George Carroll moved from Texas to Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, New York.  He was threatened by a neighbor with a box cutter so he moved again, with his wife to the safer neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York.

He was stabbed to death just outside of his home.

The suspected murderer, Gary Correa,  is 19 years old, with 13 arrests, including those for robbery, burglary, and drug possession.

Carroll was stabbed because he looked at Correa.

Correa and another man chased Carroll and his wife down the street before stabbing him to death.

As last ditch effort to get save his life, George Carroll threw his cell phone at his attackers.  It did no good.

One state over, in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, Common Pleas Judge Joseph Bruzzese survived an ambush attack by drawing his own concealed weapon and firing back at his attacker.  His attacker was then shot by a probation officer.

Two spontaneous attacks.  Adjacent states.  One man dies, stabbed to death for looking at a career criminal.  Another man lives by fending off his attacker with a gun.

Christina Romero Carroll should not have to bury her husband.  The city of New York should be disposing of the body of Gary Correa.  But the laws of New York cost George Carroll his life, easy on criminals and hard on law abiding citizens.

I don’t know if George Carroll knew how to use a gun, but as a native Texan I’d like to think he did.

The next time some innocent man is chased by two assailants for merely making eye contact, rather than throw a cellphone, he can launch some hot lead their way.  Until something drastic changes, New York will continue to be a place where human garbage have a nearly unfettered ability to prey on the law abiding.

1964 Winchester Model 70 in .30-06

From what I had left of my Gun Fund, I was able to get this rifle for a price that it is embarrassingly cheap through a states sale by Denis Badurina’s shop Dragon Leatherworks, longtime friend of this blog.

From what I have gathered online, it seems I scored a Model 70 National Match and although I am not an expert on condition, it looks used, shot and cared for. Not a Safe Queen nor abused.

An astute and observant reader may have already find what is “wrong” with my rifle: No sights. Even though they came with the rifle out of the factory, for some reason they are not present.  Long short, inquires were made, but the original sights could not be found.

Of course, being an ignorant about bolt-action rifles and specially the Model 70 and specifically this particular subspecies, I thought that just tossing some rings and any scope would do the job. Boy was I wrong.  First, good or even average scope stuff is EXPENSIVE. From tools to the tube itself? It could be from triple to eight times what I paid for the rifle and I had already expended my funds to the point of leaving enough for a Happy Meal.

Then I realized that the top of the barrel is not quite your regular thin barrels in hunting rifles. It has blocks forward of the receiver and that looked vaguely familiar. I looked online and looky here what I found. US Marine Sniper Rifle with a scope.

That is a long scope! And now a effing classic which commands four to five figures in a Free Market if you can find it. “Fortunately” a replica is being made and sold in Midway USA: Leatherwood Hi-Lux William Malcolm USMC Sniper Rifle Scope.

I did say “fortunately” because at $575 plus whatever I need to pay a good gunsmith to mount it is way past what I have in my Gun Fund. Why not mount it myself and save some bucks that way? I heard Harry Callahan whisper in my ear “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

I was running out of options.

Continues in Part 2

Via @GeorgiaCarry.

After all the scare-mongering by Gun Control fanatics and swearing on a stack of Bibles that Campus Carry in Georgia would reduce enrollment, this apparently did not happen, but just the opposite.

However, two very recently famous places of higher education have seen their enrolments drop:

COLUMBIA • Out-of-state students and incoming freshmen are among the hardest hits to University of Missouri enrollment data announced Monday. Undergraduate enrollment is down more than 2,100 students, or almost 8 percent, this semester compared to fall 2015, and almost three-quarters of that loss comes from the freshman class.

Source: Enrollment is, in fact, down at Mizzou | Education | stltoday.com

But Evergreen faces a deeper, and more long-term threat. It is the only state four-year higher education institution to see enrollment drop steeply since 2011 despite wide-open admission standards. At about 4,080 students, it is about 300 students short of the Legislature’s funded enrollment target.
The two problems are now entwined. Evergreen President George Bridges and his administration need to assure future students and their parents that academics come first — and not acquiesce to the 200-or-so student protesters at the expense of the 4,000-student campus. Without safety, there’s no learning, and without learning, Evergreen will wither into irrelevance.

Source: The Evergreen State College: No safety, no learning, no future | The Seattle Times

I am not going to say that Campus Carry helped increase enrollment, but sure as heck it did not hurt it. However, unhinged Liberalism is slowly destroying other places of learning. Maybe this is why the Left is suddenly found with a hard-on for Free College. People who needs to shed tens of thousands of dollars in tuition are going to be looking for stability and common sense, not Social Justice Warriors interrupting classes and parading around campus badly dressed in Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn Cheerleaders .

The Michigan Gun Owners organization and Michigan Open Carry, Inc. hosted a picnic on Saturday, Aug. 19 at the park to get together and exercise their right to openly carry their holstered handguns in public.“With open carry, we bring gun ownership out of the closet,” said Tom Lambert, president of Michigan Open Carry, Inc. “In that strategy you see success, because people learn the truth. They learn that their friends, neighbors and family are gun owners, and they’re not bad people.”Lambert said several picnics are held every year in different locations around the state. He emphasized the picnic was not in response to any particular event, just an opportunity to openly carry and advocate for the groups’ cause.

Source: Gun owners hold open carry picnic at Holland State Park

This is how you do it! Not dressing up like a bad Call of Duty: Detroit Pimps cosplayer wannabe.

If you want normalcy, act normal. Not like morons exhibiting his pimped up – shot once rifles.

Some years ago, I bumped into this documentary in the History Channel. It is about the last month of the Civil War and how the people involved ended up defining the future of the United States and that includes one Robert E. Lee.

It is about an hour and a half, so I’d say you save it for a time of relaxation and comfort.

