PRIORITIZING CHILDRENS’ SAFETY WHILE IN SCHOOL SHOULD BE THE AIM OF ALL SCHOOL DISTRICTS, BUT IT ISN’T

CHILDREN ARE PAWNS IN A DANGEROUS GAME PLAYED BY THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND BY MANY STATE GOVERNMENTS*

MULTISERIES ON THE ISSUE OF SCHOOL SAFETY

PART THREE

SUBPART ONE

The Nation’s public schools exist for one salient purpose: to sharpen logical-thinking skills in our Nation’s youths so they become confident in their abilities and productive members of society.Something hinders the effectuation of that purpose: school shootings.Board members, administrators, teachers, support staff, and children cannot concentrate on the core purpose of education when they fear the next school shooting incident.There were four major, widely reported tragic school shooting incidents (K-12) in the past 20+ years:**Columbine in 1999, Sandy Hook in 2012, Stoneman Douglas in 2018, and, most recently, Robb Elementary in 2022.These incidents were devastating, profoundly affecting both the children and adults directly involved and the Nation.Each incident is unacceptable. Yet, all were preventable.What are the States doing about this? Some States are doing much; many others little to prevent the next school shooting. See the ecs.org report. States generally, but not invariably, delegate the responsibility for developing and implementing school security plans to the school districts and many have enacted statutes dictating policy in that regard. Id.There are 13,349 School Districts in the Country, and 731 are in New York.The largest School District in New York and in the Nation is the New York City School District, and it has an enrollment of 1,007,610 (K-12 Public Schools) as of June 30, 2021. The New York City School District has 1,400 schools, one-third of all the public schools in the State. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is the sole bargaining agent for teachers, non-supervisory educators, and paraprofessionals for the City School District. A rational person would think that given the size of the NYC School District (the City is divided into 32 geographic districts and 2 Citywide districts), and given the severity of violent crime in the City, and a host of related societal problems, the District would be a leader in “hardening,” (fortifying) schools against armed attack. But that isn’t true. See articles in the New York Post, the Washington Times, and the National Review.The UFT, taking its cue from the Biden Administration and from the National Education Association (NEA), adamantly opposes implementing the “hardening” of schools, claiming that it doesn’t work. Yet, this notion is at loggerheads with the position of the New York State Legislature that passed, in 2018, a bill funding schools specifically to use armed personnel “To strengthen security and help keep students safe.” The view of the Huntington School District, on Long Island, aligns with that of the State’s Legislators in Albany. The view of the UFT does not.See the Arbalest Quarrel companion article, posted on January 30, 2023. The Huntington School District has implemented a school safety program that makes use of armed staff to protect children, teachers, and staff. See the article in Newsday, and wshu public radio. The use of armed guards has stoked resistance even though such use of armed guards is authorized “on school grounds” but not “in the school.”  That has done nothing to placate deep-seated antipathy on the part of some parents and teachers who oppose all use of armed guards, notwithstanding that the armed school resource officers (SROs), not police officers.But what explains this strong resistance? There is a reluctance, even a hysterical reaction, to the use of armed police or armed school resource officers (“SROs”) at schools even as their effectiveness in protecting students, teachers, and administrative officials from aggressive armed assault is clear. See the article from the rand corporation.  This is a disturbing trend. And it is illustrated both in the New York City School District, and some of the other largest school districts in other areas of the Country.This reluctance must be attributed to a concerted attack on “guns” generally, by groups always opposed to guns, and a hyped-up fear of armed police and armed school resource personnel, particularly.Although the UFT is adamantly opposed to any armed personnel in the City's schools, apparently the District cannot prohibit NYPD from entering the schools in pursuit of their lawful police functions. This has led the ACLU to provide guidance to students when interacting with the police, suggesting a strained relationship from the get-go. See the article, titled, “How to Interact with the Police in New York City Public Schools.”The Legacy Press, itself, abhorring guns and contemptuous of those who choose to exercise their natural law right to keep and bear them, does nothing to alleviate the public’s phobic reaction toward guns. Instead, the Press exacerbates that irrational fear, exploiting shooting incidents—especially those taking place inside schools or outside, on school grounds, involving harm to children. Stoking fear of and concomitant hatred of guns furthers a political agenda. It is an agenda aimed at weakening and eventually eliminating the fundamental, unalienable, natural law right of the people to armed self-defense. The Press uses the alarmist expression “epidemic of mass shootings” to stoke public anger and rage toward guns, suggesting, falsely, that “mass shootings” are commonplace. They are not. See the article in the City Journal. And the term ‘epidemic’ when tied to shootings falsely alludes to a public health emergency. It is not.Criminal conduct involves public safety, not public health. The implement used by a sociopath, or psychopath, or lunatic to commit mayhem doesn’t define the event.  A sentient agent’s use of a gun to commit a crime does not convert that act, a public safety matter, into a public health matter. Similarly, an epidemic or pandemic, like the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, the Bubonic Plague, or the recent CCP Chinese Coronavirus (COVID-19) doesn’t transform a public health matter into a public safety matter. Society doesn’t place a “virus” on trial for a crime. And Society doesn’t place the “gun” in a hospital because it, “the gun,” is deemed “ill.” That is discordant. Yet, the public doesn’t stop to think about the irrationality of the messaging so caught up it is in the cacophony on display.Publications like Time show no reluctance in treating a criminal matter as a health issue when that criminal matter involves guns. See the article in Time.One would think the medical community wouldn’t fall for this. Not so. Many medical practitioners and medical organizations are happy to shoehorn the misuse of guns, a public safety issue, into a presumptive public health issue, and even a public health epidemic. How can this be? Many in the medical community, apparently, are blinded by their own loathing of guns and therefore fail to perceive the irrationality of the presumption. Still, some medical practitioners, realizing the problem, try to make a case, nonetheless:“Advocates believe a public health approach is warranted not only because of the aggregate numbers of death and injuries, but also because epidemiological analysis suggests gun violence may share features with communicable diseases; exposure to gun violence can predict other incidents, and gun violence often diffuses like a contagion through connected social networks. Physicians also are being asked to step up. Various medical groups including the AMA and the American Academy of Pediatrics have issued policy statements calling for greater physician involvement in combating gun violence.” “Physicians’ Elusive Public Health Duties,” 99 N.C.L. Rev. 923, May, 2021, by Richard S. Saver, Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor, UNC School of Law; Professor (Secondary Appointment), UNC School of MedicineThis is sophistry. The author of the above article equates “gun violence” with “communicable disease” or “contagion” because he mistakes his metaphor for a literal representation. If “gun violence” were really “like” a “communicable disease,” then this would mean that guns, as “viruses,” or “contagions,” would transform all people who happen to come into contact with a gun as having within them the seed of pathological criminal violence. That’s not only patently false, it’s also nonsensical. But, in fact, many in the medical community ascribe to this. And politicians and the legacy Press run with it. Many in the medical community, therefore, contribute to this hysteria over guns, rather than being a voice of reason. And a half-hearted debate over the matter does nothing to allay the tendency to hysteria. See Tulane University article.The desire to treat “guns” per se as a health matter informs all subsequent discussions on the matter. The result is disastrous public policy decisions. Fortunately, not all members of the medical community have jumped on the bandwagon. They do not treat “gun violence” as a public health matter, let alone a public health emergency. They perceive this notion as wrongheaded and illogical. See the website Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership.On the matter of guns, the Press, politicians, and many in the medical community are not serving the best interests of the Nation, least of all the best interests of and safety of our children.Children have become useful pawns, sacrificial lambs, in a high-stakes game, where the survival of the Nation as a free Constitutional Republic is at stake.____________________________

A GENERAL ANTIPATHY TOWARDS GUNS MEANS TREATING CRIMINAL USE OF GUNS AND LAWFUL CIVILIAN CITIZEN USE OF GUNS FOR SELF-DEFENSE AS A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE

SUBPART TWO

The refusal of many school districts to consider utilizing police or armed resource officers as a necessary part of an effective school safety plan arises from both an antipathy toward guns, culminating in an outright phobic reaction toward “guns.”   An irrational abhorrence toward guns has pervaded the Country. It has not come about by chance. It is all part of an elaborately conceived and orchestrated campaign aimed at disarming the American public. In this effort to affect the desired outcome, a child is viewed as a useful pawn, whose life is deliberately placed in mortal danger. This says everything an American need to know about the value the legacy Press, and many school districts, including the New York City School District and the Biden Administration place on the life of our Nation’s children. It is just a matter of time before another tragedy that need not occur will occur in a school. The usual cast of characters will piously declare how horrific that is and why it is that civilian citizen possession of guns must be drastically curtailed. This will do nothing to prevent another mass shooting incident to occur in a school or outside it. In fact, the contrary will ensue. A mass shooting incident is guaranteed to occur, demonstrating once again, ever again, that the goal of ending criminal violence with guns is not, and never was about guns.Consider the ubiquity of the hyper-alarmist expression “gun violence.”New York Governor Kathy Hochul incessantly goes on about this thing “gun violence” and “hypes” her package of restrictive gun legislation to “fight gun violence epidemic.” See the article on her website. But few people stop to reflect on her lengthy, convoluted package of gun legislation. They should. The legislation has nothing to do with stopping criminal conduct. It has everything to do with repressing the ability of average, responsible, rational, law-abiding Americans to own and possess a firearm—the only truly effective means available to safeguard one’s life against a violent, vicious aggressor. Such random, unprovoked attacks have increased exponentially in recent years, in New York, as reported by the New York Daily News, and the City Journal Magazine. Violent Crime is surging in major Cities, including New York, as reported by the New York Post. Back in January 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared, “Gun violence is a public health crisis that continues to threaten every corner of our city” and he claimed to have the plan to deal with it.Do you remember: “The Blueprint to End Gun Violence.”How well is that working? Strange, the Mayor has said little to nothing about it since he rolled it out with great fanfare early last year.The answer to violent crime, as the legacy Press and the politicians explain is to constrain and eventually curtail the natural law right of the citizen to provide for his own defense. That is their answer. That is their only response. And why is that? Apparently, the law-abiding citizen gun owner is an easy target and a useful one. And, the Press and politicians point to the many guns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen. So? So, what?Conflating guns held by law-abiding gun owners with those held by violent criminals, the seditious Press and duplicitous politicians make a pretense of serving society, while stepping all over the Bill of Rights. Gun owners are perceived as “the other”—not representative of true law-abiding Americans.Although not expressly stated, the rationale, is this——Restricting the exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense of the former, the average law-abiding citizen, will serve to distract from the problem of misuse of guns by the latter, the rampaging psychopathic and psychotic killer.Through this sleight of hand, the Destroyers of a free Constitutional Republic can methodically whittle away at the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment. This, of course, is and was their primary aim all along: erase the natural law right to armed self-defense ostensibly for the well-being of the greater society. It is all a ruse. But, it plays well.Thus, the more often that violent crimes occur—preferably through the use of guns—the more likely the public will be to embrace a policy whose end goal is a “Gun-Free” America. That is to say, the elimination of the lawful possession of firearms by civilian citizens. That, of course, has no impact on the criminal. But, witnessing the casual way in which many City Governments treat crimes and criminals today, tackling crime isn’t a matter of concern for them; disarming the average, honorable, rational, responsible civilian citizen is._____________________

