Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 274
March 8, 2018
Homegrown ISIS Terrorist Attacks High School: Corrupted youth show that gun legislation will never work
As gun grabbing organizations seek to use the Parkland shooting victims to advocate gun control measures by busing them into Washington D.C. for a rally to satisfy their strategic desires, a teenager in Utah inspired by the terrorist group ISIS attacked his school with a bomb—but nobody seemed to pick up on the story. The teenage kid put a homemade bomb in his backpack and tried to ignite it at Hurricane High School, in Utah in an area that usually contains a lot of people, but the bomb produced only smoke allowing bomb techs to arrive and disarm the device without injury or death. But not before the kid vandalized the school destroying American flags and spray painting “ISIS is coming” on the school’s exterior. That high school got lucky, because if the bomb had worked the death count could have been significantly higher than the Parkland shooting which has inspired the many anti-gun student protests around the country. Yet, the story gained little attention.
Obviously, we all know why. The bomb narrative doesn’t fit the anti-gun objectives of the liberalized media culture who desire to exploit every tragedy as a means to advance their progressive agenda. The students trained from nearly birth in those progressive sentiments are simple pawns in the great political game of gun confiscation and a complete rewriting of the Constitution by progressive activists—so they have no desire to deal with real solutions to real problems like the rise of radicalism among violent teenagers either inspired by ISIS propaganda or the psychologically dangerous erosion of values found in the many video games available to them at a young age—games like Grand Theft Auto. More than ever we have lots of young men being raised by single mothers who needed the help of a husband to properly raise aggressive sons. Lacking that firm parental structure some young men like this ISIS follower find their authority figures in radicalism, whether it be Islamic terrorism or anarchy such as the many ANTIFA groups. In the case of a removal of strong males in the home of these growing boys, group affiliations that show power become the substitute, like ISIS, ANTIFA or even Nazi radicalism. After all, we don’t typically see females doing these terrible things, so the primary villain is the son seeking father complex which many suffer from in our modern age.
There wasn’t a single gun involved in this attempted bombing of a Utah school, yet the desire to kill classmates and make a radical attention-getting statement was very much a part of the motive. Banning guns doesn’t stop these kinds of intentions—the desire to hurt others is the real problem and dealing with the cause of that desire. Until that issue is dealt with there will continue to be violence in schools and other public places. An assumption otherwise is to defer blame from the true guilty parties, those same progressive groups who have instigated the destruction of the American family unit, pushed strong men off the map of teaching and assumed that women could do it all by themselves. But even worse, they have assumed that the public education institutions themselves could serve as the primary parent and that group affiliations could replace the desire for individualized instruction. These social failures are at the heart of the very foundations of liberal epistemology. And to the credit of conservatives, we all tried as a country to bring all these different types of thinking together to give it a try. But the destructive results are now way too evident to ignore.
There isn’t any gun legislation that would have prevented this terror attempt, in fact we are likely to discover that the fewer guns there are the bolder these attempts become. In our present society a deranged kid like this Utah bomber doesn’t know how far they may get with some terrorist attempt. The kid obviously thought he’d get away with his actions long enough to create some vandalism prior to discharging his backpack bomb. If guns were to be removed from society at large there would be even a greater zone of no risk to this kid should he be intercepted going to or back from the school on this journey of intended death and destruction. Fewer guns in the world mean even more people like this young ISIS inspired terrorist are emboldened to live out their fantasies of corrupted ideology at the expense of the innocent—and that just isn’t acceptable.
Liberals in spite of considering them part of a debate in the friendly sense of rhetorical discussion are actually insurgents against American ideas and have long ago declared war on traditional founders of North American enterprise. I’m not talking about the nature loving savages of the Indian tribes, but those who brought from Europe the ability to read and manufacture who started their own country out of the ashes of kingdoms from across the Atlantic where kings and religion fought on the carcasses of innocent people just trying to live their lives. Liberals are part of that old-world mysticism where kings claimed themselves divine rods to the gods themselves and the church fought them for that same power for several millennia. When America finally came around to asserting itself we put into our Constitution the right to bear arms so that we wouldn’t have to listen to any kings or any authority figures who would love to rule our minds by force—and that was always the point. Liberals have sought to remove that tool and in so doing they have created an environment that has bred kids like this ISIS terrorist—home grown in the vacuum of destruction liberals imposed on the American family.
And to defer that blame liberals are attacking guns so that by the time we all as a society figure out who is really to blame for all the carnage we are experiencing, that we might not have the ability to take back our government from the people who have screwed it up. So they have no problem using children to perpetuate their erosion on American rights. They don’t care about those rights, they only want what they want using a philosophy that is not conducive to the way of life of what traditional America has always represented. And in that former understanding, there weren’t kids like this Utah terrorist being bred right out in the open, they were getting their asses kicked by a dedicated father who taught them better. Instead of those kids finding that needed authority figure in ISIS they had their sons at the kitchen tables telling them to do their chores or else. And those kids didn’t rush out into the night to tear down American flags and burn efficiencies against our nation, they were learning to love our country through the discipline of tough love—which a lot of young males needed to hold together a method of productivity into their own futures. Without it they become their own worst enemies.
It was those same guilty parties who sought to provide 24 hour a day coverage of the Parkland shooting and the Vegas massacre that gave almost no airtime to this bombing attempt in Utah. And that was because it didn’t fit their narrative. After all, it’s not the news they were after, it was the ability to use hurt feelings to drive an anti-gun agenda that liberals all share together. They did it because they fear Americans with guns because it’s quickly becoming obvious who is really to blame for all these national tragedies. It’s certainly not traditional thinking Americans waving red white and blue flags in the streets who are NRA members who are causing all these problems. It is the troubled youth of progressive creation who have turned into monsters that we now must all contend with. And its only getting worse.
Rich Hoffman
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March 7, 2018
How the NRA and America are One in the Same: Understanding what defends values and why its important
There is a very philosophic reason for supporting the NRA if one wishes to protect the basic foundations that founded the United States of America. Of course, those who want to change the American idea into something else are against the NRA and things really do play out along those lines. People would like to believe that there is some waiver room there, room to have varying opinions, but basically if someone or a group of people are working against the 2nd Amendment, they are working against the political philosophy of America—and essentially against me and you personally. To that effect, I have never been prouder to be an NRA member. Over the last few weeks after the latest gun free zone shooting I have heard the NRA being bashed by just about everyone but the members themselves and that has only solidified my resolve on this matter. I am the NRA. You are the NRA. We are the people who make the NRA what it is—a lobby group representing our interests and when people talk about abolishing it, they are talking about abolishing us.
We are told that the two things we are not supposed to talk about are politics and religion—so to allow for the non-conflict type of discussion that should go on between people of different backgrounds and beliefs. The only problem with that are that both are part of the basic philosophy epistemology of our culture—and if those basic foundations aren’t agreed on, there really can’t be a society at all. Without a foundational philosophy, no society can hope to preserve themselves into the future. Essentially a country is just an organized group of people who have decided to live a certain way under constitutional foundations. Anyone who wants to change those basic foundations is looking to overthrow the nation as it was. And that is why it became popular to suggest that when speaking with other people that we don’t talk about politics or religion—because both provide the foundations for which nations are built.
Politics is the study of the principles governing the proper organization of society, it is based on ethics, the study of the proper values to guide man’s choices and actions. Politics and ethics have been fundamental branches of philosophy from the beginning. Religion of course is typically associated with the type of ethics a society uses to flourish. With these things stripped away from society mankind has nothing to hold their values to, which is precisely why we can say that we live in a time where values are stripped from us and people are functioning from a rootless existence. The people of today with all their problems were made that way because the essential foundations of philosophy for which they would otherwise function have been removed from them and they are left empty and open to whatever tyrant of activism might come along to sweep them off their feet.
