Tag: NRA

Video Games are to Blame for the Parkland Shooting: A neighbor reported that Nikolas Cruz played online shooters 15 hours per day

Gun confiscation is a goal of the political left, but in regard to these school shootings any gun control measure will have little effect because as I’d argue, there is a new element to our society that is much more to blame. About twenty years ago a video game called Goldeneye, based on the recent James Bond movie of the same name hit the Nintendo 64 home video game console. It was considered the first real “first person shooter” game which changed the industry forever. For the first-time players could play multiplayer death matches in the way that is common today with poplar games like Call of Duty, Battlefront, and even Grand Theft Auto. Two years after Goldeneye was released, there was the infamous Columbine School shooting in Colorado—and there have been occasional mass school shootings since. The connection to the video game industry is much more guilt associated than with the gun industry because there were guns before all this happened. What was new and different was the ability of young people to shoot guns in the world of computer gaming where the typical skills of learning to shoot and the consequences that were once taught to young people have been removed. These modern video games are slick, and fast. The guns fire ballistically in a very similar fashion. I used to tell my daughters who grew up on the next generation of that Goldeneye game experience, Perfect Dark, that what they shot on video games was the cheapest shooting that they’d ever do. And for most kids, they can handle it—but they love to shoot at each other in first person shooters. I’d say that there is an intellectual need people have to play this way. But for a kid that is just a little crazy, it is far too tempting to live out the fantasy created in the video game culture of gunning down lots of people, because for a fleeting bit of moments, it makes them infinitely powerful. And for some kids trading that moment of power for their lives either in jail or in death is a worthy one.

We learned from USA Today that the shooter in Parkland, Florida was a heavy video game player. A neighbor of accused shooter Nikolas Cruz told the Miami Herald that Cruz “escaped his misery” by playing video games for as much as 15 hours a day. “It was kill, kill, kill, blow up something, and kill some more, all day,” he said. Well, that really hasn’t been talked about in the news—the only line of thought that has been this proposal to confiscate guns. The biggest problem with that besides it being flat-out unconstitutional is it’s also not relevant to solving the problem. What is even worse, the way the media used those kids from the Parkland shooting to advance their liberal gun agenda, in the same way that Michael Moore did when he released the film Bowling for Columbine hoping to press the nation into a gun confiscation policy similar to Australia—the media completely ignored the video game problem. Most of the kids they were parading out in front of the cameras were shooters themselves in the world of video games. Because these days, most kids are. Most young people don’t learn about guns from their grandpa or their fathers anymore where they really feel the gun shoot, understand the recoil, and the expense of firing a lead projectile at a target—they only see them in video games under the new social world of online multiplayer battles—which are as common as the milkshake was to teenage kids in the 1950s at the local car hoop. Talk to just about any high school kid and they are playing games online at home.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/20/after-parkland-video-games-back-critics-crosshairs/356654002/

I know a little bit about this world because I am still very much a part of it. I have always played lots of video games and I’ve watched this evolution, and personally I love it. The PlayStation network for which I’m a member reported to me the following stats for the year of 2017. I was a little shocked by them because as people know, I am a very busy guy. I work professionally 60 to 70 hors per week. I read at least one book every week. I shoot real guns often as well as fulfil many interests that I have. In addition I spend a lot of personal time with my family so I didn’t think it was possible to play as many hours as my PlayStation gamer tag said I did last year. Here’s a bit of the report:

Over the months of 2017, you played
768 hours

over 17 different games, while making the most progress in November with 118 hours of gameplay.
The average PlayStation gamer played for
218 hours

The most-active month in 2017 for PlayStation gamers was July with 1.13 billion hours.

So I played roughly three times more gaming on PlayStation than the average video gamer. And as seen by their own stats, people play about 1 billion hours a month in online gaming, most of which are first person shooters like Call of Duty. My thing is Star Wars: Battlefront. Now consider that these stats are just for PlayStation. Xbox has an equally vibrant following as does Nintendo. Presently in our house we have both the PlayStation and the new Nintendo Switch which get tremendous workouts all hours of the day. Video games are the number one past time of young people these days so if any reforms should be tackled, it is in what happens in the world of online shooters. That is the first place to start.

A gun ban will do nothing to curb the violence because the desire to violence is nurtured in online gaming. The need for a human being to decimate other live players is something very inherent in us all, which is what first person shooters are all about. Until that desire is eliminated from all human beings, there will be mass violence occurring. For well over 99% of the population they can play these games and not go out into the world and engage in mass violence. But for some the temptation to do in real life what they can do in the video game world is just too enticing—so they carry out the fantasy like Nikolas Cruz did in Parkland.

These video games are a global phenomenon, people are playing them in Europe and Asia as well, in live time. Guns aren’t so easy to get in those places so the killings that occur are other methods, knives, cars, bombs—whatever terrorists can get their hands on. I would be willing to bet that if most ISIS terrorists were tracked down to their gamer tags, we’d find that they play all these video games religiously in their countries of origin. I’m sure PlayStation and Xbox know who is playing what and how often. If they are tracking me, they are tracking everyone. And you can bet the NSA and the FBI have profiles on certain players and their online abilities and connections.

In real life one of the measurement systems I use to make multimillion dollar assessments of something is the lean manufacturing technique of Gage R&R which is a type of MSA—Measurement System Analysis. Gage R&R (repeatability and reproducibility) are typically only 30% to 50% accurate even with the best inputs that can be acquired so getting the best information to collect is of utmost importance. If I were to run a Gage R&R on mass school shootings putting all the data into a nice big beautiful spreadsheet taking into account the age of the shooter, the back ground of the shooters, the types of guns used, the social circumstances for which they functioned, the political beliefs, the amount of times they had sex with females—was their a father in the home, etc., we’d find that it was none of those elements that would point us to the obvious problem of what causes school shootings. What they’d all have in common to some degree or another was the direct result of the video game industry and the romance that gun violence has been perpetuated by the Hollywood product. Even the music industry would show up on our Gage R&R to show a repeatable influence over the last two decades for desensitizing people to the realities of the world and encouraging violence to instigate social change. The fault of school shootings statistically speaking have nothing to do with gun manufacturers or the NRA—it has everything to do with Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox. The MSA analysis points only to the video game industry followed closely by movies and television as the prime drivers of social violence. Even if all guns were confiscated and the NRA were out of existence today, mass killings would still occur because the cause of the violence has not been yet dealt with. The desire to kill lots of people can be done with a gun or a car, but it’s the problem of our modern society that such desires are there to begin with—and video games assist that desire with a role-playing element that makes the weakest and less disciplined of us seek out that sensation in real life.

You will never hear from me to ban video games. I love them too much and I am willing to put up with the occasional violence that we see because I think there are benefits to what video games bring to people. Violence is a byproduct, but so is the thinking that goes on which is changing us as a species and allowing us to process information so much faster than we ever did before. There is much more good about video games than bad. But if there is something to blame for the Parkland school shooting, it was video games that Nikolas Cruz played which likely pushed him over the edge. If you are harboring resentments in an aggressive setting and losing grips with reality—killing hundreds of people a day online is likely to create the fantasy of doing it in real life. Most of us know how to turn off that switch and to only keep that desire in the video game reality. Obviously, Cruz didn’t have that switch. But if people really want to solve the problem of school shootings, you have to start with the video game industry. Because there are a lot of Nikolas Cruz kids out there just waiting to snap. I think we are headed for a period over the next two decades where there will be many more killing attempts—because kids like Cruz play kill so much online that they want to try it in real life. And because they don’t have strong fathers to hold them together, or a family structure, a church, or even good media influences to look up to, there is nothing to keep them from testing themselves in reality once they have grown tired of killing in the world of video games. Not being able to buy a gun at Dick’s sporting goods or the Kroger stores won’t prevent them from some other method. If they want to kill, they are going to find some way to do it, and when they do, we have to be ready for them.

