Two cents

I don't think Trump is serious about gun control. Do you?

Madness in Annapolis

Another shooting, this time in Annapolis, Maryland:

A gunman blasted his way into the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis with a shotgun Thursday afternoon, killing five people, authorities said.

Journalists dived under their desks and pleaded for help on social media. One reporter described the scene as a “war zone.” A photographer said he jumped over a dead colleague and fled for his life.

The guy who did it? A nut with a grudge against the paper:

Police took a suspect into custody soon after the shootings. He was identified as Jarrod W. Ramos, a 38-year-old Laurel man with a long-standing grudge against the paper.

Ramos was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, according to online court records. He did not have an attorney listed; a bail review hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday in Annapolis.

What was the issue?

Ramos’ dispute with the Capital Gazette began in July 2011 when a columnist wrote about a criminal harassment case against him. He brought a defamation suit against the columnist and the organization’s editor and publisher. A court ruled in the Capital Gazette’s favor, and an appeals court upheld the ruling.

Neither the columnist, Eric Hartley, nor the editor and publisher, Thomas Marquardt, are still employed by the Capital Gazette. They were not present during the shootings.

The article in question was called "Jarrod Wants to Be Your Friend" and Slate has an excerpt:

“’I just thought I was being friendly,’ [the woman] said… That sparked months of emails in which Ramos alternately asked for help, called her vulgar names and told her to kill herself. He emailed her company and tried to get her fired.

 But when it seemed to me that it was turning into something that gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he seems to think there’s some sort of relationship here that does not exist … “I tried to slowly back away from it, and he just started getting angry and vulgar to the point I had to tell him to stop,” she told the judge.

 “And he was not OK with that. He would send me things and basically tell me, ‘You’re going to need restraining order now.’ ‘You can’t make me stop. I know all these things about you.’ “I’m going to tell everyone about your life.” “An email in April 2010 said, ‘Have another drink and go hang yourself, you cowardly little lush. Don’t contact you again? I don’t give a (expletive). (Expletive) you.

Not the sort of friend anyone would want. In other words, this guy was operating in his own world, independent of anything otherwise happening around him. There won't be any place for the usual ghouls who enjoy using mass murder to push their agendas on this story. Then again, who knows?

Follow the money

Always good advice. And in the case of the gun grabbers, the money always leads back to places you'd expect. Let Daniel Greenfield be your guide to the March For Our Lives:

Take Everytown, the noisiest and most dishonest anti-gun group on the scene. The one consistent thing about anti-gun groups is that that they are usually the opposite of what their name says they are.

Everytown for Gun Safety was formed out of two other groups: Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Both are actually front groups for Michael Bloomberg, the lefty billionaire and former boss of the Big Apple, who used New York City resources to host at least one of its websites.

So Everytown is really New York City. 

If they can make it there, they'll make it anywhere. But there's more:

March for Our Lives is on every cable channel, but who runs it? The photogenic teen fronts are out front. But it’s obvious to everyone that a bunch of teens don’t have the resources and skills to coordinate a nationwide movement. Instead it’s the experienced activists who are actually running things.

The March for Our Lives Fund is incorporated as a 501(c)(4). Donations to 501(c)(4) groups are not tax- deductible. And they don’t have to disclose donors. That’s why they’re a great dark money conduit. 

And Greenfield is just getting started. You really need to read the whole thing.

Whole Hogg

I make a particular effort not to call someone a Nazi, because (a) almost no one outside of the Illinois 3rd Congressional District is an actual Nazi, and (b) calling someone a Nazi is usually a response based on emotion, rather than reason.

I'm going to make an exception this time.

I'm particularly disgusted with David Hogg, the rank opportunist student from Stoneman Douglas High School who has built a podium for his own glory on the bodies of his fellow students. This kid looks like a young David Byrne, but he's a straight-up Nazi, all in with the gun grabbing goon squads who failed his dead classmates. He's more than happy to disarm you to please his masters. But he doesn't like clear backpacks, apparently:

After attacking American's Second Amendment rights for over a month, calling the NRA "child murderers," Hogg complained about having to use clear backpacks at school.

Hogg claimed that the decision by Democratic Broward County officials violated his "First Amendment rights" as he also cited potential embarrassment for students going through "their menstrual cycle" because of their "tampons and stuff."

"It’s unnecessary, it’s embarrassing for a lot of the students and it makes them feel isolated and separated from the rest of American school culture where they’re having essentially their First Amendment rights infringed upon because they can’t freely wear whatever backpack they want regardless of what it is," Hogg said.

