Tag: Sheriff Jones

The Show Business of Sheriff Jones: When it comes to H.B. 99, Thomas Hall offers a solution

Allowing Teachers to Carry Guns

At the heart of the problem, Sheriff Jones illustrated on his WLW November 18th diatribe against Representative Thomas Hall’s H.B. 99 was this long-established problem of whether or not more public sector employees are a solution to gun violence in schools or a hindrance. There are a lot of guns in Butler County, Ohio, so school shootings are pretty rare, and there is undoubtedly a direct correlation that liberal politics doesn’t want to admit to. Even Sheriff Jones himself is a supporter generally of concealed carry. He has told me that it’s great to have many first responders in the community to stop criminals at the point of a crime. But, Jones is also the head of a police union and symbolizes strength among all the public sector unions. And it is there that he politically turns left every time. He comes from a generation where they wanted to believe in the system of government that we have seen now has let us down time and time again. Yet, he is still a stubborn defender of labor unions even when they show themselves to be trouble. Saying all that, there haven’t been many school shootings in Butler County. There was one in Madison, Twp., not that long ago, and it was Thomas Hall’s father who was a school resource officer who ran the shooter off the scene only wounding four people, not getting a chance to kill them when the attacker fired into a cafeteria one day seemingly unprovoked. To say that Thomas Hall cares about school safety is an understatement. His bill H.B. 99 was meant to set basic training requirements for school boards to plan to so that they could allow teachers to be armed in the classroom, to be those critical first responders when and if a school shooter presented themselves as a menace to the public. For many mysterious reasons, Sheriff Jones was against the bill and made an absolute embarrassment on WLW attacking Thomas Hall for many reasons that no conservative would understand. But Jones has done that before. 

I was pretty disheartened to learn firsthand that Bill Cunningham was not a real conservative. My history with Cunningham goes back for several years, all the way back to 1996 when I had paid Cunningham to be the spokesman for our “Take An Axe to Our Tax” t-shirts that we were using to promote tax cuts during the Bob Dole campaign that year. I was supposed to come on WLW to talk about the promotion, but my segment got bumped because Willie decided to do a strip show that night, where he brought in live strippers to dance nude during the show. The producer offered me to do my segment during that mess, and I had to decline because it just wasn’t something I could be a part of. Later I learned that Bill Cunningham plays a conservative on his radio show, but he wasn’t very conservative. He was the Stephen Cobert of radio, playing a conservative in media, without really being one. I learned around this time that Sheriff Jones, who was frequently on with Cunningham, was much the same way. He played a conservative in public, but he has many big government ideas in private. He’s great if we are talking about law enforcement. But when it comes to social issues, he shows himself to be very liberal, which is why he and Bill Cunningham have always gotten along so well. I understood the show business aspect of the radio work, but I thought of these people as the real deal until I learned firsthand that they weren’t. 

Sheriff Jones Attacks Thomas Hall For Petty Reasons

In 2013 Sheriff Jones and Cunningham came out in favor of the Lakota Levy, which raised our taxes in monstrous ways. It caused so much trouble in our community that we haven’t had a levy since because we never needed it. We didn’t need it then, but Jones worked with the Democrat Kathy Wyenandt to pass the tax increase. We didn’t speak for about five years when finally we broke a little bread together in the middle of the Trump administration. I thought he had been doing an excellent job for Butler County and representing us to the Trump administration. But I wasn’t too shocked to hear him revert to the kind of liberalism that he uttered again with Bill Cunningham using Lakota as a kind of launching point for his resistance to arming teachers in the classroom and for disparaging the very conservative Thomas Hall personally for his position of empowering teachers to add another layer of protection. For Jones, he wants school resource officers or prohibitive training that would make it so difficult for anybody who wishes to even to carry a gun in a classroom that it might as well not even be a law. But Thomas’ bill empowered school boards to set the maximum limits themselves, depending on their need, and Jones felt he needed to sabotage the bill through the public airwaves and the political career of the young representative himself. 

My argument in favor of a more private-sector solution, as opposed to a unionized employee, is due to people like Jones himself. When it comes to the cosmetic stuff, Jones is a great Republican. But when it comes to legislation, he’s a big government guy that’s always talking about compromise with the other side that wants to bury us all. I think it’s an age thing, he and Cunningham are from the same generation, and they thought the big Democrat politics from the early 60s were going to work, and they never really changed their point of view. We have seen times where school resource officers like Thomas’ dad run off shooters while under fire. But we have also seen some who panic, as the resource officer in Florida did, never engaging the shooter and allowing lots of carnage in the meantime. People panic, and cops, even with their many hours of training, panic too. Sometimes they get so much training that they can’t adapt to a unique situation. Sometimes they lock up. They passed the test on paper but can’t apply it to reality. I like the idea of cops in schools. But I want a teacher armed with a gun to be the first responder. And I like the idea of a teacher being so comfortable with a gun that they accept it as part of their lifestyle, practicing every week for the rest of their lives. Not just some bureaucratic training period that may or may not be enough. 

I always wanted to believe in Bill Cunningham as a conservative, just as I always wanted to believe in Sheriff Jones. But with them, most of their public persona is a show. And that is the same with police in general. Having a cop in the hallways of our schools may look nice. It might scare away some potential shooters. But if a shooting actually happens, I don’t believe any public employees are full proof and will behave appropriately under pressure. I prefer mitigation to their service if they get scared or misstep themselves when danger presents itself. Sheriff Jones, the big government guy from Butler County, believes absolutely in public service. He has been a public servant all his life and always will be. I still think he’s generally good for our community so long as it’s mostly a show we are putting on, and things aren’t getting too real. Yet, after the way he treated Thomas Hall on WLW, where he turned to the show to attempt to destroy a person he endorsed just a year earlier, I would never trust an employee like him in a school without some extra measure of mitigation, a teacher comfortable with a gun, to protect kids when they are under an assault from bad people. That is, If we ever fully get back to school because all these lazy union employees don’t want to go to work using Covid as a cover for staying home.   And what will we do in the future when the school resource officer, unionized and terrified of Covid, calls off work the day there is a school shooting? If we rely too heavily on them, we are bound to get burnt by the general laziness of all government employees. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Old Yeller: The fight between Thomas Hall and Sheriff Jones

Why Is Sheriff Jones Going After Thomas Hall

Sheriff Jones decided to go on 700 WLW and speak disparagingly about Thomas Hall, the current House Representative of the 53rd District. I like Sheriff Jones, I hope he runs and wins a few more terms, but nobody in their right mind could support the way he attacked Thomas Hall on those radio waves to hundreds of thousands of people. Long-time readers here know that I used to be a frequent contributor on WLW, like Jones. Over time, many of my people who used to work there moved away, were fired, or otherwise changed their point of view. We separated like some kind of divorce, and I have not had much of an idea of reconciliation. I have more freedom in media with this site, so I have not returned in several years. But Jones does go on WLW quite a lot, so because I don’t pay much attention to what goes on there these days, I did not hear the original airing where Sheriff Jones disparaged Thomas Hall in many negative ways calling him a 12-year old “goof,” not just once, but many times. Still, I have often heard from many Republicans who want to defend Hall but are scared of retaliation from Jones, and I think that’s a shame. Hall certainly isn’t 12-years old. I said in the video that he was in his early thirties, but actually, he’s in his mid-twenties and is the youngest member of the current Ohio House. However, the young man is an overachiever by all measures, and his age certainly isn’t a hindrance. He has had two terms as a Madison Trustee, and now he’s in his first term as a congressman seeking a second term. 

