US Already Descending Into Recession: Economist
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The Jan 6th kangaroo hearings were created so Democrats would not have to face a Trump candidacy. They wanted to cut his legs off a third time since their two impeachments failed.
What Hillary did was far more damaging and seditious than anything that happened on Jan. 6. She literally sought to overthrow a duly elected president.
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Most Americans Skeptical That Democrats’ Jan. 6 Investigation Seeks The Truth: I&I/TIPP Poll
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Dispatches from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alaska, a magical trout stream & a Cookie Table.
By Salena Zito
1.) From across Ohio: “If you had to look to just one place in the United States to understand the political earthquake that has occurred over the last six years, the eastern border of Ohio would be a good place to start.” https://www.
2.) From Appalachia:
Culture and traditions from other countries have always been part of the American experience; it’s why we go to ethnic festivals in the summer and fall to take a peek at the foods and celebrations and foods that people from other countries have incorporated into the American fabric.
The cookie table is one that was started here by immigrants as a way to connect not just with their past but also to the new country they started to call home. As their children married outside of their ethnic backgrounds or religions and assimilated to their new country a new tradition was born to connect all.
Yes, it was a way to show-off — but it was also a way to welcome. Deep friendships and community ties began at those kitchen tables and card tables that the women labored over 100 years ago — they still do. I know. I made 3,000 cookies for my daughter:
3.) From a legendary Pennsylvania trout stream: An 'Ordinary Joe' Whose Talent Changed People's Lives: https://www.
4.) An exclusive and fascinating interview with Sarah Palin who is one step closer to serving in Congress: “The media forgets that I was a mayor, a city council member and chair of the oil and gas commission that oversaw the supply of a lot of our natural resources to the rest of the United States,” she said of her credentials. https://nypost.
5.) PITTSBURGH — It’s not often in American politics that the person who came within a hair of winning an election sits down three days later, candidly admits the loss still stings, doesn’t linger all that much on the past and instead focuses on bringing his or her political party together.
Yet three days after conceding a hard-fought Republican primary race that came down to fewer than 1,000 votes — and five days before the recount’s full results were set to be released — David McCormick did: https://www.post-gazette.
Enjoy! And as always please let me know what you think and if there’s something going on in your community let me know about it I might just show up— because nowhere in this country is the middle of nowhere everywhere, is the middle of somewhere!
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NEWS
Bennett warns Iran close to bomb as nuclear talks remain at impasse
DAVID ISAAC / JNS
"The world must take a firm stance … Iran’s nuclear program won’t stop until it’s stopped,” affirms the Israeli prime minister.
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The biggest factor of why Seniors are losing more and more benefits. They are getting blamed for part of our country’s increasing deficit.
It's easy to dismiss individual programs that benefit non-citizens until they're all put together and this picture emerges.
Someone did a lot of research to put together all this data. Often these programs are buried within other programs making it difficult to find each of them.
The following 11 reasons should be forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the readers get sick of reading them. Included are the URLs for verification of all the following facts.
1. $11 Billion to $22 Billion is spent on welfare to illegal immigrants each year by state governments.
Verify At:http://www.fairus.org/site/Pag eServer?pagename=iic_immigrati onissuecenters7fd8
< http://www.fairus.org/site/ Pag eServer?pagename=iic_immigrati onissuecenters7fd8 >
2. $22 Billion dollars a year is spent on food Assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal immigrants.
Verify At:
< http://www.cis.org/articles/ 20 04/fiscalexec.HTML
The High Cost of Cheap Labor | Center for Immigration Studies
www.cis.org
About the Author Steven A. Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. He holds a master's degree in political science .
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal immigrants.
Verify At:
http://www.cis.org/articles/20 04/fiscalexec.HTML
The High Cost of Cheap Labor | Center for Immigration Studies
www.cis.org
About the Author Steven A. Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. He holds a master's degree in political science .
<http://www. cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalex ec.HTML >
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on Primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify At:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt...0.HTML
< http://transcripts.cnn.com/T RA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt...0.HTML >
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for Education for the American-born Children of illegal immigrants, known as Anchor babies.
Verify At:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML
< http://transcripts.cnn.com/T RA NscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal immigrants.
Verify At:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/%20 TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTM L<
TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTM L"
href=" http://transcripts.cnn. com/%20 TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTM L "
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"http://transcrip ts.cnn.com/%20TRANscriptS/0604 /01/ldt.01.HTML>
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison Inmates are illegal immigrants.
