Starvin Larry

BY JOHN R. LOTT JR.

Gun sales are at record highs, but Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest seller of guns and ammunition, announced last week that it has stopped selling so-called “assault rifles” or “other modern sporting rifles.”

“It’s about what customers are buying and what they’re not,” Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg announced, suggesting the move wasn’t due to political considerations.

Headlines fixated on Wal-Mart’s decision to stop selling AR-15s, a gun used in Newtown and other tragedies. These guns aren’t selling quite like they did in 2013, but they’re still the best-selling rifles in America. Many other rifles are only gaining in popularity.

Sales of U.S.-made rifles increased 119% between 2010 and 2013, the latest year for which data are available. Between 2001 and 2013, there was a 212% increase. More recent background-check data suggest gun sales have continued to soar since 2013.

Gun sales and manufacturing took off as soon as President Obama was elected in 2008 and are now at record levels. Against this backdrop, Wal-Mart may just be having bad luck in experiencing a drop in gun sales. But there have been other pressures.

Hoping For Good Will

In 2013, the Washington Post announced that the White House was trying to work with Wal-Mart to help push gun-control strategies. This year, New York City’s employee pension fund is considering divesting from Wal-Mart because it was selling “assault weapons.” Trinity Wall Street Church tried to force a shareholder vote on limiting what types of guns the company could sell.

Perhaps the company that used to be labeled “the nation’s first politically incorrect discount retailer” — on issues from the minimum wage to the use of products made in foreign countries to the construction of superstores in urban areas — feels that taking these guns off its shelves could buy some political good will.

Wal-Mart will apparently still be selling semi-automatic rifles for hunting, just not so-called “assault rifles” or “other modern sporting rifles.” Ironically, the civilian version of the AR-15 uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as do small game-hunting rifles, fires one bullet at a time, and does no more damage.

No self-respecting military would use the civilian version of these guns. Many states even forbid using the AR-15 for deer hunting, as its small bullets are likely to wound rather than kill the animals.

The AR-15 is a hunting rifle that has been made to look like a military weapon.

Walmart, the biggest seller of guns and ammunition in the United States, announced last week it will stop selling “semi-automatic weapons” like the AR-15 and instead will focus on “firearms more associated with hunters and sportsmen.”

The company said the decision was based solely on declining sales, not political pressure. Yet many find this explanation more than a little suspicious.

Although gun sales have indeed slowed down recently, there are signs they may be picking back up. Gun sales spiked 11% in June alone, making it the busiest June ever, according to CNN.

Read the rest @ Bluegrass Bruce

Publisher’s Note: Please read Paul’s brilliant post on Peak Obedience at his site. It dovetails nicely with the screed below. -BB

“But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.”

• Lysander Spooner

Don’t hit and don’t steal. Absent these two things, no government on Earth could exist for an hour much less centuries. Once the state has secured the means to threaten or initiate violence, this prerogative becomes the exclusive preserve of the monopolistic state. Political science is not about elegant ways for humanity to co-exist

an·ar·chy ˈanərkē/ noun noun: anarchy absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.

The definition means that rulers don’t exist but rules do. This is not paradoxical but makes perfect sense.

But the notion of anarchy scares the shit out of Americans across the fetid plain. The notion of not having legions of armed busybodies ready with the bat to apply the wood shampoo or worse at the behest of the ruler de jure makes most American men shiver in terror.

I know the A-word makes most humans quiver in fear and loathing so I employ a less charged word – abolition. I am an abolitionist and opposed to all forms of human slavery whether it be chattel, bondage, indentured, taxation or regulatory.

All of it.

It’s a bit disconcerting to think that one would have to defend the notion of abolition in polite conversation but that is the American salon today. Quivering women of both sexes shaking in trepidation at the thought of not have a master across the political spectrum. Fortunately, I have no place on that spectrum since politician is a nice colloquialism for violence broker and will not participate in selecting the latest psychotic kakocrat to parade into the Offal Office or its subsidiary satraps.

Think about that.

Absent he FAA, would corporations go out of their way to ensure that their aircraft plummet out of the sky to attract customers.

So if government didn’t exist, no market actors would step in to build roads? Here’s a pop quiz for you: name one government-held paving company in the United States. Just one.

So people would die of food poisoning because the state wouldn’t police restaurants. Food interest would go out of their way to drive customers from favorite brands by doing shoddy business?

Every time private security is used instead of state police forces, violence goes down.

The sickening trend for all of this is the increasingly brutal and Third World nature of statist policing on US soil. The cops kill with impunity and sustain laws that have no victim save the state. Government roads and arterials are simply a locus for high-grade banditry where speedometer readings don’t happen to coincide with random numbers on signs leading to a pretext to further ensnare the populace in searches and seizures of possessions and freedom and even life.

