Charlotte: Video, And The Reality Of Gunfights

The two videos–dashcam and bodycam–of the Charlotte confrontation are, as has been widely reported, not definitive. As I wrote in December of 2014 in The Body Camera Delusion, body cameras are not a panacea, an infallible source of evidence that will incontrovertibly prove or disprove any allegation against the police:

Let’s play police officer! Draw a camera on a piece of masking tape and stick it to the center of your chest on a buttoned shirt. Keep in mind the lens of your camera is sort of wide-angled, which means it will probably be able to take in two people standing shoulder to shoulder, but probably nothing else, and it might be able to take in their bodies from upper thigh to a bit over the top of the head, but a lot of that depends on how short, tall or wide they are and where you position it on your body.

Charlotte, The Run On Guns, And The Rule Of Law

There is little doubt Barack Obama is the gun salesman of the decade–perhaps the century–thus far. Many think this due to his anti-liberty, anti-gun philosophies, and his cynical attempts to push gun control measures after school attacks like that in Newtown, CT, and of course, following virtually every terror attack. While Mr. Obama refuses to identify such attacks as motivated and carried out by Islamist terrorists, he has never hesitated to paint law-abiding American gun owners as terrorists and criminals.

But it is not mere his anti-gun tendencies that have dramatically increased gun, ammunition and accessory sales. Even many progressives, while not yet abandoning their political faith, have become first-time gun owners, and found themselves associating with, and being advised and trained by, the God and gun clingers they previously reviled.

Hillary Clinton: Everyone Has The Right To Immigrate To America!

credit: nationalreview.com

The United States of America is without peer in generosity, not only of pocketbook, but of spirit. No nation in history has been as altruistic, and as willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for the welfare of others. We give foreign aid–at last count just under $50 billion per year–to 96% of all nations in the world. The amount is likely considerably larger as the means for determining what, exactly, is “foreign aid” are remarkably flexible.

Part of this altruism has always been immigration. Compared to most nations, America’s immigration laws have been remarkably generous. Our immigration bureaucracy has been, at times, well, a bureaucracy with the worst connotations of that word, but the underlying spirit, authorized and supported by the American people, has remained intact.

Charlotte: A Tale Of Two Black Lives

credit: charlotteobserver.com

Black Lives Matter. No American of good will doubts this. All lives matter. The civil rights movement was, thankfully, successful. Actual racists are rare, and justly, social pariahs. But there is a problem: to BLM/Social Justice cracktivists, only some black lives matter, and only when their untimely deaths can provide money, notoriety, or political power to the unscrupulous and anarchic.

The respective lives of Keith Scott, 43 and Brentley Vinson, 26, illustrate this sad state of affairs. Scott was the man shot and killed by Charlotte Police Officer Vinson. Both men are black, but lived very different lives, as The Charlotte Observer reports:

Hillary Clinton And The Second Amendment: Avoiding The Necessity

credit: washingtontimes.com

Progressives are, in many ways, predictable. They seek ultimate power, and understand the only way it can eventually be seized is through complete disarmament of law-abiding Americans. So gun control, in whatever way possible in the blowing political winds of the moment, is a never-ending priority.

To this end, the demonization and trivialization of their eternal enemies—Americans that embrace liberty and the Constitution—is essential. Gun owners, and non-gun owners that respect all of the Constitution, are consistently portrayed as potential terrorists, criminals, mentally unstable, and always, fearful and paranoid, a meme taken up by Politico: 

School Attacks: Feeling Good Or Saving Lives, Part 5

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The first four articles in this series are:

(1) School Attacks: Feeling Good or Saving Lives, Part 1 

(2) School Attacks: Feeling Good or Saving Lives, Part 2 

(3) School Attacks: Feeling Good or Saving Lives, Part 3

(4) School Attacks: Feeling Good or Saving Lives, Part 4 

In this, the fifth, updated, installment of this series, I continue posing and answering pertinent questions relating to preventing and stopping school shooters.

Q: CAN’T WE SECURE SCHOOLS WITH METAL DETECTORS, HI-TECH LOCKS AND OTHER METHODS?

Barack Obama: The Losing Narrative

Isn’t this just precious? White House Spokestwerp Josh Earnest said, in response to the multiple terror attacks over the last few days, we’re just fighting a “war of narratives” against ISIS, and by implication, all other terrorists. Of course, neither Earnest nor President Obama embraced the dreaded “T” word. As usual, they couldn’t bring themselves to admit that the multiple stabbings, bombings, etc., had anything to do with terrorism, and as usual, they warned us about overreacting against Muslims.

WoW! Magazine Forum For 09-19-16

The Forum, Rome, Italy
credit: wikipedia.en

Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the WoW! Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: Can America Unite Again?

Stately McDaniel Manor:  One of the favorite tricks of defense lawyers is the “anything’s possible” ploy. They get a witness, often a police officer, to admit the wildest, most improbable happenstances are at least possible, and juries sometimes buy it, letting their guilty-as-sin clients walk. The truth is, everything/anything is not possible. Monkeys will never fly from my posterior. A billion dollars will never fall from the sky and land, intact, at my feet. I will never be 25 again, and I will never become a Hollywood starlet. But for the purposes of this forum, I’ll play defense attorney and stipulate it is possible America might once again be united.

Now let’s get real and consider why it’s more likely that’s impossible.

Studies In Relative Morality: College v. High School

credit: issuehawk.com

In recently discussing the aphorism: “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” with my students, I recounted the tragedy of Kitty Genevose, the young New York City Woman, who, on March 13, 1964, was stabbed to death outside her apartment building. The commonly known narrative is likely inaccurate to one degree or another, but the point was that despite knowing what was happening, no one took affirmative action to help Genevose. My classes of 16-17 year-old Texas teenagers were aghast. To a boy and girl, they affirmed that if that happened in Texas, the first person–including them–to lay sights on a killer would blow them out of their socks, then they’d call the police after helping the victim.

This week, we compare the relative morality of the denizens of higher education with high school students. You, gentle readers, decide who are the adults, and who are the moral. First, we visit Debra Heinie at PJ Media: