It started with this post.

There's no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone.

— Lizzie Marbach (@LizzieMarbach) August 15, 2023

Congressman Max Miller responded this way:

This is one of the most bigoted tweets I have ever seen.

Delete it, Lizzie.

Religious freedom in the United States applies to every religion.

You have gone too far. https://t.co/QCx8oAT1Kr

— Max Miller (@MaxMillerOH) August 15, 2023

Now the internet is on fire and there is about to be sectarian violence between Christians and Jews.

Miller may have overreacted, but you need to understand the divide here.

I understand the Christian perspective.  Lizzie was making a statement of faith.

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, it wasn’t malicious.

What Jews, with out thousands of years of faith, tradition, and history of being persecuted for that faith, hear is: “You’re wrong, there is no hope for you l, and you’re going to hell.”

This, however, is the problem with proselytization.  What one side might have said in love and concern for the souls of others, is heard as an attack on their faith, culture, and identity.

We Jews do not proselytize and we take deep offense at being proselytized to.

I’ll be honest, even though I understand what Lizzie is saying and giving her the benefit of the doubt, my reflexive position is that she’s an asshole for saying what she said the way she said it.

Now a very vocal side of the Christian Right is playing the wounded victim, with this as an example of Jews using the power of government to oppress Christians.

On that later point, we need to be clear what a First Amendment violation actually is.

A Congressman saying: “Your post sucks and you should delete it” isn’t a violation.

A Congressman saying: “Your post sucks and you should delete it or you will face legal consequences” is a a violation.

If a simple opinion without the backing of force is a violation, then any Congressman who wishes people a Merry Christmas is in violation for creating a official state religion.  Without any weight of enforcement behind it, it’s just a person opinion which everyone, including Congressmen, are entitled to.

But back to the main point.

One of the most salient features of American Exceptionalism is our lack of sectarian conflict.

Compared to Europe or Asia, with theor thousands of years of religious wars, America has lived in religious harmony.

I’d like to keep it that way.

This is an issue of cultural sensitivity, or lack there of, where each side feels slighted.

Christians, for being called bigots for professing an article of faith.

Jews, for being told (one again) that were wrong, bad, and going to hell.

The Left already hates the Jews.  I don’t want the mainstream Rught to adopt the alt-Right Naziesque Jew-hating position that ‘the Jews are attacking Christianity.’

Rather than retreat to extremes, can we understand the situation in context.

This post in response tona thread I posted.

Christians in America will not kowtow to those who reject Christ

You are vastly outnumbered, and the tides are now turning against you such that it can no longer reversed

I would advise being quiet, and perhaps not working so hard to wear out your welcome in our society

— Honest Hillman (@HonestHillman) August 16, 2023

This is the Hitlarian argument: “The minority of Jews are oppressing us and now we’re justified in exterminating them, we’re the majority after all.”

This is the bad side of Christian Nationalism.

This is the attitude that has kept do many Jews out of the Right.

I understand that this is not the opinion of the majority of Christians.

But this Hitlarisn bullshit is why I own guns.

I went to a USPSA match last night after work.

I showed up in my usual competition gear: a Bianchi gunbelt, and Blade-Tech holster and mag pouches.

It’s served me well for years.

I was running a SIG P320 with a fiber optic front sight and adjustable rear.  Limited minor was my classification.

I was the oldest competitor there, at 40.

Everyone else was running battle belts with MOLLE attachments and Cobra buckles, retention holsters, guns with red dots and weapon lights. They had fixed blase knives, blowout kits, and tourniquets. Everything in Multicam.

Two guys were in training plate carriers and bump helmets.

I was prepared for a friendly shooting competition.

They looked like Delta about to raid a cave in Afghanistan.

I didn’t know this was the new standard.

I felt like such a boomer Fudd.

One would think that this is simple, look up the criminal history, respect the rules, get the result. If any three people were to get the same report, they would end up with the same results.
—id.

To begin with, these are called “Guidelines”. This is to imply that they aren’t always followed. The more out of line with the guidelines the sentence is, the more likely the sentence will be overturned on appeal if it is too much. If it is too little, no victim has standing to challenge the sentence.

It is unclear what Sotomayer was speaking about when she described the question. We don’t know from her opinion on the denial of cert. what exactly was done.

There are three parties involved with the sentencing. The first party is the prosecutor, the second is the defendant, and the third is the judge. In a fair and just world, we would want the Judge to respect the law and the guidelines.

The problem is that the guidelines can be manipulated. This is done with modifiers, number of charges brought, and subjective evaluation, where available.

If the judge is looking at this person, that is bad. The judge knows it. The person has been before his bench for various violent crimes over the last few years. He is tired of him getting a slap on the wrist and out again.

There was a case I read about where the accused took a plea deal. The deal was for 5 years with probation. The accused had to allocute to his guilt, he said the words, he claimed it was just to get the deal. The Judge heard the allocution, decided that the plea was off the table, and sent him to prison for 19 years.

The dick wad that was diddling my friends kids was found guilty in a court of law and sentenced to the “special” prison where kiddy diddlers might actually live for a couple of weeks. The judge sentenced him on each count to the maximum, then set them to run serially, then entered into the record that he had other charges that had not been tried — yet.

