Reposting a rant you're not going to like, by Brandon Morse

Ed. here. The last couple of months has been hard on Walt's blood pressure, and kindly ol' Doc Martin has suggested some time away from the USA might do him some good. He is therefore in partibus infidelibus until further notice, but we -- Poor Len Canayen and I -- won't let our faithful readers down.

Our National Sports Editor will wait until after tonight's NHL playoff game between the Penguins and the Habs to make sure he wasn't dreaming on Saturday night, so today we'll share with you excerpts from "Stop Being Nice: A Rant You're Not Going to Like", by Brandon Morse, in RedState, 31/7/20. By "you", Mr Morse means you conservatives and libertarians who aren't fighting back against the BLM/SJW/Antifa war on our society. Here are some choice chunks from his call to action.

I'm convinced that we've become a nation that has gotten so out of control in our adherence to social justice that it's even infected the people who are supposed to resist it, or worse, we've become too scared to rebel against it....

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, isn’t living up to its reputation as either of those things. Social justice has infected everything and turned the United States into the shadow of its former self.

Despite all the fighting back we've done, the left is still managing to make their reality-rejecting ideological stances the standard in how the public conducts itself. It doesn't matter if its a complete denial of science or embracing failed political systems, the general public has become too afraid to look at the raging, temper tantrum throwing, hate-filled left and say "no."....

Social justice has taken over our society so much that we have a mass of people so brainwashed by leftist propaganda that they actually believe that socialism and communism are awesome. Socialists and communists [come] out of the woodwork to let me know that capitalism is actually the place where people starve and that Soviet Russian citizens actually ate better than Americans back in the day....

So convinced are the brainwashed left by their professors and peers, however, that their position is that my own eyes and ears are useless and that I should trust theirs. So consumed with social justice are they, that despite reality slapping down every position they have on the subject, they embrace it with their heart and soul to the point of violence....

These are the same idiots screaming "Black Lives Matter" in the streets as they burn down black-owned businesses, destroy their neighborhoods, and even kill them over television sets during riots. The same idiots who tell you that they're the good guys as they pummel you into a near-coma because you think pummeling people into a near-coma isn't the way we fix society.

...the end-goal of Black Lives Matter isn't equality and elevation of black lives but the fact that despite repeated actions from the BLM rioters and their leaders have proven me right time and again, the general public either still believes BLM cares or is too afraid to say otherwise. It's this cowardice that drives me nuts.

Our nation is collapsing around us, people have lost or are losing their jobs, businesses are failing, and the stress of it all is causing drug and alcohol abuse, as well as suicide rates to shoot up....

If all the truly responsible people went out and opened their businesses and conducted their lives like normal, the politicians and COVID-Karens could rant, scream, and rave all they want, lefty doctors could fear-monger till they were blue in the face and show us skyrocketing infection rates, but beyond these people, you wouldn't know a damn bit of difference between now and pre-COVID America....

I think a lot of this is happening because, frankly, we've become so passive and polite. Our enemies have interpreted our mild-mannered kindness as weakness and we’ve done nothing to prove otherwise....

I'm sick of this "nice guy" routine we’ve gotten ourselves into a rut with. It’s not doing us any good and we’re clearly being taken advantage of....

I'm promoting self-defense, which we have a right to. I guarantee that if rioters began seeing that the likelihood of being shot went up significantly, you'd see a lot of people a lot less gung-ho about being destructive and violent. The choice to loot and pillage becomes a lot more difficult to make when the consequences involve dying somewhere between the store and the hospital bed.

That means speaking truths that are uncomfortable and not doing things that our polite society has taught us to do. Stop qualifying your facts with reassurances that you’re not racist or sexist. Stop being afraid to make other people uncomfortable with your disagreements. ...stop entering every verbal combat situation by putting yourself on the back foot as a show of friendliness. They won't show you that mercy and will only take advantage of it.

We're not a nation of cowards so let's stop acting like it. The old saying that "all evil needs in order to succeed is for good men to do nothing" applies here. Our enemies deserve no quarter as we have received none ourselves.

Fight back.

That's about half of what Brandon Morse wrote. Click on the link in the introduction to read the whole thing. Any further comment from us, even an "Amen!", would be superfluous.

VIDEO: Thinking about gun control

This weekend's unexplained... and unexplainable... massacre in Las Vegas has been politicized to the Nth degree by the Democrats, lamestream media and others whose agenda is to overturn the Second Amendment and take our guns away, leaving weapons only in the hands of criminals, terrorists and "the Authorities". I've been thinking about that. Being a libertarian, I'm inclined to resist the calls for disarmament of ordinary people, but tragedies like Mandalay Bay and Sandy Hook give me pause.

I have some experience with guns. In my misspent youth [a century ago. Ed.] I was into Dr Hunter S. Thompson's fun trio of drugs, firearms and loud music. Get ripped on reds 'n' white and go out on a dark night and blast the shit out of some inanimate object -- good times, good times. The key word there is "inanimate". I was never a hunter. I did shoot skeet, but Mrs Walt found it hard to clean and cook. But there was something mighty satisfying about firing a good shotgun, like this Ithaca 51.

I used to keep mine, safely stored, in my cabin in the pines, a good half-hour by car from the nearest town of any size. I have always subscribed to the theory that a man's home is his castle, and was secretly hoping for an opportunity to defend my little castle with the Ithaca or either of a couple of pistols I kept for just such an occasion. The shotgun would have been best. Cut the intruder in half with a deer slug. Yeah. Just as Bill Burr says at the 2-minute mark of this video.



