How a gun-happy nation spends its #FourthofJuly weekend pic.twitter.com/VZBeGIQ9XO
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) July 6, 2021
America is just emerging from its annual celebration of that time 245 years ago when a bunch of ratty-ass citizen soldiers, using their own military grade weaponry, took on and defeated the world’s most powerful fighting force to secure their independence from a distant authoritarian power. It’s known here as Independence Day or, more colloquially, simply as the Fourth of July.
This year’s observance of that brilliant British humiliation, however, comes at a difficult time here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We’re finally, blessedly, shaking off the effects of the pandemic.
I travelled to and from St. Louis over the long weekend to visit family and literally the only places I encountered that still require the wearing of a mask were a nursing home (even there, I could de-mask once I was in my mother’s room) and all facilities and conveyances that are under the control and direction of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The other aspect of American life for which 2021 is becoming known is that we appear to be turning the clock back toward 1990s-levels of violent crime. In addition to the reports from firecrackers, bottle rockets, and M-80s, the other sounds heard frequently in many urban areas over the long Independence Day weekend came from gunfire. And not just the ill-advised celebratory kind.
The media report that about 150 people died in 400 shootings across the country over the holiday. New York saw a score or so of shootings with two dozen killed or wounded. There were a dozen in L.A. And as surely as the sun rises in the east . . .
NEW – 92 shot, 16 killed, 6 kids among the wounded in Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s #Chicago. The most violent weekend of 2021 so far. pic.twitter.com/fR3ju3Pc9g
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 6, 2021
But it wasn’t just the biggest cities that were affected. Towns like Syracuse, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Denver and others saw an increase in shootings, too.
This continues a trend that began last year after the killing of George Floyd and has accelerated into 2021. It’s almost as if defunding and denigrating law enforcement — combined with electing a slew of soft-on-crime, politicized “prosecutors” in city after city — has had an entirely predictable result, encouraging and increasing criminal activity.
Anyway, the long weekend wasn’t a great one, law-and-order-wise.
Which brings us to the tweet and cartoon at the top of the page. China’s Xinhua News Agency — otherwise known as the official state mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party — didn’t let the combination of America’s celebration of our freedoms and the increase in “gun violence” pass without firing a rhetorical shot in our direction.
Yet somehow the budding superpower couldn’t manage to find a decent cartoonist for their government-produced agitprop. That thing looks like the kind of half-ass amateur production you see in America’s weekly alternative newspapers.
Whatever the quality of the art work, the CCP will have to forgive us if we choose to ignore the criticisms of a regime that killed as many as 80 million of its own (disarmed) citizens in an effort to “purify” its class ranks. Gunning down and literally crushing thousands of democracy demonstrators under tank tracks wasn’t a good look either. Then there’s the matter of the concentration and slave labor camps that are in operation even now. Oh and don’t forget the forced organ harvesting.
We’d also point out that we have China’s incompetence and lies to thank for loosing the virus on the world that got 2020 kicked off in style….while killing millions more…but that would be churlish.
So the irony of China denouncing America’s Second Amendment freedoms is kinda like Iran’s mullahs having the stones to criticize the U.S. for our human rights record.
But it’s easy to see where China’s rulers are coming from. One of the their greatest fears is an armed populace, people who have the means to defend themselves against a dictatorial government that has ruled — and frequently slaughtered — them over the last 70-plus years.
History’s greatest mass murderer proclaimed that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. That’s a lesson Chairman Xi hasn’t failed to learn.
People who have the ability to decline to be subjugated, imprisoned, and systematically murdered are difficult to coerce and control. That’s not how the CCP likes to do business and Xi isn’t about to cede any of that power to the peasants over whom he rules.
The kind of totalitarian regime that rules 1.4 billion Chinese is exactly why America’s Founders included the right to keep and bear arms in the Bill of Rights. And if knowing that the Chinese Communist Party disapproves of your gun ownership enough to commission a (crappy) cartoon and ridicule it doesn’t inspire you to to go out and buy even more guns and ammunition, what will?
The freedom to own firearms — like all freedoms — comes with costs as well as benefits. Civilians use firearms tens of thousands of times more often often to defend themselves every year than those guns are used to kill. And while many don’t like to acknowledge it, America’s civilian gun ownership has kept us as free of government tyranny as we still are to this day. May it ever be thus.
And if the Chinese don’t like that, they’re more than welcome to take a great leap forward and piss right off.
F the ChiComs.
Who cares what China thinks? They have rejected reality and substituted their own.
The looked at the book 1984 and saw a blueprint, not a warning.
And Xi is making the mistake of believing his own propaganda.
The Chinese Communist Party governs the way American leftists wish they could. “You have the right to shut up and do as you are told.”