Rich Hoffman

Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

Stand and Fight: Boycotts, Planned Parenthood, Scott Israel Corruption and people deciding to be lions, not sheep

I don’t typically pay attention to boycotts but this one against the NRA by Alamo, Delta and many others bothers me due to the hypocrisy. Why is it that large organizations will rally behind a cause that is conservative, but will continue to do business with people who support Planned Parenthood? Those same people will say that the NRA is killing our babies in schools when Planned Parenthood is actually killing our babies! Can someone illuminate this topic more succinctly? Planned Parenthood is all about relieving the responsibility off a female who happens to get pregnant by killing the child that she may accidentally find herself impregnated by while the NRA is about defending life with the Second Amendment—protecting value. Yet companies like United Airlines, Metlife Insurance, and First National Bank will take a stand against the NRA due to “customer feedback” but they will continue to do business with many thousands of customers who have recently had abortions at Planned Parenthood. Doesn’t that seem just a little hypocritical?

I take it personal when I see people attacking the NRA. It’s a group I happen to love. I don’t require everyone in the world to think the way I do, but if you attack something I care about, there are going to be problems. I’m alright with public assembly and protests if that’s how people want to spend their time, but I’m not OK if those protests turn against something I care about, like the NRA. Personally, I heard enough last week regarding people blaming the NRA for the school shooting in Parkland, Florida to last me a lifetime. Boycotts bother me because they run counter intuitive to some basic ideas I have about the world. I’m a person who keeps like a Bible everywhere I go around my home a copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations which articulates free market ideas in a very pure way. Many years ago when I was working on public education issues from a financial standpoint a series of mad mothers who wanted to pass higher taxes threatened to boycott the restaurant of one of my supporters which changed forever my tolerance for such people. It was the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, packs of angry supercharged moms demanding free things for their kids in school that we all had to pay for, then threatening a legitimate business owner who supported a cause I was responsible for with financial ruin if that owner didn’t comply with the demands of the mob. After that experience it forever changed how I viewed public education. And in a very similar way, this Parkland shooting has changed how I view a lot of things especially those who support abortion with great fanfare, yet point to the NRA and proclaim death. It’s the other way around, and we’re not going to let this one slide. If those big companies cutting their support of the NRA really mean it, they’ll cut ties with anyone who participates in the death and degradation of life at Planned Parenthood with the same gusto.

What fueled this anti-NRA hatred in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting was the Sheriff of Broward County, Scott Israel essentially blaming the NRA for the intent of the shooter—for allowing an anti-NRA dialogue to develop as if the gun advocacy group had inspired and trained the shooter to commit the action, when in fact it was the failure of that Sheriff’s entire department which drove up the death county—needlessly. Scott Israel did not have his employees prepared to deal with such a crises, because when it did happen four of his deputies that were on sight at the shooting took up positions outside of the school and failed to engage the shooter. Meanwhile the shooter was inside the school taking the life of 17 people, and this was the fault of the NRA? It should come as no surprise that Scott Israel is a registered Democrat, so mismanagement is to be expected to a certain extent. But to deflect that failure away from him and to the NRA is reprehensible.

https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/23/broward-county-sheriff-scott-israel-accu

The NRA as an organization has stood for morality and good clean American lifestyles for as long as I can remember. My son-in-law as soon as he became an American citizen signed up to be a life member of the NRA because that was one of the things he most wanted to do as an official American. In England where he came from people don’t have guns and they certainly don’t think to defend themselves in the midst of aggression. A typical Englishman might send a strongly worded letter to their local law enforcement if some villain harasses them and their property but they don’t have something like the NRA to protect their right to do anything about a crime. They just endure it in the way that the criminal underworld was portrayed in the film A Clockwork Orange. Scott Israel when he was confronted for the high salaries of some of his employees in a corruption allegation that was politically motivated the Sheriff said, “lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep.” That’s why apparently his office failed to take action 18 times regarding the behavior of the shooter Nikolas Cruz—because he viewed the complaints as coming from the sheep of his county.

In a lot of ways, the stupidity of Scott Israel is why we need the Second Amendment, because the way he functions as a person helps breed the behavior of killers like Cruz. The NRA is there to preserve our right to be the last line of defense in protection of our own lives. Because all too often there are idiots like Sheriff Israel out there who bring danger to our doorsteps just because they mismanage the affairs around them. Scott Israel, because he was a bad sheriff that let a killer destroy the lives of many people in a school shooting should have never been on CNN arguing with Dana Loesch trying to deflect the responsibility of the killings onto the NRA, he should have been cleaning out his desk in disgrace for the many failures he contributed to the matter. And as the crowd cheered after that set-up CNN debate for which Israel participated, it was these many companies pulling away from the NRA to show the public they were on the side of the Sheriff—a failure of a person who couldn’t even train his men how to engage in an active shooter situation, that acted based on his public statements. I mean if you are going to wear a gun on your hip, you better damn well be willing to use it when danger presents itself. Most five-year olds would have done a better job in that situation than Israel’s men, because they at least know right from wrong instinctively. These slobs of the Broward County Sheriff’s department were too busy thinking about lunch, they surely didn’t want to get killed saving a school full of kids.

The NRA has about 5 million members, and that number should be greater not less. I look forward to everything I get from the NRA because I respect what they do. If not for the NRA gun laws would have been wiped out a long time ago leaving us completely at the mercy of losers like Scott Israel who think they are lions among men and the rest of us are sheep to be slaughtered at will. As much as we’d like to trust authorities to do that right thing—and many around the country are good—we can’t always expect them to do so. Israel’s department is the perfect example, they were commissioned to protect our society and when danger came, they hid behind their cars allowing many people to be killed and wounded in a school of all places. Then when they were caught they threw their aggression toward the NRA. The logic would further deteriorate drawing out a sinister hypocrisy, how could a bunch of anti-gun protestors point at the NRA and declare them to be an advocacy group for death when many of those same people support abortion and the efforts of Planned Parenthood? It is in that kind of logic that mandates we must always have the NRA to defend our rights against those very kinds of encroachments from corrupt administrators who are so grossly incompetent that they are a danger to themselves and others. When they fail, it is not our burden to follow them into the depths of oblivion, it becomes our task to Stand and Fight. Because we as American gun owners certainly aren’t sheep—the people who decide to join the NRA make quite explicit decisions to be fellow lions—which is what people like Sheriff Israel are really afraid of.

Rich Hoffman

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The Answer to Sam Zeil’s White House Question: Why we can buy “weapons of war” at the local store

I was impressed with the 18-year-old Sam Zeif who spoke at the White House after the Parkland, Florida school shooting. He lost his best friend and was very sad about it. He spoke very intelligently and was extremely articulate. But he asked a question that deserves an answer, and a lot of people who don’t shoot much, or understand the philosophic premise of the Second Amendment are asking the same question. Young Zeif said it a couple of times, he wanted to know why he could still buy “weapons of war” at the store and suggested that we’d all be better off if America adopted a similar policy as Australia—and had a general gun confiscation policy. I heard that and a natural tension went up my spine wanting to defend the basic assumption. However, I don’t blame the kids so much for not understanding the scope of the situation, they have learned it in their schools and in the temperament of their intuitional interaction. Yet most gun owners know and understand otherwise, and that knowledge is often traditionally transferred from generation to generation for a reason that is specific to American culture and is why we can go to the store and buy weapons of war. Young Sam apparently has not had the benefit of this generational exchange, so I’ll offer it here for him and those of a like mind.

Whenever I buy a new gun it is always a magical experience. I love every single new one and the thrill of it never stops. Guns always represent power and strength and the bigger and meaner the better. Being weapons of war is a very foundational way to look at them, but what they represent is aggression and defense. Yet ultimately, they stand for freedom, freedom from aggression, freedom from authoritarian rule, freedom from any sinister forces that might want to steer your life in a direction of their choosing, not yours. Having big, mean, powerful guns means you are on equal terms with even the most vicious aggressor out there in the world that may have ill intentions toward you, and having an option against those forces brings about freedom that only a gun can yield.

