“I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.” —George Mason (1788)

The Tennessee General Assembly is preparing to convene in a special session called by Gov. Bill Lee, ostensibly to discuss “gun safety.” Lee is a steadfast conservative, but in the wake of a “transgender” assailant’s attack on a Christian school in March, he bowed to Democrat demands for a special legislative session.

As a result, Lee has carelessly set up Republican majorities in the House and Senate for a Democrat blitzkrieg of bills. Demos know most of those bills will not pass, thus creating a public relations cluster and setting up conservative legislators for election opposition based on their votes. There should be debate on these measures, but not in a special session errantly called by a governor under the duress of emotive gun control proponents.

The Democrats are going to use the Tennessee debate as a template for how to force their agenda on other states, so to Republicans nationwide I say: caveat emptor.

School attacks are very rare, but as long as sociopathic assailants have been murdering children in schools, Democrats have been propping up the coffins of those children as political soapboxes for promoting “gun control.” They are especially quick to do so when the victims are white, hoping to invoke a strong response from their cadres of emotionally incontinent supporters — particularly their wealthy, white privilege Demo benefactors in the suburbs. You can identify them by their virtue-signally plastic yard signs declaring “Protect Kids Not Guns,” indicating their emotions have been successfully co-opted.

The incident prompting the special legislative session was the murder of six people, including three children, at The Covenant School last March by a gender-confused woman.

The pain that continues to afflict the grieving families of those victims is unimaginable, and it is that pain that Demos crassly use as political fodder to advance their statist agenda.

A week after that attack, Joe Biden hosted a group of Demo legislators from Tennessee to elevate the visibility of their faux political protests.

To put the coming legislative debates into perspective, that grief has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of Americans who have also endured the murder of a loved one. But the fact is, more than 99% of ALL murder victims are NOT killed in so-called “mass shooting” incidents in a school or any other location. And the politically inconvenient truth is that a grossly disproportionate number of those victims are black men, women, and children.

However, there are no plastic yard signs for them in those white suburban neighborhoods.

The legislative “gun violence” debate in Tennessee will center primarily on an “order of protection” proposal by Gov. Lee, better known as a “red flag” law. The Republican House majority declared in April: “Our caucus is focused on finding solutions that prevent dangerous individuals from harming the public and preserve the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. We have always been open to working with Governor Lee on measures that fit within that framework.”

But Democrats quickly seized on the special session to promote their broader gun control agenda in an effort to violate the foundational civil rights of law-abiding citizens, and they hope to obscure that agenda with emotional appeals. Democrat minority leader Raumesh Akbari says in regard to Lee’s willingness to discuss red flag laws: “It really is starting to feel like we’re on the same team. It has been fascinating to see him break from his caucus, from his party, given that they have not been willing to embrace the possibility of gun safety legislation, especially after what happened at Covenant.”

Seems reasonable, right? I mean, if such “gun safety” legislation will stop just one assailant from killing others? At least that is what the leftists and their cadres would have you believe. I suspect that, by the close of the special session, Gov. Lee will substantially revise or retract his red flag proposal in order to protect the fundamental constitutional rights of Tennesseans from the abuse of such laws by the leftists.

Coinciding with the upcoming special session, I recently met the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary — the Connecticut school where a sociopathic assailant murdered 20 children and six adults on December 14, 2012. In retrospect, all the warning signs about the Sandy Hook attacker seemed obvious. Unfortunately, warning signs are not so obvious as predictive indicators of such attacks, as has repeatedly proven true in cases such as the Uvalde school attack last year, so the best mitigation is reasonable protection of kids in schools.

Thus, the principal’s presentation and the ensuing discussion centered primarily on how to harden schools from such assailants. There are more than 98,500 public and more than 30,000 private elementary, middle, and high schools across our nation, and protecting all of them adequately is a formidable task.

Notably, however, none of the considerable safety measures that schools have taken in the last decade would have prevented the most deadly attack on an elementary school in history. That attack occurred in 1927 in Bath, Michigan, when a disgruntled school board member detonated two bombs outside that town’s elementary school, murdering 38 children and six adults, and injuring at least 58 others.

Frankly, given the number of sociopathic “empty vessels” whose heads are filled with the media and gaming violence promoted as “entertainment,” it is fortunate that mass assaults in schools are not much higher. The school safety panel I spoke with concurred that media violence is a significant causal indicator in mass assaults, so where are all the Demo protests about the infusion and indoctrination of abject violence?

I believe the merits of how best to identify potential mass assailants should be vigorously debated. If Demo politicos and their cadres of protesters can set aside their gun control agendas long enough to have a serious debate, some solutions might be found.

But their objective is not to find solutions; it is to divert from the real issues that are directly responsible for the vast majority of violence across our nation, and their legislative charade will coincide with Biden’s upcoming announcement of his latest “background check” proposals to further constrain Second Amendment rights — also a diversion from the real issues.

Let me repeat this: More than 99% of ALL murder victims are NOT killed in “mass shooting” incidents in a school or any other location. And a grossly disproportionate number of those victims are black men, women, and children. That is a politically inconvenient truth Democrats never mention — but if they actually believed that black lives matter, it would be their highest priority. That gross discrepancy is not about “gun violence” but about a culture of violence Democrats continue to perpetuate with policies that have, generationally, resulted in broken families — the number one indicator for violence — and that, in effect, keep their constituents enslaved on Demo urban poverty plantations.

If the Democrat objective in Tennessee, and any other state, is really to reduce violence, then that legislative conversation should start with serious consideration of the culture from which murderous thugs arise. But Democrats will vigorously avoid any such discussion because responsibility for that violence will fall at their feet. Consequently, Republicans should change the subject from emotive solutions of rare but tragic mass murders to the causal factors associated with the vast majority of murders.

It’s tragically evident that our nation has reached the pinnacle of privilege and complacent ignorance when some of its citizens demand the revocation of the one right that assures all others.

Finally, a footnote for perspective: According to the latest CDC data, more than 178,000 people died from alcohol abuse last year – that’s NINE times the number homicides associate with fire arms. Drunk driving is responsible for 37 deaths per day. Drunk driving results in 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 or drugs. In both cases, only law-abiding citizens will be penalized while outlaws will continue to disregard the law.

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

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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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.

FOOTNOTE 3: Regarding what Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists 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.

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