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The anti-gun pearl-clutchers are in a tizzy. Voter polling is showing that radical gun control isn’t a leading concern as America is closing in on election day Nov. 8.

Voters are keyed on runaway inflation, the increasing cost of living and rising crime as the most pressing issues that will inform their votes. Voters are more concerned about what the Biden administration is doing to their pocketbooks today than what it wants to do to gun rights tomorrow.

Voter appetite for increased gun control is plummeting, with one New York Times poll indicating that just one percent of likely voters said it was their top issue, according to The Reload.

Survey Says

That poll wasn’t an outlier. The Hill reported that crime, inflation and immigration ranked as the top-three voter concerns, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll. Monmouth University’s polls indicate that gun control was ninth on the list of voter concerns. That’s out of 12 voter priorities. In fact, the same poll showed a 30 percent approval for President Joe Biden on gun control.

That hasn’t stopped the president from continually calling for strict – and unconstitutional – gun control measures. Just weeks before election day, President Joe Biden continued his call to ban modern sporting rifles (MSRs), which he maligns as so-called “assault weapons.”

There are over 24.4 million of these rifles in circulation, making them the most popular-selling centerfire rifle in America. That also clearly qualifies them as “commonly-used,” in the parlance of the Heller decision. There are more of these rifles in America today than there are Ford F-150s on America’s roads.

One poll, conducted by Tufts University School of Medicine in partnership with a gun control advocacy group, found that just one-third of gun owners would support an MSR ban.

That shows the Biden administration is more focused on delivering for their donor-class special interest groups than they are for the American public. Americans are more focused on the issues that are impacting them.

NBC News reported that Change Research conducted the online survey of 715 adult black women voters, in coordination with a political action committee working to elect black “progressive” women across the country. These are traditionally voters who support gun control causes. Not this time.

“A majority (76%) of Black women said they were “extremely worried” about inflation and rising costs of everyday essentials — namely, rent and housing, groceries, gas and affordable health care,” NBC reported.

Plan B

That’s got gun control groups scrambling. Instead of dropping money to run ads supporting their favored candidates for gun control, they’re diving into other issues. The Reload reported that antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety is buying millions of dollars in airtime to attack candidates that support gun rights.

Everytown isn’t leading the attacks with discussions of gun control. Instead, they’re going after Republican candidate Joe O’Dea in Colorado over his position on abortion, as he challenges Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennett.

It’s not just him. Everytown is running similar ads against Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia.

#GUNVOTE

Voters will decide between candidates who embrace strict and radical gun control policies and those who would protect their rights and the industry that provides the means to exercise those rights.

Gun control candidates, and the groups that prop them up, know that voters are rejecting their messages. That’s why they’ve switched tactics. NSSF is reminding all voters, “Don’t Risk Your Rights. #GUNVOTE.”

To learn more about how to register, where to vote and how the firearm industry scored Members of Congress and senators, visit gunvote.org.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

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87 COMMENTS

  1. Depending on who you ask up here in NY our concerns are either jobs/economy/inflation, crime/bail reform/not enough cops, or both. Hochul bombed last night (not as bad as Fetterman) but we will see what happens in November

        • Neighbor is on the election committee.
          The new method, seems kinda iffy.
          However, it also requires an electoral (I know him too) to certify the ballot as legit.
          Regardless, there is a paper trail.

      • I think they even tweak the losing totals in red states to up the overall numbers. Trump got the exact same percentage of the TN vote in 2020 as he got in 2016. That’s highly suspect. The Puppet got a larger percentage of the vote than Hillary did in 2016 despite people in deep red states being pissed about the summer of riots and the thought of the senile puppet winning.

        • No, they love Dominion. You’re thinking of Diebold.

          They both suck, but Dominion has a paper trail so when it mysteriously swaps votes you can hand count votes until the bureaucrats tell you otherwise.

  2. Keep gun control front and center biden, dacian and miner. If ever there was a way to prove you fascists are completely out of touch with reality that would be it.

    • after the massive antifa riots and subsequent exploding crime, it’s amazing that anyone would think gun control legislation would go anywhere for at least the next few decades.

