Showing posts with label abc news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abc news. Show all posts

Monday, January 11, 2021

January, 2021, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: More Doubts About Global Warming, ABC News Goes Nazi, and Cuomo Screws up Again

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) For a long time I did a monthly set of posts under the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” The basic premise of the theme was that global warming advocates, who morphed into climate change advocates when their global warming predictions failed miserably, only looked at research and opinions that confirmed their myths. They refuse to even consider that maybe global warming was not the bad thing, or anything, they thought it was.

For whatever reason, there has not been a lot of myth busting that has had to be done lately on the whole climate change topic. I don't know why but at least for now the subject has been kind of dead. Thus, the article summarized below, while it would have fit into that overall theme, it is not enough to fill up a whole post. 

Thus, I have decided to kick off today’s political class insanity discussion with that article since it again shows how politicians’ global warming warnings, predictions, and doomsday scenarios never quite seem to happen:
  • Back in September, 2019, a ship carrying 16 climate change advocates got under way to measure how rapidly the ice was melting up towards the North Pole.
  • Good start, people going out to prove or disprove their theories, very scientific.
  • Unfortunately, their ship got stuck in ice halfway between Norway and the North Pole.
  • Keep in mind this was in September, the end of summer, not the dead of winter when everything is much colder.
  • According to the Maritime Bulletin: "The ship is on an Arctic tour with the Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter in challenging conditions, all are safe."
  • But this was not the first time this had happened, back in July, 2019, the middle of summer, another ship got stuck up there, too much ice.
  • In July, the ice was ten feet thick and chainsaws and the 20,000 horsepower engine of the boat in July could not allow the boat to push through.
  • According to Klassekampen, a Norwegian newspaper: “Polar bears were seen on Bjørnøya this past winter – located in the middle of the Barents Sea– which shows that the ice edge was very far south.”
Now keep in mind that Al Gore predicted that there was an excellent chance that the entire North Pole would be melted by about 20 years ago. Instead, boats engineered for ice stretches could not get through in the summer because the ice was too thick. Missed that forecast by a little bit, Al. For more global warming myth debunking by real scientists , not ex-politicians parading as real scientists, go to the following link:


2) We have often discussed how important a strong, aggressive, unbiased press is to a strong democracy. A strong press that acts in integrity, is the gatekeeper of truth and reality, both of which are needed to keep the political class in line and make sure our freedoms are not being endangered.

Unfortunately, the free press in the country today is anything but unbiased and in integrity. Various news entities have taken sides and present only news, and present it in a biased way, to support the side of the potential spectrum they are on. Rather than protect a democracy and the truth, they disdain democracy, reality, and truth, advocating for their own biased positions.

Unfortunately, such was the case in the aftermath of the Capital fiasco earlier this week. Rather than be an instrument of peace and try to understand all aspects and sides of a problem like real journalists, ABC News went all Nazi right out of the gate:
  • Rick Klein, of ABC News, said that: “Trump will be an ex-President in 13 days. The fact that getting rid of Trump is the easy part. Cleansing the movement he commands is going to be something else.”
  • He made this horrific statement via his Twitter account which he later deleted but not before screen shots were captured and circulated around the Internet.
  • He included his remarks in an official ABC News article, an article that was later edited to be less Nazi like.
Such cowardice, such ignorance of history. An American has a different political viewpoint of you and you immediately invoke the cleansing of Jews in 1930s Germany with your “cleansing” remarks. Put “ethnic” in front of cleansing and you have something Hitelr himself likely said. So sad that wanting the elimination of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights is now cause to have them exterminated.

3) The whole covid mess had been going on for at least ten months. The search for a vaccine has been going almost as long. Which means the political class knew that at some point in time there was going to be a need for a mass vaccination process to be implemented. 

But the politicians in charge had time. Months and months of time to set up procedures, establish websites and social media accounts to promote and explain those vaccination procedures, set up the infrastructure that could be put into action as soon as the vaccinations were on their way.

They could have done all of that, a process that should have resulted in the quick, immediate and efficient distribution of the vaccine doses as they became available. Being this efficient would like save lives and prevent untold millions from getting the virus.