His understanding of the First Amendment is as faulty as his understanding of the Second Amendment. I think the clear backpacks are ridiculous, too, but when you allow the government to start taking your rights away, what do you expect? If there's a Bill of Rights issue at play here, he might want to try the Fourth Amendment, but higher math may be beyond his ken, based on the available evidence.

Hogg and his Hitler Youth pals are converging on Washington today, demanding other people be disarmed so he feels safer. I guarantee Hogg that Scott Israel, the Broward County Sheriff whose officers were contemplating their navels while the bullets flew, won't be disarming himself. And when Hogg and his compatriots are no longer useful to the apparat (and his sell-by date is approaching), his best case scenario will be a billet in the ditch in Crawford next to Cindy Sheehan, although if he keeps swearing in his interviews he might get the Kent State treatment instead. Such are the wages of loving Big Brother.

Meanwhile, I was able to obtain an advance copy of Hogg's speech today. Interestingly, he decided to set it to music:

Crime time

The last 24 hours have been busy. Hennepin County finally got around to charging the cop who killed Justine Damond. A good guy with a gun stopped a shooter in a high school in Maryland. And the guy who was terrorizing Austin with bombs blew himself up as the police were closing in.

Of these stories, the one in Maryland is the most important, but also most likely to disappear from the news cycle, because it runs counter to the narrative. See if this argument sways you:

Speaking of fantasies

I'm not sure how Zal (whoever he is, but he's official) plans to stop all kids from getting guns, but I have to imagine a certain amount of fantasy, backed by overwhelming brute force, would be necessarily involved. Apparently in Zal's world, doing what works gets in the way of doing what he wants. And while a 17-year old is not legally an adult, it's misleading to refer to him as a child. Show us your plan, Mr. Zal. Tell us how you're going to prevent "children" from getting guns. Provide details, please.

We'll be watching the Damond case closely, but at this point I only have one conclusion -- it's still awfully tough to convict a cop.

Get with the program, kid

It's important to express your opinion, so long as it's approved:

Minneapolis police say no arrests have been made after a student carrying a flag with the word “Trump” on it was assaulted outside of Southwest High School.

Police say the altercation happened while students were outside of the building during National School Walkout Day Wednesday morning.

He totally had it coming. There's more:

As students were observing a moment of silence, two students confronted the flag-bearing student across the street from campus.

Six other students joined in the confrontation, taking away his flag, damaging his camera and inflicting minor injuries.

8 kids against 1. Sounds fair. But they took the kid out for cake later:

Have some

Here's a hint to our crusading young people. If your school allows you to walk out, you're not risking anything for your protest. You're enlisting in their cause. Do what you want, but understand you aren't speaking truth to power. You're getting in line.

Lightning Round -- 022618

Busy weekend, mostly spent away from the news. But what I've heard deserves comment:

• I'm not to the point where some of my erstwhile libertarian friends are in re law enforcement (i.e., using hashtags like #****thepolice), at least not yet, but when I watch a guy like Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel operate, I understand why people feel the way they do. Israel's department failed in every conceivable way and yet he's still strutting around like he deserves a medal, primarily because his solution for his own department's incompetence is to take away millions of guns across the land. His grandstanding performance in the Wellstone Funeral CNN Town Hall on guns was disgraceful, especially since Israel knew full well his officers did nothing to stem the carnage inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Israel ought to resign in shame, but it's likely he won't. The only person in recent political life who was more infuriating in his passive-aggressive bureaucratic serenity was John Koskinen, Obama's top IRS droog. Students are expendable, but bureaucrats are bulletproof.
• Do we want guns in school? No. Do we need them? That's a separate question. No one is seriously saying we need to make the faculty at the average high school a SWAT team, but if a school district were to say they are giving their schools the option to have a certain group of personnel get the training they need to confront a school shooter, the chances are greater that such school will minimize the danger. I will be curious to see if the Osseo school district takes up the idea.
• We've spent a lot of time on music in the last few days. Fearless Maria performed at the Minneapolis Convention Center with the MMEA All-State Jazz Band, and we spent Saturday at Irondale hosting drumlines and color guards for our annual Winter Music of the Knight show. The nasty snowstorm that arrived Saturday afternoon really hurt our attendance, but it was still a happy event. While we're not likely to miss the 10+ days involved in putting on a show, we remain grateful for the many opportunities our family has had through our involvement in the music programs at Irondale. The kids have a chance to do remarkable things and while there's a cost involved, it's been well worth it.