      • I fully encourage them to continue trying, it played so well in NY that the Hochul camp is considering a second debate and likely a message rehab.

    • “subsequent exploding crime“

      Yep, the Republicans have a real issue with exploding crime rates in red states, they have their propaganda machine in high gear trying to cast the Democrats as ‘soft on crime’.

      Unfortunately, the facts are against them:

      “Mississippi’s murder rate was nearly 400% higher than New York’s, more than 250% higher than California’s, and about 120% higher than Illinois’s. In fact, the five states with the highest murder rates, all Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York’s murder rate and at least 150% higher than California’s, the homes to some of the largest cities featured prominently in the “crime is out of control” narrative.“

      https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem

      • Golly minor how could that be when many other states have even more lax gun laws and no problems that come close? Or are you just trying to push a narrative?

      • “Republicans have a real issue with exploding crime rates in red states”.

        Yes they do. The “real issue” is that one certain racial demographic that while only 6% of the population is responsible for:
        52% of all homicides
        42% of all murders of police
        30% of all rapes,
        56% of all robberies
        33% of all aggravated assaults 30% of all burglaries
        38% of all ‘Violent Crime’
        33% of all crimes against ‘families and children’
        53% of all mass shootings

        So smart guy, do you have a way of getting in touch with that demographic and tell them to knock it off?

  3. If the radical left and Democrats thought logically, they would have been tipped off by the fact that people are buying firearms at the rate of over 1 million per month. No one goes out to spend that kind of money to turn in their firearms to the Government or because they agree with the Government priority on gun control. Most sane people realize that no gun ever killed anyone without being handled by a human and if over 150-million-gun owners were really as dangerous as they make people out to be there wouldn’t be anyone around to complain about it. Open borders, defund the police, lack of bail requirements, lack of support for police enforcement of the law, and socialist minded politicians who can’t make a distinction between what happened on Jan 6th and what happened in blue cities for months are the real causes of the increase in crime and violence not We The People’s 2nd amendment rights to own a firearm without undue Government interference and stalling tactics. A sound defeat of Democrats (without them cheating) in November should send the message loud and clear that the majority of American Citizens are not in favor of their policies nor their politics. Its time they were put in their place as people are sick of the negativism, violence and their dictatorial mode of operation. The only law enforcement agency in the Government doing its job despite continual Government harassment is the Border Patrol. The FBI, DOJ, ATF, IRS and Homeland Security have all been compromised and regularly break the law and their oath to the Constitution.

  4. Maggie Hassan just said not even half the people in her upper class gated community care about inflation. They all care about wokeyness.

    Must be nice to live with such privilege you can focus all your energy on make-believe, crystal powers, astrology and pseudo-science.

    Meanwhile it’s about to get real cold and oil tanks need filling. This keeps up and the people will be wanting global warming to speed the hell up.

    • “…people will be wanting global warming to speed the hell up…”

      Don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. I did my propane pre-buy before it got too bad, so we’re ok, but I know lots of folks aren’t or won’t be. My natural gas contract is expiring at my business, and the new rate is 2.3x. Saved some coin while it lasted.

  5. “By the way, I’m coming back and I’m eliminating assault weapons again.”

    come and take them.

    • “And next time after eliminating them this time again I’m gonna come back Jack and do it again after eliminating them again. You don’t fuck with a Biden if you ain’t Black, man. End speech, point finger at crowd in gun type gesture and smile. Can I have my ice cream now? Wow, nice plane! Are we back in Delaware?”.

  6. Well, yes.
    The economy, inflation, rampant crime, all things that all voters across the board are concerned about.
    Now, the first two affect everyone, except maybe the top 10%. The rest of us lower 90% see it every day when we fill up at the pump or at the check out line in the grocery store.
    Crime for those in Democrat ran cities it is a major concern. So much so, those who can afford to leave have left. For everyone else, just seeing what Democrat ran cities that back the defund the police movement, they are the ones buying guns. Has nothing to do with “gun culture” or the gun industry. Every day people see the crime and violence in those cities and that is what is driving the recent sales in firearms. And we all know how 40% of new, first time buyers are minorities and women. Good for them.
    What is the silent but significantly important issue for voters: Public education. As noted, Asian community support for the Democrats has dropped by 5 points. Hispanics are not far behind. Both groups see sexualization of children as young as 6 years old as abhorrent. Just 10 years ago, if you suggested cutting off perfectly good organs of a child, or chemical castration, puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones, you would of been thrown in jail.
    Now, president Biden endorses it.

