Kris Brown

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Against Guns, Against Self-Defense, or Both?

July 19, 2022 by 6 Comments

There was a shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indianapolis, Indiana area on Sunday. Reportedly, the killer had hidden in the bathroom adjacent to the food court with a number of firearms in his backpack. As the mall was preparing to close, he entered the food court and killed three individuals as well as wounding two others. He might have killed more but he was stopped by 22 y.o. Elisjsha Dicken who was legally armed. Mr. Dicken was legally carrying concealed without a permit as was his right under Indiana’s recently passed permitless carry bill.

While the mall was posted as a so-called gun free zone, they have no force of law in Indiana. It would only be an offense if the carrier was asked to leave and refused. In that case, the concealed carrier could be arrested for criminal trespass.

Even though the mall was posted against carry by its owners the Simon Property Group, they had this to say about Mr. Dicken.

We are grateful for the strong response of the first responders, including the heroic actions of the Good Samaritan who stopped the suspect.

Contrast this dignified response with that of two of the leaders of the gun prohibition industry: Shannon Watts and Kris Brown.

First, Mrs. Watts who resided in the Indy area for many years until she left for more progressive pastures in the People’s Republic of Boulder and thence to California. She later deleted it.

And now Kris Brown, president of Brady United, who referred to Mr. Dicken as a “vigilante”.

Many on the progressive Left believe that government should hold the monopoly on violence. In other words, self-defense on behalf of yourself or others would be against the law and that any defense of a person should come from agents of the state, i.e., the police. If you respond like Mr. Dicken, then you are just as culpable in the eyes of the law as the killer.

Michael Bane discussed this at length in his MBTV On The Radio podcast last week. His example was that of the bodega worker who was being charged with first degree murder for protecting himself against a felon out on parole. This episode is well worth a listen.

We know that Mrs. Watts and Ms. Brown are anti-gun. It also appears that they are against self-defense. I am of the belief that as elitists, they fear firearms in the hands of the great unwashed. In other words, thee and me. They want the monopoly of violence – and the tools with which to secure it – to be in the hands of the state. This fits in directly with what Chairman Mao’s speech to the Chinese Communist Party said in 1938.

Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party… All things grow out of the barrel of a gun.

The founders of the United States, by contrast, were greatly influenced by the works of English philosopher John Locke. He was a proponent of natural law. One tenet of natural law is that you have a natural right to life and you have a right to defend this life.

From Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, Chapter II, Section 16:

 it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

Most countries of the world, whether they be communist, socialist, capitalist, authoritarian, democratic, or some other variant, do not recognize the individual’s right to self-defense. It doesn’t matter whether you are in China or Canada, the monopoly of violence remains in the hands of the state.

The United States, however, does recognize an individual’s right to self-defense. Whether by common law or codified law, it is a right recognized in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. This is true even in the most progressive of states.

That Mrs. Watts and Ms. Brown reject the right of self-defense puts them, not us, outside the mainstream. It is a right that must be defended at all costs because without it we are slaves.

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Speaking Of Jim Crow Relics

August 2, 2020 by

The weekly compilation from the Brady Campaign had an attack on the filibuster. Quoting former President Obama, it was called a “Jim Crow relic”.

This week, President Obama called for the elimination of the filibuster: an arcane rule in the Senate that requires a supermajority of 60 votes, instead of 51, to pass nearly any bill. Our movement knows all too well the dangers of this rule. It’s what stopped Congress from passing lifesaving gun reform legislation following the Sandy Hook massacre.

They were 54 votes in favor and 46 against — clearly a simple majority! But the 60-vote rule stopped Congress from acting  even after 26 students and educators were shot and killed. 

Enough is enough. Why do we need a 60-vote threshold to pass a bill that will save American lives? Fifty-one is the majority, and 51 is fair.

We’re not asking for a lot. We’re simply calling for a simple majority vote — fair and square — to pass lifesaving, evidence-based policy solutions to end gun violence. There’s no excuse for senseless gun violence, especially when legislative solutions have been sitting before Mitch McConnell and the U.S. Senate for over 500 days!

We need to let every Senator know that #51IsFair and gun violence is a national emergency.

Actually, the filibuster and its use in the US Senate predates both the origin of Jim Crow laws and the Civil War. According to a history of it as published by the Senate, unlimited debate was allowed in both the House and Senate. The growth in the number of representatives saw it discontinued in the House but unlimited debate continued in the Senate. Its use to block bills came to the forefront in the 1840s when unlimited debate was used to block a banking bill. The concept of cloture or the ending of unlimited debate by a vote only came into existence in 1917 at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson.

The history of Jim Crow laws and black codes began in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment which ended slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States once and for all. The black codes were laws enacted at the state and local level which restricted former slaves as to where, when, and how they could work and also restricted their compensation. It served to put many blacks into indentured servitude.

Jim Crow laws were a follow-on that served to enforce segregation, to ban inter-racial marriage, to keep blacks disenfranchised, and, for the purposes of my discussion here, disarmed.

