Facts and hatred

Mandatory Credit: Photo by AP/REX/Shutterstock (9190148a)
Sutherland Springs Shooting. Law enforcement officers gather in front of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs after a fatal shooting, in Sutherland Springs, Texas
Shooting, Sutherland Springs, USA – 05 Nov 2017

This would seem to be quite the incongruent post but, if you follow along, you’ll soon come to understand the linkage I’m attempting to make.

On the heels of Sunday’s shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Demorats, Leftists and the American Media Maggots came out in full force and barked sharply about firearms, gun deaths, white people. SLF. Standard Leftist Fare.

Then they began to excoriate those who were sending prayers, as did certain personnel in my comments section. Typical Leftist pap: “What is needed, clearly, are more prayers and no gun restriction. Oh and thoughts. Thoughts and prayers, yup, that will do it.”

Time.com wrote:

Democratic leaders and gun control advocates shut down the immediate and familiar outpouring of “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of the South Texas church shooting on Sunday, calling for stronger gun laws.

“Represent,” Time, “represent.”

Because, well, “thoughts and prayers” refer to religious people and everyone knows that religious people are stupid and Caucasoid and ill educated, driving around in Ford FX4 Off Road pickup trucks with loud motors and damaged exhaust pipes, flying Confederate banners and Ed Gillespie bumper stickers with Gadsden Flag front license plates, looking to run down little Muslim kids and children with higher melanin counts. Race baiting? Nah.

It’s all you ig’nant Southerners with that easily-mocked and stupid drawl like, well, Bill Clinton. Wait. That’s not what you meant.

When Speaker Paul Ryan wrote this on Twitter:

He got this loving retort from highly-paid and relevant actor extraordinaire Wil Wheaton:

These social media responses as well:

And lest we forget that profound and insightful Teutonic Keith Olbermann, Mein Fuhrer:

The embracing, kind, inclusive and understanding Chelsea Handler?

How odd that Laura Ingraham happened to address the issue on her Monday show.

Of course, as we all know, it’s only Caucasoids who are mass murderers. Just ask Ruben Navarrette.

Except for one thing: those damnable facts. It’s too bad Tucker didn’t have immediate access to the facts — facts even acknowledged by Leftist organs. First, from Slate.com:

Mass Shooters Aren’t Disproportionately White

by Daniel Engber

Where the myth came from, and what it gets right and wrong about the demographics of mass killings.

Stephen Paddock shot more than 500 people from the windows of his Las Vegas hotel room Sunday night, killing 58 of them. In the days since, a familiar story has been passed around the internet about the blinkered way in which we talk about these sorts of massacres. We’re so quick to blame Islamic terrorists, this story goes, that we don’t address the stark, distressing truth about mass shootings. The killers aren’t angry immigrants, by and large. They’re white men.

Of course they are. Ask any Leftist, Demorat or American Media Maggot. Or Ruben Navarrette.

“These shooters are almost exclusively coming from a single socio-economic class and racial group,” wrote actor Cole Sprouse in a widely shared Twitter thread. We must now address “what part of whiteness influences this kind of Petri dish for gun violence and killing.”

Because, after all, actors are particularly insightful and full of professorial knowledge.

This wasn’t just a social media phenomenon. The Huffington Post published Sprouse’s tweets as a “Powerful Take on Whiteness and Mass Shootings.” An article in Elle called the link between white men and mass shootings “a general rule” and proposed that “our refusal to confront toxic white male violence is why this problem will metastasize.” The progressive news site ThinkProgress said that “when we talk about mass shootings, we are talking about white men.” Newsweek wondered if “white men commit mass shootings out of a sense of entitlement.” A CNN opinion piece bemoaned the fact that “America has silently accepted the rage of white men.”

In a narrow sense, these stories are correct: The plurality of mass killers are white. But the notion that white men of privilege are disproportionately represented among mass shooters—indeed, that they make up “nearly all” of them—is a myth.

“Oh myth, can I have another cup of coffee please?

What those initial Mother Jones numbers showed, though, was that white people weren’t overrepresented among mass shooters. The media outlet had found that roughly 70 percent of the shooters in mass killings were white—certainly a majority. But according to Census Bureau estimates for 2012, whites accounted for 73.9 percent of all Americans. (Keep in mind that the definition of whiteness is both vague and forever changing. In the 2010 census, the “white” category includes those whose families originate in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Mother Jones, for its part, categorizes one Moroccan immigrant killer as “white”; leaves the race field blank for a Turkish immigrant; and describes several shooters of Pakistani, Palestinian, Afghan and Kuwaiti extraction as “other.”)

Uh-oh. Leaks in the hull?

I’m not sure where Kimmel and Leek got their stat about mass murders perpetrated by teenagers, but that figure, too, wasn’t that far off from U.S. demographics. At any rate, it certainly wasn’t true—as many argued then, and many do today—that mass shooters were “almost exclusively” or “disproportionately” or “nearly all” white. (Mass shooters are disproportionately men, however—more on that below.)

Of course mass shooters are disproportionately men. Ask anyone in Chicago.

Here’s another way of looking at it: Instead of asking why so many mass shooters are white, we could ask what it is about mass shootings that differentiates them, even to a small extent, from the broader trend of racial inequalities in murder rates. Why might the huge disparities that we see in homicides, born of systematic disadvantage, be diminished (though not reversed) in our most extreme episodes of violence?

Don’t stop there. Keep going.

All of that is a very long way of saying the data don’t support the whites-are-overrepresented-among-mass-shooters meme. On the other hand, they do back up the notion that these killers are nearly always men. In the Mother Jonesdatabase, 97 percent of the listed killers are men; in the one from USA Today, that number is 94 percent.