A GENERAL ANTIPATHY TOWARDS GUNS MEANS TREATING CRIMINAL USE OF AND LAWFUL CIVILIAN CITIZEN USE OF GUNS FOR SELF-DEFENSE AS A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE

SUBPART THREE

All this focus on guns has affected the way much of the Country views the discussion of and treatment of guns, including, most despicably, how many school districts treat their charges. A life that has value only as a commodity in service to a higher aim: But the refusal even to consider a school safety policy using armed resource officers may place the lives of children, while in school, in mortal danger. Is not the lack of a truly effective school safety policy stark evidence of the lack of value that the Government, today, places on the life of a child—the lack of value that the Government places on the life of the average American citizen in our Country?But the refusal even to consider a school safety policy using armed resource officers may place the lives of children, while in school, in mortal danger. We had pointed this out in an Arbalest Quarrel article, posted on November 17, 2022, writing about this stubborn attitude of the New York City School District, we said,“The UFT isn’t interested in hardening the City’s schools. And it is particularly resistant to employing trained and armed resource officers in the schools.This stubborn stance is an ominous sign of bad things to come. This lax attitude invites school shooting incidents. It may be only a matter of time before a New York City school suffers this horror.I hope it never happens but, given the sheer size of the NYC school district and given the amount of criminal violence afflicting New York City, coupled with a casual attitude toward crime, demonstrated by New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, and New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, I am fearful that it is just a matter of time before a tragedy, at the hands of an armed lunatic, visits a City school.” Less than two months after we wrote this, our prognostication, unfortunately, came true. A Charter School in New York City, East-Williamsburg in Brooklyn was the site of a shooting incident. The New York Post writes,“Three people — two of them students — were shot outside a Brooklyn high school on Wednesday afternoon, police and law enforcement sources said.Bullets flew just past the 2 p.m. dismissal time after a fight erupted outside the Williamsburg Charter High School at 198 Varet Street, cops said.A 15-year-old girl was shot in the right leg and a 17-year-old boy was shot in the left thigh, cops said. A 37-year-old man — a security guard at the school — suffered a graze wound to the neck, according to police.The students were taken to Bellevue Hospital, and the staffer to Elmhurst General, all in stable condition.This started as a dispute, a physical fight,” down the block from the school, near White Street, NYPD spokesperson Lt. Paul Ng said in a press briefing.About 15 men got into the melee, and one of them whipped out a 2×4 stick — which is when the shooter opened fire, according to Ng.”We would be remiss not to point out that, although Williamsburg Charter High School is located in New York City, it does not come under the purview of the New York City School District and the UFT.The Guide to Charter Schools in New York State, says, in part,“Charter schools are completely independent of district school boards. What allows a charter school to provide education to the public is a “charter,” a type of contract, between the school’s board of trustees and a chartering entity (also known as an authorizer). According to the terms of the charter, a school agrees to meet rigorous academic, operational, financial, and legal standards. The authorizer oversees each charter school to ensure it is meeting the terms of its charter.”Yet, despite their independence from district school boards, “charter schools must follow the same health and safety, ci rights, and student assessment requirements as other public schools, but they are exempt from all other laws and regulations, except for Article 56 of the Education Law. v 6” Id.The Safety program appears to be one-dimensional, though, essentially limited to the use of metal detectors to scan for weapons. And “School Safety Agents” appear to be limited to being versed in the use of scanning techniques. Nonetheless, the school safety program falls under the auspices of the NYPD. But, there is nothing that we can decipher from the material we perused to suggest that NYPD officers or armed safety personnel are utilized.In a document involving “A Collaboration Between the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the New York City Department of Education,” effective July 21, 2016, school safety seems directed to and limited to scanning for weapons coming into the school:“Since the late 1980’s, metal detectors have been used in New York City public schools in order to maintain a safe and secure school environment and prevent weapons from being brought into the schools. The scanning program continues to be a vital security initiative and significant deterrent to weapons and violence. Furthermore, when weapons are found, schools can implement appropriate supports, interventions and follow up measures to reduce the chance of recurrence and address underlying factors that affect the safety and security of the school community. In accordance with established procedures and protocols, including Chancellor’s Regulation A-432 on Search and Seizure and the NYPD Patrol Guide 215-18 on Search Protocols for School Safety Agents, all students and visitors entering a school facility where scanning takes place are subject to scanning. School staff may enter the building at a non- scanning entrance designated by the principal/designee, which is monitored by school safety agents. NYPD personnel who conduct the scanning are trained to respect students’ rights and to ensure that scanning occurs in the least intrusive and most respectful manner possible. A principal or his/her designee must be present whenever scanning occurs. Scanning is only conducted at High Schools or Middle Schools which includes grade levels 6 through 12. When an Elementary School is present in a Middle School or High School where scanning occurs, a separate entrance will be provided for Elementary level students to enter the building without being scanned. . . .The Role of School Safety Agent School Safety Agents are trained to treat all individuals entering a school facility with courtesy, professionalism and respect. School Safety Agents overseeing scanning in a school must: • Properly set up/dismantle equipment and test the scanning equipment daily to ensure it is in proper working condition. • Greet students and provide them with clear, concise instructions in a professional manner • Be aware and alert to the walk-through metal detector signals and correctly utilize the hand-held metal detector while carefully observing, interpreting, and reviewing the x-ray machine screen for any suspicious objects Conduct sweeps (searches) for weapons, contraband, and other prohibited items periodically throughout scanning operations each day on the perimeter of the school site. • Adhere to the established methodology for scanning procedures . . . .”Obviously, the shooting incident that occurred on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, involving multiple shots fired and several individuals being shot, on the school grounds of Williamsburg Charter School, suggests serious deficiencies in security, on many levels. That incident may be replicated in any other school in New York City and could lead to more severe consequences. It is just a matter of time.______________________________

THE VALUE OF THE LIFE OF AN AVERAGE AMERICAN IS NOW REDUCED TO ZERO! WELCOME TO “THE NEW LIBERAL WORLD ORDER”!

SUBPART FOUR

What is evident today in New York City in the mammoth New York City School District and in many School Districts across the Country that develop deficient school safety protocols grounded on the biases of the Biden Administration and the NEA are disasters in the making. The crassness is quite remarkable. We reported on this before, in our AQ article posted on November 17, 2022, and it bears repeating:In a May 2022 Press Briefing, reported in the New York Post, prompted soon after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Biden’s Press Secretary pointedly said:“ ‘I know there’s been conversation about hardening schools, that is not something he [Joe Biden] believes in,’ Jean-Pierre told reporters at a White House press conference. ‘He believes that we should be able to give teachers the resources to be able to do their job.’” This wasn’t a mistake by the Press Secretary. The next month, on June 2, 2022, as reported in Breitbart, Joe Biden, himself, confirmed he doesn’t support hardening school buildings.“President Joe Biden delivered a 20-minute prime-time address about gun violence on Thursday in which he mentioned a litany of gun control policies without mentioning the need for hardening school security . . .” [and] nowhere throughout his speech did he mention the need to place armed security guards on school campuses or bettering school security overall.”Since the Biden Administration is adamantly opposed to the use of armed security officers in public schools and explicitly discourages the application of any steps to harden school buildings to protect children, this serves to dissuade the UFT leadership from pursuing “hardening” as a solution for New York City schools. And, many other school systems across the Country follow the Biden Administration’s policy.One is left to ponder the forces at work in this Country who have little if any regard for the life and well-being of the average American: whether man, woman, or child. The Biden Administration is merely a reflection of the monstrous claim that these shadowy, powerful forces have over our Country and its people.The goal of these forces with their toadies in the Biden Administration and in several State Governments across the Country is control over the Country and over the American citizenry. Gaining control over the Country and its people requires capturing the weaponry of Americans to affect absolute control over the populace. Propaganda plays a critical role in that endeavor. Capturing weaponry in this Country requires first capturing the minds of the majority of the people. The lives of Americans, and especially children, count for nothing to these ruthless forces. Rather, loss of life, through criminal misuse of guns, plays a central part in that effort. Regardless of what the politicians and the organs of the Press and media spout, it is control over thought and control over firearms that is essential to the dissolution of a Sovereign, Independent, Nation-State; essential to the dissolution of our Free Constitutional Republic; and essential to the subjugation of a sovereign and proud people. That is the endgame.The Biden Administration and much of Congress, and many of those in State Governments, have no reason for existing other than to carry out the will of their benefactors. And those benefactors have lavished money and power on their toadies to secure their compliance and their loyalty. And they have served their masters well. And what of we, the commoners, the sovereign people of a once Great Nation? We are destined for the yoke if we don't demand an accounting, long past due, of those scoundrels who have sold us out. For the sake of our children, for the founders of our Republic, the first Patriots, and for the many Americans, down through the years, decades, and centuries, who placed their lives at risk, and for those who paid the ultimate price to secure our freedoms, we owe it to all of them to make a stand. Otherwise, all that came before was in vain.___________________________________*This article updates and complements our article posted on January 30, 2023.____________________________________**AQ has corrected an earlier account of school shooting incidents where we stated that there were four school shooting incidents in the past thirty years. We wish to clarify that remark. An astute reader of this article explained to us, on February 9, 2022, that the assertion is inaccurate. We stand by the salient point but acknowledge its vagueness. Therefore, we add this clarification: There were four major, i.e., widely reported school shooting incidents (K-12), from 1999 through 2022; one from the last decade of the Twentieth Century, then two through the first two decades of the Twenty-First Century, and, at this moment in time, one during the third decade of the Twenty-First. The website, Statista, does report many more “mass shootings,” overall, from the time frame, of 1982 through January 24, 2023. Also, we note that the site Statista does not formally define the phrase, ‘mass shooting,’ saying only that “Mass shootings happen when there are several injuries or deaths from a firearm-related violence.” Id. What, then, is a “mass shooting”? The newspaper, USA Today, which has a clear Anti-Second Amendment left-wing bias, writing about it in an article published on June 11, 2022, and that is upfront concerning its abhorrence of the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, calling for the outright repeal of it in a subsequent article, published one month later, on July 11, 2022, allows itself, unbidden, to proffer its own non-legal definition: “There's no single consensus on the definition.The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter. In contrast, Everytown currently defines it as a shooting in which four or more people are shot and killed, again excluding the shooter – but Burd-Sharps noted that they are moving toward expanding the definition to also include four or more injuries in the future.The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't have a mass shooting definition. Instead, the FBI defines "mass murder" as an incident where four or more people are killed, which can include gun violence.USA TODAY defines a mass shooting as an incident where at least four people are hit with gunfire, even if there are no fatalities. Mass killing refers is an incident in which at least four people are killed.”The organization, The National Mass Violence Victimization Resource Center (NMVVRC), whose mission, as stated, is directed to serving victims of “mass violence” points to a plethora of definitions for similar expressions, in an article, “Definitions of Mass Violence Crimes.”  AQ refuses to be pigeonholed, focused on terminology cunningly devised by propagandists. The use of argot designed by propagandists ensnares a person, traps him, and compels him to adopt a particular viewpoint, even a philosophy through which to view the world. Expressions, like ‘assault weapon,’ ‘gun violence,’ ‘gun culture,’ and ‘mass shootings,’ to name a few, direct a person to view firearms and anything associated with them, including, and most especially, the fundamental, unalienable, natural law right codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to a particular and decidedly peculiar way of thinking, a way of thinking at once antithetical to our Nation's history, heritage,  cultural ethos, national identity, and to the philosophical underpinnings of a free Constitutional Republic.____________________________________**This article updates and complements our article posted on January 30, 2023.____________________________________Copyright © 2023 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

