Nom de plume: Rivrdog

The NRA Shits in it's own Messkit, AGAIN

If POTUS signs HR38/HR4477, he has opened the door to gun confiscation on an almost-unlimited scale. The "Fix NICS" half of that bastard conglomeration will allow a (D) President to require BATFE to "study", then implement virtually unlimited "Categories of Prohibited Persons". The HR 4477 part of this Bill is the beginning of the end of the 2A.

Gun owners will only be "safe" from this gun-grab time-bomb as long as a Gun Rights POTUS occupies the White House, and the sad reality is that era could be over in as little as 3 years, and no more than 7 years. Under this Bill, the 2A will be the responsibility of the BATFE to "protect".

Sorry, people, Concealed Carry Reprocity will: (1) Be sued by the ten or so gun-grabber states who WILL succeed in negating it's effect and (2) subtracting the gun-grabber States, HR 38 only gives a few more states where you can't already carry with a Utah permit or which are Constitutional Carry States.

HR 38 is a only minor improvement in gun rights, but the HR 4477 part pretty much guarantees the end of the 2A as we know it on the day the next Liberal POTUS is inaugurated.

The most curious thing to me is that when the gun-grabber States go to Federal Court (and eventually, the SCOTUS), their argument will be State's Rights, and that IS a powerful argument. No, the way that the NRA SHOULD have worked this issue is to sue each gun-grabbing State for violating 18 USC 242, Denial of Civil Rights Under Color of Authority, citing the totality of all the gun-rights-restricting laws in those States. I believe that a case could have and should have been made that SCOTUS has already acted sufficiently to declare the R2KBA an Individual Right, and the USDOJ should provide an enforcement mechanism for Heller and McDonald, the landmark R2KBA cases now in place as the Law of our Land.

The NRA has won only a Pyrrhic Victory with the passage HR-38/HR-4477, and I believe the org knows that. It is now incumbent on all of we gun owners to convince POTUS Trump to veto this miscarriage of our rights.

UPDATE: 12/9/17 0030 PST: For the three NRA "defenders" who have challenged, via comments, the danger I and GOA see in HR 4477, the "Fix NICS Act of 2017", your answer lies in the over-broad definition of "Fugitive From Justice" in 18 USC 922 (g)(2). Pursuing the legal definition of "fugitive...etc" through the excellent Cornell Law site, my search fails at the word "crime", which is not further defined, so the GOA is correct when it posits that a person may become "prohibited" as to NICS acceptance to buy a firearm by nothing more than failing to pay parking tickets, and then moving from that State where those CIVIL (not CRIMINAL) violations occurred. Most jurisdictions have a "bump-up rule" which says that after a fine-payment grace period expires, the violator may be bumped up to misdemeanor charges for some form of contempt of Court for failing to pay the fines. The problem with this HR 4477 is that it sucks in the entire, faulty 18 USC 922 (g) section re: definitions, and the definition in (2) needs to be clarified with regard to an actual CRIME having occurred, specifically a FELONY crime, punishable upon conviction of one specification of charge by imprisonment of one year or more in a PENITENTIARY (not County Jail, since that is the definition of a Misdemeanor).

I was an Officer of the Court of the Multnomah County Circuit Court for 25 years. In that capacity, I was expected to, and did, take training to insure that I was at least conversant with the principles of Law as I have mentioned above in this Update. I was, and am, more than "conversant", since on many occasions, I was required to present the State's case as stated in the proper Accusatory Document (traffic ticket) before the Court without the assistance of a State's Attorney, but in full compliance with the rules of the Court as to evidence, decorum, etc.

The NRA spends a lot of my $35/year dues money schmoozing politicians to do what that org thinks is "doable", and in this case, "doable" means letting the nose of the gun-grabbing camel under the flap of the tent of our Second Amendment. HR 4477 should NOT be supported as written and "grandfathering" the faulty and overbearing 18 USC 922 (g) rule. HR 38 is a good interim step towards National Constitutional Carry, but bad language in all the "Brady"-related Bills has to be corrected before any more of the 2A is jeopardized by the snakes in the grass which NRA is all too willing to excuse.