Guilty. Then from NYMag.com:

Whiteness Doesn’t Cause Mass Shootings

by Jesse Singal

Yesterday’s horrific massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in which 26-year-old Devin P. Kelley killed 26 people and injured many others at the town’s First Baptist Church, has spurred the tragically familiar call from Americans begging for politicians to take some action — any action — in response to what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings. Today, many are arguing for enhanced gun-control legislation, perhaps legislation which would take into account what appears to be an important connectionbetween domestic violence and these sorts of acts.

But in a Democracy Now! segment from earlier today, George Ciccariello-Maher, a political science professor at Drexel University, made a different case. He argued that while it’s important to examine the policy ramifications of Kelley’s murders, including the possibility that “targeted gun control for domestic violence [offenders]” or similar policies might prove effective, the bigger conversation should be about the fact that he was white.

Evil Caucasoids. Evil religious Caucasoids. Evil Constitution-embracing Caucasoids.

But the full damage done by these whiteness-violence claims goes deeper. And to explain this, it’s important to explain why some people are making these arguments in the first place. When Ciccariello-Maher and others posit whiteness as an explanation for violence or other bad behavior on the part of whites, they are, in part, offering a rejoinder to the pernicious idea that blackness can explain such behavior on the part of blacks. As many scholars have shown, perhaps most comprehensively the Harvard University professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad in his excellent book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, this idea has a long, ugly history.

Thank you.

Let’s say, for a minute, that Engber is wrong and mass shooters are disproportionately white. If this is reason enough to claim that their race is an important causal factor, then a conservative interlocutor could easily jump in and say, “Oh, well then I guess blackness is causing black crime, since black people commit violent crimes at higher rates.” That is a real discrepancy, after all — it’s one that can be explained by socioeconomic factors, including institutionalized racism and urban neglect on the part of predominately white American power structures, but it’s also easily exploited by racists as “proof” of the sorts of claims spotlighted in Muhammad’s book. Or what about Europe? In those European countries that have been hit by recent mass-casualty attacks, those attacks have been overwhelmingly committed by Muslims. Does it follow from this that we need to talk about “Muslim culture,” or that Muslims are essentially violent in a way Christians and Jews are not?

Leftist excuses made by Leftists taking into account every Leftist meme possible. You have to see beyond that. And I’m sure you do.

Leftists believe there is no such thing as an evil person, only a misunderstood person. They couldn’t be more wrong, ignorant or naive themselves.

Look, Leftists, I can see you a mile away. So can Conservatives. You don’t respect the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. In your world everything is gray and in flux. I get it. People of any religious bent are evil — except for Muslims, because you fear them and at least recognize that if you go against them they’ll kill your ass. I get your cowardice on that, too.

I also understand your final play: gun confiscation. Outright confiscation. Some Leftists are brave enough to talk for the rest of you and advocate it. I at least admire the honesty and clarity of those few Leftist souls making that argument. It’s why I admire Bernie Sanders. At least he’ll tell you he’s a Socialist all day long.

Bottom line? Guess what? Gun confiscation isn’t going to occur.

Unless, of course, you wish to revisit 1861.

BZ

 

26 people killed in Texas church shooting, suspect dead

Occurring at about 11:30 Central time on Sunday, Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, of New Braunfels, Texas, approached the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, opened fire with a Ruger AR15-style rifle, and killed at least 26 persons.

Less than twenty-four hours after the event — just like the New York truck attack on Tuesday, October 31st where 8 persons were killed by a Muslim ISIS sympathizer — we know a good deal about the shooter and the circumstances. Quite unlike the Las Vegas mass shooting on Sunday, October 1st, where 58 people were killed by Stephen Paddock.

One way to know you’re in Texas. Look at the motto on the rear of the police SUV.

Whereas the bodies had not yet cooled before Demorats, Leftists and the American Media Maggots called for the abolition of the 2nd Amendment, two brave Texans, I believe, will be shown to be the reason that Kelley and killed before any sort of police response and, more importantly, was unable to drive to another location and perhaps kill even more people.

Let’s examine some of those Leftist comments.

Just off the top of my head, 37,000 people died in vehicle accidents in 2016. Not a peep. 44,000 to 98,000 people die in US hospitals each year due to medical mistakes — the third leading cause of death in the US. Not a peep. There were 762 murders, 3,550 shooting incidents, and 4,331 shooting victims in the city of Chicago — a Leftist haven — in 2016. Almost every victim and suspect was black. Not a peep. The FBI’s 2015 Uniform Crime Report found that nearly three times more Americans were killed by knives or other “cutting instruments” than shot and killed by long guns. Not a peep.

From AJC.com:

Bystander, neighbor chase gunman who killed 26 at Texas church

by Jared Leone

Two men followed the gunman who killed 26 people and injured more than 20 others at a Texas church Sunday, leading police to the man’s location, according to reports.

Bystander Johnny Langendorff watched as Devin Kelley traded gunfire with a neighbor who had grabbed his own rifle and engaged the gunman as he tried to flee the scene at First Baptist Church.

“I pulled up to the intersection where the shooting happened and I saw two men exchanging gunfire,” Langendorff said, according to the San Antonio Express-News. “The other gentleman said we needed to pursue (Kelley) because he shot up the church. So that’s what I did. I just acted.”

The pair followed Kelley until he lost control of his vehicle and ran off the road. Authorities were there moments later, according to KSAT.

It is still unclear if Kelley was shot by the armed resident or if it was self-inflicted.

