AT WHAT POINT DO NEW YORK VOTERS SAY “NO” TO CRIME AND CORRUPT GOVERNMENT?

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL IS A GHOUL!

[UPDATED WITH CORRECTIONS REPORTED BY AQ READERS WHO NOTED INCORRECT DATES PERTAINING TO NEW YORK GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO'S RESIGNATION, AND THE DATE UPON WHICH HIS REPLACEMENT, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL, BECAME GOVERNOR, SERVING NOW FOR 14 MONTHS. SHE IS NOW UP FOR ELECTION, FOR THE FIRST TIME, ON NOVEMBER 8, 2022, RUNNING AGAINST LEE ZELDIN, WHOSE ELECTION AS GOVERNOR WOULD MARK THE FIRST TIME NEW YORK WOULD SEE A REPUBLICAN ELECTED GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK IN 20 YEARS. [SEE CHANGES TO THIS ARTICLE IN "GRAY" INK INFRA]The adage “People get the leaders and government they deserve” has increasing relevance today, in America.Cities, States, and the Nation are imploding. This is no accident. It is by design.Consider New York and its largest city.The five Boroughs of New York City are a cesspool of violence. Crime is rampant. It is out of control. And it is affecting the entire State. No one is safe.This is no illusion. It is very real. Politicians and newspapers that deny this are not merely lying to the public, they are insulting the public’s intelligence.This situation is unacceptable, and it need not be. But it happens to be because most of the electorate votes the worst people into Office.Take Kathy Hochul, the present Governor of New York. Hochul, the Lieutenant Governor took over the Governorship after Andrew Cuomo resigned from Office in disgrace. But Hochul is no better than Cuomo. Both embody two of the worst traits of a human being: Arrogance and Piousness.It is bad enough to see these character traits in any person. But society itself is endangered when such people hold public office. For then, these character flaws have free reign. The result is corruption on a vast scale.The impact of corruption is felt on many levels.Corruption in Government is felt on a societal level, as institutions fall apart and, concomitantly, society falls into decay.Corruption in Government is felt on an economic level as businesses, unable to operate in a lawless environment, are forced to leave. Tax revenues then dry up. With Government services attenuated, cities and states fall into a death spiral.And corruption in Government is felt on a basic and raw, physical level, as criminals and lunatics prey at will on millions of innocent men, women, and children. No place is safe: public areas, stores, and shops, schools, houses of worship, even one’s home is susceptible to violence from roving predators.People grow anxious, fearful, and afraid to venture out, day or night. The consequences for victims of violent crime are life-altering.And what do we get from our government leaders: much talk, but no effective action.Kathy Hochul, Lieutenant Governor under Andrew Cuomo was sworn in as New York's Governor on August 24, 2021. Did anyone ever hear of her? Cuomo kept his understudy in mothballs for years. He intended to remain Governor in perpetuity, as New York law allowed, running for re-election every four years for another term. There are no term limits. But the Democrat Neoliberal Globalist powerbrokers had other plans. For whatever reason, likely not the ones that were fed to the public, they wanted him out. The news organs went to work, making much of the sex scandals, that the powerbrokers and the Press had certainly known about for years, but had ignored. In a flood of stories, the Press reported on the sex scandals, and, to a lesser extent, the Press reported on the COVID-19 nursing home deaths that were clearly more important and altogether reprehensible. But as for that latter story, the Press had hitherto, and peculiarly, underreported it, had even been dismissive of it, even though the New York public had always known about it and was justifiably angered by it, as were Americans around the Nation.But now the floodgates were opened. The Press went to work. The powers that be, whom the Democrat Party and the Press serve had tired of Cuomo. Having realized the game was up, and that it would be futile to fight the powers that be, Cuomo reluctantly announced his resignation, on August 10, 2021, to be effective 14 days later, on August 24, 2021. On that same date, August 24, 2021, Kathy Hochul, who Cuomo had kept in mothballs since 2015 when she sat as Lieutenant Governor, took the Oath of Office, See, e.g., articles in Spectrum News NY1 and the article in the AP. Now, Kathy Hochul faces the New York electorate for the first time. The midterm elections take place on November 8, 2022. She is running against Republican, Lee Zeldin, who gave up his U.S. Congressional seat to run for Governor of New York. The race is tight and the liberal media is nervous, frantic, really. See the article in the periodical, Time. Magazine. Democrats have become incautious and arrogant. They thought