Posts Tagged → shooting
Primitive hunting techniques are more important than ever
In this day and age of popular stainless steel and plastic hunting rifles and Hubble telescope-sized rifle scopes, primitive hunting techniques and weapons are more important than ever. Something in the bad age of video games and instant gratification happened to the American character in the past thirty years or so, and so many young Americans have become lazy and even a bit heartless, as a result. Hunting culture has suffered from this, too. Really badly. Today’s focus seems to be predominantly on the kill, and much less on the process of the hunt.
Those curious about the distinction here should look up some neat videos from real hunters in the big woods of Vermont, Pennsylvania, and the Adirondacks.
Hunting should never be just about, or mostly about, killing an animal. Especially if the hunter wants to call it a trophy and put it up on his or her wall as a representation of his skill.
People trying to justify 300, 400 yard long range shots (or farther) on unsuspecting animals are not hunting, they are assassinating. Their wood craft often sucks, their field craft is limited to wearing camouflage, and their knowledge of the game animal is negligible. They are not really hunters, but rather shooters. Their high-tech guns, ammo, and rifle scopes are a crutch diminishing their need for good woodcraft, and it also results in a lack of appreciation for an actual hunt, and a lower value placed on the animal.
Culling oversized wild animal populations for the benefit of the environment is one thing, but hunting wild animals for pleasure and clean meat should be accomplished with skill. Age-old skills that everyone can respect. Hard-won wild animals taken with real skill under fair chase conditions are all trophies.
An unsuspecting big game animal assassinated at long range (or worse, inside a high fence, or over bait) requires very little hunting skill, and can never be said to be a trophy that is reflective of the hunter’s skill set. And yet isn’t this why so many hunters want big antlers and broad hides? They see these big animals as a reflection of their hunting prowess, of their manhood, their chest-thumping status within the outdoors community. As a result, America has developed a hunting culture driven by bigger-is-better trophies, at any cost, all too often achieved through long-range assassinations of unsuspecting wildlife, or over bait. Fair chase, which has always been at the heart of hunting, has been tossed away in favor of quick gratification and unfounded ego bragging rights.
The primary reason why primitive hunting weapons are so important today, is that someone has to keep the culture of hunting alive. What is a primitive hunting weapon? Pretty much any legal implement that requires the hunter to work hard to develop unique field craft/ wood craft skills, including the ability to penetrate within a fairly close range of the prey animal’s eyes, ears, and nose: Any bow (compound bow, stick bow, self bow, longbow, or other hand-held vertically limbed bow), spear, atl-atl, open-sighted black powder or centerfire rifle, any large bore handgun with or without a scope, should qualify. Flintlocks, percussion cap black powder muzzleloaders, and traditional bows are especially challenging to master and to harvest wild game with.
All of these primitive weapons require the hunter to actually hunt, to rely upon his woodcraft to carry him quietly and unseen across the landscape, and into a fair and close range of his prey animal. Animals taken with primitive weapons and techniques are earned in every way, and therefore they are fully appreciated.
Few experiences bother me more than watching some internet video of a fourteen year-old hunter running his hands over the antlers of a recently deceased buck, and listening to this inexperienced mere child discuss the finer aspects of this rack, its inches, its points, its relative size, and its (barf on my feet) trail camera name. Usually the child has shot the deer from an elevated box blind that conceals all of the hunter’s scent, sound, and movement. Whoever has taught these kids to hunt this way exclusively, and to then look at deer harvested this way as so many bragging rights, has done a huge disservice to these kids. These kids are going to grow up into poachers and baiters, always trying to prove how great of a “hunter” they are, and how studly and manly they are, at any cost. They will end up doing anything to score the next “record book” animal. These young kids who are being warped right now with this trophy nonsense are the future of America’s hunting culture, and what a crappy culture it will be if it is dominated by big egos and even bigger mouths armed with sniper rifles and no actual hunting skill.