WHY DO SOME SCHOOL DISTRICTS EMPLOY ARMED RESOURCE PERSONNEL IN THEIR SCHOOLS WHILE OTHERS DO NOT?

A PSYCHIC DISTURBANCE PERVADES THE THOUGHT PROCESSES OF MANY SCHOOL DISTRICTS: A SINGLE-MINDED, ABERRANT ANTIPATHY TOWARD AND FOCUS ON GUNS PREVENTS THESE DISTRICTS FROM INSTITUTING PROVEN SECURITY MEASURES THAT DO WORK AND, IF IMPLEMENTED, WOULD PROTECT CHILDREN FROM THE DANGER POSED BY VIOLENT ARMED AGGRESSORS

MULTISERIES ON THE ISSUE OF SCHOOL SAFETY

PART TWO

There are 731 School Districts in New York.But how many of these Districts have established an effective security plan?An effective plan incorporates armed resource personnel. The South Huntington School District (SHUFSD) knows this and has designed a plan for school security utilizing armed resource personnel. On Wednesday, January 25, 2023, updated on January 26, 2023, two reporters, John Asbury and Craig Schneider, writing for “Newsday,” a leading news source for Long Island and New York City, discussed this plan. They said, “Armed guards will be stationed outside all South Huntington school buildings by the end of the month, one of several Long Island districts making that choice as school shootings continue to be a terrifying national trend.” The reporters added, that, “[t]he South Huntington school board voted unanimously Wednesday to implement the new security measure.” In a follow-up “Newsday” article, published on January 28, 2023, the reporter, Craig Schneider, cited remarks of Dennis Callahan, who heads the South Huntington Teachers’ Union, writing,“The head of the teachers union for South Huntington schools said Friday that his members have strong but very different opinions on the district's decision Wednesday to use armed guards at schools.‘I have members who are thrilled about it and others who are vehemently opposed,’ said Dennis Callahan, who also teaches AP Spanish at Walt Whitman High School in the district.The South Huntington school board voted unanimously to spend $750,000 to hire an undisclosed number of armed guards, who officials said will be stationed outside the seven school buildings by the end of the month. School Superintendent Vito D'Elia pointed to the long string of shootings in school settings in this country.On Friday, Callahan said teachers supporting the move ‘say we are in an unsafe world, and we need to do everything in our power to ensure that when students come to school in the morning, they get home safe.’Those opposed, he said, worry that ‘bringing weapons into school opens the door to more violence.’”How can the utilization of armed resource officers “open the door to more violence”? The idea is more than a trifle vague. Let’s delve into this.Are teachers who oppose armed resource officers afraid the officers would themselves turn on the students and administrators and staff, developing or harboring violent proclivities and thereupon becoming violent? If so, what evidence is there of any such incident ever before occurring in a school that utilizes armed resource officers? These teachers proffer none because there is none. Nothing like that has happened. And there is no reason to suggest an incident of this sort would ever happen. The idea does not merit serious consideration. It leads one down a blind alley.What then can one make of the claim that utilizing armed resource officers would open the door to more violence? Perhaps, teachers who oppose a school security plan utilizing armed officers simply abhor the idea of guns in the school or on school grounds regardless of the benefits derived from having armed officers in the schools and thereupon conjure up an unlikely scenario. If so, there is, in the assertion, a note of hysteria, grounded on a neurotic phobic reaction to the very thought of “guns” and gun-wielding guards. We explore this idea, infra.Perhaps, as a sop to those teachers who suffer from an irrational fear of firearms, or, otherwise, in spite of that irrational fear of firearms felt by many within the District, the South Huntington Board of Education said armed personnel would be stationed outside school buildings, never inside the buildings.A school district that refuses to utilize armed resource officers cannot effectively “harden” schools against a dangerous armed threat. This should be obvious to everyone. Apparently, it isn’t since many school systems refuse to acknowledge this. A fanciful notion, devoid of demonstrative proof or logical validity, leads one down a blind alley. All the more horrific to consider that irrational feverish beliefs inform a school district’s policy decisions. And it is the children who pay the price.Consider: One of the largest school districts in the Country, the New York City School District (UFT), has opted out of using armed resource personnel.“Too many elected officials, school boards, and teachers’ union leaders propose solutions that don’t work.They aren’t interested in listening to parents who, increasingly, have little voice in the matter of their children’s education and no voice in the matter of their children’s personal safety while in school.Their solution to school shootings proposed boils down to one thing: ‘Get Rid of the Guns.’” See the Arbalest Quarrel article, satirically titled, “How to Guarantee Future School Shootings,” published, on November 17, 2022, by Stephen L. D’Andrilli, CEO and President of Arbalest Group, LLC.The failure of some people to recognize the difference between lawful uses for guns and unlawful criminal misuse points to the evident effectiveness of an elaborate propaganda campaign perpetrated on the public and vociferously and monotonously perpetuated for the last few decades.It is a campaign that involves many actors—news media, pundits, politicians, antigun activists, and powerful health organizations, like the “American Medical Association” (“AMA”) and the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” (“CDC”).These multivarious actors are all focused on and draft narratives around this thing, “Gun Violence.”Well, there are “Guns” in our society and there is “Violence” in our society, too. All that is true enough.But the words ‘Gun’ and ‘Violence’ aren’t synonymous. It is only thinking of the two as inseparably linked that would make it seem so.Conjoin two disparate words ‘Gun’ and ‘Violence’ and, voilà, the propagandist has, in that, a shorthand rhetorical device, ‘Gun Violence,’ a neologism—one in service to an insidious agenda, centered around a nefarious end, injurious to a free Constitutional Republic: the disarming of the American citizenry.The aim is the elimination of the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of self and in defense of innocent others.Americans will not readily sacrifice their Bill of Rights. They must be urged to do so.It takes ingenuity and subterfuge to coax Americans to willingly forsake rights and liberties that no other people of any other nation on Earth possess.The phrase, “Gun Violence,” is a viral meme, infecting the psyche of the public. If the pursuit of public health and safety is the goal, the reduction of “Gun Violence” is the theme played and with little variation to get the public there. Or so the public is told. And many there are who swallow the lie.The American public is presented with the classic “false dilemma” fallacy narrative:TOTAL CIVILIAN DISARMAMENT AND A PEACEFUL, SAFE, WELL-ORDERED, WELL-ENGINEERED, HARMONIOUS, SOCIETY VERSUS THE WELL-ARMED CITIZEN AND CONTINUOUS, UNINTERRUPTED, SAVAGE, RAMPANT GUN VIOLENCE.THIS ONE OR THAT ONE ONLY: THE ONE OR THE OTHER, BUT NOT BOTH, AND NOT NOT EITHERBut the tension isn’t real. The armed citizen, which, in the context of schools, is the armed resource officer, does not aggravate the threat of criminal violence by virtue of being armed. This is contrary to the view of many teachers and board members. The officer mitigates and repels that armed aggressive threat. Similarly, the armed civilian citizen neither causes nor adds to criminal violence, but rather mitigates criminal violence.Many Americans fail to perceive this. Many simply cannot perceive this. But, perversely, many others have the desire not to perceive this.And, the UFT, for one, certainly cannot see this. That says much of the cunning of those who instigate this incendiary narrative of “Gun Violence” while being careful to omit any mention of “Criminal Violence.” There is a method to this madness.The propagandists emphasize the object “The Gun” while, at once, deemphasizing the agents of violence: “the Criminal” and “the Lunatic.”This false narrative has a profound effect on the policy choices that politicians see available to them. The policy choices made, invariably endanger, rather than safeguard, their respective communities.Similarly, this false narrative has a profound effect on the choices that school districts make when designing a security plan for their schools. Some districts eschew the “hardening” of schools altogether, single-mindedly focused, as they are, on their abhorrence of “Guns.” Focusing entirely on guns, they conclude that children cannot be safe until or unless all guns are eliminated from society. That is impossible, a ridiculous demand, and one that would not prevent rampant violence anyway, as long as criminals and lunatics run amok in society. And, they would continue to run amok. The forces that crush western nations and people realize the usefulness of sociopathic and psychopathic elements to destabilize nation-states if allowed to do so, and they are given free rein to do just that in the United States.Such absolutism compels one to believe falsely in the futility of securing schools from harm. But Progressives, who ascribe to this absolutism comprise the majority of these School Boards. They make all kinds of excuses for the behavior of the worst sort of deviant types, placating them, unable to comprehend that these same lunatics and psychopaths have no regard for the hand that feeds it, and will readily bite it off if given the chance. So, these Progressives, these smug do-gooders, vent their wrath on Americans who would dare exercise their right to armed self-defense to thwart the destructive elements allowed to pillage and destroy businesses, homes, people, and institutions, with abandon.  Progressives comprise the majority of these School Boards. They make all kinds of excuses for the behavior of the worst sort of deviant influences, placating them, unable to comprehend that these same lunatics and psychopaths have no regard for the hand that feeds it, and will readily bite it off if given the chance. Instead, these Progressive do-gooders, vent their wrath on Americans who would dare exercise their right to armed self-defense to thwart the destructive elements allowed to pillage and destroy businesses, homes, people, and institutions, with abandon.  These Progressives direct their energy against the average law-abiding, rational, responsible, gun-owners, and against the mechanism of their survival, the firearm, believing firmly, and nonsensically, that disarming the gun owner and destroying guns will safeguard society, secure the public schools, and protect the children. It will do no such thing.  Consistent with that belief system, Progressive members of School Boards believe safeguarding children is impossible where guns are prevalent in society. Knowing that they will not get rid of guns nor that they will be able to defeat the exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense, these Progressive school board members, disgruntled, and enraged, but refusing to acknowledge defeat, forsake designing, and implementing any security measures, hoping and trusting or simply desirous that the life of their charges will one day, in a Golden Age, be safeguarded once guns all disappear from the face of the Earth. Till, then, they will do nothing to protect the children in their schools. It is a kind of Nihilism that sweeps through these School Districts, pervading all thought, a sickness hidden in plain sight only because the highest officials and functionaries of Government suffer from the same ailment, a psychic disturbance wrought by those poor sorts that have inculcated the psychotic dogma of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a dogma incompatible with our Nation's rational historical, political-philosophical creed, embodied in our natural law rights, emanating from the Divine Creator, that the new false secularism repudiates out of hand.These school districts hope the children in their care will be safe but believe they really won't be, and that, since nothing can be done, to prevent, in their mind, harm to their charges, they feel it is senseless to even try. So, they won't.This bizarre position emanates directly from the thinking of the repugnant Biden Administration itself. And, unsurprisingly, but no less unfortunate, many school districts, including the UFT, take their cue from this Federal Government. See June 6, 2022, report in Breitbart.And, since the public psyche is infected with the false notion that the existence of guns invariably threatens the physical and emotional health and safety of children, many public schools around the Country have opted out of employing armed personnel in schools.So it is, that some school districts, apparently so disheartened, disillusioned, and embittered as a result of their obsessive fear over the “proliferation” of guns and this thing, “Gun Violence,” have refrained from undertaking instituting any measures whatsoever. Consider, e.g., a 2007 report from the “National Institutes of Health” (“NIH”), that must bear some responsibility for this.A long-running campaign of psychological conditioning, undertaken by a plethora of organizations over a broad landscape of institutions, often operating in concert, and on an industrial scale, has succeeded in causing psychopathy in the minds of many Americans.And this elaborate propaganda campaign negatively impacts the decisions political leaders make: Governors of States, Mayors of Cities, and Members of School Boards.So powerful is this propaganda campaign that many Americans do not distinguish, indeed cannot distinguish, between criminal use of guns on the one hand, and non-criminal proper, lawful use of guns by average, rational, responsible, law-abiding people, on the other hand.The founders of our free Constitutional Republic would be puzzled indeed to consider that such a failure of reason could gain such wide currency.The founders of our Republic, the framers of our Constitution were acutely aware of the profound importance of firearms to both the creation of and maintenance of a free RepublicThey were certainly aware of the profound importance of firearms to the creation of and maintenance of a free Republic where the common man would stand and must stand sovereign over Government lest tyranny arise, as tyranny must, where good men have neither the will nor the means to prevent it.Guns are only a tool, inanimate objects, but necessary ones. Like any tool, a gun can be utilized for good or ill, dependent upon the nature of the sentient agent who wields it. A “firearm,” being insentient, is incapable of engaging in harm initiated by itself but listening to antigun zealots, one tends to hear them argue otherwise.The founders of our free Constitutional Republic certainly were aware of the importance of firearms as the most effective means to successfully safeguard human life from predatory creatures, predatory men, and predatory Governments. Our Country would not exist without the will and courage of these men, our Founders, and the means required to repel tyranny.Knowing this, one is left to ponder that——The failure of so many Americans to recognize the utility of firearms (“Guns”) as a source of positive good must be by design.The danger to the life, safety, and well-being of innocent Americans, especially children, is palpable.Sadly, there are powerful, ruthless forces machinating against the well-being of our Nation and its people, and they exert that influence on politicians at all levels of Government, and on businesses, media, the Press, and school boards across the Nation—with devastating effect. The felt impact of this, demonstrated by the money and time spent to undermine the natural law right to armed self-defense, is too much in evidence to be reasonably denied.Inducing in the psyche of a person a deep-seated phobia toward “the Gun,” such that a person finds nothing salvageable in it, suggests a dark and sinister intent of powerful forces to disarm the citizenry. That influence manifests in poor policy choices of Government officials, across the board, leading inevitably to rampant crime in our communities, lax security in our public schools, and the collapse of our sacred rights, and liberties, and institutions.____________________________________Copyright © 2023 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