And we’ve seen the worst of these people in the days after Donald Trump was elected president. If there was anything that really was wonderful about his election it was that these types of people who have been seeking to reshape American foundational philosophy were rooted out. ANTIFA comes to mind with their violent protests in our city streets and the lunatic feminists who proposed very violent actions against our government yet do not expect to see the wrath of justice thrown back at them—because they understand that they are hiding behind the destruction of America’s basic foundational premise. This is also why the FBI expects to get away with serious crimes they committed against the Trump transition team and even in tampering in an American election—then trying to blame the Russians. These criminals know that a vast majority of the people within America these days have been stripped of their basic philosophies of goodness, righteousness, and valor—and that they are naked and afraid waiting for the gods of institutionalism to shape their opinions to the flavor of the day—rootless into history or any kind of sense.
Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. The task of philosophy is to provide people with a comprehensive view of life. When that comprehensive view is disrupted or even reshaped into something destructive—such as what we see from the ANTIFA members where they are exactly what they declare themselves not to be—anti-fascists fighting for the right to be fascists, then the forces behind that thought corruption can sell any contrary idea to the public and not expect to be questioned back. We live in an age where young people have been taught that nobody should judge their actions, and once they are adults they believe they can conduct their lives in this fashion. This is largely how Hillary Clinton’s campaign expected to hide her many crimes, and she succeeded largely by those who call themselves Democrats, because their foundational philosophies have been stripped away from them to the point where they can no longer make value judgments about anything. They can talk about their favorite music, what they are watching on Netflix, or what the latest fashions are at Hot Topic, but they can’t tell you what they think of Hillary Clinton other than they want to see the first woman president sitting in the White House. Since so many people have been taught not to judge others, it allows criminals like the Clintons to roam through our political stratosphere without consequence for their power play politics.
The political left has been in the practice of deforming human beings essentially since their political philosophy shaped largely by Immanuel Kant and the peripherals took to the global stage challenging the Aristotelian foundations of Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and John Locke. To beat those philosophies which caused people to create their own country in North America away from the European failures, the political left had to introduce decades of philosophic deformity to the basic foundations of American ideas to nonviolently introduce the type of political suppression which would advance the political left and stunt the growth of the political right. Leftists did this essentially by taking over the education institutions and seeking quite openly to remold the American youth from their very foundations so that they could pull off the destruction of America without any military assault or mass protest in the streets—but home by home and over a long period of time.
But, those forces of insurrection ran into the membership of the NRA and nobody who has supported that Second Amendment group has budged at all for well over 100 years. The NRA was founded in 1871 and has maintained a firm grounding into the type of roots that founded our country and the members which have supported that cause have been very successful in preventing the type of deformation of our basic philosophy which the political left has been so aggressive in perpetuating. The secret to the success of the political left in how they essentially lobotomize people in what they know has been the threat of force to bring harm to people who think differently than they do. Yet the essence of the Second Amendment is to provide protections from that very threat. Free people armed to defend themselves do not have to fear having their basic philosophic foundations robbed from them by force—and that has really been all that’s kept America going all these years. Its been those 5 million NRA supporters and the 10 to 20 million others who support the NRA but haven’t yet sent a check to the organization to lobby on their behalf. We become members so that the NRA will work on our behalf to prevent violence. Because if there isn’t an NRA and the political left comes to attempt to remove reason from our minds—what are we supposed to do—just sit there and let them do it? Of course not.
Rich Hoffman
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March 6, 2018
Let’s Ban ‘Grand Theft Auto’: How many hours of video games did the Parkland shooter play?
After listening carefully to the Parkland school shooting victims and the many other high schoolers around the country that so quickly jumped on a proposed ban on “assault weapons” and took their anger out on the NRA specifically, then getting up close and personal with some of them at my local school board where their ideas were decidedly dangerous, I think its time we address the elephant in the room and come up with a real strategy. These same kids were all too comfortable with breaking Supreme Court decisions regarding the 2nd Amendment, but where quick to retreat to Supreme Court decisions protecting Grand Theft Auto under 1st Amendment considerations. The weakness of the entire progressive battlefield has been revealed—and as gun owners, moralists, and gun rights advocates, we’d be crazy not to utilize it—and we’re not crazy. So let’s let the ammunition fly, quite literally. Only this ammunition isn’t bullet trajectories coming from guns, but the great love and obvious corruption that fans of Grand Theft Auto—who are also some of these protestor kids, have for that most violent game in the gaming industry. It’s time we push for a ban of it—any store selling it, anybody buying it, any media given to it deserves the wrath of the NRA members.
I personally like Rockstar Games who makes Grand Theft Auto. I think their Red Dead Redemption games are fantastic, but they obviously meant to push every boundary possible with their Grand Theft Auto series of games which make murder and mayhem the essential plot points for young impressionable minds, and without question have had a degrading effect on our culture in general. Where is the proof you might say—where are the statistics? We’ll anti-gun advocates have no problem ignoring statistics when they preach for gun bans, but then cling to them like a baby clinging to a mother’s breast when the tables are turned toward the video game industry, something they care about. So why start now? Actually, speak to any teenager these days and in most cases, especially if they play Grand Theft Auto a lot, you can tell instantly that their minds are toast. The game certainly helps make them that way. I have no reservations about it. Grand Theft Auto is an evil game designed to bring out the dark side in its players and it’s not good to even allow yourself to think such things. The effects on our society have been devastating.
Well before there is ever a ban on AR-15s, which have a legitimate personal property protection necessity in some aspects of our modern culture, Grand Theft Auto should be banned. States should put proposals immediately to their state houses banning the sale of the product by Rockstar Games and if they want to take the case to the Supreme Court, then let’s take it to court. I have a VERY STRONG feeling that the Parkland shooter played Grand Theft Auto a lot. Early in the case USA Today reported that a neighbor of the kid played video games up to 15 hours a day, and I’m sure his gamer tag is well-known which games he played the most. How much do you want to bet that one of them was Grand Theft Auto. If that were the case shouldn’t that be part of the debate on the cause of school shootings. If we look at the gamer profiles of all school shooters what are the percentages of them who play more than 20 hours of Grand Theft Auto per week? I’m sure someone knows the answer to that question. Take that information to the Supreme Court. I have the privilege of knowing a few state Supreme Court justices and let me just say this—with such evidence presented, the video game industry would be toast. The only reason that evidence has not been yet presented in such a case is due to that lack of will from the progressive community—which the video game industry is filled with. They don’t want to know the answer to that question because once they know, they would be complicit with the knowledge provided.
I’m all for freedom of speech and I think most gun owners don’t call for such boycotts because they are respectful of the Constitution. They have no desire to impose their view of the world on people who might enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto even though I am certainly not afraid to speak my mind on the subject. I think Grand Theft Auto can only serve one purpose and that is to help make people inclined toward evil more of it. It reminds me a lot of the very good television series West World. Grand Theft Auto allows people an unrestricted way to be their ultimate self. If people are truly good Grand Theft Auto won’t make them evil. But if you are on the fence or have a few things lacking in your life regarding proper ethics, then that video game can allow you to exercise that deficiency without restriction making those traits much worse. The controversial orgy scene in West World I think shows best this nature in people. The good characters were not partaking in the truly degrading circumstances of their environment, but plenty of people were. They were thinking those things before they ever visited West World, but the park gave them an outlet, which is what Grand Theft Auto does for disturbed people like the Parkland school shooter. But if we sit on our hands and do nothing we will lose this 2nd Amendment fight so because of the aggressive actions of the gun grabbers, we must take aggressive action and attack something they enjoy. We cannot let the gun grabbers determine the ground for battle.
