Gun Owners: Defend and You're on the Snide!

It was alleged on the  news today that some subhuman shot up a birthday party in Oklahoma City and  was confronted by two legally armed citizens who demanded he submit.They shot and killed the alleged criminal when he appeared to be aiming the gun at them. Probably lucky for the good guys that it happened in a common sense place like Oklahoma and not in the People's Republic of NY.  In New York if they were to do such a thing they would be in very, very serious legal jeopardy.  Do ya think that just might make the law abiding hesitate to get  involved? Lets imagine how the news would be if it happened there:

"Two men  are being held without bail tonight.  They allegedly used supposedly legally possessed firearms to shoot and kill a gunman who had  just shot two participants in a birthday party. It is alleged that when they demanded that the gunman submit, the gunman aimed at them and they shot the gunman. They are charged with second degree murder, brandishing, making a terroristic threat and illegal possession of a weapon .  Gov. Cuomo said 'It is of course of great concern to law enforcement and citizens when overeager vigilantes recklessly presume to take the law into their own hands; a life is now needlessly forfeit because of it'.Those shot at the party were unavailable for comment." Gov. Cuomo is of course well known for his warm and forgiving feelings toward violent felons and his disdain for law abiding gun owners.  His parole board recently freed a killer of two policemen and he ain't losing any sleep over it. No word yet on restoration of the enjoyment of life itself to the slain officers. 

There is a way to stop this kind of thing.  The Federal Department of Justice should make it abundantly clear that it will immediately and closely scrutinize any case like this to ascertain whether the civil rights of  law abiding good samaritans and those of potential victims they saved are being violated when they are taken to potentially life ruining task  by ambitious prosecutors  and/or the laws of left leaning states. If it decides such offense has been made, serious Federal criminal charges should be leveled if possible. Some states already have laws protecting courageous ones who choose to risk everything by using force to protect the innocent. But, perversely, some don't.

It used to be assumed that 2+2 equaled 4; that up was up and down down, that being bad was bad and being good was good and, (stick with me now, "progressives" )  that goodness should not be punished.  And in the greater part of our country these truths prevail. But there are some states, and they have the considerable law making powers which accrue to states, in which moral relativism has so corrupted public policy and legal thinking that these verities are denounced. So it was in the formative days in smoky '60's dorm rooms and so it is by law now.  So if  you use force to confront a thug, its YOU that's on the snide; its you who are guilty until improbably and at some little cost grudgingly certified innocent.  Ask law enforcement and corrections officers; they know.  This is powerful and completely unacceptable nonsense and we have a Federal administration capable of confronting it with civil rights law enforcement.  We must urge it to do so.  Jack 

 

Democrats - You're losin' 'em.

In our little town here I have a friend who owns a car and truck repair business which he and his wife have built, with enormous effort, into a highly respected and, I trust, successful enterprise.  He told me something yesterday which was music to my ears.  He's always told me that his business and maintaining his mastery of mechanics requires most of his time and effort.  He has opinions on public policy but he doesn't have the luxury of being able to expend much time or energy to pursue them.  But he said this:  "I didn't vote in 2016 because I didn't like either candidate but, for sure, now I'll never vote for a Democrat ever again.  Trump is doing a good job and all they can do is attack him". Oh gads I hope this is represents a trend.   Joe, Bernie, Kamala, Cory, naughty Kirsten and even Andrew - take heed: you've lost his vote and maybe many of his hard working  colleagues across a land the vastness of which you would be stunned by if you were willing to do other than fly over it and sneer.

Recent primaries appear to show that Trump nation is ready to stand by him again and that we are incensed by the vicious onslaught on him by Democrats and their media toadies.  As if we needed it, now we have Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former Democrat Chair, sniffing that NRA is close to being a terrorist  organization.  Good goin' Deb, we know how well your "war on women" screed went in 2016.  Thanks for reminding us how very much you and yours loathe the real America.  NRA is sort of popular with us don't you know? You'll need some of our votes to surf that "blue wave" in November and you're losing more of them every day. I still get a kick out of the fantasy of you serenading Hillary after the election with "don't cry out loud . . . remember you almost had it all". You ought to know; the withering disdain you, her and your ilk display for us was a big factor in her loss and its still at work. 

