Second Amendment

Media high on Hogg

By Dalton Clodfelter

I grieve with the students of Santa Fe, Texas, and Parkland, Florida. These tragedies are becoming all too familiar across America because municipalities and school boards have insisted school campuses remain gun-free zones and, thus, vulnerable to mentally ill attackers.

David Hogg, a Parkland student and anti-gun activist, has become the “face” of this tragedy, particularly at his new home away from home, CNN. And the liberal media has jumped on his bandwagon — supporting his profanity-laced tirades with countless articles and appearances on news/talk shows. The media has given Hogg a voice to support its own liberal narrative.

Hogg is not my voice or that of hundreds of other young people who aren’t given a media platform. And, he is certainly not the voice of my generation.

I am a proud member of the NRA; a young Christian Conservative who supports our Constitution, and isn’t afraid of the mob mentality that is the liberal culture on many high school campuses today. I’m David Hogg’s worst nightmare.

Hogg has been praised by the left as a virtuous advocate for peace. He has now entered into a contract along with his sister to publish a book titled, “#NeverAgain”, which will pursue a theme that if you are pro-gun then you must be pro-killing children. Expect to find this book a short time from now on the discount tables at Costco and Walmart.

Here, Mr. Hogg, are some facts. Statistics maintained by data.cityofchicago.org show that, in 2017, more than 600 people were killed by illegal use of a firearm even though Chicago is among many large cities with stringent gun laws.

The mainstream media crow about declines in urban murder rates, overlooking that outlaws are still randomly killing innocents on the streets. Are the families of the 5,738 victims of homicide in the nation’s 50 biggest cities in 2017 consoled by the fact that 2.3% more were killed in 2016? Where is the outrage centered on the slaughter of 26 law enforcement officials so far in 2018?

Remember when the “Black Lives Matter” movement was emerging and a Maryland lawmaker was roundly shouted down for retorting that “all lives matter”. That same illogic seems to to pervade the “gun control” crowd. The deaths of high school kids gunned down by mentally unstable fellow students are unthinkable, but the drug lords and gang members in cities killing kids are just statistical anomalies.

Washington, D.C., also was known for its climbing homicide rate and strict gun ban policy enacted in 1976, with the annual homicide rate rising from 188 to 364. Of course, after politicians eliminated the gun ban, there was a decrease in homicides.

According to the University of Chicago’s gun crime stats, from 1977 to 1999, the right-to-carry laws drastically decreased the frequency and devastation of mass public shootings, and where shootings did occur they were in areas of the state that still did not permit concealed handguns.

The liberal media and its Hogg puppets focus much of their venom on the National Rifle Association. Some have labeled the NRA a “terrorist organization”. Yet, the NRA, more than any other organization, has labored to address the core issue tied to school shootings — preparing and protecting schools from massacres. Parents and school administrators are doing the kids in their communities a disservice if they are not visiting the the NRA’s web site and learning about the National School Shield program.

Hogg’s book will be nothing more than another attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, just like his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts. David Hogg is the epitome of today’s social justice warrior the liberal media loves and promotes. Unfortunately, his 15 minutes will not soon be up.

Dalton Clodfelter is a high school senior and founder of the web site rightwingworld.com, which strives to enable young people to break free from the mob mentality and collectivist movement on school campuses today.

Hudson vs. 60 Minutes

Hudson on 60 Minutes

It was just a matter of time before last December’s passage of H.R. 38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, by the U.S. House of Representatives sparked left-wing media outrage. Leave it to none other than CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday prime time program to unleash correspondent Steve Kroft on the topic, which 2nd Amendment antagonists distill as follows: far right, gun packing rural hicks versus reasoned, intellectual elites who desire a permanent ban on firearm possession by our citizens and confiscation of previously registered guns.

Enter our Congressman, Richard Hudson (NC-8), who authored and championed the bill all the way to the finish line. It passed in the House 231-198 last Dec. 6 and is in the U.S. Senate pipeline. During a tense moment in their taped interview, Kroft barely contained himself while scolding Hudson’s comparison of a reciprocal concealed carry permit to a driver’s license, which is valid in every state.

“It’s not like a driver’s license!” Kroft shouted, insisting that licensed drivers must demonstrate minimum proficiencies. Kroft is unaware, apparently, or deliberately ignores that H.R. 38 would grant concealed carry reciprocity exclusively to legally registered firearm owners who “would have to follow the laws of the state, county and municipality in which they are carrying concealed.”

Remarkably, Hudson’s retort was not edited out of the segment. He did not blink. “But, driving is a privilege,” he said. “Owning a firearm is a Constitutionally protected right. So there is a difference.”

Make no mistake, this was a hit piece from beginning to end, but not merely an attack on Rep. Hudson’s bill, or Tim Schmidt, founder in 2003 of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (also interviewed by Kroft). The objective of 60 Minutes producers and Kroft was obvious: to demean and belittle the “folks” in the red(neck) states who, unlike their educated blue state fellow citizens, are trapped in a time warp in which guns, as Kroft put it dismissively, “are woven into the culture.” They are, in other words, dangerous, exceeded only by the Constitution itself as a threat to society.

Kroft’s segment was not so much a “report” on an issue of the day as it was a televised op-ed. Two examples. In the first, he characterizes a Constitutional right as an idea:

The central tenant of Concealed Carry Reciprocity is that the 2nd Amendment gives people the right to carry guns anywhere they want. But that idea is more aspirational than factual.

In the second, Kroft despairs that he and his New York-based arbiters of 21st Century America can not disenfranchise an enormous swath of our population (the inference being that the people who elected Donald Trump are alive and well):

Whether people like it or not, that world (where guns are carried and concealed) already exists in many parts of the country, where people are quite happy with it. And so are their representatives in Congress.

Kroft’s parting shot at Rep. Hudson was to dismiss the core assertion behind the necessity of concealed carry as having been “refuted by numerous studies”, but without detailing these so-called “studies”, or who conducted them. Hudson stood his ground, which is not easy to do amid the glare of the famously intimidating 60 Minutes entrapment sessions.

I can tell you that in the last 20 years you’ve seen a huge uptick of gun ownership, you’ve seen a huge uptick in concealed carry, and, at the same time, you’ve seen violent crime drop. If you look at states with concealed carry, you’ve seen violent crime drop.

The fallacy of ‘gun control’

The Washington Post‘s relatively new mantra reminds readers that “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. In the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre perpetrated by a maniacal individual, who owned unfathomable numbers of weapons and was not on law enforcement radar, we are reminded anew that “Propaganda Thrives in Darkness”. The Post, in Oct. 3 editions and online, underscored this truth by publishing a stunning admission by a former “gun control” advocate, who sheds light on a reality that the newspaper’s editors and readers likely will find unsettling, if not heretical. Continue reading “The fallacy of ‘gun control’”