It’s not just out of revenge for trying to initiate boycotts against the NRA and pushing politicians into instant bans on AR-15 rifles, it’s because if there is a cause and effect, without question Grand Theft Auto has much more influence over young minds than any gun law. What good is gun control legislation if a huge part of our youth population is playing a video game that encourages breaking the law and murdering people as a way to get points? Guns by themselves do nothing. But this Grand Theft Auto game actually promotes illegal activity. Yes its free speech but if we are talking about social engineering than how can anyone propose banning guns without first talking about banning video games, because the games actually allow players to simulate violent tendencies.
I think the NRA would be wise to take aggressive action in this direction—take these cases to court and let’s fight. I want to hear the leftists from Silicone Valley try to provide testimony in defense of Grand Theft Auto when the data their companies have been collecting for decades say otherwise. I am pretty sure that the right to play video games which promote violence against our society is not in the Constitution. Murdering people for points, raping whores, and stealing cars may fall under the banner of free speech, but we are certainly free to decide if the harmful effects that such things do to our youth are worth avoiding legal entanglement, and I’d fully support more contributions to the NRA if they would take that fight to the enemy instead of waiting for the enemy, “the gun grabbers,” to come after our 2nd Amendment rights. Because if we do nothing and live and let live, they will stop at nothing until gun confiscation is the law of the land while our progressively raised youth sit around playing games all day fantasizing about murdering authority figures in a mess that will become our future if we fail to act. I’ll write a big check today to the NRA if they want to take up that fight and get the lawyers on the case. What is there to be afraid of. Pandora’s box has already been opened by the opposition.
Rich Hoffman
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March 5, 2018
Why Trump’s Trade Policies are Brilliant, and Bold: Resetting value from gross wealth redistributuion practices that have supressed economies
I am a little surprised that so many people are against Trump’s tariffs on foreign aluminum at a rate of 10% and a 25% rate on steel. Critics are declaring that Trump is messing with free market concepts and that utilizing an America first policy will drive up prices and harm industries needing cheap aluminum. Rather the opposite will turn out to be true, a lot of the great wealth that China has enjoyed as a communist nation is this international propping up through wealth redistribution that has been occurring for several decades now. China has enjoyed a different kind of crony capitalism that has used regulation and trade policies meant to harm American interests and transfer the wealth to recipient countries, which they of course have enjoyed tremendously. But in any situation the way to determine who will win and who will lose in these types of engagements is to understand who has the leverage position and who doesn’t.
As if we are supposed to care but The Beer Institute, a trade association and D.C. lobby firm said that a 10% increase on aluminum would cost the industry $347 million and more than 20,000 jobs. Really? People who drink beer even if the cost per can did go up like they say it will of .20 to .24 cents per can aren’t going to stop drinking the product. Ever go to an NFL game where beer is $8 a cup? People who drink beer really don’t care how much it costs so how are beer manufacturers going to lose 20,000 jobs? People just got a raise in their weekly checks. Granted, they should net a weekly profit, but if they are going to drink beer, they don’t care if the price goes up .24 cents. If anything, I would think beer consumption would increase because people’s expendable income has increased under Trump and that’s the real issue.
Obviously, the trade imbalance has been a real problem for many decades and people have come to get used to it—and accept that the United States would just get the short end of the stick. As the richest capitalist country in the world there were many jealous countries that wanted very much to ride the coattails of North America to greater prosperity for themselves—primarily China. China with even its billion people still has an economy that is behind the United States and that is due to the fact that everything is state-run. Russia has a similar problem, this past week it was released that they had some kind of invincible weapon that could attack the United States without detection. Well, why does anybody think they released that information—for the same reason that North Korea does, to scream like a child to let people know they are at the negotiating table. But they have nothing to offer, so what is there to talk about?
When we pick something up that is a material possession do we say—“hey, that was made in Russia, or China, or even North Korea. Look at that great craftsmanship?” We don’t. Russia and China occupy most of the world’s land mass together yet they are behind countries like Japan and the United States in economic output per capita and the only reason it’s never pointed out is that the stunted growth is due to the history of communism in those two places. Many in the media markets still hope that communism can find its way in the world but it never will, because the epistemological premise of economic philosophy behind communism is incorrect. The world has literally tried to fake it for most of the last century and they’ve used the United States as a way to prop up the concept with looted wealth.
I’m not anti-China, but I am very much anti-communism. China is a pretty neat country and has always been before they turned to communism in the aftermath of World War II. If China would like to adopt capitalism I think they could truly explode as an economic force around the world. The same as Russia, if they would truly become free market capitalists, they’d have a lot more to work with than the United States has had to work with.
I would recommend to anybody interested in economic matters of any kind to read the great book by Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. I have the older 1976 copy of its many renditions, and on page 364 paragraph 3 it states “The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.” For instance, if some Chinese person is making baskets and they can make three in a day by hand, the way to increase those baskets would be to either add more workers to make baskets, or to make it so that the basket maker can produce more per hour. The productive work has a measurable value and the Chinese and Russian markets have an abundance of people who want to inject more “labour” to a task, but the problem for them is that the need for that product is created by American capitalism. So the only way that there can be a global market of shared wealth in this present world where communism has destroyed much of it economically, is to have the needs for products arise in America and to have the job fulfillment going on in the communist countries. Since China has an abundance of people they can afford to throw their labour at the market demand and charge a cheaper rate—whereas in the United States the per capita output is necessarily much higher meaning the labor demand for each product garners higher value because that labor value is being divided over many market trajectories. In short, labor is cheaper in markets that have parasitic economics and that ratio has been encouraged by world leaders who still believe that the way to social fairness everywhere is through various philosophies of socialism and communism.
There isn’t going to be any trade wars with the world, not in China, not in Europe, not in Russia. China needs the food the United States produces so they’d be hurting themselves by jacking up the price for their own people. They can’t feed all their people because the incentive for work has been taken away from their economy by the state-run communism which mandates all their policies. That leaves people to do only what they must, which makes them staff all their labor needs in the most inefficient means possible. Without basic capitalist ideas like private property ownership and incentives for innovation, the cost of labour is mandated by bodies, not innovation meaning a state-run country always gets only the minimum of that effort because of the human predilection to only provide what they must since the state is the entity which collects the efforts for its own economy. Yet product is developed for those who can possess it, and that is why all the lucrative markets are still in the United States which puts all the leverage behind Trump’s tariffs.
Given all that understanding it is incorrect to artificially bring down the price of foreign goods at the expense of American wealth, because the wealth of the nation was created by the United States under the means of capitalism and that wealth has been looted to prop up the failed philosophies of tyrannical dictatorships—and that is what China has been for quite a long time. Russia is also too authoritarian which is left over from when they were one of the largest communist countries in the world. Apple has more value as a company than most of the Russian economy which is very sad considering the vast wealth that Russia has that is underutilized. When they were allowed to feel like the big kids on the block by charging NASA to fly into space and were pandered to on the world stage it made Putin look legitimate as the former KGB officer turned politician. Now under Trump all that artificial leverage has been taken away leaving him to be just another saber-rattling despot threatening global destruction if someone doesn’t give him some money. China will be the next, but the real matter on the table is that these countries can do nothing, because they don’t have the money for it. Russia barely has enough money to launch a missile, let along build a lot of them, just like North Korea doesn’t. And the best way to keep China from sneaking money into places like North Korea is to cut them off from American wealth as well. Then when they are faced with the failures of communism compared to nations that aren’t so limited will they be forced to change. They might scream and threaten in the meantime, but they are harmless, because they don’t have the gold that rules the world. America does—and it’s not because we are functioning from raw imperialism. It’s just because we adopted Adam Smith’s economic philosophy and the rest of the world hasn’t yet. But they need to.
A few years from now people will realize how brilliant Trump’s tariffs really were. They will re-establish balance around the globe for economic value without propping up communist regimes, and the truth will finally be revealed. America will of course prosper, people will still drink beer, buy cars and build things. Costs will align with the practice methods of innovative business means to combine the efforts of labour to the effect of national GDP. Some costs will go down, some may increase, but the net yield will benefit America for the better and that’s all that really matters. The parasites will have to adapt and if we really want to see an end to communism in the world and free people from its tyrannical effects, we will let the tariffs destroy it for the good of the people suppressed under it. We don’t need tanks and troops to do that—all we need to do is let market forces do their work and that is how the world will be much better and freer at the end of Trump’s four years than it ever was before. And that will be good for everyone—except the tyrants.
