A man was shot and killed by police, the bloody aftermath of which was broadcast live on Facebook in a video where the man’s girlfriend says the “police shot him for no apparent reason, no reason at all.”

Philando Castile, 32, an elementary school cafeteria supervisor who studied at the University of Minnesota, is seen bloodied and in pain with a gunshot wound to the stomach as the video comes on and his girlfriend begins talking to the camera.

“He told him that it was in his wallet, but he had a pistol on him because he’s licensed to carry. The officer said don’t move. As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times,” she said.

Source: Facebook Live Video Shows Man Dying from Police Shooting

We don’t see what happened prior to the beginning of the video, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was  lot of tension followed by contradictory orders by the police and not having a prior plan on how to address and inform of the status.

Here is a good video of Massad Ayoob explaining what you should do in a case like that. Notice the Tom Gresham is carrying his ID in a front pocket of his vest rather than the back pants pocket. I have been doing that ever since I started to carry because cops like to see hands at all times.

At a time like this, your goal is not to get shot. Keep the “Am I being Detained?” BS for Gun Forum discussions. Be polite, comply with the officer and you may even get a break with the ticket. Above all: Have a plan and practice it.

In the last week, this is what I have seen:

The former Secretary of State and current Presidential Candidate, was under investigation by the FBI for violating Federal law in mishandling classified information.  That mishandling possibly allowing classified information to fall into the hands of less than friendly nations.

The former President of the United States and husband of the Secretary of State was under investigation meeting with the Attorney General of the United States in an unofficial meeting on an airplane.

The  former Secretary of State and current Presidential Candidate floated the idea that if she won the election, the current Attorney General might be kept on an be the Attorney General of her administration.

The Attorney General punts on determining if prosecution is warranted  based upon the FBI investigation to the FBI, abdicating her legal responsibilities.

The FBI Director holds a press conference detailing all the ways the former Secretary of State and current Presidential Candidate violated Federal law, as well as showing evidence that she committed perjury during her testimony in a previous (Benghazi) hearing.  Despite the evidence to this felonious behavior, the FBI Director recommends against prosecution of the  former Secretary of State and current Presidential Candidate, while admitting that anybody else would be brought up on charges for doing the same thing.

The Justice Department headed by the Attorney General, announced that none of the assistants or support people involved in this violation of Federal law will be prosecuted either.

Following the FBI Director’s press conference, the current President of the United States attends a campaign rally for the former Secretary of State and current Presidential Candidate, in which he allows the former Secretary of State and current Presidential Candidate to break with tradition and decorum and give a campaign speech from behind the Seal of the President of the United States.

Now the political party of the President of the United States, the former Secretary of State, and the Attorney General, as well as the majority of journalists covering this want the rest of us to believe that what appears to be naked, open, and abject corruption, is just a lot of hoo-hah over nothing.

Let me ask this question:

At this point, is it even worth holding an election?  If those in power are going to be so corrupt so brazenly, is it necessary to go through the pro forma process of an election?  If the current President simply appointed the former Secretary of State to the position of President by executive action, in the words of the former Secretary of State ” what difference does it make?”

Notice the ad says nothing about being a viable third option… because they would be lying.

Although I like some stuff that Libertarians are for, I cannot take them seriously as a political organization. Economically they are all over the place and are too isolationist for my taste. But what ranks me the most is that you don’t hear about Libertarians unless a presidential election comes up. They are like the Punxsutawney Phil of politics who only come out of their holes if there is a November Electoral shindig and go back underground after it is over.

Libertarians will gain my respect as political entity when I can read in a newspaper something along the lines of:

“Today at the State Legislature, Minority Leader John Doe (L) said the bill presented by….”

Until then, they will be a bunch of “Me Too!” that belong in the kids political table.

CLEARWATER — A man who crept into a sleeping couple’s home died early Tuesday after the husband hacked him repeatedly with a machete kept under the bed, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s deputies say Steven Aiosa retrieved the machete after a rifle also stashed under the bed malfunctioned and the intruder began attacking his wife

Source: Clearwater man dead after burglarizing couple’s home | Tampa Bay Times

Prime example of why you need an alternative means of self defense in case your main weapon goes Tango Uniform. But as usual, there is more to the story:

The sheriff said Steven Aiosa, 43, grabbed a .22-caliber rifle from under the bed and walked with his wife out the home’s back door to the back yard to try to load it. But the gun was malfunctioning and he couldn’t get a round in the chamber.

Keeping an unloaded firearm around for self defense is like keeping a flat tire in the trunk: Not gonna work when you need it the most. And also, being under the adrenaline dump of an stressful situation sends fine motor skills to hell, specially if you have not practiced the procedure you are trying to attempt.

Hat Tip to Jeff A.

I know the article I’m about to quote is a few days old, but I’ve been on vacation, and have some catching up to do.

The Illuminati. The Bilderbergers.  The Freemasons.  The Trilateral Commission.  The Lizard People (Reptilians).  The Jooooooooos.

The NRA?  Gun Manufacturers?

Maybe those last two are little bit of a stretch.  Maybe not, if you listen to what some people on the political left say.

