In View of the Texas Mass Murder, Should the NRA's Convention in Houston Be Cancelled?

In the The Epoch Times, Frank Fang reports that

Donald Trump said he will still deliver his scheduled speech at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual meeting in Houston on May 27, following the deadly school shooting in Uvalde that killed 19 students and two teachers.

In the wake of the Uvalde incident, the question has arisen: should the NRA event be outright cancelled? 

All over the planet, we are told by leftist Americans and foreigners alike that nowhere should guns be owned or held by private citizens — which is nothing less than insane — that weapons should be left in the hands of the police.

I discussed this on French television last Wednesday, when I was the very first American, Republican, and/or pro-Republican to accept an invitation to a debate on the children's massacre in Texas.

Well, what do you know? It seems that, if anything, the Uvalde incident proves nothing less than — get  this — the very necessity of private citizens to own and bear arms.

The parents and other citizens of Uvalde made the (understandable) mistake of trusting the police. But the law officers sat (or stood) around for an hour, not just refraining from engaging the killer at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, but actually using their powers to arrest a number of people. As it happens, the people that the cops arrested were the frantic parents and citizens of the town begging them to intervene, hand-cuffing said civilians in the back and unceremoniously laying them on their stomachs, their noses in the dirt.

No, Democrats. No, leftists. No, drama queens. No, people around the globe who say that security should be entrusted exclusively to the police: cops cannot be entrusted to do the right thing. (Not always, in any case.)

(In that perspective, see also the actions, or lack thereof, of police officers during Florida's Stoneman Douglas High School standoff as well during the ordeal of Doctor Petit prevented from saving his family members from being burned alive in his Connecticut house in 2007.)

Any real red-blooded American, whether a civilian or in uniform — and provided they had a weapon — would have stormed the school building immediately.

Instead, the cops — police on all levels (local, state, federal…) — seem to have gotten tangled into command issues and/or into bureaucracy.

So far, the NRA has released a statement, which, truth to tell, sounds a bit lame. Also disappointed in Ted Cruz for once (very rare), who said we shouldn't politicize the issue. True, but instead, everybody should be punching back twice as hard.

As the convention starts in Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center, I hope they come up with something that sounds like the following:

We have been told that it's inconsiderate, or uncouth, to hold our meeting in the wake of the tragedy of Uvalde, and that is something we have been told by people, American as well as foreign, claiming that guns belong in no one's hands but those of the police. Even if our support for law officers is theoretically unconditional and second to none, we ought to take a hard look at how the cops acted or, rather, failed to act in Texas.

This is the reason — this is precisely the reason — that citizens need to be armed.

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Or, in the case of the Robb Elementary School, minutes that turned into an hour. 

Think of another mass shooting, also in Texas, unreported in America and across the globe, because in December 2019, as it happens, only three people were killed. Hold on, you ask: Three people? Certainly a tragedy, but why, then, call the West Freeway Church of Christ event a "mass" shooting? Well, because that low figure was due only to one parishioner pulling out his weapon and gunning down the (would-be) mass shootist. Jack Wilson is what we call "a good guy with a gun."

Welcome to Houston, NRA members…

Update: Ann Althouse (via Glenn Reynolds): 

If the police don't arrive and save us from violence, how can this event support the argument for restricting guns? This is the very situation that makes the most responsible people want to own guns. It reminds me of the summer of 2020, when there were riots, and the police stood down.

• FBI Reveals How Many Active Shooters Were Stopped by Citizens (via Stephen Green)

Related:

• What Is to Blame for the Connecticut Shooting? Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere? (Ten-year-old post, but still entirely pertinent)
• T'is easy to tout the success of gun control laws in the rest of the Western world when you ignore certain pertinent facts from Europe
• Mourning "all lives lost to gun violence" is like calling the people murdered on 9/11 victims of “airplane violence”

Discussing Gun Control on French TV in the Wake of the Uvalde Tragedy

On Wednesday, I was the very first American, Republican, and/or pro-Republican to accept an invitation to a debate on the Uvalde tragedy in Texas on French television.

Among the things I brought up during the news show on the BFMTV channel, or tried bringing up — there were three people against me, after all, or five, counting the two moderators (sic) — were the 2011 massacre of 77 people in Norway, most of them teenagers, as well as other non-American mass killings which I mentioned years ago in a rebuttal letter to the New York Times — see how the French drama queen seated next to me goes almost berserk when I try to broach the subject of the 10 to 15 victims each in various German and Finnish schools or universities.