Moms, dads, grandpas and uncles who are beginning to teach kids to hunt right now can do two simple things that will ensure their little student grows up into an ethical, responsible, high quality, law-abiding hunter: Make them use open sights on single-shot firearms and bows.
The skills that young hunters develop from having to rely on open sights and single shots (primitive weapons) will force them to achieve a high level of field craft, wood craft, and fair chase values. Developing skill requires a person to overcome challenges and adversity, often making mistakes along the way. And that results in better character.
Forcing kids to get close to their prey animal, and to take only carefully aimed shots with just open sights, will result in people who become really excellent hunters. Adults can always opt to add a scope to their rifle as their eyes age, but the lessons learned early on in concealment, controlling movement, playing wind direction, and instinctive shooting will keep the respectable art of hunting alive and well.
This Fall, get your little one started on a flintlock or old Fred Bear recurve bow from the get-go, for squirrels and deer, and watch as a true hunter is born.
A Uvalde Memorial Day weekend
In the spirit of this Memorial Day weekend, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the 19 child students and two teachers sacrificed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, last week, to advance the Democrat Party’s pursuit of absolute and total control over every American.
No deaths are ever too many in the Democrat Party’s pursuit of the latest bloody crisis they can leverage into illgotten political gains. From late-term abortions where the living child is literally euthanized after having been born, to innocent school children gunned down in defunded police-free schools, the Democrat Party stands proudly for one thing: Death to children every day. Because God knows, the Democrat Party must always have a crisis to exploit to help them move otherwise unpopular and poorly considered legislation, and no sacrifice for that is too big or too sad.
We must also acknowledge the importance here of the Child Molesting and Pedophile Groomers’ Lobby, aka the National Education Association and its many state and local affiliate teachers’ unions. They, too, wish to exert unchallenged control over all taxpayer-funded government schools, where they exploit small children in psychopathic social experiments pitting the kids against their loving, devoted parents. Nothing happens in public schools without the teachers’ unions lobby say-so, and so their well considered decision to leave public schools as vulnerable soft targets is implemented everywhere across America. They can’t have their bloody crises without the soft targets inviting them.
The teachers’ unions are A-OK with sacrificing children and even some teachers to move their political football down the field. Recall that a great many of the teachers and politicians and basketball coaches demanding gun confiscation today are the very same people who demanded that local police forces be defunded and also stay the hell out of schools yesterday.
Yes, it is true that these teachers’ unions and their political allies speak out of both sides of their mouths, but what is the point of being logical and reasonable when your end goal is the total collapse of American civilization?
We have learned some disturbing facts about the Uvalde massacre over the past few days: A teacher propped open a door that cross-dressing murderer Salvador Ramos then walked through unopposed, after he had spent TWELVE MINUTES shooting his guns at the school building with no apparent return fire or police response. He must have realized that the school was undefended and also welcoming to mass murderers, and so he literally waltzed in.
And apparently the law enforcement officials who did eventually respond milled about outside for an hour like a bunch of scared school girls, and not like the trained burly men with firearms they actually are. What a bunch of cowards. And then these same cowardly law enforcement officials turned their violent attention onto the terrified parents they were blocking from the school, tasing one father and handcuffing a mother.
In other words, the police at Uvalde were too busy “saving” the parents outside to go inside the school to actually intervene and save the kids from Ramos.
You can’t make this stuff up, but a lot of this failure has to be associated with the Democrat Party’s efforts to defund and defang the police across America. As a result, a lot of police everywhere these days feel confused and uncertain about what they are supposed to do, and how much trouble they will get into with angry Democrats if they actually shoot a child murderer dripping blood from his hands. Because a heroic police officer to you and me is always a cold blooded murderer to the Democrat Party….
Gun confiscation from law abiding citizens is the Democrat Party’s goal here, for the simple reason that an armed populace is impossible to rule over the way that the Democrat Party intends. So, what’s a few sacrifices here and there in the pursuit of absolute and total control of all 350 million Americans?
