Godless Albany

The passing of the Reverend Billy Graham recently serves to exemplify by example the height of an ethical and honorable man. Juxtaposing this are the immoral aliens that occupy today’s political moonscape in New York State.

Former NYS Senator George Maziarz recently pled guilty to a corruption charge because he spirited away $100,000.00 in campaign donations to pay off a former aid accused of sexual harassment. Add Maziarz to the list of more than 40 elected NYS officials that in recent times have been caught up in criminal, dishonest and sometimes disgusting behavior, from the former Governor Spitzer on down the line.

Today, we await the jury verdict in the Joseph Percoco case, a Governor Cuomo confidant and Albany insider extraordinaire, accused of bribery. Syracuse.com reports: “…, the late Gov. Mario Cuomo was known to describe Percoco as a third son. The younger Cuomo joked Percoco was the son his father loved best. And Percoco joked Andrew Cuomo was the bigger brother he never had…” Yet our esteemed, untarnished Governor wants the public to believe that he knows nothing whatsoever of the untoward dealings of brother Percoco.

That level of ignorance would make the Governor either incompetent or a bald-faced liar and no one, even Cuomo’s detractors see him as incompetent.

By comparison, Graham was known as “America’s Preacher”, having ministered to every US President since Harry Truman. Graham personally spoke to over 210 million people in more than 185 countries during his years evangelizing. No one in the history of the world has spoken directly to more people about the gospel than Billy Graham. He was a man of honor, character and dignity because he was a man of God. Graham was married to the same woman for 64 years and enjoys a history free of misdeeds. A testament to the importance of this man to the very character of the United States is the fact that Graham’s casket sat in the rotunda of the US Capitol in memoriam of his service to our country.

While Graham sets a very high bar for us all, Albany has seemingly vetoed the bar out of existence.

The old cliché says, “You can’t legislate morality”, which is true. Instead, we attempt to influence behaviors by legislating negative consequences when immoral, unethical and illegal activities occur. Increasing the severity of punishments for the illegal acts of public officials attacks the problem after it takes place and does little to nothing to insure higher standards of performance and expectations. One could argue that the need to ratchet up sanctions indicates a worsening of the problem.

Our ordinary compass detects direction from the gravity of the earth. The only way a moral compass provides righteousness in the hearts of men is in concert with a belief, a trust and a relationship with God. Legislation is not the answer, the Almighty is. As Tocqueville reminded us in 1835, “Liberty depends on morality. Morality depends upon faith. Faith depends upon God.”

Albany exemplifies governance by the godless.

A Special Kind of Stupid

I have been writing about firearms for over 30 years with the overarching objective of educating and informing those who know little to nothing about the issue. Regardless of my best efforts, I have failed. I am disheartened to report that many in the general population of 30 years ago has morphed from ignorant and uninformed into just plain garden variety stupid today.

While it is accurate to acknowledge that the anti-gun, lying media complex has created and fortified the misinformation campaign against firearms, I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the gullible public that ingests this garbage.

Look no further than the very words of the anti-gun public in their expressions of opinion about guns. My local newspaper’s op-ed section on Sunday printed eleven letters about firearms. Nine of the eleven were negative and in each of those nine letters, provably false claims were made, not claims where thinking people can differ, but out-and-out falsehoods. Of course, the Gannett newspaper prints these because the lies justify their dedication towards the anti-gun agenda.

Don Lemon at CNN was caught on-air not knowing the difference between a semi-automatic and a fully automatic firearm and when called on it, he declared that, “it doesn’t matter.” Well it does matter Don. Rejecting the truth transforms you from ignorant to willfully stupid and whoever heard that segment with Lemon and still believes him, is stupid as well.

And worse yet, the politician’s who actually are responsible for enacting the laws seem to know less about the subject that the stupid people who elect them. California Senator Diane Feinstein, a vocal gun-hating ignoramus often mistakes a magazine for a projectile and not only doesn’t understand the differences in a bullets caliber, but clearly doesn’t want to learn because she has been in office for over 25 years, giving her plenty of time to distinguish between fact and fiction.

