Biden’s repeated abysmal ignorance about policing and firearms
Biden doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and yet he arrogantly opines as though he does know, which is the worst kind of ignorance. Or perhaps he knows, and is merely trading on what he assumes is the ignorance of his audience.
Apparently Biden thinks that this is a really good suggestion for police. He made it in last night’s Town Hall:
…”you have to teach [the police] how to de-escalate circumstances,” said Biden. “So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”
That’s not just a demonstration of ignorance about how difficult it is to shoot someone in the leg (it’s easy to miss the leg, and then the person keeps “coming at you”) and how dangerous it can be to shoot someone in the leg (there’s an important artery there and a person can bleed to death from such a wound), but it’s also a demonstration of extreme ignorance about how police are presently trained.
Is Biden actually so ignorant that he thinks that police are not already “taught to de-escalate circumstances”? Does he not know that the “first thing” police do is not “shooting to kill”? Ever heard of a taser, Mr. Biden? And among other things, when police do shoot in a self-defense situation, they shoot to stop people from harming the police, not to kill – and since shooting in the leg is almost impossible for most police with a moving target “coming at you,” they are purposely taught to aim for the bulkiest place that’s easiest to hit and most likely to incapacitate the other person, which is the torso.
You can read article after article patiently explaining, to people who know zero about policing or firearms or self-defense, that if someone is trying to attack you, aiming to shoot in the leg is a bad idea.
And the story gets worse – because this isn’t the first time Biden’s said this. He had already stated his brilliant and innovative policing idea back in June, and the way in which he stated it then was even more stupid and ignorant, if such a thing be possible:
An “unarmed” person coming at you with a knife.
Stupid, ignorant AND senile.
Biden will make a wonderful president, with communist slut Harris as “backup”.
There’s just no limit on how deeply and abidingly I have come to hate the democrats and those that side with them. Ignorance of reality is no excuse.
It doesn’t bother me quite as much that he said it back in June, though it was stupid then regardless. What really horrifies me is that, months later, after topics like police training have been talked about in many fora across the country, he still thought it was such a fantastic idea that he said it again. No concept of the facts of life.
You would think that at some point, Joe could have at least asked his former boss, who, after all, lived in Chicago once upon a time – “O should know” about matters like people getting shot by the police, one would think – I’m told it occurs with some regularity in that town.
Again I ask myself: what could His Majesty possibly have seen in this ‘base fellow’ twelve years ago that he could choose such a one as his backup?
Phillip – I always considered Biden to be Obama’s insurance policy. Biden is so bad that no one wanted something to happen to Obama.
Stupid or evil? Why not both!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFjF9kW9Mcc
Biden isn’t really ignorant, he’s a bullshitter, has that in common with his opponent. He is indifferent to the truth value of what he says, he cares only about the effect on the listener.
And he can count on a compliant media to filter or explain away anything that might be troubling to a mass audience.
You could chalk this up to Biden’s declining condition but more likely it just reflects the anti-gun environment he’s been living in his entire political life. It’s not an exaggeration to say there are a lot of people on the Left who have not only never owned a gun, and not only never known someone who owned a gun, but they’ve never known someone who’s known someone who owned a gun.
I’ve seen adult liberals talk about guns in literally the same way small children talk about the boogie man.
Mike
I do believe that he really doesn’t know. But, as a leader he should be gathering info from the experts. That he was in the senate for many years, and then VP for 8 years and never learned this should tell most voters that he is unfit to be a leader.
As for the ignorance of his audience – yep, I do believe that as well. People who have never been around guns, or have never worked with police (even sitting on a jury involving police) think the same thing – just shoot them in the leg. I think it comes from watching too much television and thinking that the shootings on TV westerns or TV crime dramas are the way things really work.
Liz, I’ve heard that idea in the past and it certainly has things to recommend it. And yet, if that were all there was to it, why did His Majesty give Biden certain real tasks in diplomacy and so on, rather than just have him sort of hover in the background and be content with his backup role? I suppose Biden would have clamored for “something to do” before too long, that his great talents weren’t being properly utilized.
Not only that, if Biden really were that bad, why was he ever taken seriously by his party in this election cycle? However, on that point, it would seem sufficient to note that the ‘electability’ factor arose and certain minds were changed in the course of time.
MBunge, it might be interesting to do a “six degrees” type of exercise on that. How many steps would each of us have to go along our personal connection networks to reach a firearms owner, for example? I guess it could matter whether said owner is current or former, and one or two other potential caveats might exist. In my case, for example, looking at my life as a whole, I would have to go 1 step to get to a gun owner. In my current life, it’s harder to say, as I don’t know of anyone in my immediate circle who owns or trains or what have you, but then I’m not in the habit of asking about that sort of thing, either.
“Biden doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and yet he arrogantly opines as though he does know, which is the worst kind of ignorance.”
It’s called the Dunning–Kruger Effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I wonder if I’ve left buying a gun too long…
If Biden wins obviously there will be a mad rush to buy even more guns, because Biden will push hard against the Second Amendment.
If Trump wins obviously there will be a mad rush to buy even more guns, because there will be renewed “mostly peaceful” riots all over the country and fewer police.
I don’t like how this is shaping up.
