Mass Shootings – Causes and Fixes

 

Mass Shootings – Causes and Fixes

 The frustration, sympathy and anger after every mass shooting in the country is understandable.  Unfortunately, these heart-felt emotions are seized upon by politicians who know very little about firearms, and who have their own agendas.  Marches on Washington or other cities are whipped up in the angry, but clueless sheep that constitute much of our young public.  Useless laws are conjured up in congress to address the public outcry

 Rather than increasing security at our soft targets such as schools, and concentrating on mental health issues that cause mass shooters to go off the track, these demonstrations are aimed (sic) against an inanimate object, the gun used in the shootings.  This is comparable to a drunk driver killing people in a crowd, and blaming the car.

 Many of the shootings in the country occur in jurisdictions that have the most draconian anti-gun laws, - California, New York State, Illinois.  It has been statistically proven that concocting laws against guns as inanimate objects has no meaning.  Neither do reactionary laws in response to anecdotal events.  Recent crazed shooters were 18 years old, so pass laws making 21 the minimum age to purchase AR-15’s.  How absurd!

 Let’s look once again at the numbers.  Our population is in the U.S. is about 335 million people. It is estimated that there are somewhere around 400 million guns in the country, and 20 million AR-15 style .223 rifles.  Every time the anti-gun lobby and anti-gun legislators, parroted by a clueless Joe Biden make threatening moves against second amendment gun rights, citizens that otherwise normally would not buy a gun, flock to sporting goods stores to arm themselves, and further increase the number of guns in the country.

 So, puny incremental anti-gun laws against classes of firearms are inadequate against the shear number of guns in the country, and the attitudes of many gun owners about their “cold dead hands”.  Inventing meaningless terminology like “assault weapons” or “weapons of war” for one-shot at-time semi-automatic rifles and pistols just obfuscates the issue in the minds of a gullible and ovine public.

 Why do we have so many mass shootings, and what can be done about it, if passing more anti-gun laws does not work?  What is wrong with our society?  We seem to have a mass shooting at a school or a church or a super market, or other such soft target, as often as every week.

 What happened to our country?  It’s not the guns.  We’ve always had guns.  Guns are endemic to the American ethos and culture.  We just used them as the tools that they were intended to be, and not against each other, or to enter a school and start killing innocent children.

 In the past, we were raised with guns.  A Red Ryder BB gun at age eight.  A .22 rifle at age twelve.  Then shotguns, higher caliber rifles and pistols when I got older.  And we carried these firearms around in our cars and trucks, and didn’t even think twice about it.  They were tools, for hunting, or for target practice.  Never in a million years would the thought arise to turn a gun on another human being.

 But it was different world.  We went to church.  We respected our parents and teachers and the police.  We obeyed the laws.  We were taught to be good citizens by the paragons of our communities.

 Elements of our society lost being decent, God-fearing people, somewhere along the way, and lost their ethical and moral integrity.  Maybe it was related to the reaction to the second world war and the movement away from religion and toward secularization.   Maybe it started with the assassinations in the 1960’s of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, and the world-wide movement toward anarchy.  Maybe it was related to the resurgence of socialism and communism being taught in our universities, with insufficient stress on the corrosive nature of those philosophies.

 And more recently, this ethical and moral degradation has been hastened by the ready availability of destructive anarchic material and pornography readily available to young minds on the internet, and the rise of “wokeness”, political correctness and “cancel culture” as active facets of popular thought.  Marxist groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa fan the flames of violence, and people like George Soros fund it.  

 Many Americans, at least in “fly over country” retain solid American values.  They still use firearms as the tools for which they were intended.  But unfortunately, some younger Americans have lost touch with what America is all about, and enough of these are disenchanted or lawless or “woke” enough to riot violently in the streets and cause destruction, or to pick up a weapon and go on a shooting spree.

 Ray Gruszecki

A Hot June 12, 2022

What Caused Our Current Dystopia?

 

What Caused Our Current Dystopia?

 There is a malaise gripping the country to the point of dystopia, that is getting worse with time.

 It almost seems as if this Biden administration has consciously set out to destroy the country, and to adversely affect our well-being.  Nearly everything they touch has a deleterious effect on modern American lives, pocketbooks and freedoms.  Yet, when Biden himself, or one of handlers addresses the issues, they pat themselves on the back as if they were doing a great job.  If someone manages to ask Joe or one of his minions a question about the terrible situation in the country, they quickly dissemble and blame Putin. or the oil, or food, or transportation industries, or just refuse to answer.