    Abortion, gun control, things not on the average American mind.
    If what I am seeing is correct, the economy and inflation is going to get a lot worse, no matter the outcome of the mid-terms.

  7. “There are more of these rifles in America today than there are Ford F-150s on America’s roads.”

    they intend to get rid of both.

  8. Crime, Democrat induced and inflamed.
    Inflation, ditto.
    Immigration, ditto again.

    It’s not clear yet how many voters are going to vote the abortion issue. That could hurt Republicans this time around. Except, as the poll so obviously reveals, people are more worried about those top three, than they are about killing babies. Human sacrifice is all well and good, for the death cult, but they want to eat three squares a day, without being mugged for their meal. Human sacrifice ain’t worth much if you’re hungry, mugged, and can’t find work due to illegal aliens taking all the jobs.

    • “Crime, Democrat induced and inflamed.“

      Then why is crime higher in red states than blue states?

      “Mississippi’s murder rate was nearly 400% higher than New York’s, more than 250% higher than California’s, and about 120% higher than Illinois’s. In fact, the five states with the highest murder rates, all Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York’s murder rate and at least 150% higher than California’s, the homes to some of the largest cities featured prominently in the “crime is out of control” narrative.“

      https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem

      • But if you drill down into the data, you will note all those red states, the crime is taking place in Democrat ran cities.

  9. Well worn promises of security in exchange for gun rights are no longer gullible vote grabbers. Especially when more and more counch potatoes are discovering what the democRat Party kkk Gun Control did to Black Americans and nazi party Gun Control did to Jews.

  10. Apparently NEW YORK State voters care about gun control, or at least the candidates in NY think they do, judging from all the campaign ads in this area pushing for ever stricter gun control laws. We’re constantly getting bombarded by campaign commercials by Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democrats, either celebrating their own “common sense” (cough, cough) gun control infringements, or demonizing their opponent by saying “he wants to give semiautomatic weapons to kids!” — their idea of “kids” being 18, 19, and 20-year-olds who thought that just because their US citizens and adults, they have Constitutional rights, but Dems say, just like the Soup Nazi said, “No rights for you. Come back three years!”
    The Dem candidates in the New York/New Jersey area are falling all over themselves to say, “No Constitutional rights for 18 to 20-year-olds, not on my watch!”

    • Thankfully I barely notice the TV adds, a few internet adds (always 5 seconds or less) were pro bail reform and claimed any criticism was some kind of propaganda. Oddly could never report said ads as being spam or misleading as I could for anything else. Otherwise just get the occasional mailer or democratic canvasser who realizes that unaffiliated just means republicans are not far enough right but are the best we can expect with my household.

  11. Elon Musk just walked in the front door of Twitter with a symbolic message to the employees :

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585341984679469056?cxt=HHwWgICpxdaIooAsAAAA

    The employees are circulating a demand letter for the new Owner :

    “Elon Musk’s plan to lay off 75% of Twitter workers will hurt Twitter’s ability to serve the public conversation,” reads a draft of the letter, which has not yet been published. “A threat of this magnitude is reckless, undermines our users’ and customers’ trust in our platform, and is a transparent act of worker intimidation.”

    Sure looks like the ‘Free Speech’ platform is about to get an education on what free speech actually entails.

    Musk has changed his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit”, at Twitter.

    The screams of anguish from the Leftist Scum ™ will be such *sweet* music to our ears… 😉

    • Trying to imagine a largely unregulated Twitter (lacking employees to shape the narrative) where only illegal content is removed/monitored for…………. so 4chan with likes?

    • Ha! I hope musk not only cans their useless asses but cancels their twitter accounts as well.

      • Sounds like a major win for Society either way…Musked or sabotaged – the end result is a diminished woke propaganda platform.

        • it’s a communications platform, left or right. the left will make sure it’s a communications platform for the left or for no-one.

          and that’s how they think about everything in the world. “ours, or it doesn’t exist.”

          including you.