HOW TO GUARANTEE FUTURE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

AN ESSAY BY STEPHEN L. D'ANDRILLI, CEO AND PRESIDENT OF ARBALEST GROUP, LLC.

MULTISERIES ON THE ISSUE OF SCHOOL SAFETY

PART ONE

The Nation’s public schools exist for one purpose: to educate our children to become productive members of society. Something hinders that: school shootings.But public school shootings need not happen and should not happen. Yet, these incidents do happen. And that says something odd and disturbing about our politicians and prominent groups, like the powerful teachers’ unions, that let these incidents happen.When they happen, our nation suffers, and that suffering extends to every American: man, woman, and child. So, then, why do they happen and who is to blame?There were four major school shootings in the past three decades: Columbine in 1999, Sandy Hook in 2012, Stoneman Douglas in 2018, and, most recently, Robb Elementary in 2022. Each of these incidents is unacceptable. All were preventable. What do these shootings tell us?Too many elected officials, school boards, and teachers’ union leaders propose solutions that don’t work.They aren’t interested in listening to parents who, increasingly, have little voice in the matter of their children’s education and no voice in the matter of their children’s personal safety while in school.Their solution to school shootings proposed boils down to one thing: “Get Rid of the Guns.” A simplistic Democratic Party slogan becomes a societal policy stance, that endangers the most innocent of Americans, our children.“Get Rid of the Guns” is what the public hears. It is the universal solution provided and the solitary message conveyed.It’s a National trend. Federal, State, and affiliated Union officials all espouse it, including the powerful United Federation of Teachers (“UFT’) that represents nearly 200,000 dues-paying members.The UFT publishes a newsletter, called, “New York Teacher,” that keeps its members apprised of union policies, positions, and news.As a dues-paying retired NYC teacher, I receive copies of the newsletter.On May 25, 2022, one day after the Uvalde, Texas incident, the UFT published its “Resolution to stand against gun violence.” In form, this “Resolution” presumes a consensus reached by UFT members.The last sentence of the UFT’s “Resolution” elucidates where the UFT expends its energy —— “RESOLVED, that the union supports Governor Hochul’s measures in New York, reaffirms its longstanding support for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as other gun safety laws, and will work with the American Federation of Teachers at the national level both to overcome the obstacles to these commonsense safety measures and to organize other means of harnessing the power of our local and national organizations to confront and end this ongoing national tragedy.”One month later, on June 16, the UFT published a follow-up article titled, “Delegates decry deadly school shooting,” where it expanded on its “Resolution to end gun violence.”I was both troubled and angered by this one-sided news reporting and pontificating.Reference to “Gun Violence” in the title of the “Resolutions” establishes the theme of the UFT leaders’ sole approach to dealing with school shootings.The word ‘Gun Violence’ is a narrative tool, a Democratic Party establishment talking point, recited and reiterated constantly, and echoed by the legacy Press.The UFT’s leaders buy into this, regurgitating the same tiring refrain. This is deliberate and it isn’t benign.The use of the expression “Gun Violence” promotes a dangerous way of thinking, encouraging bad policy choices.The Nation’s decision-makers divert scarce taxpayer resources away from the implementation of effective measures to secure our public schools and direct those resources into measures that make schools less safe.The UFT leadership has become a useful pawn of the Biden Administration’s bad policy.It has learned nothing from the tragedies that have befallen other school districts around the Country so  caught up as it is in the fiction of “Gun Violence.” Dwelling on that fiction prevents consideration of and implementation of constructive solutions to school shootings.I could not sit idly by, allowing the UFT’s remarks to go unchallenged. I wrote a letter to the editor explaining my concern, suggesting concrete ways it could secure the City’s school system.The UFT published my letter on November 3, 2022, adding the title, “Where is the school security plan?”But the editor made changes to the letter I did not authorize, involving a fundamental idea made, thereby undercutting the import of the salient point I sought to convey:An effective solution to school shootings requires the “hardening” of schools against aggressive armed assault.The editor struck the word, ‘hardening’ from my letter. That was no accident. But why did the editor do this? That single word encapsulates the basic strategy for securing school buildings from armed assault.Hardening physical structures against armed assault isn’t a novel idea. Federal and State Governments have applied it to airport terminals and courthouses around the Country for many years.Security in these buildings is extraordinarily tight. Protocols are assiduously enforced. That explains why shootings in these structures are extremely rare or nonexistent.Hardening structures against aggressive armed attacks do work.Seeing this success, many school districts have adopted hardening protocols to thwart school shootings. Those that do and that see to the enforcement of those protocols, do not experience the tragedies that afflict districts that don’t use them.Why aren’t these protocols universally applied given their obvious effectiveness?How can any rational mind fail to apply them? They should, but don’t. The UFT doesn’t and isn’t about to. Why is that?Both I and my business partner Roger J. Katz, an attorney, and a former public school teacher himself, have written extensively about this, posting our articles on our website, the Arbalest Quarrel.And, Ammoland Shooting Sports News, the web’s leading Shooting Sports News Service for the Second Amendment, Firearms, Shooting, and Hunting and Conservation communities republished five AQ articles: January 25, 2016; June 15, 2016; February 26, 2018; March 17, 2018; and May 26, 2022.By “hardening” our school buildings we protect the life and safety of our children, teachers, and staff.This isn’t difficult. A lot of the work has already been done on this. There is no guesswork for any of it.It takes only the desire to do it and the fortitude to follow through on it.I propose seven measures as basic to securing schools and safeguarding students, teachers, and staff within them, therefore “hardening” them. These include establishing:(1)  A Designated Entrance and Exit,(2)  A Vestibule and Video Surveillance,(3)  Positioning of Metal Detectors at Entry Points,(4)   Photo ID,(5)  Security Desk and Visitor Escorts,(6)  Trained and Armed Personnel (including Plainclothes, and/or Uniformed Personnel), and(7)  Periodic Testing and Strict Adherence to all Policies and Protocols.Implementation of this 7-Point Strategy in New York’s schools would deter an armed assailant from insinuating himself into a school building.The use of trained and armed resource officers is imperative.The UFT isn’t interested in hardening the City’s schools. And it is particularly resistant to employing trained and armed resource officers in the schools.This stubborn stance is an ominous sign of bad things to come. This lax attitude invites school shooting incidents. It may be only a matter of time before a New York City school suffers this horror.I hope it never happens but, given the sheer size of the NYC school district and given the amount of criminal violence afflicting New York City, coupled with a casual attitude toward crime, demonstrated by New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, and New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, I am fearful that it is just a matter of time before a tragedy, at the hands of an armed lunatic, visits a City school. The Biden Administration bears singular responsibility for enabling this violence.In a May 2022 Press Briefing, reported in the New York Post, prompted soon after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Biden’s Press Secretary pointedly said:“ ‘I know there’s been conversation about hardening schools, that is not something he [Joe Biden] believes in,’ Jean-Pierre told reporters at a White House press conference. ‘He believes that we should be able to give teachers the resources to be able to do their job.’” This wasn’t a mistake by the Press Secretary. The next month, on June 2, 2022, as reported in Breitbart, Joe Biden, himself, confirmed he doesn’t support hardening school buildings.“President Joe Biden delivered a 20-minute prime-time address about gun violence on Thursday in which he mentioned a litany of gun control policies without mentioning the need for hardening school security . . .” [and] nowhere throughout his speech did he mention the need to place armed security guards on school campuses or bettering school security overall.”Since the Biden Administration is adamantly opposed to the use of armed security officers in public schools and explicitly discourages the application of any steps to harden school buildings to protect children, this serves to dissuade the UFT leadership from pursuing “hardening” as a solution for New York City schools. And, many other school systems across the Country follow the Biden Administration's policy. Why do you suppose that is?A person might be tempted to conclude the Biden Administration WANTS school shootings to occur. But that can’t be true, can it? No one, in their right mind, would dare use, or even think of using, children as sacrificial lambs simply to gain public sympathy and support for a radical agenda positing the disarming of Americans, would they?After all, to be adamantly opposed to the application of measures that do work to protect children is both irrational and seemingly inexplicable. And no Government agenda can justify sacrificing the life, safety, and well-being of the children to carry out an agenda. Yet, isn't that what we are seeing? Isn't this in fact occurring: a cold, calculated, plan that to be accomplished requires an extraordinary sacrifice: our Nation's children?Nah! Ridiculous!Ridiculous, Indeed! But, hasn't the advent of the brain-addled Biden and his psychopathic Administration demonstrated a proclivity for instituting policy prescriptions illustrating an absolute lack of concern for the life and well-being of Americans? Reflect on the hasty, ill-conceived, and horribly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the needless deaths of thirteen American soldiers. Ponder the infusion into our Land of over five million illegal aliens, none of whom were carefully vetted, and many of whom pose a direct threat to the security of our Nation and its citizenry, and all of whom constitute a substantial monetary burden on the taxpayer, as these "migrants" require housing, food, medical care, and education for their offspring. And consider the dire threat of Global Thermonuclear War posed by the Biden Administration's cavalier attitude toward Russia that his Ukrainian/Russian policy has placed us in.