Rich Hoffman
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March 4, 2018
Lakota Doesn’t Really Have a Choice: The Video of the CCW issue on February 26th 2018
Looking back on the video of the school board meeting on February 26th 2018 where the topic of arming teachers with a CCW drew a lot of media attention around the city of Cincinnati it wasn’t even close. The entire meeting is shown below, for which the media categorized it as “contentious,” which it was—but it was much more civil than you might think for such a hot button issue. The public comments section can be viewed at the 38-minute mark. My comment can be seen at the 53:30 mark. After me there was one other speaker on the list from the sign-in sheet and at that point the score was 6 for arming teachers with a CCW in class to just 2 against. Once the listed speakers had concluded Samuel Ronan who is running against Steve Chabot in the 1st Congressional district and was from Springboro spoke. He didn’t count in my view because he was simply there to give a stump speech on a national issue because the Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones took the lead on suggesting that he’d offer free CCW classes to any teacher who signed up for his class. After Ronan spoke there was a student who cried and couldn’t get through her speech followed by a lady who additionally added to the anti-gun comments. When the scoring was all said and done for the evening the score was 6 for allowing CCW teachers to bring their guns to school to act as first responders with only 5 against the proposal. That is the purest score this issue will ever get at Lakota. Obviously, the people against the measure hadn’t had time to professionally attack the CCW proposal and were caught a little flat-footed on the matter.
Those of us for the CCW proposal really hadn’t coordinated our efforts either. I had a few people call me to see if I was coming to the meeting and when I said I was, there were others obviously who felt they could come and add their opinions to the matter. If Lakota had a vote likely the tally would come down to a similar demographic as was shown in that school board meeting on that particular evening—something close to a 60% to 40% vote in favor of arming teachers in our 22 school buildings. Those who spoke against CCWs presented an emotional argument without any solution present, which is typical on this subject. There is a portion of our society that is just afraid of guns and wishes that humanity could remove them completely. Any logical person not thinking emotionally understands that 92% of all mass shootings take place in gun free zones—which is why schools are such a hot target. Wishing that guns were never invented isn’t a logical solution—especially in the short run. Lakota does have school resource officers—10 of them to cover the 22 current buildings, which isn’t nearly enough for a community that has over 100,000 residents. The cost is prohibitive to have an officer in every building and in every hallway in case something was to occur where a school shooter might attack and realizing all that, based on this school board meeting, there really isn’t a choice. Lakota is going to have to adopt a measure arming teachers and the reasons are obvious.
My first thought when Samuel Ronan handed his camera to an Islamic woman who was sitting next to one of the anti-gun speakers from earlier was that we were getting ready to hear from the professional anti-gun lobby. And that was confirmed when the 3-minute clock was not started for Ronan. Listening to Ronan speak I thought a member of the school board had invited him to talk which was why the clock never started for him, and why he was permitted to not address the board–but the audience and the television cameras that lined up the back of the room. But after going on for well over 3 minutes the board did stop him so it appears that the progressive politician had just crashed our meeting in a similar way that a school shooter might attempt to do and take advantage of our good graces as a community. He simply went on a stump speech for every progressive political platform and his supporters represent the emotional element which the media has latched on to. But if you listen to his speech there is no solution presented even though he is an obviously polished speaker. At the end of his speech we still had the problem and that was the same for every speaker against the measure.
How to argue with Liberals about #2A #2ndAmendment #2Amendment pic.twitter.com/w87ahXQPbg
— Nah
March 3, 2018
Video Games are to Blame for the Parkland Shooting: A neighbor reported that Nikolas Cruz played online shooters 15 hours per day
Gun confiscation is a goal of the political left, but in regard to these school shootings any gun control measure will have little effect because as I’d argue, there is a new element to our society that is much more to blame. About twenty years ago a video game called Goldeneye, based on the recent James Bond movie of the same name hit the Nintendo 64 home video game console. It was considered the first real “first person shooter” game which changed the industry forever. For the first-time players could play multiplayer death matches in the way that is common today with poplar games like Call of Duty, Battlefront, and even Grand Theft Auto. Two years after Goldeneye was released, there was the infamous Columbine School shooting in Colorado—and there have been occasional mass school shootings since. The connection to the video game industry is much more guilt associated than with the gun industry because there were guns before all this happened. What was new and different was the ability of young people to shoot guns in the world of computer gaming where the typical skills of learning to shoot and the consequences that were once taught to young people have been removed. These modern video games are slick, and fast. The guns fire ballistically in a very similar fashion. I used to tell my daughters who grew up on the next generation of that Goldeneye game experience, Perfect Dark, that what they shot on video games was the cheapest shooting that they’d ever do. And for most kids, they can handle it—but they love to shoot at each other in first person shooters. I’d say that there is an intellectual need people have to play this way. But for a kid that is just a little crazy, it is far too tempting to live out the fantasy created in the video game culture of gunning down lots of people, because for a fleeting bit of moments, it makes them infinitely powerful. And for some kids trading that moment of power for their lives either in jail or in death is a worthy one.
We learned from USA Today that the shooter in Parkland, Florida was a heavy video game player. A neighbor of accused shooter Nikolas Cruz told the Miami Herald that Cruz “escaped his misery” by playing video games for as much as 15 hours a day. “It was kill, kill, kill, blow up something, and kill some more, all day,” he said. Well, that really hasn’t been talked about in the news—the only line of thought that has been this proposal to confiscate guns. The biggest problem with that besides it being flat-out unconstitutional is it’s also not relevant to solving the problem. What is even worse, the way the media used those kids from the Parkland shooting to advance their liberal gun agenda, in the same way that Michael Moore did when he released the film Bowling for Columbine hoping to press the nation into a gun confiscation policy similar to Australia—the media completely ignored the video game problem. Most of the kids they were parading out in front of the cameras were shooters themselves in the world of video games. Because these days, most kids are. Most young people don’t learn about guns from their grandpa or their fathers anymore where they really feel the gun shoot, understand the recoil, and the expense of firing a lead projectile at a target—they only see them in video games under the new social world of online multiplayer battles—which are as common as the milkshake was to teenage kids in the 1950s at the local car hoop. Talk to just about any high school kid and they are playing games online at home.
I know a little bit about this world because I am still very much a part of it. I have always played lots of video games and I’ve watched this evolution, and personally I love it. The PlayStation network for which I’m a member reported to me the following stats for the year of 2017. I was a little shocked by them because as people know, I am a very busy guy. I work professionally 60 to 70 hors per week. I read at least one book every week. I shoot real guns often as well as fulfil many interests that I have. In addition I spend a lot of personal time with my family so I didn’t think it was possible to play as many hours as my PlayStation gamer tag said I did last year. Here’s a bit of the report:
Over the months of 2017, you played
768 hours
over 17 different games, while making the most progress in November with 118 hours of gameplay.
The average PlayStation gamer played for
218 hours
The most-active month in 2017 for PlayStation gamers was July with 1.13 billion hours.
So I played roughly three times more gaming on PlayStation than the average video gamer. And as seen by their own stats, people play about 1 billion hours a month in online gaming, most of which are first person shooters like Call of Duty. My thing is Star Wars: Battlefront. Now consider that these stats are just for PlayStation. Xbox has an equally vibrant following as does Nintendo. Presently in our house we have both the PlayStation and the new Nintendo Switch which get tremendous workouts all hours of the day. Video games are the number one past time of young people these days so if any reforms should be tackled, it is in what happens in the world of online shooters. That is the first place to start.