But alas, being efficient is not in the vocabulary or ability of most American politicians:
  • Nowhere has that failure been as evident than in New York state and New York City.
  • Despite having ready to go vaccine doses on hand, both the state and city governments screwed up completely in not having processes and procedures in place to quickly distribute the shots despite the lead time they had.
  • The New York Times pointed out that on a recent weekend day, more jets took off from JFK airport in NYC than doses of vaccines were distributed in the whole city.
  • The failure to efficiently distribute the vaccine has been so complete that many doses have had to be destroyed because they were past their useful life, i.e. life saving vaccines were thrown out because they could not be distributed quickly.
  • Of course, as always, New York Governor Cuomo, blamed everyone else but himself for the failure to get the doses out in time and in a timely manner.
  • After his administration took some severe heat for their failures, Cuomo decided it was not his fault, again, and blamed the local governments for their ineptness.
  • He blamed mayors like NYC’s de Blasio to manage the issue: “I need them to take personal responsibility for their hospitals. This is a management issue of the hospitals. They have to move the vaccine, and they have to move the vaccine faster.”
  • He has threatened hospitals with stiff fines because he failed to provide a process to get the vaccines out as soon as possible.
Again, no creativity, no plan, just bullying and endangering the lives of his constituents, much like he did early on when he forced nursing homes to mingle covid parents with healthy elderly residents.

Consider what was done in DC when the vaccine supply was about to expire: rather than throw out the spoiled vaccine doses, the city government encouraged health care providers to give doses to anyone who wanted it regardless of where they fell in the priority listing. Better to get vaccines out to anyone who could get it before the usefulness of the vaccine spoiled. Rather than work that great approach to maximize vaccination supplies, Cuomo, as is typical, just bellyached how he was not responsible. Typical politician attitude, blame everyone but themselves.

As a side note, I recently read an article that in the late 1940s, the return of smallpox to New York City obviously created a health emergency. Within one month of the first smallpox identification, the entire city population of NYC, 6 million people, had been vaccinated. 

That is how incompetent today’s politicians and governments have become: 60 years ago 6 million are vaccinated in 30 days or so. Today, vaccines go bad before they can be used despite the government bureaucrats and politicians having nine months to come up with a plan. Insanity.

That will do it for today: another massive government failure and show of incompetency, the free press goes Nazi, and global warming advocates get stuck in massive ice jams… in the middle of the summer, proving again why it is sane to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

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Thursday, September 29, 2016

The Perversion and Death Of An Unbiased Press In this Country. Part 2

Record numbers of Americans are pretty disgusted with both candidates for president this year. Between the out of control quality of Trump to the lying and greedy Clinton, we are not faced with anywhere close to good choices from the Democrats and Republicans for President this year.

But we have faced incompetence before in Jimmy Carter. We have faced criminality in Richard Nixon. And we survived as a nation. But we have likely never faced in any Presidential campaign is the corruption and biased reporting of the press in this country. Rather than providing the facts and realities of life, we are now faced with press and journalism outlets that have a point of view to push rather than the truth. 

And that is what scares me more than the incompetence of Trump and Clinton. Without the truth that the press has previously been relied on in the past, we are forced to question everything and adjust our views not based on the realities but on the historical reporting bias of each news outlet.

To show you how biased, crooked, and dangerous news reporting is today, consider the following recent instances where journalism has the distinct color of yellow:

1) Before giving actual examples of bad journalism, let’s consider what a recent Gallup poll says about how much Americans trust what the press media tells us today. According to their recent opinion poll, only 32% of respondents said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media today:


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While the trend in trust has been slowly declining over time, Gallup thinks that the dramatic one year drop from 40% in 2015 to only 32% in 2016 is because of the misreporting and bias going on for the 2016 Presidential election. 32% is the lowest level of trust since at least 1997 and the 8 point drop in one year from 2015 to 2016 is the second largest drop since 1997. It is the highest percentage drop since 1997.

Trust among Republicans has dropped especially fast, from 32% in 2015 to only 14% in 2016. Trust among younger Americans dropped 10 points in one year.

Our democracy can survive bad Presidents, it has done so in the past. Not sure it can survive a perverted and corrupt press and media industry where truth is secondary to ratings and the political leanings of high ranking media executives and owners.

