Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group, Everytown for Gun Safety, ranks the 50 states on how well they have comported their laws to the organization’s civilian disarmament agenda. In doing so, the group describes New Hampshire, with its few gun control laws, as a “national failure.”
That descriptor might come as a surprise to residents of the bucolic northern New England state. According to CDC homicide mortality data, in 2020 and 2021 pro-Second Amendment New Hampshire had the lowest homicide rate in the nation
In the Granite State in 2020, there were 0.9 homicides per 100,000 residents. In contrast, Everytown gun control “national leader” New York experienced 4.7 homicides per 100,000 residents – a rate 5 times higher than New Hampshire’s. Everytown’s highest ranking gun control state, California, had a homicide rate of 6.1, almost 7 times higher than New Hampshire’s. Everytown darling Illinois had a homicide rate of 11.2.
The point is, political actors like Everytown will manipulate metrics to advance their agenda.
In recent years, Democratic enclaves have been conducting an experiment with soft-on-crime policies. Predictably, the national homicide rate has increased alongside these highly-visible efforts.
Understanding that most of the voting public doesn’t condone the intentional promotion of lawlessness, some prominent Democrats have attempted to shift the narrative by making misleading claims about homicide in Republican-controlled “red states.” According to the left-wing talking point, murder rates are worse in these “red states.” Part of the implication is that the lack of gun control in these states is part of the problem.
It should be noted that New Hampshire has a Republican governor that enacted Constitutional Carry in 2017 and both houses of the New Hampshire General Court are controlled by Republicans.
As the American Enterprise Institute’s Marc A. Thiessen pointed out in an October 20, 2022 piece for the Washington Post, the “red state” murder claim is “bogus.” Thiessen explained, “In most of these red states, the high murder rates are driven by the lethal violence in their blue cities.”
Missouri is one of the states with a high homicide rate that those on the left have cited to support their thesis. Thiessen pointed out,
Take Missouri. Yes, it voted for Trump. But it is also home to two of the most dangerous U.S. cities — St. Louis and Kansas City — both of which are run by Democrats… According to the FBI, the state had about 520 murders in major metropolitan areas that year, 20 in cities outside metropolitan areas, and 28 in nonmetropolitan counties. So, the vast majority of Missouri’s homicides took place in its Democrat-run cities.
To elaborate on the matter of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West’s homicide rate per 100 thousand residents exploded from 64.5 in 2019 to 87.2 in 2020. The homicide rate was far and away the city’s highest in the preceding 50 years.
This startling increase in homicides came under the tenure of St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. Elected to the office in 2016, Gardner has worked to “reform” the city’s criminal justice system – often placing her at odds with city law enforcement. Gardner has received significant support from anti-gun billionaire George Soros. As Politico reported back in 2016, Soros is engaged in a wide-ranging effort to remake the U.S. criminal justice system by electing activist prosecutors throughout the country.
Research from the Manhattan Institute also undermines the left-wing “red state” murder factoid.
In May 2022, the think tank published a report examining the 2020 homicide spike using county-level data. The researchers found that “Counties with a higher share of GOP voters not only have lower homicide rates but also a lower growth in homicide rates between 2019 and 2020.” Further, the authors noted, “We also find that there is no statistically significant relationship between the growth in the homicide rate and either the number of Covid-19 deaths or the number of guns sold per capita.”
Researchers at the Heritage Foundation also debunked this Democrat talking point in a November 2022 report titled “The Blue City Murder Problem.”
Examining the 30 cities with the highest homicide rates in the nation, the researchers found, “27 have Democratic mayors” and “within those 30 cities there are at least 14 Soros-backed or Soros-inspired rogue prosecutors.”
To show the impact that “blue cities” have on the homicide rate in “red states,” the authors recalculated several states’ homicide rates when high-crime Democrat-dominated cities and counties were removed from the equation.
In the case of Missouri, the report pointed out that,
The elected officials in the City of Saint Louis, Missouri, are all Democrats. The 28 members of the Board of Alderman are all Democrats, as are Circuit Attorney (the equivalent of a local district attorney) Kim Gardner and Mayor Tishaura Jones.
Saint Louis County is equally lopsided with elected Democrats, including five of the seven members of the County Council and District Attorney Wesley Bell.
The report went on to explain,
St. Louis City and St. Louis County heavily influence the state’s homicide rate, having 46.235 and 14.387 homicides per 100,000 residents, respectively. Removing St. Louis City lowers the state’s homicide rate from 9.363 to 7.482 per 100,000 residents, a 20.09 percent reduction. Removing St. Louis County lowers the homicide rate to 8.395 per 100,000 residents,) a 10.34 percent reduction, while dropping both counties reduces the state’s homicide rate by 35.17 percent to 6.070 homicides per 100,000 residents… removing both counties drops Missouri’s homicide ranking from fifth to 20th in the nation.