      • “the employees will sabotage the system on the way out.”

        You’re far from the first one who thought about that.

        As I understand it, smart companies expend a good deal of effort insulating themselves from just such a possibility, steps like a full backup being kept far offsite.

        The dangers of disgruntled current or ex-employees in digital companies is far from unknown…

        • My spouse manages roughly 150 remote-working employees. Large companies have had to adapt to the ever-changing post-COVID workplace. When someone is terminated, their access to critical systems is gone before the employee even knows they are terminated to mitigate possible adverse actions by the (former) employee. Fortunately no sensitive data or programs are stored locally on the remote machines. They can still trash the company-owned computer…however, they signed for the property and if it is trashed they face legal action for the damaged property. They receive a FedEx box and return label within two days of termination in which to return company equipment.

      • Serious damage to the system would probably incur federal and/or state charges.

        And this one’s big enough that I don’t think the FCC would be able to look the other way.

  12. ”

    Joe Biden:

    “By the way, I’m coming back and I’m eliminating assault weapons again.” pic.twitter.com/WHzBUtHcRl

    — TheBlaze (@theblaze) October 21, 2022″

    You didn’t ‘eliminate’ them the first time so whats this “again” thing?

    Basically; The so called 1994 assault weapons ban did not eliminate assault weapons, it didn’t even eliminate the civilian grade AR-15 which are not ‘assault weapons’. What it did basically was ban some ‘features’ on the civilian grade semi-auto AR-15 (for example, a bayonet lug), so manufacturers complied and remove the ‘banned’ items on new rifles and went on selling civilian grade AR-15’s but all the ones that were pre-ban could still be sold as they were but the prices did go up some. In short, overall, more civilian grade AR-15’s were sold during your so called ‘assault weapon’ ban. You could not get a complete ban through congress then… and if you come back its still not going to work because the second amendment is no longer a second class right like it was back in 1994 and we have a constitutional right to have them.

    You have a bill sitting in congress now, passed the house but it can’t go any further because it is directly and intentionally unconstitutional and the democrats know it would not survive under Bruen and trying to push it through would effectively end your gun control campaign platform. Its going to take a while, but eventually even in the non-free states their own bans will be struck down too and in fact many bans for firearms things across the nation are already being chipped away at in the courts and being done away with.

    So no Joe, you will not be “eliminating assault weapons again.” so stop gaslighting the American public you old fool.

    • Thumbhole sporters, no flash hider & 10 round magazines had no significant effect on the weapon’s performance. Like cutting one testicle off a hound dawg instead of neutering.

  13. I carry a firearm because a vacuum aspirator large enough to abort criminals won’t fit in my pocket.

  14. Come and get it. I’m tired of your shit, let’s go boy. I believe I can take care of a whole mess of your new armed federal employees. I don’t hold it sideways. There’s a reason they used to call us white devils. Every time I pull the handle on the press I get a smile on my face.

    • they won’t come for your guns. they’ll just delete you.

      one day you’ll wake up and find out your credit/debit cards dont’ work. your bank account will be locked. your drivers’ license will be suspended, along with any other licenses. your water meter will be shut off and locked, and your power meter removed. your phone will be disconnected, your internet accounts closed. your employer will “let you go”.

      and your local police will receive an official bulletin to be on the lookout for you, an armed and dangerous criminal. license plate scanners at intersections and facial recognition systems in stores and other facilities will automatically call the cops every time you are observed.

  15. Then I won’t have anything to lose. Dying isn’t the end of it. I am not afraid to die anymore. Got ‘em good didn’t I FATHER. Told ‘em they weren’t going to mock the GOD of Israel!

  16. CLIMATE CRISIS : TAKE CARE OF MOTHER EARTH OR NO NEED WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE , ON MY LIST .. FRGN OVER POPULATION GROWTH … SAVE LAST BULLET FOR YOURSELF

  17. Well clearly they need a horrid unspeakable shooting to get people motivated to vote for gun control. I wonder what the Demon-Rats can pull out of their sleeve just a few days before the election.

