“The defense of one’s self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law. This principle of defense is not confined merely to the person; it extends to the liberty and the property of a man … it extends to the person of every one, who is in danger…” —James Wilson (1791)

I will get to the murders in Chicago and Highland Park, but let’s start with the death of a man in Akron, Ohio.

Ahead of the Independence Day weekend, the Akron police department released the body cam videos of a 25-year-old black man who was shot and killed five days earlier after a lengthy early morning pursuit. Once stopped, Jayland Walker, who had previously fired on officers from his vehicle, exited his car wearing a black full face ski mask and, refusing officers’ orders to stop, attempted to flee.

A foot chase ensued, and officers were unable to stop Walker with a Taser. At one point, Walker turned toward the officers and raised what they believed was a weapon. Given that he had previously fired on them, eight officers opened fire in the darkness at the suspect, ultimately hitting him an estimated 60 times. He was not armed at the time, but his loaded pistol was recovered from his car seat, and at least one spent shell casing was found where he originally fired on police during the pursuit.

It was not clear if Walker had abandoned the weapon or dropped it while exiting his vehicle. It is abundantly clear, though, that had he stopped his vehicle rather than attempting to evade police, or had he followed lawful instructions once he exited his vehicle, he would be alive today and his arrest would never have made it into even the local news cycle.

Night stops can be deadly for officers. And, unfortunately for all those involved, Walker chose not to do what law-abiding citizens do.

Akron is a city run by Democrats in a county run by Democrats, and activists and their political collaborators are attempting to turn this into another case of so-called “systemic racism,” as they successfully did ahead of the 2020 election.

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan and Police Chief Stephen Mylett released a statement: “We know that no police officer ever wants to discharge their service weapon in the line of duty. And anytime they must, it’s a dark day for our city, for the families of those involved, as well as for the officers. Tragically, we are once again faced with a young man, with his life before him, gone too soon. Every single life is precious, and the loss of any life is absolutely devastating to our entire community. Our prayers are with Jayland Walker’s loved ones, and we offer our sincere condolences to all those who knew him. Our thoughts are also with our Akron police officers and their families.”

Sadly, there is little the officers can say now that will not be drowned out by the well-organized network of Demo hate hustlers using their race-bait template in collusion with their Leftmedia propagandists. Together, they will amp up this incident into a frenzy. Then they will do what Demos do best: use every interracial death as political fodder, as will Walker’s family attorney, who is no doubt drawn to the million-dollar legal-lotto settlements cities are making in such cases.

Not one of the reports about this incident makes any mention of the fact that this year, the number of police officers shot in the line of duty is already up almost 20% over 2021, when there was a 59% increase in officers murdered. Adding to this year’s total were two officers shot in Philadelphia during Independence Day festivities. In fact, this incident has prompted its Demo mayor to declare he wants out.

As the social discord in Akron was simmering, I was wondering how many black men would kill other black men in another Demo-controlled city, Chicago, over the holiday weekend — and how many of those victims’ names would make it into the national media.

The answer? Between Friday and Monday, there were a total of 15 people murdered in Chicago. That was an improvement over the same long weekend last year, when 19 people were murdered in just three days. And this in a city with the most restrictive firearm regulations in the nation — a city that is slowly disintegrating.

Of course, not one of the victims’ names made it into the national news — nor do they ever when the crime is black on black.

Chicago is just one of many violent urban centers under Democrat “leadership.” In New York City, with gun restrictions similar to Chicago, nine people were murdered over the weekend.

Fact is, the Democrats are ignoring the record surge in violence, which, as I thoroughly documented last month, they unleashed after politicizing the death of another thug killed by police — George Floyd.

For the record, today’s record violence is irrevocably linked to the fact that, in 2020, Democrats at the national, state, and local levels willfully provoked and promoted mass lawlessness while they simultaneously demoted and defunded law enforcement capability — cutting almost $900 million from police budgets in major urban centers. They empowered their Marxist Black Lives Matter thugs and their anarchist antifa legions to riotous violence in the name of “social justice.”

Demos let the dogs out, and Democrat-controlled urban centers are paying a heavy price for that today.

That notwithstanding, instead of addressing the cultural issues that are the direct result of failed Democrat social policies, leftist politicos, as they are wont to do, are labeling violent crime as a “gun problem,” and they’re calling for more gun control.

And that leads me to the tragic assault on a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, where the cultural devolution embraced by an assailant resulted in the death of seven people and injuries to others. It was yet another case of a sociopathic mass shooter already known to police, similar to the assailant in Uvalde, Texas.

Highland Park police had previously responded to the assailant’s house twice, once after he threatened to kill himself and again after he threatened to kill his family — at which time weapons were confiscated.

Illinois has a so-called “red flag law,” yet the assailant was able to purchase his firearms after police were called to his home, in a state with the tightest gun restrictions in the nation. Apparently his father sponsored his firearm ownership card despite the assailant’s violent record.