The world that many rock stars have sung about, and what Sam Zeif by default articulated does not exist. There is no institution in the world that is completely trustworthy, especially with our lives. We may wish for that to be the case, but even in the Parkland school shooting there were so many hired people who failed from the institutional point of view that no reasonable argument in their defense can be made. We would be fools to trust completely that the FBI would do their jobs 100% of the time. We’d be idiots to assume that local law enforcement will get it right in every circumstance. In the Parkland shooting there are reports now that up to four officers near the incident failed to confront the shooter, so even those officially sanctioned to use guns get it wrong a lot of the time—more than is acceptable. That doesn’t mean we should scrap our society into anarchy, but it does mean that we need another layer of security in our lives that is individually driven. We should leave it to the professionals—those we pay to worry about security and the laws we make as a society, but we should always look to ourselves first.

To assume that if all the guns in the world were confiscated that we would all by default fall into a society of peace is just ridiculous. Human beings probably have at least 100,000 more years of evolution before the basic natures of our existences change for the better, where aggression isn’t part of our interaction with each other. People are always competing with one another, there are always bigger people, smarter people, faster people, better looking people, etc., who will leverage their talents and abilities against others to acquire what they think they need to live. It was only through the invention of the gun and the general distribution of reading through the printing press that freedom from static institutions began to falter and the cultures of individuality began to spring up around the world, most notably in the early American colonies for which our Constitution was written. Before people could read things for themselves and defend what they acquired through that knowledge with personal defense, societies were strung together through kingships and nobility. The gun freed us all from that enslavement.

But go to any corporate environment and you will see the same primitive mechanisms at work, people using whatever skills of superiority they have over others to acquire advantages for themselves. War is a trait of human beings, even two nicely mannered women will fight over who has the best flower bed, the best pie, or even the largest diamond ring. It is in the nature of human beings to be competitive, even if the foundations are rooted in destruction. But when a person has a gun and they are smaller than another person with a gun, they are both suddenly equal. Guns are the ultimate equalizers, having guns puts everyone on the same footing essentially making firearms a major contributor to the furtherance of a human species working toward objectives that supersede the typical primitive motivations of past millennia. Many of the advancements made in America are because of the gun, not in spite of them. People who might in any other society be pushed to the back of the pecking order line were able to profess their ideas about things knowing that they wouldn’t be gunned down in the street for professing them, because everyone is armed and retaliation is always a possibility. For the first time in the history of the world, individuals had power over the institutions so they could contribute to the nature of existence. If the threat of retaliation is not present, such as a big person being tempted to abuse a person of smaller stature, too often with humans an abuse of that relationship will take place because the larger person can, then the smaller person will find themselves in a weak position individually. If the smaller person has a gun, suddenly the size of the other person no longer gives them an advantage and a more equal exchange of information is possible leading to a better relationship.

Owning weapons of war even though nobody of a right mind ever thinks of using them for a destination of violence eases a mind that may always be concerned that the size of institutions may inhibit their options in life. Having big scary weapons in personal possession means that the big scary authorities who have lots of weapons of war will think twice before kicking down your door in the middle of the night to abuse their authority—just because they can. When there are people out in the world carrying around big scary weapons to prevent terrorists from attacking the foundations of our society there must also be checks in place to keep law enforcement from using that power to abuse their authority to take the possessions of people they are supposed to be watching over. We all hear of cases where traffic cops pull over a car full of girls and have forced them to perform sex acts to get out of expensive fines. Or cops detain an attractive woman and force them into a state of undress accusing them of carrying dangerous weapons just so they can have the power to strip down a beautiful woman. It happens much more than it should. The people we pay to protect us are much less prone to abuse that relationship if they have to worry that people might shoot back if they abuse their authority. We’d hope that such a thing might never happen but just looking at the abuse of the FBI against the Trump administration tells us that even at the highest levels of our government that trust is only as deep as the threat of danger that might come back at the perpetrators. Without that threat, abuse often happens in any relationship.

Ironically weapons of war are the foundations to a civil society. You will never see a lot of pushing and shoving going on at gun events where everyone is armed with a gun. Big people, small people, smart people and dumb people all treat each other respectfully because in those meetings everyone is truly equal because it’s not the biological gifts that we have which make us that way, it is the invention of the gun that takes over and puts everyone on equal footing. By taking away the temptation for aggression it forces everyone to treat each other fairly and with great respect. That’s why you don’t see mass shootings at gun shows or NRA events—and why those people tend to be very polite and respectful. The gun is an invention of equality and it works wonderfully.

So to answer Sam’s question, why can he go to the store to buy weapons of war, well, because those weapons are needed to keep human beings on an equal playing field. Institutions by themselves cannot be trusted, they often do abuse their power and so long as that is the case, which isn’t necessarily a learned behavior, but a biological one, equality must be achieved between people through an inventive process. The beauty of a fine weapon that is big and scary is that it gives the owner the ability to function in life with a level of equality that has never been possible prior to the invention of the firearm. Having that firearm forces others to deal with you at a level of respect that is unmistakable and takes away the temptations to abuse relationships for the gain of a one-sided exchange. If young women had more guns in an open carry part of their fashion, they would get harassed sexually a lot less. Because the natural relationship between a large man of 250 pounds is to show superiority over the 120-pound woman. But when she has on her hip a nice Glock or a Smith & Wesson revolver, the large man will treat the woman differently because his size and strength are no longer assets that he can claim superiority over. She is just as strong as he is just because she has a gun. If he has a gun as well, then the two are truly equal.

Traditionally when a father or grandfather gave a young man his first gun, the gift wasn’t just a weapon of war, it was an assignment of equality that let the youth engage with the world on an equal footing—even among his parental peers. For instance, the implication of the dad to the son, “you are now as strong as I am and I trust you enough to give you this gun.” Many such people never use their guns in any kind of aggressive manner, but they know if they needed to, they could and that leads to a society of greater respect in personal exchanges. If the behavior of Nickolas Cruz, the shooter in the Parkland massacre, were to be studied correctly it would be revealed that the kid was small, had been picked on for much of his life and his parents failed to give him a good philosophic foundation to live with. So he turned to the gun to become superior to his oppressors. If people at the school also had guns, then Cruz would not have such a claim to superiority that he had on the day of the shooting. But taking guns away doesn’t solve the problem—Cruz was still a kid who was picked on for being such a small person, humans are always looking for leverage over one another. Only in an equally armed society do we actually have the basis for a proper interaction based on fairness. That is why we have weapons of war for sale at an area store. They are essential to a proper and justice-based society.

Rich Hoffman

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Why to Love the NRA: Give Wayne LaPierre the credit to stand tall when everyone else failed

If you really want to piss me off then drag me into the insanity of what I would consider very stupid people desiring to engage me into their bad decisions. I’m pretty open-minded about what people do with themselves and how they live—that is, until they try to make me a part of it. Then I have no tolerance, because if there is one thing I truly desire in life it is to live well, and the way I want to. My life is not the possession of anyone else. Its mine, and I love it. Honestly, I don’t need a firearm to protect myself. But if someone threatens my life they’d be an idiot to think they are going to walk away from that engagement alive whether or not I happen to be carrying a gun or not at that moment, because I know how to protect myself and the people I care about. However, a gun is the most efficient way to equalize a conflict with someone with ill intentions, and these days due to many social breakdowns, that threat is greater than its ever been before. Even in a week when President Trump has let us down with a move to the left on gun control and I find myself at odds with people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on the issue, it was so nice to hear Wayne LaPierre speak on behalf of the NRA at CPAC.

My membership to the National Rifle Association is one of my most treasured memberships. I am proud every time I see the words, “NRA.” I am equally proud of my membership to the Cowboy Fast Draw Association, which is an NRA affiliate. Those are some of the finest people I know and not to brag too much, but I know a lot of people. I’m a business professional that does work with many hundreds of people all over the world so I’m not living in some cave in Montana when I say how much I love the NRA. It’s not some wacko group of right-wingers like the gun hating press would like you to believe, they are good people who want what America has always been about, the pursuit of personal freedom—and the support of guns is the most efficient way to protect that freedom.