Then there was this from MySA.com:

Hero describes how he tracked down church shooter after attack

by Kelsey Bradshaw

As emergency responders rushed into Sutherland Springs following the state’s deadliest shooting, two men were headed the opposite direction – chasing after the suspected shooter.

Two locals took on the man who authorities say shot and killed 26 people at the First Baptist Church Sunday morning as the suspect was trying to flee the scene. 

Johnny Langendorff was one of the men who chased after suspected killer Devin Kelley, a 26-year-old from Comal County, he told KSAT in a television interview. 

The pair chased the man down FM 539 headed North before the shooter lost control and ran off the roadway. Langendorff said the other man with him jumped out of the car and drew his rifle on Kelley.

“He didn’t move after that,” Langendorff said.

I’d call that a rather ready clue in terms of who was responsible for the stopping of Kelley. Some additional insight here.

If there’s one thing we know — but Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots don’t — it’s that it takes a person with a firearm to stop a person with a firearm.

We now know, Monday, that the second citizen involved was 55-year-old Stephen Willeford, above.

  • Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, was leaving First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs after he opened fire on parishioners, killing 26 people

  • Stephen Willeford had ‘grabbed his rifle and engaged the suspect’

  • Kelley fled the skirmish and got back in his SUV to flee the scene at 95mph

  • Willeford then jumped in the truck of neighbor Johnnie Langendorff and told him to chase Kelley

  • Kelley eventually lost control of his vehicle during the high speed chase 

  • He called his father to say he had been shot and didn’t think he would make it

  • Police then believe that Kelley shot himself dead

CNN reported about the suspect, Devin Kelley:

Kelley was once a member of the US Air Force, spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. He served in logistics readiness at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, starting in 2010.

Kelly was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, assault on his spouse and assault on their child, Stefanek said. Kelley received a bad conduct discharge, confinement for 12 months and a reduction in rank, she said. The Air Force did not provide a date of the discharge.

Kelley purchased the Ruger AR-556 rifle in April 2016 from an Academy Sports & Outdoors store in San Antonio, a law enforcement official told CNN.

When Kelley filled out the background check paperwork at the store, he checked the box to indicate he didn’t have disqualifying criminal history, the official said. He listed an address in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he bought the rifle, the official said.

We know that Kelley worked as a security guard for a Texas waterpark this past summer, according to a resume under his name that appears online.

We know that he is married to Danielle Shields Kelley, and that his mother-in-law has an address in Sutherland Springs, where Danielle is from. His wife’s mother, in fact, attends the First Baptist Church. My first question knowing that: is she one of the victims?

It is becoming evident that Kelley had ties to and/or knew about that church. How personal was this attack?

Heavy.com writes:

Another former classmate, Nina Rose Nava, wrote on her Facebook page: “…in complete shock! I legit just deleted him off my fb cause I couldn’t stand his post. He was always talking about how people who believe in God we’re stupid and trying to preach his atheism. Smh.” It’s not clear why the killer would say he briefly taught Bible classes if he was fixated on atheism.

CBS unearthed a photo of Devin Kelley that shows him with the beard. According to KSAT-TV, “His parents lived in one home, while Kelley lived in a ‘barndominium’” on a “wooded property behind a cattle guard.” His neighbor, Mark Moravitz, told KSAT: “Nothing abnormal. Regular guy. I mean, the only thing unusual across the street is we hear a lot of gunfire, a lot of times at night. We hear gunfire a lot, but we’re out in the country.” The New York Times reported that his parents’ home is worth $1 million.

This, by the way, cinches my first thought: the shooting was personal.

Court records in Comal County show they got married in April 2014, when he was 23 and she was 19. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), told The LosAngeles Times of the motive, “I’ve been talking to some community members. They think there was a relative there. It was not random…There’s going to be some sort of nexus between the shooter and this small community… somebody in that church will help us find answers.”

As per normal these days we look to social media for some answers. Kelley’s Facebook page was pulled rather rapidly, but not before I captures this and other screen shots from various sources. Please note them.

Then there was the below photo with an Antifa reference. True or not? Unknown yet.

Kelley also had this post about a firearm. Oddly enough, it is a Ruger AR-556 with a number of accessories attached.

It would appear at first blush that Kelley leaned Left considering his associations on Facebook and other forms of social media.

And why do I say I frequently seek news sources from UK media? Here is one excellent example, from the UKDailyMail.com:

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Creepy, crazy and weird’: Former classmates say Texas gunman was an ‘outcast’ who ‘preached his atheism’ online before killing 26 in the state’s worst ever mass shooting

by Jenny Stanton

  • Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, shot dead 26 people and injured 24 others in Texas
  • Walked into First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas and opened fire 
  • He was wearing black, tactical gear and carrying a military style assault rifle
  • Kelley was shot by local Stephen Willeford, 55, and died after a car chase
  • Former classmates have described him as an ‘outcast’, ‘creepy’ and ‘weird’
  • Another said he talked ‘about how people who believe in God were stupid’
  • LinkedIn reveals Kelley was an Air Force veteran and ex-Bible studies teacher
  • He was court martialed in 2014 for two counts of assault on his spouse and child
  • He was living in New Braunfels, a suburb of San Antonio, and was married 
  • Did you know Devin Patrick Kelley? Please contact Jenny Stanton by emailing jenny.stanton@mailonline.com

The Texas church shooter who mercilessly shot dead 26 people and injured 24 others was an ‘outcast’ who ‘preached his atheism’ online.

Former classmates say Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, who stormed First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas and opened fire on Sunday, was ‘creepy’, ‘crazy’ and ‘weird’.

Patrick Boyce, who attended New Braunfels High School with the killer, told DailyMail.com: ‘He had a kid or two, fairly normal, but kinda quiet and lately seemed depressed.

