I’m going to double down on a segment of a post made by Miguel the other day on Camiella Williams.

For the record, The Trace is an anti-gun propaganda news site, backed by Michael Bloomberg.

It published an article titled “A Young Chicago Woman Has Lost 23 Loved Ones to Gun Violence. She Wants You To See Their Faces.”  The article starts with Ms. Williams going through her social media account showing all of the people she knew that were lost to gun violence.  It is a tear jerking tragedy.  This poor girl who loses everyone close to her because of guns.

Except, that we find out that poor Ms. Williams is not just an innocent bystander in all of this.

“Not so long ago, gun violence could have consumed her life as well. Williams joined a gang in elementary school, bought her first handgun in sixth grade, and began dealing drugs in high school. It wasn’t until she was 19, when she was pregnant with her child, that she decided to break away from the dangerous trajectory that she had set herself upon as a girl on the city’s South Side. Her path from street life to graduate school has taken 10 years.

‘If I didn’t have my son,’ Williams says, ‘I don’t know where my life would have been.’ But she can guess. Either the gang disputes she often encountered might have lead her to kill someone. Or someone would have tried to kill her.”

Ms. Williams was very much a part of Chicago’s gang culture.  More than a culture, it is an open war.  There is a reason that these sections of Chicago are often referred to as Chiraq.  It is an appropriate parallel, with rival gangs fighting over territory much like rival extremist sects in the Middle East.

Much like everything else the antis do, they focus on the guns, not the bigger issue of gang violence.  Back to Ms. Williams, we find out that she and her friends violated pretty much every state and federal gun law they could.

“Williams soon fell in with a group of teenage boys that belonged to a local gang. When she was in fifth grade, two of them taught her how to shoot. For target practice they would set up light fixtures on a backyard fence where one of them lived.

Williams doesn’t know exactly how her friends got hold of their weapons, but she says it was never too hard to buy or borrow a gun in that part of the city, where today a handgun can be purchased for as little as $25.”

At this point the article causes me to lose all sympathy for Ms. Williams, describing how her life goal was to become a drug kingpin at an age where she couldn’t get into PG-13 movies on her own.

“A year later, in sixth grade, Williams got her first gun: a loaded 9mm pistol she bought from a friend with $25 of her allowance money. After school, she’d rush home and stuff the heavy weapon in her backpack before heading out. She’d pull it out of her pack to scare kids in the neighborhood. ‘That power, that fear that other people had, I got a rush off that,’ she says.

By high school, Williams had begun to sell marijuana. ‘I wanted to be the female [Pablo] Escobar,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to sell drugs and get cars.’ Over time, she acquired two more guns, a .38 and a .22. Increasingly a target for rival gang members — many of whom attended her high school — she felt she needed the weapons for protection.”

When I was in the Sixth Grade, the most criminal thing that I did was stay up later than my parents on Saturday nights to see boobs on HBO.  This girl was selling drugs and brandishing guns.

But don’t worry, the article tries to make Ms. Williams into a tragic victim.

“She didn’t imagine it ever going beyond that. ‘My friends were not out killing people,’ she says.”

Oh really?   Color me skeptical, but there is an old expression: lie down with dogs wake up with fleas.  Meaning… if you are a member of a gang, selling drugs, carrying illegally obtained guns, cavorting with people engaged in likewise crimes, you are morally culpable for anything that occurs because of that… like drive-bys and gang murders.  This girl was no tragic bystander, she was a willing participant in a gang war.

Ms. Williams get pregnant, gets very close to getting killed herself, drops out of the gang, and becomes an anti-gun activist.  A touching story of redemption … that only a bunch of myopic, anti-gun liberals could love.

Neither Ms. Williams nor anybody else associated with The Trace comes close to addressing the real issue here, the gang culture that is tearing inner city Chicago apart.  Chicago is on the path of having the bloodiest year ever.  Sure, maybe the guns used by gangs in Chicago come from Indiana and Wisconsin.  But let me tell you something.  I lived in Indiana and Illinois.  Indiana, which has much more lax gun laws than Illinois does not have anywhere near the murder rate of Chicago.

It’s not the guns stupid.  It’s the culture.  It is a culture where a man get’s shot in the back for wearing the wrong hat on the wrong street corner while trying to visit his mother.

But the antis don’t want to address the root cause of Chicago’s murder rate.  Why?  Because it’s a difficult problem to fix, it requires being judgmental about other people’s way of life, and it’s not a means by which they can exercise their desire to control people they don’t like.