If he is every given probation, those “other charges” will come up, and he will be put back on trial for the other counts. At this time, it looks like he is eligible for parole on his final sentence sometime in the late 2100s.

When we are talking about judicial discretion, this is what we are thinking about. The judge knew dick was a bad person that should never see freedom again. (The court was aware of some 4 other victims that had not brought charges)

When the PSR was created, the prosecution added the fact that they knew of other victims. They added that there were other charges pending. They added that he had spent two years evading a warrant for his arrest for bouncing checks. All of this factored into his final sentences.

In the case before the Supreme Court, the question was different. The accused was accused of only charged with two things. Armed robbery and murder. He was found not guilty of murder.

When the prosecutor brings the PSR to the judge does he mention the multiple charges for which the accused has not been found guilty? Or is he limited to just the charge he was found guilty of in the case?

Was this his first offense, or was he “Well known to law enforcement”? Was this the first time he had been found guilty of a crime? Is this the first time he didn’t plead out of more serious crimes? None of these questions were answered by the Order Listing.

To me, the fact that a 17-year-old boy is robbing pharmacies at gun point is a pretty good indicator that he is a bad person.

That is what he was found guilty of. Do you, or I think this was his first encounter with the law?

This is why the state is going over the sentencing guidelines. We want the bad ones off the street, yet at the same time we don’t want the one and done overly punished.

There is a balance in here. I don’t know where it is.

The Left is doing a massive end zone dance over the decision by the Illinois State Supreme Court that the Illinois assault weapons and high capacity magazine ban was constitutional.

BREAKING: MAGA gun nuts have a complete meltdown as the Illinois Supreme Court rejects a conservative challenge to the state's lifesaving assault weapons bans — marking a major victory for gun reform.

But it gets even worse for Republicans…

The court's vote came down to 4-3… pic.twitter.com/vBxUzO1Yba

— Occupy Democrats (@OccupyDemocrats) August 11, 2023

Anyone who knows anything about Illinois politics could have seen this coming a mile away.

The Illinois State Supreme Court always upheld gun control.  Concealed carry was forced on Illinois by the federal 7th Circuit.

The Democrats are celebrating this so hard because they lost every SCOTUS decision on guns since Heller.

I’m hoping this goes to SCOTUS.  With their track record, they will most likely shoot down all AWB and magazine capacity bands.

As the special Legislative session nears in Tennessee, the complicit Media is still doing its propaganda work for Gun Control.

The Headline:

They dutifully link to a 2023CFRAnnualReport Tennessee Child Fatality which on itself sems to be carefully crafted to disburse information a certain way.  Let us begin.

The headline stated that guns are the leading cause of death among children in the Volunteer state and at the beginning of the report we are given the number of deaths for the 17 year old and Under:

And you nod your head and keep reading while they hope you don’t pay attention to one discrepancy from the headline or the title:

I searched for “external cause of death” and I according to the return from the CDC it means:

So, we have our first intellectual “misdirection.” Rather than guns being the leading cause of death in Tennessee, they are in fact not but just a part of it. Tragic indeed, but trying to exacerbate public opinion, an honest release of information would have been more productive.

Let’s keep reading and try to find out how many deaths are we talking about, not just some random selected percentages. We find a set of numbers in this graphic:

926 deaths of Children Ages 0-17. Now, don’t forget our dear friends of WKRN told us guns are the leading cause of death, so I have to ask how many “gun deaths” happened in 2021:

Sixty-seven deaths by homicide.

But wait, there is more: Not all homicides were done with guns:

After a quick run with the calculator, it comes to 57.62 which I will just approximate to 58 homicides by firearm.

And how about suicide? Not any better I am afraid.

And you already know the next question: How many suicides by firearm?

And that comes to 19.98 rounding it to 20 suicides by firearm.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the number gives us a grand (and still very sad) total of 78 deaths by firearms.  But let us not forget that WKRN said it is that homicide by guns the overall major cause of death.

Overall, homicide was the leading cause of death among Tennesse’s children in 2021 — far outnumbering suicides, drownings, fires, falls and poisoning deaths — and guns were the leading external factor with firearms involved in 86% of homicides.

Guns leading cause of death among Tennessee children, report finds (wkrn.com)

Really? How about Motor Vehicle Deaths? I noticed they did not mention them at all.

Another bit of journalistic lack of integrity? Maybe, I don’t know. Do-It-For-The-Children? Maybe, again I don’t know.

Let’s summarize: We have an official number of 926 deaths of Children 17 Years Old and Under. Out of those 926, we have a total of 78 in which a firearm was used and only 58 of those deaths were from homicide while 20 were from suicide. That comes to a very low but still sad 18.75% of death in Tennessee and not “The Leading Cause Of Death!” that is the latest talking point among Gun Control Intelligentsia.

Now this last one is pure speculation on my part, but it is a very interesting graphic found in page 42 of the report:

Wouldn’t it be interesting to see the number of homicides per health region? I would not be surprised if Memphis and its surrounding areas were the leading locations. But that would mean that Gun Control is not the True and Only Answer, but a more detail examination would be required and probably would not be in the best interests of certain groups and entities.

PS: I forgot my usual ending.

If your cause is righteous, why lie? 

The devil is in the details.