[IBD] However great the shock of the massacre in Orlando, it is only a matter of time before we start hearing again the fact-free dogma that "diversity is our strength."
If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, "diversity" should be a prime candidate.
Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan's homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity -- or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?
Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?
"When in Rome do as the Romans do" was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do -- and to assault those who don’t knuckle under to foreign religious standards.
The recent wave of refugees flooding into Europe include Muslim men who have been haranguing European women on the streets for not dressing modestly enough, not to mention their sexual molestation of those women.
Smug elites in Europe, like their counterparts in America, are not nearly as concerned about such things as they are about preventing "Islamophobia." Legal restrictions on free speech in some European countries make it a crime to sound the alarm about the dangers to the culture and to the people.
In the lofty circles of those who see themselves as citizens of the world, it is considered unworthy, if not hateful, to insist on living according to your own Western values or to resist importing people who increase your chances of being killed.
#6
Have to love the anodyne metaphoric nature of "violent extremism" as a WH criminal classification. So inclusive! Includes the nativist right & posse comitatus etc but not rad/trad Islam because well "sharia values" are benign.
Noted firearms expert Christopher Ingram writes a piece for the Washington Post to show why he thinks the Assault Weapons Ban should be re-instituted.
They're going to keep banging this drum in hopes of scaring and hood-winking ordinary people into banning one of the most popular rifles in America. Everyone in the MSM is calling it an "assault" rifle, though anyone with half a clue knows that it isn't. The Democrats and the media (but I of course repeat myself) are appealing to the clueless, which is unfortunately a substantial proportion of our country, and a larger proportion of our legislatures.
Last night in Orlando, a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed at least 50 people and wounded 53 others in a crowded nightclub.
Six months ago, in San Bernardino, Calif., a man and woman armed with assault-style rifles killed 14 people and wounded 20 others at a holiday party.
In 2012, in Aurora, Colo., a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed 12 people and wounded 58 others in a crowded movie theater.
Also in 2012, in Newtown Conn., a man armed with an assault-style rifle killed 28 people and wounded 2 others at an elementary school.
One common denominator behind these and other high-casualty mass shootings in recent years is the use of assault style rifles, capable of firing many rounds of ammunition in a relatively short period of time, with high accuracy. And their use in these types of shooting is becoming more common: There have been eight high-profile public mass shootings since July of last year, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine. Assault-style rifles were used in seven of those.
In the past 10 years, assault-style rifles have been used in 14 public mass shootings. Half of those shootings have occurred since last June.
Assault-style weapons have long been a flashpoint in the American gun debate. They were outlawed in 1994. But that ban expired in 2004 and Congress opted to not renew it. Gun rights proponents point out that rifles, of any type, are rarely used to kill people in the U.S. Because of that, researchers have generally found that the assault weapons ban had little impact on U.S. homicide rates while it was in effect.
On the other hand, compared to other firearms, assault-style rifles make it fairly easy to kill or injure many people in within a short period of time. So perpetrators wishing to inflict indiscriminate harm on a large crowd of people often turn to them. Of the 10 mass shooting incidents with the highest number of casualties — killed AND wounded — in the U.S., seven involved the use of an assault-style rifle, according to Mother Jones's database.
A gunman opened fire on a crowded nightclub in Orlando early Sunday, June 12. He killed at least 50 people. The final death toll is not known, but this shooting is already the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States.
Terrorist groups have taken note of the widespread availability of assault rifles and other guns in the U.S. In 2011, al-Qaeda encouraged its followers to take advantage of lax guns laws, purchase assault-style weapons and use them to shoot people.
"America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," American-born al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn said in a video. "You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?"
Gadahn was incorrect on one point — fully automatic weapons, which shoot continuously when you hold down the trigger, have been banned since 1986. But he was correct on other the other points: Most states don't require background checks for firearms purchased via private sales at gun shows. Most states don't require showing ID to purchase a firearm from a private seller.