 Now Joe Biden is a pathetic old man who is clearly in over his head.  But he is a egotistic, cantankerous old buzzard, who consistently strays off script and flirts with nuclear-armed adversaries, and then gets angry when corrected.

 The country is in terrible shape.  We have nearly 10% inflation, $5.00 gasoline, unsafe streets and high crime rates in our democrat run cities, an open southern border with human and drug trafficking and the killer Fentanyl flooding in.  We have psychos perpetrating mass killings across the country.  We have illegal demonstrations at SCOTUS justice homes.

 One theory posits that this deterioration of our country resulted from misguided and mismanaged attempts by the Biden administration to apply several socialist based programs – the “green new deal”, “defund the police”, “critical race theory”, and more than necessary trillions of dollars of socialist programs coached as “Covid relief”, or “America rescue plan”, or “infrastructure plan”.  All of these poorly managed by socialist retreads from past liberal administrations.

 The other, more Machiavellian theory posits that the impetus for this weakening and planned deterioration of our country came right out of Lenin, Trotsky, Maduro and Alinsky, and was funded by someone like George Soros, that master billionaire manipulator.  That it was a planned ruination of the country, followed by replacement by a Marxist regime, as recently happened in Venezuela.

 In considering these two possibilities, it almost seems unlikely that any administration could be so incompetent and so stupid to have caused the first result in so short a period of time.  A planned Marxist takeover?  It wouldn’t be the first time in the world.  If we don’t guard our democratic principles, they will erode away and allow opportunistic Marxism to replace them.

 Unfortunately, we Americans allowed a combination of election chicanery, irregularities and media obfuscation, lies and censorship to allow Biden to be installed as president.  It would have never happened if we were watchful and guarding of our democracy, and not been led down the garden path by those same voices that have now caused this dystopia in our country in a few short months.

 Ray Gruszecki

June 11, 2022

Orange Man Bad

 

Orange Man Bad

 The January 6^th “committee” is not a congressional committee allowing adversarial dialogue.  It is a left-wing multi-media extravaganza designed to once more attempt to discredit President Trump.  Apparently, the continuous persecution of Trump starting with his announcement that he was running for president in 2015, and including two frivolous and misplaced impeachments orchestrated by Nancy Pelosi was not enough.  The goal of the January 6^th “committee” is to publicly denounce Trump, so that he will not run for president in 2024.

 The nature and goals of the multi-media presentation quickly became evident as soon as the cherry- picked excerpts of January 6^th videos were shown, including one in which “peaceful and patriotic” were omitted from Trump’s speech.

 What President Trump did not admit on January 6, 2021, was that the fix was in, and he had to accept it.  Instead, he chose to object to the election fix, and many supporters chose to back him.  Things got out of hand at the capitol, and several protesters and police were hurt and killed, some by capitol police, and some by the mob, which had become violent, apparently patterning itself on that summer’s left-wing violence.

 The January 6^th multi-media presentation continues to heap blame on President Trump for the capitol riot, and eschews any veracity for Trump’s claim of a stolen election.  This in spite of the election chicanery and irregularities observed during the election, but not acknowledged by various post-election authorities.  Also, in spite of the censorship and claims of disinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop, that would have swung the election to Trump if the truth about the laptop’s contents were known by the electorate.

 Because of their absolutely ruinous policies, the democrats are clearly hurting with respect to the approaching mid-term elections.  So, we hear things from them like “abortion”, “AR-15”, and now, “January 6”, all shiny objects to get our minds off of $5.00 gasoline, 10% inflation, crime in our cities, fentanyl deaths of our young people.

 All the January 6^th “committee” multi-media presentations are apt to do, however, is to exacerbate the divisions in our already fragmented society.  Backers of Trump will back him more strenuously.  Haters will hate him more.  Those in the middle won’t fail to see the partisan leftist slant of the presentations, and aim for the truth.

 Left out of the cherry-picked video of President Trump’s January 6^th speech at the Ellipse:         “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.