Those trillions of dollars wasted in the past, today and surely tomorrow never had to leave the pockets of a single human being to make the world more civilized. The government is nothing more than a criminal gang with flags.

There is not a single government enterprise that couldn’t be done better by the private sector and free market actors save one. War. But this is the exclusive province of the state because it is the primary vector for growth and strangulation of its host populations and the legions of victims abroad.

Absent the Pentagram and the Department of Offense, America may be a peaceful player on the world stage instead of the barbarous bully that has plowed a blood-red path planet-wide since the first abortive and amateurish action in Korea in 1871. Unfortunately, this was merely the prelude to meddling around the Earth once the aboriginal problem had been solved per the interests in DC through the remainder of the 19^th century.

Many of the usual suspects mewl about the absence of government turning the world into chaos. Why, who would build the roads, who would feed the people, who would protect us from the bad people.

Ironically, these same people happily assent to a mystical implied social contract and participate in the largest Stockholm Syndrome passion play in the history of mankind by voting for a new psychopath every few years to ensure that huge government apparatus remains in place with no accountability whatsoever demanded of the rulers but unlimited accountability demanded of the hapless ruled who consent to the nonsense through acceptance, acquiescence and fear.

Read the whole thing @ ZeroGov

There have been EHD outbreaks in Ohio recently as well, usually in dry summers,the outbreaks can decimate local deer populations,as the 2012 outbreaks did in northern Summit and SE Geauga counties. I was talking to a couple of ODNR game wardens in 2012 at the Ladue public hunting area,and they told me they had counted 30 dead deer along a 1 mile section of the Cuyahoga river,farmers in the area that I talked to told me they had dead deer all around the streams and ponds on their farms in 2012. The deer numbers around the Ladue public hunting area appear to be back up-according to a friend who lives next to part of the hunting area.

The Summit county outbreak was in the area around our home.The deer populations are just now getting back to near where they were,northern Summit county deer are having a harder time gaining numbers due to coyote predation,with high ‘yote numbers,and very little private land on which to hunt or trap ‘yotes.

From Illinois and NJ-

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Fish and Wildlife is asking the public to be aware of any white-tailed deer that may be affected by Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, or EHD, and to report any suspected instances since outbreaks typically begin in August.

Although EHD is not a public health issue, it is the most important viral disease that affects white-tail deer in the United States according to the
Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia.

The New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife reports that the state has experienced seven outbreaks of the disease since 1955. The virus is transmitted by a type of biting fly, commonly known as a biting midge, but have also been called sand gnats, sand flies, no-see-ums, or punkies.

The last outbreak of the disease in Sussex County came back in 1975, while parts of Morris and Warren Counties have had confirmed isolated cases of the virus show up in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

According to the University of Georgia, an easy lesion to spot where EHD could be expected is an erosion of the dental pad. Any deer with growth interruptions in their hooves or chronic lesions of the first part of the stomach, or rumen, by a hunter can suspect there was exposure to EHD.
The university noted that the geographic range of the disease year-by-year appears to be expanding. The division hopes that any deer exhibiting the symptoms of the disease will be reported to the Office of Fish and Wildlife Health and Forensics or the Bureau of Wildlife Management.

The signs of the disease this time of year are difficulty standing, drooling, foaming from the mouth or a carcass with no apparent wounds near water.
Another closely-related disease to EHD, named “Bluetongue,” or BT, was detected in deer for the first time in New Jersey last year. For New
Jerseyans and Sussex County natives, it is important to be aware of the disease because EHD can effect livestock, mostly cattle, while
Bluetongue is a disease of concern for all ruminant livestock, including sheep, goats, llamas and alpacas.
The public is not at risk to contract the disease and cannot be infected by handling infected deer, being bitten by infected midges or eating infected
deer meat, although the latter is strongly advised against. Dogs and cats are not susceptible to the disease either.

Unfortunately, there are no current strategies available to prevent or control EHD in the deer population. But, any livestock owners who believe their animals have been inflicted with the disease should contact a veterinarian for appropriate assistance.

Source

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is asking Illinoisans to be on the lookout for signs of a disease fatal to deer.

According to IDNR, Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) is a virus that causes high fevers and kills deer hours of days after it’s contracted. Small insects called midges carry the disease and transfer it to deer by biting. Midges live and breed near water sources such as ponds, lakes, or creeks. Deer often contract the disease while drinking and die nearby.

The disease has no known effect to humans or domestic animals but can kill off localized deer populations in high numbers, according to wildlife ecologist Eric Schauber with Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

“It’s a big deal because we get these occasional periods and places where we can get these occasional periods and places where you can get fairly heavy mortality and it can kill off a substantial fraction of the population,” Schauber said.

Most cases are reported during drought years, Schauber said. He said there are several cases in the Southern region each year but most cases are reported in the central part of the state.