Indeed, federal law allows people on terror watch lists to purchase guns, and thousands of them have done so.
The ease of purchasing guns in the U.S., even powerful ones designed to kill many people in a short period of time, is underscored by a crucial fact in Mother Jones's database: Of the 79 mass shootings since 1982 that Mother Jones was able to determine purchasing information for, 63 were committed with guns purchased legally.
#2
Most gun shows have banned parking lot sales. The vendors inside pay a lot for their spaces and voiced opposition to those sales. The Virginia Tech shooter used hand guns. Try buying a fully automatic weapon at a gun show.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/14/2016 8:40 Comments ||
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#6
communism is the weapon of choice for mass murders.
I would argue Communism as a subset of totalitarianism, Darth Vader. Nazi fascism is merely a type of socialism. Muslim jihadism is neither, but is totalitarian, and would have killed considerably more had Mohammed and his followers had modern weapons to kill with and modern population numbers to kill.
[Daily Caller] The Supreme Court shot down a law that would have allowed Puerto Rico to restructure approximately $20 billion of its debt in a 5-2 decision Monday.
The ruling stops the island, which faces a $72 billion debt burden, from re-enacting a law allowing it to restructure its public utilities debt ‐ meaning debt restructuring will be left up to the U.S. Congress, the Associated Press reports.
"The term ’State’ includes the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, except for the purpose of defining who may be a debtor under chapter 9 of this title," the opinion of the court reads.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion, arguing the island needs bankruptcy rights to start fresh and get back on a path toward fiscal solvency
Well, that didn't take long...
Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, announced Monday that "body shaming" advertisements will no longer be allowed in London’s public transport.
"As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies. It is high time it came to an end," Khan said.
#1
"Body Shaming" Riiiiiight. Well the feminazis and the limp left will swallow this lie whole (along with other things) and continue to march towards the mass graves all the while celebrating the fact they are so "tolerant" and "progressive".
There have been so many "sensitive" responses to the nightclub massacre in Orlando, that I should like to add an insensitive one, for the sake of variety. I note that the pundits -- and every amateur politician is a talking head these days -- divide roughly along party lines on whether the shooter was an Islamic fanatic, or a generic madman. This strikes me as a "both/and" proposition, rather than an "either/or".
This is a key point. Whether or not the Orlando killer was truly bipolar (he grew up in an Afghani household, where behaviour that seems insane in the West is expected), the diagnosably dangerous follow fads -- identifying as Napolean one decade, raped by aliens another, killing at the order of angels or now picking up the gauntlet of jihad. And in terms of jihad, both Al Qaeda and ISIS have been sending orders through the internet to "kill the unbelievers where you live." Muslim jihad has always made use of the unbalanced as well as of the trained warrior to spread terror and speed conquest. The current age is no different, for all that to us living in it it's modernity.
Yes, Florida gun laws seem a bit lax, perhaps they should be tightened. But then I held this opinion before the massacre, keeping it to myself only because it was none of my business. Perhaps I am over-Canadian, for I tend to think the open sale of battlefield weapons such as the semi-automatic assault rifle this Omar Mateen was carrying, a little over-the-top. I presume that, "even in America," the citizen’s right to bear arms does not extend to, say, nuclear weapons. Reasonable men might decide upon some reasonable limits; but between the current spokesmen for the respective political parties, I do not detect much reasonable manliness; only a propensity to grandstanding.
..."Let us be clear," as the Obama loves to say, in his station as talking-head-in-chief. Grand displays of public grieving are invariably fraudulent. Those who knew none of the victims are faking it. Those who encourage them are morally disordered.
As a customary principle of politics, whether "electoral" or "appointive," I think it unwise to adjust legislation, or offer to adjust it, in response to behaviour by the criminally insane. This confers too much power on them. Verily, it is a mark of our present social condition that "reforms" are guided more and more by the hardest and strangest cases. (Dare I mention the word, "trans"? Was there really a continuing national crisis in the designation of toilet facilities?)
