Random Thoughts. We all have them. Here are a few of mine from the last few days:
Judge Shopping
If you are a leftist and you want a favorable judicial ruling, you go to San Francisco Federal Court to file your lawsuit. Remember that bad cases make bad case law. You know that at the SF Federal Court, you will get a reliable leftist activist judge (because they all are), to hear your case and rule in your favor.
Causing the adults in the room to spend years and possibly millions of dollars to get the case to the US Supreme Court to get it corrected. But if you are a conservative, you go somewhere like the Northern District of Texas where there is only one Judge, who happens to be pro-freedom, and he will rule in your favor.
Funny that now Senator Chuck “U” Schumer wants to make sure you can’t do that. He wants to force those lower court districts to have more than one judge. Hat’s off to Attorney Mark Smith at the Four Boxes Diner in his YouTube video “Anti-Gun Senator Tries to Stop 2A “Judge Shopping”“. He pointed out this bit of backroom arm twisting. The linked video is worth watching if you want to know how the sausage is made.
Fake Data?
Professor John Lott, PhD. sends out a weekly email newsletter. This week’s newsletter was incredible because it highlighted two things:
underreporting of crime since Covid
that 92% of violent crime does not include the use of a firearm!
This new research, I think is really important. The American news media has been working overtime to convince people that violent crime is dramatically falling, and castigating Americans for falsely believing that crime is increasing. However, new research shows that Americans are right and the media is wrong.
Arrest rates have plummeted since COVID. In 2022, only 20% of reported violent crimes, and 4.5% of reported property crimes in cities with over one million people, resulted in an arrest. As arrest rates have fallen, people have been less likely to report crimes to police. This led to criminals committing more crimes, as they have little to worry about. The end result is that reported crimes have fallen even as total crimes have risen. To show how law enforcement is collapsing in these large cities, only 8% of all violent crimes and 1.4% of property crimes result in an arrest.
But, there is a big problem with using the FBI Uniform Crime Report data on crimes reported to police because victims don’t report most crimes. More importantly, the number of crimes reported to police falls as the arrest rate declines. If people don’t think the police will solve their cases, they are less likely to report them to the police. While the violent crime rate reported to police fell by 1.7% between 2021 and 2022, the National Crime Victimization Survey shows that total violent crime (reported and non-reported) rose from 16.5 to 23.5 per 100,000. Violent crime in 2022 was above the rate the last year before the pandemic in 2019 and above the average for the five years from 2015 to 2019.
Additional research, also from John R Lott, PhD, shows that over 92% of violent crimes over the last eight years ending in 2022, did not involve guns. It doesn’t exactly fit the frequent claim that violent crime is a gun problem.
The short answer is YES! And I fully expect it will while we have such a weak and compromised President in the White House. TownHall.com editor and author Kurt Schlichter wrote a piece on March 25th, 2024 that you should read. “America is Going to Be Targeted for a Massive Terrorist Attack, Will You Be Ready? Describing an October 7th type of attack, I know I am ready and I hope you will be too. Please stay Ready at All Times. Be it ChiCom or ISIS, you are America’s first responders. But then, we are Iowans and we are used to taking care of business.
Help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by joining or renewing your IFC membership here today.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Gun Control Buried in the $1.2T Spending Bill vs IA Gadsden Plate? What does that headline mean? Well, let’s break this down into two contrasting components to illustrate a succinct point.
First, you have the Fox News Report pointing to $12,500,000.00 for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) study called the “Prevent Firearm Injury and Mortality research. Of course NIH is “committed to supporting scientific research to develop, evaluate, and implement effective public health interventions to better understand and prevent violence, including firearm violence, and the resulting trauma, injuries, and mortality.” Short version? Taxpayers are being robbed to equip the NIH (AKA big government entities) to “research” gun confiscation and the curtailment of your civil rights and liberties.
Second, you have a bill (HF2639) where people can VOLUNTARILY choose to buy a Gadsden Flag license plate where the funding is made available for grants to further 2A education.
Compare the two. Just ONE of many monster entities with well-paid staff is rolling in money to seek and erect all new facets of gun control – not because we gave the money willingly, but because Uncle Sam took it. Gun control is then further accomplished through policy and practices pushed through the medical community, education community, government programs, etc. Juxtaposed to this, you have volunteer organizations, like IFC, using VOLUNTARY funds to push back on this behemoth with 2A education, grants, scholarships, etc.
If the last 20 years of 2A change in Iowa mean something to you, consider that deeply when it comes to the issue of the Gadsden plate. To quote my friend, Dillon, “The Freedom Amendment set the tone for Iowans 2A liberties. Iowans now are DEMANDING a license plate to reflect that.”
Yes, Gun-Free School Zones Are Unconstitutional! With the help of Mark Smith, on the YouTube channel Four Boxes Diner, I’ll explain why.
