Former Bloomberg lackey Alex Yablon has taken to the pages of The New Republic to review a new book by racialist University of Arizona sociologist Jennifer Carlson titled Policing the Second Amendment. The book’s (and Yablon’s) conclusion seems to be that decades of “collusion” between the National Rifle Association and law enforcement has created a dark dystopian society comprised of xenophobic, trigger-happy concealed carriers, insurrectionist armed militia groups, racist police forces and militarized “American crusaders” who are all-too-eager to kill. This, despite a decades-long decline in FBI violent crime statistics that reached pre-pandemic generational lows.
You have to wonder what color the sky is in Carlson’s (and Yablon’s) world.
After decades of NRA lobbying, gun laws are as likely to encourage gun carrying as to restrict it. A growing number of states, like Arizona, have so enthusiastically embraced gun populism that they no longer regulate guns in public at all. In places that do license firearms, police decide who gets to pack.
Carlson observed the sheriff-run process in Michigan, one of the few states with public licensing hearings, and found that it often brutally reproduced racial hierarchy. Not only were African American applicants for concealed carry permits more likely than white applicants to be denied because of a criminal record, they were also subjected to more scrutiny in cases where the sheriffs had discretion and to revocations for nonviolent offenses; lectures on respectability politics; and, in a surprising number of cases, threat of arrests for open warrants.
This has been the NRA’s two-pronged strategy to the problem of gun violence since the early twentieth century: Convince both police and civilians to arm themselves heavily and to kill without a second thought as part of a never-ending “war on crime,” fought against internal opponents who pose a threat because of their innate “bad guy”-ness.
The persistence of gun violence is just more evidence that the war has not been waged ruthlessly enough, that the Other side has not been sufficiently overpowered. As a result of a century of political organizing and lobbying, civilian gun owners and police see themselves as co-combatants fighting a perpetual domestic counterinsurgency. In other words, gun owners are cops, and cops are troops.
Though Carlson’s frame is strictly domestic, it is naturally in dialogue with work by security scholar Stuart Schrader on the ways that Cold War tactics developed by the United States and its allies to fight a global Communist and anti-colonial insurgency came back home to American policing, as well as historian Kathleen Belew’s work on the ways that America’s involvement in anti-Communist proxy wars shaped the latter-day militant hard-right movement.
Read together, this body of work demonstrates a shared structure of feeling among concealed carriers, outright vigilantes, militia members, cops, and the American crusaders who fought the Cold War and later the “war on terror”: the conviction that the American way of life only survives because hard men are willing to kill to protect it. To these men, attempts to restrict their use of force amount to a threat to that way of life.
– Alex Yablon in Why Police Back Gun Guys
Fear
From the article:
“The persistence of gun violence is just more evidence that the war has not been waged ruthlessly enough, that the Other side has not been sufficiently overpowered.”
Those are sobering words. The author did not simply say that gun violence is still a problem; he said it’s evidence that they (gun grabbers) have not waged their actions against us (gun owners) “ruthlessly enough”, and that we must be “sufficiently overpowered”.
Note these words from Patrick Henry, excerpted from his famous speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, only four weeks before the Battle of Lexington and the beginning of the hot Revolutionary War:
“If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!”
Yablon and Carlson need to cut the chase and put on sheets and jack boots and go door to door with a box demanding occupants put their Guns in the box. Yablon and Carlson should not be surprised when some cookie baking housewife puts a frying pan upside their crap filled heads.
So the NRA and police sponsor extrajudicial killings? That is the gist of what they are saying. Look at the crime stats and you will find the truth. Another example of the media leading a false narrative.
Agreed. But they never own up to the trail of lies.
They must be perplexed at the gun sales volumes since defund the police.
As of this morning 3781 people have been shot in Chicago this year, 17 by police and 19 by armed citizens. I guess the right wing white supremacist militias have been falling down on the job.
Had to chuckle at your comment.
There is the truth right there. The numbers don’t lie. Yet they just don’t want to see it.
It’s got to be a mental disorder.
Mental disorder! Exactly what I have been saying for years now. Liberalism is a genetic defect. A form of mental retardation. And I don’t mean that in the way school kids pick on each other by calling other kids retards.
I mean that they have retarded brain/logic function! It is a genetic defect, no question. They see or understand almost everything with a sideways and/or backward logic. You can present facts to them and as if being blind, they cannot or will not see the truth. They do not comprehend.
Retarded! Plain and simple.
More accurately, such persons think emotionally, not rationally. You find this often among people who fly off the handle easily or are prone to violence, as well as among utopians who profess peace and love if only we’d stop killing each other (as we have been doing for the last 100,000 years). Common sense and logic are absent, and they follow their “feelz.”
Agreed.
