The problem is that this plan depends on the full collaboration of the mainstream media, and cracks are appearing in that previously reliable alliance.
During a Democratic National Committee event, president Biden once again indulged some of his favorite pieces of misinformation (Did you know that Donald Trump lied all the time?). Biden said that gas prices have fallen by “$1.30 a gallon,” with the average now being “less than $2.99” in 41 states and the District of Columbia. He also said that the current unemployment rate of 3.7% is the lowest it has been in over half a century.
CNN, in the midst of a course correction (as in “maybe we should go back to actual journalism a bit”) debunked both statements. “Biden’s claim about average gasoline prices was false, as the White House acknowledged by correcting the official transcript after CNN inquired about the claim on Friday afternoon,” CNN reported. “In fact, zero states have an average price under $2.99 per gallon, figures from GasBuddy and the American Automobile Association show. As the correction notes, Biden got a key digit wrong: 41 states and the District of Columbia have an average price under $3.99, not $2.99….“But the price of gas is one of the most important numbers in politics. Even if the President made an inadvertent error this time, his incorrect remark was televised live on CNN and MSNBC.”
Later, Biden changed his story to say that “a few” states had average gas prices under $3. That was also a lie.
CNN hit the unemployment deception as well. “A White House official noted Friday that on at least five previous occasions this month, Biden has correctly said that the current unemployment rate is ‘near a 50-year low, ” CNN pointed out. “By claiming this time that the 3.7% rate is the lowest in more than 50 years, though, Biden not only erased the recent uptick from 3.5% to 3.7% but erased the performance of the pre-pandemic economy under his Republican predecessor.”
Of course, how much or how vigorously the rest of CNN’s propagandist pals will start trying to inform the public rather than assist the Democrats in defeating the fascists is still much in doubt. So far, the vast majority of Biden lies and inexcusable misinformation have been ignored by the media propagandists; Prof. Turley flagged one this month.
“…[H]e returned to a curious claim that he has made repeatedly: that “the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun.” Turley wrote in part. “Conservative and gun rights publications have repeatedly shot down that claim but it does not seem to have any impact. As with Biden’s false claim that certain weapons were banned from private ownership at the ratification of the Second Amendment, the President continues to make the same false claim on velocity speed….Those false statements can be dismissed as just another gaffe or “Corn Pop” story, but they refer to the factual foundation for gun control under the Second Amendment. Since President Biden is suggesting that such facts are material to a ban, there is a need for accuracy in such details..”
Ugh. Weenie Professor-ese again. Why yes, professor, there is always a “need for accuracy,” as in “It is unethical to try to persuade by lying one’s head off.” Some outrage would be appreciated, and might help curtail this unethical habit. He continues,
The White House is ramping up the President’s call to ban “assault weapons” before the midterm elections. The position remains unclear, including additional references to 9mm handguns are possibly next on the list for prohibitions.
In support of the ban on AR-15s, Vice President Kamala Harris declared: “Do you know what an assault weapon is? It was designed for a specific purpose, to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war, with no place, no place in a civil society.”…Courts likely would press the Biden administration on why it is seeking to ban this model when other higher-caliber weapons are sold. AR-15s can handle a variety of calibers. However, they are no more powerful than other semi-automatic rifles of the same caliber and actually have a lower caliber than some commonly sold weapons which use .30-06, .308 and .300 ammunition; many of these guns fire at the same — or near the same rate — as the AR-15. None of these weapons are classified as actual military “assault weapons,” and most civilians cannot own an automatic weapon.
Turley concludes.
There are good-faith arguments for gun control, including arguments that the Second Amendment does not create an individual right to bear arms. We should continue to have that worthy debate but we should follow the rule of the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
Yes, except that if lying and disinformation works because our partisan media refuses to do its job, manufacturing useful, if false, facts is a process too effective to eschew.
Ethics Alarms 
“There are good-faith arguments for gun control, including arguments that the Second Amendment does not create an individual right to bear arms.”
1. The Second Amendment doesn’t create an individual right to bear arms, it just obligates the government to guarantee that right, which preexisted the government.
