Gun Controls Are On the Political Horizon

 

The Republican Speaker of the House, who was once upon a time the darling of the leading edge conservatives in the party and was a name to run for President, came out and claimed that Republicans are open and considering possible limitations on limiting accessories and possibly types of firearms. We have included the video below for your viewing displeasure or pleasure, depending on your views. Before you run to the video, allow us a few comments. Paul Ryan was accurate to some extent when he pointed out that fully automatic weapons have been banned for a long time, well, almost correct. Fully automatic weapons, like explosives and rocket launchers, require a Federal Firearms License (FFL) weapons permit which requires a series of steps depending on what types of weapons one will be dealing. So, they are not illegal, just very difficult to own and there are special fees and taxes involved in ownership or dealing in such weapons which can become onerous. But then Speaker Ryan states something interesting, namely that he was not aware of such things as bump stocks until this week. Well, allow us to admit that we too were ignorant about such accessories for rifles and other weapons. Speaker Ryan then expresses the idea that a bump stock can take a normal weapon and make it fully automatic fire rate. We did something that the Speaker of the House has apparently not done, actually bothered to read into bump stocks and what they actually do in aiding in the use of a firearm. Wikipedia defines “Bump Fire” as the resultant effect of using a bump stock thus allowing, quote, “The act of using the recoil of a semi-automatic firearm to fire shots in rapid succession, which simulates the ability of a fully automatic weapon.” That is they allow one to simulate, not actually become a fully automatic weapon fire. Now, before delving deeper, here is Speaker Ryan and MSNBC News.

 

 

Now, we looked a little further into bump stocks ourselves and what is about to be stated are our reactions and interpretations of what the use of a bump stock does and does not permit. First, if you are an amateur gun enthusiast whose main firearms use is plinking at targets once every month or so with some friends, then a bump stock will allow you to look ‘kewl’ shooting at the range. With some practice, it, along with the practice, allow you to be more accurate. With a whole lot of practice, it will also aid your rate of fire significantly. So, what exactly is a bump stock and how does it work. It is a recoil-absorbing tool which allows for better accuracy allowing the entire rifle to slide directly backwards when fired. The theory is if one can keep their finger exactly where the trigger-pull fires a bullet, then upon return another round will fire thus mimicking full automatic. This mimicking is exactly that, as you still must have trigger pull for each individual shot fired. Yes, you can, with practice, increase your rate of fire but will suffer a lower accuracy. With some patience, the bump stock can aid accuracy by absorbing recoil allowing one to remain on target between shots requiring less adjustment as recoil is absorbed by the stock as well as the normal recoil mechanisms of the weapon. The Las Vegas shooter was not as concerned with accuracy as he was firing at a mass target, the crowd at an outdoor concert. This means he was able to use the bump stock to fire more rapidly sacrificing any actual target acquisition. He was simply spraying rounds into a large mass of people and hoping for the worst. Firing from the thirty-second floor of Mandalay Hotel into the concert crowd spread out over an acre or more area. The people below were little more than dots running in every direction and he was likely not actually choosing targets with the majority of his shots fired. Military personnel have a name for such firing; they call it ‘spray and pray’ when one simply puts rounds out hoping to hit something, anything of the enemy or of his targets. But now let us talk about the CNN screenshot below used to announce Speaker Ryan’s startling readiness to consider some form of firearm control and especially the banning of bump stocks as they, he falsely claimed, can make a firearm fully automatic fire, remember, falsely stated.

 

CNN Gun Control and Paul Ryan

 

The weapon they used in the graphic was deliberately chosen to frighten anybody who is completely devoid of any actual firearm knowledge. Let us count the ways the weapon depicted is illegal for the average firearm owner. There is one very nice sound suppressor, often referred to as a silencer, on the end of the barrel. It would be next to useless which we will explain in a little while. That stock is an adjustable stock which can be made longer or shorter in order to fit a person of any size. The scope is a military styled scope. But here is the clincher, the tube under the barrel would be a grenade launcher which would make the firearm a military weapon and definitely not legal to own without an FFL license (described above). The weapon pictured above is a wonderful weapon which if society ever fails I would love to have with me. It is also probably select fire rate including single shot, three round burst and full automatic. The M203 grenade launcher fires 40mm grenades including White Phosphorous, High Explosive, High Explosive Anti-Tank and Flechette amongst others (see image below).

 

40mm Grenade Rounds

 

The problem with a sound suppressor on that particular weapon is that, without special sub-sonic ammunition, the round leaving the weapon will exceed the speed of sound, thus making a distinctive and very loud ‘crack’ upon hitting the air and breaking the sound barrier. There is no means of preventing the crack made from breaking the sound barrier. Still, the weapon chosen resembles very closely the weapons shown on the pages linked to above which are all military weapons. The weapon shown in the CNN clip and probably in most broadcasts will largely be military weapons which are not purchasable at your neighborhood firearms dealership. They are the Lotus racecar of weapons. The one item which many of the reports are counting on is the ignorance of the average viewer. They are aware that the average person who resides within a metropolitan area, especially along the two coasts, probably has not fired a gun in a long time if ever. They are using this ignorance, the lack of in depth knowledge of firearms to show a firearm which they are fully aware is nothing at all similar to any firearm that one can purchase under the law without special licensing. But here is something nobody is likely to tell you about firearms. The scary-looking weapons may not be the more dangerous weapons. The first thing one needs to know is the military style weapon and the hunting rifle both fire one bullet for every trigger pull. Either weapon can be adjusted to take a bump stock but a well-trained weapons expert can use techniques to perform the exact same firing style which the bump stock is presumed to provide with a normal stock. The bump stock may make the rapid-fire rate easier for the lesser skilled marksman, it can be equaled through additional training. Now there are some differences which are due directly to the length of the barrel. The military styled weapons have shorter barrels than their hunting rifle variants. Both use identical bullets for the same caliber. The additional length of the barrel for the regular rifle allows for greater accuracy and a faster exit velocity for the projectile, the bullet. These two points are that the hunting rifle which in most instances has similar, if not identical bullet capacities, are actually more dangerous even in the average person’s hands who has a modicum of weapons training.

 

Finally, let us talk about what laws, which can make shootings like those which have plagued the United States, a thing of the past. We are talking about school shootings, church shootings, the Las Vegas mass shooting and the carnage such as experienced in the city of Chicago and other major metropolitan areas. The one item which would work if enforceable would be making bullets and firearms illegal. The problem is unless the energy entities from the Star Trek episode, “Errand of Mercy,” where the Organians disable all offensive weaponry by making them radiate extreme heat making them incapable of being touched, let alone used, we are stuck with what humans can do. Unfortunately, we doubt the Organians are real, but unless such beings do exist and the governments have kept contact a secret, then this attempt to end gun violence will be ineffective. The idea that if weapons such as firearms are made illegal, then only outlaws will have guns is valid if for no other reason than owning a firearm would make one a criminal. The meaning behind it is that criminals really have this habit of disregarding laws and thus would continue to use implements of crime such as firearms in their commission of crimes when helpful. Finally, the only means by which weapons controls could have any hope of working would be if they were universal and that would include disarming nations and their militaries. For reasons which we hope are obvious, this also could never work as there would be at the least a dozen or so nations which would make weaponry illegally and in as clandestine a manner so as to try and catch those nations silly enough to obey such a United Nations decree disarmed and conquer them. Oddly enough, the best means to prevent these mass murders and the straight criminal use of firearms would be counter-intuitive. The solution is to require everybody to take weapons training with refresher courses every year and qualifying and everybody who qualifies will be required to carry a firearm concealed everywhere they go, criminal, stock broker, salesman, parking attendant, stock clerk, accountant, lawyer, car salesman, rocket scientist, physician, physicist and anyone else. In this way there is likely to be an armed person capable of using their weapon close to any criminal use to end the shooting plus criminals would be suspecting that their potential targets would be armed thus crime would drop to the lowest levels in history. That is correct; arm everybody capable of controlling a firearm. Yes, it sounds crazy, but this is the only method which would work and this has been proven, guess where, Israel where the IDF infantry and other trained personnel carry their weapons in public. Shootings are often brought to an end very rapidly as a trained person with a firearm is often close at hand to bring the shooter to justice with great swiftness. But many would quickly claim that some things which work in Israel might not work as well outside Israel and we agree.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Same Old Gangs Blaming Israel