  18. with both the dem approved violence and the destroying of criminal records poc in record numbers are arming themselves legally

    lefty created

  19. Ignoring the gun control morons and getting to more interesting/important things…

    The real question is, if the red wave really does materialize, what will the GOP do with it?

    If recent history is any guide the answer is “sweet fuck all”.

    Generally, it would be an interesting cycle for the oddities in it if not for that lurking specter of total annihilations looming in the background.

    The Dems have clearly calculated for a while that they’ll probably lose badly. Hence that little attempt at a secret deal with the Saudis to postpone a rise in the price of gas until after the election. It’s not about saving the election, it’s about losing and then blaming the winner based on temporal association, a trick they’ve used before many times.

    The interesting thing here is that I doubt it works since it requires a media apparatus to pull off and the majority of Americans now think the MSM is a major “threat to democracy” in this country. (Fucking hilarious, that. Couldn’t have happened to a nice bunch of folks.)

    But then there’s Mitch who seems to be playing politics as usual and muddling his own temporal horizons for election cycles. Good parliamentarian but shitty tactician? Self-interested jackass? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ You decide. It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other anyway.

    So that kinda leaves us with the statistical probability of having a divided government that has to work together to avoid, oh at least 12 catastrophes in the next year, and absolutely will not. Ol’ Joe says he’ll veto every damn thing.

    The funny part is that the media clearly doesn’t know they’ve jumped the shark with the public because they’re quite obviously holding back quite a few stories so they can reanimate them after the election and blame the GOP. Fertilizer shortages, impending gas price hikes, food shortages (worse than current), diesel shortages, the trade war with China which is currently collapsing, OPEC+ possibly walking away from the USD along with BRICS+, that whole Credit Suisse swap line thing, the EU in full blown collapse as I type this…. man this list gets deep quick and I’ve not even started to scratch the surface.

    Fun fuckin’ times. Historical parallels all over the place. Sadly, none of them are exactly a fortuitous story.

    • Bread n circussesses. Can’t kill off the baker and fire the ringmaster, wut would we watch on da tell-a-visions?

      • Break them once people realize that they induce delta waves at a median of 12 minutes and that this is time for the first commercial break on a show because it makes people suggestable and therefore basically boils down to an undisclosed psychological intervention and fraud?

        • [Nerd rant inbound.]

          Ooooof. That’s a larger topic than you might realize, like an entire book and not a short one. The ultra short answer is “Yes”. The slightly longer answer is “Yes and no”, which has to do with the fact that much of this isn’t new, it’s been around for a long time but has gone unnoticed by most of the public. The delivery mechanism is new and it’s more effective in certain ways, particularly in the odd ways it is self-reinforcing due to differences in generations of people.

          TikTok uses an entirely different mechanism to manipulate people. Social media is similar to slot machines and general casino gaming, it’s a mostly Pavlovian reward system that plays on several neurotransmitter pathways to hijack the brain and it uses Freudian tricks to make this initially appealing so that people come back for more doses. All of these conditioning mechanisms require repetition to program behavior. Social media also uses an interesting mix of positive/negative reinforcement via vote-systems. Wrongthink is immediately and severely punished. It’s like rewarding a dog for good behavior and really beating the shit out of it immediately for bad behavior.

          In this regard TikTok’s similar to Twitter and Facebook in that it has the same basic functionality and it’s addictive and fits in your pocket thanks to phones. TikTok takes lessons on how to make aspects of the program more addictive, learned from prior iterations of social media, and puts them on steroids too.

          But they all basically train you like a person trains a dog. That’s part of why they’re so much more effective on young people who don’t have the experience/fully formed brain to resist. Schools, these days, function in many of the same ways and use linked-reinforcement from social media to amplify the effects of the school and social media. Interlocking fields of fire, if you want to run with a gun analogy. Either way, they target people who are the “blankest slate” because that means there’s less to attempt to overwrite which the Pavlovians discovered was pretty hard to do.

          TV, basically, works by a form of hypnosis and plays heavily on the fact that most people believe hypnosis doesn’t work. That’s a balancing act in some regards. It’s not meant to work too well or it would be obvious how manipulative it is. It’s true strength is also in repetition just like the web, which is based on people repeatedly coming back for another dose because the source of the advertising is addictive but not for the same reason as social media (affirmation).