it would be impossible for a Republican to be elected Governor. The last Republican elected New York Governor was George Pataki, and that was 20 years ago. Pataki had narrowly defeated Andrew Cuomo's father, Mario. That surprised, shocked Democrats. See a 1994 article in the Washington Post. See also the article in The Hill. Will there be another upset in November 2022? One can pray it to be so. If enough voters in New York City have had enough of crime, corruption, and misspent taxpayer monies, they will give Hochul the boot.Fourteen months in Office has given the New York electorate more than an inkling of what to expect from Hochul if she gains the Governorship.Does the public want this person? Since a New York Governor’s term in Office is four years, the scale of the damage she would do to New York, economically and societally, would be enormous, irreparable. Scarcely over one year in Office, Hochul’s Administration is already embroiled in scandal.Last month, September 23, 2022, the New York Post cast light on Hochul’s corruption in a story titled,“‘They did what they did’: Hochul sees $637M ‘pay-to-play’ as no big deal.”  the Post points out:“Gov. Kathy Hochul tried to avoid blame Friday for a spiraling ‘pay-to-play’ scandal in which one of her top political donors scored no-bid contracts that overcharged taxpayers for $637 million in COVID-19 test kits.And she also brushed off the notion anyone in her administration should pay the price for it, telling The Post dismissively, ‘They did what they did.’Asked about the recently revealed deal with Digital Gadgets of New Jersey, whose owner, Charlie Tebeble, and his relatives have contributed about $330,000 to her campaign, Hochul at first repeated her team’s talking points on the simmering scandal.‘My directive to my team was: ‘The only way we’re going to get kids back in schools is to amass as many test kits from wherever you need to get them – just go do it,’ the governor said, when asked to answer for it by The Post at an unrelated event in Lake George.‘That was my only involvement.’New York might have saved as much as $286 million on the tests had the Hochul administration gotten a better price from the company, which the Times Union recently reported charged the state twice as much as other vendors selling the same test.”Hochul is corrupt to the core of her being. And she has made her corruption known both to the public and to those of like kind who are well-heeled. She is duplicitous, unapologetic, and slippery as an eel.The New York Post revelation isn’t a one-off. Hochul is power-hungry and without scruples and the big donors know this. They want her in Office, and they have filled her coffers before she even took the Oath of Office. They lavish favors on Hochul and they expect lavish favors in return. As reported by City and State, New York,“New York has never seen a campaign finance filing quite like Gov. Kathy Hochul’s. She started fundraising in August, days after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he would resign, and she never stopped, bringing in more than $21.6 million in a five month period. Hochul’s campaign touted the haul as ‘the largest contribution total for any single filing period in New York history’ in a press release Tuesday that noted she nearly doubled the $12.8 million raised in 2002 by then-Gov. George Pataki. The windfall further solidifies her position as the front-runner in the 2022 Democratic primary for governor, with her biggest competitors, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi, raising $221,996 and $3.4 million respectively according to the public filings.”And Crain's New York writes,​“Governor Kathy Hochul relied almost exclusively on wealthy donors in the latest campaign fundraising period, which ended in mid-July. The governor received a little more than $2 million, with 46% of her individual contributions exceeding $25,000, according to state campaign finance records.” Does anyone think these big donors give a damn about rampant crime in New York if it doesn’t affect them? Does anyone think they give a damn about anything but their own selfish wants and desires?But more to the point, does Hochul care about the well-being of the State and its cities and of the needs and well-being of the people? The answer is a resounding, “no.”  The New York Post explains:“When it comes to safer mass transit, we’ll take what we can get (as will Mayor Eric Adams). But it’s impossible to see Gov. Kathy Hochul’s offer of some taxpayer cash to support more subway-cop patrols as anything but a panicked gesture.And panic in the face not of the rising violence underground, but of Lee Zeldin’s surging poll numbers.”Many New Yorkers understand that Hochul is deceitful and doesn’t care about New York or its residents. Her tenure in office is all about graft.