Today the typical situation which is used by Israel’s nefarious enemies will use to cast Israel as the evil force continuing the cycle of violence. Once they start pointing to the fact that Israel has not ceased their attacks despite the Palestinians agreeing to a new three day ceasefire then their supporters and their useful idiots and their cohorts in hating all things Israel which includes extremist right wing nationalists, far leftist anti-capitalists, plain old anti-Semites and others who simply are looking for something to protest or hate will all come flying out of the woodwork with the ready-made signs and chants anxious to excoriate Israel contending that the Israelis are viscous barbarians who live to murder innocent Palestinians. The way this operates is one of the plethora of terrorist groups, or some combination; agree to a ceasefire such as this weekend when the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad all agreed to renew a seventy-two hour ceasefire but when the time to execute came Hamas continued firing rockets into Israel forcing the IAF to respond to defend the Israeli civilians with an attempt to silence the Hamas rocket launching terrorists. Meanwhile both the Palestinian Authority and Islamic Jihad are claiming that Israel has refused the ceasefire and are continuing to bomb Gaza despite their ceasefire agreement. They know that the mainstream media will transmit their plaintiff lament of deception word for word and then add their own commentary forcing the deceit to another level. Next thing you know there are protests across North America, Europe and the rest of the Western world. These demonstrations will instantly appear whenever Israel comes under attack and is forced to defend her citizens. It is a unique occurrence reserved solely for the Israelis.

There has been a viscous war ravaging all of Syria going into its third year and yet there has been nary the major demonstration. The violent land dispute between Russian President Putin and the Ukraine had its share of demonstrations in the news, mostly from within the Ukraine but only limited play-time around the rest of the world. There is ISIS who is crowning their announcement of their forming the next Caliphate with the blood of thousands of Christians which one would expect at least some protests, but mostly silence as their slaughter of innocents continues. Since President Obama had ordered airstrikes against ISIS we just might see some protests now, against those airstrikes, not ISIS. Mind you, the violent abduction of over two-hundred school girls in Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorist group did manage a hashtag demonstration on Twitter which even got a determined angry First Lady but limited street demonstrations, very limited. The sporadic cross-border violence between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been completely ignored by the protest anything groups. All of the various nations in South and Central America which have spurred the child emigration into the United States as desperate parents shipped their children off hoping they would find the promise of a decent future has gained some demonstrations, against the children illegally entering the United States, not against the misery and violence which spurred these children’s parents to such desperation. Spin a globe while blindfolded, stop it and point randomly until you hit a nation and the odds are fairly even that you will be pointing to one of the numerous hot spots of violence, almost all of them unprotested by the perpetually perturbed who usually are ready to protest for any cause. But have Israel come under attack and launch a retaliatory strike and then you would think the world had caught fire by the immediate throngs demonstrating across the globe.

The truth is that the terrorist groups starting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad as the big two and numerous smaller outfits which include but are not limited to al-Qaeda in Gaza, ISIS, small groups attached to Fatah, and PFLP will all combine their efforts to cast Israel in the worst possible light. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are known for their willingness to sacrifice as many innocents as necessary to make it appear Israel is slaughtering these civilian victims of this horrific propaganda ruse. They have also learned that by dressing their fighters in civilian clothing that when a terrorist falls in combat they simply need remove his firearm and any other military gear and now they have another civilian ready for the cameras. Often the media are brought to the place where there had been terrorists struck in an Israeli airstrike who had been sanitized and then shown and photographed by the media. Some of the media who work Gaza as their assigned beat have been induced into providing support for the terrorist interests while others are simply intimidated into assisting in the terrorist rouses presenting exactly what Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the others wish for the world to witness. Any media operating in Gaza or the West Bank area under complete Palestinian Authority rule are required to have their reports approved before they are permitted to transmit or file their story. Any media personnel who report stories or file pictures or videos which cast the terrorist as, say, terrorists, those filing such reports, videos, or pictures are refused any further ability or access to Gaza or other terrorist controlled areas. In Israel the media has the advantage of freedom of the press and are permitted to report everything as they see fit. This even includes reporters and others who are known Israel bashers or even outright anti-Semites, anti-Zionists or reporters for Al-Jazeera. Is it any wonder why Israel receives critical media that actually questions and challenges Israel on their every reason and action while Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Authority and other terrorist groups receive such supportive reporting hiding the horrors and illegal actions such as their firing their rockets and mortars from amongst civilian homes, storing military stores such as rockets and explosives in Mosques and UNRWA schools, surrounding their fighters during firefights with children, using their children to explode suicide belts in public places inside Israel and aiming their rockets and mortars toward Israeli civilians rather than military targets. And this ignores the entire misinformation campaign which had become known as “Pallywood” which I will leave to your search engine to provide the evidence.

