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The CDC, FBI, and legacy media are conspiring to “debunk” the truth that armed, law-abiding citizens prevent crime and stop mass shootings. //
The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), which I run, has found many more missed cases and is keeping an updated list.
Overall, the CPRC estimates that law-abiding citizens with guns have stopped over 35 percent of active shootings over the last decade and 39.6 percent in the last five years. This figure is eight times higher than the four percent estimate made by the FBI. //
In places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry firearms, we estimate that armed civilians stopped 51 percent of active shootings over the past decade. Over the last five years, that figure was 53.1 percent.
ReporterMcCabe @ReporterMcCabe
·
Shock video: Bad actors attempt to smash their way into a @DCFGuns store in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the retailer's multi-layered security thwarts them.
10:22 PM · Sep 2, 2024
“They used minors to do it, and frankly, it's pretty clever,” Oltmann said. “They hit five stores in less than two weeks.”
If they are arrested, the minors are sent to the juvenile system and emerge with clean records upon their 18th birthday, he said.
Oltmann said the modus operandi is to have two stolen cars driven by adults, with underage confederates. The thieves use one car to smash through the windows or entryways to the store. Then, the minors rush in and grab whatever they can until they make their escape in the second car.
As of publication, Oltmann said he still has not spoken with law enforcement leadership about the two incidents.
“They hit the West store, and here's the bad part: it took 73 minutes for a police officer to roll up on scene from a robbery from a gun store,” he said.
The show host said he believes the people who hit his stores were connected to the Venezuelan gangs who took over apartment buildings in Aurora.
Yet there is no question that California voters were deceived. Ten years later, the state is looking to roll back Proposition 47. //
Harris’s most consequential act in California leadership was her contribution to passing of Proposition 47 in 2014. The law is widely credited with the social collapse of once lovely cities like San Francisco.
Passed with nearly 60% voter support, the initiative reclassified many felonies as misdemeanors, such as, most notoriously, theft of under $950, including repeat offenses. This shift created the now familiar spectacle of thieves leisurely walking into stores and picking up $949 of merchandise — and then doing it again and again, in the plain view of bored security guards.
Proposition 47 decriminalized drug possession, taking away the instrument that allowed law enforcement to pressure addicts to enter rehabs. //
The measure required resentencing of prisoners previously convicted of felonies if under Prop 47 those felonies were reclassified as misdemeanors. What followed was the early release of many so-called justice-involved individuals.
That trend was picked up in 2016 by Proposition 57 that emptied out California prisons further via early parole. The two propositions created the notorious prison to homelessness pipeline of the former inmates, poorly prepared for challenges of everyday life, pouring into the homeless encampments. //
Although it goes without saying that not all of the unhoused are former inmates, California’s homeless population is growing. As reported in 2023, half of the nation’s homeless now live here.
A group of up to 12 migrant boys or young men have been linked to roughly 10 robberies in Central Park, Chell said.
Police are investigating whether the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has been enlisting young boys to commit robberies such as the wave of Central Park muggings, a senior law enforcement official previously told The Post.
The problem is out of control. No one knows how many separate crimes there are, including the Department of Justice. Researchers have tried counting, with one 2019 effort identifying at least 5,199 statutory crimes. Regulatory crimes are orders of magnitude greater, with estimates of the number of regulatory crimes ranging from 100,000 to 300,000 separate offenses.
This is inconsistent with basic ideas of self-government and the intentions of those who framed the Constitution. Laws with criminal consequences should be carefully considered by the legislative branch, not pushed through by unelected bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people. //
Congress can seize the opportunity and pass some simple and commonsense reforms that would further reduce the power of the administrative state and its appetite for passing criminal laws.
Congress should begin by requiring the executive agencies to simply catalog their regulations that have criminal consequences. After all, if a federal agency does not know if something is a criminal offense, how can the people be expected to? If a “mens rea” requirement is not already in the law, Congress should make all criminal regulations have a “willful” requirement to prevent citizens from being prosecuted for actions they did not even know they took. For new laws, agencies should be required to state the applicable mental state.
Atrox
3 hours ago
I'm sure there are differing views on this but I always say, EVERYTHING is a win for the left. Vigilantism is a byproduct of their soft on crime policies and it's something they want. The more it happens, they can complain about how "something needs to be done"!!! ....
mopani Atrox
a few minutes ago
This is the desired result. The progressive left response to vigilante justice will be the suspension of civil rights, because violence. Two guesses when civil rights as we know them will be reinstated, and the first guess doesn't count. //
Random US Citizen
4 hours ago
Indeed. This is exactly what happened on the frontier in the early days of America. If there was no sheriff to be found, citizens might take it upon themselves to hang a horse thief. Because they were--like these folks in NYC--a mob, sometimes the wrong person wound up at the end of a rope. The arrival of civilization, in the form of law enforcement, courts, and jails was--for most--a welcome thing.