In two days...

It's my birthday. 74 years. I'm officially a Mid-Seventies Geezer. I get my Life-Membership in the Curmudgeon Club. I can snort and sniffle at all the X,Y, Z generations and their "trending" apple-crapple (especially their Apple crap, not a fan). I'm just a bit too old to be a "Boomer", although I could probably fudge my way into that group, except I diss on THEM also. That generation was responsible for bringing us metal-thrash music. Aside from a few GREAT base players in that genre, you can put metal-thrash music where the sun don't shine. The Doors lit my fire. Aretha Franklin made musical love to me. Steely Dan lit my fire. All music since has been a Royal Scam.

I put up with a lot of different politicians in these 74 years. The first President I read of regularly in the paper was Ike, who had just WON a War for the USA. We don't even try to WIN wars nowadays, we just fight them to some point of supposed advantage, then we quit without vanquishing anyone. The next President I really RESPECTED after Ike was Ronnie Reagan. I was an ace B52 nuclear bombardier during his Admin. Stationed at March AFB for the first three years of Ronnie, his E-4 Airborne Command Post aircraft would fly in and take up so much space, and his Staff used up so many Alert Vehicles that we had to be restricted to the Molehole while he was at his rancho down on the coast, but I didn't mind that, he was a great Commander In Chief to work for. I got a tour on the big bird once. It was VERY secret then.

I had two full careers in these 74 years. My Sociable Seguridad statement from 2003, the year I last worked for a paycheck, said that I had 47 years of full-time SSA credits. I served in the USAF for 22, half on Active Duty and half in the Reserves. I had 25 years as a beat cop on the mean streets, but in the days I worked those streets, the police commanders were interested in RESULTS, not PeeCee attitude. I couldn't do that job today. Crooks are still crooks, and you don't keep your community safe from them by mollycoddling them and "understanding" them, you find Probable Cause that they committed crimes and you take them to JAIL. The police game isn't played that way anymore, and you won't last as a cop nowadays without subscribing to the Chief's (or Sheriff's) political correctness dogma. Summing these two up, the new Chief is a BLM supporter who removed 25+ years of a database which tracked the street thugs as her first policy in her new office. Sheriff Reese is a major gun-banner who has sucked up Bloomberg's bucks. End of discussion on THOSE two. Good effing luck, Portland!

I have a new full-time job now. I am the full-time caregiver for my sweet wife of forty years, who will meet her Jesus in the not-distant future. We have a big house, so trying to keep it clean and her in a civilized condition is a full-time job with overtime every day for me. It's my duty, my God gave me this Duty when I made my Marriage Vows on February 7, 1977.

I have always done my duty as given to me. I see no reason to change that habit now, Praise God.

Three dreaded words

Watching the morning news in the 10am Eastern time segment on Fox. I like Maria Bartiromo, she spiels it out in plain English. Her interviews are clean and crisp and she doesn't talk over her guests like the big evening names do.

Maria was passing along some news out of Vegas. It seems that the MVPD is getting tired of their investigation into the mass-murders, and we know this because they are using a standard, but tried and true Homicide Detective's ploy to segue towards the end of their work. Problem is, they haven't established motive, so now I hear the three ugliest, most dreaded words:

"Undiagnosed mental illness"

Okay, I can hear you say it now, my peeps: "If all the leads turn up nothing, then undiagnosed mental illness must explain it, sir."

Two problems: that gives HUGE new hope to the mavens of Gun-Grabbing that they can maybe pass a bill that further restricts the rights our 2A gives us to keep and bear arms, AND it's a false statement to begin with. If you Vegas gumshoes haven't found the motive yet, could it possibly be because you haven't thought hard enough about the case, and you haven't thought hard enough because your world outlook is too restricted?

In my first instance above, I refer you to the Virginia Tech murders of a few years back. Out of that case, our ever-protective (NOT!) NRA spun their Rolodexes, made their calls and sold us the idea that OMG, un-documented Mental Illness had to be cause to restrict gun rights. We bought off on that and lost some gun rights (mostly for veterans and who gives a rip about veterans, right?) but we also lost some medical privacy, and nobody talks about that. Now comes Vegas, so we are about to be led further down the garden path into that thicket of gun-grabbing thorn-bushes. Now it's un-diagnosed Mental Illness. Think about that for a moment.