In this article, we get a good peek into the problems in Chicago.  Poor, (predominately) black kids who turn to gang life and drug dealing, which gun violence is a large part up.  We almost have a moment of clarity.  But no… never mind the hopelessness, poverty, self destructive behavior.  It’s the guns.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why this will never get fixed.

I’ve seen this exact scene before, many times.

I figure one day, I will find a strip mall and open up gun store and a knitting/craft supply store right next to each other.

I’ll make a killing.

H/T: Wirecutter

I’m half watching Law & Order: SVU while doing the dishes, because there is nothing else on.  The episode is called Raw, and is about a school shooting.  Blah, blah, blah… whatever, whatever, whatever…

So the cops find the gun on top of a building across the street from the school.  It is described this way:

“Folding stock, bolt action, internal magazine.  High-powered scope and a flash suppressor. This is a precision sniper rifle.  Kind you use with a specific target in mind.”

WOW… a bolt action with an internal magazine and a high power scope.  That sounds like most of the deer rifles sold in America.  There is nothing that the folding stock and flash suppressor (which looks a lot more like a muzzle brake) does to make the gun any more dangerous.  Got to love Hollywood gun hyperbole.  No way this is just another bolt gun.  This is a “precision sniper rifle” used to kill people only.  I can’t believe that this thing is legal./sarc/

This is the rifle that the police tech holds up (captured from Hulu for this post).

I didn’t recognize it (which is saying something) and had to look it up.  Turns out it is a Grendel SRT, which turns out to be a .308 Sako 85 modified by the precursor to Kel-Tec, Grendel Arms, and was made in the late 80’s.  Yep, a hunting rifle with a folding stock and muzzle brake.

It’s a rare rifle.  I only found one online auction for one (either active or expired) and it was on Armslist for $1,600.  Seems like kind of an odd gun to be found at a crime scene and an expensive gun to use as drop piece.

So I tune out…

Then I hear “South Dakota.”  So as a former resident of the Rushmore State, I rewound the episode a little bit (hooray for DVR) and found out that Detective Munch traced where the gun was made:

“It was lovingly manufactured in Sturgis, South Dakota.  Made its way to a wholesale distributor in Brainerd, Minnesota.”

Well this was the image on the screen.

That red dot is nowhere near Sturgis.  Sturgis is right by Rapid City – which you can clearly see on the map.  In fact, if you look carefully, you can see Sturgis on the map just above and to the left of Rapid City.

OK.  I know what you are thinking.  This is a show written and shot in NYC.  What do they know or care about South Dakota.  That is flyover country, why be accurate.  Fine.  I’m used to it by now.

But then L&O: SVU goes full retard.

This is the dialog between Detective Munch (M) and Captain Cragen (C):

M: It was lovingly manufactured in Sturgis, South Dakota.  Made its way to a wholesale distributor in Brainerd, Minnesota.Who then shipped it to a whimsically named little shop – called “Gun ho!” On Staten island.
C: When?
M: Less that a month ago. Gun ho! sold it last Thursday.
C: We have a legal purchase?
M: Complete with loophole.  It’s a long gun, so no background checks are required.
C: Cash sale.
M: Of course.
C: Buyer’s signature on the affidavit?
M: Yeah, but it’s illegible.  And I guarantee you, it is bogus.
C: Okay, well, looks like, uh, “S. Brockwull” or, uh, “Rockwell.” First initial could be “G”? Who made the sale?
M: The owner of Gun ho! His name is Brian Ackerman.
C: Well, he did a pretty half-assed job.  He didn’t get a clear signature or a full first name.

And what, pray tell, is the image that goes along with this?  A mother-lovin’ ATF Form 4473.  It says so right at the bottom of the damn page.

So there are the things the writers of L&O: SVU want me to believe.

1. Neither the Federal Government nor the State of New York mandates background checks on long guns sold at gun stores?
2. A Federal Firearms Licensed gun store will make no record of serialized inventory if the item is paid for with cash?
3. Nobody checked ID when having the buyer fill out a Form 4473?
4. A buyer can get away with not properly filling out a Form 4473 and not printing a full name, birth date, address, city of birth, SSN (optional but very heavily encouraged)?
5. A Form 4473 is NOT part of the NICS background check system?
6. And all of the above is legal?

That is some serious bullshit right there.  No wonder most people and politicians have no idea about the background check system in this country.

Now that I am about one-third of the way done with this turd sandwich, I sit down to finish it.  As the late, great Billy Mays used to say: “But wait, there’s more.”

Detectives Munch and Stabler go to the Gun Ho! (the gun store) and lie their way past the owner’s 16 year old son to take a look around WITHOUT a warrant.  How does the prop department dress up the inside of the store?

