War on self-defense? Some updates.

Despite recent snows in the High County (the Rockies and Sierras and Black Hills, at least), the summer tourist season is nearly upon us. With that, people are traveling and warm days and cool nights (but not too cool) bring out the rats. The human kind as well as the kind with tails.

And courtesy of the current fad of “from the river to the sea” protests and occupations and “peaceful” vandalism and confrontations on and off campuses across the country? People are concerned about the safety of themselves and their families as they travel and as travelers come to their area.

The mainstream media loves to feed on and ramp up these fears. Europeans and even Brits and Australians continue to be sold the idea that the States are a lawless, gun-violence-filled land that resembles their imaginations of the Old, Old, Wild West – an image pushed by Hollywood for a century.

Gunfights every day at noon on Front Street; madmen (and madwomen pretending to be men) invading schools and mowing down teachers and children, war parties attacking buses and RVs on remote Interstate highways, and gang fights on Broadway and Times Square. Besides the overseas tourists who are frightened into not coming, the lurid tales seem to be relished by some.

Of course, they are disappointed. Perhaps even more so than the disappointment that not every Lakota or Comanche or Ute they meet resembles a Karl May Roman (novel) character: no huge eagle-feather headdresses, no scalps tied on lances. No young Dineh (Navajo) women in velvet skirts and calico blouses. Boots and cowboy hats and jeans and plaid shirts or tanktops are a real letdown.

There are always things going on about legal gun control in the big tourism States let us look at a few in particular.

Florida: Back in January 2023 when the monster De Santis signed “constitutional carry” (at least as far as concealed weapons go)? The media, the hoplophobic gun activists, and the hoploclastic politicians spouted the usual nonsense: explosion in rising crime rates, blood-splattered streets, more gunmen (or women) massacring kids in schools.

Now, more than a year later? Crime rates – both violent and non-violent crime – seem to be down in Florida. The biggest problems in schools seem to be not being allowed to teach DEI and some teachers preying sexually on students. Now maybe it isn’t permitless concealed carry that is reducing the rates of crime. But the point is, the gun violence rate has not exploded as the Woke and the fearful predicted.

California: As in Florida, we can’t say for sure why crime rates are changing. Again the hoploclasts want us to believe that all it will take is a few (dozen) more laws to keep the crime rates from continuing to climb. And refuse to discuss the idea that it is the thousands of laws in California and its jurisdictions might be one reason that crime is booming. The courts are mixed in their reviews with some being overturned and others allowed to continue to disarm more and more honest and peaceful people in more and more places. While criminals continue to be what makes them criminals: breaking the laws.

Colorado: This ever-more blue State is imitating California in passing laws that don’t accomplish their claimed purpose of ending or reducing gun violence. Or trying to pass them: even the media had to admit that the semi-automatic gun ban pushed in the General Assembly died this year as the result of actions by Democrats joining with the GOP minority to table it. Of course, the Woke are screaming about how this will increase gun violence in the State.

California and Colorado aren’t the only States having problems passing more hoploclastic laws: apparently both collectivist Minnesota and Maine and New York State seem to be having trouble getting bills through the legislature or getting the courts to go along with them. Perhaps minor irritants but still a good sign. But overall the most populous and Regressive-ridden Woke States are busy passing more and more gun control legislation. And despite Uncle Joe’s claims of reduction in crime across all Fifty States, it appears that crime is increasing in those very States, and spilling into more red states as a result.

We should point out that gun control laws in Colorado, California, even Massachusetts and New York and Wisconsin have been effective in some ways: not just making life easier for criminals. They are driving businesses out of those States, and often they are driving residents out of those States to friendlier and safer States.

Meanwhile, should we also not note this? Despite the liberal nature of new gun laws in some States (liberal in the old sense of less restrictive, more freedom-supporting; not the modern neo-liberal Regressive mindset). Those States are growing in population. Places like Texas and Florida and Tennessee for example. Many people apparently do value liberty more than security, and don’t believe the propaganda about blood in the streets.

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