There is a common theme in the attacks directed at the NRA and firearms industry by the media and the anti-gun politicians and activists:

The NRA and gun companies doesn’t care about you.  They don’t care about your rights.  They don’t care about your life.  All they want to do is sell you guns and watch you drown in blood.  The NRA and gun makers love mass shootings and high profile murders because they can use them to manipulate you into buying even more guns for you to kill yourselves with.  The NRA and gun makers are entwined in an evil conspiracy to profit from the slaughter of innocent people.

To a reasonable person, this might seems ridiculously far-fetched and down right insulting to the decent people who work in the firearms industry.  I guess Isvari Mohan of the Boston Globe is not a reasonable person.

If it seems wrong to talk about a mass shooting as a business issue, you’re right. It’s wrong. But thanks to the National Rifle Association and the $13.5 billion-in-revenue gun industry, money is inextricably tied to the seemingly endless string of killings plaguing our country… But for the NRA, the gun industry, and the politicians they bankroll, spasms of violence like Orlando are an obscene blessing.

This is disgusting.  No one in the firearms industry revels in a mass shooting or terrorist attack.  I can testify to that with my very own eyes.

No one came into the office on June 13th, with a smile on their face, saying: “Did you see the news on Sunday?  We are going to be rolling in dough.”

Lobbying is one of the most successful businesses in this country, one the gun industry is especially good at. The NRA has so much power that even when 90 percent of Americans said they wanted universal background checks after the Newtown, Conn., massacre, according to a CNN/ORC poll, there was no federal action… The problem is extremely wealthy people, gun makers, and the NRA, can now spend as much as they want to buy candidates.

While it is true that the NRA has outspent anti-gun groups in political donations, the NRA has spent enough money to rank 75th in political contributions.  Bloomberg’s interests rank 36th, just to give you some perspective.  But CNN won’t write stories about the influence of the donations by George Soros’ interests (14th) or the SEIU (1st).  They will cover the NRA’s lobbying efforts ad nauseam.

But in the warped mind of the conspiracy theorist, 75th might as well be 1st.  There is no other money in politics than gun money and the NRA is the entity that shovels it out.

The NRA – and the five million people who get its magazines – are on a mission to prove that guns make us safer… (Quotes Kellerman Study) … In other words, guns make you less safe and they’re not that great for self-defense.”

Yes, yes, yes, I know.. owning a gun means that I am more likely that I am going shoot my my wife and kids until the home invader takes my gun away from me to kill me with it.  Then again, according to liberals, I’m also too stupid to decide was car I should drive, what beverage I can drink, how big my burger should be, what I should be able to watch on TV, and pretty much every other personal choice I can make.  So, I’m going to take this one with a grain of salt … if the liberals will let me have a grain of salt.

Until the 1960s, the Supreme Court had only dealt with a few gun control cases and held that the Second Amendment was related to militia and collective rights, not individual rights. In 2008, thanks to a long NRA campaign, the Court held in Heller that the Second Amendment does grant an individual right.

OH GOD NO!!!  THE NRA IS MAKING DECISIONS FOR SCOTUS NOW TOO!!!  “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” ACTUALLY MEANS “ALL THE PEOPLE”!?!  OH THE HORROR!!!

Just to be clear: The gun industry does not actually care about your Second Amendment rights; they don’t even care about your life. They only care about profit.

Just to be clear: we absolutely do care about gun rights.  Despite what Ms. Mohan seems to believe, the gun industry is not a few fat cats smoking cigars and drinking scotch atop a mountain of skulls.  We are men an women who love our jobs and are passionate, dedicated firearms enthusiasts.  We have spouses and children.  We value life.  We go to work in a industry we believe in.  Yes, we want to make profit, so does ever industry.  But we don’t want to profit off enormities.  We want to profit off good products made for good people who will use and enjoy them responsibly.

Since business is the only thing that seems to speak to the NRA and the gun industry, one solution to the gun culture problem might be boycotting businesses that refuse to support responsible gun ownership. A lot of retirement stocks are invested in the gun industry – and they went up after the Orlando shooting – so people who support gun control might want to prevent their savings from being invested in companies that profit when people die.

This is movie stock market thinking.  Yes, stock value is in part determined by perceived value of the company.  But a company’s worth is in its earnings.  If antis don’t invest their 410(k)s into gun companies, we won’t magically dry up and die.  There is real earnings in people buying guns.  It’s not the investors that cause the industry to hit record highs in value, it is the record gun sales that are doing that.

The only purpose of guns is killing. And the only purpose of the gun industry is to sell them. Next time you think about buying a gun, think about that.

I should say that killing is not the only purpose of guns, but I won’t.  All target practice is killing practice, even if you don’t ever intend to kill.  I will agree with Ms. Mohan on this point, but I will take it one step further.  I want the tools to kill.  I don’t want to commit murder.  I do want the ability to defend myself with lethal force if necessary.  I do think about that when I buy guns, which is why I own them.  Whether it be the government or criminals (or both), I don’t want somebody else to have the monopoly on violence.  I want to be able to hold my own and meet force with force.