‘He was the first atheist I met. He went Air Force after high school, got discharged but I don’t know why. 

Nina Rose Nava, who went to school with the gunman, wrote on Facebook: ‘In (sic) in complete shock! I legit just deleted him off my fb cause I couldn’t stand his post. 

‘He was always talking about how people who believe in God we’re stupid and trying to preach his atheism’ 

Christopher Leo Longoria replied: ‘I removed him off FB for those same reasons! He was being super nagtive (sic) all the timd (sic).’

I think we’re beginning to realize something of a theme.

He was married to Danielle Shields, and they appear to have a child together. She was previously a teacher at the First Baptist Church.

Kelley lived at his parents’ home with his wife and child and neighbor Mark Moravitz told ABC News he would sometimes hear gunshots coming from near that house late at night.

The gunman’s mother-in-law, Michelle Shields, also appears to have been a parishioner at the church and was friends on social media with the pastor’s wife.

It is not clear whether they were at the church at the time of the shooting.

As it turns out: yes, it was personal. From the UKDailyMail.com:

REVEALED: Texas shooter sent ‘threatening texts’ to his mother-in-law, who attended church where he massacred 26 people before calling his father to say goodbye before committing suicide

by Ashley Collman

  • Officials say Devin Patrick Kelley was in a domestic dispute with his mother-in-law Michelle Shields, who attended First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas

  • At an afternoon press conference, it was revealed that Kelley sent ‘threatening texts’ to his mother-in-law

  • Officials wouldn’t go into further details about the family fight

  • Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackett said that Kelley and his wife Danielle were estranged 

  • Danielle used to work as a teacher at the church, her mother is friends with the pastor’s wife

  • Records show they were married in April 2014, when Kelley was 23 and his bride was 19

  • He was also married at least once before, to a Tessa K Kelley

  • The couple divorced in 2012, the same year he was court-martialed for domestic violence   

  • After killing 26 in the church on Sunday, Kelley fled in his car and was found dead behind the wheel 

  • The official cause of death is pending, but officials believe he committed suicide by gun 

  • Before killing himself, he called his father and said he didn’t think he was going to make it, officials said  

All things considered, I say this: contrast and compare to the Las Vegas shootings. Examine and notice how quickly we learn things about all the other shooters, killers and terrorists.

Las Vegas still does not pass the smell test. Another reason why myself and others do not trust the investigators running the Las Vegas case. There is good reason, I submit.

Finally and most importantly, condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the First Baptist shooting. Your names have not yet all been revealed but trust me, you are in the thoughts and prayers of thousands and thousands of Americans throughout the United States.

BZ

 

26 persons killed in Texas church shooting

The original story is here.

Following a press conference from Texas Governor Abbott, new information is:

There are 26 confirmed deaths in the Texas church shooting.

The suspect, 26-year-old Devin Kelley was armed with a Ruger AR15 type rifle. As the suspect exited the church, a local resident armed with a rifle engaged the suspect, who dropped his firearm and fled from the church. The citizen pursued the suspect.

Kelley fled in his vehicle, crashed, and was found dead. It is unknown if the suspect shot himself or was shot by the citizen.

Kelley was dressed in all black gear and wearing a ballistic vest.The victims range in age from 5 to 72.

More information forthcoming.

BZ

 

52 dead, 527 injured

If Stephen Craig Paddock wanted to make a name for himself, he certainly accomplished that goal. He is now America’s most deadly mass murderer, topping the Muslim shooter at an Orlando gay nightclub in 2016 who killed 49 persons and wounded 58 in the name of Allah.

Killing 52 people and at last count having injured at least 527, Paddock himself is an enigma. A tempest that no one yet appeared to see brewing. He cannot be consulted because he killed himself just prior to police breaching the suite. The coward’s way out. Emphasizing that there is no defense against a firearm save that of others with firearms.

Paddock decided to, late Sunday night around 10 PM (October 1st), break out two windows in his large 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and fire hundreds of rounds at 22,000 attendees of the Route 91 Harvest Country Music festival below. The shooting went on for about 10 minutes.

He had 23 firearms in his room and 19 more at his home. He checked into the Mandalay Bay on Thursday, September 28th, with more than ten suitcases. He had three days for planning in the suite itself. He clearly planned to target that specific concert from the Mandalay as it had the advantage of superior elevation and the least occluded field of fire, while offering a distance that would be initially confusing. People would expect the Luxor to be the obvious sniper’s perch that night. It wasn’t. Paddock instead chose an expansive corner suite at the Mandalay Bay.

They were easy targets as Paddock utilized some of the classic “positions of advantage” in military combat and special forces tactics, that of elevation, speed, surprise and violence of action. The distance involved was roughly 400 to 500 yards.

Military concepts utilized by a man who was never military-trained.

Theories are wide ranging.

Is this guy even remotely correct? Keep reading.

Paddock had no military record. He had no criminal arrest record save that of a traffic ticket. He was not a member of a militia, hate group or most any other group. His social media was negligible. The 64-year old Paddock was a resident of Mesquite, Nevada and lived in a quiet retirement community. He was a gambler and would take junkets to Las Vegas. He won big and he lost big. He was a multi-millionaire who had property and profited from real estate and investments. He did not have close ties to his family. He was twice-divorced. His live-in girlfriend was not home when the event occurred. He had no mental illness history. He was a retiree. A former aerospace industry worker. A former accountant.

“He was just a guy,” Eric Paddock said of his brother. “He lives in Mesquite, he went to the hotels, he gambled, he went to shows.”