Liz; Philip Sells:
My own theory is that Obama chose Biden for several reasons. The first is that when Obama was first running, a lot of people were concerned that he had little experience, especially foreign policy experience. So he chose Biden because he was perceived (by a lot of people, although certainly not by me) as a reassuring, experienced, “expert” on foreign policy in particular. He would balance the ticket in that way, and in terms of age and race as well. In addition, Biden is not a smart man although he’s a cagey and canny one, and I believe that Obama thought he could control Biden and basically tell him what to do, and Biden wouldn’t oppose him in any effective way or even at all. And I believe that panned out just as Obama wanted, as well. In a way, choosing Biden was a brilliant tactical move on the part of Obama.
I have never thought Obama was the least bit stupid.
Huxley, buying the gun is the easy part (that is if you pass a background check). The really hard part is getting the ammunition for said gun.
Obama is not stupid, he is quite smart, but he is, however, evil.
I suppose that Biden watched Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and the Lone Ranger growing up, since he is only 7 years younger than I.
Those old movies were less violent, because those heroes could shoot the gun right out of the bad guy’s hand. Then they would knock him out, all without losing their hat, or rumpling their Hollywood version of a cowboy shirt.
Those were the good old days. Eh, Joe? They just don’t make good guys like they used to.
The inmates are in charge of the democrat party and Biden is simply pandering to his base, who above all demand that reality must be as they wish it to be.
Sooner or later it must be accepted that these people are fundamentally disconnected from reality.
Think back on their actions, positions and demands over the past few decades and try to come up with another explanation for their behavior.
They’ve been indoctrinated into a fantasy and drunk deeply of the kool-aid.
We either disabuse them of their delusions, or eventually external forces will, as denial of reality has an expiration date.
This article features 3 pieces of extremely bad firearms advice by Slow Joe.
My favorite, as in most appalling, recommendation is:
Always verify who or what your target is and what’s beyond it before firing.
______
Here’s a fictional lesson on a variation of “just shoot ’em in the leg.” The detective character played by Holly Hunter believes she can just shoot them in the brachial nerve of their gun arm in the movie “Copycat.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyUhDn4ZmMw
Huxley, buying the gun is the easy part (that is if you pass a background check). The really hard part is getting the ammunition for said gun.
LYNN+HARGROVE: Well, my thinking is — and correct me if I’m wrong — I should get the gun first so I know what ammo to buy.
First the gun, then the ammo, then the place to train.
I have heard that ammo is hard to come by. I may have an underground source for ammo and an unregistered gun, though I’d prefer not to go that route.
The trouble with guns is that they are loud and I am rather delicate. I have borrowed a Beretta to shoot on a couple occasions.
Waal, you’ve got three explanations:
1. He knows nothing of the use of firearms and policing, and is too stupid to be circumspect on the topic. Rather unbecoming in an old man.
2. Senescence
3. It’s BS and he knows it.
Is Biden actually so ignorant that he thinks that police are not already “taught to de-escalate circumstances”? Does he not know that the “first thing” police do is not “shooting to kill”? Ever heard of a taser, Mr. Biden?
Biden simply says the first thing that comes to his mind, which in his senile state is usually something that doesn’t make sense. If the first thing that comes to mind happens to be what his far-lefty handlers just told him, his utterance will probably not make for coherent policy, but will nonetheless sound a little more coherent, as it at least parrots what a non-senile person told Joe to say.
Biden was chosen as Bama’s VP to lend some foreign policy gravitas to the administration.
Yes, I know, hard to believe.
Gringo:
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. He said the same thing in June and now, for starters. And this is the type of stupid utterance that’s been a hallmark of Biden’s for a long time, long before there was any noticeable age-related decline in his cognitive abilities. It was often simply shrugged off as “Joe being Joe,” or ignored. During his debate with Palin in 2008 he did this sort of thing, too, and much (although not all) of the MSM covered up for him. Here are some of his strange claims during that debate
What do you make of Trumps polling among women? Not good.
Tim – I’m a college-educated white female who lives in the suburbs. All my friends are voting for Trump. But, we are the “shy type”. I have an American flag flying, but the Trump sticker is not going on the car.
One thing that I have observed in my area is that there are D signs for Rep & Senator, but not for Biden. I am seeing more signs that say “Stand up for America” appearing in the neighborhood. I tend to believe that it is a substitute for a Trump sign.
Huxley – I would first find a place to train. There are some gun ranges which also sell guns & ammo. The ones in my area will let you try the different types of guns to make sure you can handle them. Then, buy the gun & ammo. After that, practice, take classes, practice. Take the concealed carry class even if you don’t want to do that because they will go over the laws in your state. And get good ear & eye protection for training. With prime day, I finally bought my first gun safe.
Neo – I agree that Biden was added for his “expertise” but I think they never wanted him to use it. They did give Biden a few assignments that were never reported back on – something about cancer and a few other things.
Philip – re the six degrees thing about guns – I would have to search hard to find a friend/family that doesn’t have a gun, other than my liberal sister on the east coast. But, I never asked her and she sure won’t ask me.
“Rah Rah Ree!
Shoot ’em in the knee!
Rah Rah Rass!
Shoot ’em in the other knee!”
