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Back in June of 2021 I wrote Self-Defense In A World Gone Mad.  The occasion was reflection on the “Summer Of Love,” and police officers and the public in general were finding themselves in desperate straits.  In blue cities the police weren’t allowed to make arrests or defend themselves.  Thousands of officers were injured. Citizens were scared to death if a mob surrounded their car and tried to murder them, and they defended themselves, they’d be wearing prison orange rather than their attempted murderers.  I began that article thus:

The 2020 ‘summer of love’ was anything but, and transmogrified into the fall of our discontent.  With the arrival of the summer of 2021, things have not, in much of the country, improved.  The Biden/Harris/Whoever Administration—Joe Biden, Temporary President—has done far more damage in only six months than anyone believed possible.  The old, comforting idea America is sufficiently strong to withstand even an anti-American, malicious president is no longer so comforting.  Racial hatred championed by that evil cabal threatens to destroy the love of each other and America Americans of all races have worked so hard for so long to achieve.  In these uncertain times, we find our situation reflected in art, more specifically The Second Coming, written in 1919 by William Butler Yeats (in part):

‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.’

Even back in 2020, 61% of Americans were worried America is on the verge of civil war.  No doubt the percentage has not decreased since then.  As regular readers of this series may recall, one of the triggers of such a conflict would surely be government attempts to disarm the law-abiding.  Another, in the face of the purposeful emasculation of the police, the criminalization of self-defense.  Both are intimately related, for it is the Second Amendment that acknowledges the right to secure the means of self-defense, and without both, what other right matters?

Pushing America closer to the abyss are Soros prosecutors, evil men and women Like George Gascon of LA and Alvin Bragg of New York City, funded by one of the most evil men alive, George Soros.  Once in office, they refuse to enforce the law, and crime rates skyrocket.  Ably assisted by blue state legislators, city councils, and judges, bond is eliminated and crime pays–very well.

Americans—many female and minorities–have responded by buying nearly 40 million guns in 2021, and 4.1 million more in January of 2022 alone.    The rate of gun purchases—all legal—has not abated.  But there is a serious problem: citizens reasonably fear if they are forced to lawfully defend themselves, it is they, not their attackers, who will be prosecuted, whose lives will be ruined.  The most recent example occurred in New York City:

credit: the last refuge

Violent ex-con Austin Simon, a 35 year-old career crook on parole for assaulting a police officer, and his girlfriend were shopping in a bodega. She tried to buy a bag of potato chips with an EBT card, but it was declined and when 61 year old clerk Jose Alba refused to give her the chips for free, Simon ran behind the counter and began to violently assault Alba.  Here’s an account:  

Alba was manning the counter at Hamilton Heights Grocery on Broadway and West 139th Street Friday night when Austin Simon, a 35-year-old career criminal on parole for assaulting a police officer, stormed behind the counter and shoved him into a wall, surveillance video shows.

The ex-con then grabbed Alba as the frightened clerk tried to get past him — getting his hands on a knife and plunging it into Simon at least five times.

During the fight, Simon’s girlfriend allegedly pulled a knife from her purse and stabbed Alba three times in the shoulder and hand, according to his attorney.

She has not been charged, with the DA’s office saying only ‘we are continuing to review the evidence and the investigation is ongoing.’

Not quite.  Alba was arrested and the DA demanded a $500,000 dollar bail.  This in a city where felons are routinely released on no bail.  Facing the rage of New Yorkers, Bragg reduced the bail by half, and finally, to $50,000, and Alba finally walked free, but with an ankle bracelet, something with which few felons have to bother.  Even some NYC city councilmen seem to have had enough:

The bipartisan group of City Council members said the DA’s controversial, progressive approach to law enforcement was ‘rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.’

‘The fact that you are even prosecuting Mr. Alba reveals how your perverse sense of justice not only protects violent criminals, but actively seeks to destroy the lives of crime victims,’ the lawmakers wrote Bragg on Thursday…

‘You are simply rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.’…

The letter was signed by Councilmembers Robert Holden (D-Queens), Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island), Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn), David Carr (R-Staten Island), Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn), Joann Ariola (R-Queens) and Vickie Paladino (R-Queens).

What do we care? You say?  That’s NYC, and they’re all crazy leftists.  This is not limited to NYC.  Consider the McCloskeys of St. Louis, lawyers both who, with firearms,  stood off an angry Antifa/BLM mob who broke down the gate of their property and threatened them.  Despite shooting no one, they were ruthlessly prosecuted.  Enter “mccloskey” into the SMM home page search bar to find the articles on their case.  And there was former Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson.  For preserving his life against a violent attack by drugged strong armed robber Michael Brown, he lost his career and was forced to flee the state.  And there was George Zimmerman, who was forced to defend his life against drugged gangster wannabe Trayvon Martin.   Even in Florida, a Republican Attorney General ignored the local prosecutor, who knew he acted in self-defense, and charged Zimmerman with murder.  Only two brilliant defense lawyers managed to keep him out of prison. And there is, of course, Kyle Rittenhouse, who in Wisconsin had to defend himself against multiple deadly attacks in videotaped and clear cases of self-defense.  He was arrested and tried and despite gross prosecutorial misconduct and lies was acquitted.