          TV “informs”, which cloaks its addictive nature in a manner which FB, Twitter and TT don’t really have in a lot of cases because they don’t really need it as much. This is why TV is the preferred outlet for propaganda directed at old people. Boomers are the TV generation. They’re also huge as current generations go, like 78 million of them. Most of them believe that they watch TV for information, and that’s the insertion point for both Freudian and Pavlovian manipulation. It’s 1/2 of the source of generational warfare too. Propaganda works on multiple levels and TV news plays heavily on a couple of them, first being “fact based” (this isn’t manipulating you and you’re here because you’re smart and know this!) and secondly, decades of repetition that has built a misplaced trust. Stats on TV vs internet as an information source coupled with a week or so of observation of both from a good vantage point will perfectly explain the “Boomer vs. Millennial” thing for you. Both sides are being heavily manipulated and specifically against the other group by the very thing that’s fucking both of them. This is a two-way (technically four way) emotional manipulation commonly found in cults, btw.

          But this is elsewhere too. Like old print ads, all of this is doubly effective for the fact that it’s not too effective. If it maximized for effect it would be immediately noticed and people would retaliate against the people doing the manipulation. As it is people are more likely to fall for it because it’s relatively subtle and people will rationalize that it doesn’t work because they don’t see an ad and immediately jump up to buy the product or adopt the dogma. But over time…

          And it can be a bit more overt with kids because, as noted, kids lack the experience and certain parts of brain function to notice the incongruencies on their own. They also tend to trust authority figures dishing this out in schools and it’s reinforced online and, often unwittingly, by parents too. That’s at least a trifecta and it’s more subtle than loudspeakers on every corner the way the Germans used in occupied territories but the effect is identical. Repetitive messaging you cannot get away from. The more normal, the less likely to be noticed and the more likely to be effective.

          You can see this with “kids” who are now older, like in their 30’s for example, on the topic of college. Lots of Conservatives hate the university system at this point and if you take a careful look at that debate, especially in regards to “college debt” you find that it’s an engineered disagreement. College isn’t useless, but like any tool the application needs to be considered before selection of the tool. Kids, for a long time, were raised from birth to make an improper selection and literally no one is actually countering that. So, so it’s hardly surprising that kids who shouldn’t go to college do. This has too many effects to detail here but it has been financially weaponized against the better part of three generations, and the side-effects weaponized in both directions to keep older and younger people at each other’s throats rather than looking at the real issue. This is a paper in-and-of itself.

          And that leads into discussions of hyper-financialization creating a MASSIVE population of widwit middle managers who are well paid and useless. They exist to promulgate their own class, basically. And no one stopped them. Now your average college is 8:1 admins to faculty and your average hospital is 6:1 admins to doctors. Entrenchment happened some time ago, the numbers prove this.

          What people need to realize is that there are A LOT of corrupted systems running here and that they reinforce each other. This is a supersystem that evolved over time. It’s made up of a very powerful set of systems that have been hijacked individually over time. They work together in a huge number of ways. People profit from them in terms of money and power but this system is not built to allow you as an individual to *profit* in life. It’s meant to make you a drone that works for the overarching system.

          And no, as I said it’s not a plan. This wasn’t set up by a bunch of Persian-cat-having, cigar-smoking, snifter-sipping elites. It’s like a forest. A series of interlacing systems that have grown up over time. In this case however, these systems all have minor perversions in their incentive systems and, when interlaced, they form a very powerful system that bends hard in the wrong direction and attracts exactly the people don’t want to run such a system into positions of power while driving everyone else, who might make good choices, away.

          Just look at modern politics. Run by idiots and assholes for 40 years, mostly the same people for those 40 years because they derive power from this system. A cesspool of immorality, why would a normal person want to get involved at all? They wouldn’t, which is good for those immoral assholes because it keeps out the competition which should, rationally, outcompete the current crop of geriatric kleptocrats.

