U.S.A. — “Democratic LA city councilman charged with embezzlement, conflict of interest in latest political scandal,” Fox News reported Thursday. “Curren Price is the latest member of the Los Angeles City Council to be arrested in recent years.”
Price is accused of voting to approve projects “in which he had a direct financial interest,” with his wife receiving more than $150,000 in undisclosed payments from developers, and of “having the city pay for medical benefits for his now wife while he was still married to another woman,” the story elaborates. All in all, he’s “facing five counts of embezzlement, three counts of perjury, and two counts of conflict of interest.”
So naturally, he doesn’t trust his constituents with guns, exploiting a so-called “buyback” with the Los Angeles Police Department to gain himself some free publicity while not making a bit of difference in the violent crime Angelenos live under (and bafflingly, vote for with their choice of “leaders”). It wasn’t his first.
“Certainly in South L.A. I feel that gun violence is the No. 1 public health issue,” Price said at a press conference for a 2017 event. “Buyback programs like this really underscore the importance of getting guns off the street. It’s just amazing the number of weapons that are turned in.”
Not that they do anything but fraudulently make it look like city “leaders” are taking charge. No less an “authority” than the National Institute of Justice has admitted:
“Buybacks are ineffective unless massive and coupled with a ban… 1. The buybacks are too small to have an impact. 2. The guns turned in are at low risk of ever being used in a crime. 3. Replacement guns are easily acquired. Unless these three points are overcome, a gun buyback cannot be effective.”
“Price is fighting to ensure our justice system works for everyone, not just the wealthy and well-connected,” his campaign website advertised, hitting on all the right “progressive” buzzwords to gin up resentment and stir up support for doing everything but address the real issues behind criminal violence.
“He has fought to bring more accountability reforms at LAPD to stop racial profiling and police misconduct, especially against young Black and Latino men. He’s led efforts to crack down on guns and successfully secured funding for at-risk youth and foster programs, gang intervention, and crime prevention. And he’s fought for investment in mental health, addiction treatment, job training, and education – not more jails and incarceration.”
“I am a firm believer in the control of guns, the restraint of guns, and the federal government’s proposal for the regulation of guns,” Curren told Our Weekly in 2013 in a report on the “Gun Culture on South L.A.”
But what about the other council members? The story says he’s “the latest” to be arrested:
“Mark Ridley-Thomas was found guilty of conspiracy, bribery, and fraud in March of this year… José Huizar pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to violate the RICO Act and one count of tax evasion [and] Mitchell Englander was convicted in 2021 of scheming to falsify material facts after he attempted to cover up lavish gifts and services he received from business interests.”
Are you ready to not be surprised?
“Ridley-Thomas also wants the group to explore options to better enforce existing and/or adopt stricter gun control restrictions and penalties… ‘especially related to sale or possession of semiautomatic guns and military-style assault weapons,’” The Daily Breeze reported. “He gave several examples of possible regulations, such as deeper background checks for gun sales, requirements for those who purchase guns to buy insurance to cover any taxpayer expenses incurred from the ‘injurious use of a gun’ or taxes on ammunition and firearms.”
This is what Huizar and the rest of the council didn’t trust Angelenos with, per Gunsandammo.com:
“L.A. bans the POSSESSION of mags holding more than 10 rds. in city limits… People who currently possess such magazines, many for collectible firearms registered decades ago, have a 60-day window to remove them from the city, sell them to a legal gun dealer, or turn them into the Los Angeles Police Department.”
And let’s not forget phony Mitchell Englander lending his support to banning phony guns, pulling the phony “even one gun surrendered” BS at a phony “buyback” event, and trying to outlaw 3D printed weapon files and block citizens who were against it from seeing what he was up to.
These lawbreaking “lawmakers” join a long line of others, starting with Mike Bloomberg’s Criminal Mayors Against Your Guns, and extending up the political food chain to “anti-gun” gun-running racketeer Leland Yee and beyond.
It’s really no wonder that such political predators don’t trust citizens with guns. Knowing you can’t be trusted means no one can be: It’s called “projection.” And it’s also called “survival instinct” when wolves demand “commonsense horn safety” laws.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
On the same scorecard, we’re way beyond the point where the number of immigrants illegally crossing our borders is enough to seed the electorate and swing elections permanently, presumably leftward — a disgraceful tactic but also no secret. The planning and logistics have been exceptional right down to coordinated, “the border is closed!” falsehoods, which media lapdogs lap up.
All Rights Matter
But quiet rumblings surfaced about how these masses, “yearning to be free,” just might appreciate due process, personal prosperity, free enterprise, the profit motive, private property, and so many things progressives dislike, including the big one — gun ownership. That’s power in people’s hands, literally. It might be enough to shift the tide.