Here we see the opposite effect. The decline and fall, as it were. The courts are no longer working to decide the guilt of accused, they are now firmly on the side of the criminals. Law enforcement, whether willingly or no, is no longer able to enforce the law. Bereft of the protection of the society that they are a part of, citizens are resorting to vigilantism again.
You can expect this to get significantly worse unless these places reverse direction.
My advice: invest in lead. //
Douglas Proudfoot
4 hours ago
As every Montana 8th grade graduate knows, the absence of law and order gives rise to vigilantes. In Fall, 1863, a gang of Road Agents murdered perhaps 100 people in the gold fields of Montana. In January, 1864, vigilantes hung 25 of them. The outlaw leader, Henry Plummer, was the elected sheriff of Bannack, MT. Vigilantes hung him too.
Something as big, complex, and interactive as a major city, if it is going to be livable, requires predictability and control. The citizens of our cities have to know that every morning they will be able to go to work unimpeded, to do their jobs, to go home again; they have to know that their children are safe walking or riding the bus to school, that they can go to a store without worrying about a flash mob showing up to loot the place. //
And while I am and always will be an advocate of minimal government, this is one of the government's few truly legitimate roles: To protect the liberty and property of the citizens. In that, the government of these cities has failed. //
the blame can only be placed on the elected officials in those cities, the ones who make policy - and, yes, on the voters who elected them.
In 1919, in his poem "The Second Coming," W.B. Yeats wrote:
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.
But, as the late Paul Harvey pointed out, we shouldn't be able to imagine this kind of thing; as he said, "If you could understand this, we'd have to worry about you."
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is one of those organizations that sounds good on paper, but you quickly find out that in the real world, it's another bureaucratic tool that could easily be used for political prosecution.
Lo and behold, it issued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes committed in Gaza for war crimes committed against the citizens of Gaza, which fall under the Palestinian Authority, a group that gives the ICC authority to prosecute. //
For one, the ICC is a purely bureaucratic entity with no real oversight. What's to stop it from utilizing its "legal authority" to issue warrants against people for their own political interests? How do we know this warrant against Netanyahu isn't one already?
The Netanyahu warrant already shows that the ICC doesn't seem to understand the nature of war, especially when that war is being fought against a terrorist organization that uses its own people as human shields. Of course, citizens have died...Hamas saw to it. Moreover, it's not like Israel can just choose not to wage this war. Hamas made it clear that the complete destruction of Israel and the death of the Jewish people is its highest priority. Israel is forced to wage this war. //
The ICC should be something that no country ever agrees to recognize because, in the end, the ICC is a direct attack on the sovereignty of a country. If the ICC says a citizen of a country needs to be arrested then the country will have no choice but to give up their own citizen to the ICC, even if the country in question doesn't recognize that their citizen has done anything wrong. //
Because we all know how authority works. A little ceding here, a little authority there, and soon the authority in question is far more powerful than anyone ever intended it to be.
Hirsch failed his Kobayashi Maru test. //
Zenit2008
5 hours ago
That the scammer used the name "Kobayashi" should have been a dead giveaway. Kobayashi Maru has been synonymous with "no-win situation" for >40 years.
Jeff S Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
15y
8,465
Subscriptor++
jandrese said:
This is actually somewhat impressive. 12,600 victims means each one was extorted for around $135, which seems like the amount of money you might expect an average 14-17 year old boy to have. That's an enormous amount of work on the scammers part. Day in and day out camming and scamming.
One of the things that often ends up being the case for groups committing organized crime is that, when you look at the hours worked to perpetrate the crime, most of the people in the crime ring don't get paid very well. The people at the very top of the gang usually make some decent money.
There have been a few studies on the economics of gangs primarily involved in drug dealing, and most of the people in the gang were making minimum wage or much less - despite taking enormous risks both legally, and the risk of getting shot or beat up or whatever by rival gangs or even your own gang if they decide it's time to 'fire' you.
On top of that, if the criminal enterprise has some success, there's a very real risk that as soon as you start making some money, now you gotta start paying out protection money to crooked cops, politicians, judges, etc.
Even that people at the top of the gangs topped out at around $130k annually, which would be a very good wage for a middle class professional, but really low for an 'executive management' person, which is the closest analog for those groups.
Makes you wonder why they don't get the idea if they are starting up what basically constitutes a business, to sell something legal instead.
There is no doubt that our criminal justice system is far from perfect. As someone whose name escapes me once put it, "It's not a system, and it has nothing to do with justice, but it is criminal." That said, sometimes the reason people draw long prison sentences for a very good reason that has nothing to do with systemic racism or bad lawyers.