The 2016 election was critical in that had we lost we probably would have been finished, I think. Now the shoe is on the other foot.  The Dems are still showing much of the overconfidence in which they luxuriated in 2016. It still hasn't dawned on them that we got their message alright; we just don't like it, despite its "unquestionable" transcendent truth and virtue.   If they lose again they may begin on the long slide to marginality they thought to put us on.  They may become as disoriented and vexed as to nominate a real whopper in 2020 - one who entertains no compromise with politically incorrect heresy and, well, reality but floats their perfectionist boat.   I'm sure Van Jones would be pleased to serve;  Jerry Brown might come down from Olympus - he thought about it before. Maybe Zeus dissuaded him before playfully transforming himself into a pile of coins.  It would be high comedy to see Rachel Maddow run and have to face actual opposition and disagreement insolently directed at her very person.  It could be that the left blew its big chance to dominate in 2016 and that its beginning to know it and to panic. Why, maybe it has decided its just too good for this country; "let them stew in their primitive juices - we tried to enlighten them!"   The road ahead will be rough for them and we have a proven effective leader; they don't.  Jack    

NYC rules; is that democracy?

Majority rule is a sound principle but our American political tradition does include some departure, some mitigation, of the possibly unjust consequences of the application of this principle.  A very good example is to be found in the 2016 election.  The Electoral College was  established in part to empower those sometimes vast areas lacking intense population to resist the inevitable tyranny of extensively settled areas. It did its work in preventing Hillary Clinton from riding the assured support of the teeming  NY and California  lala lands to dominance over the benighted real America.

Now a Manhattan based NY State Legislator introduces a bill to outlaw all firearms competition and training in NY state schools. It contributes to the "gun culture " she sniffs with the assumption that that verity condemns it out of hand.  My guess is that if she came to a meeting of a rod and gun club in my common sense area of her state that she would freak. There is only one way to deal with that breed of disdainful bigot; you must overpower them; they are beyond persuasion. "I don't know from Buffalo and I don't cayah!"  We may still retain the power in the NYS Senate to do so sometimes, barely, but we may not have it much longer. One maverick Democrat Party senator is our only present hope. As my  Senator puts it, "those NYC area lawmakers (executive, legislative and often judicial) can usually stop anything we want and we often cannot stop anything they want - they have the numbers".   In effect, after elections, those of us in the Southern Tier , the vast North Country and  most of the rural counties of NY State are dictated to by downstate, which has a culture very much different from ours. Is that democracy?

We are far more like Pennsylvania or the midwest and even the serious consideration of such a bill is a spectacle virtually impossible in that real America. When an area with an identifiable culture is dominated by another, only because it cannot outvote it, especially one with values inimical to its own,  what redress does it have? Separation of the generally conservative upstate into its own state has been proposed in our legislature and has gone nowhere.  Apparently downstate wants to keep us in thrall. Three thoughts occur to me:

The legal history of the past division of states (eg. West Virginia) would be worth reexamining . Perhaps it provides or exemplifies a procedure applicable to our dilemna.  Maybe a Constitutional challenge (Equal Protection?) would "go good".  Also considerable would be negotiations on a partially autonomous status for upstate New York. If we can determine what factor motivates downstate to swallow its gorge and continue to be seen in public with us, we may be able to trade it for a policy of "benevolent" detachment on social issues.  Think I'm being too hard on them?  Consider the withering contempt displayed by that quintessential "New Yawka" Andrew Cuomo for the values which inform the geographic majority of our state.  To our resistance to his wrongheaded  gun laws, which burden law abiding gun owners with the assumption of criminality on their part, he sniffs"they are just a vocal minority" and "they don't belong in our state".  With a fanatic like him, determined to impose extreme leftist fantasies (eg. "why marriage is whatever we say it is!") on as great a number of the unwashed as he can manage, compromise is unlikely.  He'll have to be off with Jerry Brown, pursuing Aquarius and persuading him to double back to Earth, for us to have any chance at having our views honored in NY. It has to happen sometime.

If you are blessedly outside our borders you may think this of little relevance to you and yours.  But beware; Andrew may run for President.  If he does, expect from him a patronizing and completely insincere bow to the real America which he truly despises. And he may have devotees in your state. Jack  

A Banner Day

Any day when Marxist Eric Schneiderman vacates his office as NY State Attorney General and thereby guarantees he will never be Governor is a good one.  Ollie North becoming NRA President is even better;  he'll keep NRA on  offense, where it belongs. We gun owners will never tolerate being blamed for outrages we did not cause and could have prevented had we been heeded. But our President repudiating Obama and Kerry's Iran Deal is incomparably sweet.