...Which points again to the deeper "problematic" (one tires of the misuse of this word) in politics as practised today. We not only legislate in response to the transient behaviour of the criminally insane. Worse, our legislators, though arguably sane to start with, get in the habit of indulging insanity, even within themselves.
#1
Grand displays of public grieving are invariably fraudulent. Those who knew none of the victims are faking it. Those who encourage them are morally disordered.
One has to wonder if the reaction, especially Mr. Obama's, would have been different if (with a suitable change in venue) the victims had been Baptists, or Mormons, or Masons, or Knights of Columbus, or petroleum executives, or dry cleaners, or...
#2
I concur with your analysis, except for the following sentence:
"Perhaps I am over-Canadian, for I tend to think the open sale of battlefield weapons such as the semi-automatic assault rifle this Omar Mateen was carrying, a little over-the-top."
The term "semi-automatic assault rifle" is an oxymoron: assault rifles are, by necessity, full automatic, and mere semi-automatics (a.k.a. "autoloaders") would be useless (these days, anyway) as a battlefield weapon. The autoloading AR-15 used by the Orlando shooter is no more lethal than an ordinary utility rifle such as the autoloading Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle-- it just looks more badass, due to its visual resemblance to the military full-automatic M-16, which is an assault weapon.
Democrats like to blur the distinction between these two fundamentally different types of rifle, because doing so helps them further their goal of banning all firearms. Those Republicans who go along with the Democrats, usually do so out of simple ignorance.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/14/2016 10:43 Comments ||
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#3
"One has to wonder if the reaction, especially Mr. Obama's, would have been different if (with a suitable change in venue) the victims had been Baptists, or Mormons, or Masons, or Knights of Columbus, or petroleum executives, or dry cleaners, or..."
...or global warming deniers.
Actually, in the latter case, I don't think any wondering is needed; I'm sure the near-universal reaction on the Left would be approval bordering on jubilation, with self-righteous declarations of "they had it coming."
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/14/2016 10:49 Comments ||
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#4
One has to wonder if the reaction, especially Mr. Obama's, would have been different if (with a suitable change in venue) the victims had been Baptists, ...
No one doesn't. One recalls President Obama, et al not responding in the same way after San Bernadino, or more pointedly the "workplace violence" label of the mass murder of his fellow troops by that Muslim military psychiatrist whose name escapes me.
[Daily Beast] Omar Mateen committed the most horrific act of anti-gay violence on U.S. soil. But there was a time when he had gay friends, a high school classmate says.
FORT PIERCE, Florida -- Years before he shot up an Orlando gay club in what became the largest mass shooting in American history, Omar Mateen regularly picked up lunch from a drag queen at Ruby Tuesday. He may have even gone to see a drag show or two, a former high school classmate told The Daily Beast.
About 10 years ago, Mateen, a few years out of high school, was working at the supplement store GNC. Samuel King, a year ahead of him in high school, was working next door at the restaurant chain. Mateen was a few years out of playing football in high school while King, who is openly gay, had long, flowing extensions, and prettier hair than most of his female co-workers.
"He always had a smile on his face," King told The Daily Beast on Sunday. "Maybe it’s because he was working in customer service."
BLUF: [Breitbart] If we turn the other cheek while standing firm in the truth; if we dismiss easy answers and make the difficult choices, we will make it.
It will not be easy or popular, but the cure is simple.
I will stand in your defense.
I will comfort you in the storm.
I will make your plight mine as we are all human and an injustice toward you is an injustice to me.
Taking a stand really only matters when you link arms with those who don’t share your own viewpoints or lifestyle.
#3
The looniest of the loony. The folks at Breitbart must think he's funny because they report his every word. But I think he's kinda sad and pathetic. I never read their articles about Beck.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