Sheriff Jones Goes After Thomas Hall over H.B. 99

Another thing I said about Thomas is a couple of times in the video, I referred to him as Thomas More, because for a lot of reasons, I think of the writer of Utopia whenever I think of Thomas Hall. It’s been that way for a while just because of my own reading habits. There are a lot of Thomas’ in English literature; another is the character of Thomas Becket from The Canterbury Tales, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by his friend Henry the II. It’s one of my favorite books, and this story keeps coming to my mind when I think of Thomas Hall and his friend and mentor, Sheriff Jones. Jones had endorsed Thomas and was mentoring him until a few things happened. Apparently, Jones didn’t like Hall’s voting record. The Sheriff had a confirmed case of heartburn over H.B. 99, Hall’s bill in congress, which set definitions for minimal teacher training to carry firearms in public schools. Jones uncharacteristically turned on Thomas Hall and made quite an exhibition about it on WLW right before Thanksgiving in 2021. I hadn’t heard it until I did an endorsement video for Thomas Hall, and he mentioned it. I had heard from several very prominent Republicans, some very close to the Sheriff, that something had gone on really bad. As I said in the video, one of them was not Senator Lang. I never put people in positions where they get caught in crossfires with each other and given the mean streak that many fear in crossing Jones, many don’t want to be a part of it. Yet many more than ten contacted me to let me know what was going on between Hall and Jones, and they weren’t happy about it.

Thomas Hall Responds to Sheriff Jones

I listened to the Jones interview with Willie, included here; then I listened to the response from Thomas Hall the next day. I played them for my wife, who loves Sheriff Jones. We talked about the interviews and thought Thomas Hall did a fantastic job. He certainly won the argument. But Jones came across as petty and even childish. My wife offered that maybe he was hurting about something else, totally unrelated. Perhaps that’s true. Whatever it is, I would suggest a few thoughts regarding the excellent Sheriff. I’ve been sideways with him a few times over things, particularly school things and union business. I still blame him for the Lakota levy passing in 2013. He has a liberal streak in him that I can’t stand, but we have buried the hatchet since then. What he did for Butler County during the Trump years has been great. A person’s body of work can’t be defined by just a few years here and there or by the grumpy old dog that starts biting people who step on a porch to sell Girl Scout cookies. I hope that Jones runs and wins more terms for as long as possible. But perhaps my wife was right about him, that something else is bothering him. 

In my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I deal with this very issue of an older generation coping with the young people biting their heels. The chapter is called “The Skill of Developed Intuition” on pg. 181. You spend your whole life getting somewhere, making yourself into the person people put on T.V. Getting invited to the White House. Where you can’t go into public without people wanting to get a picture taken with you. And suddenly, here is some 25-year-old whiz kid who suddenly does more in one year than most state reps do in a lifetime. And he’s confident and won’t kiss the ring. Deep down inside, nobody would want to see such a young person broken, but consciously, the older person wants respect because he gave it when he was younger. The aging process isn’t fair. When you can start to see the end of the tunnel, and you know it’s going to be over soon, it is painful to see intelligent young people with their whole lives in front of them getting the attention it took you a lifetime to build. Sometimes, you might be tempted to crush the young competition, show them all they don’t know yet and teach them obedience. But I would caution you not to do that. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is encourage the young people, not tear them down, but build them up. 

Old Yeller

Listening to Thomas talk about the WLW incident, I was amazed he wasn’t more upset. I would be. I carry grudges for a long time, for decades. I would not have been able to say all the nice things that Thomas said about Sheriff Jones when I did my endorsement video with him. I would have been plotting revenge and embarrassment. But obviously, Thomas Hall has had a lot of good mentors in his life, his father being one. But several other politicians for another, including Sheriff Jones. So, there are a lot of lessons here that should be observed. I would hope that Sheriff Jones wouldn’t spend all the years of his excellent branding on petty nonsense that will overshadow all the good things he has done. There are people concerned about just that very thing by many of the calls I received. But Thomas isn’t that way; he understands that politics is a blood sport, and he plays to win without getting hung up on stupid stuff. And in his mind, he already defended himself on WLW the next day. But people were confused as to why the Sheriff went after Thomas, and I would suggest that it shouldn’t ruin the reputation of the Sheriff. I don’t think we are dealing with an Old Yeller situation here. Maybe just an old dog that would love to run around like the youth do but can’t anymore. There is still good to do, and from the point of view of Thomas, he’s willing to do good wherever possible.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Looking for Justin Nix: The Sheriff is looking for you, lets get this thing resolved

(An update to this story, shortly after the Sheriff made this announcement many 911 calls came in and Justin was picked up in Hamilton on a drug charge. Nice job, and this holds true in Butler County especially, no drugs, no killings, and no other crimes similar in nature. If you see something, say something. And remember, Ohio has Stand your Ground laws now. Keep your neighborhoods safe from criminals.) Its unfortunate that there was a homicide in Hanover Township. Sheriff Jones and the team are trying to get everything figured out. Justin Nix or someone who knows him needs to help out.

Sheriff Jones is looking for Justin Nix

Call the Butler County Sheriff’s Office at (513) 785-1209 with any information.

Rich Hoffman

Sheriff Jones: A National Treasure of Butler County

I really like what Joe Statzer and others are doing in Butler County to get some official media to cover all the good officeholders concentrated in the northern suburbs.  With their new YouTube channel True Spoken GOP, Joe has collected several interviews with stars of the GOP and future stars.  And yes, I think stars is the right word because it takes a lot of guts to put themselves out there and work the ropes in ways many people have no idea about to make the world a little bit better.  We work hard in Butler County, Ohio, to make its government-run well, and at the top of that star-driven pyramid is Sheriff Jones, who is world-famous.  I am very proud to have him as our sheriff because if he wasn’t, it’s likely that things would have been much worse during these Covid overreaches that we have seen out of the DeWine administration and, ultimately, the Biden administration.  Sheriff Jones has held firm, and recently, he gave an excellent speech at Big Bul’s in Ross, Ohio that was a lot of fun.  I recorded a few sections of it for my article, but I had wanted to hear it again.  Thankfully, Joe and the great people operating True Spoken GOP captured it pretty much intact and put it up, which I think is worth sharing. It’s people like Sheriff Jones who will stand up to any communist infusion first coming from the Biden administration.  But over our shores and beyond our borders, there are schemes and plots from the Davos crowd working with China to overthrow America’s influence worldwide.  And it can look pretty scary, that is until you go to one of these GOP events and Sheriff Jones speaks.  When he does, suddenly, the world makes a lot more sense. 