Verify At:
https://owa.slugger.com/owa/Ur lBlockedError.aspx
< https://owa.slugger.com/owa/ Ur lBlockedError.aspx >
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on Illegal immigrants for Welfare & Social Services by the American taxpayers.
Verify At:
http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCI PTS/0610/29/ldt.01.HTML
< http://premium.cnn.com/ TRANSCI PTS/0610/29/ldt.01.HTML >
9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal immigrants.
Verify At:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA NSCRI
< http://transcripts.cnn.com/ TRA NSCRI >
10. In 2006, illegal immigrants sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their Countries of origin.
Verify At:.
http://rense.com/general75/ nih t.htm >;
>
11. The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One million sex crimes committed By Illegal Immigrants In The United States ..
Verify At:http:
// www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
http://www.drdsk.com/ articlesh tml >;
THE TOTAL COST IS $338.3 BILLION A YEAR.
SINCE THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 135 MILLION TAXPAYERS IN THE UNITED STATES, OVER $2,500.00 OF YOUR TAXES GO TO FUNDING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
Are we THAT Stupid?
YES, FOR ALLOWING THOSE IN THE U.S. . CONGRESS TO GET AWAY WITH DOING THIS YEAR AFTER YEAR !!!!!
If this doesn't bother you, then just delete the message.
If, on the other hand, it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope you forward it to every Tax Payer in the United States!!!
God bless you and God bless America
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Like I have written: We get to act every other year. Radicals are at it 24/7.
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The Fed-Up Americans
By John Kass
You see them every day, the people who don’t call attention to themselves. They don’t preen or lend themselves to hysterics. They don’t scream or demand their enemies’ heads to be put on pikes.
And their numbers are growing.
Here’s what they really care about: Their families, their kids, and keeping their jobs.
They don’t really care about political talk. But with the price of gasoline at an all time high and inflation higher than it’s been for more than 40 years, and food prices higher every day taking care of what’s important is difficult.
Their anguish is mostly silent, unspoken, wordless, but it is real.
So, they wait. They watch. They see. They take notice. They remember.
Since they don’t call attention to themselves, it’s been easy for some to miss them. But though they’re low key, they’re out there. As their numbers grow, they reach to the horizon.
They’re Independents, Democrats and Republicans. They’re of all parties with deep interests in issues and ideas, but many more don’t care anything for politics. The political class treats them as livestock to be herded, but they are not livestock. They’re not fools.
They’re not stupid. They’re not chumbolones. They don’t much like being treated as fools. And now they’re angry.
So, what do you call them?
How about if we call them exactly what they are?
They’re Americans. They’re the Fed-Up Americans. If you doubt they’re Fed-Up, just look at the president’s disapproval ratings. Joe Biden’s approval ratings are so low now, he makes Jimmy Carter look like epic hero.
They seek a restoration to how things were, when we could have a difference of opinion, but it didn’t have to end on scorched earth. Some of them remember the days when couples didn’t require fealty to some political ideology to fall in love and raise a family.
All they had to do was swear fealty to each other before God, in God’s house.
Now all are struggling. Many are cutting back, unable to afford the rising price of gas to get to work. If they live in the cities, they worry about taking public transportation where in some cities they could be attacked, beaten, robbed or worse.
They can’t afford to buy the fancy electric cars the president and his administration want them to buy to wean them off gasoline. Political talk doesn’t fill the gas tank. They feel real pain now. They don’t live in some failed banana republic. They don’t live in the so-called socialist paradise of Venezuela where the people were reduced to slaughtering zoo animals for meat. They don’t live in some old Eastern Bloc nation, where the party apparatchiks got what they wanted through political connections.
They live in America. And this is happening in America.
If they live in a big city like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, they worry about becoming a crime statistic, floating away in that urban river of violence. If they live in rural areas, they’re forced to balance the need for paying for gas and a long drive to work with the need for food.
They know something has gone terribly wrong with their country. But there is no other place for them to go.
They’re not all that active on social media. They don’t share their opinions publicly, because they’ve seen what happened to friends and others who spoke their minds freely, the way all Americans were encouraged to do, once, when speaking one’s mind in America was permitted, even encouraged.
