“May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths.” –George Washington

A week ago, I received a text message and photograph of the Columbine Memorial, a solemn place dedicated to the memory of 12 students and a teacher who were murdered by two sociopaths at Columbine High School in 1999. The text was from my son, who visited the memorial with several other AFA Cadets as an expression of homage, and to gain some sense of this terrible incident, which they were too young to remember.

My son was a six-year-old kindergartner at the time of Columbine.

Seeing that photograph evoked distinct memories from that April day, both the grief I felt for the victim’s families, and the anger I felt toward those assailants who so casually took the lives of these young people, and wounded 23 others.

That was my backdrop for the terrible news on Friday that another murderous sociopath had entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 precious children and six adults, after he had murdered his own mother earlier that day. Those same feelings of grief and anger emerged again – but this time somehow made worse not only because the numbers were greater than Columbine, but in the faces of those little children I saw my own children at that age.

Most parents I have spoken with this weekend felt the same degree of empathy for the parents and families of the Sandy Hook children – particularly four members of our Patriot Team who have children the ages of those murdered in Newtown.

We have all prayed for those families, though none of us can really grasp the extent of their grief unless we have lost one of our own.

We have prayed also for the surviving children, who suffered great trauma – and not only those children but also the emergency medical and law enforcement personnel who rushed to the scene of this massacre, only to find the damage had been done.

Having spent some years on call with a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing team working with first responders after mass casualty incidents, I can tell you the trauma those responders experience is often forgotten, but accounts for the high incidence of PTSD in their profession.

We continue to pray for all those who have experienced varying degrees of loss in this tragedy, and further, that they would be shielded in the coming days and weeks from the inevitable political machinations that attend such tragedies.

We also pray that these families will be shielded from the coming political crossfire between those on one extreme who believe all weapons should be banned, and those on the other who believe every teacher should be armed. We most assuredly want to live in a nation where neither of these extremes is necessary.

Disgraceful Political Theater

Obama has asserted erroneously, “The vast majority of Americans would like to see serious gun control, [but] it doesn’t pass because there is this huge disconnect between what people think and what legislators think and are willing to act upon.” His disdain for grassroots gun owners was summed up in his unguarded remarks to campaign donors in 2008, when he said that they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Endeavoring to close that gap, every time there is tragic mass murder where the assailant used a gun, Democrats offer the disingenuous rationale that violence is a “gun problem” rather than a cultural problem. Of course it’s easier to blame guns than culture, and that serves the Left’s political agenda.

The tragic attack on young students, teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown is a case in point.

Before the bodies of murdered children had been removed from Sandy Hook Elementary, Barack Obama was, shamefully, stacking up the coffins of innocent kids to use as a platform for his disarmament agenda, which he and his socialist cadres will conceal behind a thin façade of “concern for public safety.”

Just one paragraph into his brief remarks about the murders in Newtown, Obama tearfully exclaimed, “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. … We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

New York Demo Rep. Jerrold Nadler was less discreet in his insistence that Obama use the deaths of these children to advance the Left’s gun prohibition agenda: “I think we will be there if the president exploits it.” Sen. Charles Schumer added, “I think we could be at a tipping point … where we might get something done.”

Within hours of the deaths, Sen. Dianne Feinstein promised, “I’m going to introduce in the Senate – and the same bill will be introduced in the House – a bill to get … weapons of war off the streets.” Of course, Feinstein, et al., know that the use of so-called “weapons of war” as murder instruments is exceedingly rare – less than 2/10ths of one percent of all homicides in America occur on school grounds, and less than three percent of all homicides are committed with “assault weapons.” So what is their real agenda?

At a vigil in Newtown two days after the attack, Obama again politicized the attack, framing his remarks around his gun-prohibition agenda. He asked rhetorically, “Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose? If we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. And we will have to change. What choice do we have? Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

The day after that speech, in my daily email from the White House came a link from Obama’s “senior advisor,” David Axelrod, with a video link to Obama’s vigil remarks posted on his “Forward” campaign Web site (and we thought the election was over). Astoundingly, the video was framed inside a page seeking donations to Obama’s campaign fund.

For the record, Connecticut already has a ban on “assault weapons,” and the Newtown school was already a “gun-free zone,” but that didn’t prevent the murders of these precious children and six adults. In fact, the assailant violated more than 20 laws in the commission of this horrific crime. Also for the record, since the “assault rifle ban” of 1994 expired in 2004, gun ownership has increased and crime has decrease.