ALLOWING CRIMINALS AND LUNATICS TO KILL CHILDREN TO DEMONSTRATE A NEED TO GET RID OF GUNS IN CIVILIAN HANDS TO STOP VIOLENCE DOESN'T DEMONSTRATE A CONCERN ABOUT VIOLENCE. NO! IT DEMONSTRATES INSTEAD BLATANT DISREGARD FOR THE LIFE AND WELL-BEING OF AMERICANS, TO ACCOMPLISH AN END: ONE THAT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ENHANCING THE SAFETY AND WELL-BEING OF AMERICANS. THE GOAL IS THE SUBJUGATION OF THE COMMONALTY: ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENT CONTROL OVER ALL THOUGHT AND ACTIONS—IN OTHER WORDS—THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF TYRANNY.

A fixation on the notion of guns as the root cause of criminal violence not only diverts precious monetary and manpower resources away from the implementation of effective solutions to school shootings, such fixation goes further. It prevents the very consideration of viable solutions to the specific problem of school shootings. This is unconscionable, but that is precisely the intention of a rogue Federal Government.The expression, ‘Gun Violence,’ like those of ‘Gun Culture’ and ‘Assault Weapon,’ are intentionally designed to focus the public's attention on things the Biden Administration wants the public to focus its attention on. But these expressions are fabrications. These expressions refer to nothing concrete. Yet, the public is led, nonetheless, to believe, erroneously, they denote, real, and negative, things.These fabrications do serve a purpose.Propagandists utilize these expressions to compel a specific response in the target audience: the American public. And the response sought is one of anger and rage toward guns and those who wish to exercise their natural law right to keep and bear them. So the public relinquishes their firearms to Government overseers and then what? Is the public any safer? Of course not. In fact, the public is considerably less safe. The public couldn't be in a worse position: facing danger from predatory criminals and lunatics, which is bad enough, and, worse, facing imminent, danger from a predatory Government.Words, thus, do carry weight. They are often emotionally laden.Propagandists know this. They employ verbiage that sways public opinion in the direction they want, and they refrain from utilizing verbiage that sways public opinion in a direction they don’t want.The public, whipped into a frenzied mob, operates through rabid emotional instinct; their higher faculties of refined, calm, deliberative thought and reflection are anesthetized.With the public intellect effectively hijacked, the propaganda mill persuades the public that “Gun Violence,” a “Gun Culture,” and a Nation “awash” in “Assault Weapons” are the cause of criminal violence. They aren’t. They aren’t even the effect of criminal violence.What are they, then?They are rhetorical flourishes, red herrings, manufactured by propagandists to draw attention away from the true causes of “violent crime”—the criminals and lunatics who commit it, together with the perversity of Biden Administration officials and many State and local Government officials who refuse to deal with the fact of it.Through time, these “red herrings” evolve into viral memes. They get inserted into the public psyche, where they become lodged and difficult to remove.The public obligingly conforms its belief system to Government policy promulgated by Biden officials. And, through ongoing, vociferous broadcasts by the legacy Press, radio, broadcast and cable news, and social media, the public grows amenable to that policy, begins to support it, and eventually becomes enthusiastic about it, even though it is contrary to the public’s interests and needs, and does not address the problems claimed: schools infiltrated by armed lunatics and growing violence in society as a whole.“Getting rid of guns” means, literally, confiscating guns presently in the hands of tens of millions of average, law-abiding, responsible, rational citizenry.  “Getting rid of guns” is presented as a panacea to armed killers stalking schools, and to violent crime generally—or so the public is told. The policy, “Getting rid of guns,” becomes the “Battle Cry” of the Biden Faithful.The Biden Administration, Congressional Democrats, and State and local governments, along with their friendly travelers in the legacy Press, cable and broadcast news networks, and social media, constantly and consistently utilize verbiage like ‘Guns,’ ‘Gun Violence,’ and ‘Assault Weapons’ to support their narrative to accomplish their objectives, and they assiduously avoid the use of other verbiage that undercuts their running narrative.Expressions like ‘hardening,’ ‘school security, ‘armed resource officers’ and ‘armed self-defense’ are a few of the main ones the propagandists avoid.Such latter expressions reinforce the need for effective security in schools and in the greater society; the former does not. To make the illusion work, the use of expressions like ‘hardening,’ ‘school security, ‘armed resource officers,’ and ‘armed self-defense’ must be scrupulously avoided in Government sponsored messaging. The public too is discouraged from using those expressions in public discourse.What is advantageous to schools and to society as a whole is an anathema to the present Administration and antithetical to the Administration's policy pertaining to firearms and the Second Amendment.A profound quelling of dissent is fostered, unlike anything seen before in America. A fog settles over the public psyche. This is as intended. The First Amendment freedom of speech is severely constrained.Many organizations obey the guidelines for discourse set by the Biden Administration and establish policies of their own consistent with those of the Biden regime, even though Biden's policy directives are contrary to the welfare of the Nation and destructive of the fundamental, unalienable rights of the people protected by the U.S. Constitution.The UFT is in league with Biden Administration policy, and actively and avidly assists the Administration in complying with the Administration's duplicitous schemes. And it wields considerable influence over its members.Many teachers who should be attuned to the dangers of manipulation of public thought become ensnared by it. Worse, what impacts them also affects their charges.This sad result is emblematic of New York City public school education.And, so, the Public school buildings remain unsecured. And, yet, New York Governor Hochul and the UFT would likely disagree with this observation.On June 23, 2022, following the Uvalde, Texas shooting incident, Hochul signed a school security bill, named in honor of a student who was a victim of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High School shooting tragedy. An announcement on the Governor's website proclaimed——“Governor Kathy Hochul today signed Alyssa's Law (S.7132B/A.10018), requiring schools to consider the use of silent panic alarm systems when conducting review and development of their school safety plans. . . . ‘I am proud of the work we have done to pass a nation-leading bill package to crack down on the scourge of gun violence, but this is an ongoing fight and we cannot stop there,’ Governor Hochul said. ‘We will continue to take aggressive action until every child in New York is safe to pursue an education without the fear of senseless tragedy. That's why I am proud to put pen to paper on Alyssa's Law, a real and meaningful piece of legislation that will require school districts to evaluate systems that can save precious minutes—and lives—in the event of an active shooter situation.’This bill requires that schools consider their usefulness when developing their district-level school safety plans and expressly authorize their inclusion within building level safety plans. The panic alarm systems themselves can cost just a few thousand dollars to purchase, and can be implemented in the classroom as a smartphone app.”Notably absent from the hoopla surrounding the signing of this law is any mention of the use of armed resource officers to take down an “active shooter” while students, teachers, and staff anxiously await the arrival of police. How much damage can this “active shooter” do and how much harm can he inflict on children during those seconds and minutes before the police arrive? Significant damage; horrific harm!That absence of armed resource officers leaves children vulnerable to and helpless in the face of physical violence, in the precious seconds and minutes they must await the arrival of the NYPD Special Operations Bureau officers. But is it better a child should die, sacrificed for the greater good of society that enshrines the precept that “Guns are Bad” and develops school security policy around that idea?And children themselves—those that survive armed assault—are indoctrinated in the precept that “Guns are Bad.”Consistent with the intent behind that precept is the idea that those who commit violence are simply mentally ill, not inherently evil; ergo they aren't responsible for their acts. Hence, the moral imperative: blame the object, “the Gun,” for the act of “Gun Violence”, and refrain from blaming the agent, the “active shooter,” who happened to use the Gun to commit an unspeakable horror on an innocent child. No less is a child's innocent mind endangered—and by implicit Federal Government commands that many State and local governmental authorities and teacher's unions obey. A child's innocent mind is left open—accessible to, receptive to, and, inevitably, held captive to a slew of corrupting influences. These corrupting influences produce in the child, a phobia towards firearms and a disinterest in or abject hatred toward the Nation's natural law rights, including the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of Self and family, and against the armed predator, and to preserve the security of a free state against the predatory Government. The schools indoctrinate the child at an early age to focus his attention on the object, i.e., the Gun, and not on the sentient agent who misused a gun to harm another. The child is subconsciously infused with the ethical precepts of consequential utilitarianism, eschewing the moral culpability of the sentient agent, and looking at the concepts of good and evil in terms solely of utility: Do the consequences of an act maximize utility for society or reduce utility? As guns are deemed deleterious to the well-ordered society, any act involving them is deemed inherently bad by definition and altogether destructive to the well-being of the well-ordered society. As perceived by the predatory Government, the mere presence of guns in society reduces utility. Therefore the predatory Government must rid society of guns; all guns that are in the hands of the civilian citizenry. The Biden Administration is attempting to do just that, in incremental steps. The attack on so-called “assault weapons,” a.k.a. “weapons of war” is a major step in that direction. “Assault weapon,” refers to any semiautomatic handgun, rifle, or shotgun.  The Biden Administration intends to rid the Country of all of them—this—the most prevalent category of firearms in the Country. Tens of millions of American citizens keep and bear semiautomatic firearms. No matter. The Biden Administration intends to collect all of them. And the citizen should expect as much from a predatory Government.The predatory Government views a well-ordered society in terms of its own well-being, and not in terms of the well-being of the citizen. An armed citizen represents an inherent threat to the predatory Government. Therefore the citizen must be disarmed—this—ostensibly for the benefit of the well-ordered society qua the well-being of the predatory Government.Perpetuating the fiction of “Gun Violence” serves as an effective vehicle to de facto nullify the right codified in the Second Amendment, and eventually dismantle the free Constitutional Republic. A true republic cannot long stand in a land devoid of its armed citizenry. The Biden Administration intends to make it so.Americans bear witness to the inexorable dissolution of their Republic toward authoritarianism, and eventually totalitarianism, and the subordination of the American people to the State. The armed citizen is equated with Gun Violence.” No allowance is made for the law-abiding gun owner. The law-abiding armed citizen and the law-breaking psychopathic criminal and the rampaging lunatic are all subsumed in the same category: illicit gun-toting destructive elements, albeit the criminal and lunatic, serve the predatory Government's purpose to dismantle a free Republic. Criminals and lunatics are therefore allowed to run amok as they accelerate the destabilization of society, allowing authoritarianism to settle in. The predatory Government perceives the law-abiding gun owner as the graver threat, in fact, the gravest  “security” threat to that Government.Apropos of schools, the ill effects of the application of “Gun Violence” policy objectives become too blatant to ignore. Any attempt “to harden” school buildings against armed aggression is met with firm resistance. This is plain from the UFT “Resolution to end gun violence,” as posted in the UFT newsletter, and in the mangling of my letter to the editor in response to the “Resolution to end gun violence,” and to the UFT follow-up article, “Delegates decry deadly school shooting.” The editor deleted my reference to the “hardening” of schools to protect children against armed invasion, while in school. This import of doing this is important. The UFT would does not support the hardening of schools against violent armed assault. This endangers a child's safety. The UFT and the Hochul Government feel this is an acceptable risk, as it is consistent with the philosophy embodied in establishing a “Gun Free” environment. This means the UFT and the Hochul Government forbid schools from utilizing armed resource officers as a security measure to protect children. Thus, a necessary component of school security hardening to thwart infiltration of New York City schools by an armed intruder is unavailable. Why would the UFT and the Hochul Government take this stance?The reason is this——The implementation of school security “hardening” proposals, while of benefit to the child, would be harmful to the Biden Administration's goal of nullifying the natural law right of armed self-defense, as codified in the Second Amendment. The Hochul Government and the UFT will not implement school security strategies that are inconsistent with Biden's anti “Gun Violence” policy directives directed to the eventual de facto nullification of the Second Amendment.Thus, a child's life is effectively subordinate to the dictates of Biden's tacit policy directive. That directive has infected the policies of many school districts, the effects of which are painfully visible.How do the UFT and the Hochul Government respond to this——Through a feat of legerdemain, the Biden Administration, Governor Hochul, and the UFT deflect criticism of deficiencies in school defenses against armed invasion by focusing the public's attention maximally on guns and on those law-abiding citizens who keep and bear them and focusing minimally on the “active shooter.” School shootings serve as a useful pretext to advance the Biden Administration's goal of reducing the impact of the right guaranteed in the Second Amendment to a nullity.This failure to effectively harden schools against armed assault is replicated in school districts around the Country. This is sad and profoundly disturbingBut, the ripple effect extends beyond issues pertaining to school security measures.The vehement incessant attack on guns and on the natural law right of armed self-defense compromises: one, the safety, security, and well-being of one's physical self; two, the sanctity and inviolability of one's Spirit and Soul; three, the preservation of the U.S. Constitution along with preservation of a free Constitutional Republic; and four, the sovereignty of the American people over Government. All of this is in danger of rupture—and more so today than ever before in our Nation's history.____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE ANTIGUN MESSAGE OF TEACHERS’ UNIONS MISSES THE MARK ON GUN VIOLENCE.