What they know is that legacy corporate media and politicians would like to herd them into a group, a party, with banners and slogans, the easier to push them along down the chutes to process them as votes. They feel the goad pushing them along.
They’re worried, upset, angry. They know that something has gone terribly wrong with their country. But they know there is no other country for them now. There is no place for them to go.
For the most part, they’re wordless. Their emotions remain largely unspoken. They see the tens of thousands marching toward the wide-open Southern border. They know about the more than 100,000 young Americans who died from fentanyl overdoses last year.
They take notice. They wait. They watch. They see what the politicians are doing. And they bide their time.
In the great cities of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia they’ve seen the rise of lawlessness, chaos and anarchy. The hard political left that has seized the Democratic Party has installed prosecutors who won’t prosecute, exacerbating the collapse of public safety and the rule of law. The lack of prosecutions encourage the most violent criminals , who are not afraid. Much of media ignores the horror stories from the courts, the allegedly violent with criminal records released on low or no bail to make other victims. The people are afraid, exhausted by the lawlessness.
Dozens and dozens of these permissive prosecutors were installed by leftist billionaire George Soros, who spent tens of millions of his dollars to elect them. Journalists who dared warn the people of the lawlessness brought by the Soros prosecutors were hounded by leftists in their own newsrooms. Some were defamed. I personally know this to be true.
Now we’re seeing the people begin to push back. In San Francisco, the most leftist city in America, the people of the Democratic town voted last week to recall and rid themselves of Soros-backed Chesa Boudin, the District Attorney there. The public’s antipathy to lawlessness is growing in Los Angeles, too.
But in New York, two attorneys from Brooklyn convicted of trying to firebomb an empty police vehicle during the Black Lives Matter George Floyd riots had their charges reduced. Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman faced 10 years in federal prison. Yet sentences were drastically reduced down to 18-24 months.
So much for lawlessness when the left is lawless lawless.
As Chesa Boudin was bounced, a man with a gun was arrested in Washington near the home of Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He was charged with attempted murder. He had a gun, a knife, restraints, and implements of torture in a bag. He reportedly told authorities he was concerned about the conservative Kavanaugh voting on gun rights and abortion and allegedly said he wanted to kill Justice Kavanaugh.
The New York Times and much of the left leaning corporate media buried the story. But Fed-Up Americans took notice.
Perhaps some of you remember NY Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, then Senate Minority leader, publicly threatening conservative judges.
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” said Schumer. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
There has been no apology. So much for threats to achieve political when the threats are made by Democrats.
The leftist activist group “Ruth Sent Us” continues to protest outside the homes of Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito. Their home addresses have been disseminated out on the internet by protest groups for any madman to find them. It is against the law to protest at the homes of Supreme Court Justices to influence their vote, which is exactly what the activists are doing.
But no prominent Democratic Party from President Biden on down have called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to enforce the law against protesting outside the homes of Supreme Court justices.
The New York Times and other left-leaning legacy media outlets downplayed the story of the gunman arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home.
Democrats and media weren’t eager to discuss the reported Kavanaugh assassin. They didn’t want to spend time on the ouster of Soros prosecutor Chesa Boudin by Democrats in San Francisco. They don’t want to talk about the Democrats and Biden Administration role in spending that added to inflation, or the White House refusal to increase domestic oil production.
Instead, they wanted to change the subject to Republican lawlessness in the Jan. 6 riots in Washington on behalf of former President Donald Trump.
The riots were ugly and frightening. It was sickening. It was ugly. I said so at the time that Trump “owns this.”
In wrongly saying the 2020 election was stolen, Trump sounded remarkably like Democrat Hillary Clinton blaming the fantasy Trump Russia collusion after she lost in 2016. You could say he also sounded like Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who refused to concede after losing the governor’s race.
But the media and the Democrats are horrified about Trump. Not Clinton. Not Abrams. Not the “intelligence community” and federal security forces and influential Washington media aligned with Clinton that pushed the Russia collusion hoax that we now know was untrue.
It is logical, that a democratic republic cannot survive long if the losing side refuses to concede.
But can the Republic long survive if the losing party refuses to concede, and as in 2016 marshals its allies in the state run security services and corporate media to demonize and destabilize an incoming administration and feed a big lie to the people, day after day, year after year, about the White House colluding with Russia?
Isn’t that what Democrats did?
