If there is one historical quote that could be used in every single post of this blog and of No Pasarán for the past 21 years, it is that of a French writer who traveled through America two centuries ago:
It is easier for the world to accept
a simple lie than a complex truth
— Alexis de Tocqueville
That also applies in the present post addressing the Left's contention that Charlie Kirk "had it coming" due to his "insensitive" declarations in favor of that "repulsive" Second Amendment. I would like to start with a question for those, foreign as well as American — not a few of them among my social media contacts — making jokes about, laughing about, or otherwise celebrating the Charlie Kirk assassination:
Besides the fact that your attitude is heinous, how — how on Earth — do you propose to convince a sizable of citizens in future elections — not just Republicans but also Independents and even your own fellow Leftists (Democrats, Socialist Democrats, outright Communists, etc) — that a would-be leader supported by somebody like yourself (by somebody as childish and as vile as yourself) deserves to be elected to office and be put in charge of the well-being and the welfare of the country and its population?!
Incidentally, I will add that I am not in favor of Elon Musk taking down these videos on X/Twitter — I think that all people should know exactly the childish, the wicked, and the abhorrent attitudes of the "tolerant" locofocos on the Left.
In that perspective, I will add a message to those — again, foreign as well as American — who seem (slightly) less partisan and more thoughtful, "simply" calling the founder of TPUSA (or his speeches) hateful. As many others have pointed out, if you call Charlie Kirk odious and the perpetrator of hate speech — the epitome of a conservative seeking an honest debate — then there is no hope for what you claim to seek, a bridge to connect with any of you.
In addition, your homilies about a "divided America" — when Charlie Kirk did nothing but try to engage in dignified debate with you and, indeed, try to unify America — are nothing but a deliberately passive description of a rift that is entirely caused by you yourselves and by your (by the postmodern left's) own pedantic didacticism and depravity.
Furthermore, be sure to read the post "My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans; Zero clue." Robert Sterling's "long rant" on X Twitter is without the shadow of a doubt the single best article that I have seen on the Charlie Kirk assassination since the tragedy in question.
Related: RIP Charlie Kirk — This Is What Is Bound to Happen When You Constantly Refer to Your Adversaries as "Fascists" and as "Threats to Democracy"
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| Via Powerline |
Let us examine the holding that Charlie Kirk deserved to die because of his statements. One in particular stands out: The speech claimed to be the most controversial is that in which he is described as allegedly ignorant or uncaring about the country's murder rate, specifically school shootings of kids.
"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
As usual, with the Left, it can only be described as a lie: they omit the entire context, which ends by addressing the very school shootings that CK was supposed to be criminally ignorant and/or repulsively uncaring about. (This will be examined in detail at the end of this post.)
Having said that: has it occurred to you that, first of all, you are engaging in superstition? You people of the Left don't believe in religion, you claim, and you instead prefer rationality — pure rationality. Then in the very next breath, the drama queens that you are claim that some so-called invisible force in the universe — whether it is (some type of) God or karma or whatever — that, like a deity from a pagan religion, unleashes his (or her) wrath on people and reigns down injustice on evil capitalists (see also 9-11 and Gaia and tsunamis along with various other natural catastrophes).
As a general remark, it should be pointed out . Take the Canadians: when Donald Trump made abour, the karma remark is suddenly nowhere to be found
A more general observation about karma (and superstition) is the extent to which the charge proves too often to be remarkably one-sided and the source of double standards. For instance, when Canadians vowed to boycott U.S. products because of Donald Trump's controversial comments about their country last winter, leftists and anti-Americans the world over cheered, saying that the conservative Yankee president was getting his just desserts. Now that populations the world over, not least the Canadians, are holding memorials for a conservative Yank — even singing America's national anthem! — the karma aspect is suddenly nowhere to be seen.Second of all, ask yourselves this, Leftists: what are we doing, exactly, by pursuing this line of thought?
Think about it…
Aren't you validating the need for the very Second Amendment that Charlie Kirk defended?!
There are millions of people who, rightly or wrongly, hold the same opinions and viewpoints as the husband of Erika Kirk. If you say that the founder of TPUSA deserved to die, then millions of other Americans presumably also deserve to die — by being gunned down or by any other means. Well, guess what: since we disagree with you (rather vehemently) about this, I would suggest that this makes our desire for weaponry rather more rational than (as you claim) irrational. Indeed, if one of you were to (God forbid) be elevated to a position of power in this country, how — how on earth — are we to trust you to be in any way benevolent towards us (i.e., towards that part of the population that does not agree with you)?!