2. Yeah, sure, this is good faith argument, just like the First Amendment doesn’t establish an individual right to free speech and the Fourth Amendment doesn’t establish an individual right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. I’m sure the Left wants it that way, but it ain’t so.
Is there an example of one of the founding fathers, or other leaders in the government or military of the time, turning in their personal weapons to an armory for a militia after the creation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights?
Whenever anyone within government rails against citizens owning firearms, you just know they have we the people best interest in mind—->Riiiight.
I mean, history proves that right—->Suuuuure.
You can always trust the motives and sincerity of government officials when they maneuver to increase their power while decreasing the power of those they rule over, right?
The 2nd Amendment is likely the primary reason the fascist Left arm of the current dem party is not even more violent, intimidating, and militant. Imagine how worse things would be without a well-armed citizenry. The Founders knew exactly what they were doing.
It is always entertaining when Cornpop escapes his basement while simultaneously dramatizing the decreased efficacy of his medication. Life is good, drink it up!
I think many of those in Maine were required to hand over their weapons, during and after the British-American War, as part of their oaths of obedience. Of course, those weapons weren’t collected by a U.S. militia.
False claims can’t be dismissed as “just another gaffe” after the first time they’ve been pointed out, unless the speaker is too addlebrained to remember being corrected. In spite of of SloJo’s substantial “history of fabricated history”, mental deficiency may now be a real possibility in his case. Here he is recently, representing us at the queen’s funeral: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdDHNYBX0AIdFuo?format=jpg&name=small Hopefully he’s not having to clean his tongue after licking himself…or the woman in front of him.
One small note on gas prices: Some states temporarily suspended their state gasoline taxes (Georgia’s resumes Oct. 12). This means even current lower price averages aren’t really as low as they appear.
Putting aside the common argument that “weapons of war” are precisely the types of individual soldier’s arms meant to be protected by the Second (strongly implied in US v. Miller), I don’t know that any army in the world uses AR-15s, though dem Tammy Duckworth tweeted “It’s literally in the name. Weapons of war are designed for the battlefield.” This prompted questions about whether she is actually a duck, or at least only worth as much as one.
Regarding gun control, there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. It described how Ukraine won the battles in and around Kyiv during February and March.
The article starts by stating “Citizen volunteers teamed up with soldiers to turn the tide.” In other words, the Ukrainian military by itself would not have won this battle. Ordinary citizens volunteered to fight and defend their country with whatever weapons they could find (including their own).
You may recall our president saying it was hopeless for citizens to think they could defend themselves against the government because it had F-15s. Well, I think this is an excellent example of how wrong he was.
I believe the Russian army has the equivalent of F-15’s, they have main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, (not to mention real, actual assault weapons). Ukraine had some of that stuff, but not nearly as much. Nonetheless, they did everything they could and beat the Russians back from their capital.
It is an object lesson of the resilience and ingenuity of determined men and women defending themselves against an oppressor. We’ve had this lesson before, in greater or lesser degree — the American and French revolutions, the Texas revolution, our Civil War, the partisans in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union during WWII, the Roman republic. I am sure there are more examples.
I think this latest example demonstrates how important the 2nd Amendment is — and why the government (rightly) tends to be afraid of it.
There’s a pretty big elephant in the room when Biden talks about how the US government’s fighter jets and tanks guarantee defeat for insurgencies that only have small arms on their side…
Who’s in charge of Afghanistan today? Two decades of “F-15s” doesn’t seem to have done much to stop them, and up until we gave them billions of dollars worth of our rifles and equipment, they were fighting us mostly with worn out Soviet-era junk, wearing handmade sandals.
Great point Jeff although I believe White House paid liar Karin Jean-Pierre has already addressed that exact issue.
White House gadfly and meanie Peter Doocy raised the point that Jeff made and Jean-Pierre’s response was something along the lines of—> It is really hot in Afghanistan and the locals having grown up there have become naturally acclimated thereby giving them an unfair advantage and also negating the weapon/technology imbalance. Video tape shows all the dem reporters heads bobbing up and down.