Maybe Joe has plans to replace the police with new-model cyborgs:
https://youtu.be/MGjQtbfpxvU
Joe knows a lot about guns, and music too! It must be time for us to listen to him sing about shotguns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-mztxHgYQo
Well, you know, you can “man-spliane” it till you’re blue in the face. In the end you’ll only come out sounding like a white supremacist for all the effort to explain the real world to anyone on that side.
Interesting how many people I know people who have guns and I do know a few who do not own guns here in my part of Texas. Almost all of my male friends own guns and have completed the Texas License to Carry classes which are great, lots of class instruction and then a shooting at a target 50 times and being scored. Our town has an extensive Parks & Recreation which includes monthly LTC classes taught by local police officers.
I noticed above that in some states you have to get a permit before you can purchase a firearm and then at times there is a waiting period. In Texas and most of the surrounding states if you are a resident and not a felon all you need is a valid drivers license be over 18 for a long gun and over 21 for a pistol and then go into a store, fill out the paper work and then let them call it in to the NICS and in most cases within less than 30 minutes you will receive your approval, pay for the gun and walk out of the store. If you do have the Texas License to Carry all you have to do is fill out the paper work, your LTC number on your card that looks like a driver’s license will be entered on the paper work and you pay for your new firearm and you are done. At that time you can keep your loaded firearm in your home or in your vehicle here in Texas with not additional permit or license.
As for leg shoot’n by cop, Biden has no idea what he is talking about.
much more effective ..
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-suggests-stopping-criminals-by-making-them-slip-on-banana-peels
To Phillip Sells at 5:27PM… Regarding Chicago shooting people.. not as common as one might think. According to heyjackass[dot]com, CPD has shot 13 folk so far this year, offset by 10 CPD officers being shot. Five of the 13 died from it. The overall count in the inter-murals is 3411 total shot, 577 of those shot dead. The CPD numbers are almost statistically insignificant.
I could go on for days on this stuff, but this will have to do: an officer working for me tied up with an ex-con fresh from the joint. The cop tried the escalation of force rule and ended up losing control of his baton and shortly his footing and use of left arm…. gunfire ensued. The criminal was hit 10 times, at least 5 were potentially fatal (face & torso) according to med examiner, but he never left his feet until he tripped in some shrubbery as the officer continued to back-pedal. The guy died in those shrubs. Take-away: shooting in the leg will not always end your problem.
Biden has no idea what he is talking about.
Well, what does everyone expect him to say? He can’t talk about the real solution: like maybe if certain people stopped pointing guns at and stopped fighting with police when being arrested the number of certain people shot by police would drop drastically in a very short time. Nope, can’t talk about that!
Hi, Another+Mike. I peek at that site’s stats from time to time since Second City Cop refers to it quite frequently – I like the clarity of its presentation. My only point was that cops are forced by the nature of the criminal class there to use their guns more than they should have to, not that they do so arbitrarily. It’s not every day or week, but it does still happen with “some” regularity. () I am relieved to see that it’s only about once a month, at least.
Biden is simply repeating a very common liberal talking point I have heard countless times over the last 25 years (about half of that time I was on the left). He should know better and I’m sure his handlers do. But this plays very well to a core progressive demographic: educated ignoramuses. I’ve referenced this demographic many times before (and a majority of my professional and social circle fit most or all of the traits):
1. Possessing at least a baccalaureate; but often a graduate/professional degree as well. Their undergraduate degree is, invariably in the humanities/social sciences. Any graduate degree is in the same, or in law, education or social work.
2. Living in an extremely blue city (though, not necessarily, a blue state).
3. Middle to upper middle class (there are exceptions: the humanities graduate working at Starbucks, but often these exceptions still come from a middle to upper middle class background.
4. Overwhelmingly white (again, there are exceptions; but they are very much the exception) and living in overwhelmingly white (perhaps with some Asians or East Indians) neighborhoods.
5. Adamant they are well versed in history, though they think “The 1619 Project” is solid scholarship in American history.
6. Obsessed with SCIENCE!(tm), though few of them could write a basic chemical equation to save their necks.
7. Often secular (at best, “culturally Jewish or Christian”) but will lecture incessantly about how Jesus would absolutely be a pro- choice, democratic socialist in this day and age, even though few of them could quote more than three bible verses and couldn’t name more than two theologians.
9. Get almost all of their news from the NYTimes, MSNBC, CNN, a bunch of smug comedians/talk show hosts and, most importantly, anything that is passed on to them from their social media echo chamber
10. Know as little about police work as they do about any of the above topics I mentioned. And, like the above, they are not shy to lecture you, based on their ignorance.
I have heard the “shoot them in the leg!” foolishness repeated (often passionately) from the above group more times that I can count. Yes, it’s absurd, yes, it is easily rebutted, yes a few minutes of reflection should reveal (to a reasonable person) some of the problems it would engender. But, it is still widely believed and advocated by many in the Democrat base. Thus, it is no surprise Biden would repeat it.
Sorry. Completely off topic.
This is what a Trump county looks like. I want neighbors like that.
https://twitter.com/tafkag/status/1317046143939940353
No big surprises here.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/its-myth-police-criticize-bidens-advice-cops-should-shoot-suspects-leg
That encapsulates the one charge that came out of the Breonna Taylor shooting: the policeman endangered her neighbors.
An interesting differentiation in purpose, even if the results are the same.