A gun ban will do nothing to curb the violence because the desire to violence is nurtured in online gaming. The need for a human being to decimate other live players is something very inherent in us all, which is what first person shooters are all about. Until that desire is eliminated from all human beings, there will be mass violence occurring. For well over 99% of the population they can play these games and not go out into the world and engage in mass violence. But for some the temptation to do in real life what they can do in the video game world is just too enticing—so they carry out the fantasy like Nikolas Cruz did in Parkland.
These video games are a global phenomenon, people are playing them in Europe and Asia as well, in live time. Guns aren’t so easy to get in those places so the killings that occur are other methods, knives, cars, bombs—whatever terrorists can get their hands on. I would be willing to bet that if most ISIS terrorists were tracked down to their gamer tags, we’d find that they play all these video games religiously in their countries of origin. I’m sure PlayStation and Xbox know who is playing what and how often. If they are tracking me, they are tracking everyone. And you can bet the NSA and the FBI have profiles on certain players and their online abilities and connections.
In real life one of the measurement systems I use to make multimillion dollar assessments of something is the lean manufacturing technique of Gage R&R which is a type of MSA—Measurement System Analysis. Gage R&R (repeatability and reproducibility) are typically only 30% to 50% accurate even with the best inputs that can be acquired so getting the best information to collect is of utmost importance. If I were to run a Gage R&R on mass school shootings putting all the data into a nice big beautiful spreadsheet taking into account the age of the shooter, the back ground of the shooters, the types of guns used, the social circumstances for which they functioned, the political beliefs, the amount of times they had sex with females—was their a father in the home, etc., we’d find that it was none of those elements that would point us to the obvious problem of what causes school shootings. What they’d all have in common to some degree or another was the direct result of the video game industry and the romance that gun violence has been perpetuated by the Hollywood product. Even the music industry would show up on our Gage R&R to show a repeatable influence over the last two decades for desensitizing people to the realities of the world and encouraging violence to instigate social change. The fault of school shootings statistically speaking have nothing to do with gun manufacturers or the NRA—it has everything to do with Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox. The MSA analysis points only to the video game industry followed closely by movies and television as the prime drivers of social violence. Even if all guns were confiscated and the NRA were out of existence today, mass killings would still occur because the cause of the violence has not been yet dealt with. The desire to kill lots of people can be done with a gun or a car, but it’s the problem of our modern society that such desires are there to begin with—and video games assist that desire with a role-playing element that makes the weakest and less disciplined of us seek out that sensation in real life.
You will never hear from me to ban video games. I love them too much and I am willing to put up with the occasional violence that we see because I think there are benefits to what video games bring to people. Violence is a byproduct, but so is the thinking that goes on which is changing us as a species and allowing us to process information so much faster than we ever did before. There is much more good about video games than bad. But if there is something to blame for the Parkland school shooting, it was video games that Nikolas Cruz played which likely pushed him over the edge. If you are harboring resentments in an aggressive setting and losing grips with reality—killing hundreds of people a day online is likely to create the fantasy of doing it in real life. Most of us know how to turn off that switch and to only keep that desire in the video game reality. Obviously, Cruz didn’t have that switch. But if people really want to solve the problem of school shootings, you have to start with the video game industry. Because there are a lot of Nikolas Cruz kids out there just waiting to snap. I think we are headed for a period over the next two decades where there will be many more killing attempts—because kids like Cruz play kill so much online that they want to try it in real life. And because they don’t have strong fathers to hold them together, or a family structure, a church, or even good media influences to look up to, there is nothing to keep them from testing themselves in reality once they have grown tired of killing in the world of video games. Not being able to buy a gun at Dick’s sporting goods or the Kroger stores won’t prevent them from some other method. If they want to kill, they are going to find some way to do it, and when they do, we have to be ready for them.
Rich Hoffman
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March 2, 2018
Donald Trump is Smoking Crack: The case of Julius Malema–if I have to pick between the president and the NRA, I’m with the NRA,
I’m still with you but what you said yesterday puts me on the fence. I understand the complexity and desire for good negotiations but some things like due process are critical to your base. It is certainly critical to me. @DonaldJTrumpJr @Scavino45 https://t.co/V9LSgzwu5u
— Rich Hoffman (@overmanwarrior) March 1, 2018
As much as I like Donald Trump, if I have to pick between him and the NRA, I’m with the NRA. If there was anything good in Trump’s move to the far political left with his fantasy talk about due process second after gun confiscation, it’s that he made the point for gun rights pretty apparent. What Trump had said to a bipartisan group of legislators during a White House meeting shocked me as it did many others and even considering that it might just be typical Trump talk to move an issue in debate, the fact that he even thought it proves a long-held understanding about the very nature of the 2nd Amendment. There has never been an administration that I trusted more, or felt that more closely represented my intersects than the Trump administration. I have maybe for the first time in my life a trust that my government will work for my interests as best as a Republic of representatives can. But even an administration, any administration, all through the history of our nation is prone to make mistakes and when those mistakes occur, it can’t be my life, or anybody else who should suffer. The gun protects private property—the efforts of a lifetime, whether it be a spouse, children, a dog or the contents of a home, car or business. Nothing in life supersedes the nature of our private property for which our lives are paramount in value.
Over the years there have been many instances where the federal or state governments have done just as Trump suggested, which is probably why he thought he could get away with saying it–that if the police or military is called out to your home in the small hours of the morning, that they have a right to confiscate all your guns and whatever else they may wish and that they have the right to take over your life for which you must surrender willingly to for the “greater good.” There is no greater good than my life, your life, and the life of our neighbors. Government certainly doesn’t eclipse our lives and our possessions which are the products of those lives. It is the mutual understanding that the protection of property is a basic foundation of American existence which keeps everyone from killing each other, which is a basic concept from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and is the very structure of American society. And the great equalizer of protecting those values is the gun, which is how the Second Amendment ended up in the Bill of Rights to begin with. To take away that basic right is to essentially destroy the premise of American civilization—which is why foundationally the political left wants to abolish the Second Amendment. Even though the typical leftist doesn’t know why they think what they do–as they’ve been taught without truly understanding the concept—their epistemological understanding of the world as liberals recognizes that through mob rule at some point they are going to want what others have and they want those others disarmed so they can then seize that property for their own consumption.
For instance, in a surprising vote just a few days ago, South Africa’s National Assembly voted to evict white farmers from their land and seize their property, justified by the country’s past apartheid policies. The vote was led by Marxist activist Julius Malema, who is head of the political party Economic Freedom Fighters. They feel that the seizing of land is part of delivering justice to the discrimination black farm workers have faced in the past. Marxism has become a powerful political force in South Africa since the government abandoned its apartheid policies. Few realize it today but Nelson Mandela was a Marxist, and his political legacy that has continued among radical black activists who have followed him continue to erode away the basic foundations of South African society. Not that any form of discrimination is appropriate, but the lenses of history is always defined by the political groups that seize power at any given time. Thus, a weakness of any democracy is the concept that mobs can rule so far as a majority of everyone believes something, and they can then justify the acquisition of other people’s values at a whim—because they desire such things as a collective group. Using that logic what if a bunch of Seattle Starbucks customers sitting around sipping on their lattés decided that their lives were terrible because they spent all their time smoking pot, playing video games, and bitching about the world around them, and instead of taking action to improve their condition decided that they were going to storm out into the suburbs to take the homes of the wealthy people who lived there—because they had a need for which a majority of the losers desired? If they desired to do so, what keeps them from doing it? Not the police. Talk to a loser sometime, if you go into the inner cities and feel like killing a few hours of time, pick one and offer to buy them breakfast and listen to what they tell you. You’ll find that most people in such a state think just like Julius Malema does. Because of our liberal education institutions American society now has a lot of people who think in the way of traditional Marxists and if they want something, they don’t understand why they can’t just have it. Guns in our society allow for people to have different political attitudes without those forces being able to bulge into an ideology that robs individuals of their basic property rights—which represents foundational value.
https://silenceisconsent.net/south-africa-votes-seize-land-white-farmers-heres/
Without guns in America all the various groups that emerge under group association would impose itself on the unwilling without question. The wonderful thing about America is that just because there are elements of our society that is just as crazy as Julius Malema is, or Barack Obama, because we have guns and can protect ourselves from when those mobs of losers might arrive at our doorsteps wanting what we worked a lifetime to acquire, it is our guns which keep them from acting on their fantasies. The typical welfare recipient in America isn’t far from the thinking of even the craziest radical from around the world such as the South African Marxist leader. They want guns eliminated from society, they see bump stock bans, and assault weapon restrictions to be great policies in their favor of outright repealing of the 2nd Amendment. People in need, which is usually a condition derived from bad decision-making, always look with jealous eyes at those who have things in their lives worth protecting and without the ability of every individual from having the aptitude to protect themselves with lethal force, it is the only real stabilizing factor in our society that allows it to advance.