In fact, violent crimes are almost exclusively committed by sociopathic thug, drug and gang-bangers battling on city streets. Furthermore, it is also clear that 96% of all mass shootings since records first began being kept in 1950 occurred in so-called “gun-free zones.” In other words, people were killed in places where the victims were most likely unable to defend themselves. And 90% of those firearms were obtained illegally.

Of course, only law-abiding citizens abide by laws, and making lawful citizens helpless clearly does not make outlaws harmless. Remember: The vast majority of mass assaults occur in “gun-free zones.”

Sidebar: Anyone who asserts the public or private space they manage is safe by posting signs and/or establishing regulations prohibiting (gun-free zones), should thus be liable for any assault that occurs in that public or private space, because in effect they advertised it was safe from any firearm assault – and advertised to criminals that the space is full of people who are unable to defend them selves.

As for the real root causes of violence, in addition to the irrefutable link between fatherless homes and violence, what I believe is the single most significant contributing factor scripting this particular type of assault, but one that will get the least attention, is the fact that the assailant was steeped in the desensitizing violence of video game “entertainment” — spending countless hours through his formative years in a fantasy first-person killing role. Tens of millions of young people are submersed in these games and don’t emerge as sociopathic killers. But in those rare instances when a young person does become a mass assailant, their pathology, combined with their killing fantasy, results in bloodshed.

For example: The 1999 Columbine High School murderers were immersed in the violent game “Doom,” achieving “berserk mode.” The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer logged 83,496 kills in one violent video game, including 22,725 headshots.

To that end, a joint statement from the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry declares, “At this time, well over 1,000 studies … point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.”

Additionally, many of the most noted mass shooting assailants were, or had been using, psycho-active prescription drugs, particularly selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, including Prozac similar drugs. It was only after the introduction and widespread distribution of these drugs (now an epidemic of overprescription in the US) that mass shootings began.

Any honest American should be deeply offended by politicians who are so calloused that they would use the deaths of innocents as political fodder for their agenda. Could Obama not exercise the most basic decency and allow time for genuine grief to pass before exploiting the blood of innocents? Obviously not, according to the first chapter in his political playbook: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste.”

It is no small irony that the political party that has made killing children prior to birth a pillar of their platform expresses such indignation when a sociopath places so little value on life that he murders children. Of course, it’s easier to kill children who are faceless – and I am certain that in the eyes of the sociopathic killer in Newtown, his victims also had no faces.

Further, acknowledging that the majority of murders and other violent crimes in our country are the direct result of social and cultural degradation on urban poverty plantations would be, first and foremost, an indictment of the socialist welfare state advocated by Democrats. Thus, they call for more gun control – on top of the 20,000 gun control laws now on the books.

Fact is, on average almost 50 people are murdered every day, two-thirds of them with guns. It is statistically notable that about one-third of murders are not committed with guns, and moreover, blacks and Latinos commit a grossly disproportionate number of all murders and the victims are predominantly blacks and Latinos.

For example, the very weekend that Obama and his race hustlers attempted to politicize the shooting of Trayvon Martin by “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman earlier this year, the Chicago Sun-Times (Obama’s hometown paper) reported that in just 48 hours, 10 people were murdered and at least 40 others were seriously wounded. Most of the assailants and victims were black or Latino, but not a word from Obama about those murders.

Moreover, as of this date in 2012, 62 young people between the age of 6 and 18 have been murdered in Chicago this year, a city with the toughest gun restrictions in America. Not a word from Obama about any of those deaths because they reflect the aforementioned cultural problems created by Leftist social policies, not a “gun problem.”

Even Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers Union, commented on the commercialization of the Newtown tragedy: “There might have been a time where ‘politicizing’ tragic events, especially mass shootings, was thought to be in poor taste. That has changed with the 24/7 news cycle that continues to focus far too much time and energy on the perpetrator of the massacre than that of our precious victims.”

Lewis said Obama’s education policies “kill and disenfranchise children.” “We in Chicago have been the victims of their experiments on our children since the current secretary of Education [Arne Duncan] ‘ran’ the Chicago Public School system.”

Notwithstanding the fact that violence is not a “gun problem,” given Obama’s disgraceful exploitation of the Newtown deaths, expect to see aggressive second term proposals endeavoring to implement bold encroachments on the Second Amendment.