The CCP deserves credit for recognizing that communism is an economic system that can never work successfully. What they have now is fascism.
“communism is an economic system that can never work successfully”
it works perfectly for the elite rulers. everyone else not so much.
For a short time, it can *seem* to work perfectly…but it will eventually impoverish everyone.
70 years after its communist revolution, the USSR was a hollow, completely impoverished wreck, and even the central party elite had to admit it. Letting the communist party die put them to a great deal of hazard and risk, but the gravy train had finally stopped rolling, and it was the only way they could continue their corrupt self-enrichment.
70 years after China’s communist revolution, the communist party’s pivot to fascism has postponed that reckoning indefinitely. Probably not forever…but for the foreseeable future, at least.
The CCP is getting interested in Afghanistan. Will they be more successful than previous attempts?
Will they be more successful than previous attempts?
They’ll do more than write a few strongly worded letters and you can bet there won’t be any limited “fighting season” bullshit… Afghanistan is RICH in rare earth minerals and China is batshit in love with rare earth minerals… And they don’t care about nation building… just kill em all and move their own people in… Who will stop stop them Braindead and the “Hoover”?…..
“Will they be more successful than previous attempts?”
yes. they won’t “attempt”, they’ll just move in and obliterate everything that gets in their way.
Easy, history will repeat its self and there will be US based arsenals sent over. Free of markings for the most part.
China could put us on the (not so bad) side of the Muslims of the world again. Between them and the Iranians.
When you lie wounded on the Afghan plains
And the women come to cut up your remains
Roll over to your rifle to blow out your brains
And go to your god like a soldier.
Rudyard Kipling
Guess they saw “Wolverines”… Citizen ownership of firearms is the only thing that keeps the CCP from storming our shores, which is the main reason the signed on to the UN Smaal Arms Treaty AND are pushing the US to sign on as well… Hey China GFY…
And which is why they so vehemently object to us selling sophisticated arms to Taiwan.
+1
Now that peking has a lock on the white house we need to worry about their op-eds.
They certainly have a Manchurian Candidate though Hunter Biden’s foundations.
“. . . using their own military grade weaponry, took on and defeated . . . ”
May I take the first opportunity to pick a nit.
Of those who mustered at Lexington and Concord, some were equipped with muskets and bayonets. Others, merely rifles.
Military doctrine at the time – so far as I understand it – was that a rifle was what we would call today a “modern sporting rifle”. It could not be re-loaded quickly enough for firing in ranks. Moreover, it lacked the essential bayonet mount.
Military doctrine promptly evolved on 19 April 1775; of course. The “modern sporting rifle” began to assume it’s place as a “weapon of war”.
However artful, descriptive or incendiary a word/term might be, none of us should be deceived by sophistry. In that time, a rifle was one piece of hardware, a musket a different piece of hardware. Today, an AR-15 is one piece of hardware, an M-16 a different piece of hardware. Nothing more; nothing less.
We can have a discussion of the distinctions between hardware types; for whatever purpose that discussion might serve.
As a Constitutional matter, the original understanding of the “necessity” of a “well regulated” “militia” to the “security of a free state” was the articulated reason for enumerating “the right of the People” to “keep and bear arms”.
Significantly, the rationale of “hunting and fowling in seasonable times” was left behind on the cutting room floor.
The implications for interpreting the original understanding of the 2A should be clear. The distinction between “modern sporting rifle” and “assault rifle” probably matters very little. What does matter is that “military grade weaponry” was clearly the principal objective of the 2A.
actually the principle objective of the 2A was a well-regulated militia.
And the militia was all able bodied men from late teens to mid 40s.
yes, and these were all presumed by cultural copying of greece and social practice of the times to be in a well-regulated militia by definition – the idea of the second amendment referring to individual rights would not have occurred to the writers.
WRONG. Read the Federalist Papers. The founders were arguing over the concept of a standing army, which most were against, and how else to provide for the defense if our new nation. Ratification of the bill of rights came before a decision could be made regarding national defense, so “militia” simply refers – in this instance – to whatever military solution would be arrived at for the collective defense of the states. While it was assumed such a military force, whatever form it may take, would be under the control of the federal government, the unalienable INDIVIDUAL right – and duty – of every citizen to bear arms was not to be infringed upon. Ever. By any means. By anyone.
To guard against improper use of that military by the fed gov.
Thomas Jefferson said “The good thing about the 2nd Amendment is that you won’t need it until they try to take it away.”
And THAT, young Padawan, is what we adults call a “mandate”.
“the unalienable INDIVIDUAL right – and duty – of every citizen to bear arms” …
… within a well-regulated militia.