Is writing a gun law dealing with un-diagnosed Mental Illness a gun-grabber's blank check, or WHAT! How far from that Bill would it be to "2A only applies if you pass a mental-health examination"? If you said that is a small gap that can easily be overcome, take the rest of this class period off, you've passed the test.

NRA Caves on Bump-Fire

Here is a NY dead-tree report. I suspected that this would happen. NRA's White Flag is here.

Look, I don't give a rip about bump-fire stocks. I wouldn't have one if you gave it to me gratis. Like Uncle says, like PawPaw says, their sole purpose seems to be turning ammo money into gunsmoke rapidly. They are NOT useful for delivering anything but areal fires, and they don't do that accurately enough, either. My range bans them, along with Full Auto because of the "spray and pray" aspect of their use.

N.R.A. = Not Really Advocates (for the 2A). Mark One, Mod Zero NRA operating procedure after the Left's Blood Dancing: 1. Freeze up, say nothing. 2. Spin Rolodex, make some calls to gauge the best Neville Chamberlain Moment. 3. Run up the White Flag 4. Send out a $$$ appeal letter. They've done this several times. Wayne LaPierre has been involved each time. Your 15 minutes are up, Wayne. Hit the road.

If my gun club did not REQUIRE NRA membership as a condition of Club Membership, the NRA wouldn't have had a dime of my money for the past eight years or so. The last useful thing I got from them was the RSO course. I will now appeal to the Board of Directors of my club to either dump the NRA entirely, or at least let us substitute either GOA or JPFO as orgs we can belong to for demonstration of our pro-2A bona-fides..

 

Guns and Suicide, a debunked study.

Jews for Protection of Firearms Ownership cites this "study", which debunks itself on the rule of statistical insignificance. The study's pushers (yes, anti-gun scammers are just like drug pushers, so we call them that here) survey Maryland's population, only 3.5# of the males there come from rural areas, and guess what the "study" concludes? It concludes that EEvil Gunzz are to blame for most male suicides in Maryland! Anyone drawing that conclusion from those facts should be publicly exposed as Charlatans, and thank God we have JFPO to do that.

I looked into the American Public Health Association, because as a kid, I remember my dad belonged to that org. Dad was a Doctor and diplomate of the Harvard School of Public Health. When I opened APHA's front page, the "issues" it addresses as a group appeared to be right out of a Democratic Party Talking Points briefing or a stump speech by a (D) Mayoral candidate for Baltimore, MD. (Human-caused Global Warming is a HEALTH problem?). Next, I looked for Bloomberg's ugly footprints in this rose-garden, and sure enough, I found some. Michael Bloomberg, the Daddy Warbucks of anti-2A politics, bought into the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (Baltimore, MD) years ago just to lend "Authenticity" (read: pump anti-gun beeEss into his politics) to his anti-2A work.

So, another debunked anti-gun "scientific study" for which any dumb schmuck with a plugged-up nose could find the stink of Bloomberg on. Not fake news, but not really news, either. ALL of these "studies" have been engineered to give fake authenticity to anti-gun propaganda. Go over to Joe's Place, he will have many, many more listed over there. Between Joe and JPFO sleuthing around the the lairs of the anti-gunners, they just can't hide.

There IS real news here though, news which supports the debunking that JPFO did. For this news, you need a bit more education than the Democrats would give you. You need some actual study in the history of Philosophy. That's not hard to find, it is a freshman or sophomore-level course at almost every college and university. You can probably take it at your local Community College for $120 or so. After you've had that course or it's equivalent in self-study, you will find that discussions of suicide MUST involve studying Philosophy. Academically, and the Left is nothing if not "Academic", right? (Karl Marx said so, so it must be so, right?), the subject of suicide is ALWAYS philosophical, and most philosophies are against it, most religions, too.