          I’ll digress at this point, this could go on for many pages more and barely stratch the surface. Overarching point being: This is complicated and runs on incentives that are short-term based rather than long. This has lead to corruption. This is highly manipulative and the people who are the most far-gone are the ones who vehemently deny that they are susceptible to this. These things operate on deep brain systems. No person born is immune. They work on dogs, cats, lizards and birds. These things play on brain functionality found in most species on this planet. It is only untrainable creatures, like insects, that this doesn’t work on because their neurobiology is fundamentally different.

        • Well, if you care that much, SAFE, a fairly long comment is in moderation.

          Also ignore the keystroke error in the formatting that turned most of it bold. Only the first bold word was meant to be bold.

        • Will keep an eye out for it also on the oddball stuff that came up in passing, ever heard of a document titled Silent weapons for quiet wars?

        • strych finally saw your nerd rant post and …………..yeah pretty much what I noticed back when I was in college. Lot of excess admissions and many of the departments were not productive fields of study unless you wanted to be a professor (or politician lately). The cult analogy is perfect as multiple levels (short attention span + long rants + everyone reinforcing the message) were exactly what we found with NXIVM (see Vanguard retreats executive training and others). It would also explain why any counter culture (see independent thinking) is quickly condemned and limited on the platform when possible as it is a quick crack in the narrative that is catchy and while not enough to break the programming is enough to create questions.

        • IIRC, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars is a treatise on biowarfare?

          I know there’s a book on it, I haven’t personally read it so I’ll limit my commentary to basically nothing and go see if there’s a copy available on B&N… (there is, $11.99. Ordered.)

          NXIVM is something I never really delved into either. I’d have to go look at it before commenting on it, but a lot of those “personal improvement” systems are borderline cult shit. Every notice how they’re rarely run on long-established systems elucidated by psychologists as a set of suggestions? It’s always some sorta weird fucky person?

          …it is a quick crack in the narrative that is catchy and while not enough to break the programming is enough to create questions.

          This is the least allowable thing, for the reasons I note. Your brain is searching for patterns and looking for deviation from the expected. When the unexpected is found you have an emotional reaction we usually call “surprise”, a mix of anxiety and curiosity. If sufficiently alarmed you run away, otherwise your curiosity leads you to investigate.

          The latter being absolutely unacceptable to the manipulator. Which is why they push “entertainment” of the “right type”. I point this out about the music industry all the time. Rap’s a good example. Big record labels push a specific, and quite narrow, brand of rap that keeps you from asking “What the actual fuck is going on in these neighborhoods?” because the popular, widespread music seems to provide a perfect explanation. They do NOT push the music that doesn’t bolster the preferred narrative, which is actually most rap and hip-hop. Meanwhile, country music is promoted in a similar manner but in another direction by the same labels and industry. Odd, that, huh?

        • Music is always a tricky one but the independent label sometimes has some fun ones. Tom Macdonald, Topher, Chris Webby, Adam Calhoun, Burden (and a bunch that do collaborations with the previous). May still be (likely is) various levels of programming but a lot more enjoyable than on message music.

        • Interesting that you bring that up, it’s another level of what I’m talking about.

          “Indie labels” mostly owned by the Major labels through a series of shell corporations, this is true at least of all the labels that get their artists on the “Indie” charts.

          That’s why people like Tom McDonald don’t have a label at all, they are fully independent. Which is also why they don’t show up on Billboard even when they outsell the #1 group/artist on the chart. Because Billboard is owned by the labels too and exists to promote those artists that are on the label.

          The only one that comes to mind as actually semi-independent is Epitaph, which owns Hellcat. There are others in other genres, but not really that many truly Indie as opposed to “Indie”. If you chart through the “Parent Organizations” of the latter you usually end up back at Sony, Viacom or similar.

          While that’s not always true but true more often than not. And note how few actual indie artists make any sort of chart worth talking about regardless of sales. I mean, sure, breaking the Billboard Top 200 is cool and all but look at a band like The Interrupters which gets massive radio play all over the country on top of stupid high internet traffic but their top charting song ever was 141/200 and that was back in 2018.

          And likely you won’t see them chart higher than that (though they currently have a song at 145/200, their second charting sinlge) because they don’t have the right distribution contract to get everything they do counted. Again, like Tom. He can blow out Apple’s store and YT and a bunch of other services that keep records and still be kept out of the 200 Singles chart because of how things are counted in favor of the Majors.