Sheriff Jones Speaking at Big Bul’s in Butler County

I can’t get to every event, but I try to go to as many as possible.  I have been participating in more GOP events lately because there is a real political need to help in some of these areas, and I do what I do to help.  I see it as a community thing, in helping shape the kind of government we want.  Sometimes money isn’t enough, nor is it just volunteering. Occasionally other items are needed, and with the way things are right now, people are required to help make things better.  We can’t just sit around and complain about how we’d like things to be.  We need to help make them better, and as I say often, politics is like a blood sport.  Competition makes it better, but sometimes even with the heat of the pressure, there needs to be some strategy that everyone can agree on.  And sometimes, like that event at Big Bul’s, it’s just nice to sit back and let other people talk and to show everyone that there is more of a fighting chance at surviving the problems of the present without losing ourselves along the way.  That night Sheriff Jones opened up for a speech by Corey Lewandowski, and for the audience, it was something they needed.  Both speakers are part of the inner workings of the Trump campaign.  Sheriff Jones has been to the White House a few times and worked directly with Trump, and that night, people wanted to be close to Trump, and Sheriff Jones was a suitable representative.  It was a good night.

I remember the night well when things looked bad for Trump, a few days after the Access Hollywood  blast from the mainstreamers sought to kill Trump’s campaign right before the election in 2016.  I was at the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, which was filled to the top with about 19,000 people.  I had to do an overseas meeting with some people I work with at the same time that Sheriff Jones was speaking before Trump arrived, and he was so loud I had a hard time finishing the call.  There was no place in US Bank Arena that I could go to where I could hear the other people.  Sheriff Jones was so loud that night.  But I wasn’t mad.  I managed through it.  I was more grateful that Jones had the guts to stick with Trump during a tough week.  It looked like our hopes of getting Trump was going to fall short and that we’d be stuck with Hillary Clinton.  But Sheriff Jones showed up with Rudy Giuliani, and they lit up the audience before the arrival of Trump.  And once Trump did arrive, after that evening, I felt that he was still going to win, no matter what the media was telling us.

That’s how it felt at Big Bul’s during that speech that Sheriff Jones gave there.  He went around the audience beforehand and shook everyone’s hand.  I had a chance to talk to him a bit.  We both love our cowboy hats, and I had just picked up a new one from a recent trip out west to Jackson Hole, which he noticed.  And I just felt proud at that moment to have Jones in our corner within Butler County.  Some brutal battles have been fought over the years, and he’s always a reminder that good does beat evil. That’s how I felt before the speech.  After the speech, I felt even more confident than I did after the US Bank Arena speech that we would win this modern tragedy involving the Biden administration and a global cabal who wants to destroy everything it means to be American.  That night at Big Bul’s, the real Americans showed up on a steamy evening in August of 2021 and drew a line in the sand.  We weren’t going to be conquered by the progressive left.  We were going to stand up to them and do what we had to do.  But for a moment in time, we’d crack some jokes, shake hands with one another, then we’d pull down our hats and do what had to be done. 

Sheriff Jones has been a great warrior in Butler County.  I hope to have him for a sixth term, or perhaps even a seventh.  I hope we have him for sheriff for many more years.  But I am grateful for the times we have had.  It’s mainly because of him that we do have good officeholders in Butler County. He’s done an excellent job of leading by example and exerting influence leadership in the blood sport of politics.  Because in the end, we have won a lot more than we’ve lost, and we have survived to tell stories about it.  And I have a feeling even many years from now; there will still be stories of Sheriff Jones and the leadership he provided when the community needed it most, as hope looked like it was fading.  Only for us to realize that we were only a joke or two from beating back the progressive advances of a maleficent force of antagonists who want to destroy everything we stand for.  But not so fast, not at Big Bul’s in Ross, Ohio with our white-hatted sheriff, a direct connection to President Trump who has been exiled from the White House, only to return, with all our help, to retake our country and push out the thieves caught trying to steal it.  Revenge is coming, but that doesn’t mean we have to take things too seriously.  There will be time for that later.  Now, while the time comes near, it’s the mark of a good leader to know how to ease people’s minds with a bit of laughter and camaraderie.

Rich Hoffman

Gunfighter’s Guide to Business
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Yes, Harsh Language Was Just the Right Tone: The Freedom Rally at Big Bul Roadhouse

Freedom at the Big Bul Roadhouse

I know it’s scary out there.  The news is one constant outpouring of crises every day.  With the debacle of Afghanistan, the threats from China, the power of our out-of-control government going complete tyrannical rule over mask mandates and vaccines, it looks pretty hopeless. But when you unplug from the television and go to places like the Freedom Rally we had in Butler County, Ohio at The Big Bul Roadhouse and listen to Sheriff Jones and Corey Lewandowski speak along with some good music, cold beer, and lots of American flags, you will find that our country is still there.  It’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t see it because our media won’t show it on TV.  But it’s there, and I saw it for myself.  I include above and below videos of the event to share.  I have many people from other countries who read here daily, so this is meant for them.  Especially in Taiwan, where there is some genuine terror that America will fall and not be there for them, China will gobble them up because that is what the media propaganda is saying there as we withdraw from Afghanistan.  For those in the United States, I’m sure you can find a similar Freedom Rally like this in your neighborhood.  Although Butler County, Ohio, is a special place, there are similar events all over the country.  But those in other countries like Serbia and the Netherlands, where I have several readers every day who turn to this site for hope and encouragement, I’m happy and proud to share how life is in Butler County, Ohio, where freedom and liberty are still very much alive. 

A night at Big Bul’s Roadhouse in Ross, Ohio

It’s always great to have our Sheriff Jones speak at these kinds of things.  He was hilarious.  I only filmed a portion of his comments, mainly because I was right up front with the camera, and I didn’t want to ruin his speech with a constant recording.  Sometimes with these kinds of things, you want to let the intimate setting between the speaker and the audience have its way, and Sheriff Jones was off the chain funny.  Even more so after I turned off the camera.  But in the clips here, you get the point.  And should he be talking like that, you might ask?  After all, he’s in his fifth term as Sheriff, and he has no plans to retire.  Well, yes, he should talk like that.  He is the last line of defense between the people of Butler County and the kind of tyranny that comes out of the federal and state governments.  Sheriff Jones, over the years, has earned my respect the way he stands up to governors and presidents, reminding them often before anybody else in the country that power flows from the counties up to the federal level, not the other way around.  In many ways, your local Sheriff is the most powerful office holding job in the country, even more so than the President of the United States.  We aren’t taught that in school, but in reality, that’s how it is.  And we certainly have a good one in Butler County, Ohio.  I am very proud to have him on my team!  He can say whatever he wants as far as I’m concerned because the situation warrants it.  We can’t play pattycake with the enemies of America.

