to remain enrolled despite his daily, deranged behavior for a full year? Not by negligence, but by policy.”

They add, “Students with disabilities are supposed to be educated in the ‘least restrictive environment’ possible, regardless of whether their disability is that they’re dyslexic or a psychopath, and the paperwork requirements to send them to a specialized school can take many months.”

Despite a laundry list of truly disturbing incidents, the future assailant was allowed to enroll at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High after a brief period of good behavior. And while the mainstream media tried to convince the rest of us that gun control alone would have stopped this slaughter, the facts paint a far more disturbing picture of negligence on behalf of school officials. Indeed, Eden and Pollack highlight distressing trends in public schools across the country, where the most deeply troubled students are free to do the most awful things.

Apparently, the loss of life in Parkland did little to stop California Democrats from making sure the next school shooter will have a safe place to shed more blood. There, Democrat Gov. scumbag-Gavin Newsom recently signed  into law a bill prohibiting schools from suspending students in grades 4-8 for disruptive behavior. Previously, the ban on suspensions only applied to elementary-school children. The new law also stops charter schools from taking students out of the classroom. Supporters of this ill-conceived measure claim that sending these students home disproportionately affects students of color and those with disabilities.

Florida’s Broward County, home to the Parkland massacre, is known across the nation for having followed Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s preferred policy to reduce suspensions and expulsions — without having reduced troublesome behavior. In schools like Stoneman Douglas, it’s apparently more important to appease various social and political groups than to protect students. Such policies ensured that Broward County would keep its name in the national headlines, albeit with unspeakably tragic results.

It could have been different.

Robert Verbruggen writes at National Review, “Against standard practice, the school’s principal had decided no one could call a Code Red but him, to avoid false alarms that could bring bad PR, and the principal was gone that day. Most notoriously, school resource officer Scot Peterson hid outside the building the entire time rather than confronting the shooter. The shooting could have been stopped years before it started and could have played out differently. Every step of the way, officials failed. These failures were sure to result in a catastrophe of some kind, if not necessarily a massacre.” Verbruggen notes several other key factors that contributed to the lack of security at the school.

We can’t place all the blame on the school’s officials, however. The entire community failed the victims and their families, from the local sheriff’s office to mental health professionals to the FBI.

Sure, some students can be paired with school counselors who can effectively treat them and return them to the classroom. But there are exceptions, and we should have policies in place to address those exceptions. Clearly, the Parkland killer was an exception.

It’s far too easy to blame guns for the rash of violent school shootings. Moreover, politicizing these atrocities does nothing but distract from addressing their root causes. We can only hope that Eden and Pollack’s book will lead an effective discussion about how to spot and stop these school shooters before the trigger is pulled.   ~The Patriot Post

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liar-Pelosi was asked whether she regretted not bringing the House back early from its August recess “to keep the flame lit on gun violence.” She became clearly agitated, firing back, “We did our job. The Senate was supposed to come back. Why don’t you all get that straight? The Senate did not come back to pass the bill.” After expressing her anger over the “silliness of these questions,” liar-Pelosi bloviated, “Lives are at stake. Senator McConnell is standing in the way. … Don’t ask me what we haven’t done! We have done it! … Sen. McConnell hasn’t acted. Why don’t you go ask him if he has any regrets for all the people who died?”

Getting past liar-Pelosi’s emotional theatrics, the reality is that Democrats are seeking to force McConnell into taking up some of their gun-control proposals. Ironically, even with these clearly Orwellian bills that liar-Pelosi knows would never pass constitutional muster, Democrats are still backing away from passing their most loudly advocated gun-control measure: a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Since liar-Pelosi and company know that these bills amount to little more than anti-gun virtue signaling, why not go all the way and pass their “assault weapon” ban?

The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti notes that “some moderate Democrats — especially those running for office next year in decidedly purple districts — won’t sign on to a blanket assault weapons ban, leaving Democrats around ten votes shy of getting the ban passed in a branch of Congress that they control. That’s right: the ban is so unpopular that Democrats aren’t able to marshal their own to support a bill that has no hope of passage.”   ~The Patriot Post

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