“When it comes to safer mass transit, we’ll take what we can get (as will Mayor Eric Adams). But it’s impossible to see Gov. Kathy Hochul’s offer of some taxpayer cash to support more subway-cop patrols as anything but a panicked gesture.And panic in the face not of the rising violence underground, but of Lee Zeldin’s surging poll numbers.As Nicole Gelinas notes, the new patrols depend on added overtime, which is nothing like a lasting solution. Cops, like anyone else, can only do so much OT before they’re exhausted — and the city was already expecting to do 61% more street-cop OT than initially budgeted.Plus, NYPD retirements/resignations are on pace to exceed 4,000 this year, the highest since post-9/11. Thanks to no-bail and other ‘criminal-justice reforms’ that Hochul continues to defend and even extend, plus won’t-do-their-jobs DAs like Alvin Bragg (whom she refuses to fire), police morale is through the floor. That means fewer cops, especially fewer experienced ones — yielding a force that’s less effective and more prone to make mistakes that the anti-cop fanatics will seize on to further undermine public safety.Meanwhile, finally getting off her ‘abortion abortion abortion” obsession, the panicked gov just dropped a new ad on crime, with her vowing, ‘You deserve to feel safe, and as your governor, I won’t stop working until you do.’” “You deserve to feel safe”? This can be a useful campaign slogan, but, from the mouth of Kathy Hochul, it is vacuous as hell.This is what Hochul thinks of public safety: It is all “Smoke and mirrors:” Pretend to care about the life of average, honest, hard-working people, but give them nothing but empty promises.Hochul refuses to accept if she ever bothered to consider that——The right to self-defense is axiomatic, self-evident, true. It is a natural law right: an immediate need, at once indisputable, eternal, pre-existent in each human being, immutable, and illimitable, but this natural law right isn’t in Kathy Hochul’s lexicon. And don't expect that Kathy Hochul will proffer New Yorkers police protection.The police don’t operate as personal bodyguards to anyone except political bigshots like the Governor or a mayor of a major city, and, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the police do not legally have a duty to protect anyone. The public isn't aware of this, and Government has done nothing to explain this to anyone. The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively about this.The police force of a community is only under a duty to provide protection for the community as a whole. Unfortunately, in New York, the police do little of that as well, and the fault rests with the Governor, Kathy Hochul and with NYC Mayor Eric Adams.Moreover, with massive cuts in police funding, cashless bail, and the presence of “non-prosecutors” like the George Soros flunky, Alvin Bragg, the need for, and right to armed self-defense in New York—especially in New York City—is acute.But Kathy Hochul perfunctorily dismisses any notion of a natural law right to armed self-defense, even when the U.S. Supreme Court makes abundantly clear to her the right to armed self-defense extends outside the home as well as inside it. Her response to the Bruen rulings makes her antipathy toward the right to armed self-defense crystal clear.Hochul refuses to comply with the High Court’s rulings in the third seminal case, NYSRPA versus Bruen.She conspired with the Democrat-Party majority in the State Legislature to thwart compliance with the rulings of the High Court.Hochul signed into law a set of amendments to the Court’s unconstitutional Gun Law that compound the unconstitutionality and unconscionability of the State’s Gun Law.Unsurprisingly, the package of amendments to the State’s Gun Law, referred to as the “Concealed Handgun Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”) were immediately challenged.Instead of relenting to the challenge, Kathy Hochul squandered taxpayer funds to defend the CCIA.Ultimately, the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York found for the Plaintiff New York gun owners. It issued a TRO, restraining Hochul from enforcing the amendments until trial on the merits of the CCIA.Still, Hochul refused to relent. She appealed the TRO to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where the case remains pending as of the date of this post.Conflating criminal misuse of handguns with the lawful use of handguns for self-defense, Hochul haughtily, contemptuously hides behind propaganda: a false, toxic narrative brew that the proliferation of handguns equates with gun violence.On a superficial level, this may make sense to some people as her proclamation is designed to do. But the true purpose of it is to hide a nefarious agenda: to deny to the law-abiding citizen his or her natural law right to armed self-defense.Hochul’s position is insupportable on legal, logical, and moral grounds. She obviously doesn’t care.If New Yorkers expect a safe and secure New York, they won’t obtain it from a Hochul Administration. Presumptively, any rational person would wish to live