“In general, in terms of the Southern part of the state it doesn’t seem to have a big impact on the population as it potentially could in the central part of the state where the habitat is mostly along waterways,” Schauber said.

Schauber said deer that have contracted the virus often exhibit odd behavior such as walking aimlessly, having no fear of people, panting or sticking its tongue out, and having a swollen face or body.

The last major outbreak of EHD in Ill. was in 2012, according to IDNR. 51 counties had reports of deer being killed because of the virus.

The IDNR is asking anyone who thinks they may have spotted a deer infected with EHD to contact their local IDNR biologist or the Wildlife Disease and Invasive Species Program.

Source

A new study conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, inmates in the Cook County jail said they get they guns on the streets from “personal connections” rather that outlets like guns shows and the internet.

The study focused on “inmates who were facing gun charges or whose criminal background involved gun crimes.”

According to the Chicago-Tribune, Crime lab co-director Harold Pollack said the study shows that “some of the pathways [regarding guns] people are concerned about don’t seem so dominant.” He said very few inmates indicated using gun shows or the internet. Rather, they get the guns in undetectable ways on the street. He said the inmates know they run the risk of being caught by police but “were less concerned about getting caught by the cops than being put in the position of not having a gun to defend themselves and then getting shot.”

The vast majority of the inmates used handguns to commit their crimes or protect themselves, very few cited using “military-style assault weapons.” And they said their habit was to get rid of a gun after one year because of the “legal liability” of being caught with a gun that could be linked to crimes they or others committed.”

As for specifics regarding sources for purchasing guns, some of the inmates indicated that gangs have individuals with a Firearm Owners Identification Card who buy guns then sell them to gang members. Others indicated using “corrupt cops” who seize guns then “put them back on the street.”

The inmates made clear they do not walk into gun stores to buy guns. Which proves a point Breitbart News, Gun Owners of America, and other gun rights groups have made for years; namely, that background checks place a burden on law-abiding citizens which criminals easily avoid.

Source

By John W. Whitehead
September 01, 2015

“If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”—George Washington

The architects of the American police state must think we’re idiots.

With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

Long gone are the days when advocates of free speech could prevail in a case such as Tinker v. Des Moines. Indeed, it’s been 50 years since 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker was suspended for wearing a black armband to school in protest of the Vietnam War. In taking up her case, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Were Tinker to make its way through the courts today, it would have to overcome the many hurdles being placed in the path of those attempting to voice sentiments that may be construed as unpopular, offensive, conspiratorial, violent, threatening or anti-government.

Consider, if you will, that the U.S. Supreme Court, historically a champion of the First Amendment, has declared that citizens can exercise their right to free speech everywhere it’s lawful—online, in social media, on a public sidewalk, etc.—as long as they don’t do so in front of the Court itself.

What is the rationale for upholding this ban on expressive activity on the Supreme Court plaza?

“Allowing demonstrations directed at the Court, on the Court’s own front terrace, would tend to yield the…impression…of a Court engaged with — and potentially vulnerable to — outside entreaties by the public.”

Translation: The appellate court that issued that particular ruling in Hodge v. Talkin actually wants us to believe that the Court is so impressionable that the justices could be swayed by the sight of a single man, civil rights activist Harold Hodge, standing alone and silent in the snow in a 20,000 square-foot space in front of the Supreme Court building wearing a small sign protesting the toll the police state is taking on the lives of black and Hispanic Americans.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

The Supreme Court is not going to be swayed by you or me or Harold Hodge.

For that matter, the justices—all of whom hale from one of two Ivy League schools (Harvard or Yale) and most of whom are now millionaires and enjoy such rarefied privileges as lifetime employment, security details, ample vacations and travel perks—are anything but impartial.

If they are partial, it is to those with whom they are on intimate terms: with Corporate America and the governmental elite who answer to them, and they show their favor by investing in their businesses, socializing at their events, and generally marching in lockstep with their values and desires in and out of the courtroom.

To suggest that Harold Hodge, standing in front of the Supreme Court building on a day when the Court was not in session hearing arguments or issuing rulings, is a threat to the Court’s neutrality, while their dalliances with Corporate America is not, is utter hypocrisy.

Making matters worse, the Supreme Court has the effrontery to suggest that the government can discriminate freely against First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum. Justifying such discrimination as “government speech,” the Court ruled that the Texas Dept. of Motor Vehicles could refuse to issue specialty license plate designs featuring a Confederate battle flag because it was offensive.

If it were just the courts suppressing free speech, that would be one thing to worry about, but First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country.

The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”

Officials at the University of Tennessee, for instance, recently introduced an Orwellian policy that would prohibit students from using gender specific pronouns and be more inclusive by using gender “neutral” pronouns such as ze, hir, zir, xe, xem and xyr, rather than he, she, him or her.