Why does society fight the idea of self-destruction so hard? Simple: they always have. How did such anti-suicide policy get ingrained in Judeo-Christian society so deeply? Simple! It's numbers. When times are hard, and they ALWAYS were hard in the Olden Days, despair at the current life's status one finds one's self in was very common. To prevent society from collapsing of low numbers, Judeo-Christian leaders formulated TWO diktats: first, "Go forth and Multiply" (Book of Genesis 1:28 {KJV}) The second diktat is that one's body belongs to God, therefore, we lack the right to destroy it:

(1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NIV) [19] Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; [20] you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. We are not our own. It is up to God when we die not us. It is hard to argue that a person who kills himself is honoring God with his body.) This last quote is via a very good source, Behind the Badge, btw.

Some philosophical codes don't go as far as saying your body belongs only to God, though. The Bushido code, for one. It was the behavioral code of requirements for the Samurai class of ancient Japan. This code DID include women, btw, so get lost with your feminist cant, ladies. The Bushido Code had a place where suicide was MANDATORY, and that was if you failed it's basic tenets, your military superior could order you to take your own life (Seppuku). I read the Bushido code, never subscribed to all of it. Some of my married-into-family had Samurai roots though, so I got to hear tales of the Bushido Code around the dinner table.

I subscribe to a simple Warrior's code, and yes, I'm a warrior so I can do that. In my Warrior Code, I get to choose the time and place of my own death. Me, Myself and I are the only ones responsible OR empowered for that. As a Warrior should, I have contemplated what conditions I would have to be in to choose to end my life. I KNOW when I would do that, and I only will know when and until that point comes, if it ever does. To give you salacious readers some respite, let me just say that I'm nowhere near that point, as old and decrepit as I might be, I soldier on and suffer through it all.

Did I just digress? No, I just put my literary spear in the belly of ALL these "suicide studies", the VAST majority of which are from simpletons regurgitating ancient philosophy, to say something nice about them. There is NOTHING nice to say about the anti-2A people, they are simply wannabe dictators, and our Constitution AND our Warrior Codes all tell us that those folks are Enemies of our State. If you actually read all my above screed, you KNOW that suicide is not about guns, it's about personal choices.

Now, go forth and multiply.

Portland cops illegally enforce "no weapons zone" at Free Speech Rally

This action shows just how badly the authority of the Left side of Government can be abused.

Situation: a rally by pro-Trump groups was planned for 6-4-17 on Federal property (Terry Shrunk Plaza, Portland), and the Looney Lefty Mayor tried to cancel it, found he couldn't do that, so he sent his cops to cordon off the Federal Park (only one small city Block). The cops apparently were under orders to "stop and frisk" everyone going into the Plaza, and they did that, seizing a LARGE number of things from people. Some obviously WERE makeshift weapons (home-made spears), most were questionable (walking sticks and the like), and some were ordinary things that people would have as they stroll in public, such as pocket folding knives. It seems that the cops overlooked several Constitutional guarantees at their display of force:

• Police are required to issue a Property Report, filed under a Police File Number, for EVERY item which they seize under ANY circumstance. No such reports have been found for this large number of seizures. The cops DID Tweet photos, more of a brag than a report.
• Cops are supposed to follow the law. There is NO law on the books that I am aware of which authorized then to declare any sort of "weapon-free zone" at the perimeter of the Terry Shrunk Plaza. A "State of Emergency" had NOT been declared.
• The Police have let themselves in for HUGE Civil Liability, as there WERE injuries from fights there which the cops (1) did not prevent and (2) disarmed folks of items which they might have used in their own defense.
• The cops may have exceeded their authority so far as to be personally criminally liable for Denial of Civil Rights under Color of Authority (18USC242 et seq).

