“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 “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, 140,000 people die from alcohol-related causes annually — more than five times the number of homicides. Drunk drivers are responsible for 28 deaths per day. And notably, it is estimated that alcohol is also a key factor in at least 30% of homicides involving firearms. (Include illegal drug abuse as a factor and that number jumps to about 70%.) If Democrats are serious about homicides, maybe they should attempt to outlaw alcohol again, just as they have illicit drugs.

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.

BOTTOM LINE: The First Civil Right is To Keep and Bear Arms. It is the “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” as it is the ultimate assurance of all other rights.

FOOTNOTE: Regarding so-called “gun violence” and “mass shootings”: For the record, murders of multiple people, particularly mass murders, are very rare in our nation of 330 million people. There were approximately 25,000 homicides in the U.S. in the latest year of record, which you can view state by state, and fortunately there are indications that homicides may be declining after the surge in violence unleashed by Joe Biden and his Democrat agitators in 2020.

The Demos ubiquitously and falsely label the generational murderous contagion they have seeded, “gun violence,” and 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 on Democrat-controlled urban centers.

In a country and culture that ignores the rising generation of sociopathic murderers – thugs in violent urban centers who are saturated with cultural violence to the point of glorifying it, it is fortunate that the incidence of mass murder is not ten 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 degraded urban poverty plantations because they want to avoid at all cost, the “inconvenient truth” about race and violence, which is the direct result of failed Democrat social programs. Those murders aren’t useful for the gun control narrative they invoke to evoke emotional reaction from mostly wealthy white suburban women, whom form the Demos’ largest voter constituency.

As for actual mass murders, that is detailed in the FBI’s data on “active shooter incidents” – which it defines 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 more relevant 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 range between 20 and 40 incidents.

FOOTNOTE 2: Regarding why Democrats only focus on less than 1% of murders nationwide – they are intentionally using these rare high-profile tragedies to foment fear – most notably 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 are intentionally propagating is 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 is an irrational fear that their children will be shot. That is precisely the fear that Democrats want to perpetuate, especially among their female constituents, in order to advance their gun control agenda.

FOOTNOTE 3: Regarding those so-called “assault weapons,” for much the same reason Democrats focus only on the rare high-profile attacks to generate fear and angst, some of those attacks involve semi-automatic rifles versus pistols, thus the calls to ban them. However, rifles and shotguns of combined are used in less than 3% of all homicides, but Democrats never let facts get in the way of their political agenda.

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, 54% of all deaths involving firearms are suicide, most also involving drugs or alcohol abuse, but the big numbers in “gun violence” reports often do not distinguish between murder and suicide. It would seem that the Demos’ support for assisted suicide is in conflict with their support for gun control.

FOOTNOTE 6: Regarding alcohol v firearm deaths, Demos should ban alcohol because alcohol abuse is far more deadly than firearm abuse. More than 140,000 people died from alcohol abuse last year – that’s SEVEN times the number homicides associate with fire arms. Drunk drivers are responsible for 28 deaths per day. And notably, it is estimated that alcohol is also a key factor in at least 30% of homicides involving a firearm. (Include illegal drug use and that number jumps to about 60%.)

If Democrats are serious about homicides, they should outlaw alcohol. Problem is, 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, while lawless users don’t.

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

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