It addresses the same difference that appears in “We target criminals. We do not target black men.”
It’s a nuance that seems to escape the general public’s comprehension.
Most rational people get it as well.
Biden, and anti-gunners in general, do not deal with reality well.
Hence the wide-spread respect among gun users for Kyle Rittenhouse’s discipline and effectiveness in stopping the threats to his life.
Mic drop.
Generally, we presume people who speak as Biden did on this subject know better and hope the audience doesn’t. In many cases, the audience doesn’t. So the speakers are lying to the gullible.
Discussing these sorts of things makes me wonder about the gullible. How can anyone–many cases educated people–be so stupid? How can they believe up is down? Is there a process by which some can, in effect, force themselves to sincerely believe up is down in a given situation? And then be proof against facts?
For example, cops are not allowed to “fight”. When trying to control a suspect, they’re restricted to what might be congruent with high school wrestling, or judo except now no chokes. The perp is not so restricted. Any lethal or crippling move is “allowed” to the perp but not to the cop. Picture wide-eyed incomprehension.
But Biden, by having said this sort of thing so many times, in his senescence actually believes it.
I see Tommy Jay already noted this particular stupidity that Biden vomited forth in an interview, but once more for emphasis.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/02/28/biden-advises-shooting-shotgun-through-door
“VICE PRESIDENT Joe Biden told Field & Stream magazine in an interview published Monday, “[if] you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.”
Coincidentally, a 22-year-old man in Virginia Beach, Va., was charged Monday with reckless handling of a firearm after doing just that a couple days earlier…”
The guy wasn’t charged with even more serious felonies because he didn’t injure or kill anyone. If you’re stupid enough to follow Biden’s advice on, well anything really but on this in particular, you are going away for decades and possibly life should you kill someone. I mean, my God, it could be your own kid standing on the other side of the door, fumbling with the keys.
Then he went on to make further ignorant statements about how “assault weapons” are heavy and hard to handle compared to a double barrel shotgun. In the name of all that is holy, where does this idiot get his stupid opinions? This guy was VP, one heartbeat away from being the CinC, and he hallucinates that the U.S. armed forces evaluate small arms only to saddle the troops with a heavy, difficult to handle weapon. The M-16 weapon system was selected precisely because it is lightweight (especially compared to the M-1 Garand and M-14 which it replaced, and both of which I love; everyone has gotten their Garands from the Civilian Marksmanship Program, right?), ergonomic and therefore easy to handle, with light recoil.
I bet Dementia Joe would use bird shot on that front door of his. No one who has used slugs or heavy buck shot loads (the only loads that can reliably stop a person especially in when wearing heavy clothing) in a shotgun would spout off with this:
“Most people can handle a shotgun a hell of a lot better than they can a semiautomatic weapon in terms of both their aim and in terms of their ability to deter people coming.”
The standard when evaluating a self-defense claim is the “reasonable person” standard. But the standard when evaluating the lawfulness of a police shooting is higher; it’s the “reasonable police officer” standard. Precisely to keep hopelessly stupid people like Joe “Just Shoot ‘Em In The Leg” Biden from substituting their own untutored, moronic ideas for that of a law enforcement officer who is actually on the job.
Biden is an idiot.
A useful idiot.
Lenin talked about “useful idiots”, and many, perhaps most college students are being indoctrinated into being useful idiots.
Useful to the rich power structures, that feel they are entitled to power.
Credentialed, not really educated, idiots with the power to make organizational decisions.
Like to power to decide NOT to play the US National Anthem at a baseball game.
Thanks, JimNorCal for some inspiration.
Free people don’t have to follow the stupid decisions of credentialed idiots.
My wife went with me to a local range a couple weeks ago – her first time. We’ll go again. I was an expert shot when younger, boy scout plus USNA, but way out of practice with worse eyesight now.
More conservatives need to get more involved in K-12 teaching. Even if it pays less. To reduce the ignorance of the useful idiots.
Tom Grey
I picture myself in front of a history class. And finding four flat tires when I leave. Plus cancelled. Accused of assaulting a student. Vilified at a school board meeting.
There was an episode of The Streets of San Francisco where the Michael Douglas character was at the range practicing the Joe Biden leg shot. The show first hit the small screen 48 years ago, the same year Biden was elected to the US Senate.
Biden is an example of “failing up.”
Biden and his entire family are rotten to the core, and Biden is demented as well.
Of course, Democrats are evil. You saw that in the Barrett hearings. Hirono the Jap-born former Buddhist is a prime example.
Democrats are fixing to persecute Trump. Persecute!
See this cnn piece:https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/trump-election-legal-reckoning/index.html
As to ammo, our stores are sold out. Brownell’s, the nation’s biggest retailer, is sold out. I have lots, always have had. If Antifa or BLM comes for me, I am not going down alone.
Biden is a typical Democrat — frequently wrong, but never in doubt.
He fumbled his humble and lost possession.
I mentioned in an earlier comment that if you’re stupid enough to follow “Dementia Joe’s self-defense tips” you’re going to go to prison for a long, long time. I forgot to mention he’s just as likely to land you in the morgue as he is to get you locked up. Tommy Jay quotes from an article that he rightly observes has 3 horrible pieces of advice. OldTexan is correct when he points out that Dementia Joe “Just Shoot Them In The Leg” Biden has no idea what he’s talking about. I’m sure some of what I’m about to say has occurred to many people but no one has articulated it yet. So I will. Then there’s a final observation I’m going to make which will demonstrate Biden is not only an idiot when it comes to firearms but he just self-identified as a fraud when he claims to be Catholic.