2) ABC News recently got into the biased reporting act when it abruptly cut the live feed of a Trump speech after he said something that ABC News did not like relative to the ABC favored candidate, Hillary Clinton. Trump was making a speech in Daytona Beach, Florida and said that Hillary Clinton “should get an award as the founder of ISIS.” Typical campaign rhetoric, making an accusation that has at least some credibility. However, immediately after those words came out of his mouth, the ABC News feed went blank and then returned with only the ABC News logo and some background music.

Now, it could be that ABC simply had technical problems. However, since it does not appear that they apologized for the technical difficulties and I am a member of the 68% that Gallup found does not trust the media, I am going with the theory that Trump dared to accuse Hillary Clinton of some bad things that ABC decided to censor on the spot by cutting the Trump speech feed. 

The whole censoring thing can be viewed at the following link:

http://conservativetribune.com/censored-abc-cuts/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=TPNN&utm_content=2016-08-08&utm_campaign=manualpost

2) Yesterday, we had a couple of examples of CNN, the Clinton News Network, misbehaving when something happened that did not fit their prejudiced view of what they wanted to report. In one instant they inserted a word into a Donald Trump quote that he did not say and in another instance they cut out a Hillary Clinton statement that they did not want the public to hear. 

Today, let’s examine a CNN host that cut to a commercial break when an interview he was doing did not go according to the pre-conceived and biased manner he wanted to go:

  • The host of a CNN news show, Don Lemon, was doing a live interview of Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, focused on the riots in Charlotte, North Carolina.
  • Clarke has been very anti-Black Lives Matter activities and philosophies even though he is an African-American himself.
  • During the interview, it is clear that Lemon keeps on wanting to promote a dialog that shows Black Lives Matter in a far more favorable light than how Sheriff Clarke holds that organization.
  • Every time that Clarke tries to make a point about how bad Black Livers Matter is, Lemon tries to justify the organization in some way, only to be further rebuked by Clarke.
  • Thus, rather than let a valid, expert opinion be stated, Lemon eventually gets so frustrated that he cannot get the answer he obviously wants from the sheriff that he just cuts the discussion short and goes to a commercial break.
  • Things do not get any better when the come back off of commercial break, with the sheriff stating facts and realities about police and African Americans’ relationships and Lemon denying the facts that this subject matter expert is expected to bring to Lemon’s show.
  • Lemon goes on to claim that he is just an unbiased reporter, that he simply reports realities which is pretty obvious he is not if you view the whole interview. The African American sheriff shuts down the interview with a very powerful statement that I am sure was not consistent with the biased message Lemon wanted to get: “There is no place in American discourse for that sort of vile, vitriolic hate coming out of this ideology. This has fueled and fanned the flames of this anger toward the American police officer. There’s only one group in America—one, Don—that cares about the lives of black people in these urban ghettos. It’s the American police officer, who goes out on a daily basis and puts their life on the line to protect who? Black people.”

Just another way that CNN remains a very biased and untrustworthy news sort, cutting off debate and discussion that is counter to their own skewed views and objectives. The entire discussion can be accessed at:

http://twitchy.com/twitchys-3839/2016/07/18/cnns-don-lemon-cuts-feed-when-sheriff-clarke-starts-making-sense/?utm_content=bufferf73b6&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

3) One last piece of reporting bias and, surprise, surprise, it also comes from CNN. This one is particularly interesting in that the CNN producers actually cut off one of their own reporters who dared to say something, anything even vaguely critical of Hillary Clinton. 

CNN reporter, Brianna Keilar, was on the road reporting on a speech that Clinton had just given in Springfield, Illinois as she filed the following report: “Largely Hillary Clinton’s comments here today, John, were based around the recent violence that we have seen. The police-involved shootings of black men in Minnesota, in Louisiana, and the killing of white police officers by a black gunman in Dallas. That was really what she based her comments on around today.

And remember Hillary Clinton has some vulnerabilities herself. Even as she calls for criminal justice reform because of her support in the 1990s for anti-crime legislation that ultimately helped contribute to this era of mass incarceration that she now speaks out again–.”

Uh-oh, just as Keilar was starting to report on a very valid and historically accurate point that would show Hillary in a potentially bad light, her live feed went dead and the CNN producers threw up a silent black screen with some minimal graphics that referred to Donald Trump as “dangerous.”

