Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment defense & war general freedom Second Amendment rights

Spree Shooter Shot Dead

handgun, self defense, freedom, 2nd Amendment

We need to be reminded every now and then that shooting rampages can often be stopped as soon as they start — if only a good guy with a gun is on site and willing to use it. 

Or good gal.

Dennis Butler, a 37-year-old with an “extensive criminal history,” recently targeted the attendees of a party in Charleston, West Virginia.

Earlier, someone at an apartment complex had asked Butler to drive more slowly because there were children around. This made him feel explosive rage. So he fetched a semi-automatic weapon that he owned illegally and started firing into a crowd of party-goers at the complex.

A woman with a gun and presence of mind happened to be at the party.

“She’s just a member of the community who was carrying her weapon lawfully,” says police spokesman Tony Hazlett. “And instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives.”

No one in the crowd was reported to be injured.

I hope that if this heroic woman had been carrying her weapon unlawfully, relevant authorities would have cut her some slack. But it’s good that she didn’t have to deal with such a complication.

Butler is dead — shot multiple times by the woman with a gun. Police haven’t reported her name.

Just as well. We wouldn’t want her to become a target of gun-control groups upset that she used a pistol rather than sharp words to dissuade Butler from killing everybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Not Saving Lives

prayers, circus, politics, politicians

Virtue signaling won’t stop a mass shooter. 

Nor will scoring political points. 

If we earnestly want to focus on preventing these horrific attacks, let’s stop wasting everybody’s time advocating new laws that we already know, had they been in effect, would not have stopped the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. 

Or the recent massacre in Buffalo. 

Or virtually any other murder spree. 

“On the specifics,” Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), “how would your federal background check have stopped either of these two shooters in Buffalo and in Texas? Neither of them had criminal records.” 

“I just don’t get into the trap of having to write a law for the last mass shooting that captured the nation’s attention,” the senator responded, arguing that “on the same day of the shooting in Uvalde, there were 100 plus other people in this country who died.”

Sen. Murphy was anything but frank, certainly, but it was an admission that his proposal is clearly not geared toward stopping massacres by gunmen.

Americans should ignore the political circus, realizing that the politicians are working on other agendas while these killers have serious and often completely untreated mental health issues. Let’s concentrate public policy — and everyday neighborliness — there.

Lastly, while some dismiss the value of “thoughts and prayers,” I do not. There is a social, emotional, spiritual element that I think we totally discard when all we can talk about is what a bunch of corrupt folks in Washington “must do” to solve our problems.

On the other hand, a return to a culture of mourning, thoughts and prayers might at least sober up those drunk on power.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Injustice By Quota

arrests, quotas

Let’s say there are 100 murders — in a certain city in 2021. How many arrests for murder should there be in that city that year?

We can’t know in advance. Setting lagtime aside, consider the other factors. Some of the killers may have killed more than once. Some of the murders may never be solved. Some honest arrests may prove to be mistaken. We can only say: “As many arrests as possible, so long as persons are arrested for murder only if and when there is good cause to do so.”

Properly, one establishes sound criteria for making arrests and good investigative procedures. Not quotas. The same principles apply to every kind of arrest.

“Yes, Paul Jacob. But all this is bleedingly obvious. Why go on about it?”

Alas, what is really basic common sense to you and me apparently clashes with the desire of some within and without police departments for “proof” of effective results. Proof like total number of arrests. (Of course, in a police state, you might arrest half the population, far exceeding any quota, and still get lots of crime.)

The errant fondness for arrest quotas is at least being ended, almost, in Virginia, where the governor has signed legislation to prohibit Virginia agencies and police departments from using them.

I write “almost” because the legislation does not include a ban on quotas for traffic tickets, which are like being half-arrested. Tickets are one way municipalities make money.

Well, maybe we can all just stop driving.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights too much government

Four of Five Doctors Disagree

Salem Witch Trial

“Thank goodness I don’t live in X,” we may say as we follow the news.

Billions live in Russia, Ukraine, China, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Cuba, New York, Chicago, Seattle, California, Canada, and other statist hellholes. The rest of us live elsewhere. Perhaps we congratulate ourselves on our wise choices of birth location and/or subsequent residencies.