I was moved to see Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's obvious relief and gratitude at President Trump's gutsy decision. The Prime Minister's revelation last week of the products of the highly competent and credible Israeli intelligence operation, to the effect that Iran has blithely and dishonestly advanced its development of nuclear weapons, was wisely heeded. For Israel, this is a fundamental concern. They would survive an Iranian nuclear attack, they are ISRAEL after all and they would deal with Iran in a most decisive manner, but for obvious reasons they wish to prevent it.  I've said it before; I think any nation's attitude toward Israel, the most beleaguered and most courageous and civilized nation on earth, is one credible measure of a nation's  humanity.  I rejoice that President Trump has rejected the cynical and  antisemitic hostility toward Israel -  openly demonstrated to and viscerally felt by the Israelis - of his Marxist predecessor and has stood with that heroic nation.  Thankfully former President Obama's objections today fall on deaf ears.   John F. Kerry's futile and possibly illegal efforts to preserve his obsequious bow to the mullahs bring to mind his anti American efforts in 1971, when he contributed to the Communist triumph by denouncing our military campaign against world communism in Vietnam, on the very floor of  Congress.  But this time he fluffed unless his intention was simply to do mischief. He is said to be considering another Presidential quest.  Well! Then so am I. 

Now what?  I've seen Donald Trump types in action.  They state their case simply and without qualification. Then they sit back and fix the gimlet eye on their often thereby discomfitted opponent. In the past, they would have lit one up and settled in. The ball is in the Mullahs' court and they have to know that this guy means what he says.  They are in for yet another round of  economic hardship probably even more unwelcome to the  long oppressed Iranian people.  That is, unless they relent in their atavistic and frankly tiresome vendetta against the modern world.  Jack 

Leftists:Waking up and Smelling the Coffee

In Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath the character of Tom Joad, when asked to talk about his prison experiences, says "it just makes my guts feel kinda droopy".  Tom was to be admired, so the analogy is not direct but I'll bet anything that many on the left now are starting to feel their guts droop as the realization that their worst nightmare has been empowered and is thriving dawns on them with nauseating and enervating impact.  It was bad enough that their darling lost to one beneath contempt; though at first it seemed  to them to be only a momentary setback - a last convulsive twitch by the real America before it was taken in hand and put in its deservedly subordinate place.

"Now, oh now!"    This thing for which they cannot muster a minimum of human decency ( witness the White House Correspondents' Dinner) has proven  to be a formidable administrator and negotiator and also one insolently dismissive of their characteristically emotional references to their unimpeachable justice in all matters. Since they have been blithe to use all manner of vulgarity in their commentary on him and his Presidency I shall be as brash as to follow their lead: they are PUKES; the President has been dealing with their sort all his life and surprise, surprise - he's good at it. That he is able to mix it up with them on their "realpolitik"  level is an unbearable affront to them.

They were so very sure he would fluff after his all unlooked for ascent. " He's a dilettante who got lucky and the job will do him in quickly" they sniffed.  I don't think you come from virtually the furthest reaches of improbability, endure an endless campaign replete with the calumny and excoriation always directed at those who stand up to political correctness , without showing great strength of character. His haughty opponent failed twice, despite the enormous advantages afforded her by her unassailably just status simply as a leftist woman. Could it be that her, well, shall we say, questionable character had something to do with this?

President Trump has been proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.  When one considers that a dissembler like Barack Obama got it for (as a commentator comically noted) "sneezing", one might want to consider if its an honor worth having. Oh . . . let's assume it is. Unprecedented and astounding steps toward a final peace in Korea have taken place due to his leadership.  Should they bear fruit he may get the prize in a walk and, incidentally, millions of Koreans could look forward to long and perhaps prosperous lives .  Oh heavens, what shame would be theirs who sneer at him now.

But here is the kicker, I think.  The real America rose in 2016 because it was fed up with  American radicals and their by then open intention to force unending unwanted "fundamental transformation". It got a miracle in the unanticipated success of the most faithful and competent conservative President since President Reagan.  Instead of Hillary sealing the far left deal, the America of those who believe in its essential merit and worthiness grows stronger apace. The America haters may well have wasted their one best chance at assured dominance and eventual absolutism. And that growing realization, borne out by a burgeoning economy, forthright productive confrontation of  national and international problems far too long trifled with, in answer to the long deferred aspirations of a loyal majority, must be one of appalling  discomfiture to them.  Jack