We want to believe in rehabilitation and redemption, but we also have to realize that the patterns of behavior and personality traits that send a man to prison for several decades are rarely made better by incarceration. We should be surprised that a man who drew a 50-year sentence for violent crimes killed someone in the same way that we would be shocked that a poisonous snake bit someone. //
How much risk are we willing to inflict upon society so we can feel good about ourselves?
Carrie Severino @JCNSeverino
·
During a panel, DC residents voiced their frustrations and demanded accountability from city leaders in addressing the violent crime epidemic that's plaguing our nation’s capital.
DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s response: “We cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.”
2:46 PM · Jan 31, 2024 //
The forum was specifically addressing the issue of juvenile crime and juvenile carjackings, and this lawn flamingo of a prosecutor was looking at these residents and declaring that executing his assigned duties was not the solution. //
INTJ
28 minutes ago
"We cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it."
Dude. That's the only way you're going to get out of it.
Skibum
12 hours ago
This situation is a great example of the Democrat superpower - the ability to blind voters to the impact of cause and effect. Democrats manage to never be held responsible for the consequences of their legislative actions. //
piscorman
13 hours ago edited
That is how politicians do it. They create a problem, blame it on the private sector, and create another government solution problem trying to "fix it".
X user MorosKostas wrote:
This is hilarious. Theft is so common in California that it happened right in front of Newsom, and when the cashier (who didn't realize it was Newsom) said they can't stop shoplifters due to the California government, Newsom got mad at her and asked to see the manager. //
Then Newsom said he questioned why he was spending $380 when everyone else walked right out.
How completely lacking in self-awareness is Newsom, that he doesn't seem to understand that this is going on. Employees in his state are being told not to bother with shoplifters like this because they wouldn't face any consequences.
Indeed, Newsom seems more upset about the worker blaming him for it than about the Democratic policies that have led to this problem (along with the liberal DAs that refuse to prosecute such cases). //
VoteGeneric
14 minutes ago
Newsome doesn't shop at Target. His housekeeper shops at Target.
Made up story for the press.
Wednesday, the grand jury "no billed" the shooter. //
Dieter Schultz
11 hours ago edited
I don't have a problem shooting a man's weight in lead at him to bring him down. In this case, I thought a solid, indestructible self-defense case was available for the first four rounds. The next four were decidedly in the "gray area" of legality. The ninth round, in my opinion, could, in the right lighting, be mistaken for an execution.
While I can see streiff's point, why is it OK to train cops to 'keep firing until the person is no longer a threat', and they won't get dinged for doing it, but we're willing to put a shot count on civilians that aren't trained like the police are?
I get the last shots may have been unnecessary and overkill, but with adrenaline flowing how do we place these, seemingly, higher standards on civilians? //
anon-608f Asurea
3 hours ago
I appreciate your testimony. However, I believe this philosophy is outdated. Why are we changing the responsibility from the thug to armed civilian? No. The thug was willing to kill them all for pennies. He forfeited his life the minute he began the encounter. The armed citizen should only be held to account their behavior before the encounter- once it starts all accountability should be transferred to the thug. No more armed citizens should be prosecuted for ending, however completely, deadly encounters they didn't begin. The way we're handling it now is cruel and unreasonable. You were just as likely to have shot a fleeing felon in the back and been imprisoned for it...after they invaded your home! It is a sick theory that only attorneys could come up with. //
We agonize over a thug who, milliseconds before, was preparing to kill a truly innocent person- they have no good will, their humanity is forfeit. And so they get shot.
Why are we ever going after the armed citizen for injuring or killing a worthless thug? Why are we holding them to standards even police are hard pressed to meet??!!
No. I say no. When certain situational and evidentiary thresholds are met (not hard in this age of digital recordings), we shouldn't care if a thug is shot in the face or in the back, or even if already fleeing in a car. They forfeited their humanity and the citizen had every right and responsibility to ensure that they weren't coming back. Because they do. They'll rob multiple places in a night so long as they meet no resistance. Letting them flee is NOT morally superior to shooting a feral thug while fleeing.
As far as I'm concerned, you don't stop shooting at a predator attacking the flock just because it runs, and I respect coyotes and wolves far more than felons.
I just think our moral philosophy is outdated. I'm not saying this should be the "wild west" and people are shot dead with no account, but I do believe the threshold for "justifiable" and "reasonable" ought to be lowered in self defense.
"Let's see," Reason magazine associate editor Billy Binion posted on X. "Some recent stats: Mississippi's gun homicide rate: ~13 murders per 100,000 people; Louisiana's gun homicide rate: ~15 murders per 100,000 people; Missouri's gun homicide rate: ~11 murders per 100,000 people; Chicago's gun homicide rate: ~29 murders per 100,000 people."