Political force, lawlessness and violence is indeed frightening. It’s almost like burning American cities, costing billions in damage, and destroying businesses and assaulting cops (including killing some) in order to gin your voters up before an election.
That happened through the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. Democratic politicians and their agents fed the cities and businesses to the mobs. And though left-leaning media insisted the riots were “mostly peaceful protests,” Americans weren’t fooled. It was all about political force to engineer the outcome they wanted.
Was the 2020 election stolen from Trump? No. It was not stolen.
But was it rigged?
It’s a fair question. Was it rigged through blatant media manipulation in which corporate legacy media served as the Democratic Comms Shop carrying the Clinton’s water?
Was the election rigged by Big Tech through social media censorship of critically important news about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s questionable, corrupt foreign business dealings and that laptop from hell that broke just weeks before the presidential election?
Was it rigged by the political prostitutes of the “intelligence community” telling Americans through compliant left-leaning media that the laptop find was likely “Russian disinformation,” even though it was no such thing?
Was it the election rigged by $400 million donated from powerful Democratic donor Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? He didn’t donate directly to Biden, but offered grants to local government election offices in key swing states to deal with post COVID-19 election issues?
I’d long said I thought Trump policies worked, that he was the street fighter his voters wanted after all the years of Clinton/Obama influence. But he lacked the temperament for the job. Unfortunately, as he lost the election, he reacted as the Democrats hoped he would.
And those Americans who didn’t like what happened to him and went to Washington to protest publicly on his behalf have been ruined and broken by the state.
Was what happened on Jan. 6 a insurrection? Was it a coup? Only if you believe that the foolish Chewbacca Man with the ridiculous horns on his head was about to influence the taking of control of the government of the United States.
The odd thing about Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 Committee Hearings–with six more to go–is that they’re all about attacking Republicans, trying to prevent Trump from running again, and arguing that what what happened on that day was politically motivated lawlessness.
But isn’t that what happened in the Democratic cities in 2020, politically motivated lawlessness, when liberal Democrat mayors and governors and other political hacks promoted the protests that became the BLM riots, in order to prosecute their political case against the Republicans?
Some use force and violence and are excused. And some are not excused.
The Fed Up-Americans see this clearly and take notice.
And isn’t lawlessness promoted by the Soros-backed prosecutors–from San Francisco’s Cheasa Boudin to Chicago’s Kim Foxx to all the others–when they refuse to follow the law and prosecute crime? There is a political component to this, too, no? The lawlessness brings anarchy and chaos, and history tells us that some find these to be politically useful.
Yet at the same time the Democrats stay silent about the assassination attempt of a Supreme Court Justice, while gathering media and the federal police to do their political bidding and hold public show trials to prosecute the lawlessness of the other party.
But here’s the problem. Washington Democrats don’t hold themselves to the standards they demand for others. And the people see right through it.
Watching the Jan. 6 Committee, I don’t think that Europeans and South Americans, Africans, those of the Balkan states, Turkey, the Middle-East and others are all that surprised. They’ve seen this kind of thing for years: One party using the their political power against their opposition.
They’ve seen all this before, the state using muscle to exert control and meet out political revenge, with media loyalist supporting their purges, even as biddable fools go out on social media to babble and scream about authoritarianism.
The Fed-Up Americans are not as preoccupied by politics as the corporate media that detests them. The Fed-Up Americans can see inflation destroying what they’ve built, with gas and food prices rising. They sniff the air and can smell a collapse in the housing market.
But to change the subject, the Biden White House and the Democrats, their media minions and a few Trump-hating Republicans wave those the shiny Jan. 6 objects to distract them. I get the politics. So do you.
It is a shell game like find-the-pea, where the sharpie takes the rube’s money in some old newspaper cartoon.
But the people aren’t clueless rubes. They notice. They bide their time. And as they wait, they seethe.
From today, Sunday, June 12, to Nov 8, there are 149 days. And November 8 is Election Day.
And on Election Day in November, the Fed-Up Americans will have their say.
And:
The Boiling Over of America
Even California voters are fed up with progressives. And the Supreme Court faces a mounting crisis.