Who, among the spokespeople for Freedom in this area are going to call for a Civil Rights Investigation? Denial of Civil Rights as a leftist political strategy gains strength by the day around here, but has been practiced by the Lefty Looney Leaders of Portland for years. For example, about six years ago, during Rose Festival Week, I navigated my small yacht up the Willamette River towards the Riverplace Marina, where I had rented a berth for several days. As I approached the downtown area on my voyage from the Multnomah Channel Yacht Club, I stopped at the blockade under the Broadway Bridge to be searched. I had 2 concealable weapons on my boat, allowed by law due to my status as a retired Peace Officer of this State, and I told the Federal Homeland Security cop on the River Patrol boat that. I was refused navigation upriver past that point. I turned around and berthed at the  nearby River Patrol station, and had an River Patrol officer of my acquaintance put my sidearms in his locker. I went back to the blockade, was inspected and passed along (in an escorted convoy, no less) to go upriver past the moored warships of the US and Canadian Navies (to which my 38-caliber Ruger and Kel-Tec P3AT was no threat, since they had sailors topsides manning 20mm and 50-caliber defensive weapons and there was a "red-line" Exclusion Zone in effect around the ships). BTW, my boat is large enough to qualify as a "Home" under Oregon Law, so any weapons aboard M/V Lofoten Girl cannot be removed without a Search Warrant, properly approved by a Judge. None of that mattered to the anti-gun Portland City Hall, though.

Go on offense, NRA-ILA

With a gun-friendly POTUS, and with a GOPe majority in both halls of Congress, why are we still seeing things like the horrible parade of anti-2A llaws enacted in in the Soviet Republik of Kalifornia, and Oregon's commie State Leges desperately trying to catch up to Kali and destroy the 2A for myself and other Patriots?

Where is the firm declaration, stand and ACTION to protect the 2A, in both law AND spirit, NRA?

From a conflict-management point of view, this is an easy fight. Just get Bloomberg's money out of the fight, and get it out VERY definitively, and the battle is over and won. Michael Bloomberg, ex-Mayor of New York and multi-multi billionaire, has been telling us and showing us for over a decade just what his filthy lucre buys in the way of caviling lefty politicians. His money-pot is available to anyone on the Left, as long as they sign on to his anti-gun agenda.

Get that money out of the game and the anti-gun side collapses.

Now that OUR side has a real, by-God conservative US Attorney General, he should hook up IMMEDIATELY with the Solicitor General and sue Bloomberg as a destroyer of Civil Rights, ENUMERATED Civil Rights. It might be a landmark case, and it might take three years for it to get to the SCOTUS, but it WILL prevail there and the now-standard Lefty attacks on the First and Second Amendments will be relegated to the history books.

In the meanwhile, NRA, why are YOU putting your entire corporate energy into selling dubious insurance schemes (first "Lifelock" and now "Carry Guard") instead of PROTECTING  our 2A?

Go on offense, NRA. It's why I still belong, the faint hope that you will actually DO SOMETHING.  

Surveillance State the answer?

It would seem that the Surveillance (nice French word, that!) State is NOT the answer. There were 1,200 surveillance cameras in and around Nice, France. Good cameras. No one watching those cameras, apparently, because backtracking the attack vehicle shows the perp loading it with guns, etc out away from the City center. Think about it. An attentive guard can monitor MAYBE six screens showing activity at once. That would mean that the Gendarmerie needed 200 cops watching monitors on a busy night. I don't know how many they actually had, but if it was more than a dozen, I'd be surprised.

The answer here would have been to have zero road traffic permitted on the waterfront. Maybe they did, I haven't heard, but if that WAS the case, they were unprepared for a vehicle ramming the barriers.

Another answer, of course, would be to have an armed populace. If that had been a crowd on the US Gulf Coast, for example, it's likely that the vehicle would have been fired upon by many, many concealed carriers, markedly shortening the death-rampage. On Coney Island, NY? Not so much resistance. Gun-free zone.

Curious that there were apparently far more weapons on the truck than the lone perp could use. First thing that come to MY investigatory mind is: Where was the rest of the crew of Jihadis? Chickened out? Dog crossed their path and they had to go bathe and change clothes?

That "Ruh-Roh" feeling about the 2A

The feeling is, that the major attack on it which will be the hallmark of Obama's failed presidency is but weeks away, maybe days away.