In 30 seconds of TV I spotted three SBR’s (two SIG 556 and one UZI) hanging from the walls of a store in a state that explicitly prohibits the ownership of NFA items.  Not including the NFA items, there were a bunch AR-15’s, AK-47’s and other guns with high capacity magazines, in violation of New York City’s longstanding Assault Weapon Ban.

Maybe, this is a gun store that does deal in illegal “backdoor” and straw-man sales.  But would they really be so stupid as to have pretty much everything that is illegal in NYC put on display as soon as two cops walk in the door?  Or did the prop department really have no idea what is and is not illegal in NYC and just put the scariest looking stuff they have in the warehouse on the walls?

So the show progresses a little more, Munch and Stabler hear a noise and go down into the basement where BOOM!!!

A whole orgy of evidence that the gun store owners are racist, white supremacists.  Because of course, why not.  White people, guns store, assault rifles, talking about *gasp* the Second Amendment… they have to be white supremacists.  You just can’t have normal, law abiding, small business owners, who just happen to sell guns in NYC.  Not if you are Hollywood leftists.

I guess not seeing this coming was my fault.  I should have remembered that having an AR is practically screaming “Sieg Heil!” right? I figured the way that NYC oppresses scrutinized guns stores  – to the point where some don’t even sell to civilians – a gun store would have to be above board.  Nope.

Now we find out that the owner of the gun store has an entire Neo-Nazi website.  And somehow neither the government of NYC nor the anti-gun nuts in NYC never uncover this.

As it turns out, the sale was illegal for use in a murder conspiracy.  Somehow the the store owners goes free.  No mention of being arrested and charged with any of the federal laws that were broken relating to an FFL performing an illegal transfer as part of a criminal conspiracy.

In the course of this episode I watched the people over at SVU go hyperbolic misdescribing a 80’s Finnish hunting rifle, show total ignorance of state and federal gun laws and the background check system, then go into complete character assassination of gun stores and gun owners.

This is why so many people are so stupid about guns, gun laws, and gun culture.

F*** you Hollywood.  F*** you.

Moms Demand Action posted this little gem late last night.

That had to be some sort of early April Fool’s Day joke.

First of all, lets address the fact that Illinois has mandatory background checks on all gun sales.  In order to own a gun in Illinois, you have to have a Firearms Owner ID card (a FOID).  Essentially, you fill out a some paper that is nearly identical to a Form 4473 for the Illinois State Police (ISP), pay them $10, 60-90 days later get a permit to exercise your 2A rights.  To even go into a gun store in Illinois, as a resident of the state, you have to have a FOID.  (Yes, I know this is not technically the law, but it is my experience as store policy in gun stores in the Chicagoland area.  The people at the gun counter in the Cabela’s in Hoffman Estates won’t talk to you if you don’t show them your FOID first.)    In every gun sale, your FOID get’s checked.  The seller has to call the ISP to verify that your FOID is still legal – hasn’t been revoked for criminal activity.  In an interpersonal sale, the seller still has to call the ISP to verify the FOID of the buyer even if no NICS check is performed.  In fact, for an interpersonal sale, the FOID of BOTH the buyer and seller has to be verified by the ISP.  Failure to do so is a felony.  So don’t tell me that a lack of a universal background check law is the problem in Chicago.  If the state can’t enforce a FOID check on every Windy City gang banger, what do these people hope the Federal Government can accomplish.

But beyond that, there is no way that MDA could be quoting FORMER Chicago Police Superintendent, Garry McCarthy with any level of seriousness in 2016?  Right?

I know the people over at MDA and Everytown don’t like to venture outside of their anti-gun echo chamber all that often, but this post really shows just how much Bloomberg’s army suffers from cranial-rectal impaction.

Late in 2015, the country learned just how much of a piece-of-shit human being Garry McCarthy is.  Gun owners had been calling him that for years, ever since Illinois was forced to implement concealed carry by the 7th Circuit Court.  McCarthy didn’t want concealed carry in his city and so made a not-so-thinly-veiled threat against potential lawful carriers.

“I don’t care if they’re licensed legal firearms, people who are not highly trained… putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I’ll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we’re going to have tragedies as a result of that. I’m telling you right up front.”

That’s right.  Chicago’s top cop said that his officers will shoot first and check for permits at the morgue.  That’s only calling for politically motivated extrajudicial killings of law abiding citizens on live TV.  Gun owners are used to anti-gunners threatening us, but when that threat comes directly from law enforcement, it’s something new.  There is so much anti-gun hate that spews from MDA and Everytown that perhaps McCarthy’s call for violence against legal gun owners just got drowned out in the anti-gun noise.