To clarify what I am saying, and I’m pretty sure you are agreeing, only in not so many words, is that their lack of logic and their being subject to such uncontrollable feelings comes down to a complete mental inability to understand certain things…a retardation. To the fullest/most accurate definition of the term. The liberal defect, is a genetic, real and serious issue. I believe that those affected are absolutely unable to think clearly. They prove it with every hypocrisy and double standard, though clearly pointed out, that they refuse to acknowledge. Put simply, they just don’t understand. They cannot. It is impossible.
I would bet most of the DGUs are by legally armed “people of color” since that is where most of the violence is.
Whenever the Left knows they can’t win an argument, they just continue to make the racist accusation. Anyone that points out the actual facts is deemed a racist. This charade wouldn’t be possible without the propagandist media outlets and the tech companies that oversee the flow of information.
Notice how real election integrity proposals are always “racist.”
There is no logic like liberal logic.
1994: Only the police should have guns.
2020: Defund the police.
AND
2016: Trump is LITERALLY Hitler
2018: Give Trump your guns.
AND
2013: No one is coming for your guns. From Biden: “…Kinda scary, man. The black helicopter crowd’s really upset.”
2018: We need red flag laws, to take guns from people who MIGHT be a danger to others or themselves.
2020: From Beta the Dork, “HELL YES, we’re gonna come and take your AK-47!”
This week is the Jonestown anniversary.
If you get a chance you should read through transcripts of Jim’s sermons and his daily “news” broadcasts as well as writings from Temple members.
Lots of fearing “fascist” phantoms around every corner, blaming their problems as a group and individual on everyone but themselves, constantly harping on police who murder at will and an oppressive system of institutionalized racism all the while he goes around complaining about those n-words who dare follow another preacher along with calls for universal basic income, free healthcare, free housing and justification of violence against non-combatants to bring light to the “struggle.”
Not to mention this crusade to mandate everyone inject themselves with a new vaccine yet to be tested on any meaningful level. It takes 5-7 years to truly understand the side-effects of any drug and that’s after a decade or more spent in development. Grape Flavor-Aid? Maybe.
This was all decades before Trump so the lefts crazy issues are not new and we’ve all seen this play out before. End stage “TDS” for whatever abstract concept that “T” represents at a given point in time is messy for everyone.
These are stunted children who want somebody else to take care of them because the real world scares them and their emotional immaturity prevents them from developing beyond toddler level.
Wow, this is just way too much stupid this early in the morning.
Actually, crime is higher in areas where the police are less likely to support the NRA (or the 2A in general). Big city cops are no friend to the armed citizen, and that attitude is more than encouraged by the four-star clowns that run those departments.
“Big city cops are no friend to the armed citizen,…”
Make that –
“Big city cops in Democrat-controlled cities are no friend to the armed citizen,…”
FIFY…
Department of Redundancy Department
Yeah, I’m trying to think of a big city that’s not controlled by democrats. Fort Worth’s the only one I can think of, and that’s iffy at best.
San Diego had a Republican[ish] mayor, but in the grand scheme of council, state gov, etc. it didn’t benefit POTG one bit.
Couple points there fascists! The “alliance” is between real American patriots and law enforcement. And as for politicians, yeah the alliance DOES include the ones who still believe in the constitution and bill of rights!
If you someone has a criminal record and open warrants, those are exactly the people that the system purports to deny and that gun control advocates constantly whine about preventing from getting guns. That is not a racial issue.
A good friend of mine, a black man, and his significant other, just recently got their Licenses to carry for the first time and bought their first gun. In PA there is no hearing so there was no opportunity to lecture, and not being criminals, they had no issues with any part of the process.
However, if it concerns these tools so much that poor down trodden thieves, drug, dealers, robbers and rapists are being denied their 2nd amendment rights then I propose a compromise; National Constitutional carry. It would remove race and criminal history from consideration altogether and should be something everyone can support.
“in a surprising number of cases, threat of arrests for open warrants” – the audacity! And the people who live in constant fear of “gun violence” OPPOSE this?!
First of all the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gets to decide who may carry a firearm. That is a Right of The People, not a Power of the Police.
In states that have licensing there is no basis for arbitrary and subjective decisions on licensing. The only proper decision making mechanism is “Shall Issue”, based on factual criteria. Age requirement met? Background check passed? Identity confirmed? License gets issued, no argument, no debate, no delays.
“Identity confirmed?”
I’m pretty sure that’s racist.
“Background check passed”
Show me where, in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, it says “shall not be infringed, unless a person has previously been convicted of a felony.” If you’re not incarcerated, your right to own and carry arms (not just firearms) is protected by the Second, full stop. Don’t like the sound of that? Well, look at it this way: if you can’t trust someone with a firearm, how can you trust them with a rental truck, gasoline, a chainsaw, a nail gun or any other dangerous tool with the potential for misuse?