The gun haters want, and expect that society at large has all the answers that an individual may need in their life, which is pure fantasy on their behalf. If you’ve ever been to Europe or get a chance to go you will quickly get an idea what left leaning people want to do to the United States, they’d like to replicate European culture. But what Europe has is a deep history that is at the heart of everything that they are—they are a people always looking back at what they were, not what they want to be. America is different, it is a country always looking forward at what individualized potential might drive forward culturally. And to facilitate that optimism, individual freedom is encouraged and treasured, whereas in Europe its frowned upon. Even on the topless beaches of France and Spain where women declaring themselves liberated and equal to men sunbathing with their breasts exposed we see the basic foundations of collectivism, because the women are cheapened into a collective entity as opposed to a sanctimonious specimen of a treasured loved one holding her treasures for the father of her children in the most idealistic individual fantasy of love, honor, and privacy. In America we don’t necessarily like to share ourselves with the world as we guard against the unwanted appraisal of others as innovation pours forth from our minds hoping to ride the waves of capitalism to a better life, and we protect that life from encroachment by parasitic personalities with a gun.

If we look just at the case of the many institutional failures of the Parkland assassin Nikolas Cruz, who was rejected by his school, kicked out so to preserve the sanctimonious public school. Over a seven-year period the local sheriff’s office visited Nikolas Cruz 39 times due to concern over the kid’s behavior. 39 times! The FBI directly had tips on Cruz and failed to act on those observations. When the shooting happened a hired gun that was supposed to be protecting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School by the name of Scot Patterson took up a defensive position outside the school never engaging the active shooter for over four minutes. Patterson resigned in the aftermath in disgrace. His failure cost 17 lives. But then there was the tape delay on the security cameras and the slap stick cops’ scenario of the police radios trying to figure out what was happening. While Cruz had already killed his targets and was having a sit-down meal at a local McDonald’s, the police were viewing videotape that they thought was live of the shooter moving from the third floor of the school to the second, only to be embarrassed by the revelation that they were watching something in past tense. The killer had already come and gone. It was only by luck that one alert officer an hour later thought correctly that he had spotted Cruz apprehending the killer. It wasn’t just one failure that caused the death of 17 people and wounding many others, it was several—really a failure at every level of the supposed safety nets that were supposed to be in place. Yet the anger leveled at Marco Rubio at a CNN anti-gun forum was astonishingly brutal as everyone there advocated for more of that kind of mess. More laws, more police, more mental health screening, more, more, more institutional control mechanisms when we just observed that even the ones in place had failed at every level.

When it really comes down to it we are all we really have. We must guard our own lives with responsible action and through that effort, others around us are saved. The only real solution to most of our modern problems is an improvement of individual action. If everyone took care of themselves and declared responsibility for their lives, then a lot of these problems would go away. We don’t have a gun problem in America, we have a responsibility problem. And the reason things are so dangerous these days is that responsible people, good people are at risk from the many lunatics out there especially on the political left who are starving for attention and salvation created from their rotten lives and they want what good people have. Guns have always provided a barrier of protection for individuals against those who would seek to take from them what they personally possess—even their very lives. At the most fundamental level, our lives are our most treasured possessions, and the destitute of our species do not have any collective right to the merits of our lives. They don’t get to walk across our yards unimpeded, they don’t get to drive our cars. They don’t get to molest our children, our wives, even our mail boxes without the threat of engagement—because all those things are products of our individualized lives and the hours of hard work it took to build such a life. The world of our institutions may have good intentions, but as we have seen, when lazy minds inhabit those institutions from the FBI to the local police, to the ultimate failure of Scot Patterson we can’t trust them and there has never really been any evidence that we ever could.

Every gun grabber who ultimately wants to confiscate all our firearms in America and send us to the league of nations around the world drowning in socialism and repressed governments perpetually looking into their own pasts—to their better days—expect us to trust completely the many intuitions that failed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School case. They have president Trump’s ear about stricter background checks, but what about the crazy ex-wife who wants to burn her husband with false accusations of misconduct because she is jealous of the next woman? Would that husband pass a background check if there is a pending case with a traumatized former wife? What if she is really jealous of his guns and she makes up some story of abuse, and acting on that the police come and take all his guns away? Is that fair to the man who did nothing but decide he didn’t want to be married to the woman? And those are just a few examples that most people can relate to in some way or another—there are countless ways that someone’s background check could be corrupted to lose their Second Amendment rights, and that is what the NRA is fighting against. The NRA stands against all those left leaning encroachments because ultimately the gun is there to protect individuals from a world that has a tendency to fail under institutional control. Our best hopes for the future are always in the conduct of individuals. So even if a man makes a mistake and runs off with a girl half his age and the ex-wife is upset about it, he shouldn’t lose his right to possess firearms. He may need that right for other things going on in his life—because all life has value, and deserves to be protected from the aggressions of others who might have intentions of dark design.

It is for all these reasons that I love the NRA so much and because of this aggression against the gun culture of our nation, I feel compelled to make more gun purchases, to support the industry. Gun makers, sellers, and the people who buy them are some of the best people you will find anywhere in the world. Not very long ago I was on the balcony of a very rich man in Japan overlooking some of the most expensive real estate in the world. This was a guy at the top of the world and could literally have anything he wanted, but do you know what he desired? He was in love with images of a Montana rancher who had a big pickup truck and a shotgun in the back window, and even a concealed carry gun under a warm jacket overlooking a vast plain of endless horizon. The NRA protects that very specific lifestyle from the jealous hordes around the world who secretly want what America has, and will do anything to get a piece of our lives. And the only real protection we have is ourselves and the guns we carry. Because as much as we’d like, we can’t trust anything else.

Rich Hoffman

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Why we need More Good Guys with Guns: Social failures by the left leave us no other choice but guns to draw the line between good and evil

Even though more people were killed that day in Chicago with guns the political left pounced on the opportunity to exploit a mass shooting outside of San Antonia, Texas as the Antifa supporter and angry atheist Devin Patrick Kelly descended on a small church to kill all inside hoping that his mother-in-law might be in the congregation. Kicked out of the Air Force over anger management issues there was nothing to stop this 26-year-old assassin but a good guy with a gun. After killing 26 people of all ages inside the church Kelly moved to his still running vehicle to make a getaway and that’s where a neighbor, a former NRA instructor, engaged the villain with a rifle and disrupted the plans of the killer. A well-placed shot made its way between the body armor of Kelly forcing him to drop his AR-15 and hastily leave the scene. Being an experienced man with guns, 55-year-old Stephen Willeford still barefoot from a leisurely Sunday morning of rest grabbed his gun and engaged the target shooting Kelly in the leg and in the torso. He knew the young man would bleed out if untended, so he flagged down a cowboy hat wearing pick-up truck driver at an intersection and encouraged pursuit. The police hadn’t had time yet to even brew a cup of coffee, let alone assist in the act of terrorism so it was up to the two Texans to put an end to the nightmare.

The truck drive was a young man of ambition looking for an opportunity to rectify the situation so he caught up to Kelly quickly traveling at over 90 miles per hour in hot pursuit. With two bullet holes in him and miles from the nearest hospital with no way of being treated without being arrested, the panicked killer shot himself in the head ending the chase about 5 miles later. Without the pressure of the two Texas citizens, the shooter might have gotten away. And with a vehicle full of guns and adrenaline to drive him, he may have killed again before being caught by police who were rushing the other way—to the church. Yes a lot of people died, and it’s a real tragedy. But no more tragic than anywhere else in the nation. The difference here was that good people with a gun and a pick-up truck were there to stop the carnage, and that is the whole purpose of the Second Amendment.