Beyond that, my main message was the "two taboo subjects" on the gun control issue, which are the same as those discussed in a piece from National Review's John Fund: 1) the leftists' "tolerance" for and "lack of judgment" against people with mental illness (leading the latter to being freed from psychiatric hospitals); in addition to 2) “gun-free” zones, praised everywhere, but actually counterproductive.

L'Amérique sous le choc après la fusillade dans une école au Texas - 25/05

Au lendemain de la fusillade qui a tué au moins 19 écoliers et deux enseignants dans une écoleélémentaire d'Uvalde au Texas (États-Unis), les réactions attristées et choquées se sont succédées ce mercredi. Outre-Atlantique, l'invariable débat sur la détention et la régulation des armes à feu est relancé par un Joe Biden affligé. On y revient avec: Antoine Heulard, correspondant de BFMTV à Washington (USA). Erik Svane, membre des Républicains Overseas. François Durpaire, consultant États-Unis de BFMTV. Amandine Atalaya, notre éditorialiste politique. Ulysse Gosset, notre éditorialiste politique internationale. Et Mahali Chalais, journaliste de BFMTV

 

Le 25/05/2022 à 17:29 | Durée : 22:59
Par Olivier Truchot et Alain Marschall

As it happens, I had taken a train to Switzerland that morning when, not an hour later, I got not one call from the BFMTV channel, but two from a duo of reporters independently, almost at the same time, for two different news shows, neither knowing a fellow colleague at the same station was calling me, within a minute or two.

I immediately decided to cancel my trip, bailed out of my TGV Lyria at the very first stop (Dijon) and ran to another quai — with four bags and one cat — to get on the next train back, leaving only four minutes later.

Update: I have since penned this post: In View of the Texas Mass Murder, Should the NRA's Convention in Houston Be Cancelled?

Related:

• What Is to Blame for the Connecticut Shooting? Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere? (Ten-year-old post, but still entirely pertinent)
• T'is easy to tout the success of gun control laws in the rest of the Western world when you ignore certain pertinent facts from Europe
• Mourning "all lives lost to gun violence" is like calling the people murdered on 9/11 victims of “airplane violence”

The "Texas Sharpshooter" Logical Fallacy Explains the Thought Process of Leftists and Drama Queens

  … claiming “direct cause and effect” is exactly what [the the Drama Queens are doing, but only] when it suits them!

Linking to William Lehman's Texas Sharpshooter theory//fallacy, Sarah Hoyt comments that

IT’S NOT JUST THAT DEMOCRATS LIE. IT’S THEY ALSO BELIEVE THEIR OWN LIES

William Lehman:

“Texas sharpshooter” … refers to the “Logical Fallacy” by that name.  Hubspot defines this fallacy as follows: This fallacy gets its colorful name from an anecdote about a Texan who fires his gun at a barn wall and then proceeds to paint a target around the closest cluster of bullet holes. He then points at the bullet-riddled target as evidence of his expert marksmanship.

Speakers who rely on the Texas sharpshooter fallacy tend to cherry-pick data clusters based on a predetermined conclusion. Instead of letting a full spectrum of evidence lead them to a logical conclusion, they find patterns and correlations in support of their goals and ignore evidence that contradicts them or suggests the clusters weren’t actually statistically significant.

 … there are morons and the insane in the world, and one seems to feed off the other.  Then there are the Svengalis of the world, that use any crisis, any disaster, to further their agenda, and when those three intersect and show up on my radar, well, I just naturally get my back up, and feel the need to call this shit out … the latest bullshit from the NYT and the “Anti-Defamation League”

 … David Leonhardt (NYT) is at it again. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220517&instance_id=61553&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=28200476&segment_id=92459&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F095cc587-8474-5c7c-834e-f5a99763488e&user_id=10d59faf3e1d1200e0ddca9ff23febad

Oh, he’s not alone, this time he’s using data provided by the “Anti-Defamation League,” that well known truly fair and unbiased arbiter of all that is good and fair in the world.  This is where the “logical fallacy” part comes in.  See the ADL has come up with this magical number of 450 US murders that were “committed by political extremists.”  (all of this, of course, is in the wake of the shooting in Buffalo, and is an opportunity to “Wave the bloody shirt.”  Sadly, they never even wait until the blood is dried.)

Now before we even get into the conclusion these fine folks come to, let’s look at the numbers they’re using. 450 murders in a decade.  Remember the definition of the fallacy?  “Cherry-picking data clusters based on a predetermined conclusion?”  There were more than 21,000 murders in this country in the latest year on record. (CDC and FBI data for 2020) There were 38 “mass shootings” in 2020, 43 in 2021, and 30 so far this year. 