Also, from former FBI hostage negotiator and BSU (Behavioral Science Unit) unit supervisor Cliff Van Zandt.

“My challenge is, I don’t see any of the classic indicators, so far, that would suggest, ‘OK, he’s on the road either to suicide or homicide or both.”

One odd note.

While Stephen Paddock appeared to have no criminal history, his father was a notorious bank robber, Eric Paddock said. Benjamin Hoskins Paddock tried to run down an FBI agent with his car in Las Vegas in 1960 and wound up on the agency’s most wanted list after escaping from a federal prison in Texas in 1968, when Stephen Paddock was a teen.

The oldest of four children, Paddock was 7 when his father was arrested for the robberies.

We know what the initial responses were and will be from the Demorats and Leftists. “It’s all about the guns” they will bleat, using politics even before the bodies began to cool in the streets of Las Vegas. So typical. Hillary Clinton Tweeted “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get,” and “Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.”

Let’s not forget the above. Politics as bodies cooled.

And the expected, from the New Republic. At least they had the guts to write it.

It’s Time to Ban Guns. Yes, All of Them.

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy

Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those. Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.  

That’s rather succinct. More laws. More bans. Targeted at whom? Oh, right. Law abiding Americans who aren’t involved in actions like this. More laws would not have “prevented” this shooting as Leftists bleat.

And trust me, make absolutely no mistake, gun confiscation and removal is precisely what Leftists and Demorats want as their end goal. Have no doubt of that.

Another high-powered Leftist thinker.

Yet, Stephen Paddock is mostly a cypher as of this writing.

Let’s note this, however.

Why do I get the feeling there is much, much more to this story?

BZ

Sen Tom Cotton on crime and injustice in the Obama administration

Please, I implore you, watch the video. 39-year-old Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton is refreshingly open, concise and honest about crime and justice — precisely the things that Barack Hussein Obama and his so-called “Justice Department” were not. We can never afford to relive these times and Senator Cotton makes a necessary summary.

If you’re uninterested in 28 minutes of video, then please read the transcript.  From Hudson.org:

Senator Tom Cotton’s Remarks on Crime and Justice in America

This past Sunday, thousands of law-enforcement officers, their families, and other supporters gathered at the Capitol to observe Peace Officers Memorial Day.

Every speech given, every tribute paid, and every prayer offered was a poignant reminder: public safety and order in our country often come at a high cost.

Law and order in our communities doesn’t arise spontaneously; men are not angels, after all. Police officers put the badge on every morning, not knowing for sure if they’ll come home at night to take it off. Dedicated prosecutors toil long hours in our courts. Corrections officers and other professionals do the thankless work of administering punishment and, hopefully, providing a path for redemption. And neighborhood-watch groups and civic organizations take it upon themselves to raise standards of conduct in their communities.

During this police week, I also want to take a moment to also remember Deputy Sheriff Sonny Smith, one of Arkansas’s own. Deputy Smith was an 11-year veteran of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, and he also proudly served in our nation’s Navy. He was killed in the line of duty last year while responding to a burglary.

Deputy Smith’s story is a sad reminder that preserving the peace takes vigilance. It takes hard work. And it takes sacrifice—sometimes, the ultimate sacrifice.

This may seem obvious to those who dedicate their lives to keeping our streets safe. But it’s no longer so clear to some in these times of historically low crime.

We’re currently reaping the benefits of one of the great public-policy achievements in modern times: a dramatic, generation-long drop in crime. Violent crime is at a 40-year low. Property crime is at a 50-year low. Even more remarkably, this drop in crime followed a decade-long spike in crime arising out of the drug epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s. That epidemic turned streets into literal battlefields, teenagers into foot soldiers, and too many citizens into casualties of the drug wars.

It may seem like a distant nightmare now, but make no mistake: 30 years ago, our cities were slowly dying.

Maureen Dowd, then a young metro reporter, described the ravages of the drug trade through the eyes of children living amidst it. She quoted a 10-year-old girl who called her neighborhood “the murdering area.” Other children chimed in as well: “Two days ago on the corner they stabbed a man,” said one. Another young boy confided in Dowd: “[T]he…raping, kicking, fighting. To death it scares me.”

At the peak of New York’s crisis, the city had 2,245 murders in one year—that’s over six murders every single day. In Los Angeles, a city half the size of New York, there were 1,094 murders. Nor was the crisis limited to the biggest cities. I have several family members living in Little Rock. At one point, Little Rock had the highest per capita murder rate in America, as memorialized in Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock, an HBO documentary.

This was the context, I would add, in which Hillary Clinton warned about so-called “super predators” while championing her husband’s crime bill, which is now much maligned by pro-leniency activists.

Many people in those days doubted whether our society could turn itself around. Maybe Central Park would forever be a no-go zone for law-abiding citizens. Maybe women would never be able to ride the subway alone again. Maybe drug gangs would always outgun the police.

These fears were understandable, but they were also wrong. We turned our society around and we made our streets safe again. But this didn’t just happen by accident; it happened because of policy changes like broken-windows policing techniques, mandatory-minimum sentences for violent criminals, 3-strikes laws, and other reforms. These sweeping changes to criminal-justice policy were championed by scholars like Jim Wilson, elected leaders like Rudy Giuliani, and tough police like Bill Bratton. These policies helped to take back our streets.

Too many people, it would seem, have forgotten these hard-learned lessons. They take our historically low crime rates for granted, acting as if safe neighborhoods are the natural state of man. They often speak and act as if criminals are victims, too.