We live in times where violence is going to be part of it. Not that I’m against the popular HBO television series Game of Thrones, I love the show, but it’s very violent. I love video games too, but they are very violent. Our movies, television, our pop culture are all very violent which is an obvious subconscious reaction to the elements of static institutionalism that have been thrust against our better judgment. We have created a society that is ultra-safe and politically correct in our schools, our businesses and our media culture leaving nowhere for our primitive needs to unload the pressures of our unconscious minds. Kids like Kelly grew up on video games like Grand Theft Auto where the heroes are the villains and the good guys are shot dead in the street for points. Most every family these kids know are fatherless and otherwise broken where their mothers are revolving doors of new lovers bringing immense instability into their domestic lives, and that’s not going to change any time soon. If we started today with a society that exercised stable family values like our society did in the early part of the Twentieth century it would take at least 50 years to see any results socially. So we have a mess on our hands. Communism and socialism have been taught to our children in public schools, they were also told to become activists if they didn’t get what they wanted. This assassin Kelly wanted something from his mother-in-law and he wanted to hurt her for a bunch of twisted reasons and he had no rational deduction to not associated innocent children in the congregation from the anger he had for his mother-in-law. In his mind it would all hurt her, so he opened fire and did his evil without considering the consequences. Like a lot of people his age, Kelly doesn’t have the intellectual tools to make rational decisions because our society has tried to manipulate those tools to many political agendas leaving most young people scribbled messes.

So shootings are up, violence everywhere is up and morality is down. That leaves peaceful people with only one option in the face of such vast institutional failure—guns. We need guns to defend ourselves and our friends, neighbors and fellow community members from the kind of evil that is the net result of all the modern failed politics. It’s that simple. There will be more shootings, there will be much more violence and it will be bloody because the modern failures of institutionalism have nowhere to go but into the hands of lost kids like this Kelly assassin where their frustrations with the outside world doesn’t match the fantasies of their coddled existence. When faced with the grim reality that all they have ever been taught was a falsehood they retreat into their childhoods where they were maniacs on Grand Theft Auto killing anybody who stood in their way, and the live out one last fantasy.

Even if the killer Kelly didn’t play that popular video game he lived in a youth culture where that entire generation has been desensitized to violence and respect for older generations has been utterly destroyed. There is no foundation of respect to build a peaceful society, so we are all potential victims to their frustrations as they learn in life that they must work and earn money to live a good life and that raising a family takes more effort than just sticking a penis into a girl and out pops some kids that the government then raises like plants in a nursery. There is a potential Devin Patrick Kelly in every neighborhood and they are becoming increasingly frustrated. They don’t have respect for the police. They don’t have respect for their parents. They don’t even have respect for the American flag. So there is no foundation to reason with them on, except a bullet from a gun.

The liberal gun grabbers who sought to capitalize off this Texas tragedy want to eliminate the option of self-defense because they really need the failures of all their social tampering to be hidden from the public. If there is a baseline of good people like these two Texas heroes, then there is a value assessment that can dispute the liberal failures that are producing people like Kelly into our society. Devin Kelly is a product of our modern society and the only real defense we have from them is the Second Amendment.

There should have been people in that church in Texas carrying firearms. I don’t mean one or two people, but virtually every adult. In every business, there should be responsible people endorsed by NRA classes carrying firearms to stop workplace violence at the point of the occurrence, and not 15 minutes later when the police are called and finally arrive. We need good guys with guns in movie theaters, shopping malls, at Wal-Mart, Costco, EVERYWHERE! In the case of the Texas church shooting, luckily there was an NRA member next door ready for action on a moment’s notice. But that’s not to say there always will be. We need a lot more people like Stephen Willeford, not less. And having more people like him won’t put an immediate stop to the attempts at violence from losers like Kelly. But it will keep them from doing the type of mass harm they expect to inflict when the disappointments of their own lives mount up to such destructive behavior and they take those frustrations out on a society that is foreign to them because they were taught incorrectly by institutionalism on how to deal with it.

Rich Hoffman
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Devin Patrick Kelly was a Radical Leftist: Antifa’s war against America took casualties in a Texas church

Astonishing that liberals moved so quickly to call for a ban on guns because the Texas church shooter on 11-5-2017 was one of their own.  That’s right; the 26-year old kid who walked into a San Antonio church on a bright Sunday morning to kill more than 26 innocent people was an active member of Antifa and was a liberal activist.

After committing the deed a civilian engaged the terrorist and a gun fight ensued.  Devin Patrick Kelly took a hit and fled the scene.  He died a few miles down the road where police picked him up.  If not for a good guy with a gun there at the church, the Antifa radical would have gotten away.  But he didn’t.

https://twitter.com/overmanwarrior/status/927358303860068358

We need a lot more guns in a lot more places.  And we need to make all liberals a potential suspect because they are obviously at war with traditional America and they are willing to kill.  Lucky for us, there were several people who were able to capture screen grabs from Kelly’s social media accounts before the FBI swept in to cover up the story—which they obviously did in the case of Las Vegas.  Once the name was released, citizen journalists did the work that we can no longer trust our media to do.

Rich Hoffman

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The Morality of being a Gunfighter: How guns make America a more intellectual culture–and improve lives

From the anti-gun people, especially after the Vegas mass shooting there has been this constant term they use “you don’t need so many guns.” They say it as if they were the authority on living and had the complications of life all figured out as a superior philosophic matrix. Yet I look at their lives, the losers on Saturday Night Live, the Hollywood industry, the open criminals like Hillary Clinton and the DNC workers of 2016 and I must conclude, who on earth would take advice from people so messed up? Who are these people to give us advice about anything? I wouldn’t trust them to tell me where the corner deli is in New York city that could sell me a pack of gum, let alone advise me on how many guns I should have or even why I should have them. Even worse, their declarations that guns should be made illegal in any form indicates a complete lack of respect for the kind of living we have in the Midwest of the country—essentially the Red State middle of the entire country. Essentially only the coastal regions have these liberal losers driving policy. Guns for everyone else is a fact of life. They are certainly a big part of my life. Here is video of what I do almost every night for exercise. It’s how I practice Cowboy Fast Draw in my private range. The goal of this activity is to draw and fire my Ruger Vaquero as fast as I can once the target light blinks on solid. Once the target blinks three times it lets me know that the next time the light comes on that I need to draw and fire. My time is registered on a display on my workbench. It’s a fun activity that really sharpens your mind, and I enjoy doing it almost every night at least for 15 to 30 minutes.

When people say that we don’t need guns, well I’d say, we don’t need footballs, golf clubs, or baseball bats either. All of those things could be used as weapons if people were so inclined, but in a civil society nobody would even think of such a problem. Most of the people I know have guns and nobody goes out on a killing spree after dinner. When shooting in my private range I never think to use those guns on other people. Always my use of them is to increase my speed and accuracy in shooting a target under conditions of duress. The process of doing that helps me in other parts of my life. Now to the pot smoking loser on Saturday Night Live who does things during the after party that they’d never want to tell their parents, I wouldn’t expect them to understand my love of guns. Because they are still looking for mechanisms in life to help them manage all the pressures they experience. I look at their lives where they smoke, drink or have too much sex and would say that those are all factors contributing to the problems they have in their lives. I don’t have those problems. Instead I shoot and spend time in my range working out solutions to very complicated problems. Shooting helps me and many others live a better life.

If you visit England presently you will find everywhere some visage to their Norman period where knights were part of their national identity. It doesn’t mean that people want to go cut off the heads of their enemies when they hold a wooden sword from a gift shop in London—it’s just means that people are paying regional respect to an order which built the identity of the nation. If you go to Japan you find much of the same, everywhere is some visage to the samurai culture and behind that is the constant symbol of the sword. Even going to a hibachi grill to get some very expensive Kobe Beef you will see the cooks emulating the ghosts of their samurai heritage as they prepare food in front of you. It is very important to them and is a huge part of their national character. You don’t see radical leftists attacking these countries for their history of violence and the modern respect that is still given regarding the weapons which forged their nations.