You’re better served with a shotgun than an AR-15? This is weapons-grade stupidity which has been triple-distilled to make it 100 proof weapons-grade stupidity. At least four times the stupidity content of any weapons-grade stupidity on the market. Remember, Hidin’ Biden was talking about a double barrel shotgun. I’d be the last one to suggest you’re not armed and dangerous with a double barrel shotgun. I love my Pedersoli 10 gauge side by side. And it’s a muzzle loader. But unlike muzzle loading rifles you don’t give up a much if at all to modern shotguns in terms of down range performance although typically the muzzle loader performs like the next gauge down. So my 10 ga. will match the performance of a 12 ga. You do not want to threaten my life when I’m holding my 10 ga. True I only have two shots, then I have to grab it by the ends of the barrels and club you to death with it if you’re still moving. Heaven help me if I’m dealing with more than two assailants.
What you give up is reloading speed (fortunately I’m never without a knife, and you don’t need to reload a knife).
Which is precisely what you give up using a double action shotgun compared to an autoloading rifle. The AR-15 chambers the next round for you. Sloe Joe Biden’s pheasant gun doesn’t. If it’s equipped with ejectors it will kick the empty shells out of the chambers (over your shoulder if properly timed) but if you have ejectors it simply pulls the shells partially out of the chambers so you can manually extract them. Then you have the problem of inserting fresh shells into the chambers.
Most people haven’t handled a double rifle. They’re a dream to reload because nearly all are chambered to use necked cartridges (and those that aren’t necked are tapered). So the neck of the cartridge is a lot smaller than the base of the shell. And the bullet is normally tapered. In other words since it essentially tapers to a fine or at least rounded point that is a lot smaller than the first part of the chamber you stick it in…
http://media.midwayusa.com/productimages/880×660/Primary/883/883419.jpg
it practically guides itself into the chamber (by design; .40 cal double rifles and above are nearly universally intended for dangerous game and therefore to be reloaded under stress). Shotgun shells don’t. They’re the same diameter from the base of the shell (the rim doesn’t count) for its entire length; the firing end of the shell is just a flat, perpendicular surface. ..
https://www.brownells.com/ammunition/shotgun-ammo/black-ammo-12-gauge-00-buckshot-prod98996.aspx
If you’re going to use a SxS (or O/U) shotgun to defend yourself you have to practice reloading it or else you’ll fumble it under stress.
(sorry, no pics of low brass no. 6 shot 2 3/4″ shells, which is no doubt what Bwana Biden uses on his farm-raised pheasants and what Sgt. “Rambo” Biden recommends for home defense; C’mon man!) When I was in the Navy I qualified with the Mossberg M590 tactical pump gun. You can get the next round into the chamber PDQ if you take advantage of the recoil to rack the shell out of the chamber. If you wait to fully recover from recoil, which a lot of people will naturally do if they don’t have much experience, before racking the slide your reload will be slow.
There’s a reason why the USN and USMC decided to go with the Benelli M4 semiauto to replace the M590. It does the work for you.
Biden isn’t just a font of the worst firearms advice imaginable, he’s a font of bad legal advice. A firearm IS deadly force. Yet Biden is advising people to use firearms in a way that signal in bright, flashing neon lights that you aren’t justified using them since you’re not countering a deadly threat.
Warning shots from the balcony? Firing through the door since “you want to keep someone away from your house.” Shooting someone in the leg? I’m not even going to point out all the ways Biden demonstrates he has less tactical sense than an earthworm. But what are you telling the court when you pepper some innocent party with shot when shooting at no one in particular from your balcony. Shot, particularly bird shot, runs out of energy pretty quickly. That’s why shotguns are legal in fairly built up areas for deer hunting while rifles are not (some entire states like Rhode Island only allow shotguns for hunting). But while shot might not have enough energy to penetrate clothing or even skin past 150 yards it will still have enough energy to destroy an eye. Warning shots and shooting through the door “to keep someone away from your house?” Both of those acts advertise the fact that at that point you did not think your life was threatened. But a successful self-defense claim hinges on (among other factors) that you reasonably feared for your life or grievous bodily harm. Biden may not be able to hit the side of a barn even if he’s standing inside one, but he’s capable of blasting the hell out of a self-defense claim. And aiming for the leg? I can hear Biden testifying in his own defense; basically restating this insanity:
“‘you have to teach [the police] how to de-escalate circumstances,’ said Biden. ‘So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.’”
What I hear Biden saying under cross examination is, “C’mon man! I wasn’t trying to kill the guy. I was trying to ‘de-escalate circumstances.’ So I aimed to shoot him in the leg.”