This disturbing amnesia also comes with a policy agenda as ambitious as it is wrongheaded. Some members of Congress would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers and other violent felons, while giving liberal judges more discretion in sentencing again. Others want to prohibit employers from inquiring about criminal history in job-application forms; some states have already done so. Just last month, one governor restored voting rights to more than 200,000 felons, regardless of the offense committed or evidence of rehabilitation. And, of course, a nationwide movement is afoot to stigmatize law enforcement and the proven policing strategies of the last 25 years.

These policies are not merely wrong. They are dangerous. They threaten a return to the worst days of the 1990s, when law-abiding citizens lived in fear of their lives. Indeed, we may be living through the leading edge of a new crime wave. Over the last two years, murders across 56 of our largest cities are up 17 percent. The numbers are even more shocking in some cities. In Chicago, murders jumped 70 percent in the first quarter of this year alone. In Las Vegas, 81 percent. In Long Beach, 125 percent.

As a result, more and more Americans are worrying about the impact criminals are having on their communities. Last year, a Gallup poll showed that 53 percent of Americans say they personally worry “a great deal” about crime and violence, a 14-percent jump from 2014. That’s the highest figure Gallup has recorded in 15 years.

The ill-considered policies of criminal-leniency advocates and the resulting increases in crime reflect a badly misguided mindset. Criminals are not victims. Criminals are criminals. Victims are victims.

Now that may seem harsh to those who have security details and live in gated communities. From those comfortable perches, one can easily miss the silliness in the notorious old New York Times stories by Fox Butterfield with headlines like: “Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops.” It’s easy, after all, to feel virtuous about being soft on crime when you live in Chappaqua or McClean or Woodside. But when you live in Osceola or Trumann or Pine Bluff—working-class towns in my state where crime has been increasing lately—you can’t afford such woolly-headed abstractions.

What’s ironic is that this supposedly “new” and enlightened way of thinking about criminal justice isn’t new at all. The specious theory that responsibility for crime lies not with the criminal, but with society or the criminal-justice system is, in fact, very old. In the 1960s and 1970s, many academic criminologists believed that criminals commit crimes because the criminal-justice system works to “label” them as “deviants.”

The policy implications of this theory were, to say the least, unorthodox: legalize prohibited activity, reduce prison sentences, close prisons, restrain the police, and swiftly restore all rights and privileges of citizenship upon release from prison. Sound familiar? This kind of thinking created the crime waves that got us to the point where Hillary Clinton worried publicly about “super predators.” Yet all that’s old is new again, I suppose.

Now, let me stipulate that many reformers have the noblest of motives. They see crushing poverty, broken families, and struggling communities—and they want to help. Out of Christian charity, humanitarian fellow-feeling, or even their own brushes with the law, they’re seeking solutions.

Yet they’re looking in the wrong places. Modern sentencing law and policing techniques have reduced these social problems, not created them. Far from the source of the problems, our criminal-justice system is a key part of the solution. Yes, it could be reformed here and there, but wholesale criminal leniency would not only be ineffective, it would also lead to more crime, more poverty, and more lives lost. Ultimately, the criminal-leniency agenda will end up hurting the very offenders, families, and communities the reformers want to help.

Let’s consider this agenda in more detail.

As you probably know, there’s a bill in Congress now that would sharply reduce mandatory minimums for a slew of federal crimes, grant judges wider discretion to depart from these minimums, and apply reductions retroactively so that duly convicted felons will be released early. The bill’s advocates contend that we’re locking up too many offenders for too long for too little, we can’t afford it anyway, and we should show more empathy toward those caught up in the criminal-justice system.

These arguments, put simply, are baseless. They’ve been proved wrong by hard facts and by history.

Take a look at the facts. First, the claim that too many criminals are being jailed, that there is over-incarceration, ignores an unfortunate fact: for the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted, and jailed. Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem.

Furthermore, the federal prison population is already declining. The Sentencing Commission has already granted 32,000 felons early release from prison since 2007 because of earlier sentencing-guideline revisions, with another 38,000 to be released. This has reduced the federal prison population to 196,000 inmates, down from 214,000 in 2014 and on track for its lowest level since 2005.

And of this inmate population, only a fraction of a percent are imprisoned for an offense like mere drug possession. Even if you assume that these prisoners didn’t plea down from a more serious offense—and, believe me, most of them did—we’re talking about fewer than 500 prisoners here. If these are the so-called “low-level, non-violent, first-time” offenders that pro-leniency senators have in mind, why does their legislation extend to thousands of felons? Releasing a flood of these violent felons into our streets would surrender the hard-won gains of the last generation.

That generation started with short sentences and soft-on-crime judges. In the last crime wave, judges had vast discretion in sentencing. This meant that drug dealers often returned to the streets just days after arrest. In fact one police officer admitted to a reporter in 1984 that the majority of dealers he arrested would pay a $50 fine and be released within four days. He stated, “For us it’s cosmetics, cleaning the streets briefly. For [dealers], it’s just the cost of doing business.”

Well, the cost of doing business for criminals needed to go up. Two main factors affecting the cost-benefit calculus of criminals are the severity and certainty of a sentence. Increasing both in the 1980s contributed significantly to the massive drop in crime—as much as 35 percent of the drop according to some studies.

The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime. It’s simply impossible.

The bill’s sponsors rarely speak of this trade-off. They don’t answer the concrete questions that matter to citizens, families, and communities: How many more crimes will be committed because of sentencing reductions? How many more lives lost? How many lives ruined and communities at risk? Let me tell you, with a recidivism rate of 77 percent for released felons, the answer is a lot, no matter how much we improve rehabilitation programs.