Once one takes the time to actually inspect and research the truth and discard the hyperbole and propaganda and a whole new picture and reality appears before your eyes and in one’s mind. Once you cast off the misinformation and group-think, researching the kernels of truth which often are reported in more remote and less popular news sources Israel takes on a whole new perspective and her struggle becomes one with which is at the forefront of the oncoming battle between modern progressive society and regressive barbarism. Doubt this at your own peril but there are reports of ISIS making plans to ally with Hamas and Islamic Jihad joining their terror war to destroy Israel and cleans it of its non-Muslim population. The further you dig into the real news the more you will realize that there is no difference between ISIS and Hamas, Boko Haram and Fatah, Hezballah and al-Qaeda or any of the other pairings of Islamic terrorism. Hamas is supported by Turkey, Qatar and Iran while ISIS is supported by Turkey, while Hezballah is an arm of Iran but ISIS and Hezballah are warring against one another inside the Syrian civil war. The alliances are confusing until one realizes that the Muslim infighting will disappear tomorrow if any Muslim force gained an ability to defeat the Western nations in one great conflagration. Until that one preeminent Islamic entity rises above the rest and shows that capability, the many different power bases within Islam will beck the wide array of terrorist forces as they pose the greatest destructive capabilities currently able for Islam to wage against the Western advanced nations. That is where Israel’s part in this struggle is apparent; Israel is the test case for the rest of the advanced Western nations. Should the Islamic forces ever destroy Israel the rest of Islam will take the lessons learned and apply them to conquer the remainder of the world bringing the entire world under their control; an unavoidable set of events they foresee are coming near to fruition. We hear reports and predictions that Islamic influence is rising to a tipping point in much of Europe, yet outside the Islamic nations of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Albania, Herzegovina, Macedonia which has a historically large Muslim population, and Cyprus which consists of a population which is half of Greek origin and half Turkish origin; the rest of Europe averages well under ten percent indigenous Muslim populations with the majority of nations well below five percent. Many leading military tacticians have claimed that Israel acts much like the cork in a champagne bottle which once removed would open the proverbial floodgates of Muslims into Europe, and some claiming that such an influx might be at the head of an attacking army hoping to initiate the new and their hoped for final expansion of Islam to take what they believe is its rightful place ruling the entirety of planet Earth. Whether these predictions are valid is something I would just as soon not test. Unfortunately, if you go by much of the media coverage of this latest conflict initiated by Hamas by abducting three Israeli teenage boys and murdering them then firing over a thousand rockets into Israeli over the ensuing three weeks before Israel retaliated, then one would believe that much of the Western world would desire such a test, including many European nations. Go figure.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Deadly Game Played on New York City Streets

The New York City Police Department, especially those stationed in mixed Jewish and minority neighborhoods, have their work cut out for them in their efforts to end a potentially deadly and most certainly repugnant “game” which was started in Crown Heights and may potentially spread to other neighborhoods if allowed to persist for any length of time. The “game” has been given the identifying name of “Get the Jew,” or “the Knockout Game,” according to a police spokesperson. The rules to this “game” are quite simple and simply repulsive and offensive to anybody with an ounce of decency. The object is to strike any identifiable Jew with one solid blow while passing them in the public walkways and knock the victim out cold or simply result in putting him on the pavement. The punch is always thrown when the perpetrator is with friends and the Jewish victim is a sole individual thus rendering the attacker sage from any reprisals due to numerical advantage. At least one known victim of this “game” was merely twelve years of age and there have been a small number of these instances caught on video security cameras and in some incidents fellow participants have taken video of the incident which is then posted to social networking sites on the Internet.