About half of the individual arms used by the Americans were rifled.
Muskets do just fine for CQB…
No care for what the British, Chinese, New Zealanders, or any other gun and freedom hating country thinks.
Like, really… none. At all.
In fact, I prefer to use Chinese tools when making new firearms. (in the less critical areas).
Even the Chinese 3D printers are particularly useful in certain ways. America can’t compete on tooling or other products because of our union driven overhead costs to manufacture the same products. Buying Chinese products to counter Chinese policies and political whims seems somewhat ironic.
“America can’t compete on tooling or other products because of our union driven overhead costs to manufacture the same products.”
You are aware that not all states are friendly to unions, aren’t you?
Now,if only we more effectively reach our own fellow citizens and help them through their personal Road To Damascus Moment- the one that gets them acknowledging that too many of those they voted for are only too eager to be The Middle Kingdom’s Middlemen/ Women/ Preferred Pronouns Of The Moment; why then we could do a better job of redirecting the tide- especially with the Dementia Addled Sock Puppet AKA Vice Roi #46
Chinese Communist Party: Don’t kill yourselves with firearms – let the government help.
“America’s civilian gun ownership has kept us as free of government tyranny as we still are to this day”
previous generations would immediately note the addition of the word “as”.
“May it ever be thus”
personally I’d like to go back to the previous level of freedom.
No, it hasn’t. It just keeps the tyranny a little softer, a little less visible, and a little less all-consuming.
The commies have pretty much gone to war against us. It’s ok for them to riot, loot, assault, and even kill people they disagree with. And on the few occasions an American gun owner has stood up to it, the good guy has ended up either in court or in jail. With one exception, no militia has risen to deal with the attack on our constitution or our way of life, and no matter what the leftists do, conservative “leaders” have all said we’d better follow the law or else they’ll be first in line to prosecute us… and the enlightened mob of freaks are now doing drag queen shows at Nellis AFB. So thus far, what good have we done to save anything?
The difference between the leadership of the CCP and our own elites is negligible. The former has a slave class and the latter wants one.
Power flows from the barrel of a gun.
This is why guns are banned in China, and heavily restricted in the USA.
And the funny thing is that Mao rivaled both Hilter and Stalin for killing the number of people.
mao and hitler and stalin killed no-one.
Stalin may not have killed anyone directly, but he did sign the orders and would add notes for an additional ten thousand or hundred thousand.
“he did sign the orders”
yep, true dat. and just who were all his little helpers who so eagerly and enthusiastically laid into the russian people and arbitrarily murdered them by the millions for decades? (look molotov).
NUKE CHINA!
It’s very telling that our enemies use the exact same talking points and attacks that Democrats use. As a matter of fact, you can’t tell the difference between the two. It makes sense. They both hate this country. Remember the Blacktivist twitter account? It was a fake account run by the Russians that used racial grievances to gain a larger following than BLM had. Democrats have become a national security risk in more ways than one.
Same freaking thing Dude…Dim sum. There’s a helluva lot of us!
In spite of that, their attempted birth control, and natural/normal death rate, China has nearly tripled it’s population. So has the rest of the world. Figure it out.
I figure if you cut the world population claims by 30% to half, you’d be getting closer to the truth. There’s absolutely no incentive for any country or official body to underestimate the population — and huge incentives to pad the numbers.
Think about it…the best census system in the world is right here in the USA, and even here we have to resort to estimates that could throw off the numbers by a good 20% one way or another. So what do all the other countries do? Estimates at best, wild-ass guesses most likely.
As for incentives, the US and all sorts of western-funded NGOs throw out money hand over fist to third-world countries and various underdeveloped locales based on…you guessed it…per capita income. Nearly every country in the world has $$$ incentives to overcount by as much as they think fools with money will swallow.
Meanwhile, every country in the world that has done anything remotely resembling an honest assessment of its birth rate and *actual* population trend is freaking out about depopulation. (Why do you think the EU is so dead-set on importing all those third-world savages at such risk to its social structure?)
I could be wrong…and this isn’t all my original thinking, as others put it together before me…but I don’t think I am. It makes too much sense to ignore.
“It’s very telling that our enemies use the exact same talking points and attacks that Democrats use. As a matter of fact, you can’t tell the difference between the two. It makes sense. They both hate this country.”
spot on and exactly so. except they certainly can tell the difference between each other and they both hate each other for exactly the same reasons they hate america. the left will attempt to use the united states to destroy china (and russia) as the last act of the united states.
Maybe when dacian is done with the unicorn rides with it’s mom at ProgWorld, it can chime in with a couple of hundred words gushing on and on about what a paradise that Capitalvania would become, if only we would give communism a chance here. I won’t even waste time waiting for it’s Soros fueled cumfest….” Hey commie, G.F.Y. “
What a crock, drop the gunm import ban on China and watch them start selling gunms in the U.S. again.