Drilling down even further, the research shows that violent crime is concentrated, both geographically and within social networks, even within cities. So, smearing “red” jurisdictions to try to blame the crime wave on a lack of gun control is beyond misleading. But of course, that’s the point.
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| KYIV, Ukraine — Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., the 46th president of the United States, announced he was deserting the oval office “so I can fight for the glory of Ukraine.” The announcement came on live TV during a surprise meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “It’s the only way I can really get at Putin,” the now-former President said, “The press always asks me, don’t I wish I was debating him? No, I wish we were in high school and I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.” | ||
| Biden, who recently passed his annual White House physical, said “I’m a spry guy, I’ve tussled with the likes of Corn Pop, I can do this.” He posed for pictures in a boxing stance to prove his point. | ||
| The former president told reporters “I am in Kyiv today to meet with President Zelenskyy and reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” Biden then turned to Zelenskyy and raised his right hand to receive the Ukrainian oath of enlistment. Out of respect for his previous legislative and executive branch experience, Biden was direct commissioned to first lieutenant though one Ukrainian officer was later heard to say he thought lance corporal was more appropriate given Biden’s documented love of American muscle cars. | ||
| Biden’s decision to desert parallels that of Daniel W. Swift, a Navy SEAL who deserted in 2019 and died fighting for Ukraine. Both men chucked a promising security career: one, a special warfare operator 1st class, the other a commander in chief. | ||
| Ukraine’s president recited the oath in his native tongue while the former U.S. president nodded as if he understood. Biden then saluted Zelenskyy, grinned widely with a mouthful of preternaturally white teeth, and gave reporters the double-guns hand signal, saying “I’m a soldier now, that’s so cool.” | ||
| Zelenskyy then presented Ukraine’s newest enlistee with a Kel-Tec SUB-2000 carbine. “This was sent to us from your country,” Biden’s commander-in-chief explained. “It is very lightweight, so you should be able to handle it.” | ||
| Biden took the weapon and immediately swept the room with its muzzle, saying, “Corn Pop better watch out now.” Everyone in the room dove for cover except Zelenskyy, who rolled his eyes and asked, “Do you think I would chamber a round before giving it to him?”. | ||
| Under questioning by reporters, Biden said he hoped his desertion would “rally the world to support the people of Ukraine and the core values of human rights and dignity in the UN Charter that unite us worldwide.” | ||
| Biden also revealed he had arrived in Ukraine with a “delivery of critical equipment, including artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments.” The former U.S. commander-in-chief did not explain how he got through customs with the equipment he alleged to have brought with him. | ||
| Back at the White House, Communications Director Kate Bedingfield called Biden’s surprise move “a bold and strong move, demonstrating resolve and commitment on … Biden’s part in the face of the extreme difficulty of [deserting] as President of the United States.” | ||
| The trip “was logistically complicated and difficult,” Bedingfield told reporters. “It sends an incredibly powerful message that … Biden has faith in the Ukrainian people and is unwavering in his commitment to stand by them.” | ||
| National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan lauded Biden’s desertion to reporters in a conference call, labeling it “unprecedented in modern times… What he wanted to do in Kyiv was to send a clear, unmistakable message of enduring American support for Ukraine; a clear, unmistakable message of the unity of the West and (inaudible) international community in standing behind Ukraine and standing up to Russian aggression; and also to be able to stand there next to President Zelenskyy in a free Kyiv to not just tell but to show the world, through a powerful demonstration, that Ukraine is successfully resisting Russian aggression.” | ||
| Biden is the first U.S. president to desert office since 37th President Richard Nixon left 38th President Gerald Ford a “Dear John letter” in 1974. In the letter, Nixon revealed that he hijacked Air Force One to Vietnam to be with the country he regarded as his true soul mate. | ||
| It was not clear at press time if Biden’s desertion would impact any federal pensions he earned from 1973 to 2017 as a U.S. senator and vice president. | ||
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| Robin Berger is a retired Air Force NCO who shops at the commissary every month as required by law. |
“There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.”—Thomas Jefferson, 1789
What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?
Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.
Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.
We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.
Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.
As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”
While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.
For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.
The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.
The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.
According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.
The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”
Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.
Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?
What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.
Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?
For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?
Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?
Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?
Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.
We should be alarmed.
As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”
Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.
Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.
Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.
Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.
This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.
This is exactly what martial law looks like—when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it: Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.
The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.
Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.
This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.
Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.
This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.
This is a turning point.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.
If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.
WC: 1308
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
—————————————————————————————-Its a nice dream but I am not holding my breath on this one! Grumpy
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