NOTE, this doesn’t count things like the black supremacist that ran his sports utility vehicle through a parade killing seven and injuring 60, because it wasn’t done with a gun.  It doesn’t count the black supremacist that opened fire in the Subways of NYC earlier this year, because he didn’t kill anyone (due to sucking at shooting, not due to lack of trying.)  They also didn’t count the Chinese on Taiwanese shooting the same day. 

Why didn’t they count those you ask?  Well, according to the ADL “the precise explanation for any one attack can be murky, involving a mixture of ideology, mental illness, gun access and more. In the immediate aftermath of an attack, people are sometimes too quick to claim a direct cause and effect.”  Yet, claiming “direct cause and effect” is exactly what they’re doing, when it suits them! 

They go on to “libsplain” (Hey, if “mansplain” is a word, so is libsplain!) that: “Right-wing violence is endemic to being right-wing, and that really, you can’t be a Republican without being a violent hate-filled monster or at least hauling the mail for those that are,” that being a racist, and believing in something they’re calling “replacement theory” a “radical conspiracy theory” that those evil bastards on FOX news spout. 

Now it’s funny that the shooter in buffalo specifically called out FOX news as an evil part of the conspiracy against white people, in his manifesto, but we’re supposed to ignore that.  It’s also sort of ironic that the NYT has been harping for a couple of years now that “the changing demographics mean that white males will be a voiceless minority within fifteen years.” and that’s good, but believing in this “replacement theory” is evil… 

They also run their position from the “known revealed truth” that being a racist or a white supremacist automatically makes you a conservative republican. From the ADL article: “All but three of the 29 murders (90%) documented in this report had ties to forms of right-wing extremism, including white supremacy, anti-government extremism of several types, right-wing conspiracy theory adherents and toxic masculinity adherents.” 

The problem with that, first, it’s a self-eating ice cream cone. “We say that white supremacy is right-wing, so right-wingers are the people doing the violence.” The second problem is that the manifestos these insane little fuckers keep leaving don’t support the right-wing claim.  This most recent one claims to be a “Moderate Leftist Authoritarian Ecowarrior” in his manifesto posted just before the crime.  Then you get into the “sovereign citizen” insanity which they also label as “right-wing.”  I’ve dealt with those morons as a cop, and folks, they are SOOO far out there you need the Hubble just to see their ass.  Right-wing they are not.  Look, I could play the same game and call the ADL left-wing terrorist sympathizers, but I’ll refrain.

The issue is this: The NYT is going on record as claiming that “The Buffalo killings are an extreme expression of a worldview that has become increasingly central to the identity of the Republican Party.” https://puffnachrichten.com/opinion/the-buffalo-shooting-was-not-a-random-act-of-violence/16927/ (This version enables you to evade their paywall.)  in one day, they have 8 different “leader” articles about how Republicans are the party of hate and need to be silenced. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/todaysheadlines?campaign_id=2&date=2022-05-17&emc=edit_th_20220517&instance_id=61544&nl=today%27s-headlines&regi_id=28200476&segment_id=92449&user_id=10d59faf3e1d1200e0ddca9ff23febad

Free speech for me, but you shut the fuck up, they explain.

Their system failed.  The most gun adverse system in the nation (or second behind CA) let an eighteen-year-old mentally ill individual go, after dealing with him in high school for violent threats.  In a state where “red flag” laws are the law of the land, no one stopped this sick little fucker from buying a gun.  He was committed to a mental hospital, yet no one did the paperwork to deny him the right to get a rifle… and now there are ten people dead, and they want to tie it to republicans, and to the gun. 

Oh, by the way, remember that Texas clock tower shooter I mentioned at the start?  [Charles Whitman] was a democrat too. Semiautomatic wasn’t needed, a standard-issue magazine with 20 rounds or thirty rounds wasn’t needed, he did it all with a three-round magazine bolt action rifle as you find in every hunting camp in America.  Remember the guy in WI that plowed into the parade? He did it with a Ford. 

Last weekend, there were 104 Americans shot dead in the streets.  I don’t know how many were killed with a knife, or a club or beat to death, but based on the statistical averages, at least 300.  Yes, you’re three times as likely to be killed by some other means than by being shot. Are they any less dead because it wasn’t a “hate crime?’ If in fact it wasn’t, and really how do you kill someone except out of hate?

The issue is not the type of firearm, it’s not the magazine capacity, it’s not even the fact that it’s a firearm, and it’s surely not what flavor of politics the killer claims or espouses.  The issue is mental health and criminal behavior.  As long as we are letting the crazies and the crooks run the streets, we’re going to have dead people.