Studio host John Berman then came back on with the following quote before the show moved on to another, totally different topic: “We just lost Brianna Keilar who was in Springfield, Illinois where Hillary Clinton just spoke.” 

Did they lose her, which of course is possible due to technical difficulties, and it was just a coincidence that they lost her just as she was pointing out some Clinton downside issues, or were they continuing their recent history of protecting the Hillary Clinton image? Given that I am part of the 68% discussed by Gallup above and the history of CNN’s biased reporting, it is my humble opinion that they cut away intentionally in a true Pravda like manner. 

The whole biased disaster can be seen at:

http://americanlookout.com/cnn-cuts-off-reporter-for-telling-the-truth-about-hillary-clinton-video/

That will do it for the second part of our two part review review of dishonest and skewed news reporting in America today. From misquoting to trying to force an answer out of a TV guest to creative editing and lying to “technical difficulties,” more than two thirds of us out in the country do not believe that we can trust anything the media and press tells us today.

Remember, once the politicians and the press unite to protect and further each other’s interests, you are no longer living in democracy, you are living in a version of the Soviet Union where the government controls the news vs. the news controlling the government and today’s news reporters and journalists are nothing more than modern day Pravda workers.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w





Sunday, January 11, 2015

January, 2015, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: Ripping Off The Defense Department, Presidential Profanity, and Debt Through The Roof


It is the beginning of both another year and another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. For regular readers of this blog, you know that as 2014 progressed, the insanity, stupid quotes, ineffective governing and legislating, and general incompetence of our politicians seemed to accelerate as the year grinded on. No major issues got addressed, never mind resolved. Obama Care’s implications across the entire country and entire economy continued to unfold in disaster after disaster. Our foreign policy, or what was passed off as a foreign policy, was in tatters. Terrorism was on the march across the world. Veterans were dying because the Federal government could not fulfill the medical and health care promises those brave veterans were promised. The national debt hit a mind boggling $18 TRILLION. 

And our President continued to play golf and go on political campaign swings like no other President ever did. Congress narrowly missed becoming the least productive Congress of all time. Billions were spent and wasted on the November elections to elect people that did not deserve the time of day never mind billions of dollars. Racial division spread across the country, a division that was fomented and spread by those in office with something to gain. 

And guess what? Over the past week or so, we have seen nothing has changed except the calendar. The political class is still out of control, the government entities that they rule over are bloated and ineffective, and the quality of life and freedom in this country continues to deteriorate. 

Today will be the last post in this series of political class insanity so enjoy one last day of the many ways that the political class wastes your tax dollars, screws up our freedoms and liberties, and generally messes up everything it touches. 

1) Of all the Federal government entities, the Department of Defense is probably the most pathetic when it comes to financial and accounting integrity. We once reported that their accounting processes are so screwed up that even highly trained auditors gave up trying to figure out where they spend their out of control budget dollars. 

Yahoo Finance on December 9, 2014 uploaded an Associated Press article about some food service companies that had formally admitted to cheating the U.S. military out of millions of dollars via their Afghanistan food contracts. Even worse than the scamming of taxpayer wealth, the two guilty companies were not even American companies that our government had contracted out the food service operations to. Supreme Group B.V. is a privately held Dutch corporation, and its subsidiaries, Supreme Foodservice GmbH and Supreme Foodservice FZE are based in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. 

The companies agreed to pay back $288 million in fines and restitution, plus $101 million to resolve a whistleblower suit: "Supreme Group accepts full responsibility for, and deeply regrets our actions that led to this situation," Emma Sharma, a Supreme Group attorney and ethics officer, said in a statement on the company's website. 

The scam involved the companies fraudulently inflating the price of fresh fruits and vegetables, bottled water and other products as part of its contract with the Defense Department. The government was overcharged by $48 million between 2005 and 2009. 

At least these bad guys got caught and are paying the price for criminal activity. Makes you wonder how many hundreds of other contractors for the clueless defense Department accountants are getting away with similar schemes. 

2) One saying that has me get through life goes as follows: people curse and swear because at the time they are cursing they are not intelligent enough or creative enough not to curse.” Everybody gets frustrated in life and everyone has probably cursed or swore in their own way at a life obstacle. 