Those of us inclined to think of and memorialize bloody American sacrifice differently than this cynical Democrat ploy can recall that our Memorial Day tomorrow is not just about those military personnel who gave their lives abroad for our freedom here at home. We also recall that in our own War for Independence, many unarmed heroes gave their lives right here on American soil so that future generations might live in freedom from government.
And this is how I prefer to think of the Uvalde kids and teachers now, as domestic heroes whose sacrifice will not have been in vain. Because so many Americans are catching on now to the Democrat Party’s anarchic lawlessness, and they see through their calls for more government control over our law-abiding lives.
Democrat Party 100% owns Uvalde school shooting
The mass shooting in yet another school, this time in Uvalde, Texas, is like all the others: It was preventable and is 100% the result of the Democrat Party and its subsidiary, the teacher’s unions, who control government schools with an iron fist.
As we have seen over the past year, the Biden Administration’s DOJ and FBI have been treating justifiably angry parents of school children as “domestic terrorists.” Relying on the First Amendment, these parents formally object through long established democratic processes to the hijacking of their taxpayer-owned schools by anti-America indoctrinators posing as teachers and school administrators.
But because the Democrat Party is using the power of government to try to silence its political critics, and to protect the government school system from being taken back by the taxpayer citizens, they have teamed up with various private anti-America groups like the National School Board Association and the National Education Association to “inform” the DOJ and FBI on who to illegally target. While this behavior is obviously un-democratic and a grotesque misuse of government power and authority, it is in and of itself not the focus of today’s essay.
What the forgoing means is that government-run “public schools” are just another captured outpost of the Democrat Party and its anti-America, bizarro sexual and cultural groomers who must be defended at all costs from the peaceful citizens who actually own the schools and underwrite them via hard-paid taxes out of their pockets. It means that public schools are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democrat Party and its primary educational arm, the National Education Association teacher’s union and its affiliates. And what this means is that pretty much everything that happens inside public school grounds is either OK’d or enabled by the teacher’s unions and the Democrat Party.
Including school shootings.
Believe me, if the Democrat Party and its teacher’s unions did not want racist Critical Race Theory taught in public schools, it wouldn’t be. If they didn’t want school shootings, there would not be any. Teachers’ unions have an absolute lock on public schools, and so whatever happens in these schools happens because of careful decisions the Democrat Party and the teacher’s unions have made. They own all of these things.
One conscious decision they have made over and over is to leave public schools as purposefully soft targets, easily accessed by murderous criminals who wreak mayhem and bloodshed in school buildings almost at will. In the wake of previous school shootings, Democrats in Congress have voted to prevent armed police from being in schools. Just the other day, Democrat Party US Senator Chuck Schumer blocked legislation that would make public schools a thousand times safer by allowing administrators and teachers to be armed.
Why would there be a constant effort by the Democrat Party to keep public schools as soft targets, their school children, staff and employees disarmed and sitting ducks? Because the Democrat Party is addicted to bloodshed and crises, at any cost. Nothing moves the political ball down the field like a scary crisis with tons of innocent blood spilled, and so the Democrat Party and its teachers’ unions have cultivated the kinds of circumstances that allow these shootings to easily occur. Such is the Left’s desire for full control over America that no sacrifice is too big, there are never enough dead children and blood soaked headlines. Anything to gain control.
The Uvalde massacre shows once again that the Democrat Party is both arsonist and then fireman.
I know this might sound nuts, but given how much official skullduggery we have already seen aimed at illegally expanding the federal surveillance state against law abiding American citizens, I would not be surprised if we learn that some of these school shooters were paid to commit their crimes.
In the Uvalde massacre, the shooter (possibly an illegal alien) Salvador Ramos, 18, posted direct online threats that no one acted on, murdered his grandmother, then drove to the school and easily overcame an armed but untrained School Resource Officer. The police on scene did not enter the school to stop the shooting out of fear for their own safety, and a mother on the scene who did try to enter the school to help was arrested and handcuffed by one of the useless cowards carrying a gun and a badge there.
