I held fossilized dino caca in my hand.

Bud Light wanted a new and inclusive ad, here is mine:

Scene:

A blue collar, hard work job, a construction site or a foundry, something dirty and tough.

The foreman is speaking to the workers saying they have a to get a lot done in a time crunch and it’s going to be a big job and some long hours but he knows they’ll get it done.

The camera focuses on the face of a young woman, standing in with all the men.  She’s a solid head shorter than the rest of them.  She looks unsure of herself.

They are working, hard.  Nobody is being mean to her, nobody is discriminating against her.  She is clearly giving it her all to keep up. She stumbles a few times, but picks her self up and keeps trucking.

Day ends, foreman announces that they accomplished their task.

Crew goes to a bar after work.

The young woman shows up.

All the other guys are there drinking Bud Lights.

The foreman beckons her over to an empty seat, she sits down, the foreman passes her a Bud Light.

Says to her “you did a good job out there today, you earned this.”

All smiles.

Cuts to Bud Light logo and legalese text.

So this has popped up over and over again. There is another study from KFF saying that 1 in 5 (19%) of people say that a family member was killed by a gun. These number are scary scary numbers. Has something happened?

Well I started digging through the CDC and NEJM letter and numbers and it is just to much work for me right now. I’ve got paying clients that need that time. Instead I’ll give you a YouTube video that covers much of what I was planning on saying:

The current population of the United States is around 331,900,000. If 19% of those people have had a family member killed by a gun that means 63,061,000 people have had somebody in their family killed by a gun. Given that there are around 45,000 gun related deaths per year, this number seems a little high.

The average family size in the US is currently around 3.1. That doesn’t really help. Looking at household size by city shows that doesn’t make a real difference either. It looks like race doesn’t really make that much difference either.

So let’s extend that from immediate family to extended family. We move to two generates, that gives us 4 + 3 + 3 or 10. If we go to three generations that takes use to 10 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 22. So we will use 22 as our base number for extended family.

That gives us 15,086,363 extended families in the US. If 19% of those families had a gun related death that would mean that
2,866,408 families had a gun related death in that family.

Again 45,000 deaths per year. It would take 63+ years to reach that number of deaths.

Given what they asked and how they asked it, my guess is that they are polling urban black neighborhoods at a rate that is over represented. In urban black centers there are often 100% rates of families having had somebody in their family shot.

The poll looks to be legit but the numbers they give just do not pass the sniff test.

Let’s compare two videos.

This is the ad Trump has started airing against Ron DeSantis.  Keep in mind, DeSantis hasn’t even announced that he’s running yet.

Now this Trump interview with Tucker Carlson.

TRUMP: "I used to get along great with" Gavin Newsom!"

TUCKER: "Wait, you got along with Gavin Newsom?!"

TRUMP: "He was always very nice to me. He said the greatest things."

TUCKER: "About you?!"

TRUMP: "About me." pic.twitter.com/qO6ebk307V

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 12, 2023

Ron DeSantis is the most popular governor in the history of the State of Florida.

He turned Florida from a purple state to a Red state.

Gavin Newsom was almost recalled.

California lost more residents than any other state under Newsom, and most of those people went to Florida under DeSantis.

But Trump savages DeSantis and praises Newsom.

Why?

DeSantis is a threat to him and Newsom stroked his ego.

This is Trump on 2024, it’s all about his ego.

He’s not running to MAGA, he’s running to Maje Trump a Winner Again.  That’s it.

In 10 years I hope the Second Amendment community can look back at the Bruen decision and celebrate all that it did for us.

After Heller we all looked at there being a huge wave of getting our rights back. Unfortunately after McDonald it all stopped. The state found a way.

That two step process of means-end was horrific. It allowed any infringement to stand as long as the state said “it will promote the public good.” Yep, that’s good enough.

I keep using the phrase “Just how much were you raped, Mrs. Jones, we have to balance that against…”

The state has lost on the history and tradition front. You can see it in their filings. Over and over again the same regulations are presented and time after time they are discounted. The fact is that there were no gun control laws in the 1700’s. Gun control didn’t really get started until post civil war when it was used to disarm the newly freed and former freedmen.

This leads to what the state is attempting to do at this time.

First, they are attempting to change the era from which they pull regulations. If they can get the court to accept reconstruction era regulations then they will win in the infringing states/courts.

Next they are attempting to get the courts to accept regulations that are not a match but could be twisted with enough leverage to match their current infringement. To do this they have to get the court to accept that their infringement is there because of something new. This is likely to make some headway but not a lot. With Bruen behind us and enough judges with good moral conscious on the circuit courts it is unlikely to prevail.

The state is also trying to hide in the weeds by saying that certain infringements are acceptable because the Supreme Court didn’t directly say anything about it. This is SCOTUS saying that things are presumptively allowed. Presumptively allowed means that the court didn’t rule on that thing so is just going to allow it to stand, for now.

This is the argument that the state is using about “Good moral character”. Since the Supreme Court ONLY ruled against showing cause and used the term “lawful user” this means that “good moral character” is also allowed. Which the state will now define in such a way as to make it so painful that it is almost impossible to get through.

We are seeing sensitive places as expected. That is going to die. Not because the states will stop using it, but it is not a long term winning strategy for the state.

The thing that Bruen really did is that it leveled the playing field for the first time in over a decade. The state hates playing fair. They know they will lose.

The biggest argument that the state is pushing is that it is the plaintiff’s burden to prove. Over and over again in these filings the state says things like “The plaintiffs have failed to prove” or “The plaintiffs have offered no evidence.”

Everything that seems to be holding for the state right now is based on trying to flip the burden back on the plaintiffs.

We live in interesting times. We are winning.

I am still inclined to go with Copycat Syndrome, but it sure as hell smells like a Matthew Bracken book.

The Internet makes everybody brave…and a lot stupid.

He Means It!! – Area Ocho