But according to the above saying, that reflects at least a temporary brain freeze of lack of intelligence or creativity. When a President does that in public then I get really worried because that to me indicates a leader who is out of control, lacking intelligence and creativity at that point in time. 

And apparently the current residence of the White House fits that leadership shortfall description. According to long time Washington journalist Ann Compton, Obama is not below swearing up a storm and directing that wrath at journalists who are trying to do their job. 

Former ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton told C-SPAN she saw President Barack Obama get so angry twice when he purposely went off the record to curse at the White House press corps. She Compton told C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb in an interview that one time his tirade was "profanity-laced, where he thought the press was making too much of scandals that he didn’t think were scandals." 

In the other case or Presidential profanity, Obama took the Washington press corp. to task for not understanding the limits that he has with foreign policy "and the way he’s dealing with the Middle East and Iraq and Afghanistan." 

Very childlike, very immature. Not cool having a President who loses control, his intelligence, and creativity because a professional journalist says bad things about him. Compton, in fact, showed more maturity with her response to the profanity laced tirades: "When policy decisions and Presidents are inaccessible and don’t take questions from the press on a regular basis, I think they reap what they sow." 

To see her C=SPAN interview and comments go to:


3) We have often made the case that this country is headed to a national debt disaster as the Washington political class continues to spend money that it does not have. Recently, Washington pushed the national debt level to over 418 TRILLION. This comes out to a household debt burden of about $156,000 for every household in the country. 

And while every previous Presidency has contributed to this overbearing debt burden, it is the Obama administration that has taken bad debt management to new lows. Consider the following U.S. Bureau of Public Debt graph which shows national debt as a percentage of the nation’s GDP. This is a good way to get a feel whether or not the country can pay that debt as both the economy and the debt level grows (double click on the graph for a bigger view): 









As you can see, through both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Debt to GDP ratio was quite constant at around 60%. However, once Obama took office and the Democrats still had control of Congress in 2009, our debt situation went desperately wrong. Our Debt to GDP ratio has skyrocketed up to over 100%, a lofty position that puts us into the area where Spain and Greece got into so much financial trouble. 

No one in Washington seems to care or have the will or intelligence to address this issue. At some point, though, the debt bomb that the Washington political class has inflated, especially during the Obama Presidency, is going to explode into an economic crash, the likes of which we may have never seen before. And that would truly be insanity. 

Okay, I know I promised today would be the last post on this month’s political class insanity but I failed, we will need tomorrow to wrap up the craziness and incompetence that is the American political class.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w







Thursday, January 17, 2013

How About More Hate Control And Less Gun Control, Part 2 - Real Examples Of Americans Defending Themselves With Legal Guns

Yesterday we proposed that before we start messing around with the Constitution and shredding the Second Amendment that we consider doing some “hate control” rather than gun control to solve a perceived problem on some people’s part that gun play is out of control. And that we start this hate control effort with our so-called leaders in the political class that are prime examples and sources of the hate and venom that are pervasive in this country.

Today we will just look at a series of real life examples where private citizens were able to protect themselves, their friends and family, and their assets because of the freedom allowed by the Second Amendment. The mainstream media is only looking at the victims from the Newtown school shooting as if that was the whole equation. That is wrong, it is only part of the total equation and reality. What needs to be done is to look at the other side of the equation, the side that tallies how many deaths were PREVENTED because of private gun ownership:

1) On January 10, 2013, ABC news affiliate KFSN reported on a shooting that occurred at a pharmacy in Madera, California. The shooting happened inside the pharmacy shortly after the last customer left for the day. Two men in ski-masks barged in through the back door and started shooting up the store.

The owner of the pharmacy and his mother, the only two people left inside, ducked for cover as bullets whizzed around them, with one hitting her in the leg. The mother and son said they ducked behind the counter as bullets kept flying. The pharmacist described the situation: "It was not a robbery so much as an execution. It was an attempted assassination, they didn't make any demands, they simply came in, reached over, and it was basically shooting us almost in the back of the head. They shot my mother and almost shot me, I was just surrounded by holes."

Fortunately, the pharmacist had a gun which he grabbed and started returning fire. He wounded one of the shooters, who eventually died, and police apprehended the other shortly afterwards. This wasn't the first time the pharmacy has been hit. The owner was able to stop two other attempted robberies in the 15 years he's owned the business, but this was the first time he felt he and his mother might die: "I thought yesterday was the last day for both us, and luckily it didn't turn out that way."