Sheriff Jones of Butler County

Many of us who live in Butler County, Ohio, think of it as a small town, a northern suburb of Cincinnati that is off the national radar.  But in truth, it is the epicenter of conservative politics. I’ve been to most of the states this year, traveling extensively, and I can report that no place else is the politics and organization of the Republican Party better and more passionate.  Other cities have pockets of conservativism.  I am thinking of Cody, Wyoming, where I don’t think there is a Democrat anywhere.  They were very solid there, but in Butler County, there are over 400,000 residents, and things could be much more complicated.  Yet, it’s all pretty simple.  We have great office holders because we maintain them well in Butler County.  We have events like this freedom rally where officeholders and the people who put them in power can talk to each other and have fun. It’s a relationship that feeds both the politics and the community healthily and unusually.  And it’s always refreshing to experience.  Sheriff Jones is the perfect embodiment of all those needs, and he plays that role to the best of his abilities, which shows.

Sheriff Jones making fun of the Biden Administration

That’s how a prominent national figure like Corey Lewandowski from the Trump campaign found himself speaking that night at the Big Bul.  If there was Trump country anywhere in the world, Butler County was it.  And he probably needed to talk to us as much as we needed to hear from him.  Everything coming out of the news was negative these days for America, and we all needed to remind each other why we were still honoring our flag.  Because Woke politics was in full bloom, and everything has been attacked.  It was good to listen to good country music and gather in the heat to recalibrate our sentiments to the fight ahead.  And Corey showing up to tell stories about working with Trump was just the right thing at the right time.  He was the closest thing we had to Trump at a time when we were hungry for solutions.  I had been dragging my wife to many political events lately, all of them good and essential.  But she was looking for a night off.   When I told her Corey Lewandowski would speak at this Big Bul event, she was eager to go.  And there were a lot of people there who came for the same reasons.  Corey Lewandowski was a door to Trump, and people were looking for a rallying point to grab on to.  While he was on stage, they had found it.  Corey was great.  Again, the language was a bit harsh, but then, so are the circumstances.  People want to fight back against the wokeness, and Corey understood that and gave the crowd just what they were looking for.

Corey Lewandowski talks to Butler County

As I said in the video above, many diverse people were there; the Bikers for Trump were there in force.  There were big donor millionaires there, and at the same tables, people could barely wipe together two nickels to get a quart of oil to change in their cars.  Such people would never associate with each other equally anywhere globally, but they do in Butler County, Ohio, and certainly that night at the Big Bul.  Everyone agreed that they loved America; they love Trump because he’s willing to defend America, not attack it like most of our politics wanted to.  And we were wargaming for future elections where Trump types of Republicans would take office seats, and we would fight back against this invasion starting in our communities, then our states, then at the federal level.  We would put Trump back in the White House, and the world can’t see that yet.  But at the Big Bul in Ross, Ohio, deep within Butler County, it was apparent.  The words were strong, the applause even louder.  The beer was cold.  And the path forward is quite clear.  America wouldn’t lose this war; we would return even more significantly now that we see the cards on the table.  And we’re playing to win this time, not just trying to get along.

Corey Lewandowski tells stories about Trump

Rich Hoffman

The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business
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Sheriff Jones Will Ignore Biden Executive Orders on Guns: What little power the federal government really has

Unfortunately, context is needed because most Republicans are just too damn nice for their own good, they listen and follow the rules way too easily and Democrats often abuse them while laughing all the way.  That is the nature of this ridiculous notion that Joey Biden is going to be able to rule from the Executive Branch through orders on gun control.  People, this is why we need guns, to maintain control of our own government in case we have to wrestle away control when it gets too big, too corrupt and flows away from our Constitution.  We’re not giving up our guns to a government that is out of control.  Its just not going to happen, so don’t worry about it.  Already in fact the celebrity Sheriff from my town has said that he plans to ignore any executive orders from the Biden administration before any of them have even been issued.  Sheriff Jones was on WLW radio this week on the Bill Cunningham show stating clearly what he planned to do regarding Biden’s plans for gun control by executive order, which is nothing.  He’s not going door to door to confiscate anybody’s guns and that’s the end of the story. 

Of course, Sheriff Jones is just one guy, but he did the same thing regarding the mask mandates in Butler County, Ohio where we live defying Governor DeWine quite openly, because our governor had lost control and was abusing his power.  Sheriff Jones just refused to follow and impose on the people of Butler County any of that lunacy.  Jones went onto all the big cable shows and expressed his reasoning and many other sheriffs all across the country joined him in defying their governors as they abused their emergency powers over Covid-19.  That is in effect the nature of our Republic, where there are checks on power that limit any kind of kingly rule.  It takes time to push through any new legislation which then prevents regimes of power from taking control in the United States.  That’s the way the system is supposed to work.  It’s certainly not what the Biden administration has been doing which is a radical takeover of the very nature of America as viewed by extreme foreign interference.  Other countries which run the Biden campaign do not understand Americans.  The last line of defense in our republic from abusive laws and regulations by an out of control government is defiance, and that is what Sheriff Jones and many other law enforcement agencies all across the nation are planning to do with any Biden executive orders.  Remember the mask mandate from Biden on all federal property including driving down the highway?  I traveled all across the country a few weeks after he issued that and you know what, everyone ignored it. There was nobody wearing masks in their cars driving down the roads across 9 different states.  Dumb rules are meant to be defied and broken.

So what’s the point at all of having a government or rules of any kind if people just break them.  Well, our republic is designed to have rule of law by consent, and we vote that at the ballot box.  That is why the election fraud rules that Democrats are proposing are so vile, the lack of voter ID and to open up voting to all kinds of forms of cheating such as mail in ballots that anybody can tamper with at any time to get whatever results are desired.  Even if you cheat, you still don’t get the will of consent from the people who had their elections stolen from them.  On paper the current government got rid of President Trump, but not the will of the people to have him represent them in our republic.  They gave us this bumbling idiot Joe Biden instead and people don’t like him, they didn’t vote for him, and they want to be free of the kind of government he represents.  When we had President Trump Democrats ignored most of his Executive Orders, especially on immigration.  Judges all over the country were refusing to obey the Trump administration on most everything which opened the door for future behavior.  Now that Biden has that power, it’s his turn to see what little power the Executive Branch truly has if the people of the country did not give consent to be ruled through the election process.  That gives everyone the opportunity to defy the federal government regionally because truly the power of our government is with the states, not some king living in the White House, as the handlers of the Biden administration obviously don’t understand.  The more they push, the dumber they look.