Guns and poses

A few thoughts:

• I'm not much of a gun guy. I didn't grow up in a family that liked shooting sports and the only time I've ever been near a deer camp is to drink beer, but I am a 2nd Amendment guy. The notion that giving up the ability to defend one's self will make us safer is, well, bizarre.
• The cheap emotionalism on display in recent days is especially grotesque. Any time you see a children's crusade forming, you can safely assume the people behind it don't have the best interests of children at heart. 
• And can we stop pretending that shrieking teenagers, no matter how badly they have been wronged, are suddenly possessed with irrefutable wisdom? Emma Gonzalez has a platform for the moment, but if she ever utters a heterodox thought, or notices that her handlers are, well, handling her, she'll be in the ditch in Crawford next to Cindy Sheehan.
• Are we allowed to notice how badly the systems already in place failed in the case of Nikolas Cruz? If we analyze the sequence of events, it's clear that plenty of people had opportunities to intervene in his life and chose not to. Perhaps it would be worth spending some time fixing those issues before we mount a crusade against inanimate objects. Nah, that's crazy talk.
• Our friend and regular reader Bike Bubba made an excellent point elsewhere the other day: I personally like the bit that Powerline linked last weekend. The “plan” for achieving gun control in some portions of the left is not about evidence or logic, but about personal attacks. I always change my mind when someone slanders me! Either that, or I might contemplate that in a world where the left confuses personal attacks with argument, I might do well to have a ready means of self-defense. Just so, Bubba.

Your government at work -- Mass Shooting Edition

If we want to stop mass shooters, we need to take your gun away. Apparently that's the solution, because we can't even do the basic work:

Documents obtained by CNN show that law enforcement officers responded to Cruz’s house on 39 occasions over a seven-year period. No police reports were immediately available for those calls so it was not possible to determine whether Cruz was involved.

Another neighbor, concerned about Cruz “acting weird” in the backyard took video of him dressed in boxer shorts shooting what appeared to be a BB gun. The man, who asked not to be identified, said his wife watched Cruz shooting bottles, cans and buckets over and over again for two days in October 2017. He sometimes pointed the gun toward their window, the man said.

“She got scared. I got scared,” he said.

I'll bet. There's more:

The FBI received a tip last month that the suspect in the Florida school shooting had a "desire to kill" and access to guns and could be plotting an attack, but agents failed to investigate, the agency said Friday. Florida Gov. Rick Scott called for the FBI's director to resign because of the missteps.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the shooting that killed 17 people Wednesday was a "tragic consequence" of the FBI's failure and ordered a review of the Justice Department's processes. He said it's now clear that the nation's premier law enforcement agency missed warning signs.

No, Mr. Sessions. They didn't miss the signs. They ignored them. And there's more:

Jim Gard, a Maths [sic] teacher, said Cruz had been in his class last year.

“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” Mr Gard told the Miami Herald. “There were problems with him last year threatening students.”

However, Robert Runcie, the Broward County School District Superintendent, told reporters he was not aware of any concerns raised about the student.

“We received no warnings,” Mr Runcie said outside the school. “Potentially there could have been signs out there. But we didn't have any warning or phone calls or threats that were made.”

So at the local level, the federal level, and within the education system Cruz had attended, no one connected the dots or made any moves to change the course he was on. Everyone was asleep at the switch. But we should let these people take your guns away. Sounds like a plan.

Just so you know. . . .

There is no way to completely stop school shootings, so long as we value an open society where people can come and go as they please. Mental health treatment might help some; as we learn more about the young man in Florida who killed 17 people, we might gain some insights we rarely get from such shooters, who in most cases take their own life to cap off their crimes. Nikolas Cruz is in custody, so he might tell us something useful. Politicians might try to render the 2nd Amendment a dead letter, but they can't take all the guns away without intolerable collateral damage. So let the bien pensant gun grabbers have their moment of virtue signaling. It will go nowhere.

Due diligence

I mostly stay out of the gun control debate. I don't think additional gun control laws are needed, at least until we get around to enforcing what's already on the books. In the case of Devin Kelley, the guy who shot up a church outside of San Antonio over the weekend, we have an apt illustration:

The Texas church shooter shouldn't have been able to legally own a gun.

But an Air Force officer failed to enter Devin Patrick Kelley's domestic violence court-martial into a national database that would have barred him from buying weapons, the Air Force said Monday.