Fortunately, he and his mom did not die because he had the means and the right to defend his family, himself and his business. It is doubtful that these two hoodlums would have registered their guns in any crackdown on Second Amendment rights.

More details on this incident can be found at:

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=8948286

2) According to a LA Times article from August 2, 2012, the following details describe an attempted heist of a LA jewelry store:
  • Surveillance footage from the jewelry store showed a white SUV backing up to the front of the store and five men getting out carrying pillowcases.
  • The men ran into the store and pointed handguns at the clerks and a customer.
  • Immediately afterwards, shots are fired and the men run back to the door, fighting each other to get out and get to their vehicle as a woman, a store employee, runs after them with her gun.
  • The SUV left before three of the suspects got back inside the vehicle.
  • Fortunately, nothing was taken from the store and no one was hurt.
The article goes on to report that this was the second local robbery incident in a week that an Orange County store owner had used a gun to thwart a robbery.

In the other robbery attempt, two men tried to rob a mall watch store only to be stopped by a store owner who shot one of the suspects in the head. Both men were later apprehended by police.

More lives possibly saved by the Second Amendment. I doubt the seven robbers would have registered their weapons under any crackdown on Second Amendment rights.

The details of these two robbery attempts can be found at the following link which also includes the store video of the employee chasing out the five robbers (by the way, the employee who chases the FIVE robbers out is the owner of the store, she is a woman, and she is 65 years old!)

Http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/08/65-year-old-shoots-at-would-be-jewelry-store-robbers-in-garden-grove.html

I find it interesting that both of these incidents occurred in California which I understand to have some of the more stringent gun laws, laws that did not prevent these criminals from obtaining firearms.

3) As reported by a Montana television station on January 4, 2013, police were doing an extensive manhunt for a criminal in Kalispell, Montana. A local citizen, Michael Stephens, came face-to-face with the fleeing criminal and tried to physically detain the criminal, but the suspect grabbed a flashlight from Stephens and began to hit him with it.

The attack ended when Amy Stephens came to her husband's aid and held Elliot at gunpoint until authorities arrived on the scene. It is unknown what would have happened to the Mr. Stephens if his wife did not have a weapon available to her but it probably would not have been pretty.

The video and text of the story is available at:

http://www.kpax.com/news/citizens-help-nab-man-wanted-after-flathead-pursuit/

4) The Canton Reporter ran an article on January 3, 2013 describing how in Canton, Ohio, two armed men went into a local butcher store and opened fire on those inside. Unfortunately, for them, an employee shot back, hitting both of them multiple times. After the exchange of fire, both teenage gunmen left the store but were eventually arrested by police at different hospitals.

Police investigators believe the two men entered Hever’s Family Meats with their weapons drawn. They attempted to take money from the cash register and, during the robbery, one of the robbers fired several rounds: “Fire was immediately returned by an employee. A gun battle ensued inside the store,” according to a police spokesperson.

It is highly unlikely that these two teenage hoodlums would have gone through the trouble of registering their weapons in any Second Amendment crackdown. Details of this incident can be found at:

http://www.cantonrep.com/news/x1896978485/Meat-market-robbery-ends-in-gun-battle

5) The CBS TV affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia reported on a violent home invasion incident on January 4, 2013 in the Atlanta area:
  • Local police say that Paul Lee Slater used a crowbar to bust open the front door of a residential house in the middle of the day.
  • However, a mother was home with her two children and when he heard her yell for them, he gave chase inside the house.
  • The chase resulted with the family getting into a crawl space near the home’s attic, essentially trapping the mom and kids in their own home.
  • However, when Slater opened the door, the mother starting firing her gun, hitting the intruder five times.
  • Slater stumbled out of the house, got into his car but crashed into a tree trying to get away.
  • The woman and her children were able to get to a neighbor's home for help.
  • Police believe the family was not specifically targeted, that it was a random choice for a home invasion.
  • The CBS article also reported that Slater has an extensive criminal history.
In this situation, the bad guy did not have an illegal gun. But the possession of a legal gun by a private citizen probably prevented the death, or at least the terrible beating, of a mom and her kids from a very bad person who went to the trouble of tracking them down and cornering them in their home.