In any case, your attitude about karma proves nothing less than — get this — the very necessity of private citizens to own and bear arms.
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| Via Powerline |
2) Mass Shootings That the MSM Never Covers
But the Left is ignoring (and the mainstream media never covers) the numerous instances of mass shootings where only two or three people died. (And for the sake of brevity, let's not get into the many instances of killings that the MSM refrains from covering because they don't further the Left's narratives — see, e.g., Iryna Zarutska.) And here you are bound to ask: If only two or three people were killed, why should the media, American or foreign, cover it?
And, besides: why would anyone call it a "mass shooting" in the first place?
Because the "mass" part of the shooting was prevented by an armed citizen (aka as "a good guy with a gun") who subdued and neutralized the shooter (either by killing him outright or by holding him in check).
Think of another mass shooting unreported in America and across the globe, the one in December 2019 where only three people were killed in Texas. Hold on, you ask: Three people? Certainly a tragedy, but why, then, call the West Freeway Church of Christ event a "mass" shooting? Well, because that low figure was due only to one parishioner pulling out his weapon and gunning down the (would-be) mass shootist. Jack Wilson is what we call "a good guy with a gun."
In May 2022, a West Virginia woman legally carrying a handgun stopped a mass shooter in his tracks, saving lives in the process. So, in this case, the good guy with a gun was a woman.
In the comments section of a Herschel Smith piece, a person named David writes that
The other factor here is when a concealed carry holder intervenes it often means the number of victims is not as high as waiting for police. In that situation it doesn’t make the list of “mass shootings”.
I saw another analysis that said if you look at just the incidents that don’t occur in gun-free zones, 46% of mass shootings end because of intervention by a civilians.
As for Gary Griffiths, he goes on to note to what extent the logic is skewered (bold and italics by myself):
Part of the problem is, it is impossible for an armed citizen to stop a mass shooting. Here’s why: If the shooter is stopped before three victims are shot, it is, by definition, not a mass shooting. If the shooter is not stopped before three victims are shot, then by definition, the citizen did not stop the mass shooting. Liberal logic at it’s finest!
Indeed, writes
Actually, the FBI did try — once (during the previous administration) — to reveal How Many Active Shooters Were Stopped by Citizens, although it was under-reported. The Spectator USA adds that
An Armed Society Might Not Be a Polite Society, writes Rick Moran, but It's Definitely More Dangerous for Criminals. Responding in turn to CNN and the AP, Rick Moran points out thatEvents like this one happen every day in America, but because they don’t fit the narrative of liberal gun control activists, they rarely get the attention mass shootings do. Instead of advocating for ways by which citizens can empower themselves, rather than wait around as sitting ducks for the police to show up, the left-wing media habitually uses tragic events as a political platform by which to trumpet for more gun control. Stories of armed citizens brandishing their weapons to deter a criminal are also not as sensational as a mass gunman killing innocent people, and, to borrow an analogy from crime prevention researcher John Lott, “Airplane crashes get news coverage, while successful take-offs and landings do not.”
An armed civilian doesn’t have to fire his weapon to stop a tragedy. Many shootings or mass shootings have been prevented by an armed citizen brandishing a weapon or simply revealing it to someone threatening others. No shots were fired. There was no need. This is far more common and just as heroic as the actions taken by Mr. Dicken.
Reason's joins the discussion with The Good Samaritan With A Gun In Indiana Serves To Refute Four Common Gun Control Myths.
3) Wouldn't Gun Control, European-Style, End Shootings in the First Place?
But all of this hardly addresses the call to imitate Europe and the contention that with gun control of the European type, there would be no shootings, and certainly no mass shootings, to begin with.
On May 25, 2022, I was on a train to Switzerland that morning when I was called back to Paris to participate in a debate on the BFMTV channel after the atrocious Uvalde school shooting.
That evening, naturally, I was the first guest asked to speak, in response to the question, "shouldn't Americans change their views on the 2nd Amendment?" or on the free sale of firearms, a question that they didn't think any person could answer other than Yes.
I responded as follows (slightly redacted):
Every time there is a shooting, we are told — both by Europeans and by Democrats in America — that these American neanderthals ought to imitate the rational Europeans, and notably they are told that they ought to imitate those nice countries like the ones in Scandinavia, a country like Denmark or Norway — Norway, where in 2011, a person gunned down 77 people, most of them teen-agers. Therefore, European-type legislation, i.e., gun control, did nothing to save the children of Utøya.