But then in late 2015 we find out that Garry McCarthy was part of a system to hide evidence in the police murder of Laquan McDonald, in order to protect Mayor Rahm Emanuel during an election year.  This act was so egregious, even for the Democrat political machine of Chicago, that McCarthy was fired amid protests at the demand of Chicago city aldermen.

Investigations into McCarthy’s actions uncovered a long history of criminal activity and abuse of power going back to his days as the Chief of Police in Newark, New Jersey.  Corruption in Newark?  Say it isn’t so…

So MDA is quoting a corrupt, evidence hiding, murder supporting, political machine muscle, disgraced, fired chief of police as a paragon of anti-gun virtue.  Well, given the number of criminal elected officials that were members of Bloomberg’s (now defunct) other anti-gun group MAI, this totally makes sense.

Hillary Clinton is accused of lying a lot… to the State Department… to the FBI… to the American people… pretty much all the time.  But I recently came across a tweet by Hillary that was very honest, and quite horrible.

Hillary is very proud of the fact that she has an “F” rating by the NRA.

I it is both telling and horrifying that a politician would brag about that.  In the last decade, there have been three major court victories (two SCOTUS, one 7th Circuit Court of Appeals) regarding gun rights: Heller v. DC, McDonald v. Chicago, and Moore v. Madigan.  These tree cases put together say that gun rights are an individual right, that applies to both the Federal Government and the individual state governments, you can own anything in common usage, and you have the right to a gun in public.

The NRA is the largest gun rights organization in the country.  To getting an “F” rating by the NRA you pretty much take a stand against of gun rights.  This is clear from Hillary’s desire to repeal the Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

So here we have the leading Democrat primary candidate bragging about how she is not a supporter of gun rights.  This is tantamount to a presidential candidate bragging about taking a stand against the freedom of speech or against the right not to testify against yourself.

This is a presidential candidate proudly stating her intention to not uphold the rights enumerated in the Constitution and decided upon by the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, among the regressive left, stating your desire to squash other people’s rights has become a badge of honor.  With everything we’ve seen on college campuses recently, I’m afraid the next step in left wing politics is trying to capture the youth vote by openly condemning the freedom of speech as hurtful or “racist and insensitive.”

We haven’t reached that point yet, but a campaign against one right is a campaign against all rights.

I like to think of myself as a nice guy, most of the time.  But there is an angry, vengeful, militant streak in me.  Every once in a while, I see something that sets my blood on fire.  This is one of those times.

One of the victims of the Brussels Airport Bombing was an Israeli Citizen.  Consequently, an Israeli flag was placed at the memorial for the victims of the terrorist attack.

Ever searching for a way to shock the world with by finding new depths to their depravity, a Muslim woman desecrated the memorial to the Israeli citizen by tearing up the Israeli flag while a Muslim man places a Palestinian flag over an Israeli flag at a different memorial.

Nobody there tried to stop either one.

After the Americans liberated Western Europe from the Nazis, a spectacle arose known as the Ugly Carnival.  French and Belgian women who had slept with Nazis – usually for favors – were dragged from their homes, had their heads shaved, and there paraded around town while the newly liberated townsfolk would throw things at them.

I don’t know what is going to happen to Europe in the coming months and years.

What I do know is this.  There is a growing resentment in Europe against the tidal wave of Middle Eastern immigrants.  Rape and violence by migrants that has been poorly responded to by European governments has given rise to vigilante anti-migrant groups.

As an outsider it boggles my mind that the nations and cultures that gave the world Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Handel,  Leonardo, Michelangelo, Monet, Giotto, van Gogh, David, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Dumas, Chaucer, Sarte, Conan Doyle, Dickens, opera, concertos, symphonies, the Pieta, The Creation of Adam, and ballet; would suddenly kowtow to a culture that for all intents and purposes bans music, portraits (most art really), literature, and dance.

Maybe, before Europe burns to the ground, some of the European elite who are so intent on coddling these people need to take a trip to the carnival and get their priorities straightened out.

Rule 1: Don’t be a dumb-ass.

Seems pretty straight forward doesn’t it?  If you have the hankering to take care of your old ride-on lawnmower by packing it with 3 lbs of tannerite and then shooting it, be sure to stand more than 43 feet away.

The bad news is that stumpy had to learn this lesson the hard way.  Good news is that he’s not being charged with a crime since the only person he hurt was himself.

P.S.

I really like the sheriff in this video.