If someone is a danger to society, they should not be out in society. Like all gun control, the background check is just another way to keep guns out of the hands of blacks. All a judge has to do is get a guilty plea to a felony charge in exchange for a suspended sentence, and boom, owning a gun is a worse felony forever.
Every single proviso in the NFA ans GCA are unconstitutional, except where they ACTUALLY address revenue generation from taxing ACTUAL interstate commerce. Everything else is just an infringement thinly veiled as taxation.
I’m confused. What’s this ‘sheriff’s discretion in Michigan’ that the authors speak of?
Hasn’t Michigan been shall issue for most of this century?
FedUp,
You are mostly correct: Michigan became a shall-issue state around 2003 or something like that. Having said that, there was a quirk in Michigan’s shall-issue law which allowed the local concealed carry licensing authority to question a license applicant to ensure that the applicant met the shall-issue requirements or something to that effect. A few counties in the state used that to discourage applicants. A more recent change in Michigan law eliminated that quirk.
“A few counties in the state used that to discourage applicants.”
Ahhhhh. By any chance do you know the political make-up of those counties? (Wink-wink, nudge, nudge…)
Oh, yeah, I seem to remember hearing somebody complaining about waiting for a hearing with the Wayne County Gun Board, like 5-10 years ago.
Geoff,
Deep blue Democrat stronghold Wayne County (which encompasses Detroit) used that quirk of the law. Surprisingly, deep red Republican stronghold Ottawa County also used that quirk of the law.
Wayne County used it for the obvious reasons.
I think Ottawa County used it because hardcore Christian fundamentalists dominate and wanted to suppress arming up. Why suppress arming up? Because arming yourself somehow promotes heathen violence and the notion of a distant God who will not protect our lives.
Is Ottawa County a traditionally Dutch region?
Why yes, yes it is!
I am forced to pull out and dust-off a word that I may have never used before to describe Alex Yablon’s article — drivel.
I am not characterizing Yablon’s article as drivel because I do not like it or him. I am characterizing it as drivel because it is woefully factually incorrect.
Drivel is to kind. It implies that the author is ignorant or lazy.
Sophistry – is a more fitting word to describe the authors writings.
Sophistry: noun, plural soph·ist·ries.
1. a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.
2. a false argument; sophism.
this raises the question as to why my spousal unit was not named sophia.
Ragnar,
You may very well be right. (I would not be the slightest bit offended if your potential correction/improvement turns out to be true.)
Either way, it means the author’s speech is horrible.
“I am forced to pull out and dust-off a word that I may have never used before to describe Alex Yablon’s article — drivel.”
One man’s “drivel” is another man’s “steaming pile of bvllsh!t.”
That is not a “feeling” nor unfounded belief, that is a fact. Had hard men not been willing to kill to protect our nation, our nation would be a narco-state or a territory/province of England, Spain, Japan, Germany, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and/or China.
Like it or not, it is a fact that there are millions of people in our world who will exploit, abuse, violate, and/or murder other people for selfish gain — and will do so with brutal swiftness, impunity, and completeness if everyone else fails to oppose them with lethal force.
A fact with no exceptions. The right to liberty (or even life) is no more a God-given handout than the right to property: all hollow abstractions without human EFFORT.
Any review of history will quickly reveal that – far from being the natural condition of all people – liberty has only ever existed in small pockets hacked out by brave men against great opposition. The fact that our “hard men” have succeeded so well for so long has blinded most people to that fact today.
This is why the FFs mentioned the “Tree of Liberty” needing to be “watered”.
It’s actually a good thing for Patriotic citizens to have skin in the game.
Those who don’t understand the cost of Liberty cannot appreciate it.
Broke O’bummer admitted to reading Marx in college, just to get laid.🙄
Does anyone here think he understands Liberty?
Amen!
who did he have to read to land his gal? barnum?
Not sure if you (James) edited, or if I’m just reading-comprehension challenged, but I only saw / replied to the first part of your response earlier.
I think he, as President Reagan said of leftists in general, “knows so much that isn’t so” – in his case, a false belief in “positive rights” not predicated on consent or reciprocity, which are actually negations of rights.
“Not sure if you (James) edited, or if I’m just reading-comprehension challenged, but I only saw / replied to the first part of your response earlier.”
That was me Umm.
I edited my initial post, went back to include that last bit. 👍
And a worthy addition it was, Sir!
Umm,
Well said. I tip my hat to you fine sir or ma’am.
Thanks, but I just followed on your excellent comment👍
Oh no! Denying a CCL to colored folk with a criminal record…imagine that😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋! I betcha white boyz are denied too😏
They have a good point that increased scrutiny of Blacks trying to get a CCW is racist. They lose me in that not regulating concealed carry and just letting anyone carry w/o a permit is somehow also racist.