Whether he missed the guy entirely, hit the guy in the leg and only wounded him, hit him in the femoral artery and he bled out, or he missed the guy’s leg but hit him in the torso and inflicted fatal or life threatening wounds, he just told the court in his own words that he didn’t perceive an imminent threat. Biden just told the judge and jury there was still time to de-escalate the situation. If no reasonable person, or not even a terminally stupid person like Biden, thought there was an imminent threat but the defendant shot anyway, that defendant better hope he has friends and relatives who will put money in his/her prison commissary account. Because you’re going to prison. I’m not a lawyer, but please, lawyers, check my work. My understanding of the law is you’re not justified in pointing a gun at someone if you’re not justified in pulling the trigger, and you’re only justified in pulling the trigger if your only choice is to take the other person’s life or lose your own. Biden thinks you can randomly shoot at people or obstacles or just into the air whenever you have a vague sense of anxiety.
BTW, Giuliani is right. Joe Biden was the stupidest person in law school when he plagiarized his way through. And Hunter Biden was also the stupidest person in law school a couple of decades later, but at the moment I’m focusing on the elder imbecile.
Now we come to how Abortion Barbie Biden is laughably incapable of pulling off the, “C’mon, man! I’m a devout Catholic” act. If I were debating him I’d ask him to explain the principle of double effect, and insist he answer the question. And I don’t even consider myself Catholic anymore, not since the Church traded in the New Testament for Das Kapital as scripture and installed the Argentinian Marxist Jesuit as Pope. And decided that selling out Christians while they are are actively being viciously persecuted and in many cases killed en masse by CHICOMs and Muslims. Their precious interfaith dialogues haven’t saved a single life in the Islamic world, and Chinese Catholics are shell shocked by how easily the Vatican sold them out to their oppressors, but the virtue signaling Curia can happily cruise the bath houses and restrooms of the public parks of Rome dreaming of building bridges to nowhere (this is not a gratuitous comment).
From the Catholic catechism on lawful self-defense, which since no one in the church hierarchy believes in anymore just like that “Jesus stuff” I had to leave:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm
“SECTION TWO
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
CHAPTER TWO
‘SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF’
…Legitimate defense
2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. ‘The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.’ 65
2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.66”
I doubt any of them could explain the principle of double effect without looking it up. Simply put you aren’t capable of fulfilling the second of what Jesus said were the two greatest commandments if you don’t love yourself, and therefore your own life. If you don’t love yourself, and your life, then you can’t love your neighbor. If your intent is to preserve life, even if the means by which you do so has the possible (even predictable) risk of taking life then you aren’t violating the commandment against murder (Hebrew like English differentiates between killing and murder but most English transliterations get it wrong). This is why if a mother’s life is at risk during pregnancy, such as an ectopic pregnancy, Catholic hospitals can perform certain procedures to save the mother’s life because they aren’t direct abortions. If the procedure is a direct or intentional abortion then those are prohibited, and anyone who has one, performs one, or helps procure one has committed a grave evil by intentionally taking an innocent life.
Cops shoot to stop. That means center of mass, as so many others have pointed out. Even lawful combatants in an all out war don’t necessarily intend to kill since the logic behind the laws of war that allow full metal jacketed bullets but not expanding hunting-type bullets is that if your intended target is only wounded then you’re taking out at least three combatants. The target and whomever has to haul his @$$ to the aid station or at least to cover (I’m not saying I find this argument all that convincing). Then there are all the resources you need to pour into treating the wounded and aiding their recover assuming you’re fighting an enemy that values their soldiers,’ etc., lives (which does NOT include the CHICOMs or the NORKs, among others).
I recommend everyone read “Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947” to get a sense of just how massive the effort would have been. MacArthur’s staff surgeon would have been in command of his own air force and navy just to haul whole blood and plasma from the U.S. to staging bases in the Philippines, get the whole blood (a fleet of refrigerated LSTs, a new innovation designed just for this purpose), plasma, and other medical supplies and personnel to the theater of combat, then recover the wounded and transport them to rear area hospitals and then back to the U.S.
The Navy’s great fear, after Iwo Jima and OKinawa, was that they hadn’t ordered enough Purple Heart medals to award all the wounded Sailors and Marines when it finally became clear just how massive the number of casualties they’d have on their hands if they actually had to invade the Japanese home islands; thank the Lord for atomic weapons.
Basically when we start peeling the onion of Joe Biden’s stupidity we find endless layers of it. And he like all leftists are incapable of learning. Ever watch Juan Williams try to explain “no duty to retreat” laws? For decades he’s been getting it wrong, no matter how many times more knowledgeable people explain, LOUDLY and SLOWLY using one syllable words whenever possible, that these are not “shoot to kill laws.” After at least two decades he still is convinced that “castle doctrine” laws and what he calls “stand your ground laws” permit people to execute innocents.
Biden is the same way. No wonder when Obama was wrestling with the decision to authorize the raid to capture or kill OBL in Abbottabod and Biden was the odd man out and said, “My suggestion is, don’t go” Obama decided to the obvious course of action was to give the thumbs up to the operation. As Neo pointed out, Obama isn’t stupid. He may have picked Biden because stupid people think Sundown Joe lent foreign policy “gravitas” to the ticket, but Obama knows Biden has a track record of being wrong on every single important issue for the past fifty years. No doubt Dr. Jill asks Joe for his opinion on which dress to wear on important occasions. Then wears the dress he didn’t pick.
On all matters great and small, especially on self-defense matters, it’s useful to get Dementia Joe’s opinion. Then doing the exact opposite.
Thanks, steve57. That was a lot of work on your part. Very useful.