Additionally, watch Obama’s effort to spin the Newtown attack in order to rally two-thirds of the Senate for passage of the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty regulating small arms. The ATT is a Trojan Horse. While it ostensibly exempts domestic gun sales and ownership in the U.S., with the stroke of a pen, it could implement severe gun restrictions and even confiscations – an end run on the Second Amendment that would provide political cover for gun-grabbing Leftists in the Senate and House.

It is worth noting that the sale of firearms has skyrocketed since Obama’s election – for obvious reasons. If Obama is really concerned about the proliferation of firearms, perhaps he should resign his office.)

Benjamin Franklin proclaimed, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In the case of those who would give up Essential Liberty for nothing more than the perception of a little temporary safety with more gun prohibitions, indeed they deserve neither Liberty nor safety and, ultimately, will lose both.

To that end, I share these words from a man whose name is synonymous with peace: “Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” –Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi

Observations on Violence and Media Misrepresentation

Just two weeks ago in an essay about responsible gun ownership, I wrote:

“Obama has asserted erroneously, ‘The vast majority of Americans would like to see serious gun control, [but] it doesn’t pass because there is this huge disconnect between what people think and what legislators think and are willing to act upon.’ Endeavoring to close that gap, every time there is tragic mass murder where the assailant used a gun, Democrats offer the disingenuous rationale that violence is a ”gun problem“ rather than a cultural problem. Of course it’s easier to blame guns than culture, and that serves the Left’s political agenda.

"However, acknowledging that the majority of murders and other violent crimes in our country are the direct result of social and cultural degradation on urban poverty plantations would be, first and foremost, an indictment of the socialist welfare state advocated by Democrats. Thus, they call for more gun control – on top of the 20,000 gun control laws now on the books.

"Fact is, on average almost 50 people are murdered every day, two-thirds of them with guns. It is statistically notable that about one-third of murders are not committed with guns, and moreover, blacks and Latinos commit a grossly disproportionate number of all murders and the victims are predominantly blacks and Latinos.”

In fact, the very weekend that Obama and his race hustlers attempted to politicize the shooting of Trayvon Martin by “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman earlier this year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that in just 48 hours, 10 people were murdered and at least 40 others were seriously wounded. Most of the assailants and victims were black or Latino, but not a word from Obama about those murders.

As for the media misrepresentation of the Newtown attack, though virtually every news outlet is reporting that this was the “worst school attack in history,” the most lethal attack on a school occurred in 1927, when a disgruntled Bath, Michigan, school-board member murdered 45 people, including 38 elementary students – with a bomb.

Additionally, virtually every media reference to the assailant in Newtown refers to him as “the shooter.” Well, like some sixty million Americans, I am a “shooter.” The assailant who murdered 27 women and children in Newtown was a sociopathic murderer who used a gun. He murdered them, not the gun.

In the words of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD, “Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.” (A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer’s hands.)

Finally, while we remain faithful in our prayers for all victims of violence, we remain vigilant in our preparedness to defend American Liberty and the innate right to Liberty “endowed by our Creator.” In the words of Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story, “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

American gun owners don’t keep and bear arms to overthrow the government, as the Left often implies. But possessing a strong and competent self-defense capability is rooted in a spirit of self-reliance and a love of American Liberty that has its origin in the American Revolution and has been passed down for generations since. What the Left is really trying to break is that spirit, our devotion to Liberty. It is antithetical to the statist power and control they seek. The Second Amendment is not negotiable, period. The Left’s perennial claims of “common sense” infringements, ostensibly for “public safety,” are a smokescreen to ensure their statist agenda is unabated.

“Arguments over the merits of gun control are made all the more difficult to navigate by the Left’s stubborn denial that we are already having a debate on the issue. Gun control propositions are by no means new, and nor is there a lack of a ‘national conversation on the subject.’ Instead, the national conversation is ongoing, and the Left is losing it badly. Gun control advocates may talk of national soul searching and dialogue, but in truth that already exists; what they mean is that they’d like to win for a change. … There are at least two hundred million privately owned guns in America, and Connecticut regulates access to them more strictly than most. To believe that [Friday’s] crime could have been prevented, you have to presume either that a man willing to go to such grievous lengths could have been deterred from doing so by stronger laws, or that those stronger laws could rid America of privately available guns completely – thus making the killer’s task an impossible one. I believe neither thing. To pass a law is not to achieve its aims, and one suspects that any attempt at gun control in America … would be destined to be filed next to Prohibition and the War on Drugs in the annals of man’s folly. American liberties, including the Second Amendment and the 40-plus state-level guarantees of the right to bear arms, pre-exist the federal government, and are defined and protected in the same document from which the state derives its authority and its structure. In a free republic, the people cannot be disarmed by the government, for they are its employers, and they did not give up their individual rights when they consented to its creation. There is no clause in our charters of liberty that allows for the people to be deprived of their freedom if and when a few individuals abuse theirs.” –National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke

Essential Liberty

“In the wake of the Conn. shooting, the 2nd Amendment has become a focal point for anti-gun proponents once more. Their message is that it’s time to re-evaluate the right to keep and bear arms, but the mistaken assumption is that the 2nd Amendment is easy to change. Like all amendments in the Bill of Rights, the 2nd Amendment does not create a right. Rather, it recognizes a right with which we were ‘endowed by [our] Creator.’ … Normally stressed in this amendment are the two obvious assertions: 1. We possess ‘the right to keep and bear arms’ and, 2. That right ‘shall not be infringed.’ But of crucial importance is the fact that this amendment is the only one which protects a right our Founders considered ‘necessary to the security of a free state.’ Obvious implications: No armed citizenry = no free state. This is why the Founders made this amendment so difficult to change or eliminate. … The difficulty required to change this amendment ought to give us pause. For our Founders went out of their way to be sure the rights protected by the Bill of Rights could not be easily stripped of their amendments.” –Breitbart’s AWR Hawkins

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NOTES:

The First Civil Right is To Keep and Bear Arms. It is, as James Madison’s Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Story, rightly defined it, “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” the ultimate assurance of all other rights.

What follows are a few key notes that all defenders of American Liberty and its foundational guarantor, the Second Amendment, should be prepared to articulate, in order to refute the rhetorical gun control agenda disinformation propagated by Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists.

While some of this data is based on annual findings, most of that data does not vary significantly year over year.

FOOTNOTE 1: Regarding so-called “gun violence,” there were approximately 19,600 homicides involving firearms in the U.S. in the latest year of record, which you can view state by state. Fortunately, there are indications that homicides may be declining after the significant surge of violence unleashed by Biden and his Democrat agitators in 2020. The 2022 homicide rate was 30% higher than in 2019.

The Demos ubiquitously and falsely label the generational murderous contagion they have seeded as “gun violence,” and they focus exclusively on the infrequent high-profile “mass shootings,” which account for only a tiny fraction of all homicides. More than 99% of murders in the U.S. are not the result of mass attacks. (Notably, guns don’t commit violence, thugs and sociopaths commit violence.) The oft-cited Gun Violence Archive defines a “mass shooting” as any incident that involves a “minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed.” The vast majority of those violent attacks are the result of drug and gang violence committed in Democrat-controlled urban centers.

In a country and culture that ignores the rising generation of sociopathic murderers — mostly thugs in violent urban centers who are saturated with cultural violence and indoctrinated with mass-media glorification of violence — it is fortunate that the incidence of mass murder is not 10 times higher. Arguably, the only thing keeping that number from being higher is that 125 million Americans are legal and responsible gun owners.

Democrats don’t focus on the vast majority of murders, particularly the epidemic of black-on-black murders on their decaying urban poverty plantations, because they want to avoid the “inconvenient truth” about race and violence, which is the direct result of failed Democrat social programs. In fact, black people (13% of the population), are 12 times more likely to be murdered, per capita, than white people (62% of the population).

That gross racial disparity in murder rates isn’t useful for the gun control narrative Democrats invoke to evoke emotional reaction from mostly wealthy white suburban women, who form the Demos’ largest voter constituency.

FOOTNOTE 2: Regarding so-called “mass shootings,” for the record, murders of multiple people by one assailant are very rare in our nation of 335 million people. Less than 1% of all murders nationwide are classified as “mass shootings” and high-profile attacks, such as the 2017 mass murder in Las Vegas, are extremely rare.

The FBI defines “active shooter incidents” as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” In 2022, the FBI reported 50 incidents resulting in 313 casualties (100 killed and 213 wounded). That number was up significantly from 2020 when the FBI reported 40 incidents resulting in 164 casualties (38 killed and 126 wounded).