There are a lot of failures at Uvalde, and not one of them has to do with lawful, law-abiding gun owners anywhere in America. But as we have seen, the Democrat Party and its media establishment is hijacking this latest massacre that they created in order to generate the next crisis that can be leveraged into more anti-constitutional behavior by the federal government, namely gun-grabbing from law-abiding Americans who form the only real bulwark against federal government lawlessness and control. And we see that the Biden Administration is 100% all-out for full control of all of us through online media, controlling our bank accounts, etc.
And so we just have to ask this logical question: If the FBI, DOJ, National Association of School Boards, and the teachers’ unions are willing to repeatedly sacrifice innocent school children on their altar of disarming and completely controlling America, then what do they really have planned for the rest of us after they take our guns?
Probably a lot more bloodshed, and all for the Leftist cause.
Colorado shooting is another “Gun Free Zone”
Another crazy guy (and it’s almost always a guy, why is that) walks into a store and shoots innocent people just going about their business. So far ten people are dead, among them a local police officer doing his duty to protect and serve.
Colorado is a western state, with a strong history of cowboys, self-reliance, and private gun ownership. Especially carrying a sidearm for personal protection kind of gun ownership. Across most of Colorado a person can expect that a great many people around you are carrying a concealed firearm, for their own protection and for yours.
But in recent decades, beautiful western states like Colorado and Montana have seen an influx of Californians fleeing the disastrous policies of otherwise-beautiful California. But these refugees bring with them the same failed mindset and foolish policies they fled and had left behind in California. Slowly but surely, these transplants begin working to implement the same exact laws, policies and regulations that are even now destroying California. And where would these liberal transplants focus most? Why gun elimination, of course.
Boulder City in Colorado is the poster child for liberalism or woke-ism run amok, and every type of Marxist regulation and ordinance possible can now be found in Boulder, in an otherwise pretty free state of Colorado. One of the things that most of the Boulder residents really don’t like is guns, or gun ownership. And so, the store in which yesterday’s mass shooting occurred fell in line and had a “Gun Free Zone” warning on its front door.
When a store posts this kind of warning on its door, it usually means that anyone carrying a firearm on the premises could be subject to criminal charges. And so those people who do carry a concealed firearm almost always avoid these kinds of stores. I suppose they would rather be safe than sorry, and so they shop elsewhere.
So, who or what kind of person ignores the “Gun Free Zone” sticker or sign on the store front entry? Well, it just might be a crazy person, like yesterday’s shooter guy. People looking for soft targets can and often do target places where they reasonably expect to encounter little or no armed resistance.
What would have been the outcome of his attack, had there been several patrons in the store that day carrying firearms? Do we think the result might have been different, as the result has been different in other places where “a good guy with a gun” managed to stop the assault as it was beginning?
Gun Free Zones do not work. They are infantile make-believe wishful thinking that all bad things would just go away. Yes, Gun Free Zones are the equivalent of a #badthingsjustgoaway mindset, which is not a grown up, mature, contemplative way to approach reality. But apparently, so many Americans have experienced so little reality or real life challenge that they actually believe this kind of weak policy works. This childish mindset is at the core of the gun confiscation movement: “If we can just get rid of guns, then there will be no more bad things.”
Which is of course nonsense, because after all the known guns are eliminated, then the unknown guns held by bad people will come out. And American society will become a shooting gallery, because no one but a police officer here or there will be around to stop the carnage.
If you doubt this prediction, just look at this Colorado store. There is your Gun Free environment right there. A real effective policy, right? A real peaceful, safe place, right?!
UPDATE: Turns out the murderous lunatic is another peace-loving jihadi named Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, from Syria. Turns out America doesn’t need gun confiscation or regulation, we need immigration control.
Irony is not necessarily an important part of a person’s diet, but here, have some
I will take some irony, please, with a heaping side of steaming crow.