Tangentially, on that distinction between ‘kill’ and ‘murder,’ I notice after checking on it that this occurs in the Greek as well – I mean looking across the Greek Old and New Testaments. The Greek in “Thou shalt not kill” uses a different word than does a statement like “You seek to kill me” in the NT. I don’t have time at the moment to do a deep dive with a concordance and all that, but it’s food for thought for later, I guess. It might have to be looked into at some length to really understand it (and I’m sure has already been done elsewhere).
I sold my cloak and bought a sword. Now what?
Liz, huxley —
I hear from a couple of friends who are getting started training with their new firearms, that at least here in the greater Seattle area a lot of gun stores/ranges won’t rent you a gun to try out if you don’t already own a gun or if you’re not with a friend.
Apparently there have been suicides.
Some years ago Joe talked about shooting the ol’ shotgun through the door. Great way to kill the pizza delivery dude, Joe.
Does anyone remember the old Depeche Mode song “People are People?” I do. I’ll never be able to forget that irritating damned thing. It came out in the mid ’80s and every time I heard it I wanted to imitate John Belushi in Animal House. Grab a guitar out of some hippy’s hands and beat the radio or stereo or boom box that was polluting the environment with those sound waves to complete and utter destruction. Every syllable of the song was an affront to the intellect and to aesthetics, but this verse was particularly despicable:
Back in the ’80s the term “virtue signalling” hadn’t been invented yet. But I was in college at the time with a bunch of virtue signalling leftists who only held the opinions and political positions they held to demonstrate how much better they were than “those people” who didn’t. “Those people” Hillary Clinton would later consign to her “basket of deplorables.”
One thing I learned about leftists is that they lie a lot. For instance, as Depeche Mode put it, nice leftists simply don’t know what it is to feel hate. They need us evil deplorables to help them understand how it’s possible to hate anyone. And of course they will never learn. Because of course if they were capable of learning then they wouldn’t keep proposing/voting for the same cruel, destructive policies that can only keep resulting in the same cruel, destructive outcomes.
They insist that they be judged on their intentions, not results. For some reason no matter how many times they inflict harm on other people they insist we play the “but their hearts are in the right place” game. “Good people” want “generous” welfare benefits that the “good people” insist will help poor people. When their policy preferences never help people out of poverty but instead create more poverty, well, their hearts were in the right place, dammit. Then they double down.
There hearts aren’t in the right place. Only evil people can perform acts of evil over and over and over again, not caring about the harm they do.
At about the same time “People are People” was climbing the charts The Cosby Show was really popular. The “good people” were saying things like “When I watch The Cosby Show I don’t see a black family. I just see a family.” I grew up in Oakland. Supposedly it’s racist of me to point out that I dated a lot of black girls and had a lot of black friends. Oakland was (or at least seemed) about 50% black. If I couldn’t get along with black people I’m giving the cold shoulder to something like 50% of the population and there’s something wrong with me. My black friends and I would listen to leftists say stupid things like that and our reaction was, “WTF is wrong with your eyes? The Huxtables are a black family.”
It turns out leftists are the racists we always suspected. They’re just more open about it now. The reason they couldn’t admit they saw a black family when they watched The Cosby Show is because they (not conservatives) have a lot of prejudices against blacks. Since they think and expect the worst from blacks, they pretended not to see them back then. It’s a classic case of projection. “Oh, YOU see a black family do you? Klansman!” In the 1920s racist Dems laughed at the idea of blacks going to college because, they said then, blacks are too lazy and stupid. Now racist Dems insist blacks get extra points for anything because to actually enforce standards would be racist. The “good people” know that the poor dears can’t do the work because of “systemic racism” and “white supremacism.” It’s racist to expect blacks to score as high on the SAT or ACT as whites and Asians (for some reason the same crowd of American citizens Democrat hero FDR interred during WWII as disloyal and potential traitors have been reinvented as a primary beneficiary of our white supremacist system) because, of course, plus reasons. So black students still get in to top tier universities if they score 400 points lower on the SAT than some Chinese guy; scoring somewhere in the triple digits is a really good score! For a black person, natch. It’s racist to expect blacks (Hispanics, too) to speak and write standard. You can look it up; actually assessing a student’s writing ability when they turn in a writing assignment perpetuates or racist system of “white language supremacy.” Seriously, this is a social justice thing. Instead of ability the SJWs insist that students are scored on the “effort” they put into an assignment. And they have to presume white and Asian students didn’t put any effort into their assignments because of our “white supremacist” system, but blacks and Hispanics had to put four times as much effort into the assignment to produce something 1/4 as good. Not because they’re stupid. No, that’s what racist Dems would have said in the 1920s. C’mon man! It’s the 2020s. Expect less from black and brown people for different racist reasons.
Even better; “academic justice” requires that teachers and professors give exemplary grads to BIPOC (look it up) students who don’t turn in their assignments. And extra “woke” points if they don’t show up at all for class. Not because they’re lazy, racist! Because they’re too emotional; they’re traumatized by the systemic injustice in this nation that was founded in 1619 on the institution of slavery and only declared independence because the racist slave holders were worried Great Britain was about to abolish slavery, according to the scholars at the NYT magazine (never mind that racists said the same racist things about minorities being ruled by their emotions back unlike calm, rational white people in the 1920s).
