Cross-Examination

• More people are packing thanks to constitutional carry: “If you want to reduce crime, you have to make it clear that the likely victims of crime will be carrying.” So says John Lott, who, as president of the Crime Prevention Resource Center and the author of the bestselling More Guns, Less Crime, has done more than perhaps any single American to ensure that proponents of the Second Amendment are armed with the facts. Those facts continue to evolve, too, and in an encouraging direction for Liberty. For example, a new study by Lott indicates that more than half of the states now allow constitutional carry — that is, the right of residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. He estimates that 8.4% of American adults now have concealed-carry permits. Criminals tend to go where the guns aren’t, but the American people are growing increasingly tired of being at the mercy of those criminals. As The Washington Times reports, “With the addition this year of Alabama, Florida and Nebraska, 27 states now allow concealed carry without a permit.” As Lott notes, “What that means is it’s a lot less costly, a lot less difficult, for people to carry, and that primarily impacts poor people that live in high-crime urban areas,” adding that these lower barriers mean more racial minorities and women are carrying in high-crime urban areas. If his theory holds, this reality should help reduce crime in the places that need it most.

• Israel and Hamas: Who knew what and when? One of the realities we pondered nearly two months ago, immediately after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, was how the Jewish state and its vaunted intelligence services could have been caught so woefully off guard. It became clear almost immediately that the planning for Hamas’s barbaric attack was both lengthy and detailed. And now we learn, as The New York Times reports: “Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.” As Hot Air’s John Sexton writes: “The whole thing comes down to a failure of imagination and also a too firm belief among senior leaders that Hamas was not interested in attacking. … Israel simultaneously thought too little of Hamas’ capabilities and too much of their good intentions. It’s a dramatic failure which the article compares directly to the US failure to predict 9/11.”

• Israeli forces self-limit: One thing that should now be painfully clear to even casual observers of the Israel-Hamas war is that Israel and Hamas aren’t equally armed combatants. Yes, Israel has military superiority, but it also has moral superiority. The two sides returned to hostilities Friday after a week-long pause in the fighting, and that means Israel is once again under withering pressure to refrain from destroying its mortal enemy. The Jew-hating Left claims that Israel is engaged in a “genocide” of the Palestinian people, but, as the New York Post’s Caitlin Doombas asks rather rhetorically, “How, exactly, can the Israel Defense Forces avoid harming civilians when its enemy hides behind innocents, directing its operations from the most sacred of safe spaces — including hospitals — in violation of the international rules of war?” It’s a great question, and even Joe Biden’s flacks seem to appreciate it. Said White House national security spokesman John Kirby yesterday: “In the last 24 hours, [the Israel Defense Forces] have been putting a map online of places where people in Gaza need to avoid and need to go. They have also been doing it with paper and leaflets and that kind of thing.” He continued, “It’s very rare for a modern military to take those kinds of steps, basically telegraphing their punches, before they actually conduct operations.”

• House votes to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds: Better late than never, we suppose, and there’s no telling what Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Senate will do, but, as Just the News reports, “House Republicans on Thursday approved legislation to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds that the Biden administration had agreed to release as part of a hostage exchange with Tehran earlier this year.” The vote was 307-119, which indicates strong bipartisan support and which may paint both the Senate and the president into a corner regarding Iran. The rogue regime’s support for Hamas is well documented, and the fungibility of money means that Biden’s lavish gift could well have been used to launch attacks not just on Israeli forces but American forces too.

• IRS penalties rise: Joe Biden’s administration is nickeling and diming Americans at every possible opportunity, be it with the regulatory state costing the average household $14,000 annually, Bidenflation weakening the dollar by nearly 19%, and now via the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS will now charge 8% interest for underpayment of taxes as of October 1. That’s a three percentage point increase in interest charges from just two years ago. So, if you have not paid at least 90% of your taxes before filing, or have less than a $1,000 difference, then the IRS will include an 8% interest penalty on the outstanding taxes. Why is the IRS doing this? Because it’s more money for the federal government’s coffers. Last year alone, the IRS raked in $1.8 billion in underpayment penalties from more than 12 million Americans. So, with Bidenflation weakening the dollar, the IRS is not about to be on the losing end of that fiscal situation.

• Texas arrests illegals: On Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he will soon sign a new law to empower state officers to arrest and detain illegal aliens for illegally entering the state. “The problem is extraordinarily bad,” Abbott explained. “The numbers are high, and that is because Joe Biden continues to lay out the welcome mat, welcoming illegal immigrants into the United States of America.” He added, “That said, what we’ve seen in our numbers in the state of Texas is because of the wall that we have built, because of these razor-wide barriers that we have built, Texas is now no longer the number one illegal entry point.” This new law will effectively make it a state crime for an illegal alien to enter the Lone Star State.

• Jussie Smollett loses appeal: Hate crime hoaxing actor Jussie Smollett on Friday lost the appeal of his guilty verdict for staging an infamous hate crime back in the winter of 2019. During his 2021 trial and in the face of evidence and witness testimony that showed otherwise, Smollett maintained that “there was no hoax.” A jury found Smollett guilty on five felony counts of disorderly conduct, for which he was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months probation, ordered to pay $120,106 in restitution for police resources spent on the faux crime, and a $25,000 fine. Following the court’s decision, special prosecutor Dan Webb stated, “As the appellate court noted, Mr. Smollett ‘challenge[d] virtually every aspect of’ the prosecution, and the appellate court correctly rejected each and every one of those challenges.” Smollett’s legal team promised to appeal the decision to the state’s supreme court.

• NYC stabbing spree leaves four dead: A man wielding a knife attacked police officers responding to a 911 call and was shot dead by one of the officers. Tragically, the perpetrator was exiting a house where four family members ranging in ages from 11 to 44 had been stabbed to death, while a 61-year-old woman was rushed to the hospital suffering from multiple stab wounds. According to NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, “The weapon that was used to injure the officers [was] a typical kitchen steak knife, and at this time this is the only weapon we recovered.” No motive has yet been established, but one thing is clear: The weapon used in these murders was a knife. Based on Democrats’ anti-Second Amendment logic, the way to “solve” this problem is not to blame the individual who committed these heinous murders but to call for legislation to severely limit if not outright ban the availability and accessibility of common kitchen steak knives. Indeed, just last year Canada experienced a massive murder knifing spree.

Headlines

• North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum drops out of 2024 presidential race (ABC News)

• COP28: UN climate talks take aim at food (BBC) | However, 22 countries pledge to triple nuclear capacity in push to cut fossil fuels (New York Times)

• House set to hold vote on bill striking down Biden’s EV push (Fox News)

• Friendly fire: Bob Menendez is “senator for Egypt, not New Jersey,” Fetterman says (Washington Free Beacon) | Humor: Weird: Man becomes more conservative as he regains brain function (Babylon Bee)

• Most Americans name China as our “greatest threat” (Newsweek)

• Pending home sales drop to a record low, even worse than during the financial crisis (NBC News)

• A Vermont Christian school is suing after being banned from sporting tournaments because it refused to let a male play against girl’s team (Not the Bee)

• Policy: The administrative state must be brought under control (Washington Examiner)

• Satire: Climate activists’ private planes freeze themselves to runway in powerful protest (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.