Oh, not for me!
I am going to serve it up to those Americans who believe that a Christian baker MUST be coerced by government force to bake a cake for someone he disagrees with politically, but that the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, has every right, even a duty, to expel and not serve people (Sarah Sanders of the White House staff) she disagrees with politically.
Then there’s a big serving of the same irony and crow for those who believe it’s just fine for public employee unions to force union dues from public employees who do not support the unions’ political activism, but it is just terrible to allow people to contribute their own money to political campaign PACs.
Democrat congresswoman Maxine Waters has become a radical firebrand for angry Socialists across America. She has said some real irony-laden doozies, like “We are sending a message to every Trump-supporting American that you are not welcome here!”
Followed by “We must welcome everyone who crosses our borders, whether they are illegal or not.”
For whatever reason having to do with artificially inflating the voter rolls, Waters and her supporters value illegal invaders over American citizen taxpayers. A lot of Black Americans wonder what that’s all about. But Waters is going to have a big heaping serving of irony n’ crow, too.
Then there’s a plate of irony and crow for Rob Cox, the loose-lipped, itchy trigger finger Reuters editor who late today directly blamed President Trump for a shooting at a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, but who has never said a word about the mass shootings and massive amounts of shootings in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other “gun-free” zones. Now the most very politically partisan and fact-challenged Mr. Cox’s integrity and credibility as a “reporter” are shot, as zero facts were available to him at his moment of big mouthed fame, and those facts beginning to subsequently dribble out don’t put Trump or his words at the scene of the crime.
See the symmetry here?
Hypocrisy has a way of catching up with people. That is called irony.
The crow is extra, gratis, on the house, served up by a host of recent US Supreme Court decisions contrary to what the once-irony-deficient here believed.
Two big plates. Hope you enjoy your meal. If you don’t enjoy it, then quit being a hypocrite and stop using double standards.
The boys of summer
This past weekend a friend and I got our boys together, plus one of my son’s friends.
The four young teenagers ran themselves ragged, and it was a beautiful thing to see. Running up and down the river, floating downstream with the strong current, exiting downward of the rocks, sloshing back up and doing it all over again. And again.
Until one of them discovered some otter’s half-eaten breakfast of fish and crayfish, lying exposed in the strong sunshine on a rock with the water swirling around it. Inspecting that absorbed their attention, heads crowded around, someone poking about with a stick. And then >POW< they broke and ran back upstream as a splashing, sloshing pack, marking a distant boulder in the middle of the stream as their next object of focus.
This kind of outdoor joy went on all weekend.
Campfires, campfire cooking, campfires becoming scary bonfires, shooting guns, lighting fireworks, ear-ringing blackpowder cannon booming, combat SORRY! games, food crumbs everywhere, clothing smeared with mud and grass stains, pickup football games, woods walks. It was just one non-stop blur of motion.
At night we watched movies, shooshing one another when someone talked over the dialogue. Crumbs on the couches, popcorn on the floor.
It was a thing of joyous beauty to behold. Such unbridled happiness. Such carefree freedom.
Meanwhile the dads sat on the river bank, on the porch, on a log in the woods, in the living room, and compared childrearing tactics, kid behavior, learning and teaching successes and failures, hopes and fears for the kids’ futures, hopes and fears for our own parenting, for our own relationships.
Somewhere in all of this I was both a child again and a responsible adult. Watching these boys being boys as boys were meant to be was refreshing, and kind of a validation of my own untamed side. That part of almost every guy that is a kind of mostly-hidden teenager who refuses to grow up and get with the adult program. Heck, being a boy is fun, even a fifty-year-old boy. You never really stop being a boy, you just get new toys. The consequences of screwing up are no longer skinning your knee, however; now, you can lose your home, your spouse, your health.
But we are boys inside, nonetheless.