Yesterday, Obama made a speech about terrorism and internal security. I listened. As the lies started to flow, I was lulled momentarily by the fact that it was all, well, so BOILERPLATE. We will kill ISIS....yada-yada. Home-grown terrorists are harder to catch and get ahead of....yada-yada. I almost zoned the prez totally out as I was doing scut work in the kitchen at the time.

Then the alarm bells started going off. the "Ruh-Roh Alarm" sounded loudly. I re-focused. I followed Fox' handy talking points crawl at the bottom of the screen. The Obama-rama Show wrapped up, and the alarms were still going off.

Why? What alarms? Glad you asked!

OBAMA NEVER MENTIONED GUNS IN THAT SPEECH, NOT ONCE.

He not only didn't mention it, but his two favorite follow-ons were missing: no words on "it's Congress' fault", no "It's the NRA's fault", no "gun-show loophole's" fault. Especially, no "I have a pen and a phone" reference to Executive Action.

Here's a little thing from my military days: when you are at war, a shooting war, and you stumble right onto the enemy and THEY DON'T SHOOT AT YOU, that is worth some brain work to find out why. In infantry warfare, when this happens with reconnaisance patrols, the usual reason is that the enemy has something major going on nearby they don't want you to discover (a hidden HQ, for example), so they let you on through without resistance, hoping that the major-something doesn't get discovered and quickly attacked by a larger force than you represent.

I had this vibe about Obama's speech yesterday. Just now, I got up at 0645, went downstairs to get a clean coffee cup, and while I was getting it, Fox News was expounding on the thoughts I have just expressed, above. Apparently, they did some digging (or just read some O-flunky's lips), and Fox has concluded, as I did yesterday, that some Gun Control Executive Action is forthcoming, fairly immediately.

A fellow blogger of this region, one I read most days (except when he's all pedantic about IPSC, because he is a Rules Monster in that sport), just pointed out that The Hill, a notable, if mostly Left, publication about "Washington Inside", ventures that Obama is readying his Un-Constitutional Edict now, and it will be released, with suitable fanfare, right after the holidays (or sooner, I would surmise).

What will the edict bring?

Well, if Bloomie was in on it, it will bring at least a National Capacity Limit for magazines (resurrect Clinton's, most likely), likely some sort of "Assault Weapons Ban" (again, resurrect Clinton's, but tighten it up so that chosen manufacturers can't grease palms like Bill Ruger did with his Ranch Rifle and buy their way out of it). I'm guessing that there won't be confiscation in it, for now. Obama is likely content to leave that up to Hillary, who has said that she would go down that road. If Hillary doesn't make it to POTUS, there won't be Federal confiscations, except maybe for a 50-cal ban and grab. 50BMG weapons are at risk because they are one RCH (look it up, it's military slang) away from being designated as Destructive Devices now, and that could be done easily by edict.

So, it's time to ask: if POTUS tries to kill the 2A by edict (Clinton did it with Congress, you will recall), what will the GOPe Congress do?

Absolutely Nothing. Need proof: Look at the super-pork bill they just passed. These are NOT the Conservative droids you are looking for...

What will Yours Truly do? Absolutely Nothing. Yep, I am not going to go to war over anything less than active confiscations, which I WILL use my skills against. Why am I promising nothing? You haven't read this blog for long, have you, my friends? If you had, you will note that I advised the purchase of all firearms, magazines and ammo that might be banned from sale, way back in '08, when it began to look like Obama was going to get the (D) nomination. If you DIDN'T follow this blog, and DIDN'T accumulate your weapons since then, you have an immediate task to do so, if you want any.

Told 'ya.

A different Threat, plus your responses

The events unfolding in San Bernardino show us a different threat. Not an unknown threat, just a different one.

We have been used to seeing various formats of homicidal/suicidal Jihad here: 9-11, the various Jihadi gun attacks since then, etc. All these attacks had one common characteristic: the Muslims involved were all determined to kill members of the Western Civilization, but pretty much stuck to methods which left their shock troops dead with the event. One-way attacks. Don't "pass go", Get your 72 raisins immediately.