In America it is the cowboy which created the nature of our country. And behind the cowboy was the six-gun and the mythology of dueling. The reason that dueling is still such a romantic idea in the period of the Old West is that it is respectable that people would face off against each other to settle a value judgment. To have a value that people were willing to defend to the death is actually a noble idea—especially in these complicated days of leftist interpretation into the events that leave people always feeling empty. In that emptiness they seek to fill the void with bad habits—such as the smoking, drinking and over charged sex. Regarding sex, if you spend more than a half hour per day thinking about sex—you are wasting your time. When you are young and always looking for some flower to pollinate, maybe you spend more time thinking about it if you are a male. If you are a female you likely won’t because you are in charge of the sexual experience and can decide when and how often, but nobody should spend more time on average than a half an hour per day. Anything more is an obsessive activity that degrades the experience. People who do think about it more than that allotted time need to develop more hobbies.

I view shooting in America as a deeply philosophic experience. The political left has successfully painted an opposite picture, that gun users in America are a bunch of dumb hillbillies who can’t speak in words longer than two syllables. Yet the opposite is true, liberals who criticize the gun culture are the dumb people, they are ones who can’t change their own oil, or fix a leak in their sink. They are the ones who fall apart whenever there is a death in the family or run to substance abuse when they feel insecure about something. People I know who shoot guns, especially people in the Cowboy Fast Draw Association, or in SASS are some of the nicest and well-rounded people I’ve met anywhere—including in those European and Asian countries that people think have so much “rich” culture. I would argue that in America we have our own rich culture built on westward expansion—which was a very “moral” enterprise in the scope of history—and guns were the backbone of that culture that we should all be proud of.

In the video the times I was recording were in the .450 range. I’m not happy with those numbers and the purpose of the slow motion is to show myself that I need to fire the gun much sooner out of the holster instead of pushing the gun forward. That is what makes that kind of training so satisfying, and worth pursuing. Shown in regular speed everything happens very fast. But when you slow it down, I can see where I need to improve, and that requires training my mind to think that much faster. In applying those techniques to my life that I learn at the gun range, it makes me a much better person in my day to day life. I think much faster when there are problems to solve and my thinking is much more accurate. After all, the brain doesn’t know if you are trying to solve the problem of hitting a target or trying to solve global economic problems. It sees everything in context, so by practicing something productive like “shooting” it helps the mind solve other problems not directly connected to the shooting sports. That is why shooting is a good thing for all Americans to do, and if more people did, especially the coastal liberals, they’d find that they could lead better lives and would have a lot fewer problems.

I’m not personally going to allow people who are broken intellectually—which most liberals are—and have them beat on gun owners anymore. My experience with guns is a very positive one and violence has nothing to do with it. Guns may have been invented to expedite the experience of death, or make people more efficient in killing others—but as tools of intellect, they are more useful in making a respectful class of people who think independently, and can manage their affairs in a superior way over their liberal protestors. I see nothing negative about my experiences on my private gun range in the sport of Cowboy Fast Draw. The practice of it makes me more efficient as a person and gives me an outlet for the stresses in my life that shooting baskets in my driveway or playing golf don’t quite reach. People who speak against guns just don’t understand why they are important culturally, and there are likely a lot of reasons for it. Maybe they had crappy parents. Maybe they didn’t have grandparents around to teach them important lessons when they were younger. Maybe they are just losers in life. Whatever it is, it’s not the problem of gun owners to bend their habits to these broken people. Broken people are not allowed to create the standard for what America is. And gun owners are not the broken people. It’s the people who criticize that culture who are in true need of a different way of thinking. A trip to the gun range would help a lot of them. But for the rest, they need a lot more.

I am proud to call myself a gunfighter. For me it’s no different from training to be a boxer, a martial artist or an MMA fighter—it’s a sport. And becoming good at that sport has a carryover effect into other things in life that are more important to good living. That is why the anti-gun people are so wrong on the gun culture in America. They don’t like America even though they try to sell their ideas by saying they are part of our culture—they clearly aren’t and seek to change it in everything they do. For them it starts by pissing on a bar wall outside drunk off their young asses and it ends with them becoming radical progressives in congress, or heads of major networks. They are all equally wrong. To speak against guns is to speak against the concept and intentions of American life. Part of that life is displayed in the sports we use to articulate our culture. Being a gunfighter isn’t the same as being a killer. These days it means a person is building foundation skills to become more precise and quicker in their life—and it’s a personal challenge worth the undertaking. It’s certainly not something to be outlawed because the more sensitive and less intellectual people on the west and east coasts are afraid of guns. What they really fear is what they might learn about themselves if they were to embark on a journey where they had to become better at something and challenge themselves. What they might learn in that process is what they are running from—and that is all the reason why guns should be more prevalent in America, instead of less.

Rich Hoffman
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Jimmy Kimmel the big liberal Pussy: How guns are important to American morality

 

Who is this Jimmy Kimmel pussy crying about things in front of his audience of what’s supposed to be a nightly comedy show?  I was so angry about his monologue right after the Las Vegas shooting demanding more gun control legislation that I waited to respond just to keep my volatile thoughts about him in check.   Kimmel is one of those west coast softies who have obviously been coddled through life and had the fortune to be put into a high platform in the entertainment culture—and he feels he has the right to lecture the rest of America about guns going so far to say that “no American should be able to own an M-16,” and he further went on to berate the NRA for supporting efforts to knock back more legislation from panicky politicians screaming for some short-term fix to a long-term problem.  I think I’ve had enough of these east and west coast liberal losers inflicting on my American culture a value system that is as foreign to this country as an alien visiting here from Mars might be.  Guns in America are important and are at the core of our independence—and every bit as important as any other Amendment, especially the First.  Americans should be able to own anything they want, and when bad guys do bad things with guns, more laws won’t do the trick.  The problem is much more complicated than what Jimmy Kimmel the pussy is advocating.

I had an extraordinarily bad week of last where hundreds of people I have been dealing with and millions of dollars in investment were on a razor’s edge of peril and it took every skill I had in the tool box to keep everything on track.  It was a brutal life that could easily crush anybody’s resolve.  But one thing I do to manage all that stress is to balance it out with things I enjoy and to that effect I had a chance to visit with my family the Neiderman Family Farm down the road from my house in Liberty Township.  I shot guns all through the week on my Cowboy Fast Draw target range.

Then on the weekend we visited a family retreat in central Kentucky where I had the opportunity to do some four wheeling and some shooting of the big guns to blow off some steam.   All those places added up to a lot of good sanity maintenance for me—they reminded me what was important as the storm clouds swirled around me professionally and as usual, I had everything sorted out by Monday morning—because of the way I manage my stress.  Guns are a huge part of that personal maintenance.

When I talk about the big guns, I am specifically talking about my favorite gun, my Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum.  I brought the 500 grain cartridges which are getting close to the top load you can fire out of a handgun.  The S&W .500 is the most powerful handgun manufactured in the world.   With the smell of a campfire blowing my way as a spectacular sunset cast it’s gaze upon my shooting position on a hilltop the punishing satisfaction of firing such a massive bullet at a steel plate target from 30 yards away is something specifically American and uniquely manly.  I wasn’t with a bunch of drunken heathens the way Hollywood might paint that picture

I just described, nearby the women were sitting around a campfire eating camp food and talking about domestic concerns.  My niece was there with me shooting a new gun for her concealed carry endeavors.  Her husband was shooting with me also while my brother-in-law was showing me his new collection of guns.  It was very much a family event and everyone was having a good time.  When I fired my big .500 it hit the steel plate so hard that it broke the chain that was hanging the target and we all marveled at the tremendous impact and firepower of the S&W .500.  For me holding that big gun I think about the great engineering that went into making something that powerful so safe.  Aside from the fact that you need to be pretty strong to hold the gun because of the massive recoil, holding that much power in the palm of your hand to me is a miracle of modern industry—and that’s what I think about when using that marvelous gun.