Details of the story can be found at:

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/20506821/homeowner-shoots-intruder-in

6) A January 4, 2013 by ABC News in Oklahoma City reported on a woman who shot at two men breaking into her home, killing one of them:
  • The woman was at home alone with her three month old baby because her husband had recently died of cancer.
  • A week after his death, two men came to her home, armed with a hunting knife and tried to break into the house.
  • When she heard the attempted break in, she barricaded herself and her child in a room with a 12 gauge shotgun and called 911.
  • As one of the men was going from door to door outside her home trying to gain entry, McKinley called 911 and grabbed her 12-gauge shotgun: "I've got two guns in my hand -- is it okay to shoot him if he comes in this door?" the young mother asked the 911 dispatcher. "I'm here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?"
  • The 911 dispatcher confirmed with McKinley that the doors to her home were locked as she asked again if it was okay to shoot the intruder if he were to come through her door.
  • "I can't tell you that you can do that but you do what you have to do to protect your baby," the dispatcher told her.
  • The mother was on the phone with 911 for a total of 21 minutes.
  • When one of the intruders finally broke through the door and came after her with the knife, the mother shot and killed the 24-year-old.
  • According to ABC, police are calling the shooting justified: "You're allowed to shoot an unauthorized person that is in your home. The law provides you the remedy, and sanctions the use of deadly force," Detective. Dan Huff of the Blanchard police said
Again, imagine the horror that could have happened if this brave mother was not allowed to arm herself in her house. I would assume that the intruder’s knife is not registered with the authorities.

7) Final example, in light of the previous incident and my own experience. We used to live in rural New Jersey, a township that was served by the New Jersey State Police. The nearest, serving State Police barracks was about twenty minutes away, IF you knew how to get from there to our home. As a result of this distance and time, we installed a monitored home security system in our home.

One day at work, a 45 minute ride from home, my security system monitoring company called me to say they had a reported break in at my home and the police have been dispatched. I decided to stay at work and wait for the police report since 1) they would be to my home before me and 2) I did not want to confront any intruders.

After about an hour, the security system people call me back with an incredible request: the State policeman was lost in the rural woods and could not find my home, could I give them directions. Fortunately, it was a system malfunction that tripped the alarm and the police were not needed.

But what if there had been an intruder and we had been home at the time? The State Police would have never gotten to us in time and who knows what the intentions and mental disposition of the intruder might have been, fight or flight, when confronted? I would have liked to have had the option of a legal firearm to protect my family and home.

The Oklahoma mom was in contact with the authorities for over 20 minutes and help had still not arrived. Fortunately, she had the ability and the permission to have firearms on site to also protect her family in the absence of a quick response from the police.

That’s enough for today, hopefully you see my overall point. It was a terrible tragedy that some nut case got hold of some legally acquired guns and murdered over a two dozen innocent people in Newtown. A horrible, horrible tragedy.

However, in any discussion of gun control, both sides of the equation have to be considered. In just the six examples listed above, at least fourteen lives were saved because legally armed citizens were able to protect themselves from violent criminals.

All of these six incidents happened in just the past few months. Do a couple of searches on the Internet and you will find that hundreds, if not thousands of lives, are saved every year by citizens legally defending themselves as a result of the Second Amendment.

Banning guns and shredding the Second Amendment is the not the answer. We have to do the really hard work of understanding why a person gets so screwed up mentally that their view of humanity and the sanctity of life is destroyed, enabling them to randomly kill for new apparent reason. Reasonable gun controls are right to be considered but the facts are:
  • Americans successfully defend themselves everyday from very bad people using legally owned firearms.
  • Criminals will always be able to get their hands on firearms.
  • Criminals will kill using other methods also (e.g. knives, crowbars, etc.), methods that can be overcome by a citizen using a legal firearm (see examples above).
  • If criminals obeyed laws against rape, rape would not longer occur.
  • If criminals obeyed laws against burglary, burglary would no longer occur.
  • If criminals obeyed laws against arson, arson would no longer occur.
Therefore, outlawing guns will not outlaw violence or crime.

More facts, statistics, and realities tomorrow in next installment of “hate control” vs. “gun control.”

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