in an environment that is safe and would expect its government leaders to value the sanctity and inviolability of the individual.But people like Kathy Hochul care not for the well-being of the individual, but only for her well-being. That is the thinking of a sociopath. That is not the sort of person fit to be a leader.New Yorkers do have an alternative.Congressman Lee Zeldin is running against Kathy Hochul for New York Governor. Congressman Zeldin is the opposite of Hochul. He believes in the sanctity of each living Soul. Hochul does not. Her actions belie her words. Congressman Zeldin is a firm believer in the tenets of Individualism, consistent with the principles of the U.S. Constitution as written, as the framers of our Constitution intended. He is not a Collectivist. Hochul treats New York like a Beehive. She is the Queen Bee, and the average New Yorker, like the average Bee, is expendable! That is the gist of Collectivism.’ The tenets of Collectivism see their true expression and realization in Countries like CCP China. And Trudeau’s Canada is veering in that direction, as is our own Nation, under both the Biden Administration and the Pelosi/Schumer-controlled Congress. And people like Kathy Hochul wish the same for New Yorkers.Congressman Zeldin has stated he will fire Alvin Bragg once elected. Criminals and lunatics will no longer have a “field day.”But Hochul protects this Soros stooge: “Give him some time”; “Cut him some slack,” she retorts! Really? How much slack should New Yorkers give this creep? How much time does he need to prove his ineptitude as a DA? Bragg has since demonstrated his lack of concern for the life and well-being of innocent people. He does not believe in the need for pretrial detention for dangerous low life but immediately throws into the slammer individuals who, to his mind, have the audacity to defend their own life against maniacs.Such is the mindset of people who fail to accept, or even to recognize the natural law right to self-defense.  And rational Americans are expected to live in an insane, nightmarish dreamscape manufactured by these Dr. Frankenstein cousins: Kathy Hochul and Alvin Bragg?Most Americans, though, do not agree and will not accept an America ruled by irrational principles and dogma thrust upon them. Lee Zeldin won't and will not govern under irrational principles and dogma. Zeldin is a proponent of the natural law right of self-defense.He will institute policies that reflect the right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense and he will not kowtow to nor tolerate the antics of lunatics and criminals.Under Zeldin's Governorship New Yorkers need no longer fear the antics of malignant criminals and lunatics; nor the sordid policies of irreverent, irreligious malevolent leaders who give free license to such behavior and herald and rationalize such policies as good and just and right and proper.Congressman Zeldin will be tough on crime and on criminals, unlike Kathy Hochul who literally gives criminals and dangerous lunatics a “get-out-of-jail-free” card. Most importantly, Congressman Zeldin is a man of convictions, and those convictions are consistent with that of the fathers of our Nation. He isn’t a crass opportunist. Kathy Hochul, on the other hand, given the chance, will sell out the State and the people of New York to the highest bidder and, from her present set of actions, she has shown a proclivity to do just that—ransoming the State and the lives of the good people of New York to serve her own selfish ends.New Yorkers should keep uppermost in mind, as should all Americans: voting has its consequences.The future of New York does look bright and will be bright with the team of Lee Zeldin/Alison Esposito. Darkness is and will remain and worsen under the Kathy Hochul Administration—but only if elected.If New Yorkers like to live and work in a perpetual condition of abject fear, unable to defend their own lives with adequate means of protection that only a firearm can provide and unable to rely on the police even to provide a modicum of protection for the community, and if they wish to accept corruption as a normal condition, then by all means, vote for Kathy Hochul for Governor. Hochul has demonstrated she doesn’t give a damn for the physical safety and well-being and welfare of law-abiding American citizens who reside and work in New York; nor for the financial and economic well-being of the State; nor for preserving the tenets and principles of a Free Constitutional Republic, upon which our Country was created and upon which it thrived. For all other New Yorkers—those who do wish to live and work in a State that promotes the safety, well-being, and welfare of American citizens and who do wish to reside in a thriving, vibrant New York—you have an opportunity to do so.Remember: in making your decision, as to whom to vote for, keep in mind the adage invoked at the beginning of this article:Voters get the leaders and government they deserve. Those people become their representatives—the ones THEY elect to office. Ask yourself when you go to the polls to vote: “Do the representatives you vote for truly serve and truly desire to serve your interests or are their words mere artifice as they go about serving their own interests and aims—interests and aims that are altogether at loggerheads with those of you and I, the American people?”___________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT PROTECT YOU! YOU MUST PROTECT YOURSELF!