Must admit; she is creative and already has a devoted following.
And before our F-15’s struggled Afghanistan, Russian MiG-29s struggled mightily there as well, for nearly two decades. Why did the world’s #1 military and the world’s #2 military fare so poorly?
I think the answer is another letter/number combo…the AK-47. I think a very large percentage of Afghanis own one and know how to use it. An armed citizenry is extremely difficult to overcome.
On a point of information, that does not happen to be the case – if the practitioner is ready, willing and able to use the tried and true methods involved (no more people, no more problem; massacre and exile, as Buchan put it, or take away the water, the fish die, as Mao Tse Tung put it). That has rarely been the case during the last 150 years, largely because of outside factors, though Britain managed a dilute form of it in South Africa more recently.
Who wants to be the first American commander to order an air strike against American citizens? Who would pilot the aircraft?
Now if the current ATF or FBI start asking for A-10s, I WILL start to worry.
I was trying to clarify that there are indeed other methods that do work reliably – if they are used. Your points, though otherwise accurate, cover:-
– Whether people would indeed be ready, willing and able to do the things you mention. Clearly, that does not go to whether the methods work if they are used, only to the very reservations and qualifications I gave as to their use. And you should not bet that those will always operate to prevent that use.
– A no doubt inadvertent straw man. None of the things you list are part of the methods that work, any more than the (eventual) British battle field success in South Africa was what the British had to do after that to pacify the country. At most, that sort of thing is a preliminary to allow the work on the ground. And that/I> doesn’t involve air strikes or anything that smacks of frontal assaults, it just needs things like lockdowns taken to an extreme, and implemented in very indirect ways (e.g. the Turks first conscripted all the Armenian men of military age they could, using or threatening the swamping methods that the French had developed to enforce that, and then burned out or drove out the rest of the Armenians with the aid of Kurds who got a share of the loot and killed death march stragglers; little or no Turkish military effort was needed).
Drat, a closing of an emphasis got broken. Sorry.
RE : unemployment rates
Biden’s claims should also factor in the labor force participation rate (LFPR). The link shows a downward trend from 2007 to 2016 under Obama. Trumps LFPR numbers are relatively flat until Covid hit and Biden’s LFPR has not yet increased to the level Trump maintained.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
What this means is that we have a lot of dropouts from the workforce. Theoretically, all unemployment values, including Trump’s, are skewed downward so any claims that they are 50-year lows is BS. The LFPR under Bush 2 was 3.3% higher than Trump’s best and 4.2% higher than Biden’s August 22 numbers.
Some of this is explained by an aging population but the consistent downward trend from 2008 through 2016 indicates that people were encouraged to leave the workforce.
There is no good-faith argument that the Second Amendment protects a “collective right”. The idea of a “collective right” has never been defined to me in any way that separates it from a power of federal or state governments. I have never been able to find a gun control supporter who can articulate what, if anything, the protection of such a “collective right” would forbid any government from doing. It finds no support in history. In short, it is and has always been a sham, a throwaway phrase used as cover for the position that the 2nd Amendment protects simply nothing at all. It is a claim that emerged in 20th century legal academia on order to align with political fashion within (urban, liberal) social class that populated the same, and only survived by shielding it from scrutiny in an academic echo chamber. It’s long past time to stop giving the argument the deference it has never deserved, and consign it to its rightful place in the dustbin of history.
Those who insist that the framers meant “the state” when they wrote “the people” in the Second Amendment are apparently too lazy to check the wording in the Tenth.
If people really pay attention to the first ten Amendments, they’re there to enumerate individual rights of the people and limit the power of the government, the notion that the 2nd Amendment was put there to limit the power of the people and increase the power of the state or federal government is delusional.
It’s not just that. Those who fall back on the claim a “collective right” meant the Feds couldn’t interfere with the several states’ power to arm their militia don’t actually mean that. Ask them if the federal government would be barred from interfering with states that designate all citizens as militia members, with directions to arm themselves. You would be hard pressed to find any who agree.
CNN is not showing integrity. These lies are so inconsequential, that CNN “factchecking” them is only meant to make noise. Biden supporters don’t care that he lied about gas prices; Republicans already know Biden lies about trivial details.