Those anti-gun dangerous quacks would have you believe that under the Heller decision, and later affirmed under the Bruen decision, schools are included in the “sensitive spaces” illustration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Only three sensitive spaces were identified by the Supreme Court:
polling places
legislative bodies (the US Capitol Building)
some courts (generally considered the US Supreme Court)
HISTORICAL FOUNDATION
Importantly, the historical record of 1791 at the adoption of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights must be considered. At the time, only a few colleges regulated the possession of arms by students. The reason for that was that many college students were still not of majority age. That is, they were not over the age of eighteen, able to enter into contracts, vote, or own real property, for example. Mr. Smith points out that Alexander Hamilton entered Kings College in New York City at the age of sixteen! It was very common at the time of our nation’s founding that some college students entered as young as fourteen years of age.
Those 1791 colleges, and their administrators, were acting in the role of loco parentis, Latin for “in the place of a parent”. No sane person that I know of has ever argued against a parent’s right to control the use of firearms by their children. In their loco parentis role, those administrators could regulate the possession of arms by their students under their care and supervision. But clearly at that time, the very same Americans who fought off the British King and gave us the Bill of Rights -including the Second Amendment – would not have prohibited any adult from bearing arms at, near, or in schools.
PRESENT DAY
More importantly, nearly all college students in the present day are over the age of eighteen when they enter college. They are, therefore, legal adults. This prohibits the colleges from regulating their possession of arms! There is no historical evidence that law-abiding adults cannot possess arms in and around schools or school zones, whether they be colleges or your local elementary school.
Mr. Smith goes on to give us a very exhaustive explanation of why that legal issue matters. You can watch his video about this very subject here.
TIME FOR ACTION BY THE IOWA SENATE
IFC and our partners at the NRA are still involved in the legislative fight at the Iowa Senate on important legislation involving the Students First Safety Act, and the Gadsden License Plate initiatives. Please go over to the IFC Action Alert page and use it to reach out to your State Senator encouraging him or her to support these bills.
Personally, I find it repulsive that in the last three years, the Iowa Senate has ignored Iowan’s demands to act on these important issues. They seem to forget that in 2022, 65.17% of Iowa voters (in a bi-partisan vote) supported the Freedom Amendment. Yet the Senate continues to refuse to act to clean up the current Iowa Code to bring it in line with the Bruen decision and the 49th Amendment to the Iowa Constitution.
Yes, it’s obvious from my arguments at the beginning of this President’s Message that the need for the Student First Safety Act should be moot. However, getting things done legislatively is faster than waiting for the US Supreme Court to rule on something that could take a decade to get done. Frankly, when it comes to our kids, Time and Math proves we can’t wait.
Help us defend all Iowan’s rights by joining or renewing your IFC membership here today. And please stay Ready at All Times.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
As I wrote on Good Friday, I’m given, or more accurately, TAKE some liberties with blogging on rare occasions here at IFC. If you author a few hundred blogs, the single-issue advocates within IFC will give you an occasional pass when you depart, for good reason, from the core mission. Similar to what I wrote on Friday, nothing is more central to our cause than a right understanding of the nature of good and evil. Those foundational concepts come from only one place. In case you haven’t considered it, they don’t come from the natural world. Good and evil are not represented in nature.
In keeping with Easter, let’s drop the “happy” part of our address to others. The word “happy” really doesn’t quite do it, does it? What happy thoughts do we have about having enthusiastically murdered the Messiah? None. Can we have happy thoughts about Him having risen from the dead? Yup. But I hope our emotion and energy surpass the word “happy” when we reflect. 😉
To think thoroughly and with devotion could nearly be indescribable. But Charles Spurgeon offers a glimpse into my contemplation with this:
This, then, is the doctrine of the resurrection. We do not believe–at least I do not–that law has been rudely violated in one extraordinary and unparalleled episode. We believe that a universal law of life, overmastering death, and always superior to it, has had once a visible witness.
-Charles Spurgeon
Let that sink in, and then find a suitable replacement for the “happy” part of Easter my friends… <3
Good Friday! As a board member, writer, and general antagonist to my fellow IFC volunteers, I’m given latitude to blog about things not specifically part of our mission and a single issue advocacy group. However, I find nothing more central to our mission, as Christians, than the proper understanding of the Gospel. With that premise, I offer you this short excerpt from Spurgeon:
“I slew him—this right hand struck the dagger to his heart. My deeds slew Christ. Alas! I slew my best beloved; I killed him who loved me with an everlasting love. Oh eyes, why do you refuse to weep when you see Jesus’ body mangled and torn? Give vent to your sorrow, Christians, for you have good reason to do so.”
– adapted from “The Tomb of Jesus” by Charles Spurgeon
We were all part of the destruction of the Messiah regardless of being physically present. The weight associated with the freely offered gift of salvation ought to stir thought and emotion from each of us. May we all ponder and reflect, for we all inhabit an afterlife – each of us lives forever. …Somewhere. Think about that.
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This new research, I think is really important. The American news media has been working overtime to convince people that violent crime is dramatically falling, and castigating Americans for falsely believing that crime is increasing. However, new research shows that Americans are right and the media is wrong.
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