Top Air Force brass ordered a full review of how the service handled Kelley's conviction at a general court-martial in 2012, Ann Stefanek, a spokeswoman for the Air Force, said in a statement Monday.

Based on what we're learning, Kelley was an all-around bad dude:

Kelley, 26, of New Braunfels, Texas, joined the Air Force after graduating from New Braunfels High School in 2009. He trained at Lackland and Goodfellow Air Force bases in Texas, before reporting to his assignment in logistics readiness at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.

In 2012, Kelley was convicted at general court-martial on two charges of assault, the Air Force said. A retired Air Force colonel who supervised prosecutors when Kelley was tried said Kelley was convicted of fracturing his baby stepson's skull and assaulting his first wife, Tessa, at Holloman.

There was more:

Records show his first wife divorced him in 2012 in New Mexico. "She's very upset," her mother told NBC News, adding that she did not want to speak about him until she was interviewed by law enforcement.

Kelley remarried in Texas in 2014. The status of that marriage was not clear, but authorities said there was a "domestic situation" with his in-laws.

"The suspect's mother-in-law attended this church," Freeman Martin, regional director of the state Department of Public Safety, said at a Monday news conference. "She has received threatening texts from him."

And more still:

Two ex-girlfriends told NBC News that Kelley stalked them after breakups.

"Years after dating me he would try to bribe me to hang out with him," Landry, who met Kelley in church as a teenager, told NBC News in a Facebook message. "He ended up assaulting me. He would stalk me by repeatedly calling me — even prank calling me, saying really weird stuff. 

"That was another thing about him — he was very sick in the head...He would tell me very sick strange things," she said, without providing details.

Other people provided details, though:

Brittany Adcock, 22, said she dated Kelley for two months when she was 13 and he was 18.

"At the time I didn't think much into it being so young but now I realize that there's something off about someone who is 18 with someone who is 13," she said.

More than something, although Jerry Lee Lewis might disagree. There's more:

When she broke it off, he continued to harass her, she said.

"He somehow would always find out my number although none of my friends talked to him and he would constantly call me until I blocked his number," she said. "Then I'd get calls from an unknown number so I've had to change my number quite a bit.

"He would offer me money to hang out with him quite a bit. There has been one point that I called the police because he was just calling me so much I wanted to report harassment," Adcock said.

And if you keep reading the linked article, you find out about animal cruelty charges and a host of other offenses. So, this is a dude who didn't have a right to own a gun, but he had one. The argument I'm seeing is that another overlay of laws would have made a difference, but do you really believe that? If so, why?

Logic, Part 2

A smarter approach to the Orlando nightclub attack:

Gun shops typically see a spike in customers after mass shootings. But this time, many are seeing shoppers they’ve never really seen before: More gays and lesbians.

George Horne, the owner of The Gun Room, Denver’s oldest firearms dealer, said Tuesday business is booming at his store.

"For this time of year I’d say its three to four times what we normally have," he said.

Background checks that once took minutes can now take hours. It's a sales surge similar to what happened after Sandy Hook and the Aurora theater shootings.

“We’re not surprised by it,” Horne said.

You don't have to love guns. I don't, particularly. But the minute you are told you can't have a gun is the minute you need one the most.

Public service

Since we seem to have a lot of confusion about properly identifying firearms, I'd like to present this helpful guide that some highly useful person posted on the internet, so it's certainly true:

The more you know

Hope this clears things up.

But for others I put on a show

Bizarro World Smokey Robinson:

But when it comes down to fooling you, honey that's quite a different subject

We've seen this crap before, of course:

So if you want to know, how I really feel/Get the cameras rolling, get the action going

And it's bipartisan:

Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry

Will the Leader of the Free World's latest proposals move the needle on guns? Not really, but it does give an especially intrusive federal agency (BAFTE) a pretext to add staffing, which is always a goal in Washington.

If you like your kabuki moistened with tears, you can keep your kabuki moistened with tears.

Submitted without further comment

“[He started] asking people one by one what their religion was. ‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and if you’re a Christian stand up. And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second.’ And then he shot and killed them,” Stacy Boylen, whose daughter was wounded at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., told CNN.

And:

An anonymous user wrote in an ominous post on the online bulletin board 4chan Wednesday night: “Some of you guys are alright. Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest. happening thread will be posted tomorrow morning. so long space robots,” the post concluded.

No guns on the premises

The scene in Chattanooga yesterday:

Don't do this, don't do that, can't you read the signs?

Huh, that sign wasn't particularly effective.