But for Republicans they fear the tyranny of the Biden administration going door to door and confiscating our guns and what that might mean to them.  After all, nobody really wants to start a war with the federal government and a lot of people are uncomfortably close to snapping and using their guns for their intended purpose, in the last line of defense in maintaining our constitutional republic from the hands of foreign invaders who have penetrated both political parties with financial influence.  Sheriff Jones gets it.  I know him actually quite well; I have a long history with him and he’s my neighbor.  We may have disagreed on union laws in the past and some other minor issues involving our local school system, but he’s a good dude and he certainly understands people.  He also knows the nature of our country and has taken an oath to our Constitution which he takes seriously as a rule of law type of guy.  And he’s not going to break that oath and betray the people of his community just because Joe Biden says so.  So for the people who live in Butler County, rest assured, the federal government is not going to be going door to door while Sheriff Jones is still in charge of law enforcement.  It’s just not going to happen and many, I would say most, sheriffs across the country will follow the Sheriff Jones example, which is why it was so important that he came out this soon to make his thoughts known. 

As I said in the video above, the law enforcement community didn’t support Joe Biden so it won’t take much for them to defy this puppet president at every turn.  Biden does not have a secret button in the Oval Office he can push and all the police suddenly get into their cars and come to our houses pulling innocent people out in the street to beat them and take their guns.  There are bad people in law enforcement who will follow Biden and they will abuse their power, but in general especially in Butler County where there are strong, good sheriffs in charge of the law, people don’t have to worry.  There may be pockets of abuse, but it won’t be that way in Butler County, Ohio and each community across the nation will have to find their groove, which is a much different thing than the entire nation falling to the tyranny of an executive order.  It’s much easier to fight your local law enforcement than some giant blob of federal government, and when the rubber hits the road on this gun control issue, that’s how it will be.  Most police will think as Sheriff Jones does making Biden powerless for his intentions.  And that’s how it is and will remain. 

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior
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Talking Tough isn’t the Same as Being Tough: My appearence on Laura Ingrahm’s Podcast

It was very disappointing to see Sheriff Jones from Butler County put out his Tweet that ended up in the anti-Trump Washington Post calling for Obama and George W. Bush to come together to stop the party bickering that is currently going on. When I first saw it I thought about saying something to him about it, because what ended up happening was precisely what I knew would happen, the national media would key on it as a top Trump supporter who was reaching back to “traditional” politics for help in solving today’s problems in America between Republicans and Democrats. I’m sure Jones thought he was being cute and that he was trying to show leadership in solving the problem from a public relations standpoint, as his role in government as a sheriff and leader of the Republican party in Butler County, Ohio. But it ended up looking like just another two-faced Trump supporter getting cold feet when the President needed him most, and it was embarrassing. Ironically around the same time that Sheriff Jones was conducting his political insurgency Laura Ingraham’s producer was asking me to be on her podcast to talk about the Covington Catholic issue that involved Nick Sandman and the Indian activist Nathan Phillips. You can hear my comments at the 24-minute mark at the following link.

https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Covington-Catholic-Students-Respond-to-the-Social-Media-Mob-Radical-Pro-Abortion-Legislation-in-New-York-and-the-Truth-About-The-Dangers-of-Marijuana-

Essentially the contents of that Laura Ingraham broadcast was to display why the two political sides cannot work together, it was the opposite of what Sheriff Jones was asking for which ended up in The Washington Post. My comments were to state simply, the kids of Covington Catholic went to Washington D.C. to go on a field trip. They bought their MAGA hats and shirts at street venders who frequent the area they were visiting, and the point of the trip was to have fun. It was a free and open market and if other political parties had a message the young people were interested in they might have bought hats and shirts from those as well, but Trump represents something in American politics that is above the line in its thinking and the Democrats want desperately to avoid it, they want to keep the nation in a below the line condition, meaning they want victimization and turmoil for which they can apply government resources to in an indirect way to maintain their power. Trumps’ message of “Make America Great Again” is a powerful message of optimism and leads to above the line thought. Democrats needing to keep the political discussion below the line need to make everything about fairness and racism, not opportunity and growth. That is where the political divide exists and there is no way to negotiate with it.

https://local12.com/news/local/butler-co-sheriff-calls-on-former-presidents-obama-hw-bush-to-help-country-unify

By listening to Laura’s broadcast, you can hear clearly, she understands the situation. The political left wants to go to war and if they have to ruin the lives of kids like Nick Sandman to do so, they will gladly. That is what we are dealing with. There is no way to make peace with that. The political left had all the dominos set up to topple at any little thing and all it took was the professional activist Nathan Phillips to step up to a group of under aged kids and challenge them with all the plotlines the left had created to engage the targets and start a political dialogue of below the line thinking. When Phillips said in an interview that “these were indigenous lands” he was simply supporting years of progressive statements to apply to the here and now for tactical implementation. The Democrats in this case had set the table and all it took was one of their activists to strike a hit on some unsuspecting Catholic kids from Northern Kentucky. The kids weren’t the target, it was Trump’s border wall, but the political left had no problem exploiting them, or even destroying them to enact their cause.

Sheriff Jones should know better, and I really think he has good intentions. But he doesn’t know the game really. Neither does his WLW buddy Bill Cunningham. Jones has a good relationship with the media. When he says something, they usually run with it. He plays his game safe by making suggestions that look bipartisan and logical. Sure it gets him on WLW. I used to be on WLW all the time too, but the media in Cincinnati decided I was too radical for them. Its been a while for me to appear on a national show like Laura’s. But the truth is that I stayed the course, I am saying the same things now in the same way I said them many years ago when Cunningham and Jones were painting me as a local radical who was instigating trouble instead of building bridges with the other side. So I’ll say it again for them and everyone else, you can’t build a bridge to Hell and expect not to get burned on the other side. Only good-natured Republicans are even willing to do such a thing, liberals are actively looking to take over the world with their ideas. Barack Obama isn’t going to help make peace in the world, especially in America. This is the America he helped create. It is Trump who has the best chance at bringing peace, by cutting all the bridges to Hell.

I like Sheriff Jones, quite a lot actually. And I have listened to Bill Cunningham on and off for years. Not much since 2012, I’ll never get over the way he sided with the Lakota teachers on that issue that cause a tax increase indirectly in West Chester and Liberty Township. But those guys are old and out of touch. Sheriff Jones has great cowboy pictures in his office and his morality ultimately comes from those movies from his youth which I think is great. But these times are not those times. The enemy doesn’t want to make peace or avoid the gunfight in the street to establish moral order. They want to kill conservatives completely and ultimately. They want to destroy talk radio. They want to destroy law and order and they want to eradicate the American family, the Constitution, and all semblance of American lifestyle. They don’t care if they destroy children, adults, men or women, and they don’t care what color someone is. If the conservative who is challenging them is black, or is a woman, they would just as soon destroy that person as anybody. They have no interest in peace, they want to destroy conservativism and those are the facts.