Even as Trump suggested that the feds would have the right to break down our doors in the middle of the night and have their way with us because the government represents something bigger than our collective efforts, he need to only look at the American FBI and previous justice departments for why such trust can never be extended beyond the possession of personal firearms. If my door gets broke open in the middle of the night I don’t care who it is, or what court might have given such a warrant to intrude on my life—people are going to get hurt because I don’t grant power to any outside force that seeks to dominate my existence through government interpretation of the basic philosophy of individual will which governs my life. We know that the FBI didn’t want president Trump to settle into the White House and they used their power to attempt to stop that process from happening—by illegally obtaining a FISA warrant to build a case for impeachment before he could even move into the White House. America is a first world nation—really is the best of the best and we can’t trust our own government, let alone others around the world. Not even the Trump government. Even though it might work better with Trump in the White House for the next 7 years, eventually he won’t be there and we could end up with someone like Julius Malema running the country. Honestly if we weren’t a society in America of guns and the Bible I doubt that Barack Obama would have been much different from Malema. Their basic desires for life were very much the same. The difference is that every American farm is likely protected by the firearms of the owners, and nobody is coming to steal a few pigs for slaughter without having their lives threatened—which is the only thing that keeps the peace in such a world.
This is a topic which could go on forever and I’ll likely explore it from many different angles. But the basic premise is that governments of any kind cannot be trusted and that they do not have the right to rule over us without some measure of checks and balances to counter their mistakes. Without that power to inflict pain back at those who are up to no good, any society crumbles. As gun grabbers point around the world to places like Europe and Australia and say that those places of gun restrictions are successful I would also point out that they have degrading societies that will not endure far in the future from this point in time because of the lack of value they have in the basic idea of private property. So as much as I like the Trump administration, Donald Trump is smoking crack if he thinks people like me who are his most solid base is going to stay with him if he talks like that. Rhetoric or not, talking about confiscating guns then entertaining due process is reprehensible. If that is the best that government can do, I’ll just take care of these problems myself, and because of gun ownership millions of us can say the same thing—which is why we have a society that is still functioning out of fairness, and kindness.
Rich Hoffman
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March 1, 2018
The Gun Grabbing Politicians of Ohio: Kasich, Skindell and Tavares overstep their authority with a proposed assult weapons ban
Let’s forget that the proposal is ostentatious and goes against the very foundations of American life, it says a lot about the people in elected office proposing these sudden assault weapons bans which are now being introduced in Ohio. Sens. Michael Skindell and Charleta Tavares introduced legislation making it a fifth-degree felony to possess or acquire a firearm considered an “assault weapon.” And to add to the insanity, Governor John Kasich is supporting it. That is a guy who has never been a conservative. It is amazing how far he has fallen, no wonder he was personal friends with the very liberal Ted Strickland. John Kasich has absolutely lost his mind. But for anyone in the Ohio legislature to assume that they even have a right to make it illegal to possess an “assault weapon” is seriously mistaken on such an intrusion into all our lives and it deserves action in retaliation.
Here’s why such a law could never be justified—because Kasich himself has framed the argument. Kasich in 2010 showed himself to be a Tea Party conservative then became a moderate shortly after the hard loss to the public-sector unions in 2012 on a controversial bill he had been pushing through. Then gradually as the 2016 election occurred, Kasich moved much closer to the liberal middle on the political spectrum and became a very radical anti-Trumper. Now he is wanting a second crack at a run for the presidency and is considering to run against Trump in the primary—which is a very un-Republican thing to do. But he’s planning to and will likely consider a switch in parties if he can’t get enough Republican backing—which means that Kasich was never a conservative. He was simply an opportunist—someone who is willing to wear the mask of whatever he needs to be to get elected in public office which also makes him dangerous.
Now consider the next implication—it is that these types of people are telling us that we should disarm ourselves and trust them with our lives. They’ll argue that nobody needs assault weapons to defend themselves, but as we all know from their past intentions, a ban on weapons of any kind is a step toward more restrictions until they reach their progressive stated goal of a gun free society. They won’t stop with “assault weapons.” That much is clear. They’ll keep trying forever to ban everything so if we give them anything, they’ll never stop until they take it all.
Kasich’s personal attack specifically on the “God-darn AR-15” is quite a case study. So is the proposal that anyone who has such a gun is to give it up if these Democrats have their way? That the day such a legislation is made into law that suddenly millions of people are now out-laws because they own an AR-15? Then to declare that the sporting rifle is a weapon of war and to decide that nobody should have them? Where does that stop, where politicians decide what we can and cannot have? What if some future politician decided that golf clubs needed to be banned because someone killed people with a well weighted driver? Would then the sport of golf be banned? I understand that to many people guns mean death, because that was their original purpose and is how a portion of society views them based on their educations. Guns are not just for hunting, but they aren’t just for killing either. Target shooting is a real challenge which combines known sciences into a symphony of human endeavor. It is quite a thing to do to put a lead bullet into a target 300 yards away. The quest to do such a thing is as useless as throwing a basketball through a hoop—yet many people put great credence in the sport of basketball but assume that target shooting isn’t just as relevant.
An AR-15 doesn’t shoot much of a bullet, it isn’t what I’d consider to be dangerous ammunition. I think of them as not much more powerful than a BB gun or a little ol’ .22. A .223 bullet isn’t very large, not even a quarter of an inch wide so it’s not that the gun does much damage. The bullet typically only weighs in at around .50 grains. It just has a perception of being a military style weapon because it looks that way. They look cool, so people enjoy them. Personally, I like much bigger guns, because if I’m going to shoot something, it should really exercise the power that you can contain in your hands. However, given the logic of these gun grabbing politicians, are we to ban anything that looks scary—is that the optimal purpose of making decisions about what’s legal or illegal—how something looks? That would open the idea that toy guns of all kinds could be banned because they look dangerous—whether or not they really were.
For a politician to assume that we don’t need this, or that we need that is reprehensible. For Kasich to say to a gun owner, “do you really need a “God-darn AR-15 to go hunting with.” The gun isn’t to go hunting with dumbass. It’s to learn the proficiency of a firearm without spending $3 a shot to get good with it, on the larger ammunition. Who’s to tell anybody what they need or don’t need. Do people need soccer balls, baseball gloves, or even baseball bats. Have you ever seen dear reader what a baseball bat can do to someone’s head? Talk about a dangerous weapon, a baseball bat can kill someone faster than a bullet. And a baseball traveling at 100 MPH down the first base side of the field into the stands can also kill someone, or at least cause a lot of damage. Should we ban baseball? Shooting is a sport more than its anything else, even as a tool of self-defense. A good gun becomes a trusted friend just like that old well-worn glove that you threw baseballs with your father way back when, or that great pair of golf clubs that created so many great memories hitting a silly little ball into a hole on a flat piece of grass called a “green.”