Let’s not forget when Bill Clitoon was in office the Japanese signed a 150, 000 petition, I think 150,000, and gave Bill a nice “present ” to ban gunms in America.
The UK also thinks gunms in the U.S. need regulated. foreign countries seem to want the American citizen disarmed for some reason.
A bit of a twist to this criticism if you can call it that is many of the guns we have in America today came from . . . China.
If there are guns in America (and around the world), it is in part due to the CCP. If being armed is such a bad thing then why is Norinco the largest arms distributor in the world?
As a matter of fact I own a few Norcs myself. Like I said above, drop the gunm ban and China will sell us all the gunms we can buy.
Yeah, I’ve got an old Norinco 12 ga pump, works fine, just can’t take it outside or it will die from rust poisoning…
“The freedom to own firearms — like all freedoms — comes with costs as well as benefits. Civilians use firearms tens of thousands of times more often to defend themselves every year than those guns are used to kill. And while many don’t like to acknowledge it, America’s civilian gun ownership has kept us as free of government tyranny as we still are to this day. May it ever be thus.”
For once I agree with Bill O’Reilly….”Bad guys shooting people is the price of freedom. Liberty is risky business. That’s why our Founding Fathers recognized our God-given right to shoot back.”
Personally, I’d rather deal with bad guys with guns than governments with guns. But, looks like we’re gonna have to deal with both on the near horizon.
How about politely advising China to Piss Up That Proverbial Rope.
I prefer they self copulated while passing on in a conflagration.
Well, what do you expect from a nation that eats bats and bugs?
what do you expect from a nation that eats bats and bugs? AND dogs… What kind of low life eats a dog?
Possum. I’ll let you handle this one.
*Snicker*… 😉
@XI, Fuck you and fuck china.
keep wallowing in second place copycat nation
China has plenty of gun violence, it’s just easy to wipe off the books when the government does it. I think they switched from asking people to open their mouths so their faces weren’t deformed when they were shot in the back of the head to lethal injection vans though. Heck if I know, seems awfully extrajudicial regardless.
Tell you what Xi, I’m going to have to pass on turning my guns over to the peoples’ party of murder, organ harvesting, concentration camps and the likes. Maybe a few rounds from one of them would hold you over? Ammo prices are high but I think I could spare a few rounds just for you.
Then again jags like him don’t come themselves, they send lackeys.
With all that, why does the CCP think they are not evil?
“why does the CCP think they are not evil?”
because following communism’s proto tenet, they are self-centered and everything – everything everywhere always – is all about them. this attitude completely externalizes all evil and all failure – they are the just and the right and the good, and everything that is not them is unjust and wrong and evil. and thus the cannot tolerate any contradiction, any setback, or the existence of anything outside of themselves – and they think such an attitude is completely moral.
The deadliest mass shooting in China was in November 1995 done by two whackjobs who murdered 32 people in a village named Zhaodong in northeastern China. Their names were Feng Wanhai and Jiang Liming. The weapons used were a double-barrel 16-gauge shotgun and a small-bore semi-automatic rifle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/masskillers/comments/m4bavn/picture_of_feng_wanhai_and_jiang_liming_training/
Don’t forget 100 million who starved to death as a result of Mao’s “great leap forward.”
There is evil in this world, and China’s communist (now fascist) regime is its fat, bloated, pustulent face.
China is just mad because if we didn’t have private gun-ownership, they could invade and easily avoid massive numbers (tens of millions) of armed civilian marksmen partisans holding up the show.
“We cannot invade the Mainland United States. There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” – Admiral Yamamoto, Japanese Imperial Navy, 1942
To this day, it’s still the single biggest deterrent against an invasion by a foreign nation. Period.
“To this day, it’s still the single biggest deterrent against an invasion by a foreign nation”
dunno man, can’t hide 300 lbs of modern rightist behind a blade of grass.
China will gain a foothold with Kalifornia.
MAKES ONE THANKFUL FOR OUR CONSITITUTION . GOG BLESS AMERICA .
I FEEL BLESSED TO HAVE BEEN BORN IN GOOD OLD USA . YEP AMERICAN MADE .
UUUH made in china UUUUH . SO TRUE OF COMMUNIST CHINA , HAVE RIGHT TO SHUT UP AND DO AS YOU ARE TOLD . FIGIN COMMIES .
HAVE TO LOOKUP HOW MANY DEATHS ON US HIGHWAYS 4TH WEEKEND ??
COMPAIRED TO SHOOTING DEATHS . ?
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