Laura has always been good at what she does but lately she has taken a turn toward the kind of moral stand that I’m talking about. Sheriff Jones might think its cute to be an advocate for peace and bridge building, but that is exactly how Republicans have constantly ended up on the short end of these tactical engagements over all these years. You have to understand the nature of the people you are fighting. In this case Laura gets it, but Sheriff Jones doesn’t. What the media and Democrats in general were willing to do to Nick Sandman show to what extent they are willing to destroy others to win their game. And if that effort isn’t matched with equal force, then one side will continue to win everything while the other continues to lose moral ground inch by inch. Those cowboy pictures on Sheriff Jones wall used to define America. Not any more, that is because the image was stronger than the action. The fight we are in now requires our action to be stronger than our image, and when pressed, we must be willing to do what needs to be done. And that is the moral of this story, which will only have a happy ending if conservatives get with the program and come to terms with the condition of the battle field. Both sides can’t live together, as much as people would like to believe. This is a war and it requires both sides to fight it out for a defined victory. There is no other way at this point.

Rich Hoffman

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A Gun Trick to Save Schools: Vote No on the Butler County Safety Levy

It had been a busy week this past week and I had the opportunity to spend time with a lot of very smart people to get their thoughts on various challenges that are percolating in our community and across the nation. And all this thoughtful discussion pointed to the central issue as proposed by the current White House to deal with school shootings, and gun violence in general—to expand armed citizens to deal with any crises much sooner than presently is happening, especially in schools. This put me in a unique spot to frame the discussion in a way that demonstrated what the opposition most feared about guns and gun safety especially as a kind of first responder. Typically, when I want to talk about precision as a metaphor for something broader I crack out a candle with one of my bullwhips to show people that what seems like an impossible probability was in fact quite doable, and the best option available. Since I’ve been doing the bullwhip work for many years it has been my primary utilization tool to articulate the abstract. However, because specifically the issues over guns and the Second Amendment being properly implemented to solve the school shootings problem and gun violence in general I decided to take another sport that I am involved in and to take those skills and modify my candle snuffing techniques. I’ve been doing Cowboy Fast Draw for several years now and have been doing some trick shooting with those techniques so it was only appropriate to apply those abilities to discuss why it is preferred to have teachers armed in public schools to deal with unwanted gun violence as it occurs at the point of the threat.

One of those events where many smart people were present this past week was the 52nd District debate for the Ohio House seat that George Lang currently holds. I was pretty stunned that George’s opponent didn’t even know about the Butler County Safety Levy that was on the ballot, especially because the 52nd seat has school districts affected by it. Essentially five of the ten schools in Butler County, Fairfield, Hamilton, New Miami, Edgewood, and Monroe are seeking a 10-year 1.5 mill levy, which is $53 per every $100,000 dollars of property evaluation to avoid arming teachers and instead hiring guidance counselors, more safety personnel, and mental health specialists. It surprised me that Kathy Wyenandt didn’t know about the levy since that was the entire scope of her campaign against George Lang—school funding. She was the one who in 2013 ran the Lakota levy campaign which only passed by 1% of the vote and she was making that issue her entire calling card to running for the 52nd district. Yet when the panel of questioners asked her about the Butler County Safety Levy she had to say she’d do some research. George Lang however gave a really good answer which can be seen by CLICKING HERE. Essentially, he reminded me of the story of the Sandy Hook principal who engaged Adam Lanza armed with nothing but a shoe during that school massacre. She died but likely saved many other people. If that principal had a gun, she’d likely be alive today and many more people would have been saved.

Every time there is a story of one of these mass shootings there always seems to be someone willing to charge the gunman to put an end to it. Even with school security officers, like what was employed at Parkland in Florida, or even security and police at the Las Vegas massacre, there have been trained armed personnel nearby to stop the shooter but not everyone is so bold as that principal from Sandy Hook. Sometimes it’s not enough to just be paid to put your life in danger—you often can’t buy heroics. It is typically a natural trait in people and it only comes out under duress. Sometimes safety personnel that we hire to guard schools find that when the bullets start flying they aren’t so brave and they hesitate to engage the target. But impassioned teachers, which there always seems to be a percentage of them in every school, those are the people who should have guns and be the first to meet a threat when they are presented. Principals and teachers like the lady at Sandy Hook are those who should be carrying guns and using those tools when danger presents itself.

That is what we are talking about in Butler County, Ohio and all the way up to the Trump administration in the White House. Impassioned teachers who are the type of people to throw themselves in front of bullets are the people we should pay a little more to be responsible gun carriers. The concealed carry class is a good beginning, but we are talking about making shooting part of their lifestyle so they know how to use a gun under duress as a second nature. That kind of thing isn’t for everyone, but for people who do adopt that type of lifestyle carrying a firearm is a very life enhancing endeavor. But there is no question that the best way to deal with gun violence is to have good people with a gun to be the first to stop bad people with a gun. The Butler County Safety Levy doesn’t deal with that aspect of gun violence, it is only focused on the aftermath. It is a cowardly way for school boards to approach the problem since most educators are functioning under the opinion that schools should be gun free zones, such an assumption isn’t conducive to reality. Luckily in my school district of Lakota we have a few conservative school board members who get it, and they opted out of the Butler County Safety Levy.

The other incident I was speaking of was a Second Amendment Celebration (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW) at the Premier Shooting and Training facility in West Chester. Big name politicians like Jim Renacci and Warren Davidson flew in from Washington D.C. to be a part of the event which evolved into a kind of NRA rally. It wasn’t a huge gathering, but the people there were all passionate about the Second Amendment. One thing that I noticed was that there wasn’t a bunch of security, there were no metal detectors or safety people sweeping people down like you might expect when big name people who typically get a lot of security in public are walking around mingling. That was because almost everyone there was armed with a concealed carry. There were probably more guns there than in any public place in Southern Ohio at that time, and as a result it was one of the safest places to be. Nobody had to worry about being gunned down, because all the people there were responsible gun carriers.

One of the people there who spoke to the public about specifically the Butler County Safety Levy was Sheriff Jones who has been against the money grab and has worked with the Trump administration to implement arming teachers to immediately solve the gun violence situation in soft target regions like public schools. As the lead law enforcement officer from our county there and certainly the head cop at that event, you didn’t see him panicking about all the guns that were freely being carried by so many people. It didn’t concern him a bit, because gun ownership tends to bring responsibility out in people. That’s why you never hear about gunmen attacking people at NRA conventions and gun shows. Having more guns in public makes a much safer society and Sheriff Jones understands that. But I did feel for him a bit when he spoke about being the lone voice in Butler County speaking out against the ridiculous safety levy. It was quite clear that the media and the schools were hoping to keep the issue away from voter’s minds so that when they did show up to vote they wouldn’t understand what the vote was. There hasn’t been much press on it in spite of Sheriff Jones calling out school districts on billboards for not adopting gun carry proposals before someone does get hurt. If the levy passes, school boards in Butler County will feed off that and not act, and will waste money on more personnel that they don’t need. The schools will still be soft targets and in danger, and taxes will go up. If the levy fails however, school boards will have to adopt a policy of letting teachers arm themselves to protect kids as a first responder in the classrooms and in the halls of our schools.