Being a dad is difficult, and fun; hard and enlightening; frustrating and rewarding. Doing a bit of it with another dad over a weekend makes it easier. But most of all I enjoyed being a part of the boy herd, and reliving some of that unfettered joy of just being a boy free to roam and run in the summer sunshine.
Santa Fe School Shooting: Liberal Democrats Sacrifice More Kids on Altar of Gun Control
Another school shooting today, in Santa Fe, Texas.
Yes, a good guy with a gun stopped the shooter, and he could have been stopped sooner.
But stopping that shooter (and the next one) would require taking the kinds of concrete, proactive steps necessary to actually protect the students from harm. It is as easy as having police stationed in the school, or armed guards (including armed volunteers), or arming the staff and teachers who want to be armed.
And these options are all too pragmatic, too simple, too real for liberal Democrats, who reject them all. They would rather use this latest blood in the streets to promote their nation-wide civilian disarmament schemes, because what they really want is political domination over every American citizen.
In fact, sacrificing a few school students on the false altar of gun control is one of those unfortunate but necessary “breaking a few eggs to make an omelette” things that liberal Democrats desire, to achieve their political goal.
The more blood, the more emotion, the more fear, the more crisis, the more they can take advantage of people’s emotions and ram through laws that will do nothing to solve the problem, but which will advance liberal Democrat goals of civilian disarmament.
When the ten-year Clinton gun ban sunsetted in 2004, liberal Democrats admitted openly that it had done nothing to lower crime. But they wanted it reinstituted, nonetheless. The high cost of disarming law-abiding Americans won’t do anything to make schools safer, either. So why demand this?
Liberal Democrats want absolute control over you and me, folks, and that is all. They do not want solutions. An armed citizenry is the ultimate block against the Democrat Party’s goal of full control of America; this is the “problem” they are really trying to solve.
If you doubt this, look at this phony, illegal “Russia collusion” thing: It is just “resistance” against the Trump administration by any means necessary – legal, illegal, unethical, immoral. Liberal Democrats reject results of elections they lose. They reject laws they don’t like or don’t write. They enable an unsustainable illegal immigration invasion and illegal sanctuary cities to recruit illegal aliens who they want to convert into loyal voters and artificial political dominion. They use the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results.
After the Parkland shooting, liberal Democrats had meetings, marches, protests. Lots of demands. Lots of brutal demonization of the NRA, of law-abiding gun owners, of gun manufacturers, even of the US Constitution. In all of that activity, they would not address how their liberal Obama-era PROMISE program had caught and released the violent criminal Nikolas Cruz half a dozen times, so that he could finally follow through on his public promises to commit mass murder in his own school.
I am sorry for the parents of the children hurt and killed in Santa Fe, Texas. I am sorry for their parents, and for their teachers and school administrators, and friends. I feel very badly for them, and if they are angry about this, they need only direct their focus on the liberal Democrats and their henchmen (teachers unions) who have blocked all natural, logical, and effective means to preventing these shootings from happening.
Liberal Democrats love political power and gun control more than they love school students. Remember that the next time you vote.
Stop Sacrificing Our Children on the Altar of Gun Control
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2018/02/making_schools_gun-free_just_t.html#incart_river_index
Making schools gun-free just turns them into killing fields | Opinion
Updated Feb 27; Posted Feb 27, 2018
By Guest Editorial
By Josh First
If public schools are dangerous sitting duck areas, falsely called “gun-free zones,” it is solely the fault of the myriad gun-control groups that have tried to stigmatize firearms to the point of demanding that historic reenactors use sticks and brooms, instead of historic muzzleloaders.
If the public is angry about lax school security, they can blame groups like CeaseFirePA, who hate guns so much that they would rather see children remain at dire risk than admit guns have a constructive and valuable role in America, and especially in public schools.
Gun control advocates increasingly admit they are anti-gun prohibitionists, who would really like to see guns removed from private ownership, or so heavily regulated to the point where government bureaucrats determine our individual liberties.