Political correctness, (PC), has declared as unacceptable calling anyone stupid. Those who believe this are a special brand of stupid. After we clear our head from the fog of PC, we know and accept that certain people are stupid and for this, there is no known cure, so I am finished trying to educate the illiterate. Those voices simply don’t matter anymore because they’re too stupid to bother arguing with. While these fools are entitled to their own opinions, they cannot construct their own alternative facts.

The millions of us who legally and safely own firearms have had enough lectures from stupid people devoid of facts, blabbering on with the talking points from their fellow travelers who control their small minds and forge their very opinions, useful idiots as Lenin called them.

Here is the reality. Governmental failure at all levels is to blame for almost every mass tragedy, from 911 to Parkland, yet the useful idiots focus on the firearms. Now that same government of repeated failures wants to “fix” the problem? Indeed, a special kind of stupid embraces that.

Dog-Whistles

Here’s a lesson in three popular liberal dog-whistle phrases so when you hear them, you’ll know you’re listening to either an idiot, a compete shill for the politically correct, or in all likelihood, a possessor of both.

Liberal dog-whistle phrase #1

“Gun Violence”

When libs use this, it is indicative of their close study of the assigned talking points because in the real world of actual spontaneous conversation, “gun violence” isn’t used.

By linking “violence” with the word “gun”, this is an effort to equate the negativity and nastiness of all that is this violent with the tool called a firearm.

Violence is violence. Things aren’t violent, people are violent. To the person beset upon with actions of violence, it hardly matters the instruments used in the administration of that violence. Guns are inanimate tools, incapable of action without human intervention. Will does not exist in objects. Will or intent, only exists in the hearts and minds of men. How they carry out that will or intent does in no way inflict vilification on the objects they choose to use. Just as a hammer is great for nails, it is not so great for skulls. And just like no one equates evil and violence with a hammer, it is no less rational to expect a difference when describing a firearm. Box-cutters, butter knives and beehives have all been involved in killing. None of these have intent or evil built into them; it was the violent intent of a person that used these things.

When the Lakeland Florida kids went back to school yesterday, surrounded by 50-armed police officers, no one was equating those armed officers as purveyors of gun violence. But think about it, if guns were in and of themselves evil and violent, that must be the case regardless of who possesses that gun, right? It just does not make sense.

“Gun Safety”

All firearms are equipped with a safety. Most firearms have several safeties. Modern firearms are safe against accidental discharge. When the libs use the phrase “gun-safety”, they don’t mean anything useful; it is simply a rouse to again equate a lack of safety with firearms. By repeating the words gun and safety repeatedly, eventually the libs hope to convince the idiots of the world that guns are just plain not safe and again, the concept of being safe is reserved to the actions of people not objects.

And finally, the mother of all Dog-Whistle phrases:

“Common-Sense Gun Laws”

Another classic lib tactic, use a phrase like “common-sense”, tie it to gun laws, and then challenge anyone to be against what is only common-sense. The problem is that this requires one to believe that the tens of thousands of gun laws on the books are somehow devoid of common sense.

The reason this particular dog-whistle gets so much traction, is that the propaganda that has been spread for years, courtesy of a complicit media, has lied about the topic for so long and in so many ways, that the low-information citizen that has chosen to receive his news from these sources, has been brainwashed into believing that the country is completely lacking in firearms regulations when nothing could be further from the truth, but then again, if you keep your head up your ass, wonder not why you’re stupid.

NRA

The National Rifle Association, (NRA) has saved more lives and done more good in the civil rights arena than any other organization in modern America. Whenever you hear an individual, a group or a corporation deride the NRA, or otherwise vilify or distance themselves from them, it is a sure fire indicator that they know nothing about the issue. If they did, they would consider this:

These are facts:

The NRA was formed in 1871, making it the longest standing civil rights organization in America. Ever since, the NRA has trained millions in marksmanship, hunter safety and the proper handling of firearms. In 1940, the NRA supplied Britain with 7,000 firearms so civilians could defend against a Nazi invasion. In 1960, the NRA became the first and only national trainer of law enforcement officers. Today, there are more that 13,000 NRA-certified police and security firearms instructors. More than 125,000 NRA certified instructors teach 1 million civilians annually the safe and proper handling of firearms. NRA

The Eddie Eagle program has reached more than 28 million kids in kindergarten through 4th grade, teaching them that if they see a firearm in an unsupervised situation, they should “STOP. DON’T TOUCH. RUN AWAY. TELL A GROWNUP.”