REMARKS OF ARBALEST QUARREL FOUNDER, STEPHEN L'DANRILLI, ON STEPHEN HALBROOK ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN AUGUST 2020 NRA PUBLICATION, AMERICA'S 1ST FREEDOM

As a NYPD veteran police officer, and Adjunct Professor/Lecturer of Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, National Rifle Association Certified Firearms Instructor (pistol, rifle, and shotgun), and Training Counselor, and active member of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors, and lifetime resident of New York City, I have dedicated my life to the preservation and strengthening of our cherished Second Amendment. This is no easy task, especially today, as we see constant, concerted, vigorous attacks on the fundamental right of personal defense with firearms.So, it was with more than a little interest I read Stephen Halbrook’s article, “How Does New York City Get Away With This,” published in the August 2020 edition of NRA’s publication, “America’s 1^st Freedom.”Stephen Halbrook is a Second Amendment Constitutional law expert and a prolific writer and author who has argued and won several important Second Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.In his article he provides a brief history of restrictive handgun licensing in New York City. He correctly observes that “[i]t all started with the Sullivan Act of 1911, the first law in any state (other than the slave codes) to require a license for mere possession of a pistol even in the home.”  Toward the end of the article, he makes the point that:“Nothing has changed since 1911 when [an Italian-American] Mario Rossi carried a pistol for protection against the Black Hand, for which he was sentenced to a year in prison.” It is of course disturbingly, depressingly, frustratingly true that, indeed, nothing has changed in New York City since 1911, insofar as the City continues to require a valid license to lawfully possess a handgun.Still, in a few important respects, much has changed, and for the worse, since enactment of the unconscionable and unconstitutional Sullivan Act.In the 109 years since handgun licensing began, New York City’s laws have become more extensive, more oppressive and repressive, and confoundingly difficult to understand. These laws are a labyrinthine maze of ambiguity and vagueness, and they are singularly bizarre.Unlike many other States that wisely preempt the field of gun regulation, as failure to do so invariably promotes and leads to confusion and inconsistencies across a State, the York State Government, in Albany, has not preempted the field. The New York Legislature gives local governments wide discretion in establishing their own firearms rules as long as local government enactments don’t conflict with basic State law mandates.Albany traditionally allows, and even encourages, local governments to devise their own, often numerous and extremely stringent, firearms rules. New York City has done so, and with glee, devising an extraordinarily complex and confusing array of rules directed to the ownership and possession of all firearms: rifles, shotguns, and handguns.New York State law, NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (1) sets forth the basic handgun licensing scheme, applicable to all New York jurisdictions, making clear that possession of handguns falls within the province of the police and that,“No license shall be issued or renewed pursuant to this section except by the licensing officer, and then only after investigation and finding that all statements in a proper application for a license are true.” NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (3)(a) provides that,“Applications shall be made and renewed, in the case of a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver, to the licensing officer in the city or county, as the case may be, where the applicant resides, is principally employed or has his or her principal place of business as merchant or storekeeper.”New York City builds upon State Statute, establishing a mind-numbing set of tiers of handgun licensing, mandating the extent to which New York residents may exercise the privilege, not the right, to possess a handgun for self-defense.The Rules of the City of New York, specifically 38 RCNY 5-01, has established, at the moment, at least, no less than 6 different categories of handgun licenses:

• Premises License—Residence or Business
• Carry Business License
• Limited Carry Business License