But people are copycats.

As producers, we are often inspired by great achievements and seek to emulate them. The destroyers among us, somewhat similarly, are eager to adopt the latest in fashionable assault on what the producers are doing.

So we don’t necessarily escape if, say, California prohibits physicians from discussing things medical whenever their judgment conflicts with state-approved doctrine. Because next thing you know, lawmakers in Tennessee or Virginia will be saying, “Gee, that’s right, gag the doctors. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Legislative masterminds in California now want to harass doctors who recommend a non-government-approved treatment for COVID-19. If AB 2098 is passed, it would authorize California medical boards to discipline doctors for “dissemination of misinformation” related to COVID-19.

The bill implies that no doctor can legitimately disagree with another about a particular case. (Yeah? See the history of medicine.)

When I say that this legislation assaults truth and truth-seeking — which requires freedom of speech as a necessary corollary of freedom of thought in medicine or in any field — I speak for Californian doctors and California patients.

I speak also for us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Witch Trial of George Jacobs by Thompkins. H. Matteson

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Accountability crime and punishment

Oberlin Must Pay

Oberlin College, bakery, racism

Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, helped students defame a local business, Gibson’s Bakery, as “racist.”

The two organizations were not strangers, however: Gibson’s Bakery had an agreement with Oberlin to provide baked goods to the school.

It all began when a black Oberlin student shoplifted wine from the bakery. When an employee acted to stop the shoplifter, the thief and two others attacked the employee.

The assailants were arrested. The shoplifter and the others later pled guilty.

But instead of protesting against the thief and his thuggish cohorts, Oberlin students turned against Gibson’s . . . for acting to stop the theft. College officials helped students conduct their protests and later issued an official statement expressing gratitude “for the determination of our students and for the leadership demonstrated by Student Senate” in launching the protests and smear campaign.

The college also suspended its contract with Gibson’s Bakery.

Oberlin College said that it would consider resuming the contract if Gibson’s agreed to drop charges. In a legal filing, Oberlin asserted that the bakery’s “archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.”

I guess protecting private property and defending ownership rights is “archaic” — it being so much more progressive to let thieves carry on their thievery.

But that’s not the law of the land. At least yet. A state appeals court has upheld a judgment against the college of $31 million — compensatory damages plus legal fees.

Progressives’ race-based undermining of property rights has lost — for now. Crime still doesn’t pay. And socialists can be reined in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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That Other October Surprise?

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Harken back to those heady days leading up to Election 2020, when six men were arrested for a scheme to snatch Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from her home.

As with other October surprises, the case was immediately politicized. 

“Democrats on Thursday made it clear they felt President Trump was at least in part to blame for an alleged scheme to kidnap the governor of Michigan,” government-subsidized NPR noted, “citing the president’s divisive rhetoric that has often found support among white supremacists and other hate groups.” CNN used the phrase “domestic terrorist plot” in relating presidential challenger Joe Biden’s laying of blame against Donald Trump.

Six men were charged in federal court with directly conspiring to nab the governor. Two have pled guilty to the federal charges, but on Friday the trial ended very differently for the four other would-be abductors.

“A federal jury acquitted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and deadlocked on the counts against two others,” reported The Washington Post, “apparently agreeing to some degree with defense claims that FBI agents entrapped the men in a violent plot shortly before the 2020 election.”

“The Whitmer kidnapping plot,” Reason’s Robby Soave explained months ago, “was extensively directed and encouraged by agents of the government.” 

This was not just a bungled prosecution.* This was the result of a wrongheaded and dangerous policy that, instead of lawfully monitoring suspected criminals to prevent violence, actively nurtures and encourages crimes. 

And breaks the story in early October of an election year.

Sure, I know the government is here to help — but even “domestic terrorists”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Suffice it to say,” Soave wrote about the FBI’s handing of the case, “it’s very hard to tell the cops from the criminals in this matter.” For instance, “the government’s star witness, FBI Agent Robert Trask, was fired by the agency after beating his wife following an orgy at a swingers party.”

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