The Don’t Be a Victim seminars have reached over 100,000 women and men in assisting them to develop their own personal protection program.

The NRA has over 5 million members focused on training, proficiency, safety and most importantly the preservation of their Constitutional right to keep and bear firearms. Those who believe that the NRA is in any way culpable for the actions of maniacal murderers are themselves morons of the first order, gobbling up all of the propaganda the mainstream media can shovel into their empty heads. The only possible way that one can link the NRA to mass shootings, is to remain so resolutely devoted to a false narrative in order to reinforce the failed premise they had to begin with, clinging to a complete lie.

When nationally recognized companies scramble to severe their ties with the NRA, this speaks more about their culture and ways of doing business, than it does of actual substantive objection. Those who play politics and take advantage of the emotional turmoil of murdered schoolchildren in order to seem enlightened and holier-than-thou are beneath contempt.

It is particularly distressing to hear Ed Stack, CEO of Dicks Sporting Goods jump on the bandwagon because Dick’s was founded right here in Binghamton and now I’m not only ashamed of Stack, but I’ll not do business with Dick’s because of it.

The NRA is a convenient target because hating on them leads to no particular repercussions while demonstrating the required political correctness these organizations feel the need to demonstrate to the progressives of the world. It is not only stupid, it is cowardly.

Today, all the kids at the Florida school went back to class with 50-armed police officers surrounding the campus. I don’t hear anyone calling for the banning of those guns…

Nero Fiddled, Kids Color

The elite American Left is finally waking to the fact that not only is the world a dangerous place, but increasingly, so is the United States. While the radical academically liberal campuses are incubating entitled snowflakes, coloring in their “safe spaces” after a rigorous class in gender studies, the world must seem perfectly formed in their image. But that is not the world in which most Americans live.

The Left creates public service announcements about bullying, drugs, guns and child abuse, feeling the effort alone is the solution. Instead, their cavalier attitude actually encourages these things by trivializing the complexity of real solutions. Victims are the secret sauce to sustain purpose for progressives. Profiting from victimhood is the primary reason liberalism exists.

Tragically, victimhood requires the individual’s capitulation of self-worth, confidence and personal accountability. Accepting victim status is to secede from participating in the greatest arena designed for personal success ever conceived by mankind; the United State of America. The greatness of America can only mean that victimhood is a choice. While millions have risked life and limb to not only come here, but to also defend our freedom and our shores with their very lives, how can those already a part of the greatest nation on Earth claim helplessness when so many resources are available? The Left has led them to a pasture where the grass looked greener from a distance and no one noticed the fence and the gate that closed behind them.

School shootings have exposed the soft underbelly of the world the Left has created. Those who conceptualized “Gun Free Zones” are as bloodily culpable as those who believed them.

God, guns and goodness have been tossed out of our schools and along with it common sense. Societal failings have decimated families with welfare programs that reward single parent households over intact, traditional nuclear families where fathers domesticate boys into men. Without such guidance, look at these mass shooters and tell me which ones had dads in their lives.

Evil propagates in a godless society. You can’t reject God and expect that the evil that is always at odds with Godliness won’t manifest itself. The struggle for all of mankind is that between Goodness and Evil. That struggle happens internally for all of us within our hearts. That same struggle, with the same evil, also exists and needs to be addressed in our external lives, our relationships, our governance, our policies, our nation’s very foundation built on goodness, virtue and God.

President Lincoln guided us through a civil war. His words can guide us today, if we only heed them.

“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty”.