As was also the case in Uvalde, the Highland Park assailant was a poster child for dysfunctional families and the lost tribal legions of faithless, empty-souled sociopaths roaming our streets. They are sponges bloated with toxic culture poisoning, who embrace a cult of violence.

The assailant embraced a whole spectrum of political identities from Left to Right, wherever he could hang his hat, but he sported socialist tattoos. He was a product of countless hours of dark and violent social media indoctrination, and he perfected his crime as a first-person gamer who posted lots of slaughter videos.

As I have argued before, the single most significant contributing factor scripting these particular type of assaults, but one that will get the least attention, is the fact that the assailants are steeped in the desensitizing violence of media and gaming “entertainment” — spending countless hours through their 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.

The leading voice connecting gaming violence to acts of violence is Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (USA, Ret.), a former West Point psychology professor whose books on killing in warfare are mandatory warfighter reading.

More than two decades ago, Grossman linked media violence with mass assailants in his 1999 book, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence. That was a careful study of the connection between fantasy and reality world violence. His 2016 book, Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing, irrefutably makes this link.

According to Grossman, “There is a generation out there that has been fed violence from its youngest days and has been systematically taught to associate pleasure and reward with vivid depictions of inflicting human death and suffering.”

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 declared, “At this time, well over 1,000 studies … point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.”

But that statement was issued 20 years ago, and violent video games and media are far more realistic now than then — and will get no mention in connection to the Highland Park assailant. The commercial and media forces aligned against making that connection and taking any action against those media platforms are staggering.

Brace yourself America. These mass assault sociopaths, and thousands of other murderous thugs nationwide, are the effluent of the unchecked cultural degradation eroding the foundational fabric of our nation. Until that culture is reined in, these assaults will continue unabated. Labelling them a “gun problem” will accomplish nothing, other than advance the Demos’ agenda to deconstruct the Second Amendment.

There will likely also be a common denominator in the current or past use of prescription SSRI antidepressants. This is not to say that such use causes violence but that many mass assailants have used antidepressants. There is also a correlation with assailants who commit individual murders. Currently there are about 25 million Americans who use antidepressants, and according to some reports, little evidence that such drugs improve longterm quality of life.

Another similarity between the Highland Park and Uvalde assailants was the manifestation of gender dysphoria. The Illinois assailant was dressed as a woman during the assault.

Predictably, Illinois leftist billionaire Governor J.B. Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt hotel chain, blamed guns, declaring, “It is devastating that a celebration of America was ripped apart by our uniquely American plague.”

In fact, Pritzker and his leftist cadres are the “American plague” responsible for the failed Democrat social policies noted above that have spawned a generation of sociopaths.

For his part, Biden issued his now-familiar refrain on “gun violence” in a short prepared statement, and he ordered flags to half-staff nationwide, in effect disgracefully using flags as political rags to promote his agenda.

No flags were ordered lowered for those murdered in Chicago or New York last weekend.

And I should note this irony: In 2015, the Supreme Court let stand Highland Park’s ban on “assault weapons” implemented in 2013.

Once again, it is clear that only law-abiding citizens abide by laws, and making lawful citizens helpless clearly does not make outlaws harmless.

Fully 95% of all so-called “mass shootings” since records were first maintained in 1950, have occurred in so-called “gun-free zones.” In other words, people were killed in places where the victims were, by statute, unable to defend themselves. And 90% of those firearms were obtained illegally.

Furthermore, anyone who asserts the safety of the public or private space they manage by posting signs and/or establishing regulations prohibiting firearms should thus be liable for any assault that occurs in that space. After all, they advertised to criminals that the space is full of people who are unable to defend themselves.

Finally, ponder this for a moment: If somehow all outlaws could be prevented from obtaining a firearm, just wait and see the carnage these sociopaths will unleash when they resort to components for bombs that are readily available at any local big box store. That is what the Boston Marathon bombers discovered.

Recall that the deadliest attack on a school occurred in 1927 when a Bath, Michigan, school board member murdered 45 people, including 38 elementary students — with a bomb. Recall as well that in one of the nation’s deadliest attacks, the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing, 168 people (including 19 children) were murdered by sociopaths who rented a truck and filled it with ANFO — the easily obtainable components of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.

The bottom line regarding the epidemic of violence: Democrats institutionalized lawlessness in the name of “social justice,” beginning with their “Summer of Rage” riots in 2020, when they intentionally provoked and promoted violence. They simultaneously villainized law enforcement and cut police budgets. The result was, and continues to be, a one-two sucker punch against victims of violence and those charged with protecting them.

Surging violence today is the direct result of empowering leftist mobs in the name of “social justice,” in effect sending the message that Democrat constituents are entitled to be violent – and that sense of entitlement continues unabated. The implications, given the rising generation of sociopaths, is dire. It will take years to restore real justice – rule of law – but leftists politicians are not going to do that when they can label the violent cultural devolution they have fomented a “gun problem,” and avoid the inconvenient truth about race and violence.

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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

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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