But some idiot like Jimmy Kimmel would never understand what that moment was like, or those methods of personal management.  They’d say that no civilian human being should be able to own such a magnificent weapon.  Why should I be allowed to have something so powerful—according to the same culture that produces monsters like Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood pedophiles?   Two days earlier at the Niederman Farm where my family attended the Fall Festival it was all about country living, big barns, lots of animals, tractors, and homemade jellies and apple ciders.  On the way to the family retreat down in Kentucky we stopped by Dry Ridge to eat at the Cracker Barrel there and of course the place was packed.  All the people there were similar to the people at the Niederman Farm.

They were Christian people happy with the simple things in life.  Most of them were gun advocates to some degree or another, and of course in the Cracker Barrel are signs and homage’s to the Second Amendment, from antique rifles displayed on the wall to paraphernalia sold in their famous gift shops.  It was one of the best breakfasts I’ve had in a while, and after such a rough week it really calmed me down.  But honestly it was the environment and the people who did it—it was the southern hospitality that people like Jimmy Kimmel make fun of as vigorously as the they do the gun culture that emerges from it.  Let’s face it; the NRA doesn’t have many impassioned members in Los Angeles.  But at the Cracker Barrel in Dry Ridge, Kentucky I could have stood on a table and read from the latest American Rifleman magazine and the customers would have been enthusiastically supportive.

Did I need to own and fire such a huge weapon which was right there with me while I was at the Cracker Barrel, because we were on our way down to the family retreat?  According to Jimmy Kimmel and the cast of Saturday Night Live I didn’t.  In their west and east coast viewpoints it is more moral to piss in the alley of a bar at 3 AM in New York City and to have sex with strange women which are part of their culture than to go shooting with close family members in the middle of God’s country in the American south.  I could easily look at Jimmy Kimmel’s personal life and pick it to pieces.  I’m sure I could declare a lot of things he likes to do illegal and destructive to a good American life.  At any time I could use that big gun to cause all kinds of damage, but it never crossed my mind because in having such a huge weapon it requires responsibility.  Once you act responsibly with a firearm people find that they act responsibly with other things in their lives as well.   That’s the way you find most people who are huge NRA supporters and concealed carry permit holders—they are some of the nicest people there are in the world—and they are honest.  Owning guns tends to bring out the best in people because the foundation of owning firearms is in responsibility.  Once people accept responsibility for something like a gun, they find they can apply the same values to other things and it makes them vastly better people as a result.

The problems that caused that liberal loser in Vegas to shoot up all those people are more systemic than in the right to own firearms.  Kimmel completely missed the point of the Second Amendment and it was painful to listen to him articulate all the stupid Hollywood dinner party talking points without knowing the reality of what the gun culture is.  I would argue that liberalism is the cause of such breakdowns, and that if we really wanted to solve the problems in our society—then we’d make liberalism illegal, not the physical firearms.  I shoot a lot and I love my guns—they are very therapeutic to me.   I like owning large, powerful weapons because they exercise a level of control that makes people better because of that responsibility.   I know and deal with people all over the world and I can report honestly that there isn’t anywhere quite like a gun range or a Cracker Barrel.  It’s not just I grew up with these ideas around me from my home in Liberty Township to the many times I’ve been shooting with family members.  I routinely deal with people of Hindu faith, people who are devote Buddhists—many people from every corner of the globe and I get along well with all of them.  But what’s missing from their various cultures is the kind of independence and positive American spirit that you find in places like that Dry Ridge Cracker Barrel.

The Niederman Family Farm is an expensive ticket, but it is in Liberty Township where most of the homes these days are well over a quarter million dollars.  It’s not uncommon anymore for a home in my neck of the woods to be close to a million dollars—and for the people who move to Liberty Township they want the best of both worlds.  They want access to the great industry that is common to the area in very capitalist friendly political zones, and they like being able to take their families to the Niederman Farm on holidays.  With the money they make at the Niederman Farm they pay their taxes and they improve the property every year so everyone wins.  As I ate a hot dog there during a setting sun with my grandchildren and sipped on drink I thought of Jimmy Kimmel and realized that he was a lost guy who was stuck in a bubble of Hollywood culture that didn’t like people who eat at the Cracker Barrel.  They didn’t like NRA members because guns are beyond their experience.  They are big government socialists who want to mold the world into the image of the rest of the world, which is in a lot of trouble.  I would rather eat at the Cracker Barrel in Dry Ridge or shoot my big .500 Magnum against a setting sun with the smell of wood smoke fresh from a raging camp fire than to eat noodles in Tokyo or sip wine in Venice.  That is what these gun grabbing cry babies are really scared of.  It’s not the guns, but the attitude and independence of the people who use guns to maintain a philosophy that is rooted in individualism instead of collectivism.  Jimmy Kimmel is a pussy because the weight and sorrow of the collective tragedy of Las Vegas was just too much for him.  He had no mechanisms of intellect to deal with his feelings of despair that he felt in realizing that the institution of Americanism couldn’t keep people from harm—and he wants even more laws to support his false belief in the merits of institutionalism.  But for me, and many people who carry and use guns a lot, especially big guns—it is in the focus on personal responsibility in having such things that make us hold the door open for ladies at the Dry Ridge Cracker Barrel while everyone waits in line to just be seated—and they are happy to do it, because they are generally happy people treating their fellow Americans with reverence and respect.  What drives liberals’ crazy is that the respect starts with gun ownership and is the backbone of a civil society—and that is why they cry like a bunch of dwindling pussies on a quest for their own destruction every chance they get, which is why liberalism should be illegal well before guns ever are.

Oh, and remember when I said I practiced Cowboy Fast Draw in my private range?  Well, this is what it looks like.  To me it’s like practicing a golf swing–it’s a sport–a way to test yourself against the forces of nature.  And its pretty cool and a lot better than anything liberals like Jimmy Kimmel do for fun.

Rich Hoffman

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A Cincinnatian’s Perspective on the Cameo Night Club Shooting: It is culture not guns that was the real villian

OK, let’s clear up some things right now since the global media—including people in India (I didn’t know they had electricity in India) are pouncing on the shooting in a Cincinnati nightclub where 15 people were shot, and as of this writing one has died.  I live in Cincinnati, so this is my turf and let me just set the record straight—the people attending the Cameo Night Club on Kellogg Avenue by the great Lunkin Airport were not NRA supporters.  The place caters to the hip hop crowd and is known as a “meat market.”  It’s not a bunch of wholesome Midwesterners getting together for a barn raising ceremony.  The place seeks to cater to a youth market—specifically college kids—and the environment is conducive to the gangsta’ culture so prevalent in urban areas where government welfare checks are handed out like candy.  So while covering this story—make it known that it wasn’t the fault of guns—it was the culture of hip hop which breeds negativity among confused youth who are easily provoked into conflict.

The people who attend these clubs are not normal Americans—everyday people who work hard, pay their taxes and try to make the next generation better than when they found it.  These are young people gathered together to listen to violent music racially inspired who take part in a culture of victimization.  Intellectually they are not much different from animals and when dogs start fighting over the same piece of meat—we all know what happens.  You can’t mix angry music with young people not yet intellectually equipped—and sell overpriced drinks to a dance floor converted to a VIP area and not expect there to be violence.  The Cameo Night Club has built its reputation pushing that line and now people crossed it.  That is the real story.  The entire shooting could have been avoided by not putting all those dangerous elements together.  It’s a cultural problem, not one that involves guns.

As the evidence is presented, the story will be watered down when it is shown that the responsibility is more cultural and of the direct responsibility of the club itself than the firearms that were used.  I know that area on the east end well down by Lunkin Airport.  The site called Cameo now used to be Annie’s which was a rock and roll hang out that brought in big name rockers after their 80s hey days were over.  And there were fights there all the time—the same as Never on Sundays in Silverton.  Those crowds were largely white rock n roll types of the heavy metal verity.  That was music for a different generation and yes they were violent places—even back then.  If two guys had their eye on the same girl, fights did break out—often.  Now that Annie’s went out of business someone thought it was a good idea to bring hip hop music out into the east end so this Cameo place took over to essentially let people live out their fantasies developed while playing the video game Grand Theft Auto.  So not only do you have an indicatively violent activity that comes with all places that play angry music—but now you have an entire generation who has played Grand Theft Auto and want to live out that fantasy in real life on weekend nights—which the Cameo club was happy to facilitate.  Now it blew up in their face and people will have to be accountable.  In the hours that come, you will find dear reader that things occurred just as I have described and now that all these media outlets have covered the story hoping to make the gun the big villain everyone will have to backtrack when they realize that the cause was the violent hip hop culture itself and the mixing of very dangerous elements together which caused this tragic situation.