Antigun activists must take Americans for fools. When a terrorist, gangbanger, lunatic, or your garden variety criminal seriously injures or murders innocent citizens, be it with a knife, a bomb, a car or truck, a baseball bat, or a firearm—no matter the object—the answer to stemming violence of all kinds is ever the same: “Get rid of the Guns!” That’s the long and short of it. Many members of the American public feed on such misguided, imperious and impertinent anti-Second Amendment slogans, manufactured by and pressed into service by the destroyers of our sacred rights and liberties, taking them to heart. The mainstream Press obliges, churning these slogans out regularly, incessantly. The verbiage may change a bit, but the message does not.Members of the public, who succumb to the antigun rhetoric and propaganda, espouse enactment of ever more restrictive firearms legislation—firearms legislation targeting the law-abiding American civilian population. Individuals who buy into the rhetoric and propaganda believe strongly, although wrongly, that the solution to societal violence is as simple to understand and to effectuate as recitation of the antigun slogans themselves. It isn’t. Contrary to the implication behind these anti-American slogans, no simple cause exists for today’s endemic violence. Accordingly, no simple solution exists for curbing it.But, one point is poignantly clear if a person would just stop to consider it. It is a point antigun advocates won’t mention. It is one antigun advocates would never countenance; and it is a point the mainstream Press—the willing bullhorn of the antigun establishment—would not so much as intimate. Societal violence is a manifestation of human conduct, not inanimate, non-sentient objects.Guns do not go on shooting sprees on their own volition. Knives do not stab individuals on a personal whim. Cars and trucks do not, themselves, ponder jumping curbs to run down bystanders. Yet antigun advocates convey the impression that inanimate objects, firearms, especially, are the innate causal agents of violence—that they “work” a sort of sorcery on individuals who, themselves, become merely the vessels for carrying out acts of violence. So, it is guns—those in the hands of law-abiding, rational American citizens and civilians—that are targeted for unceremonious eradication.“Get rid of guns!” That is the battle cry. And, the antigun advocates count on the public’s wholesale acceptance of their agenda, shaping and molding opinion to their cause; playing on emotion; stoking fear and anger. There is no reflection; no consideration; no debate. Antigun propagandists, activists, and zealots want none of it, believing that serious reflection, consideration, debate to be unnecessary, irrelevant or, more to the point, dangerous, as even a modicum of thoughtful reflection would bring immediately to light, the legal and logical weaknesses of their position.Americans who fall prey to and buy into simplistic antigun messaging and proselytizing operate unthinkingly, mindlessly, reflexively, like a village mob, brandishing pitchforks and torches, hell-bent on destroying Dr. Frankenstein’s monster—believing that ridding the Nation of firearms will in fact stem gun violence and curb most societal violence. They fail to realize that the “monster” they seek to destroy will not be destroyed—cannot be destroyed—because it is no more than a creation of the antigun propagandists. It is a shadowy figment, existing not in the “gun” at all, but in themselves. The monster manifests in and takes on form and substance, and life, as they wish it to—in their own weak, benighted natures.Of course, some Americans, certainly the antigun perpetrator activists who seek public acceptance of their antigun agenda, would like to see civilian gun ownership and possession substantially curtailed and eventually eliminated from American society, even though realization of their goal wouldn’t reduce societal violence one iota. They know this. Indeed, if pressed, they would likely acknowledge this. Antigun activists’ abhorrence of guns rests as much on aesthetic grounds as on social and political ones. They simply do not like guns; see no benefit to having them in “civilized society;” and, so, do not accept that American people have a fundamental, natural right to keep and bear arms. For antigun activists, zealots and those members of the public that fall prey to the messaging, the idea that Americans have a natural fundamental right to keep and bear arms is repugnant; an anathema; not simply arguably wrong, but heretical, even nonsensical.Yet, many more Americans—most Americans—believe fervently in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as did the founders of our free Republic, the framers of our Constitution, who sensibly realized the importance of codifying that sacred right in the Second Amendment. This is an article of faith. The antithesis of which—that no American has an unalienable right to keep and bear arms—is truly heretical. So long as the concept of natural rights remains a bedrock principle of our Nation, all the chanting, ranting, and prattling, for yet more restrictive gun laws, will be rendered moot, as well such sanctimonious posturing should.On April 5, 2018, the United Federation of Teachers (“UFT”)—a teacher’s union that represents New York City Schools—posted two articles in its publication, in support of the antigun “March for our Lives” demonstration that took place in Washington, D.C. Similar antigun protest marches took place in New York City, and elsewhere around the Country, drawing hundreds of thousands of high school and middle school students, as well as public school educators and administrators. The mass shooting incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, served as the impetus and pretext for the marches. Michael Bloomberg’s antigun advocacy group, “Everytown for Gun Safety,” and other groups, sympathetic to the goals of Bloomberg’s group, provided funding, organization, and logistical support for the students.UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who authored one of the articles appearing in the Union’s publication, titled, “Time for common sense on guns,” says that the protestors “demand sensible gun laws to keep weapons out of our communities,” and that students “don’t want to live with fear and [that] they are tired of waiting for Washington, D.C. to stand up to the National Rifle Association.” To emphasize his own abhorrence of firearms, the UFT President added this weak attempt at a play on words: “teachers should be marking papers, not being trained in marksmanship.” Rachel Nobel, UFT Staff Reporter, who authored a second article, that appeared in the same April 15 publication, titled, “Taking a stand against gun violence,” reiterated the UFT President’s comment that arming teachers was a bad idea. She asserted: “Many teachers had come to protest President Donald Trump’s proposal for licensing teachers to carry weapons in schools.” In her article Rachel Nobel quotes Larry Sachs, a teacher at PS 57, who asserted, “If taking one gun off the street saves your child from being shot, then it’s worth it.” As can be seen, a cascade of antigun slogans tumbles through these UFT articles.The overuse of slogans, in support of the position for further gun restrictions against the civilian populace of this Country, is aptly and abundantly illustrated in the titles of the two UFT articles and in the articles’ content. Slogans invariably fill mainstream news and opinion articles as well. Slogans serve, at best, as a feeble substitute for vigorous, sustained argument. At worse, they are inane, doing the American citizenry a disservice, playing simply to one's emotion, rather than to one's intellect. Use of slogans rather than cogent argument promotes intellectual laziness--both in the author of an article and in the reader. Author and reader are encouraged--nay, expected--to suspend critical judgment.The principal, albeit tacit, point of the two UFT articles is that popular support exists for yet further gun restrictions. Apparently, the UFT President and UFT Staff Reporter, and, evidently, many teachers and school administrators across the Country, believe that, although this Nation suffers from hundreds of Federal, State, and local restrictive firearms’ statutes, codes, regulations, and rules, many more are needed. Obviously, those who espouse further restrictive gun measures won't be satisfied until civilian possession of firearms in this Country is ended.Of course, tens of millions of American citizens do not support further gun restrictions. But, even if we assume, for purpose of argument, that more Americans than not, do support ever more gun control, does popular support, in and of itself, constitute a sound argument for it? No, it doesn’t!Among the informal fallacies known to antiquity, argumentum ad populum, is a common one. The argument, “appeal to popularity,”—also referred to in common parlance as “appeal to the people”—rests on the fallacious claim that, because a significant number of people believe a proposition to be true, the proposition is true.In the present case, the idea conveyed is that, because hundreds of thousands of people, taking part in the recent antigun protest demonstrations, believe that further restrictive firearms’ measures will reduce gun violence, it follows that further restrictive firearms’ measures will, in fact, reduce gun violence, and that further restrictions on civilian ownership and possession of firearms will reduce all forms of societal violence. These notions are false, blatantly so. No matter. Yet, the mainstream media insists on presenting these false notions as fact; as self-evident truth.This is a prime example of the argumentum ad populum fallacy. The fallacy proceeds from the idea that popular opinion constitutes good and sufficient evidence to support a claim. Consensus, among the masses, though, does not, in and of itself, provide evidence in support of the truth of a proposition. Shouting loud and long does not make a claim true, or “truer,” contrary to what many Americans —including all too many young people, who are particularly sensitive to emotional messaging—may happen to think.Apparently, many young Americans, as well as all too many older ones, feel that whoever shouts the longest and the loudest is one whose judgment is correct, and who, therefore, is to be believed over someone—anyone—who operates through calm reflection, who articulates a point clearly, cogently, softly, rather than through bombast.The American public should not, in any event, be subsidizing, with its tax dollars, student protests during school days and hours. Better it would be if high school students debated the issue of societal violence, calmly and intelligently, in the classroom, not in the public forum. Doing so would allow for more sensible and productive use of time.Yet, rather than seeing teachers and school administrators beseeching students to operate through restraint, we see all too many of them taking part in group excesses, along with these students. We see teachers and administrators, at the behest of the leadership of antigun groups, indulging students’ baser instincts; unconscionably encouraging, abetting, and exploiting raw emotion in young people, rather than encouraging restraint on emotions.Teachers should be cultivating each student’s critical faculties, cautioning each of them of the dangers in allowing emotions to hold sway over rational intellect, especially in moments when the rational mind is overwhelmed by senseless tragedy. But, that is where personal strength, fortitude, and indomitability of spirit come into play—where a person checks his or her emotions at the door, preventing those who hide an ulterior motive from making use of a student’s understandable anger and fear, to promote an insidious and deceptive agenda—one detrimental to the preservation of our Nation’s sacred rights and liberties. Oh, but wouldn’t that be a shame!_________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.   