These wealthy, control-freak pressure groups are responsible for insane policies like “gun-free zones” at places like Parkland High School.
Time after heartbreaking time we see that a gun-free zone is anything but that, and crime after crime America’s gun control groups pull political stunts and try to blame lawful gun ownership and the NRA for the heartbreaking results of disarming law-abiding citizens and placing them at the mercy of criminals.
A gun-free zone is a foolish, impractical pipe dream promoted by gun prohibitionists.
In reality, it is a killing field, where only the criminal attacker has a gun, and where the victims can at best put up token resistance, like Parkland’s heroic football coach, Aaron Feis (imagine if Feis had a gun, instead of his body, to defend the students with).
Effectively defending gun-free zones, such as schools, is an impossibility that society does not inflict on other public venues, like planes, museums, government buildings, politicians, sports events and music concerts.
Trying to end the problem by blaming guns, the NRA, and then disarming the law-abiding citizenry, is an indication that gun control groups are not serious about finding a solution to Columbine or Parkland. Rather, they are shamelessly exploiting a situation they alone created to advance their unconstitutional and anti-America agenda.
Guns are protected in our Second Amendment for a reason, and not because our founders were afraid of deer or ducks. Our founders knew that an adequately armed citizenry was all that stood between freedom and tyranny. Yes, gun ownership in America is unlike any other nation, with good reason.
It was an armed citizenry that created the unique freedoms we all enjoy today, and that will never change.
It is time for serious people to hold gun control groups accountable for the carnage in our schools and demand that they stop sacrificing our schoolchildren on their altar of gun control.
Dear CeaseFirePA, stop standing in the way of safe schools; schools are not the place to teach children your anti-gun message.
Josh First, a businessman, writes from Harrisburg
[This was originally titled “Stop Sacrificing our Schoolchildren on the Altar of Gun Control,” but the openly liberal Patriot News opinion editor apparently believed that was too persuasive, and changed it]
My date with MSNBC
Yesterday I took the Princess of Patience out for her birthday lunch-dinner. She is 49, again, but looks young enough that a waiter asked what my daughter wanted for dinner. No lie. Clean living apparently has its just rewards.
On the other hand, I look like hell.
So while she and I were on our date together, celebrating another notch in her gunstock, in terms I can relate to, our eyes kept getting drawn to the TV playing in the sitting area. For whatever reason, it was stuck on MSNBC, a channel I have obviously heard of, but to which I have had very little exposure. Then again, I watch almost no TV, ever.
So, being of open and easily distracted mind, I ignored my wife on her big day, and instead paid increasing attention to the people on MSNBC. It was in truth a date with the TV channel, as I got sucked in so deeply that I forgot entirely to compliment, thank, and engage with the actual human next to me.
Like I said, she is the Princess of Patience. What she sees in me is a mystery. A normal guy would throw rose petals in front of her every morning. She makes me coffee. I am lucky beyond anything I deserve.
But what of my date with MSNBC?
Well, after a solid hour of really paying attention, let us never again call this a “news channel,” nor its personnel “reporters.”
MSNBC is a wholly dedicated political advocacy program. There is no news being reported. Rather, there is news being edited, commented on, subject to opinions from one perspective, one side, one view. No opposing views or analysis are offered, and the questions designed to sound like alternative perspectives are asked of political advocates with whom the interviewer agrees.
The show was totally dedicated to the Parkland High School shooting and to promoting gun control, gun confiscation, and citizen disarmament. The comments made by the guest people, ranging from high school kids to grey-haired retirees, followed a single line of thought. Most of the comments were just factually wrong, and no one challenged them.
Give credit to the two young high school kids who were interviewed, two young men, they stood in front of the camera and answered questions. But their answers were what you would expect from high school kids: Factually incorrect, emotional, without reason or logic. These kids were being used by MSNBC to promote the channel’s political viewpoints, so no one challenged them on any of their nonsense.
For example, both boys kept stating that AR15s shoot “200 bullets a second.”