By Peggy Noonan
San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled this week in a 60-40 landslide. Los Angeles saw a surge of support for a moderate mayoral candidate, Rick Caruso, who campaigned on crime, homelessness and social disorder. None of this necessarily marks a sea change; the people of both cities have long been happy to be liberal Democrats. What they won’t accept is being ruled by progressives. (San Francisco has made this clear twice; in February, when voters fired as many progressive members of the school board as they could, we called it the beginning of a serious rebuke.) An aspect that is potentially promising for the Republicans is that the shock and trauma of the past few years of misgovernment, and the recall fights, have, for the first time in at least a generation, reminded Democrats that there are options beyond their party and that on the issues of crime and public disorder, Republicans have demonstrated the greater wisdom. So yes, there could be long-term implications.
Early reports suggest, unsurprisingly, that minority voters backed the recall in greater numbers than college-educated whites. This is because they suffer more and have fewer protections when crime spikes and homeless encampments seize new ground.
This is what the foes of progressives are saying: We won’t let our city go down. We won’t accept the idea of steady deterioration. We will fight the imposition of abstract laws reflecting the abstract theories of people for whom life has always been abstract and theoretical. We can’t afford to be abstract and theoretical, we live real lives. We wish to be allowed to walk the streets unmolested and with confidence. This isn’t too much to ask. It is the bare minimum.
Progressive politicians have been around long enough running cities that some distinguishing characteristics can be noted. One is they don’t listen to anybody. To stop them you have to fire them. They’re not like normal politicians who have some give, who tack this way and that. Progressive politicians have no doubt, no self-correcting mechanism.
Another characteristic: They are more loyal to theory than to people. If the people don’t like the theories the progressives impose, that’s too bad; the theory is pre-eminent.
Progressives say: We are changing all rules on arrest and incarceration because they are bad for minority groups.
The minority groups say that sounds good in the abstract but let’s make sure it’s good in the particular.
It proves not to be. The minority groups say: Stop.
The progressive says: You have to like what we’re doing, it’s good for you! What are you, racist?
The minority groups say: We’re going to fire you.
No you’re not, don’t be ridiculous.
Watch.
And they fire him. And he’s shocked.
Here the third distinguishing characteristic: The progressive can’t understand why. He tells reporters the voters are “in a bad mood” because of inflation and housing costs.
A final characteristic of progressive politicians is that they tend to be high-IQ stupid people. They are bright and well-educated but can’t comprehend the implications of policy. They don’t understand that if an 18-year-old is repeatedly arrested for assaulting people on the street and repeatedly let go, his thought may not go in the direction of, “What a gracious and merciful society I live in, I will do more to live up to it.” It is more likely he will think, “I can assault anyone and get away with it. They are afraid of me.”
Criminals calculate. Normal people know this and anticipate it. It is a great eccentricity of progressive politicians that they can’t.
So I do think America is on a campaign to remove them, one by one. And this is good.
I jump to another crime-related issue, and that has to do with the national Republican Party and guns. At the basest level, where politicians tend to live, you’d think the GOP would be trying to situate itself as the party of wise adults to help summon those Democrats looking for a new home.
Congressional Republicans argue, compellingly, that there is a mental-health crisis in America, especially among young men. But do they listen to themselves when they say this? Because at the same time many are suggesting they will refuse to ban 18-year-olds, with their unsturdy emotions and unformed brains, from buying assault weapons such as AR-15s. Does that make any sense? It’s as if they’re saying, “We know you’ve been rendered mentally ill by the society and culture in which you’ve been raised. Therefore we’re going to make sure you can legally obtain super-weapons to kill people.
This is proof of a mental-health crisis in the U.S. Senate. The opposition to red-flag laws is the same: We know there’s a pandemic of raw and violent instability, but it might potentially, theoretically and temporarily compromise someone’s rights if local cops, on being tipped you were displaying assault weapons on TikTok with the words, “Say hello to my little friends,” were allowed to check you out and, for a short time, confiscate your weapons. So we say no.
Don’t they know what time it is? This is a nation in all kinds of crises. You can’t let your theories and abstractions have sway at such a moment, you have to let common sense step in.
The lesson of this political moment: Don’t be radical, don’t be extreme. Our country is a tea kettle on high flame, at full boil. Wherever possible let the steam out, be part of a steady steam release before the kettle blows.
I finish with Justice Brett Kavanaugh and reports of the young man taken into custody in the middle of the night near his house with a gun, a knife and other gear. Police say he admitted he wanted to assassinate the justice.
The next night demonstrators were still being allowed at Justice Kavanaugh’s house. Shouldn’t the White House, the president, Congress and federal agencies be more fully in this and united against it?