Instead of answering these questions, advocates for leniency often point to admittedly large government budgets for law enforcement, courts, and corrections. To which I would respond: And? After national security, what government priority is higher than law and order? Moreover, this perspective is particularly short-sighted, especially for conservatives. Put aside the cost of crime to our governments; what about the cost of crime to our society?

As for the claim that we should have more empathy for criminals, I won’t even try to conceal my contempt for the idea. I empathize first and foremost with the victims of crime and their families. We ought to give criminals a shot at rehabilitation and redemption, but primarily because it’s in our interest as a society, not because they deserve more empathy.

Now, all that said, I don’t discount the the possibility of a manifestly unjust sentence, one so out of proportion to the crime that it shocks the conscience. But that’s why the Anglo-American system of justice gives the pardon power to the executive. I support the use of pardon and commutation as a precise scalpel to identify and remedy such cases. But what we should not do is use the blunt instrument of releasing thousands of violent felons and major drug dealers because of a handful of such cases, many spurious or hypothetical at that.

I believe the criminal-leniency bill in the Senate is dead in this year’s Congress. And it should remain so if future versions allow for the release of violent felons from prison. I will, though, happily work with my colleagues on true criminal-justice reform—to ensure prisons aren’t anarchic jungles that endanger both inmates and corrections officers, to promote rehabilitation and reintegration for those who seek it, and to stop the over-criminalization of private conduct under federal law. But I will continue to oppose any effort to give leniency to dangerous felons who prey on our communities.

A second priority for the criminal-leniency movement is the so-called “Ban the Box” initiative, which would prevent employers from inquiring about criminal history on job application forms.

Ban the Box has a praiseworthy goal, which I share: helping offenders become productive members of society again. Aside from the small number of criminals sentenced to death or life without parole, all convicts will eventually return to society. It’s in their interest and ours if they leave prison a changed man or woman, turning away from a life of crime and toward productive citizenship.

But Ban the Box is not the right way to go about this. Let’s be clear: if the government dictates hiring decisions, if it seeks to deprive employers of information instead of giving them more, and if it threatens severe punishment on employers for failing to do what is allegedly “good for them,” you can be pretty sure the government’s policy is harmful and unworkable.

Some companies have already removed the Box from their forms. That’s their decision, of course, and I applaud their intentions. But for many others—particularly smaller businesses—Ban the Box regulations will increase the costs of compliance and the processing of job candidates who will ultimately prove unqualified for the work. And employers face greater litigation risks, from lawsuits filed by unsuccessful applicants and from enforcement actions brought by state and federal authorities who presume their moral superiority to benighted employers.

No doubt, ex-cons face longer odds in the job market, odds that are understandably frustrating to them. But is it any less frustrating to make it to the end of a hiring process only to lose out? Because even under Ban the Box regulations, that will be the outcome a majority of the time.

Ban the Box, in other words, is an attractive solution because it seems like a tidy solution—a quick fix that will allow us to declare victory and move on. But the truth is improving the post-prison lives of released felons requires a lot more. The policy changes we need cannot start at the point where an offender applies for a job. By that time, it’s usually too late.

We need to start earlier, while felons are still in prison. They need more educational and vocational-training opportunities to develop the skills they’ll need outside prison. When offenders are asked about their criminal history, they should be frank, but also proud of the plumbing skills they honed, or the GED they earned, or the book-keeping courses that led to a training certification. And we want them to point to the college kids who mentored them and the ministers who saved their souls as job references.

Here’s the simple truth: it’s not a job that makes ex-con a contributing member of society. It’s the skills he’s gained, the work ethic he’s developed, and the commitment to an upright life that help him get a job in the first place.

Another post-incarceration priority is the movement to automatically restore the franchise to felons upon completion of their sentences. Whether and how felons can earn back their voting rights has always been a decision left to the states—where it should remain, without federal interference.

But as states are pressured to reconsider their felon-voting rules, those advocating for automatic restoration of voting rights shouldn’t throw around irresponsible charges that disagreement with this policy is illegitimate, un-American, or racist. The principle that felons surrender their voting rights when they commit a crime is embedded in our Constitution, after all.

Unfortunately, advocates for felons like to throw around these poisonous accusations. Now, it’s true there were felon-disenfranchisement laws that deliberately targeted blacks after Reconstruction. Each of those laws has been justly struck down by the Supreme Court or amended to rid them of their original racial animus.

But that sad chapter in our history doesn’t undermine the logic behind modern felon-disenfranchisement laws. Should murderers, rapists, and others whose behavior fall so far outside the norms of our society be immediately accommodated? Given recidivism rates, should we create an automatic pro-crime constituency in our society? Should felons be trusted to elect legislators who make the law, prosecutors who enforce it, and judges who apply it?

As with many charges of racism, we ought to reject the heated rhetoric and instead acknowledge the realities, in this case the costs associated with the immediate restoration of voting rights to felons. An offender who automatically obtains the franchise will have little reason to buy back into the social contract and no motivation to re-learn the responsibilities of citizenship.

I personally believe most felons should ultimately be eligible for restoration of their voting rights, but a much better approach is to provide felons with a roadmap of rehabilitation. After relatively modest periods of demonstrated obedience to the law and lawful employment, for instance, states could reinstate voting rights upon individual application by a felon. This approach would be far preferable to immediate, automatic restoration, especially when ordered by erstwhile political operatives for the electoral benefit of their political paymasters.

Finally, I want to turn to policing techniques and the growing assault on law enforcement. In the past two years, our country has seen several high-profile use-of-force incidents: the shooting of Michael Brown, the suffocation of Eric Garner, and the death of Freddie Gray, among others.