On many college campuses, declaring that “America is the land of opportunity” or asking someone “Where were you born?” are now considered microaggressions, “small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless.”  Trigger warnings are also being used to alert students to any material or ideas they might read, see or hear that might upset them.

More than 50 percent of the nation’s colleges, including Boston University, Harvard University, Columbia University and Georgetown University, subscribe to “red light” speech policies that restrict or ban so-called offensive speech, or limit speakers to designated areas on campus. The campus climate has become so hypersensitive that comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld refuse to perform stand-up routines to college crowds anymore.

What we are witnessing is an environment in which political correctness has given rise to “vindictive protectiveness,” a term coined by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and educational First Amendment activist Greg Lukianoff. It refers to a society in which “everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression or worse.”

This is particularly evident in the public schools where students are insulated from anything—words, ideas and images—that might create unease or offense. For instance, the thought police at schools in Charleston, South Carolina, have instituted a ban on displaying the Confederate flag on clothing, jewelry and even cars on campus.

Added to this is a growing list of programs, policies, laws and cultural taboos that defy the First Amendment’s safeguards for expressive speech and activity. Yet as First Amendment scholar Robert Richards points out, “The categories of speech that fall outside of [the First Amendment’s] protection are obscenity, child pornography, defamation, incitement to violence and true threats of violence. Even in those categories, there are tests that have to be met in order for the speech to be illegal. Beyond that, we are free to speak.”

Technically, Richards is correct. On paper, we are free to speak.

In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official may allow.

Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms.

As a result, we are no longer a nation of constitutional purists for whom the Bill of Rights serves as the ultimate authority. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have litigated and legislated our way into a new governmental framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

It may seem trivial to be debating the merits of free speech at a time when unarmed citizens are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order, or just breathe.

However, while the First Amendment provides no tangible protection against a gun wielded by a government agent, nor will it save you from being wrongly arrested or illegally searched, or having your property seized in order to fatten the wallets of government agencies, without the First Amendment, we are utterly helpless.

It’s not just about the right to speak freely, or pray freely, or assemble freely, or petition the government for a redress of grievances, or have a free press. The unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

Just as surveillance has been shown to “stifle and smother dissent, keeping a populace cowed by fear,” government censorship gives rise to self-censorship, breeds compliance and makes independent thought all but impossible.

In the end, censorship and political correctness not only produce people that cannot speak for themselves but also people who cannot think for themselves. And a citizenry that can’t think for itself is a citizenry that will neither rebel against the government’s dictates nor revolt against the government’s tyranny.

The end result: a nation of sheep who willingly line up for the slaughterhouse.

The cluttered cultural American landscape today is one in which people are so distracted by the military-surveillance-entertainment complex that critical thinkers are in the minority and frank, unfiltered, uncensored speech is considered uncivil, uncouth and unacceptable.

That’s the point, of course.

The architects, engineers and lever-pullers who run the American police state want us to remain deaf, dumb and silent. They want our children raised on a vapid diet of utter nonsense, where common sense is in short supply and the only viewpoint that matters is the government’s.

We are becoming a nation of idiots, encouraged to spout political drivel and little else.

In so doing, we have adopted the lexicon of Newspeak, the official language of George Orwell’s fictional Oceania, which was “designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought.” As Orwell explained in 1984, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc [the state ideology of Oceania], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

If Orwell envisioned the future as a boot stamping on a human face, a fair representation of our present day might well be a muzzle on that same human face.

If we’re to have any hope for the future, it will rest with those ill-mannered, bad-tempered, uncivil, discourteous few who are disenchanted enough with the status quo to tell the government to go to hell using every nonviolent means available.

However, as Orwell warned, you cannot become conscious until you rebel.

Source

Throughout the course of last week I watched a few events unfold with amazement. We had:

• Posted on the MVT forum for comment, some blog posts from ‘veteran’ websites. The point of interest was that these bloggers, retired military, were abusively dismissive of any attempts by civilians to tactically train, apparently because if you never served in the military how can you possibly know anything about Small Unit Tactics (SUT)? By way of comment, there is an alarming trend among former military to reflect the entitlement mindset, and also to be ‘offended’ by everything. I see a lot of ‘butthurt’ veterans who reflect this entitlement mindset and who are desperately seeking greater recognition for having served. Also, some of these veteran themed blogs put out some very poor information, mainly because the writers are not the experts in the field that they purport to be. That, however, is not the main point of the post. Moving on.
• Then, mainly centered on a post by SFC Barry at WRSA but spilling over to, and possibly caused /fueled by, some other blogs, we had another internecine bitch fest. It seems started by the usual suspects with the usual aim of attacking those who wish to promote / develop tactical training in the civilian community. The main thrust of the prime offending article, by SFC Barry, was that only military can be effective at tactics, and that any civilians who attempt any training and organization are fools and nothing more than ‘Joe’s Armed Gang.’

Read the whole thing Here