Historians like Clayton Cramer and legal scholars like Dave Kopel and Robert Cottrol among others have shown how many gun control laws were aimed at keeping blacks unarmed and vulnerable.

Let’s talk about two of those Jim Crow relics that I’ve written about in the past. The first from Florida and the second from my home state of North Carolina.

After armed black men using their Winchester repeating rifles prevented a lynching in Jacksonville, Florida, the Florida legislature enacted a law that required a permit for Floridians to carry a handgun or a “Winchester rifle or other repeating rifle.” It was the first law nationwide that treated repeating rifles differently than any other firearm. It was the antecedent to modern day “assault weapons” (sic) bans in states like California and New York (among others).

One need only look to the official proclamations of the Democratic Party and their standard bearer Joe Biden to see that support for such Jim Crow relics as a ban on repeating rifles lives on. In their ideological blindness, neither the Democrats nor the Brady Campaign suffer any cognitive dissonance in pushing Jim Crow originated gun control while attacking the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic”.

I have written often on this blog about North Carolina’s pistol purchase permit and its role in perpetuating white supremacy in the early 20th century. It was enacted in 1919 soon after a race riot in Winston-Salem. There was a great fear of black veterans returning from World War One. The co-primary sponsor of the bill was Sen. Earle A. Humphreys (D-Goldsboro). Humphrey just happened to be the brother-in-law of US Sen. Furnifold Simmons who was the architect of the Democrat’s white supremacy campaign. The goal was to make it difficult if not impossible for blacks as well as Populists and union organizers to be armed outside the home.

Every time in the last decade a repeal of the pistol purchase permit system in North Carolina is tried, it ultimately fails. Part of that failure is due to recalcitrant sheriffs who don’t want to give up the power or money and the obsequious nature of Republicans towards law enforcement. The other part is due to the unified nature of Democrats and the gun control lobby in opposition. That includes the Brady Campaign. Current Brady Campaign President Kris Brown characterized the repeal effort as rolling back “our decades of a lifesaving policy requiring a background check and a “permit to purchase” for every handgun sale.”

She was wrong. It was an effort to rid the state of the then-98 years of institutionalized racism in the form of a Jim Crow law to keep blacks unarmed and subservient.

It is the height of hypocrisy on the part of the Brady Campaign to rail against the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” because it stood in their way of enacting a gun control law. A law that had its very antecedent in a Jim Crow law meant to make it “safer” for racists to lynch innocent blacks.

To be honest, when have politicians or the gun control industry let a little thing like hypocrisy ever get in the way of their pursuit of power.

The answer is never.

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I Don’t Think That Headline Means What You Think It Means

March 21, 2020 by 2 Comments

The online version of Newsweek magazine had the most misleading headline ever related to the recent panic buying of firearms. Since I don’t think merely quoting it does it justice, here is a screen shot of it.

Do they mean gun rights advocacy groups like the National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coaliton, or one of the many state-level groups?

Umm. No.

Once you start reading the article you come across comments from these “gun advocacy” luminaries.

“Fear has been the motivation for much of the increases in firearms purchases,” David Chipman, Senior Policy Advisor for gun control advocate group Giffords, told Newsweek.

“A small percentage of the marketing to gun owners has been to encourage preparation for end times scenarios and zombie apocalypses.”

Chipman said the country’s current gun laws allow people to hoard weapons in the same way they are able to mass buy toilet paper.

Chipman, of the Cult of Personality Known As Giffords, goes on to say he is a gun owner himself. Of course he is.

Not to be out done is this advocate is the co-president of Brady United.

Kris Brown, President of the Brady gun control campaign group, also said she is “very fearful” that the number of friendly fire incidents involving children could also dramatically increase as millions of children who are not currently at school will be present in their homes with these new weapons.

Brown said the feeling of short term security and safety that is provided by purchasing a weapon is masking the actual risk that will be dramatically increased.

“I understand in any time of crisis there is fear, the desire to do something to try and create a sense of security, and safety is paramount. The same instinct as fight or flight is what’s kicking in here,” she told Newsweek.

“The reality is the purchase of a gun is actually going right into harm’s way.”

It’s always “for the children” with them.

Last but not least is that “stay at home mom of five” and former corporate PR flack Shannon Watts herself.

“Right now, there’s no question that everyone is worried about their family’s safety. We know there are risks associated with having a gun in the home, especially when kids are involved, which is why responsible gun owners store their guns locked, unloaded and separate from ammunition.”

Watts added the presence of guns in a house also increases the risks of suicide and domestic violence.

“The NRA has spent decades selling a myth that more guns make us safer, but if that were true, the U.S. would be the safest nation on earth,” she said. “Instead, we have a gun homicide rate that’s 25 times higher than the average of other developed nations.”

Watts suggested if people truly want to protect their families during these unsettled times, they should “wash their hands and lock up their guns.”

While I can’t disagree with Mrs. Watts on the importance of hand washing, the rest of her statement is all too typical of her.

The best thing I can say about that headline is that they didn’t characterize these gun prohibitionists as “gun safety groups”. Indeed, the author of this article specifically refers to both Giffords and Brady as “gun control advocate” or “gun control campaign” groups.