The court is in a continuing crisis of trust and competence, and now of danger, after the leak of the draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
NPR reported this week the clerks of the court are upset the investigation might harm their future prospects. A source tells Nina Totenberg, in her paraphrase: “The clerks are terrified that their whole professional lives could be blown up.” Wow—in all my worries about the court I forgot to worry about the mid-six-figure jobs jeopardized at Covington & Burling.
Two centuries of tradition broken and a draft decision leaked to the press, which was a disaster for the court operationally and reputationally. Demonstrations at justices’ houses, and now a guy with a gun.
The court should release the Dobbs decision—stop letting madmen think they can stop or affect it through violence. As for the clerks, yes, it’s generally, perhaps unjustly, assumed a clerk leaked it and hard to doubt it was a clerk for a liberal justice, with the motive of alarming, agitating and urging opponents to rise up.
Mission accomplished. Now the clerk should come forward, confess, and leave his or her fellow clerks professionally unharmed. If you were moral, you would want to protect the innocent. And let some steam out there, too.
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Finally:
Thomas Sowell: The gun control farce
Surely murder is a serious subject, which ought to be examined seriously. Instead, it is almost always examined politically in the context of gun control controversies, with stock arguments on both sides that have remained the same for decades. And most of those arguments are irrelevant to the central question: Do tighter gun control laws reduce the murder rate?
That is not an esoteric question, nor one for which no empirical evidence is available. Think about it. We have 50 states, each with its own gun control laws, and many of those laws have gotten either tighter or looser through the years. There must be tons of data that could indicate whether murder rates went up or down when either of these things happened.
But have you ever heard any gun control advocate cite any such data? Tragically, gun control has become one of those fact-free issues that spawn outbursts of emotional rhetoric and mutual recriminations about the National Rifle Association or the Second Amendment.
If restrictions on gun ownership do reduce murders, we can repeal the Second Amendment, as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist to protect people. People do not exist to perpetuate laws.
But if tighter restrictions on gun ownership do not reduce murders, what is the point of tighter gun control laws — and what is the point of demonizing the National Rifle Association?
There are data not only from our 50 states but also from other countries around the world. Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm’s empirical study, “Guns and Violence: The English Experience,” should be eye-opening for all those who want their eyes opened, however small that number of people might be.
Professor Malcolm’s book also illustrates the difference between isolated, cherry-picked facts and relevant empirical evidence.
Many gun control advocates have cited the much higher murder rates in the United States than in England because of tighter gun control laws in England. But Professor Malcolm’s study points out that the murder rate in New York has been some multiple of the murder rate in London for two centuries — and, during most of that time, neither city had serious restrictions on gun ownership.
As late as 1954, “there were no controls on shotguns” in England, Professor Malcolm reported, but only 12 cases of armed robbery in London. Of these only 4 had real guns. But in the remainder of the 20th century, gun control laws became ever more severe — and armed robberies in London soared to 1,400 by 1974.
“As the numbers of legal firearms have dwindled, the numbers of armed crimes have risen” is her summary of that history in England. Conversely, in the United States the number of handguns in American homes more than doubled between 1973 and 1992, while the murder rate went down.
There are relevant facts available, but you are not likely to hear about them from politicians currently pushing for tighter gun control laws, or from the mainstream media, when those facts go against the claims of gun control advocates.
Despite hundreds of thousands of times per year when Americans use firearms defensively, none of those incidents is likely to be reported in the mainstream media, even when lives are saved as a result. But one accidental firearm death in a home will be broadcast and rebroadcast from coast to coast.
Virtually all empirical studies in the United States show that tightening gun control laws has not reduced crime rates in general or murder rates in particular. Is this because only people opposed to gun control do empirical studies? Or is it because the facts uncovered in empirical studies make the arguments of gun control zealots untenable?
In both England and the United States, those people most zealous for tighter gun control laws tend also to be most lenient toward criminals and most restrictive on police. The net result is that law-abiding citizens become more vulnerable when they are disarmed and criminals disobey gun control laws, as they disobey other laws.
The facts are too plain to be ignored. Moreover, the consequences are too dangerous to law-abiding citizens, whose lives are put in jeopardy on the basis of fact-free assumptions and unexamined dogmas. Such arguments are a farce, but not the least bit funny.
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