I understand its easy for me to say, I’ve had guns in my life all my life. Everyone I knew as a kid had them, and it was just something you learned growing up, all men knew something about guns. Learning to use them was a rite of passage into adulthood. To preserve that way of life I have been involved in Western Arts most of my life, certainly all of my adult life, so I have a lot of experience to draw from, as opposed to timid people who grew up with a liberal view of the world who simply are terrified of them. But being terrified isn’t an excuse for not acting. And being terrified isn’t an excuse to raise taxes either, just to say later that a school had additional safety people available to deal with a school shooting. We actually want to stop the violence before it happens and that means that not even calling the police will stop such a thing. The best way to stop a school shooter is to have a teacher in every hallway in every school there to engage a threat. And it should be the most impassioned teachers, people like that principal who threw herself at Adam Lanza. But we should not ask such teachers to throw away their lives to save other lives, we should give them the tools to walk away from the experience and that is what arming teachers in public schools is all about—making sure the right people walk away from the danger and ending the situation in seconds, not minutes.

Rich Hoffman

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Standing and Fighting: Big name Republicans gather at Premier Shooting to draw battlelines for the upcoming midterms


The Premier Shooting and Training facility in West Chester, Ohio has since its inception been a very special place. I can never think of a bad time in visiting it, which I often do. It has essentially become the Second Amendment center of Southern Ohio. And to deserve that kind of credit they have to be more than just a target range, which is fundamentally what they are. They are one of the best indoor ranges out there for the sport of shooting. Yet they are more than that by a lot, education is what most comes to my mind when I think of Premier Shooting.

They are deeply committed to teaching self-defense to the residents of West Chester and the surrounding area, and they aren’t shy about it. And what’s inside the shooting range is only part of the Premier complex, outside they have a very large fishing lake and a lot of outdoor seating that allowed them to host a very unusual event in dedication to the Second Amendment on Friday, September 28, 2018. And for that event a lot of big-name politicians gathered to allow the public to get to know them better and show their dedication to the Second Amendment in very bold ways as shown in the videos below. It was unusual to have even federal representatives fly in from Washington D.C. at great expense to themselves to be at this remarkable event. Jim Renacci and Warren Davidson for instance were there under a setting sun fresh off the Kavanaugh hearings in Washington just hours before. But Columbus representatives like Supreme Court Justice Sharon Kennedy, George Lang, Keith Faber, John Husted, Ken Blackwell, along with local representatives like Sheriff Jones, Mark Welsh and Ann Becker were gathered as well in a remarkable gathering that wasn’t a Republican fundraiser or political rally for thousands of spectators, but just a lot of concerned people coming together for a common cause.

The biggest problem that Republicans have is that they are generally good people just trying to live their lives. There are different degrees of Republicans of course, some of more libertarian while others are more strict traditionalists, but in essence, they are people who want to live in peace and be left alone from the conflicts of the world. Presently with Donald Trump in the White House, many Republicans feel that they can step away from politics and live their lives while many of the people gathered at the Premier shooting Center event under a setting sun manage the business of running the country for them. But as we have all seen with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, that isn’t enough.

There are always people out there who don’t like that we are living our lives free of their influence and they will seek to impose themselves on us. In its most basic description, Republicans are good people who want to be left alone, where Democrats want to stick their noses in everyone’s business for the task of making everyone part of their illicit schemes. And what really prevents Democrats from achieving their aims is the threat of force that comes from the Second Amendment. While the First Amendment protects political speech and gives an option to those who do not want to be a part of Democratic impositions, the Second Amendment tells individuals that they do not have to worry about any threats of force upon their individual existence.

Over a hundred years, before the advent of Progressivism which spread from Europe and embedded itself in the Democratic Party, and in some cases the Republicans, events like this gathering at Premier Shooting were commonplace. Key politicians would interact with the public in this way without Secret Service agents and armed security everywhere. This event stripped away all those barriers and allowed people to just talk to each other as concerned citizens joined by their foundation beliefs in American ideas. Steve Chabot and I had a nice talk in the foyer of the complex as he was leaving for the night and talked about football a bit. The titles we all have in life were stripped away for a few hours and we all just enjoyed rallying behind ideas we could all agree with for the cause of continued liberty.

BBQ2GO had a vendor truck parked by the lake along with other food suppliers making the gathering place outside a very comfortable experience. There was food, fire pits and a lot of cigar smoke as we all contemplated together the necessity to keep a fighting spirit going into this upcoming midterm election. That was in essence why so many big-name representatives were present, because the typical cycle is that the previous political party in power loses their edge and don’t have very high voter turnout in the next elections once they win the presidency or hold the House and Senate at the federal level. President Trump makes it even more of a risk because he has such a big voice that people who don’t like to fight so much are happy to get behind, but are not inspired to act for themselves, which was required for the midterms. Democrats were energized to work together because they want to take something from us. Republicans already have it, so they usually don’t act until someone like a Barack Obama is elected.

As the gathering at Premier was forming early in the night I was watching the Kavanaugh hearings in the VIP lounge when the Trump administration announced that it would launch an F.B.I. investigation into the allegations leveled at Brett Kavanaugh just to appease the Democrats. Of course, the strategy is to take away any leverage they might have in the future, but the risk is that their radicalism would have another week to torpedo the nomination process. Democrats have shown that they will do just about anything to stop the vote for Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court so there is always danger even if people are just minding their own business in living their lives without trying to impose themselves on others.

Democrats are always looking to attach themselves to other people so as long as they exist, there is always a threat and Republicans need to understand that. It was good to be at an event like this one at Premier where everyone understood what was at stake. Republicans were certainly in the driver’s seat. History did not have to repeat itself. Voter turnout for Republicans did not have to be surpassed by encroaching Democrats. There was a chance to gain seats not lose them, but people needed to get out there and fight, which was the key terminology of the evening. Complacency wasn’t going to work, people needed to know that the necessity for fighting never went away, even in times of peace, and that was why all these personalities had gathered in the same place to defend the Second Amendment. Without the Second Amendment, everything philosophically fell apart in America, and we just can’t have that.

I thought it was a great evening and I give a lot of credit to the operators at Premier Shooting and Training for the really hard work of organizing such an event. And Sean Maloney did a really fabulous job with everything from getting everyone where they needed to go to arranging some of the speeches and keeping the pace of the night moving forward so that there wasn’t ever any stagnant standing around. There were several representatives from the NRA there as well, one of them was Sean and they really elevated the entire event. But as nice as everything was, the undercurrent of the necessity to stand and fight was certainly there. While the gathering was friendly, the beer was cold, the barbecue was delicious, and the Friday night setting sun under a late September sky was absolutely stunning, the grim reality that out there in that big world was a fight for our lives was certainly present.