I’ve spoken with police officers about these incidents, and I can report that they feel about abusive cops the way most soldiers feel about misconduct in the ranks: they’re among the first who wish to see them disciplined. And if there are systemic problems in certain districts, it’s the law-abiding police departments that wish to see them reformed, and quickly.

That’s why full investigations of use-of-force incidents should occur and all the facts must be considered. That’s why the Department of Justice is collecting reliable national data on use-of-force incidents for use in developing training and protocols to help officers distinguish and handle situations involving the mentally ill, the substance-addled, and the truly threatening.

After all, no officer wants to be involved in a justified use of force proven unnecessary after the fact, any more than soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan wanted to make what proved to be the wrong decision in a shoot-don’t-shoot situation. Those decisions, even if justified, live with you forever, believe me.

But what should not and cannot occur is a rush to demonize law enforcement whenever force is used. In the absence of facts and hard data, we’re vulnerable to heart-wrenching images, to our own biases, and to cheap demagoguery.

This is dangerous. We’ve already seen one retaliatory attack fueled by misguided rage. In New York, a gunman claiming to seek revenge for Ferguson ambushed and killed Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.

And at a broader level, anti-law enforcement sentiment is fueling a movement to roll back vigilant policing methods, the very techniques that are responsible for the historic drop in crime since the 1980s. In the very city where these methods originated—New York City—there’s an ideological mayor who campaigned against these policing methods and pointed to New York City’s Finest as part of the problem, rather than the solution. No wonder they turned their backs on him. I would too.

This anti-cop sentiment is surely driving the so-called “Ferguson Effect,” as FBI Director Jim Comey has called it. When professional protestors stigmatize the police as racist knuckle-draggers, when their vigorous enforcement of the law is constantly and unfairly criticized and undermined, a chilling effect on policing is nearly unavoidable. And the result is the disturbing increases in violent crime of the last two years. President Obama and others in the criminal-leniency movement are in denial about this. But it’s something more and more criminologists and law enforcement officials are confirming.

Let me make something clear: black lives do matter. The lives being lost to violence in America’s cities are predominantly those of young black men, with devastating consequences for their families and their communities.

But the police aren’t the culprits. In nearly every case, the blood is on the hands of criminals, drug dealers, and gang members. Bill Clinton recently exclaimed to protestors, “You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter.” For once, he was right. And it’s the police who are trying to protect those lives and prevent those murders. We shouldn’t stigmatize them; we should thank them.

And that’s what most people do. What critics of vigilant policing miss is that communities—including minority communities—overwhelmingly approve of “broken windows” tactics. They want low-level crime stopped. They want street corners cleared at late-morning hours so that school kids don’t have to walk among used needles and the lingering smell of urine and marijuana. They want safe neighborhoods.

In northeast Arkansas, there’s a town called Blytheville. Blytheville has faced some tough times. Its population has fallen by 40 percent, especially since the Air Force base closed. Blytheville is also majority African-American. It’s faced a serious drug and crime problem. Last year, in a major operation, hundreds of FBI agents raided the town in the dead of night to arrest 70 drug dealers.

What was the reaction of the community? It wasn’t anguish. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t indignation that law enforcement used aggressive tactics.

The reaction was unalloyed gratitude. One woman ran up to an FBI agent. She cried tears of joy. The operation, she said, “was the answer to [her] prayers.”

There’s another Blytheville resident, a woman named Vivian Harrison. Two years ago, her son Justin was shot and killed in a senseless murder. She awoke the day of the FBI raid, and she praised it. She said she’d like to see the town rid of crime to the point where “decent, hardworking people can go on with their lives without being in fear.”

I’ll conclude with what I wish were a joke, but unfortunately it’s not. The Obama administration has become so solicitous towards criminals that we’re not supposed to call them criminals at all. Now the new term is “justice-involved individual.” I’m not joking, this is the administration’s new term for criminals: “justice-involved individual.” That alone is a crime against the English language.

But it’s much worse: it reflects the dangerous mindset that criminals are victims, that the justice system somehow happened to them. They didn’t commit a crime, they became “involved” in the justice system.

Let me say again: Criminals are not victims. Criminals are criminals. Victims are victims.

When we talk about crime and justice, we should never forget the actual victims of crime: people like Vivian Harrison, her murdered son, and the other residents of places like Blytheville. These are the people I have in mind when we make criminal-justice policy. So pardon me if I err on the side of being a little too tough on crime, rather than a little too soft on crime. It’s only innocent lives hanging in the balance, after all.

For their sake, we ought not make radical changes to a justice system that has delivered so much hope to so many communities since the crime wave of the last generation. We ought not discard proven strategies for political fashions. And we ought not care for criminals more than we care for victims and their families and communities.

I agree primarily, and disagree on one point.

Criminals are not victims. Criminals are criminals. Victims are victims.

However, I disagree with Senator Cotton on one small point.  Black lives do not matter.

He cannot say that, but I can, because I am running for nothing nor must I be “politically correct” in any way.  I am the most free person ever: one who has retired, owes nothing to a job or the government, has no supervisors, and answers to no one but my own conscience and knowledge of history, predicated upon my training, education and experience.

In truth, black lives don’t matter.  They sure as hell don’t matter to politicians locally, at the state level or in DC.  And they don’t matter to the American Media Maggots.  Black urban male lives are useful only as tools to angles on various stories for the AMM.

Black lives don’t matter to Demorats.  Black lives don’t matter to Leftists. Again, they make perfectly useful implements with which to bash certain other GOWP segments of society over the head. This country will begin to parse out respect to young urban black males when they begin to respect themselves and thusly others. Children. Women.

What was that adage about giving someone a fish or teaching them to fish?

BZ