• Carry Guard License/Gun Custodian License
• Special Carry Business License
• Special Carry Guard License/Gun Custodian License

New York City’s tiered handgun licensing scheme is not only inconsistent with the Second Amendment, but it also promotes unlawful discrimination under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and invites both abuse by and corruption in the City’s Licensing Division. In fact, the City’s insufferable and puzzling handgun licensing scheme is, from a purely logical standpoint, apart from a legal standpoint, internally inconsistent and incoherent.Premise residence and business handgun licenses place considerable restraints on a licensee’s right of self-defense. Unrestricted handgun carry licenses, on the other hand, are issued only to a select few people who satisfy arbitrary “proper cause,” requirements. Of course, powerful, wealthy, politically-connected “elites” are exceptions, routinely obtaining rare and coveted unrestricted handgun carry licenses, unavailable to the average citizen, residing in the City.And criminals don’t obey handgun licensing rules or any other State law or City code, rule, or regulation pertaining to firearms. So they don’t care what the laws say. And this hasn’t changed.But it is deeply troubling, indeed mind-boggling, to believe New York City’s harsh, brutal, even despotic handgun licensing scheme continues to escape Constitutional scrutiny, a point Stephen Halbrook makes at the outset of his August 2020 NRA article, when he says,“‘Under New York law, it is a crime to possess a firearm’, held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in U.S. vs. Sanchez-Villar (2004). This ruling was based on the state’s ban on the possession of an unlicensed handgun. This prohibition did not offend the Second Amendment, said this ruling, because ‘the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.’ Later rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court—D.C v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010—begged to differ. . . . But the Second Circuit must not have gotten the memo. . . .”Stephen Halbrook makes clear that the New York licensing scheme is unlawful on its face because the very concept of licensing is grounded on the erroneous idea that gun possession is a privilege and not a fundamental right, a notion that is completely at odds with the Second Amendment and with High Court rulings. And I agree with Stephen Halbrook’s assessment.The Arbalest Quarrel has pointed out the Constitutional flaws inherent in gun licensing schemes over and over again, through the years, commencing with our first series of articles on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s draconian and inane New York Safe Act of 2013.We called the Governor out on New York’s unconstitutional licensing scheme. See, e.g., our April 30, 2014 article where we concluded with this: “To suffer bad law is unfortunate. But, forced submission to State law that infringes a fundamental right is sinful.” New York City residents have been forced to submit to unconstitutional firearms laws since 1911. New York’s gun control laws were and continue to be enacted to disarm the honest citizen and to discourage personal self-defense.If a person insists on possessing a handgun for self-defense, New York insists on one’s first obtaining permission from the police department to do so, through the acquisition of a license, issued by the police.Yet, the imposition of stringent handgun license requirements is inconsistent with the import of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms as codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Redress is necessary. It’s about time.Still, Anti-Second Amendment proponents and zealots interject that every State requires that a motorist obtain an operator’s license to lawfully operate a motor vehicle on public streets, and they ask, “why should gun possession be any different?” But in posing the question, these Anti-Second Amendment activists demonstrate an intention to reduce the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms to the status of mere privilege, which, in fact, is what a motorist’s license is; merely a privilege to drive an automobile on public roadways. It is logically and legally wrong to view and to treat a fundamental right as a mere privilege.New York attempts to skirt addressing the inherent unconstitutionality of the entire firearms’ licensing scheme through pompous, imbecilic assurances that a person doesn’t need a handgun to defend him or herself because Government, protects a person. That is patently false and, in any event, it is wholly beside the point, as the Arbalest Quarrel made clear in an article posted on our site on November 21, 2019. That article was reprinted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News on November 26, 2019, although in a different format with some editing.As we said, under the ‘doctrine of sovereign immunity’ the police are not, as a