Eventually I discovered that the Authorities and Forces For Good in the community don't want us to defend ourselves and our property. If someone breaks into your home or place of business, they say, don't challenge them, especially with a weapon. They could use it against you! Just call 9-1-1 and the police will take care of you. I call BS on that! I tried it when a young punk walked into my office after hours, looking for trouble. I gave him what he was looking for -- a warning shot across the bow, so to speak -- and then called the police. Guess who wound up in the dock (not the kind where you park your boat)? That's right. It was me! [Should be "It was I!" Ed.]

Right, Ed. We must watch our grammar. But we have no time for that now. To get my train of thought back on the rails, imagine what would have happened if I had actually shot that kid! I would likely be writing this blog with a pencil on prison stationery. [But that's what you... oh... never mind. Ed.] Law-abiding citizens who exercise whatever right to self defence is left to them by the nanny state get the shitty end of the stick every time, while criminals and terrorists get the other end. It ain't right!

I will grant you... I have to grant you, given the terrible reality of events like this weekend's massacre, that every now and then some deranged individual will go right off the deep end and take out some innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mandalay Bay was the worst, but it wasn't the first. On the other hand, perfectly sane but perfectly evil people do the same thing. Look at Orlando. Look at San Bernadino.

Several people said that if some of the people shot in those terrorist attacks had had guns of their own, the death toll would have been considerably lower. IMHO that's right. We can't depend on our police to protect us, either because they are afraid of being called "racists"and "Nazis" or because they themselves are the thugs and bullies who like to shoot people just for the fun of it. Our best defence against terrorists or other marauders is a peaceful but vigilant and well-armed citizenry.

Please don't tell me that's a ridiculous notion, a classic example of American exceptionalism. Swiss laws on the possession and use of firearms are based on a longstanding tradition of shooting as a part of the national identity. The practice of the Swiss militia is to have the citizen soldiers keep their rifles in their homes. And we're talking about military-style guns, not just hunting rifles or shotguns.

What is needed, to avoid repeats of Mandalay Bay or Pulse or Sandy Hook, is not a ban on firearms, but more careful screening and enforcement to make sure that guns are kept out of the hands of terrorists and idiots. In Switzerland, in order to buy most weapons, the purchaser must obtain a weapon acquisition permit. Any adult citizen who is not psychiatrically disqualified nor identified as posing security problems, and who has a clean criminal record can request such a permit. The same rules apply to the purchase of ammunition.

In the result, although the percentage of Swiss who own firearms is probably higher than that of the USA, the murder rate in Switzerland is much, much lower. And so far there has not been a single terrorist attack. Think about it. Banning guns is not the answer to ails the Paranoid States of America today. It's not the guns. It's the people who have them.

Further reading: "The Culture of Death—and of Disdain", by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, 5/10/17. "Why do Americans own so many guns? Because they don’t trust the protected elites to protect them."

"Bro! Don't be breakin' into houses in Texas! Dey gwine shoot you daid!"

As I've said before, it takes time for news to filter its way up to us, here in the headwaters. Agent 17 has just now sent us a lead on an incident that happened in Texas a year and a half ago. The story is so encouraging to those who believe that a man's home is his castle that it's worth posting, even at this late date.

According to a report on NBC's Dallas channel, a homeowner heard a noise inside his resident at about 4:15 PM on 13 February 2013. The noise was made by someone climbing through the window, so the homeowner shot him, as you're allowed to do in Texas, which is a Castle Doctrine state, which means that a Dallas grand jury will determine whether or not the homeowner will face any charges. Dallas Police Sgt. Calvin Johnson affirmed the homeowner’s right to defend his home. "They don’t actually have to retreat once someone comes in their home. You have the option of using deadly force if you believe your life is in danger."

The would-be burglar was identified as 33-year-old Deyfon Pipkins, aka BJ, pictured here. When police arrived, following the homeowner's 9-1-1 call, they found BJ's body lying lifeless in the window. His mother, Catherine, arrived on the scene not long after the cops, having been called by her daughter-in-law. Ms Pipkins said "Yeah, it's something he would do.... Somebody called her [her daughter-in-law] and told her he had got shot. She said, 'Momma you need to sit down, they said BJ just got killed.' That's the reason I'm here."

NBC reported that Pipkins had a lengthy criminal history, including numerous charges for theft, trespassing and possession of a controlled substance. All the same, according to True News USA, Pipkins' family thought the homeowner should have given BJ a warning, or something, before shooting. "He could have used a warning," said Lakesha Thompson, Pipkins' sister-in-law. "He could have let him know that he did have a gun on his property and he would use it in self-defense."

Comment from the sideline (elsewhere on the Net):
That's certainly true, Lakesha. He could also have invited him in and given him a beer, then helped him cart the TV out to the curb....
For that matter, Lakesha, you could have warned Deyfon. Why didn't YOU tell him, "Deyfon, yo' needs to quit breakin' into those peoples' houses and stealin' they shit. Someone is goin' to pop a cap in yo' ass!"

In light of the steadily increasing cost and rising scarcity of ammunition, a warning shot is a frivolous and unnecessary expense. In this case, a substantial savings of taxpayer money was a side result: no investigation expense, no jail time awaiting trial, no expense of a trial, and no prison costs after sentencing!

Don't you just love it when things work out right?!