“The book’s (and Yablon’s) conclusion seems to be that decades of “collusion” between the National Rifle Association and law enforcement has created a dark dystopian society comprised of xenophobic, trigger-happy concealed carriers, insurrectionist armed militia groups, racist police forces and militarized “American crusaders” who are all-too-eager to kill”
Am I all that?? COOL!
Why do we keep giving whiny mental midgets attention?
Because it gets the comment section going.
The left is a 24/7 propaganda machine. The left wants revenge and they will be merciless. The American left is a mix if Stalinism and Maoism. There is a neverending Maoist struggle session taking place right now under the guise of “cancel culture”. When the left feels that they are strong enough they will cancel their political opponents with a bullet. It’s history repeating itself, not hyperbole.
Drinking the kool-aid? Not this author–obviously something WAAYY stronger!
Totally out of touch with reality.
A complete misunderstanding of what the NRA is.
I tell ya, its coming, because they keep bringing it.
As soon as the “academic” starts talking about “gun violence,” you can can tune them out. No such thing. Therefore, the rest of what they have to say is meaningless drivel.
Now, if they want to do a study on overall violence, regardless of the weapon chosen or the weapon of opportunity…
She gives the NRA way too much credit in all this.
So the cops don’t care?? Cool I can dig up that m-79 and couple crates of grenades I buried
I’m given to wonder as to the following. Exactly what sort of “controlled substances” might the author and commentator be imbibing.
If the NRA and police or anyone else of the right wing or militia kind were desiring and encouraging violence without a second thought, there would be video, emails, transcripts or affidavits to back up the claim and you know the anti-liberty media would be all over that.
While there are many individuals and groups interested in preparedness, that is not an attempt to incite violence, it is hopefully a deterrence giving criminals second thoughts, whether they be despots or street thugs.
Furthermore, it is most likely this group encouraging safety training, discipline, practice and great care when it comes to firearms.
Then this negative 5 watt bulb of an author says his pals haven’t been violent enough towards those pro-constitutionalist that he writes about.
I think this is another case of transference is see more and more from anti-liberty leftists. What horrible things they want to do, they claim their opponents want to do. Perhaps they need to look in the mirror and see who the real bad guy is.
And whom do the anti-gun cultists expect to confiscate the guns? The violent, White supremacist police.
And what communities will they rampage through first? Google “gun trace taskforce” and “Chicago PD, SOS”.
The countries most fervent advocates of violent White supremacism are anti-gun Democrats.
They want to bring in hordes of illegal aliens to dilute the Black vote!
RACISM?? YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!!!
The NRA was the ABSOLUTE FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZATION IN THIS COUNTRY.
From it’s very formation in 1871, it made absolutely NO DIFFERENCE, whether you were black, yellow, red, or white, male or female, your religion or your “class,” you were welcome.
NOTHING has changed since then.
I strongly believe no police protection, aid, or assistance should be rendered to any liberal, democrat, or politician in any city or state controlled by democrats for what ever reason! They need to be forced to see the error of their ways, no matter how many are injured, robbed, raped, or murdered. Their cry to defund police should leave them with no protections what soever! It may take awhile to weed out the really mentally deranged ones from that crowd. But as once said, The medicine was never meant to taste good!
Unfortunately that would only exacerbate unequal treatment under the law. It is illegal to treat people differently.
I think it is more important to put our efforts to holding politicians who violate the Constitution as criminals, not punish every one else for their dangerous ideas and actions. That the tactics of the anti-gunners.
On the other hand, if a city disbands their police department, and the sane people try to sell their property and move out and find the value is now zero, they could sue the politicians for that and for making the city unsafe.
I personally do not wish harm on anyone, but recognize there are bad consequences to stupid decisions. Once there are no police, many liberals may find themselves shooting other liberals who think they have a right to their stuff or their lives.
You may comfort yourself with the belief that most people are good, and it’s just a small handful manipulating everyone else – but it simply isn’t true.
Do you really think “the politicians” conned their way into big-city governments by running as constitutionalist republicans, then cackled and twirled their moustaches and turned into socialists once they got into office? Or did they promise parasites their “right” to vote themselves other people’s stuff (as you yourself acknowledged they want) and are now delivering precisely what their degenerate constituents ordered?
I’m no delusion that anyone is good, unless they are made that way by God.
It is self interest to protect ones own rights, and also to protect others as well as that enhances your rights as well.
It is self interest to also have laws applied uniformly as much as possible.
I’m also under no delusion that politicians, even the best of them, are not influenced by power, which is why there should be continual turn over of them and bureaucrats. And strict scrutinity in regards to their oaths to office.
No doubt many people vote for politicians for access to the public till for ill gotten gain due to laziness and greed. But there are also a lot of people who would like to vote for politicians that would leave us alone except when constitutional requirements demand otherwise.
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