Ms. Mohan is supposed to be some sort of prodigy genius, writing columns for the Globe and giving TEDx talks.  To me, this article seems less like critical thought and more like a mix of Liberal anti business and anti gun platitudes, lightly flavored with conspiracy.

This is the kind of crap that passes for deep thought in  Left Wing circles.  Miguel touched on an article in an LGBT magazine a few days ago that made this same point from an identity politics perspective.

Make no mistake: The newest iteration of the pro-gun agenda has nothing to do with protecting LGBT lives and everything to do with blindly and irresponsibly selling guns to an untapped market. Telling LGBT people to carry guns so they don’t get “bashed” — as the Pink Pistols group has done recently — is like telling a woman to stop wearing short skirts to avoid rape. It’s out of touch and deflects blame from those who should truly be held accountable.

If members of the Pink Pistols are really concerned about ending deadly violence in the LGBT community, they could start by cutting their ties with the gay bashers at the NRA.

Again, the NRA doesn’t care about you or your life.  We’re just in it for profit.  Evil, evil, profit.  All the gun ranges and firearms instructors that were giving away free training to the LGBT community were doing that because… ?  At the same time that well intentioned Liberals were doing their damnedest to make sure that EVERYBODY knew that Islam had nothing to do with the killing of 49 people and the wounding of 50 others at a gay club.  So that the next time a man shows up with a gun shouting “Allah Akbar” at a gay hot spot, people know he’s just there to party.

Also… no, telling people to defend themselves is not victim blaming.  The gay men and women at Pulse were no asking to be shot and murdered by an Islamic terrorist.  But it is irresponsible to put yourself at the mercy of someone who has proven that they have no mercy for you.  I don’t blame the Jews of Europe for what the Nazis believed or did.  But I will not understand why so many Jews chose to board the cattle cars, hoping that if they just worked hard, they would survive the camps.  All the Liberal platitudes in the world won’t stop the next radical Islamist from attacking his target.  A well placed bullet will.

Daniel Greenfield summed up the cause of this belief quite well at his blog.

You wouldn’t blame a dog for overeating; you blame the owners for overfeeding him. Nor do you blame a dog for biting a neighbor. You might punish him, but the punishment is training, not a recognition of authentic responsibility on the part of the canine. And the way that you think of a dog, is the way that the left thinks of you. When you misbehave, the left looks around for your owner.

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been “liberated” to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it’s because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it’s because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. 

With this in mind, it is easy to understand why the Liberals in the media and advocacy groups don’t see how their actions drive gun sales and a growing gun culture.  It is not their incessant desire to ban guns or hinder honest citizens’ ability to buy them or their epic transparent bumblefucking of trying to explain away terrorism** that drives gun sales.  They do not believe that regular people not have cognitive function to say “the government isn’t going to protect me, so I should buy the tools to protect myself before that same government bans them.”  It is the NRA whispering mind controlling evil into the ear of the people like Emperor Palpatine.

**Watching the response to the Pulse shooting by Liberals in the media and Washington was a surreal experience.  It was like watching New York Fashion Week if all the models looked like Hilary Clinton and showed up naked and demanded that we acknowledge how beautiful and elegant everything is.  All but the most ardent Liberals were gagging, wondering if what they were seeing was for real, while the argent Liberals were calling them “bigots” for not ooing and ahhing.  I fully expected the news of that week to close with a monologue from Rod Serling.

Understanding the Liberal world view that we are puppets and the NRA and gun industry are our puppet masters explains why groups like Everytown and MDA, as well as so many others, believe what stands in their way is the NRA and gun makers.

We are not evil.  We are not soulless monsters that turn human misery and death into profit to feed our gluttonous appetites.  We are not stupid, consumerist sheep.  And we are certainly not a monolithic, top down group that manipulates the helpless masses for our own desire or world domination.

We are freedom loving people, who enjoy a sport, and want to own the tools we desire for our self defense.

Understand that and understand why we are not easy to defeat.

What gall Everytown has.  What hypocrites they are.  How dare they wish their people a happy Independence Day – a day won for America by armed citizens.  How dare they celebrate the founding of the freest nation on earth, a nation that holds dear that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” while trying to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

If there is one day that I do not want to hear from people whose common purpose is to strip me of my Constitutionally protected rights, it is the day that this nation was founded.

The 4th of July is a day that belongs to patriots.

These people should spend the day with their heads buried in the sand, unable to breathe the sweet air of freedom, made possible by brave men with guns.

The political party that wants to put people in a secret list and restrict their Constitutional Rights without Due Process because of a “suspicion” is the same party that just refused to indict a presidential candidate for proven violations of the law.

So our choices for November are Unindicted Felon versus Batshit Crazy.

I am gonna let you in a little secret: I was going to write in Larry Correia for President in November. If anything just for the laughs and to make SJWs scream in pain and horror.

I am now going with Batshit Crazy. I don’t know if he will do a good job defending the Constitution, but you can rest assured that Unindicted Felon will fuck us up to the point of No Return.