Those were not his only directions to the crowd, however. In the same speech, he also used the following phrases while encouraging people to head to the Capitol and protest his election loss, according to the transcript and video of the speech:

 “We will stop the steal.”

“We will not let them silence your voices.”

“You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

“We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing.”

“We’re going to try and give [lawmakers] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

“We’re going to have to fight much harder.”

“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-peacefully-and-patriotically/

 Ray Gruszecki

June 10, 2022

The January 6th Kangaroo Committee

 

The January 6^th Kangaroo Committee

 I just watched Benny Thompson’s and Liz Cheny’s introductions to the January 6^th democrat (+2) kangaroo committee.  WHAT A HATCHET JOB ON PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!  I’m recording the rest of it, which probably will not be worth watching, since it’s contrived to blame President Trump for an “insurrection”, while ignoring a whole summer’s, full country, pillaging and rioting over the death of a petty criminal and drug addict in Minneapolis.

 This latest democrat multi-media farce is an appropriate culmination of the persecution of Trump which began on the escalator of the Trump Tower in 2015.  The obvious aim of this January 6^th kangaroo committee is to impugn Trump by accusations, lies and half-truths, such that he will not run for president again in 2024.  The leftists impeached him, but couldn’t convict him (after he left office), so now they have produced this multi-media shiny object to dazzle the masses.

 Will the sheep that make up so much of the American public be swayed away from Biden’s 30% approval ratings by this glib multi-media production against Trump?  Or will they remember $2.00/gal gasoline under Trump, while they pay $5.00/gal for Biden gasoline?  Or paying $200/week for groceries under Trump, rather than $300/week+ for Biden groceries?  Or safe streets and an actual southern border under Trump?  Or which bathrooms to use?  Or two sexes, and not multiple LGBTQI+++++ genders.  Or only anti-Trump propaganda, rather than full-bore Marxist propaganda?

 Let’s hope that this latest “shiny object” will not change the fact that you have to go back as far as James Buchanan in 1857, to find a president as bad as Joe Biden and his Marxist cabal.  Some say Jimmy Carter in 1977, but Jimmy was a nice guy, trying to do what’s right.  He was just inept.  Joe Biden is a nasty hack and crook of a politician who is complicit in destroying the country, and too stupid, or too stubborn to admit it and do something about it.

 Ray Gruszecki

June 9, 2022

Some Scenes and Events that I’ll Never Forget

 

Some Scenes and Events that I’ll Never Forget

-        Adams, MA from Mount Greylock Memorial Tower

 -        Lasy, Moje Lasy - Savoy

 -        Manhattan from the Twin Towers

 -        Manhattan from the Empire State Building

 -        Tulips in Spring in Holland

 -        Tower of London

 -        Paris from the Eiffel Tower

 -        Versailles

 -        Pisa from the Leaning Tower (Gravity experiments not allowed)

 -        Flying Over the Alps

 -        Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie, 1962 during Berlin crisis, and 2013

 -        Coliseum and Forum in Rome

 -        Dachau, Near Munich

 -        Auschwitz (Oswiencim), Poland

 -        Ruins in Pompei

 -        Six Day War, Rioting in Beirut, Evacuation of Family

 -        Camel on the Streets of Karachi

 -        Acropolis in Athens

 -        Temple of Delphi

 -        Flying over the tan Sahara for 5 hours

 -        Flying over the Rift Valley in Kenya in a small plane

 -        Being Chased by a Rhino in Kenya, 1967

 -        Being Chased by a Water Buffalo in Kenya, 1978

 -        Flying over green Sumatra for 3 hours

 -        Flying my own Small Plane Over North Texas

 -        Arizona Monument in Hawaii

 -        Warsaw Uprising Monument

 -        Black Madonna, Czestochowa

 -        On the Bosporus.  Asia to the right, Europe to the left

 -        Gallipoli

 -        Hot air ballooning over Cappadocia, Turkey tufa formations

 -        China, Great Wall

 -        China, Terra Cotta Warriors

 -        Russia – St Petersburg, Hermitage

 -        Russia, Kremlin, Red Square

 -        Vienna, Danube, Budapest, Bucharest

 Ray Gruszecki

June 8, 2022

Laws and the Biden Administration

 

 

 

Laws and the Biden Administration

 We have federal laws against harassing or attempting to influence judges, obviously including Supreme Court judges.  These laws, which include picketing and parading, are quoted below.