There are consequences to actions and for too long we’ve all allowed ourselves to look away from this growing problem simply because white culture has been blamed for slavery so nobody is allowed to point out the obvious.  If blacks and whites, red people and yellow people and all people in between are going to live in the same country they need to have at least the same values.  But you can’t have a bunch of slum dogs celebrating hip hop gangsta’ culture openly and expect a society to thrive.  There is nothing good about a place like the Cameo Night Club.  That culture is rotten from top to bottom and I would say the same about the nightclub that was there before it in Annie’s.  There was nothing good about those places that perpetuated the benefits for mankind.  They were places to listen to angry music and pick up people for sex under drunken conditions.  Not a good mix.  And that is the problem.  It’s not firearms.

As this story unfolds it’s time to have the real discussion that is the root cause of these violent neighborhoods.  We can’t expect black communities to assimilate with the rest of the American experience when what they think is a fun time is going to places like the Cameo Club and cappin’ the ass of cops.  We already have too many generations of people who come from urban communities that think that way and they are having kids and teaching them the same stuff—and it’s time for it to come to an end.  Instead of wasting their time in the Cameo Night Club those stupid kids should have been home reading A Tale of Two Cities, or something similarly productive.  Things will only change when they change what they put into their minds.  Because what they are doing now just isn’t cutting the bacon.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Why the NRA Didn’t Attend the CNN Town Hall: The tricks progressives play to advance their strategic objectives

When President Barack Obama agreed to the CNN Town Hall debate on Gun Control in America on January 7th 2016 immediately after he signed executive orders against them, I couldn’t help but think of the typical consensus building exercises that public schools use when they want to bend communities over their knees for tax increases.  When my home district of Lakota conducted those types of meetings even though I was against the tax increases, I didn’t attend because I didn’t want to break bread with the enemy.  So I can understand why the NRA refused the CNN Town Hall.   There was little for them to accomplish having a public meeting with Barack Obama in a consensus building exercise unless you are willing to go to battle in front of everyone and embarrass the President.  That is the reason I didn’t attend the Lakota meetings—because I didn’t want to make friends and find common ground due to the foundation philosophies being too far off between us.  CLICK THE MANY LINKS TO REVIEW.  With that said, I think the NRA should have attended and engaged the president the way Taya Kyle did and several others—but I understand why they didn’t.

The problem with progressives, which the president certainly embodies that definition–is that they use compromise to advance their plans.  When you negotiate with them and give a little they always come back later to take a little more.  Compromising with them only opens the door for more impositions.  For instance, back on the public school debate, they always suggest that a little bit of tax today will save a generation of children tomorrow, so why not give a few dollars of your property value to the children who need it.  However, because of the progressive management of public school systems and the escalating costs associated with their style of management, every five years those schools continuously return to voters with the same argument because they never change their essential behavior.  The progressive oriented aggressors in this case always favor consensus building exercises because they know that no matter what concessions are achieved during a public meeting, that they will always come back to take a little more—and they continue forever until there is nothing left because the basic philosophy of a typical progressive is rooted in communism.  So in the case of a school system, every five years school board management typically changes a bit as well as the top-level teachers who take up the most payroll in a budget so the same people aren’t always asking for the new tax increase.  But, because the foundation philosophy of progressives is communism each new generation of progressives coming to consensus building meetings can trust that new concessions will be demanded and that the slow advancement toward a centrally controlled society will eventually be achieved once property taxes are too high to mandate private property ownership.

For instance, in my community, Liberty Township, Ohio, it is nearly impossible for a private owner to hold more than 10 acres of land because the taxes are so incredibly high.  Those taxes are high because of community mismanagement—local government making too many concessions over the years to the school system of Lakota and other public employees.  The only real decisions that large land holders have is to sell their old farms to developers who will turn plots of land to neighborhoods that put more kids in schools requiring more public employees to deal with the increase in children.  Essentially two decades of tax increases created the problem so now there is suburban overcrowding and the golf courses near my home are struggling to justify holding so much land at such a high rate of tax to benefit so few people.  This forces the land use to migrate from exclusivity among say country club affluence into more of a “community” centered use, which progressives have always been in support of.  For the people who loved the open farm land and large plots of land under private ownership progressives within the school system and local government have managed to convert the land use to large plots of that same land being managed by socialist oriented neighborhood homeowner associations that collectively decide whether or not you can have up a garage door or park an RV in your driveway.  As that same land used to be managed by a private family that might have had a target range in their backyard and a few cars being always worked on next to a barn, the land was converted into something entirely different and much more conducive toward the aims of progressives—which are aligned with the original communist goals of eradicating private property.

Nobody ever says it directly but if you get them to dinner away from a crowd’s ear people like Jeffery Stec who ran the Lakota “community conversations” have every intention of advancing progressive agenda concerns against all individual rights.  Even though Anderson Cooper at CNN did a great job with the debate at the Town Hall featuring Barack Obama just days after the president’s executive orders angered gun owners immensely, both Cooper and Obama as progressives were working to whittle away the resistance to their eventual aims of collective assimilation.  If you watch the debate carefully dear reader, you will see the tactics.  For instance, when Obama had to deal with the widow of Chris Kyle followed up by the rape victim—both who were strong supporters of the Second Amendment, Obama took the edge off their resistance with compliments to ease into his eventual position.  For either of the two women to attack Obama after he had provided such compliments would make them appear as the villains.  So Obama took away their aggression with compliments in a public setting.  The president yielded no ground, yet Taya and others had to, so to appear civil in the discourse.  CNN gave president Obama the high ground strategically, and once he had that, there was no way to create leverage against him in debate.  The public watching all this then assumed that Obama seemed reasonable.  CNN appeared to side at times with Taya Kyle and other Second Amendment supporters.  But in the long run, resistance to the gun control measures loosened allowing them to stand against scrutiny.  Then when the next tragedy occurs, more laws will be proposed.  Just like the land grabs of local public schools converting over time the use and philosophic position of the community toward such use progressives will gain and everyone else loses.

There is a way to attack such town hall effectiveness against the other side.  It is difficult, but possible.  In such a conflict, the NRA doesn’t stand to gain much—only to hold their ground.  The real test of Obama’s consensus building exercise would be to speak at an NRA event, on ground controlled by gun rights supporters.  CNN is certainly sympathetic toward Obama and all past and future progressives—so it was a safe zone for the president.  But a NASCAR event or a gun show would be a different story.  Obama wouldn’t give the same town hall in front of such an audience if he were invited because he would not be able to maintain the high ground in the debate.  Under such conditions, Obama would be equal at best, and that would not give him the strategic platform to execute the progressive objectives.  So it goes both ways.  The NRA did not attend the CNN Town Hall because by the nature of it, the president controlled the high ground in the debate, just as Jeffery Stec in my community controlled the community conversations.  All this is a variation of the Delphi Technique that I talked so much about over five years ago.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The intent of such games is not to find mutual understanding—it is to advance the cause of progressives—which always lead to further impositions against freedom—so the only way not to lose such an engagement is to not participate.  However, that only works so long.  Eventually, a conflict is mandated and for that reason, the NRA needs to think of ways to go on the offensive.  My suggestion would be to invite the president to the next NRA event and strip him of the security of dealing with the friendly studios of CNN.  In the battle over public opinion a new strategy is needed.  Yielding to progressives will not get the job done—as many homeowners who used to hold large plots of land now clearly understand.  You have to know what kind of game we are all playing before you can win it.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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