"Why do you pick just a couple of states to compare?" John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, posted on X. "Is that how public health researchers do research? Why don't you look at local crime rates where policing policies are determined and where DAs and judges are almost always selected?"
If you remove the blue cities from the red states, such as New Orleans, the murder rates tend to fall.
Zack Smith @tzsmith
Nov 29
·
State-level murder rates are highly misleading. As my @Heritage colleagues and I explained in our Blue City Murder Problem paper, crime is a localized phenomenon.
https://heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-blue-city-murder-problem
And guess what? Remove the blue cities from the red states...and the murder rates fall.
Joe Scarborough @JoeNBC
Watch the Senator pretend that he didn’t just hear that his home state has higher death rates from firearms than Chicago. Then he blows past that reality and thinks that insulting a woman will make us forget…that his own state has higher death rates from guns than Chicago.
Zack Smith @tzsmith
·
As you can see from this table, take New Orleans' murder rate out, and Louisiana's murder rate falls by over 15%!
And take Chicago's murder rate out, and Illinois' falls by a shocking 55%!
3:24 PM · Nov 29, 2023 //
Clare Boothe Lucid
11 hours ago edited
Also note how gun control proponents often want to talk about the overall gun death rate which includes many suicides as well as some accidents along with homicides. Obviously suicides and accidents are important, too, but those are substantially different issues with different causes and potential solutions compared to homicides. One can see examples above…one person mentions death rates from firearms and another answers with homicide rates
Expanded Homicide Data Table 8
Murder Victims
by Weapon, 2015–2019
Gretchen Carlson @GretchenCarlson
·
Ordinary people didn’t have AR-15s before 2004. They’re not some time-honored American tradition, they’re a recent mistake that we could fix and save thousands of lives in the process.
Ben Shapiro @benshapiro
No, I Won’t Give Up My AR-15
Embedded video
Readers added context
“ For more than a half-century, the AR-15 has been popular among gun owners, widely available in gun stores and, for many years, even appeared in the Sears catalog.”
npr.org/2018/02/28/588…
Context is written by people who use X, and appears when rated helpful by others. Find out more.
12:05 PM · Oct 30, 2023 //
The debil Blue State Deplorable
3 hours ago edited
Also, the FBI reported around 364 deaths, in 2019 from rifles, all rifles not just ARs.
The same report showed 600 deaths from personal weapons (hands, fist, feet, etc.).
1476 deaths from knives and cutting instruments.
The report can be found here.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls //
Public Citizen Blue State Deplorable
an hour ago
Lets not even try to compare the number of deaths and disabling injuries caused by drunk drivers with the firearms deaths.
I'm sure in the minds of the Bent Left the firearms deaths are Orders Of Magnitude greater, when in fact the opposite is the true picture. //
Robert A Hahn
2 hours ago
She's dumber than she looks. After getting ratioed to Hell and back, as outlined above, she came back with this doozy:
"In 1992, AR-15s composed 21 of every 100 guns made in the US. By 2020 almost 1 in 5 guns made were AR-15s."
Gretchen the Math Whiz. //
cupera1 Raoul Bilbao
4 hours ago
From 2019
• Twenty-eight people are killed every year by lightning.
• Roughly 2,167 Americans die annually from constipation.
• On average, 951 people are killed by their lawnmowers while another 4,193 are killed by farm tractors and other agricultural equipment.
• Murderous toasters kill 45 people per year.
• Eleven teenagers die every day while texting and driving.
• An estimated 40 people die every year while skateboarding.
• Roughly 10,206 are accidentally strangled to death while they sleep, and for those who survive the night, another 10,386 will die every year falling out of bed.
• As per the FBI, rifles of every variation — including but not limited to the scary AR-15 — killed 215 Americans in 2019. But another 1,533 were killed by knives, and 651 people were beaten to death by hands, fists, feet, etc.
• In 2015, 5,051 people choked to death while eating.
• Americans average 62 deaths per year by bees, wasps, and hornets.
President Joe Biden pushed for federal workers to return to their respective offices in August, but hundreds of bureaucrats assigned to work in the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in downtown San Francisco were told to stay home “for the foreseeable future” to avoid the rising crime, violence, and drugs plaguing the plaza.
“According to its designer, the building was set up to represent ‘the way government should be and how the workplace should be,’” Ernst wrote in a letter to General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Robin Carnahan. “Ironically, the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building is instead a symbol of the way government doesn’t work, with offices and workplaces largely empty due to drug and crime problems resulting from the misguided policies of the state and city governments.”
Built in 2007, the building was renovated thanks to millions of taxpayer dollars in 2021 and renamed after Pelosi thanks to an earmark in Democrats’ 2022 $1.7 trillion spending package. Nevertheless, it has become an abandoned symbol of the consequences of the unchecked crime that often plagues Democrat-run cities.