Those with a coloring book collection would find no safe space in the world of Lincoln, and they’ll find no such space in today’s or tomorrow’s world without God and good men with guns.

Child Abuse

Assigning authority to schoolchildren in defining a nation’s firearms policy is as idiotic as elevating movie stars to voices of wisdom when neither have any subject-matter expertise. Exploiting traumatized teenagers into a nationally televised spectacle was nothing more than a hate-fest orchestrated by CNN to further their own rabidly anti-gun agenda; shameful using kids to humanize their deplorable fake-news track record. The Left foments emotion to overcome thoughtfulness and logic because in the arena of ideas, they are clueless, underwhelming and woefully unarmed.

The Wall Street Journal reported that since 1990, a total of 150 people lost their lives in school shootings in the US. This means students are statistically 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than from a bullet. During that same 28-year period, approximately 2.5 million teens were killed in auto accidents. 100,000 kids will die in car crashes this year. The Center for Disease Control, (CDC), reports that today, texting while driving is the leading cause of teen deaths.

There are over 50 million students in 100,000 school districts in the US and today, not one was shot. However, 32 of those students will die today, and another 32 tomorrow, and another 32 every day in auto crashes, the overwhelming majority of which are the result of distracted driving. In an average school week, more of these kids will die in car crashes, than the sum total of all school shootings since 1990. These deaths will be just as awful for those left behind as were the murders in mass shootings, but these everyday deaths get no notice from a nation overwhelmed with information and tragedy.

Kids do have the specific subject-matter expertise to address this issue. Their efforts to organize and march to influence their peers to behave responsibly while driving would have a far greater impact on saving lives, instead of being unwittingly used by the Left to be reactionary and symbolic in advancing their agenda.

While these kids are quick to call on their government to “do something”, the facts tell us that it is government itself that has failed those kids and by extension all of us. The government failed to place the Texas church killer into the background database that would have prevented him from having weapons. The government failed to address the multitude of instances that the Florida shooter could have been detained. Government seldom shows us quality by example.

School shootings are preventable. Celebrating political correctness by proudly proclaiming ones school to be within the so-called “Gun Free Zone” is an attractive invitation for cowardly maniacs to become tantalized with the thoughts of killing. Unarmed, soft-targets in a confined space offer the killer opportunity with little resistance.

With no indication that society anytime soon will become softer, it is wise that we move quickly to become harder. Hardening our softest targets should be our immediate priority. Deadly force is deterred with the certainty of a deadly response. The uncertainty of who might be armed in a school deters a coward.

I wish the social scientists the best in addressing the underlying causes of our societal failings, but in the mean time, the reality of the situation is that these are the times in which we live. We can hope that somehow, things change or at least don’t get worse, but we can also, simultaneously harden ourselves and our surroundings knowing that in a violent and uncertain world we must protect ourselves and our children.

Breeding Maniacs

From our nations founding until today, societal attitudes regarding firearms have transformed from commonplace and acceptable to anti-social and heretical. The 1960’s public schools had rifle clubs and shooting galleries. In rural America, it was common for kids to bring their shotguns or rifles onto the school bus, take them into school, stow them in their lockers and go hunting after class.

Until about the end of the 20th century, mass shootings were virtually non-existent. With unfettered access to guns, schools, government buildings, churches, restaurants and other public spaces, people in the 60’s and before were not committing massacres.

Perfectly sane, legal gun-owners yesterday and today, are not the problem. While recent gun ownership has skyrocketed, homicide rates continue to fall.

Societal changes represent the problem. What has changed is the proliferation of maniacs, sociopaths and the criminally evil amongst us. There are more evildoers today than there were 50 years ago. Family breakdown is the problem and governmental policy is to blame with a welfare state that encourages it.

Traditional nuclear families domesticate young men and without that structure, maniacs proliferate. While waiting for the Utopian world, we must harden soft targets with armed, honorable men with guns.