THE COURTS, NO LESS THAN CONGRESS, IS WHERE ONE WILL FIND THE SECOND AMENDMENT EITHER SAFEGUARDED AND STRENGTHENED OR ENDANGERED AND WEAKENED.

REPUBLICAN CONTROL OF ALL THREE-BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT IS NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN BOTH THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE OF OUR NATION STATE, AND THE SUPREMACY OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND OUR SYSTEM OF LAWS.

The mandate of a Republican controlled Congress, and of a Republican President and of a federal court system--comprising jurists who recognize the supremacy of our laws and of our Constitution over foreign laws and over the decisions of foreign tribunals and who recognize and appreciate the critical importance of the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people, as codified in the Bill of Rights--is this: to maintain our roots as a unique People; to make certain that our Country continues to exist as a free Republic and as an independent, sovereign Nation, beholden to no other Nation or to any group of Nations; and to keep sacred the supremacy of our Constitution and our system of laws, grounded in the sanctity of the Bill of Rights--a Bill of Rights that has no parallel in any other Nation on this Earth. To succeed in this mandate it is imperative that: one, Congress retain a Conservative Republican majority; two, that Donald Trump remain as U.S. President through two terms in Office; and, three, that the U.S. Supreme Court hold a conservative-wing majority and that the lower federal Courts seat a majority of  jurists who recognize and appreciate the supremacy of our Constitution and of our laws and of our sacred rights and liberties, and who render opinions with that principle omnipresent.Obviously, those malevolent forces that seek to undermine the sovereignty of this Nation, that seek to subvert the will of the American People, that seek to undercut and subordinate our Constitution, our system of laws and our fundamental rights and liberties, are working for the precise opposite. They seek to gain Democratic Party majorities in both Houses of Congress in the midterm elections, and, if they can accomplish that, they will undoubtedly pursue efforts to impeach Trump, using the tenuous, ludicrous, tax-payer funded Mueller investigation, chasing after ghosts, as a springboard to destroy the Trump Presidency. These individuals and groups, bankrolled by a shadowy, secretive, ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elite”, hope, as well, to create a liberal wing majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. To do that, they must win back the White House.Those who seek to destroy the sovereignty of this Nation and to undermine the true import and purport of the Bill of Rights are rankled by two specific events that they cannot, and, obviously, will not abide: one, the failure to usher Hillary Rodham Clinton into the Office of U.S. President, which they thought was an assured bet; and, two, the failure to seat Merrick Garland—the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and President Barack Obama’s nominee—on the U.S. Supreme Court. These critical and monumental failures of the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elite” who bankroll and control the Deep State of the federal Government—the forces that would dare crush this Nation and the American people into submission—have suffered an extraordinary setback in their plans for world domination. To reset the clock in accordance with their global strategy, they have been forced to show their hand. The negative forces that manipulate and control the Government of this Nation and that manipulate and control the Governments of those Nations that comprise the EU have emerged from the shadows and have forced their toadies in this Country to surface from the depths of the Deep State of the federal Government, to undermine, at every turn, the efforts of the duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump. Not content to undermine and undercut the President's policy objectives, which they attack at every turn through the well-orchestrated media circus they control, they attack the man himself, disrespectfully, caustically, and reprehensibly; and, in so doing, they demonstrate as well their disrespect for this Nation, and  for this Nation’s core values, and for this Nation’s system of laws, and for the people of this Nation who elected Donald Trump, who was then inaugurated the 45^th President of the United States, on January 20, 2017, succeeding Barack Obama.The election of Donald Trump as U.S. President has thrown a wrench into the well-oiled and greased machine of the Deep State of the federal Government of the United States. This singularly important event has thrown the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist elites, headed by the international Rothschild clan, into a state of consternation, of befuddlement, of rage and turmoil, of chaos. Their well-laid plans for world domination sees the United States as an important cog in an expansive industrial and financial machine comprising the New World Order, for no other Western Nation has as impressive a military and as impressive an intelligence apparatus, and as adept technological capabilities as those of the United States. As the forces that would crush this Nation and its people into submission have suffered a severe and costly set-back, they intend to set matters aright. The American people bear witness to the raw extent of the power and reach of these forces: one, the naked audacity of their actions; two, the evident contempt in which they hold the American people; three, the bald self-assurance and aplomb by which they plan and orchestrate a campaign of deliberate deception—through the mainstream media—a campaign of disinformation and misinformation through which they hope and trust they can manipulate the American people into accepting a bizarre worldview--one inimical to the needs and desires and well-being of the American people; four, the obscene loathing they express toward our Bill of Rights; five, the demonstrative malevolence they have shown toward the U.S. President and toward his Administration; and, six, the abject hatred they display toward this Nation’s Constitution, toward this Nation’s unique history, toward this Nation’s core values, toward this Nation’s system of laws and morals. And through the levers of media and of the Deep-State of Government that they control, they give mere lip-service and lip-homage to those very things Americans hold most dear.The Arbalest Quarrel has done its part. We have worked to help elect Donald Trump as President of the United States and have worked, as well, to defeat the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. But our work has not ended. It has, perforce, just begun.We must continue to support President Trump from the forces that, having failed to prevent his electoral success, seek, now, to place obstacles in his path, making it difficult for him to implement the policies he has promised—policies that are at loggerheads with those hostile internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist financial and industrial forces that seek global domination which, in accordance with their plans for world domination, requires the crushing of Western Nation States, including the crushing of our Nation State, the crushing of the sovereignty and independence of our Nation state; and, with that, the subordination of our laws to that of international laws and treaties and the subordination of our Courts to that of foreign Courts and foreign Tribunals; and the undermining of the sacred rights and liberties of the American citizenry. These extremely powerful, extraordinarily wealthy, and abjectly ruthless and cunning globalist forces seek eventually to topple Donald Trump and his administration. They seek also to take back control of the two Houses of Congress. We must therefore work to maintain House and Senate Republican Majorities.Further, we must work toward and anticipation of the confirmation of at least one additional, and, hopefully, two or, better yet, three conservative-wing Justices to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. With the passing of the eminent and brilliant jurist and true American patriot, Justice Antonin Scalia, we have lost a mighty champion of liberty in the vein of the founders of this Nation, the framers of our Constitution. We hope and trust and pray that, before the end of this year, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy and/or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and/or Justice Stephen Breyer will retire. That will pave the way for President Trump to nominate at least one and conceivably two, and optimally three more American jurists, to sit on the high Court who, as with Trump’s nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, hold jurisprudential values and who would apply the same methodology to deciding cases as do Justices Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, which the late Justice Antonin Scalia had set the course. With strong and true conservative-wing Justices on the high Court, who hold a clear majority, we will see the Court agreeing to hear critical Second Amendment cases and, thereupon, rendering decisions that, with the Court’s untarnished and supreme judicial imprimatur, makes clear the import of the natural, fundamental rights and liberties of American citizens as codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution in the manner the framers’ intended.