After watching it, I ordered the book and devoured it. I did not now the respect that Lee commanded among officers in both sides. I did not know Appomattox was not the official surrender of the war but rather the first. That honor and respect were given to the surrendering party because honor and respect were the norm. We have lost a great deal of that and some want it totally out so history must be rewritten.

Most Americans do not comprehend how unusual was the US Civil War. Usually and unless one side is erased from the map, civil wars have aftermath that last for decades and even centuries as the region that was the former Yugoslavia demonstrated (First record of internal war? The year 1490.) The United States did not have a guerrilla warfare to deal with by the Government, nor did flare ups between armed groups ever occurred, most everybody went home and rebuild their lives. For all the problems that went unresolved then, there was never anther taking of arms.

 “Boys, I have done the best I could for you. Go home now. And if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well.  I shall always be proud of you. Goodbye. And God bless you all.”
Lee addressing his troops after signing the surrender at Appomattox.

On the other side of the lines, Union soldiers began to celebrate. Artillerymen fired their guns to salute the victory over Lee. Grant heard the artillery booming and sent orders that it should stop. “The rebels are our countrymen again,”  he said. “We can best show our joy by refusing to celebrate their downfall.”

It was the honorable men we had back then who by honor alone triumphed over scum, and God there was scum on both sides. Lee’s properties were confiscated and after Lincoln’s assassination, some idiot thinking he was paying the ultimate disrespect, used Lee’s land as burial grounds for Union Soldiers. Today it is known as Arlington National Cemetery and I pretty much doubt General Lee would have found nothing but honor in hosting the resting place of servicemen who laid their lives for this country.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: Is there Honor left?

In my post Welcome to France I covered an article from Slate titled Dozens of Activists Turn Selves in Spartacus-Style for “Crime” of Toppling Durham Confederate Statue.  I commented that it was awful that Slate referred to the destruction of a public monument as a “crime” with sarcastic quotation marks.

Of course the destruction of a monument is a crime.  It doesn’t matter if the monument is offensive.  It doesn’t matter if the the people that destroyed the monument feel that it glorifies racism and slavery.  It is still a crime to attack public or private property.

Since then, things have gotten worse.

Professors Rally Around a Student Who Became the Public Face of a Confederate Statue’s Fall.  Takiyah Thompson was the person responsible for pulling down the Confederate monument on Durham.  She is also a communist, a member of the Workers World Party and a supporter of the North Korean regime.  One college professor who saw her act of vandalism said that she was a hero.

“She is an inspiration to watch. She gave a brilliant interview, was arrested, came out and had a big smile on her face. She is resilient and smart and knows she’s done something that has awakened the conversation around race.”

Other professors have tried to get Ms. Thompson a scholarship.  Yes, public university professors are trying to reward her, financially, for being a criminal.

Over in Berkeley, Yvette Felarca was arrested for inciting a riot.  Felarca is a teacher (of course she is) and a member of BAMN – By Any Means Necessary – an ultra violent Leftist organisation.

Here she is punching some guy in Berkeley.

And here she is being insane on Tucker Carlson.

Well, during her arraignment she said in court “standing up against fascism and the rise of Nazism and fascism in this country is not a crime, we have the right to defend ourselves.”

Except she wasn’t defending herself.  She was attacking a guy for carrying a flag.  Again we have someone is trying to redefine the word crime to not including violence against something that offends her.

Dartmouth Professor (again, a Leftist teacher) Mark Bray said the same thing over the weekend on Meet The Press.

In an insane bit of coverage by CNN on Antifa, this concept ware reiterated.

Antifa activists often don’t hesitate to destroy property, which many see as the incarnation of unfair wealth distribution.

“Violence against windows — there’s no such thing as violence against windows,” a masked Antifa member in Union Square told CNN. “Windows don’t have — they’re not persons. And even when they are persons, the people we fight back against, they are evil. They are the living embodiment, they are the second coming of Hitler.”

Crow explained the ideology this way: “Don’t confuse legality and morality. Laws are made of governments, not of men,” echoing the words of John Adams.

Who on the Left cares about property rights when something is offensive.  It can be destroyed without consequence.

Here is the problem where is ultimately ends.  Some poor dude in Colorado got stabbed because of his haircut.  Apparently his high fade was just too neo-Nazi chic and some radical had to teach him a lesson.

When the message is “it’s not a crime to attack and destroy things you find offensive” we are all fair game to these radicals.

I thought I would post part of one of the most important speeches given in American history.

Given the tearing down of Confederate statues and Iconoclasm of American history I wanted to turn to the the words of Abraham Lincoln at his second inaugural address.

To put this speech in perspective.  The Civil War would end within a few weeks of this speech.  The Confederacy had effectively been defeated.  The 13th Amendment had been just been passed by Congress.  America needed to be healed after four terrible years of war.

Lincoln was known for his rather short speeches.  His second inaugural address was no different, it started out with him saying so.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first.

Lincoln then addresses the war and slavery in two paragraphs.  He ends with these words.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lets look at the first part of his closing one more time.

With malice toward none, with charity for all.

He then goes on to say.

[L]et us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphans.

Lincoln could have very much celebrated the victory of the Union.  He could have chastised the Confederacy, and rubbed their noses in their imminent defeat.  He could have been vainglorious in saving the ship of state.

But he didn’t.  His speech was modest.  He knew that the defeated Confederates would soon enough be his countrymen again and he wanted to end the war with no hard feelings.  Only “malice toward none” and “charity for all” would bring lasting peace and not fuel the fires of resentment.

What we are seeing today is the antithesis of Lincoln’s desires.  The quote of the zeitgeist might as well be  “with malice toward all, with charity for none.”

How sad it is that when we fail to teach the facts of history we forget the lessons of it.