The Hardening of a Nation

Mass-murdering terrorists and other forms of cowards seek out “soft targets.” This means situations and conditions where victims are least likely to fight back or even resist. Key to the evildoer’s determination of this is the ease in which access and control can be imposed on the most vulnerable with the least amount of risk. Large groups in confined spaces with limited and easily controlled methods of egress form the perfect situation for those hell-bent on delivering evil. The workplace, schools, places of worship, restaurants, malls all fit the bill. When these places identify themselves as “Gun-Free Zones”, this indicates to the assailant an even softer target.

To the lunatics and wannabe killers of this world, Gun Free Zone is a declaration of defenseless, a maniacs all-you-can-kill buffet.

The madman has the element of surprise. This is combined with overwhelmingly superior offense, not only in the planning, but also in the form of firepower. A madman with guns in an otherwise Gun-Free Zone is a recipe for a massacre. Once commenced, this assault generates over-powering fear in 99% of those targeted. This fear results in panic, which causes confusion and mayhem, freezing some into inaction, scattering others into flight and powering that 1% into action in response.

There are two distinctive schools of thought on a solution to this matter and they debate each other every time a mass shooting takes place. The cries for “common-sense gun laws”, closing the so-called “gun show loophole,” and banning “assault weapons” are all regurgitated up again, the same arguments as the last time. The other side argues that guns don’t kill, people do, that the mentally ill are too often left untreated, and that the right to arms is ensconced in the nations founding documents.

Declaring a need for common-sense gun laws infers that guns are unregulated or that current laws are nonsensical. This is patently false. Every gun purchaser must submit to a federally regulated application process that includes a background check. Only federally licensed dealers can sell guns either wholesale or retail and obtaining that license is very difficult, requiring stringent reporting obligations. Weapons dealers at gun shows have the same legal obligations regarding the sale, application and background check federally required. Violating firearms laws are severe felony level crimes invoking harsh prison sentences. In addition, this only addresses the federal component of the law. Each state has their own overlapping regulations, in many cases making gun ownership much harder or even next to impossible.

Over time, the anti-gun media has successfully convinced the public that “assault weapons” are available to the public, which is also false. Those in media know this lie full well, but they play on the fact that a growing segment of society is ignorant to actual firearms facts and gullibly reliant on their published words. By repeating the lie over and over, to the ignorant, it has become the truth.

True assault weapons are available only to law enforcement and the military, characterized by fully automatic operation. The civilian versions of these firearms are not automatic, and are no different in operation from common hunting guns. What confuses the public is that many firearms companies have produced these civilian rifles to look like the military version.

Same gun as to the right

However, just as you can buy a Lotus sports car body to replace that of a Volkswagen Beetle, that cosmetic modification does not magically render it a racecar.

Correspondingly, civilian rifles made to look like their military versions are not assault weapons.

As for accusing the media of being anti-gun, here is a great example. Yahoo Sports writer Jason Owens wrote in an article published just today the following quote. “In Norway, it’s really strict to buy weapons,” bronze-medal biathlete Tiril Eckhoff told USA Today. “I think that’s the main thing in America. Everyone can buy a gun, and that’s totally wrong, I think.”

Certainly Owens and the editors of USA Today knows that the statement by the Norwegian athlete is just plain wrong in proclaiming the ..”everyone can buy a gun,” yet they quote him and print it because it reinforces their preconceived notion and narrative, even at the expense of being totally refutable and completely incorrect. This is not an oversight on their part; this is a straight up lie that supports their position. When lies are necessary to justify ones thinking, those afflicted have gone from reasoning to propagandizing.

Emotion is what motivates the anti-gun crowd. The Wall Street Journal reported just yesterday, that 150 people have been killed in school shooting since 1990. 150 people in 28 years. While tragic and unacceptable, the fact is that means students are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than struck with a bullet.

The Left and their anti-gun friends peddle mis-information and out and out lies on the backs of emotionally charged images of grieving parents and crying children, not in order to get to the solutions, but to create from whole cloth a narrative that is inaccurate; hatred of guns.