While the people there both in the public arena and those who work in special ops within the seams of society were enjoying themselves, the realities of the greater fight were quite evident. And that fight is just getting started. Just because we have something today doesn’t mean we’ll have it tomorrow. Trump may be in the White House, but we have to defend it. We can’t just show up for one election and hope its fixed forever. There is a lot more fighting that needs to be done and for all of us the upcoming election day is the minimum—everyone needs to get out there and vote.

But for some of us, many who were at that event, a lot more is required. Fighting is a necessity so long as evil people function in the world, and in this case, evil is defined by others who seek to impose upon individuals their collective manifestations of insanity and rebellion. And that cannot be tolerated. Just look at what they are trying to do to Brett Kavanaugh and what they have been doing to Donald Trump. And if they can do it to you dear reader, they surely will.

Rich Hoffman

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I Stand With Sheriff Jones–ARM THE TEACHERS: HELL NO on the 1.5-mill Butler County school security levy

Of course, people want to know what I think of the 1.5-mill levy that five Butler County schools are trying to pass together to boost school security. The five schools are Hamilton, Fairfield, Monroe, Edgewood and New Miami, and if the levy passes they intend to increase their school entry security, and hire mental health employees to help in what they think will help make schools safer. It’s a ten-year deal which effectively avoids the entire problem. As a long-term anti-levy advocate for public schools I am on the record at Lakota as saying if they allowed a policy of arming their teachers that I would support a levy to increase teacher compensation and help them purchase firearms. As anti-tax as I am, I support the Betsy DeVos federal purchase of firearms to help teachers get their hands on them so obviously this issue means a great deal to me. I think firearms on a teacher makes schools much safer and ultimately prepares children for the kind of world they are going to have to live in as adults. The Hamilton school board actually yielded rightly to Sheriff Jones and his billboards by voting to support arming teachers, then under great pressure and in hoping that this levy would pass, they backtracked to await the results of this election. That pulled Jones off the fence of neutrality on this particular levy to speak against it. And on that issue Sheriff Jones and I might as well be identical twins. I am with him in saying what I have said many, many times in the past. This school levy is a money grab by these school districts who are very intent to ignore the problem of school shootings and are attempting to yield to the pressure of the teacher unions and their anti-gun progressive political philosophy against the nature of this threat.

https://www.journal-news.com/news/butler-county-sheriff-calls-school-security-levy-districts-money-grab/PjwIrmBL109j8U0jctoA1O/

Guns and how people think of them has largely been shaped by our public education system and ultimately the liberalism of modern politics. That essential vantage point is that guns are dangerous and just looking at one is a kind of taboo and that is a far cry from how things have traditionally been in this country. As an example, obtaining a gun in America was like getting the first responsibilities into adulthood, which is the central premise to the movie that comes out every year on all our televisions during the Holiday season, A Christmas Story. Getting a gun and learning to use it responsibly was the first access that many had in their journey toward adulthood. But since that movie and the period it covers, American youth have lost that basic stepping stone into adulthood and public schools have attempted to steer minds away from such individualized ritual into accepting more state control, which is what you hear from virtually every school official as pressure mounts to arm teachers. The positions of government schools are to rely on centralized authority as opposed to individualized first responders.

Hoping to ride public emotion away from making that critical decision to individualize security in the hands of first responder teachers this Butler County school levy is one last leap to keeping that centralized authority model alive in the context of the core philosophy of public education. That assumption is a progressive belief that guns should be removed from society and that children should grow up into adults and not have their minds on guns at all—so that an eventual federal ban will occur by those future voters. By allowing guns to be part of the solution, the fear is that this new generation of young people will grow up once again accepting that guns are a critical part of American society, which of course they always have been.

I have come to think of guns as more of a philosophy than an imminent threat. Personal firearm ownership is a declaration of independence in a lot of ways and a commitment as a first responder to law enforcement. Gun ownership is not a threat to law enforcement, it is a great assistance if done properly and it is that reality for which Sheriff Jones and President Trump support arming teachers in schools to put the whole school security issue to bed for good, before more people get hurt.

We have all talked about doing something after the most recent rash of school shootings, but the real answer is to decentralize the process and give teachers the ability to be those critical first responders when danger happens. The philosophy of guns is that by owning them, we make each owner an extension of law and order rather than hiding under a desk or behind a door while we wait five to ten minutes for the police to arrive. The fantasy that many progressive people have, which many school board members are dedicated to, is that guns will be removed from American society at some point and they think by resisting a move to the other direction that they are facilitating that inevitability. But I would point out correctly that the trajectory of gun legislation is not getting more restrictive, it is getting less so. If you track gun laws back to 1992 it will become apparent that the Second Amendment has been strengthened even under the most rigorous debate, because as an invention of individual protections, guns are at the core of everything our American society stands for. And schools should be part of that instruction, working with the NRA and even gun manufacturers to facilitate great understanding of what guns are all about and how to properly use them so that young people grow up to be good gun owners in the future. Denying this reality is where all these school board members are going wrong, because they are missing the essence of educating young people in modern-day America. Taking a political stand is reckless when the evidence shows that the world is wrong on this issue. We need more guns and gun ownership, not less to make a society built on justice, honesty, and valor.

The five schools mentioned are avoiding the inevitable. They are hoping to take this money grab to appease the unionized teachers but to act as an insurance policy if something does go wrong, because they can at least say then that they tried. But we are looking for more than trying, I certainly expect there to never be a school shooting in my county schools. And if someone tries, then I expect some first responder to put down the threat right then and there and get the students back to class learning valuable things, not sitting around crying about how emotional everyone is. There shouldn’t be a need for more mental health experts in schools because the message would be quite clear, if danger erupts, the teachers are armed. And that the way to better mental health is in conducting lives in a more individualized responsible manner. In their most basic form, firearms teach their users to be more responsible people which translates to every action a person participates in. So, the benefits are many in arming teachers in public schools.

That leaves the point of this article as to whether or not the Butler County school security tax should be passed, to be answered. And I say HELL NO! It’s a chicken approach to a hard problem and for the schools themselves it is just as Sheriff Jones articulated, it’s a money grab. I hate tax increases and I think the schools cost way too much money currently, and kids don’t learn nearly enough of what they need. I would argue that the entire government school system needs to be rethought. But I stand by my previous statements on approving levies if school boards adopt arming teachers. I sympathize with the tremendous intellectual challenge it takes for them to make the switch in thinking from a centralized safety response to a more individualized one. So I’m willing to sweeten the pot for them to bring them to the right side of the argument. I personally think everyone should learn to shoot a gun. There is nothing like going to a range and respecting the people around you who are all armed with deadly weapons because it teaches the process of being safe and conducting yourself responsibly. Those basic procedural respects are missing from today’s youth and I think they would do well to get it from their teachers in school. But better yet, it is best for kids to know that their schools are truly safe because any teacher could be armed and if danger breaks out, someone is there to respond in seconds rather than minutes. And that has a direct impact on whether there is a body count or not.

Rich Hoffman

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