For years I simply thought that leftists were incorrigible liars. But then I learned about the antisocial personality disorders of sociopathy and psychopathy. All normal human beings feel hatred. Just like they feel fear, or jealousy. There is considerable overlap between a sociopath and a psychopath. The difference is sociopaths have a conscience and psychopaths don’t. A sociopath’s conscience is very weak, and it won’t stop them from treating others as objects to be used to get what they want. They will demonstrate the same pattern of aggression, manipulation, deceit, and lack of empathy for others as a psychopath. But when a sociopath does all that the sociopath feels a weak, tiny twinge of guilt. Again, not enough to stop them. A psychopath doesn’t feel any such emotions at all.
All that does is make a sociopath easier to spot than a psychopath. They feel the little twinge of guilt but they don’t care. More importantly they don’t care if others see them for the angry, aggressive, manipulative liars that they are. Whereas psychopaths are more calculating. They don’t have human emotions; they don’t hate, they don’t fear, they don’t love. When a sociopath becomes a serial killer they want to tell the world about it. They’ll write letters to the cops and the media to brag. A true sociopath observes others and learns how to blend in; how to fake normal human emotions.
Maybe not all leftists are simply liars. Maybe when the say they don’t understand normal emotions, when they hold political opinions and espouse policies only because they have been indoctrinated that all of the “good people” have those opinions and espouse those policies and they don’t care how many people they hurt, it’s because they’re psychopaths who lack empathy.
For the record, I don’t believe Dementia Joe is a psychopath. No, it’s more likely he’s a sociopath. He’s lied, plagiarized (he plagiarized his way through law school and then as a politician he didn’t just plagiarize one of British Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s speeches, Biden stole Kinnock’s entire life story; how insane is that?), manipulated, deceived, and used others his entire life. And when you challenge him on it he flies into a rage. “You’re a lyin’ dog faced pony soldier” he said to a student in New Hampshire, “You’re a damned liar” he told an 84 y.o. retired farmer in Iowa (and I believe it was that farmer he called “fat” but it may have been someone else he called fat), he’ll poke you in the chest and tell you he doesn’t want your vote, he’ll tell you you’re not black if you don’t want to vote for him, or he’ll just challenge you to a push-up contest or to go outside and fight. He said for years his first wife and his daughter were killed by a drunk driver. Even though he knew, and at times he admitted he knew, the truck driver wasn’t drunk. And then after admitting the truth he goes right back to lying about it. He also knows law enforcement authorities who investigated the accident actually thought his wife was at fault for pulling out in front of the truck which couldn’t avoid the accident at that point. But sociopaths get angry and blame others. Joe Biden gets angry and blames others.
Like a true sociopath, he doesn’t care about hiding it. If he were a psychopath he’d be better at hiding. He has the added benefit of being a leftist Democrat. The media cleans up his messes. It certainly looks to me that dementia or senility isn’t Sundown Joe’s first mental disorder.
Then there’s the fact that leftists are incapable of learning. Because if they could learn from the horrible results their policies and opinions inflict on third parties they would have to change their minds. But they can’t because their coreligionists in the Church of Woke demand rigid lockstep compliance with the dogma of political correctness. I was reflecting on the fact that what Juan Williams insists on calling “stand your ground laws” are simply “no duty to retreat” laws. A duty to retreat never existed in the parliamentary or common law tradition we inherited from the British. It was a later, leftist invention. We went through a decades long spasm in the 20th century when leftists grafted on a requirement to retreat “when safe to do so.” I put those words in scare quotes since that’s something a leftist prosecutor will insist is always possible. Later. After hours, days, months of being able to recharacterize the actions of someone who only had seconds to respond under extreme stress. Because leftist prosecutors are “good people” who go to the same secular church all the “good people” attend. And good people know you shouldn’t have a gun, or any other deadly weapon, and it’s wrong for you to defend your life against a criminal or even call 911 when someone breaks into your house because that’s racist and that reaction comes from “a place of privilege.”
https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1269951088964370432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1269951088964370432%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3%2Ccontainerclick_0&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthenewamerican.com%2Fminneapolis-city-councilor-calling-911-for-break-in-is-white-privilege%2F
Just like it may be a crime for a Muslim to behead you, like recently happened in Paris and like IS executioners loved to video. But it’s a worse crime if you allow a “racist,” “Islamophobic” thought to pass through your head while it’s still attached to your body.
“How dare you!” I say, channeling Greta Thunberg, “how dare you expect Muslims who are still traumatized by the Crusades, the Inquisition, and American foreign policy behave according to the white cultural imperialist standards we white supremacist colonizers imposed on the innocent BIPOC people we invaded and ‘otherized.'” If they want to throw widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres as the Hindu practice of Suttee demanded, or if they behead people for insulting their prophet as their prophet Muhammad decreed (Sunan Abu Daoud, vol. 40, “Prescribed Punishments (Kitab Al-Hudud),” Ch. 2, “The ruling regarding one who reviles the prophet (pbuh);” Spoiler alert; the punishment is death according to Shariah law) or for “making mischief in a Muslim land” as their Allah decreed (Surah 5:33), who are you old white people to judge? All cultures are equal; all civilizations are equal. Except for white culture and western civilization. Which is the spawn of the devil.