Why do we humans challenge ourselves by throwing balls into baskets, driving little balls several yards into a little bitty hole on a well mowed lawn, or try to hit a speeding ball with a wooden stick—because we are fascinated by the physics as thinking creatures of how all those elements can be combined to achieve something. And that is the essence of shooting sports. How fast can we shoot lead projectiles into a target of some distance and with what measure of reliability? Those are the questions sports shooters ask, and those are recreational elements of our American society. To designate a portion of that sporting community as “dangerous,” “needless,” or a threat to the general population is a reprehensible assumption and an assault on our very way of life. AR-15s are just another sporting rifle that may look tactical and scary but are really just inexpensive ways to get to know the mechanics of a good shooting rifle. It’s not for politicians to question why we would ever need to know about such things, its our place to enjoy them because they are products of our culture. And if you really want to peel back the onion to the truth, the Second Amendment is there because we have politicians like John Kasich who will say, do and manipulate anything as a politician to have control over the rest of us. What are we to do if he says that God told him to arrest everyone wearing a Trump shirt so that he could have a better chance of getting elected president in the next election? When he runs the state of Ohio and is power-hungry enough to switch parties for his own ambitions what might he do to any of us to clear the way? The answer is, we don’t know, and if he does abuse his authority, we need some way to check that power at the local level and sometime laws aren’t enough. Action is the only thing that can meet tyrannical force when we see it, and with Kasich, you just never know who he’s going to be from one moment to the next, and that makes him very dangerous—much more dangerous than a “God-darn AR-15.”
Rich Hoffman
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February 28, 2018
A $10,000 Bonus for Lakota Teachers: How guns in schools are conducive to team building
A lot of people don’t know it but when I put together the No Lakota Levy group by joining forces with some of the business guys who were also against the school levy over eight years ago now, we had prior to that experience been mostly rivals. Several of them about five years prior were at me over a contentious real estate transaction—actually several of them and we were not on good terms. But we were united under a common objective—a real concern that high taxation would destroy our community, so we united against the Lakota school system to get things under control. In the course of that action we became pretty good friends and a lot of those heated rivalries fell by the way side. I was reminded of that experience as I stood before the Lakota school board on Monday February 26th many years after our contentious levy fights to speak on behalf of arming teachers with firearms. Many of the school board members were new, some had been there back during those No Lakota Levy days and suddenly we found ourselves on the same side of an issue—a desire to secure the schools before some copy-cat shooter sought to put their name in lights for eternity by becoming the next assassin of the innocent. It was a little weird but was a very positive experience.
It was a productive evening and I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people on this issue and I couldn’t help but see a pattern emerging, conflict resolution often is all about bringing people together on a common goal. We may argue about the means of teaching children, or what the purpose of a public school is, but one thing we all are unified on is that we don’t want bad people to come into our community where our kids are and exploit a weakness at their expense. As I spoke a lot of those heated rivalries melted away and I only saw eager and sincerely concerned faces looking back at me—everyone wanted to get this issue right and that was truly a special moment.
As we were having a good exchange where two sides of a political divide were joining together to solve a hard problem a reminder of how vulnerable we all are to charismatic radicals presented themselves right there at the school board meeting. CNN star and 1st Congressional District candidate Samuel Ronan from Springboro, Ohio crashed our meeting unannounced and took over for an uncomfortably long period of time taking advantage of our mutually good graces to speak out against the Lakota consideration to follow Sheriff Jones’ advice to arm teachers in one of Ohio’s largest school district. Ronan is a very progressive young man who is trying to lead a youth charge against guns in schools. Only he forgot one main thing, he willfully violated the terms of speaking that night as specifically cited in board policy 0160 which states: ” Participants must be residents of the District, or be the resident’s designee and be introduced as such, and have a legitimate interest in the action of the Board. The Board may also recognize representatives of firms eligible to bid on materials or services solicited by the Board. The Board may also recognize any employee or student of the District except when the issue addressed by the participant is subject to remediation under Board policies or negotiated agreements.” Ronan wasn’t the only speaker that night against the CCW recommendation for teachers, but he was the one who showed a complete disregard for the rules of our community to make his point—which is precisely what a potential school shooter would do should they decide to attack. It showed everyone in the room how vulnerable we all were to bold practitioners of radicalism from their own sometimes distorted perspective.
To my experience, and it was consistent with that evening’s activities, firearms bring people together, not apart, and that was what was happening between me and the school board at Lakota. Compared to some of our past issues this new problem transcended those transgressions. We needed to create a culture at Lakota that would protect kids from the types of people who put ideology over logic and will take those next dangerous steps toward the destruction of lives. As I said to several people that evening, I would support in this case a bonus for teachers who sign up for a CCW. I am thinking of something in the $10,000 per year range to encourage teachers to spend time with guns, to create a group of peers who might shoot together on the weekends down at Premier Shooting in West Chester then get together for dinner afterwards. We’re not talking about teachers wearing guns on their hips and advertising that they are CCW holders. We are just talking about concerned teachers who want to become first responders in case some crazy person comes into one of Lakota’s 22 school buildings and seeks to ruin the lives of the people inside. As Samuel Ronan showed us, someone who doesn’t belong can easily walk into a school and manipulate their way past security with the type of sincerity that he displayed and have their way with our most vulnerable because as good people we tend to trust that everyone else is also a good person. We are never quite ready for some villain who looks like a normal person, and acts like a normal person, until it’s too late. At that point, it would be good to have a teacher in every hall in those 22 school buildings who could at least keep their classrooms from becoming an unprotected zone of malice.
The bonus of $10,000 would be specifically to help create a culture among a group of people who up to this point have not been concerned about guns. By asking them to open their minds to the idea, the bonus would allow them to participate in the sport of shooting so that when and if something dire were to occur, they’d at least be familiar enough to use those firearms proficiently. Just as I came together with the Lakota school board that night in what was a good feeling exchange, people who shoot together tend to form bonds of friendship that extend into all parts of their lives. I am very certain that if Lakota were to adopt this policy there would be peer groups of shooters that would develop, and they’d enjoy the exchange with one another. As a gun owner and frequent user myself I can report that this is an experience I have in my life that I know would transfer over into the lives of the teachers who became CCW holders and it would be a very positive experience for them. Instead of dividing our community, it would unite in ways that nobody thought possible, just as nobody would have imagined years ago that I’d have a friendly exchange with the Lakota school board. Firearms have a way of uniting people who otherwise wouldn’t speak to each other any other way.
Shooting can be expensive, so I envision that $10,000 bonus helping the teachers pay for their lane fees at Premier Shooting and the ammunition to shoot there once or twice a month with other teachers. And after shooting they’d have a little money in their pocket to do what the rest of us shooters do with our time, you grab a bite to eat and enjoy each other’s company in a similar way that golfing buddies do. Only with guns there is always a higher purpose to what you are doing, and it makes saying hello to that other teacher in the hall a bit more special, because they would be in a unique club of potential first responders in case a radicalized terrorist would try to unleash pain and suffering on our nice and successful community.
My urgency on the matter is that Lakota is more vulnerable than other places in Ohio—because it is wealthy, its large, and its conservative. There was a reason that the progressive radical Samuel Ronan who is a pretty big-time star on cable news decided to target Lakota for his anti-gun protest. He had no other business in the Lakota community, he didn’t do it in Mason or Springboro, he came to Lakota. And if people like him who are just a bit too angry at the direction of the world are looking at the leadership of Lakota as a place to discharge their aggression, then someone just a few IQ points south of Ronan might just do the unthinkable, because it is a giant soft target for such people. Personally, I don’t want to see that happen. I’m willing to put away my past grievances for the purpose of a unifying objective—and this issue of giving teachers CCWs is the best idea that I’ve heard in public education for years. And I will promise this, it will be a very positive thing that will bring together the whole community—and will make the teaching staff much better. Firearms are the ultimate team building tool. I understand that many people don’t yet have a reference point to build off of, because firearms aren’t a normal part of their lives, but once they come to understand what a unifying factor firearms are—socially—the magic of that team building will become obvious—and as a side result, our children will be much, much safer as a net result.