Then I went on to try to ask a question, indeed two questions: Wouldn't it have been a good thing if someone on the Oslo island had had a gun and shot back at Anders Breivik (perhaps not to kill him, but at the very least to get him to seek cover, thereby interrupting his killing spree)? Furthermore — to take on a different progressive talking point — didn't Breivik deserve the death penalty?
All of which was an expansion of what I wrote in my response to a New York Times gun control editorial ten years ago:
It is easy for leftists, American as well as foreign, to tout the success of the gun control laws in the rest of the Western world … when you (deliberately or otherwise) ignore:
the 1996 massacre of 16 children at a Scottish primary school; the 2000 killing of eight kids in Japan; the 2002 deaths of eight people in Nanterre, France; the 2002 killing of 16 kids in Erfurt, Germany; the 2007 shootings to death of eight people in Tuusula, Finland; the killing of 10 people at a Finnish university less than a year later; the 2009 killing of 15 people in Winnenden, Germany; and, needless to say, Anders Breivik's 2011 mass murder of 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers.
Is it unreasonable (or perhaps politically incorrect) to wonder whether the death tolls might have been lower in any of those places — or in the Bataclan concert hall in 2015 (137 dead) — had a few of the adults (or some of the eldest teens) carried a weapon and tried to shoot back at the respective killers?
Furthermore — as I wrote in the introduction to my in-depth (and dispassionate) study on the issue of gun control —
In the 18th century — the century at the end of which the Second Amendment was being passed in the newly-born United States — the biggest problem for the majority of the world's population was not the right to keep and bear arms.
It was the lack of the right to keep and bear arms.
In the 19th century, likewise, the greatest problem for most people on this planet was not the absence of gun control.
It was the presence of gun control.
In the 20th century, most people did not suffer from the right to keep and bear arms.
They suffered from the lack of the right to keep and bear arms.
As can be attested by the victims (assuming they could talk) of the likes of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Milosevic, along with the Hutus… As an aside, one of the first measures taken by each of the aforementioned (ahem) leaders after coming to power — for the good of the people, needless to say — was to impose or to tighten arms control.
And it is no different today.
Look at Saddam's Iraq, at Khadaffi's Libya, at the Assads' Syria…
(Would not the average Iraqi citizen, the average Libyan citizen, the average Syrian citizen over the past 30 to 40 years have been better off with the right to keep and bear arms?)
And all of this brings us back, full circle, to Charlie Kirk's "controversial" statement, with locofocos and fire-eaters falling over themselves and going ballistic with regards to school shootings — which he is accused of (carelessly) ignoring or (despicably) minimizing. Except that his reply is far less controversial if you take the TPUSA founder's full reply (tak til Thomas Petersen) into context, not least the issue of school shootings, the most important part of which he addresses forthrightly in his conclusion, notably the final paragraph's final sentence (duly emboldened below + video at very bottom of this post):
Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. So, I'm a big Second Amendment fan but I think most politicians are cowards when it comes to defending why we have a Second Amendment. This is why I would not be a good politician, or maybe I would, I don't know, because I actually speak my mind.
The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government. And if that talk scares you — "wow, that's radical, Charlie, I don't know about that" — well then, you have not really read any of the literature of our Founding Fathers. Number two, you've not read any 20th-century history. You're just living in Narnia. By the way, if you're actually living in Narnia, you would be wiser than wherever you're living, because C.S. Lewis was really smart. So I don't know what alternative universe you're living in. You just don't want to face reality that governments tend to get tyrannical and that if people need an ability to protect themselves and their communities and their families.
Now, we must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. 50,000, 50,000, 50,000 people die on the road every year. That's a price. You get rid of driving, you'd have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving — speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services — is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road. So we need to be very clear that you're not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools. We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.
You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?
NB: While we're fighting to recover No Pasarán from Google's pernicious and gratuitous ban of a blog of 21 years with 14,000 posts, I am blogging here, at No Pasarán's sister blog.
Related:
• T'is easy to tout the success of gun control laws in the rest of the Western world when you ignore certain pertinent facts from Europe
• Passing expanded background checks after a school shooting is tantamount to demanding stricter drivers tests after a hit and run
• Mourning "all lives lost to gun violence" is like calling the people murdered on 9/11 victims of “airplane violence”
• FBI Reveals How Many Active Shooters Were Stopped by Citizens (via Stephen Green)
• In View of the Texas Mass Murder, Should the NRA's Convention in Houston Be Cancelled?
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