A broader record of “mass shooting” data is maintained by the Associated Press and Northeastern University, which uses the Department of Justice definition of mass public shooting: “A multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms.” These numbers fluctuate significantly year over year, and they range between 20 and 40 incidents. But notably, over the last 30 years, the number of black mass assailants is almost as high as the number of white assailants.

Democrats focus on these rare instances of multiple murders because these high-profile tragedies are political fodder to foment fear — most notably when they can toss out their oft-repeated but erroneous claim that “gun violence is the leading cause of death for children.” If by “children” they mean gang and drug-associated murders of those primarily between the ages of 16 and 21, then yes. Democrats are experts at fomenting fear and division.

The fear and angst Demos intentionally propagate are taking a toll on Americans’ mental health. Psychological researcher Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson observes: “Watching it time and time again on your phone or on the headlines can really impact you in ways that I don’t think we knew before to be as impactful. It’s so ‘in our face’ all the time and we have access to so much footage, so many pictures, so many videos, so many accounts that we’re ingesting it in ways that’s really unhealthy for us.” The result for many mothers, in particular, is an irrational fear that their children will be shot. That is precisely the fabricated fear Democrats want to perpetuate, especially among their female constituents, in order to advance their gun control agenda.

But here is a fact Democrats and their mainstream media platforms will not tell you about those rare high-profile shootings on school campuses: Young people between the ages of 6 and 22 are far safer on a campus than they are off campus.

(Notably, the deadliest school assault in American history did not involve a firearm. A sociopathic school board member in Bath, Michigan detonated a bomb outside an elementary school, murdering 38 children and six adults.)

FOOTNOTE 3: Regarding what Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists ubiquitously and falsely label “assault weapons,” an actual assault weapon, commonly known as a “machine gun,” is select-fire and can rapidly cycle rounds in fully automatic sequence. Very few select-fire weapons are in civilian hands, and only then subject to stringent licensing requirements.

In fact, civilian firearms in common use, like the AR-15 and other semiautomatic sporting and hunting rifles, are not “assault rifles.”

For much the same reason the Demo/Media talkingheads focus only on rare high-profile “mass shootings” to generate fear and angst, they also call semi-automatic rifles sometimes used in those attacks, “assault weapons.” Predictably, Demos then call for what Hillary Clinton framed decades ago as “common sense gun laws,” inevitably followed by calls for an “assault weapons ban.”

In 1994, Bill Clinton banned the sale of “military-style assault weapons,” but that ban was not renewed 10 years later because it was determined the ban had no effect on crime reduction. According to Rand Research, “We found no qualifying studies showing that bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated.”

The fact is, rifles and shotguns combined are used in less than 3% of all homicides, but Democrats never let facts get in the way of their “assault weapon ban” political agenda.

Both the Clintons were prolific prevaricators, masterful obfuscators of the truth. And Joe Biden has followed their template, establishing himself as the standard bearer of the “lying dog-faced pony soldier” cavalry.

FOOTNOTE 4: Regarding firearms and violent crime, researcher John Lott reports, “Over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms.” Again, the only thing keeping that number from being much higher is that 125 million Americans are legal and responsible gun owners.

FOOTNOTE 5: Regarding firearms and suicide, almost 60% of all deaths involving firearms are suicide, most also involving drug or alcohol abuse. But the big numbers promoted in “gun violence” reports do not distinguish between murder and suicide, thus implying that homicide rates are much higher. And does this mean that Demo support for assisted suicide is in conflict with their support for gun control?

FOOTNOTE 6: Regarding alcohol versus firearm deaths, if Democrats are serious about protecting Americans, they should outlaw alcohol. Alcohol abuse is far more deadly than firearm abuse. More than 178,000 people died from alcohol abuse last year — that’s NINE times the number of homicides associated with firearms. Drunk drivers are responsible for 37 deaths per day. And notably, it is estimated that alcohol is a key factor in at least 30% of homicides where the assailant uses a firearm. (Include drug dealing or use as a factor and that number jumps to about 60%.)

Of course, the vast majority of alcohol users possess and use it legally and responsibly. Likewise, the vast majority of firearm owners possess and use them legally and responsibly. Enacting a prohibition on firearms is tantamount to enacting a prohibition on alcohol. In both cases, only law-abiding users obey the laws.

BOTTOM LINE: Let me restate this point — only law-abiding citizens abide by the law. Only outlaws perpetrate acts of violence. Making good people helpless won’t make bad people harmless.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

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