Rich Hoffman
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February 27, 2018
Samuel Ronan the Progressive Extremist: What we learned at Lakota by the CNN star about why teachers should be armed
For all of the victims of the increased ICE Activity, I have this to say:
You are not alone.
I am a 1st Generation Immigrant from Germany, with Filipino heritage.
I am one of you.
I am fighting.
I will not back down.
We can overcome and persevere during this dark time!
— Samuel Ronan (@Ronan4Progress) January 24, 2018
I didn’t know who Samuel Ronan was when he stepped up to the microphone at the very contentious Lakota school board meeting on February 27th 2017. My first impression of him was that he was just another overly emotional kid speaking against arming teachers in our public schools. The typical thing in these types of exchanges is to be respectful of the audience, even if they don’t agree with you, because it is the battle of ideas which sifts out the truth of a matter. When I spoke nobody heckled me or made comments from the audience, so I provided the same sentiment and that’s how it should be. However, there was something very fishy about the young man who quickly provided an address that didn’t seem to match anything within the Lakota district and instead of addressing the school board, the kid turned and addressed the crowd. We all sat stunned that he had crashed an otherwise civil meeting on a contentious topic. He had to be stopped because he went over the three-minute speaking limit. After Ronan spoke, the kid disappeared quickly before I had a chance to talk to him, which was fully my intention. I went out into the hall to see if he was anywhere about. He had left as quickly as he came. So I did a little checking to see who he was and what I discovered was rather revealing.
https://www.ronanforcongress.com/
My desire to confront the kid stemmed from a couple of things he said during his speech, namely what I took as a challenge when he said that he was trained on the AR-15 platform and he doubted that any teacher would want to face him during a rampage. Those aren’t his exact words, but that’s what he was essentially saying. I’d have to watch the tape of the meeting to get the exact dialogue which actually may have been more suggestive. Of course my answer to him is “hell yeah” I’d be willing to engage an active shooter—especially if it was a kid like him—disrespectful, aggressive, showing a disregard for the rules of conduct of the established practice of a forum—those are all alarm signs that such a person is up to no good. Now, you wouldn’t shoot someone like that without provocation, but if a person will bust in on a school board meeting and not reveal what their true intentions were, taking it for granted that everyone around him would be too nice to confront him, then he made the precise argument as to why we should arm teachers. That’s what I was going to tell him until I realized after he had left that the kid was actually a progressive Democrat from Springboro, not even from Lakota, and that he had switched parties to run against Steve Chabot in the upcoming 1st Congressional District race. Even more, this wasn’t just any progressive Democrat upset about the national trend toward gun rights—especially arming teachers in schools from domestic terrorist threats—this guy ran for the Democratic National Committee Chairman seat. Not your typical anti-gun protestor.
I typically have a soft spot for young people, especially charismatic young people who involve themselves in the events of the world—but there was something creepy about Ronan that came across as startling. He wasn’t a listed speaker for the evening, he simply took the opportunity during the public comments portion, after the scheduled speakers had concluded, myself being one of them, and proceeded on with an uncomfortable rant that was misplaced for the event. He wasn’t even speaking to the crowd, the board, or even a single individual–he was only interested in the cameras. What was odd was that he gave his camera to a Muslim woman sitting in the middle of the crowd to record his video, then when he took the podium he addressed the crowd directly instead of the board and during his speech he edged as I said on confrontational language talking about his military background and how he knew how to use such dangerous weapons giving him an advantage over average teachers. It was an odd mix of euphemisms that had what to me contained ominous undertones. As he was talking I just took it as the talk of an overly anxious and political kid looking to be the next Dave Hog, maybe to get on the many television cameras that were present. Then for some apparent reason he included discrimination against Muslims which had no place in the discussion—only that he injected it out of nowhere. It wasn’t even relevant to the topic. Those of us present were mystified by his behavior which left us scratching our heads as he left.
It was only after that I did some investigation into the kid and discovered that he was quite a national activist, and that his presence there at Lakota showed to what extent the school district in my neighborhood was going to play in national politics yet again. Being one of the largest schools in the state of Ohio in a state that Donald Trump won by 11 points, which went his way even with the establishment Republicans at the time led by John Kasich working against him, the district of Lakota is conservative even for conservative standards. It would be Lakota where the issue of guns in schools would live or die, and this progressive activist put his sights on Lakota to leave his national mark. My instinct said to engage the kid, which I tried to do after the meeting and find out what his story was. And as it usually is, my instincts were correct—this was a kid up to no good. Yet he hadn’t done anything overtly bad enough to mandate a confrontation. We all just politely let him ramble on hoping he would come to reason on his own, which of course he didn’t.
He misled people about who he was to speak that night at Lakota. He stepped into the heart of Lakota management and trusted that we’d all be too nice to really engage him, and he was right. Even I was so respectful of his right to speak that we let him go on for over 3 minutes breaking all the rules that such public speaking at Lakota required. But even more than that he was misleading people on his printed campaign literature, listing himself as a Republican of the 1st District which includes the equally conservative Warren County, Ohio. He knows he stands no chance of winning a congressional seat unless he runs as a Republican in his town of Springboro. Yet just last year he ran for the DNC Chairman seat—the head of the whole enchilada and was on many debates on CNN. He was bold, and audacious—and very experienced at an early age in the art of radicalism. If you took away just a few layers of sanity from such a person, he might be the next school shooter—a person who pretends to be an innocent visitor to a school to get past the first layer of security, then when everyone was content that he was a safe person, that would be when the guns come out and a rampage would begin. If he was bold enough to crash a board meeting that has pretty strict rules of conduct and behave like he did, a similar person would work their way through official security protocols to unleash their ill intentions. That’s why we need that extra layer of security—a teacher comfortable with firearms discreetly hidden from view could engage such a radical saving so many precious seconds which likely would mean the difference between life and death.
That’s not to say Samuel Ronan is a terrorist—I think he’s a very progressive radical looking to make a name for himself. But if you consider his behavior and the way he exploited goodness, and the trust of good people there in the room with him at Lakota—a seriously deranged person would use the same tactics to get to kids in a school to satisfy whatever instability might inspire them into such a dire action. And instead of making the case for why teachers shouldn’t carry guns in the school, Ronan showed us why they should. When people can’t function on the basic elements of trust, our protocols rooted in honesty make us all vulnerable to villains who don’t observe such rules of conduct, and that is the way of our modern world, like it or not. People like Ronan who don’t tell you honestly who they are and pretend to be something when they are really something else are obviously up to no good—otherwise there would be no reason to mislead people.
Food for thought.
Change is coming and it is at the hands of the youth! pic.twitter.com/eyVL400Zt3
— Samuel Ronan (@Ronan4Progress) February 25, 2018
The reason we are required to give our name and address as speakers before the board is to protect the process of debate for just this kind of outside intrusion of politics, and Ronan was no small-time flunky from Springboro. He was a regular on CNN who had no intention to address the school board of Lakota—he went there to record himself on a stump speech trying to cause trouble. And he came and went largely without confrontation. The point of the matter is that good people trusting that everyone attending that night had good intentions either for or against the debate in question and were operating with a basic level of respect. What Ronan taught us at Lakota is that–it is that very trust a school shooter would exploit to make a menace of our children contained within our buildings. And by the time we figured out who they were, it would be too late. That’s how 17 people died in Parkland, Florida and many other places, because there wasn’t someone there on point to stop a hostile agent of terror—even as they stand sometimes right in front of us with an offering of peace and civility, when they really intend carnage.
Rich Hoffman
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