 So, while pro baby-killing rioters dance and prance in front of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland, where is our justice department?  Where is Merrick Garland?  Where is the FBI?  Where is Christopher Wray?  And, equally egregious, where is the media coverage of the attempted murder of Justice Kavanaugh by a California leftist Pro Roe agitator?

 Laws and media coverage in Biden’s Marxist dystopia are ignored for political opponents of the Biden regime, just like in Putin’s Russia or Maduro’s Venezuela.  Only if President Trump is involved are kangaroo courts like the “January Sixth Committee” convened with professional media direction and exposure.

 How sad for our poor, suffering country, which is being run by Biden and his handlers along Marxist, Leninist and Alinsky’s principles, ignoring the laws and trying to imbue the masses with Marxist propaganda.

  

“18 U.S. Code § 1503 - Influencing or injuring officer or juror generally

Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, endeavors to influence, intimidate, or impede any grand or petit juror, or officer in or of any court of the United States, or officer who may be serving at any examination or other proceeding before any United States magistrate judge or other committing magistrate, in the discharge of his duty, or injures any such grand or petit juror in his person or property on account of any verdict or indictment assented to by him, or on account of his being or having been such juror, or injures any such officer, magistrate judge, or other committing magistrate in his person or property on account of the performance of his official duties, or corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). If the offense under this section occurs in connection with a trial of a criminal case, and the act in violation of this section involves the threat of physical force or physical force, the maximum term of imprisonment which may be imposed for the offense shall be the higher of that otherwise provided by law or the maximum term that could have been imposed for any offense charged in such case.

(b)The punishment for an offense under this section is—

(1) in the case of a killing, the punishment provided in sections 1111 and 1112;

(2) in the case of an attempted killing, or a case in which the offense was committed against a petit juror and in which a class A or B felony was charged, imprisonment for not more than 20 years, a fine under this title, or both; and

(3) in any other case, imprisonment for not more than 10 years, a fine under this title, or both.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 769; Pub. L. 97–291, § 4(c), Oct. 12, 1982, 96 Stat. 1253; Pub. L. 103–322, title VI, § 60016, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(K), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 1974, 2147; Pub. L. 104–214, § 1(3), Oct. 1, 1996, 110 Stat. 3017.)”

 “18 U.S. Code § 1507 - Picketing or parading

Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Nothing in this section shall interfere with or prevent the exercise by any court of the United States of its power to punish for contempt.

(Added Sept. 23, 1950, ch. 1024, title I, § 31(a), 64 Stat. 1018; amended Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(K), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)”

 

Ray Gruszecki

June 9, 2022

Mass Shootings in the U.S.

 

Mass Shootings in the U.S.

 Some publications like the New York Times article referenced below give lurid accounts of how one demented mass shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, was influenced by fringe white supremacist material on the internet to kill 10 people in a Buffalo grocery store.  The NYT article uses this one incident to represent rampant mass shootings by “racists” and “white supremacists”, as if these were the only such mass murders in the country.

 This led me to research the racial composition of mass shootings in the country.  What I found was a recent extensive unbiased study by the prestigious German firm, Statista, that specifically examined this question.

 Statista found that the race of mass shooters in the U.S. for the past 40 years reflects the U.S. population, and is not related to any specific ideology.  The following refer.

 

 “Mass shootings in the U.S. by shooter’s by race/ethnicity as of June 2022

Published by Statista Research Department, Jun 2, 2022

 Between 1982 and June 2022, 68 out of the 129 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters. By comparison, the perpetrator was African American in 21 mass shootings, and Latino in 11. When calculated as percentages, this amounts to 53 percent, 16 percent, and 8.5 percent respectively.

Race of mass shooters reflects the U.S. population

Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the U.S. population as a whole.

Mass shootings and mental health

With no clear patterns between the socio-economic or cultural background of mass shooters, increasing attention has been placed on mental health. Analysis of the factors Americans considered to be to blame for mass shootings showed 80 percent of people felt the inability of the mental health system to recognize those who pose a danger to others was a significant factor. “

 https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/

 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/technology/fringe-mainstream-social-media.html?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=ffb9ed66f0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_06_02_02_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-ffb9ed66f0-400245601

 Ray Gruszecki

June 2, 2022