The point, gentle readers, is no matter where you are, you may not be allowed to defend yourself.  The power to arrest is the power to destroy.  The power to prosecute is a higher level of that power to destroy.  Even in red states with police officers allowed to enforce the law, some are going to adopt an “arrest them all and let the prosecutors sort them out” approach.  The prosecutor may or may not be rational or ethical, and considering what is being taught in law schools these days, counting on a prosecutor’s ethics or rationality may not be a smart move.  Many prosecutors are young lawyers just out of law school, hoping to get enough trial experience to eventually make them attractive to big law firms where the real money is. It’s widely known in blue cities it’s impossible for the innocent to get a fair trial, particularly if they were forced to injure or kill a predator of the wrong color, like Simon.

I recommend you take the link to the 2020 article to learn the specifics of these situations, but I’ll provide the likely course of events in blue cities and states:

Self-defense in a social justice zone:  You’ve been forced to defend your life.  You did it by the letter of the law, and your attacker is wounded or dead.  Even if the police want to follow the law, even if they try, you’re probably toast, particularly if you are not a member of a favored victim group and the monster that forced you to kill them is.  BLM and Antifa will probably arrive at the scene—in force–minutes after the police.  You can expect to be arrested and charged with murder and other crimes.  You can expect the media, local, state and national politicians to immediately brand you a murderer and to make destroying you part of their narrative.  You absolutely cannot expect the various D/S/C organizations that bail violent criminals out of jail to touch you with a ten-foot pole.  Kamala Harris, busy searching for the root causes of illegal immigration in foreign lands and El Paso, TX, will not raise money for your bail.

The monster that forced you to shoot them will become an instant social justice martyr.  The media will not bother to look into their mile-long criminal record, but they’ll dig up the girl whose ponytail you pulled in the first grade, and probably, women you’ve never met or seen who are certain you raped them 40 years ago, if they could only remember your name or face.

Even if local detectives believe you acted lawfully, and write their reports that way, they’ll be overridden by higher-ranking cops whose jobs are dependent on knowing the drift of the prevailing political winds.  Their report, not the detective’s report, will be on its way to a prosecutor that was elected on a platform of not enforcing the law against actual criminals.  You, on the other hand, are just the kind of wrong-thinking Deplorable they were hired to destroy, and they’re going to get maximum publicity and political mileage out of the attempt.

You are going to jail, and you’re going to stay in jail, because it’s highly likely the judges in social justice utopia are as determined to see you burn as are the prosecutors and politicians.  A fair trial; actual justice?  Silly you.  You’re going to get social justice, which is very woke, and involves a great deal more looting, arson and destruction of property.  Do you begin to see the importance of having the right kind of lawyer in your contacts file?

Facts—evidence—aren’t going to matter, perhaps not even at trial.  Even if by some miracle, you’re acquitted, there’s still the matter of civil suits, and in social justice zones, there’s probably no law that prevents virtually anyone from trying to sue you to death.  Again, if you were forced to kill the wrong kind of person, there will be race hustling lawyers lined up to sue you, and the federal Department of Justice, more militantly racist even than under Barack Obama, will surely try to prosecute you for hate crimes and other crimes they’ll make up if necessary.

But I had to act, because the police wouldn’t/couldn’t!  I had no choice!  They were going to kill me!  

Remember, in social justice city, they demonized and defunded the police.  They loosed mere anarchy, the blood-dimmed tide, and plenty of racist, anarchic maniacs with unlimited passionate intensity, all the while doing everything they could to disarm the law-abiding—that’s you—and innocent—which is also you.  They are entirely unable and unwilling to appreciate the inherent irony and will hate and try to destroy you all the more if you dare to point it out.  You aren’t part of the accepted narrative, so too bad, you racist, white supremacist, insurrectionist, white rager/hater, you.

Final Thoughts:  The message sent to Jose Alba, a man working for minimum wage, an immigrant who legally came to America and legally become an American is: don’t you dare try to save your life.  There is no self-defense, not for you, only for criminals, our beloved constituents.  That message is also being sent to us all.  Government will defund the police, make it impossible for them to do their jobs.  Even if they want to protect you, they’ll never be there in time when a violent felon tries to kill you, and you can’t sue them for failing to protect you.  

And government will never stop trying to disarm the law abiding.  Every criminal outrage is, to them, further proof you, a honest gun owner with no criminal record or intent, must be disarmed.  It’s like thinking castrating all men will prevent rape.  That criminals don’t obey the law, never seems to occur to them.  That criminals planning murder particularly don’t obey gun laws, doesn’t matter to them.  They’re full of passionate intensity.  They want your guns, and they’ll enlist Republican useful idiots to get them, little by little, or if they think they can get away with it, all at once.

Take away self-defense.  Try, in any overt way, to take away firearms, and what’s left to Normal Americans, people who just want to be left alone to live under the Constitution and the rule of law?