          Big companies, in this regard, are selling a message. One might ask what that message is and why they want to sell it.

        • Not a hard message to puzzle but sadly one easily followed, be compliant with what we want of you and if not don’t step out of line in ways we don’t like/can’t profit off of. What gets interesting is how much money they are willing to lose to control the platform/message which gets quickly to your point and rapidly connects with old CIA programs.

        • You’re right about the message to the artists, I was referring to what they’re “selling” to the public.

          IMHO, when you go through and look and who owns what it’s fairly clear that they are selling a message that is intentionally divisive. It’s been set up in a way that means that, at a glance, *those* people don’t have a valid story to tell, so why listen to them?

          Look at how many older folks hate Hip-hop and say it’s all gangster shit. But IRL most rap isn’t gangster shit, just the stuff that’s being pushed. You can see an opposite message being pushed in Country.

          IMHO, the point is to try to set up a situation where it’s hard for people to discuss what might or might not be a reflection of reality in music because the music is being curated in a way that’s designed to make that conversation as hard as possible.

          And if you look at how musicians themselves talk about influences and you trace the history of US music you find that both Country and hip-hop flow from R&B, Blues and Jazz. And, in fact, both Hip-hop and country music inform each other in real time. The artists often have very similar takes on things too, which isn’t surprising once you get to the heart of what each type of music is.

          But you’d never know that from radio or the charts which push to very divergent viewpoints. It’s been amusing to me for a long time how Hip-hop and Rap going back to the 1980’s are mostly against drugs, gangbanging and, quite frankly, distrustful of government and about self-sufficiency. Again, something you’d never know from listening to most of the pop stuff that’s heavily promoted.

    • First order of business should be to impeach the Puppet and Mayorkas, but McCarthy has no interest in that. They’ll probably investigate Fauci & Co. They need to look into the DOJ and FBI as well. They need to stop all spending, but they won’t. They can’t wait for more power so they can leverage better personal deals. That’s what Congress is all about.

      • IMHO there are two possible major moves that would be both risky by worth it, depending on how the election works out.

        1. The Speaker need not be a member of the House, so they could select someone who’s a total outsider and acceptable to most Americans. Then, holding both Chambers they could move to impeach and remove both Biden and Kamala. That’s entirely Constitutional and how it plays with the public depends almost entirely on who they select as Speaker to become POTUS. That person, however, has to be on board and have their VP and cabinet picked beforehand. I suspect that the GOP lacks the organization for this move.

        2. When you look at the history of how state legislature elections tend to and how well governor’s races predict those, there’s a legit possibility that you’re moving to a point where you can actually have a legit Convention of States. That process isn’t hijackable (though getting it off the ground is a heavy lift) and entirely bypasses the Feds. The States could reassert their rightful power under Federalism and snip the Fed’s nuts in the process.

        Short of that I don’t see any way you’re going to prevent the current “cold” civil war from going “hot”. There are too many problems created by this administration that are, with no hyperbole, serious threats to the survival of a great many people in this country. But one example: We’re at the lowest level of diesel fuel available since 1945 and that isn’t something this administration is going to allow to be fixed. No diesel and shit’s gonna get REAL wild when the transport systems can’t supply cities with basics like food and spare parts for critical systems.

        There are way too many things going on right now against a very heated background. All it takes is one event to touch things off and, as I’ve pointed out before, with major “powderkeg” events in history you usually can only identify them with hindsight. Such potential events are, currently, absolutely everywhere across the economy, society, the political landscape, geopolitical landscape and a half dozen other domains.

  20. There are 24.4 million AR 15s in circulation that people admit to owning.

    I’d place the number at 50% higher, at least.

    • I wonder what the number of Glock 19’s (plus clones) or 1911’s is at the moment official and otherwise for the handgun equivalents.

  21. “Voter appetite for increased gun control is plummeting…”

    Is NOT the same as saying:

    “Midterm Voters Don’t Give a Damn About Gun Control!”

    It should be obvious that even though guns are on the list, they are NOT at the top. If the title of this article is to be believed then that is a statement in itself. When people say they don’t want more gun control, that statement very clearly says they DO give a damn.

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