Renowned criminologist, John Lott, in his book, “More Guns, Less Crime” proves, with real-life crime statistics and information about legal firearms ownership throughout the country, that indeed there is a determinate correlation between the presence of legal firearms ownership, possession and the commission of crimes. While criminals may be stupid, they are just smart enough to distinguish between committing crimes in areas where gun ownership and the right to carry a weapon is prevalent as opposed to the softer targets located in Gun-Free Zones.

Evil is real, it exists in this world and it cannot be eradicated. The solution isn’t the softening of the entire world, dreaming of a Utopian understanding, the solution is to harden ourselves against evils incursions on our lives.

Let’s not forget, in every instance of mass shootings, the story always ends with dozens or even hundreds of people showing up with dozens or hundreds of guns that either stop the event from continuing or otherwise insure the public’s safety. Moreover, not one single proposed new law would have changed any of the outcomes.

We need to systematically harden our softest targets because in that critical moment of a horror about to be unleashed, the only solution to a maniac with a gun is a brave man with one.

A National Embarrassment

During the State of the Union address this last week, the camera panned into a view of California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, verifying the adage that a picture is worth a thousands words. For those millions of viewers who were watching last Tuesday and saw Mrs. Pelosi, let me predict, with 99% accuracy what we all collectively screamed at that moment to our respective televisions.

Nancy-Pelosi-scowl

Remember the chants of USA-USA-USA? Had we all simultaneously muted our TV’s and just slightly opened a window, this is what you would have heard, loud and clear from coast to coast when Pelosi’s scowling face appeared. No need for a thousand words, only three: (I’ll give you the beginning letters of each word, you figure it out), chanted just like the USA-USA-USA moment only YFC – YFC – YFC

That’s right, I said it……….. You Failed California…………………………

Clueless

A recent editorial bemoans the fact that today’s young journalists not only lack the protections of free speech when publishing in school newspapers, but also are devoid of the basic drive to challenge and confront fiction when they find it.

The author finds this incredulous. I find it predictable.

What should we expect when we teach our 6 year olds that the score in a game doesn’t matter, that there are no “winner” or “losers,” that everyone “deserves” a participation trophy? What should we expect when school course work is “dumbed down” and grades curved up when outcomes don’t meet expectations? What should we expect when schools encourage the politically correct agenda of today’s progressive movement, while failing to teach American history or civics? What should we expect when Washington, Jefferson and Columbus are seldom mentioned, much less taught, with the exception of calling them slaveholders and abusive plunderers? What should we expect when the least little provocation is translated into an act of bullying, shutting off the opportunity to learn the life-skills of dealing with people, yes even the jerks?

Society has relegated shame, personal accomplishment, dignity and individual responsibility to the dump of politically correct phrases now out of bounds. Perhaps some of today’s “snow-flakes” might not melt so fast had they been tempered in the fire of social adversity and been allowed to work out real-life conflicts for themselves, instead of a parent or schoolteacher intervening.

It the quest to shelter and protect our children, we have been too afraid to let them fail. We have undervalued the concept of “tough-love” and forgotten that we are parents first and not their best friends. It was easier to say yes than to say no, and many parents thought that somehow, it would all just work out.

Well, it hasn’t.

A bloody nose, either metaphoric or literal isn’t the end of the world, but the beginning of a deeper and realistically based understanding of actual human nature. A hurt feeling isn’t terminal. Ironically, while attempting to shield children from everything, we have left them naked to it all, the reality of a world not controlled by parents, teachers or progressive idealism. While many parents taught their kids to believe and live in a world they wished for, they now have to function in the world as it really is.

Problem-solving, critical thinking and a healthy level of skepticism were sacrificed at the alter of self-righteousness and the smug as confused_parent uredness that there was only one-way to interpret the world. They had it all figured out. But when confronted with opposing viewpoints and notions that conflict with their worldview, that void in their training hammers home the reality that in order to function in the chaotic reality of reality, the absolutes they thought were absolute are not, and to borrow a popular phrase from the 60’s, this simply, “blows their minds.” Reality is a stern taskmaster. No points for effort, no atta-boys for attitude, simply rewards based upon outcomes. What a concept.

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Perspectives from the INTJ angle

Thinking Trumps Emotion