So much liberty is a risk that progressives can’t dismiss it unheeded. It’s long been apparent that progressives have gained near total control of the teachers’ unions and school curricula, and thus our children, so they might actually accomplish one-party rule. The deal might seal with a lowered voting age, now openly proposed. The left-leaning influence of big tech and, with it, children’s addictive access to screen time — all screens all the time — further speaks to the wisdom in abolishing any thought of lowering the voting age to children’s level. But even this is almost immaterial to the underlying difficulty.
The most deceptive and surprisingly overlooked element in the guns-and-voting-age quandary is unspoken — creating partial citizens. How do you justify granting only some of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to a person and not all the rest?
Splitting Rights
“All of the Bill of Rights for all Citizens” is the rallying cry of one civil-rights group. (1) Are they wrong? Does a 16-year-old who gains the right to vote also gain the right to trial by jury, no longer subject to the “justice” and protections of juvenile court? Where is the rationale to deny the right to keep and bear arms to a person sufficiently whole to vote and send troops to war? Those are rhetorical because there is no justification. Splitting rights is an abomination.
You can’t do it morally or legally — it creates slaves. The Civil War settled that — no person is three-fifths of a citizen. You either have your rights intact, or you do not. Progressives lose that on principle, but that rarely deters them.
You can almost hear the hypocrisy justifying it as valid and not irrational: “We’re giving these kids the vote, but nothing else. It’s only fair.” Republicans choose other topics but often have equally baked hypocritical reasonings; Dems are not alone. When asked, would either party respond, “Sure, kids should file 1040s on income, qualify for a mortgage, get a pilot’s license, and anything else an adult can do. They can vote, can’t they?” Trigger warning: They could vote it in for themselves.
“For years, our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954.
Suppose progressives succeed in this new public-control tactic, lowering the voting age to 16 or even less. In that case, youngsters can band together and vote themselves powers (not rights) for whatever they desire: to buy alcohol, tobacco and drugs, drag race on streets (only after dark, for safety), run for and obtain office — all the things where adults know better.
When voters commit crimes, they’re locked up with the general prison population. That should prove interesting. We’ll have to stop calling so many of the refugees at our borders children. Countless images have gutted that bald-faced lie, but it keeps getting repeated. Voting-aged children have reached maturity by definition. Guns? Sure. They aren’t children any longer. We will have taken their childhood from them.
One progressive response is that young voters could be educated in school to be properly qualified to vote. Like what, starting now? Wouldn’t you love to see adults educated enough to vote intelligently? How many registered voters can name the three branches of government or other most basic elements needed to cast an informed ballot? You’ve seen TV man-on-the-street interviews … hysterical.
(1) Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, JPFO.org.
Award-winning author, writer, consultant and musician Alan Korwin has written 14 books, 10 of them on gun law, and has advocated for gun rights for more than three decades. He is now writing his 15th book, Why Science May Be Wrong. See his work or reach him at GunLaws.com.
Only it cost me a hell of a lot more than $75 but it was worth every penny !!!!!!!!!! Grumpy
For that special time when you REALLY want the party to either start or end RIGHT NOW!!!
The Greatest Living Englishman has an opinion on big-game trophy hunting:
People who hunt big game are evil…
That’s why Boris Johnson (remember him) received universal support in 2019 for pledging to end the practice of big-game hunters bringing back the severed heads of animals they’d shot in Africa.
I was so supportive, in fact, that I went outside and banged my frying pans together, like we used to do for the nurses.
Because I just cannot understand why anyone could go to Botswana to shoot a lion or a giraffe.
It simply doesn’t compute in my head.
Fear not, however, because:
…but here’s why they are necessary
Because as the House of Lords debated the ban on severed heads this week, six African governments wrote to The Times newspaper begging them to let the hunting continue.
And they have a point.
They argue the big, wild animals in Africa often attack villagers and trample crops.
They are seen as a nuisance and are often shot by farmers.
But if a rich white hunter arrives on the scene and is prepared to pay upwards of £20,000 to shoot an animal, it’s suddenly worth the farmer’s while to make sure he has something to shoot at.
So instead of killing the wildlife, he starts to protect it.
Because he’s going to get a LOT more money from Hank the Texan dentist than he is from half an acre of maize.
The fact is that the rich white hunters who do this kind of thing are actually paying for the animals to be protected and looked after beforehand by the locals.
They’re even reintroducing rhinos to areas they haven’t been seen in for decades. I know this. I’ve been to a park and witnessed it happening. And I’ve met the locals who patrol the area at night, hunting the poachers.
If hunting was banned, all that would stop.
So it’s a weird conclusion but if a halfwit with way more money than sense and no moral fibre at all wants to fly to Africa to shoot an elephant, the kindest thing we can do as a nation of animal lovers is . . . let him.
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The Mauser M98 Current Production
Introduction Back in 2009, when Mauser announced that they were going to put the classic Model of 1898 back into production, you could hear sporting rifle aficionados all over the globe singing “Halleluyah”. Not the miserable version from the Shrek movie: but the Halleluyah chorus from Georg Friedrich Händel’s