general rule, legally obligated to protect and guarantee the life and safety of any individual, and they cannot be held legally liable for failing to do so. Courts have routinely so held, including New York Courts. But many Americans fail to realize this because the seditious Press and politicians routinely lie to them.The purpose of a community police department is to protect the society-at-large, nothing more. I had pointed this out 30 years ago, in an article I co-authored with Second Amendment scholar, David Kopel. And that basic doctrine has not changed since.But, very recently, something has changed and drastically.Radical Left State and local governments are no longer even allowing their police departments to provide a modicum of protection for their community. This follows from the unrestrained actions and antics of volatile Marxist and Anarchist groups whom they kowtow to. They have called for the defunding of and disbanding of community police departments across the Country and some jurisdictions have done so. In New York City the Radical Left Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has slashed $1 Billion from the NYPD budget. This comes at a critical time when soaring crime and daily riots demand more funding for police, not less.This is a major change because the average American can, now, no longer depend on the police to provide even general protection to the community.It must be noted, too, that there are attempts by Marxists and Anarchists to rewrite the laws on sovereign immunity, to hold police accountable for harming citizens. But this is not for the purpose of securing more police protection and for making the police more accountable to the law-abiding public at large.To the contrary, the purpose of overturning police sovereign immunity rulings is  to provide the public with less protection and, at once, to allow lawless rioters, looters, arsonists, and assailants to engage in attacks on the police and on innocent people without having to fear justifiable retribution for their lawless acts.So, in some ways, matters have changed. Radical Left Governments are leaving communities less safe by preventing the police from promoting law and order, and they are even prevented from protecting themselves as lawlessness occurs all around them, rendering them powerless to engage lawbreakers.The public sees the disturbing results: demoralized officers and less safe communities as police are not permitted to provide communities with even a modicum of safety. This obviously is not for the better.Moreover, even as Radical Left Government leaders restrain and constrain the police, they continue to resist recognition of the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms for their own defense. These Marxist leaders demonstrate their contempt for the very sanctity of human life, even as they claim disingenuously to care about human life. They don’t care and they never did. Theirs is a recipe for disaster: for a complete breakdown of law and order in society.But a breakdown of society is precisely what these Radical Left Governments want. They wish to tear down the Nation, so they can reconfigure it in a manner completely at odds with the preservation of the free Constitutional Republic our founders gave us.Yet, despite the intentions of the Radical Left Collectivists, they can’t subvert the dictates of natural law. Natural law dictates that the right and responsibility of self-defense rests today, as it always did, on the individual.Americans must not listen to the seditious Press and duplicitous politicians who claim that defunding or eliminating the police is necessary and, who claim, at one and the same time, the necessity for curbing the personal right of armed self-defense as well; that taking these actions will improve society. That is not only false, it is absurd. The seditious Press and Radical Left politicians don’t have, and never did have, the best interests of the Nation or its people at heart. This is now transparent and, given the present state of affairs afflicting our Country, this fact is irrefutable.Although I have always been a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, I never advocated that everyone should get a gun. I did support and continue to support freedom of choice in owning and possessing firearms. But now, it is time for every law-abiding American citizen to be armed. Learn how to properly use a gun and how to safeguard it.Our Country is at a crossroads. We stand to lose everything near and dear to us if we don’t pay to heed to the threats directed against us, bearing down relentlessly on all of us.It is the responsibility of all citizens to safeguard their own life and safety and that of their families, and to preserve our Republic as the founders intended; to protect it from the insinuation of tyranny that the Radical Left would dare impose on Americans.Stephen L. D'Andrilli________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.