With San Berdoo, we have just seen an attack in which the Jihadis had trained and prepared to strike with force and effect, but moved on quickly to, presumably, strike again later. Far from the normal homicide/suicide attack, this is more like revolutionary attack. This resembles what we used to refer to as a "partisan" attack. Similar to the tactics of the French or Yugoslavian partisans who attacked the Nazis during WW2. What we just saw could have been very successful for the Jihadis, and the only reason it wasn't, was better training and discipline/communication on the part of the police authorities.

My purpose here is not to figure out how to defeat this different flavor of Jihad, but to prepare the average citizen to survive it. Methods of defeat for the Muslim Jihad will have to wait for a National Command Authority determined to defeat Islamic Jihad itself, and we don't have such leadership now, we have the opposite. We have political and command leadership determined to NOT face down islamic Jihad instead of the other way around. The effect for John Q. Citizen is that he will probably have to face the shock troops of Jihad alone, possibly with the help of local police.

A personal note: I am trained in various aspects of public safety, and as events unfolded and were reported yesterday in San Berdnardino, I evaluated the events as if they were the result of criminal gang activity, since, to me, the events more resembled the activity of, say, Mexican drug cartels or the criminal gang MS-13 (both very active in San Bernardino), and both are orgs not unwilling to create mass murder to get their point across. I was wrong in that analysis, mostly because I applied the usual standard of homicide/suicide Jihad, then rejected it, and this event did not fit that model.

So, how to prepare?

1. Arm up. The protected citizen will be armed at all times, with handgun(s) within hands' reach at home and away, and a long gun close by as well. You will have to figure out how to conform to "safe storage" laws to accomplish this in your home and in your car (presumably, your "away" long gun stays in the car). At home, I have quick-reaction pistol safes (plural), and the long gun goes back in the big safe when kids are present, so I comply. In the car, I carry on my person as I am permitted to do, and my long gun is a Kel-tec folding rifle with internal lock, carried in a locking gun case, kept in the locked trunk of the vehicle.That complies with local law as well (it would NOT comply in CA or several Eastern states though).
2. Train up. At this point, if you have not already done so, join a local gun club or commercial firearms practice facility. Your preference should be one which has practice facilities for handgun (any caliber), rifle (any caliber) and shotgun. With the exceptions of no 50BMG and no full-auto, my club fits these requirements. You will need to allot sufficient funds for ammo, and/or begin to reload your chosen calibers. You will need to allot sufficient time to practice, probably a minimum of once per month in the training phase, and four times per year with all defense firearms as a maintenance-of-training effort.
3. Smarten up. Apply some common sense as to your selection of events to attend, particularly if you will be responsible for others' safety. Large outdoor events are Jihad targets of opportunity, as are crowded shopping malls. Organized athletic events in arenas and stadia are probably safer to some degree, but the Jihadis wouold love to target one for the kill ratio that they could achieve. Consider applying a sliding scale of risk to your life and it's chosen events. Yeah, that's a bummer, but we are at war, dude! You are probably safest at home, relatively safe out and about in your vehicle, safe enough doing shopping that is NOT done in large, crowded venues at peak predictable times. You are less safe in any public crowd, on mass transportation, at any outdoor event which has been heavily advertised as to attendance prospects. The training and/or dedication of your local policing authority is a factor in your relative safety also. Evaluate it.
4. Vote up. National elections are close at hand. Regardless of your political affiliation, you need to vote for your own safety. Safety is personal, and politicians and political parties which refuse to recognize your personal safety as their Job #1 should NOT get your vote. This is not about flavors of morality, this is about survival. See my note on National Command Authority, above.

Again, we are at war. The war has been brought to these shores by Islam, and it's not going to get "wished away", even though this seems to be the primary "combat strategy" of the current political Administration. YOU are responsible for your OWN safety, so make safety happen for you, NOW!

A final word. Religion. Your personal religious creed should give you the mental strength to survive the mental rigors of mortal combat. It is NOT required for that purpose, but if you hold to a creed, it will pay you to increase your attention to it in these anxious times. Your creed is your business under our Constitution. Your survival is a natural AND Constitutional Right under our system. You MUST consider anyone who attacks you for your creed or attacks your Right to survival as your enemy. Islam is attacking/denying both.