That is about 199 bullets more than an AR15 actually shoots in one second.
An AR15 is a semi-automatic firearm, not an automatic firearm. Semi-auto firearms shoot a bullet with each manual pull of the trigger, and most have clips holding 20-30 rounds, not hundreds, as the one boy claimed. And very few automatic firearms of any sort, much less hand-held small arms, shoot at that very high rate of fire.
But MSNBC will not allow actual facts to guide their line of thought.
Consider the fact that the armed deputy assigned to protect the children at Parkland WAS HIDING AS THE SHOOTING OCCURRED.
Yes. When the shooting began the school’s paid deputy sheriff, today a retired deputy sheriff, immediately fled the school and went outside, where he basically curled up in a fetal position.
The man abandoned his post, was derelict in his duty, and let the killer slaughter children and teachers, unopposed.
Consider also that the police had been to the shooter’s home three dozen times for domestic disturbances, and at any time could have intervened between an obviously troubled youth and his gun.
Similarly, the FBI had been repeatedly contacted about the young man’s public threats, and they did nothing. Zero. Nada.
But none of these huge adult failures stop MSNBC from exploiting children, living and dead, from promoting their political agenda of gun confiscation.
And the hour went on like this, a parade of fake data, fake outrage, fake news. At the end of my date with MSNBC I understood why adults I know have a similar disconnect as the adults who failed Parkland’s students. Adults who watch MSNBC and believe they are getting actual news, and actual facts, are failing themselves and those around them. You cannot watch MSNBC seriously, because it is an arm of a radical political movement, at odds with American traditions of news reporting, good government, and legal gun possession.
Watching MSNBC may re-affirm your beliefs, but it will not teach you anything accurate or factual.
MSNBC’s purpose is to persuade watchers of one perspective, not to inform them of facts. MSNBC is fake in every way.
I wondered aloud how much of our other media is like MSNBC, feeding watchers inaccurate information from a political perspective?
That question was answered during the live press briefing at the White House yesterday, which was shown real-time on MSNBC, during our “date.”
During the press event, the national media personnel (they are NOT reporters) were openly hostile toward the president and current administration. They are uniformly and firmly of one political mind, and using their positions as would-be reporters to try and damage an administration they personally oppose. They are advocates, political activists, just pretending to be professional news reporters.
Add this media failure to the long list of other adult failures surrounding the Parkland shooting.
I won’t be going on any more dates with MSNBC again, or with any of her silicon sister media friends, either.
Orlando shooting = immigration policy overhaul
The Muslim shooter of 49 innocent Americans in Orlando made his political and personal positions clear for a long time, in tweets, videos, facebook posts, and then recorded telephone 911 calls from the bloody floor of the bar he shot up.
Omar Mateen stated up front for months that he was a follower of ISIS, and he was following the plain dictates of Islam.
The Koran explicitly lists the cruel punishments for gays and infidels, and Omar Mateen followed through like a good Muslim.
The mainstream media is doing everything they can to digress, ignore, avoid, and pretend that the cause of this horrendous event is anything but what it is: Another Islamic attack on Americans.
Islam is a philosophy incompatible with Western civilization. Oh, Americans have big hearts, and we are always trying to find ways to make everyone under the sun feel welcome. But that should not involve committing national suicide. That is the very definition of political correctness.
Trying to punish law-abiding Americans for the actions of insane immigrants and followers of insane belief systems makes no sense, and we will not abide efforts by liberals like US Senator Bob Casey to strip Americans of their Constitutional rights.
The irony is that the Left wants to strip us of our rights for committing thought crimes, ie “hate crimes,” while the actual haters are allowed to roam freely among us, committing crimes in the name of their inhuman belief system.
The failure of the Left in its response to the Orlando shooting is overwhelming. America is being split into citizens who see plainly what is wrong, ie anti-gay violence by religiously correct Muslims, and those who ignore the obvious outcomes of their defective immigration policies.