CNN highlighting these lies is meant only to breed deceptive trust. They want people to think they hold the president accountable for his lies, when in reality, the subject matter is too trivial for anyone’s attention. Whenever detractors rightfully point out CNN and others regular bury inconvenient facts, CNN can point to this ridiculously stupid issue as counter evidence. It also likely lets them devote air time away from some consequential scandal so that they can trumpet Biden being off by a whole dollar in the national average gas price.
Now, if CNN highlighted Biden’s lie about AR-15 ammunition speeds, rather than Prof. Turley, that would be a consequential breaking of rank!
President Biden said, ““the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun.”
That statement is categorically FALSE and verifiably so. That statement is signature significant of a firearm blithering idiot and it’s also irrelevant in almost all shootings with AR’s looking clones. President Biden opened his mouth to change socks and he seems to do that a lot when it comes to firearms. President Biden repeats the same false information about firearms that’s been debunked with actual facts so often that it appears that the President is intentionally lying.
When talking to the general population, arguments about comparing muzzle velocities is statistically irrelevant in bullet ballistics at 100 yards or less and the information presented is useless drivel that blows straight over the heads of people that are ignorant and make their eyes glaze over. It’s pure emotional bull shit propaganda and ignorant people suck it up like candy but people that aren’t ignorant about such things know it’s bald-faced lies. Don’t be one of the ignorant ones.
Here are some relevant generic facts about bullet velocity for everyone to add to their knowledge base.
Why are bullet velocities statistically irrelevant in bullet ballistics at 100 yards or less, because at or less than 100 yards (that’s what the vast, vast majority of people are actually shot at) it only takes a bullet fractions of a second or much less to reach its target. Even with a really slow rifle muzzle velocity of 1500fps it takes less than a quarter of a second for the bullet to reach its target 100 yards away. The difference between a bullet traveling 100 yards at velocities of between 1500fps and 4000fps is only 1/8th of a second. Go ahead and try thinking about just how short a time frame 1/8th of a second is. Here is some relevant data…
There are other ballistic factors that also can and do change these speeds as they travel through the air but at a 100 yards or less it’s negligent to the point of calling their effect statistically indistinguishable from zero and completely irrelevant.
Once you start shooting beyond 100 yards, experience is the dominating factor and the time of bullet travel makes a big difference when that time starts to exceed 1/2 second. I’ve known people that can figuratively shoot the wings off a stationary fly at a hundred yards or less and they can do it over and over again, but give them a moving target of any kind beyond 100 yards and they’ll miss the target half the time and when they do hit the target it’s usually not where they intended. A real world example of this is when people shoot a running deer a couple of hundred yards away, they aim for the area just in front of the heart and they end up hitting the hind quarters or miss entirely. Experience and training can make a huge difference in changing outcomes at long distances.
Back when I was in the Army, infantry soldiers were routinely put on rifle ranges with popup moving targets at various ranges (if I remember correctly when I taught Infantry School back in the mid 1990’s the furthest moving target was 200 meters or less) that are only visible for 3-5 seconds to improve their likelihood of hitting moving targets in combat situations. Even with routine exposure to these ranges their shooting scores still drop dramatically from stationary pop up target ranges. It’s not nearly as easy as it looks in the movies, it takes very regular practice to learn the skill and more regular practice to maintain the skill.
If there is one thing that’s completely consistent about the arguments from the anti-firearm advocates, it’s that they can’t argue intelligently using firearm facts so they resort to ginning up emotions with false propaganda narratives, like President Biden does. I have been saying for a while that the political left has shown its pattern of propaganda lies within their narratives so many times since 2016 that it’s beyond me why anyone would blindly accept any narrative that the political left and their lapdog media actively push! The political left’s narratives have been wrong so many times, about so many things over the last 7+ years that I can’t, and won’t, apply Hanlon’s Razor to their behaviors, in my opinion there is a clear pattern of malice in their behaviors.
Here is something else related to firearms that Statistically Indistinguishable From Zero!