 

In an article Thomas Sowell wrote, “responsible authorities in New York seem to have been caught by surprise, even though this knockout game has been played for years by young black gangs in other cities and other states, against people besides Jews — the victims being either whites in general or people of Asian ancestry.” Writing in the New York Post, Sowell further pointed out that “attacks of this sort have been rampant in St. Louis. But they have also occurred in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and elsewhere. In Illinois, the game has often been called ‘polar-bear hunting’ by the young thugs, presumably because the targets are white.” A final mention in Thomas Sowell’s coverage of these events states, “Because Jews have been singled out in these attacks, are considering prosecuting these assaults as hate crimes.”

 

There is another side to this story that will never be reported in the mainstream news, and that is that these crimes have been all but ignored by the mainstream media. Even when such assaults have been given coverage by the mainstream media, the racial angle of these being black on whites, black on Jews or black on other minorities have been omitted by never mentioning the race of the perpetrators. If a similar game were to be perpetrated in such a wide and overt manner and the victims were blacks the mainstream media would be giving such attacks rail to post coverage with front page banners and clocks counting the number of incidents and the elapsed time since the first reported case. Somehow this not fitting the mainstream media’s preferred slant and political shading this news is left with minor coverage if getting any coverage whatsoever.

 

Perhaps some day in the far off future we will be blessed with a press which actually reports facts without any slant or filtering news by its potential political effects and simply allow each individual to interpret the facts as they see fit. The current mainstream media apparently feels that they need to report the news in such a manner as they also instruct their audience exactly what the reported news means and what they should take away from the story as well as what their thoughts on the subject as a whole should reflect. This slanting and coloring of the news is most evident in the reporting during campaign season leading up to elections and has become so blatant that it is bordering on embarrassing. The slant on the news is also blatantly obvious in much of the reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict where one of the main tools used by the liberal-leftist mainstream media is to report any offensive actions taken by the Palestinians whether it be Fatah, the majority member of the Palestinian Authority and also headed by Mahmoud Abbas, or be it Hamas in Gaza using passive terms such as rockets struck Israeli farmlands doing minimal damage while reporting on Israeli counter terrorist measures in more active and violent terms such as the Israelis bombed numerous buildings causing serious damage to the structures and potentially injuring numerous bystanders. The difference is the ineffectiveness of any attack upon Israel is minimized while also often not even mentioning who launched the attack or from where it originated while any reprisal by the Israelis identifies Israel and even will state an implication of possible injuries where none were reported. The other mainstream media way of reporting these instances in a slanted manner is they first mention the Israeli counter-terror operation first and include the name of Israel and their retaliation as an attack in the article title while mentioning the initial attack by the Palestinian terrorists later in the article and then finish the article restating their slant of the Israeli strike thus making it appear as if Israel was the aggressor and not the recipient of the initial strike and only after being struck did they make any retaliatory strike. The mainstream media also tends to not bother to report that the Israelis have often absorbed weeks of multiple attacks, especially rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza as there is an extensive record, and they only bother to make any news articles after the Israelis have responded with a counter-terror-strike and then intentionally write an article more damning of the Israeli measures and making excuses for the Palestinians who were the ones on the offensive. The leftist-liberal-progressive media actually sides with the Palestinian terrorists and appears through their reporting to believe that Israel has no right to take measures in defense of their civilians or their property. The most famous of these cases was the “murder” of a young Palestinian named Muhammad al-Dura by French Channel 2 who were taken to court over their editing and misreporting and then slandering a critic and lost after the court forced them to turn over the entirety of their tapes and the truth became known to the court. To this day the entirety of the film shot by French Channel 2 of the al-Dura incident has never been released allowing the public to view the unvarnished and unedited truth. Perhaps the mainstream media should come with a warning label stating that all of what you are about to see and hear has been altered to fit the political slant and preferences of the well-known media bias, precautions should be taken and nothing should be accepted as actual fact without further corroboration from outside the mainstream media. Like that could ever happen in this somewhat less than perfect world. For those who may wish to point out the bias of the commentary here at BTC, may we remind you that this site does editorializing commentary where the slant is both obvious and to be expected, we try to report new events accurately and also include what our opinion may be and most of our readers are fully aware of this fact.

 

Beyond the Cusp