THE ARBALEST QUARREL LOOKS BACK ON WORK COMPLETED IN 2017 AND THEN FORWARD TO OUR TASKS FOR 2018

WHAT WERE SOME OF OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 2017?

Let us step back for a moment and look at just a few of the tasks we completed in 2017, and remark briefly on tasks we have set for ourselves in 2018. Much of our work, consistent with the primary purpose of the Arbalest Quarrel involved detailed, comprehensive analyses of critical federal and State Court cases impacting the Second Amendment. One of those cases is Soto vs. Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC., 2016 Conn. Super. LEXIS 2626; CCH Prod. Liab. Rep. P19,932. Soto is an active case. The Soto case arises from the deadly attack that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when a deranged young adult, Adam Lanza, 20 years old, stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School, fatally shooting twenty children and six adults, before turning a handgun on and killing himself. According to the allegations of the Soto Plaintiffs' First Amended Complaint (CM), Adam Lanza murdered these school children and school staff with a Bushmaster AR-15, model XM15-E2S rifle. Defendant Bushmaster prevailed in the lower Superior Court (trial Court), and we analyzed the Superior Court decision in depth. Plaintiffs appealed the adverse decision directly to the Connecticut Supreme Court, bypassing the State Court of Appeals, and the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed to hear argument. We will be analyzing the Briefs of Plaintiffs and Defendants in the case and will also analyze selected amicus (friend of Court) Briefs in that case. Over 50 amicus briefs were filed in that case. We also provided comprehensive analyses in an “assault weapons” case, (Kolbe vs. O’Malley, 42. F. Supp. 3d 768 (D. Md. 2014); vacated and remanded, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2016); rev’d en banc, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017) ), which we had hoped would be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court—the high Court failing to have granted certiorari in an earlier disastrous “assault weapons” case, Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 784 F.3d 406, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 6902 (7th Cir. Ill., 2015). Alas, the high Court failed to garner four votes, allowing the case to be heard in the high Court. Had the high Court agreed to hear the case, Americans would see a definitive ruling on whether so-called “assault weapons” fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection. Obviously, the liberal wing of the Court and at least two "apparent" conservative wing Justices, likely, Anthony Kennedy and the Chief Justice, John Roberts, did not want to resolve this case, and, so, to date, resolution of “assault weapons” as protected firearms within the core of the Second Amendment remains in abeyance, with liberal Circuit Court of Appeal Judges ruling that semiautomatic "assault weapons" do not fall within the core of the Second Amendment and, so, are not protected.In addition, we looked at two Congressional bills that, if enacted, strengthen the Second Amendment. We looked at national concealed handgun carry reciprocity legislation, pending in Congress, H.R. 38, and looked at Congressman Chris Collins’ bill, the “Second Amendment Guarantee Act” (H.R. 3576) (“SAGA”) which has been referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, on September 6, 2017 where it presently sits. We also did our part to sidetrack Obama’s attempt to sit Judge Merrick Garland on the U.S. Supreme Court. When we feel it critical that our representatives in Congress be notified of specific and extraordinary dangers presented to our Nation, we have not hesitated to contact them. When, after the passing of the exceptional U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, we have seen that President Barack Obama wasted little time in nominating a person to serve as a new ninth member of the high Court who would, given the opportunity, assist the liberal-wing Justices—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—in unwinding case law that Justice Scalia helped to shape in his many illustrious years on the Bench. That person who President Barack Obama had hoped to see confirmed is Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Arbalest Quarrel took strong exception to the possibility of seeing Judge Garland sitting on the high Court. We sent a letter to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley, requesting the Senator to refrain from allowing a confirmation hearing to proceed. Had a confirmation proceeding been held, that would have resulted in Judge Merrick Garland sitting on the high Court as an Associate Justice. Of that, we have no doubt, as U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch has articulated that point. According to the liberal political commentary website, "New Republic," Senator Hatch said that there was "no question" that Judge Merrick Garland would be confirmed were a confirmation hearing held. The Arbalest Quarrel explained the singular danger Judge Merrick Garland posed to the preservation of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution if Merrick Garland sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. In our letter we took exception to pronouncements of several academicians who had also written a letter to Senator Grassley. Those academicians argued that nothing in the record of Judge Garland’s service as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals suggests that an inference can be drawn concerning Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy toward the Second Amendment. We disagreed with the pronouncements of those academicians. We pointed to specific examples in the judicial record that establish beyond doubt that Judge Merrick Garland holds great and abiding antipathy toward the Second Amendment; and that Judge Garland’s antipathy toward the Second Amendment is very much in evidence in the judicial record, contrary to the pronouncements of those academicians who promote the Judge’s ascendancy to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our concern was not directed to Judge Garland’s ability as a jurist. We have no doubt that Judge Garland has a bright and, conceivably, brilliant legal mind. But, when that brilliance is coupled with a philosophy at loggerheads with the philosophy of another brilliant Justice, Antonin Scalia, then we know that preservation of the natural, substantive fundamental rights of the American citizenry—particularly the right of the people to keep and bear arms—are in jeopardy. In a series of in depth articles, we have written extensively about Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy. We pointed out that Judge Garland’s judicial approach is clearly antithetical to that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and that Justice Scalia’s illustrious work would be undone were Judge Garland to sit on the high Court. In our letter to Senator Grassley, we provided a link to the Arbalest Quarrel website and encouraged the Senator to peruse our analytical articles on Judge Garland, as the letter only touched upon the matters of concern.

THE MISSION OF THE ARBALEST QUARREL 

The mission of the Arbalest Quarrel is to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Bill of Rights, and, principally, to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Arbalest Quarrel has written dozens of articles on newsworthy and noteworthy events, impacting the Second Amendment. Many of our articles appear in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. Most of the articles we prepare are comprehensive, extremely detailed, highly analytical expositions on Second Amendment issues. Many of our articles are written as part of lengthy, continuing series. Given the exigencies of time and of new and pressing newsworthy matters, we are often compelled to sidestep continuous work on a series, returning to a series later. Since threats to the Second Amendment are constant and continuous, much of the work that we may have left uncompleted in previous weeks or months is and remains pertinent. Some work that we do, involving analysis of active legal cases, such as the Soto case, cannot, of course, be completed until further action is taken by a Court and, in that event, we must await action before continuing discussion. In other cases, such as Kolbe, where we have commenced work, as part of a series, a higher Court, in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied a writ of certiorari, which means that the ruling or rulings of the second highest Court, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, remains the law in that judicial Circuit. But, as those cases involve an open-ended and critically important issue that the U.S. Supreme Court will, at some point be compelled to tackle, our analysis of lower U.S. District Court and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal decisions are still relevant and, so, hold more than historical value in terms of their impact on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Kolbe, for example, deals directly with the issue whether semiautomatic weapons, defined as ‘assault weapons’ fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment. As antigun groups intend to deny American citizens the right to legally own and possess “assault weapons,” and, as they seek, eventually, to ban civilian ownership and possession of all semiautomatic weapons, it is incumbent upon us and important to consider the legal arguments they present. Thus, at some point in time when the U.S. Supreme Court does deal with the issue as to the extent of or whether semiautomatic weapons defined as ‘assault weapons’ fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment or whether semiautomatic weapons, as a broad category of firearms, fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment--and the high Court will, at some moment in time have to consider the issue--we will have addressed, in depth, all or virtually all of the salient arguments that litigants happen to make. As we look back at the work over the years, we note our article, titled “The Arsenal of Destruction.” Concerning antigun groups efforts to defeat the right of the people to keep and bear arms, what we mentioned in that article is as true then as it is today. We said: Here is what we deemed then, as now, to be the salient methodologies antigun groups use to undercut the Second Amendment. There are probably more; undoubtedly, the antigun groups are busy concocting others even as we publish this list:

• ENACTMENT OF RESTRICTIVE GUN LAWS

• REWRITING/RECONFIGURING/RECONSTITUTING THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO UNDERCUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INDEPENDENT CLAUSE: “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

• EFFORTS TO REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT OUTRIGHT

• INDOCTRINATION OF AMERICA’S YOUTH

• MILITARIZATION/FEDERALIZATION OF CIVILIAN POLICE FORCES ACROSS THE COUNTRY THROUGH THE MACHINATIONS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

• DIRECT MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA ATTACKS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT

• USE OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND INDOCTRINATION OF THE PUBLIC BY MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA GROUPS

• SYSTEMATIC EROSION OF THE RULE OF LAW IN THE UNITED STATES

• DENIAL OF GUN POSSESSION TO ENTIRE GROUPS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS

• ILLEGAL ATTEMPTS BY CITIES AND TOWNSHIPS TO WEAKEN OR OVERRIDE STATE LAWS WHERE SUCH STATE LAWS ARE DESIGNED TO EXTEND SECOND AMENDMENT PROTECTIONS TO THEIR CITIZENS

• CREATING CONFUSION OVER THE CONCEPT OF ‘CITIZEN’ AND CREATING CONFUSION AS TO THE RIGHTS OF A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES

• EXECUTIVE BRANCH OVERREACH/USURPATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION BY THE UNITED STATES PRESIDENT IN CLEAR DEFIANCE OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS DOCTRINE SET FORTH IN AND THE MAINSTAY OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

• OVERRIDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS THROUGH INTERNATIONAL PACTS, TREATIES, AGREEMENTS, AND CONVENTIONS

• FALLACIOUS REASONING OF ANTIGUN GROUPS AND ANTIGUN GROUP DECEPTION AS TO THEIR ULTIMATE GOAL: DE JURE OR DE FACTO REPEAL OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

• ATTACK ON GUN RIGHTS’ ADVOCATES’ MORAL BELIEFS AND ETHICAL BELIEF SYSTEMS

• BATFE ADOPTION OF ONEROUS REQUIREMENTS FOR GUN DEALERS AND BATFE INTRUSION/ENCROACHMENT ON TRADITIONAL U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LAW MAKING AUTHORITY

• MISAPPLICATION/MISAPPROPRIATION OF THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LAW AND LEGAL DOCTRINE TO UNFAIRLY TARGET GUN MANUFACTURERS

• FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RESTRAINT OF TRADE: COERCING LENDING INSTITUTIONS TO REFRAIN FROM GIVING LOANS TO GUN DEALERS

• MANIPULATION OF THE COMPOSITION OF STATE LEGISLATURES AND OF THE U.S. CONGRESS BY MULTI-MILLIONAIRE/BILLIONAIRE TRANSNATIONAL GLOBALISTS THROUGH THE BANKROLLING OF POLITICIANS—WHO ACQUIESCE TO THEIR WISHES, AND WHO ARE WILLING TO DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT—AND THROUGH THE NAKED, SHAMELESS EXPLOITATION OF ATTACK ADS, TARGETING THE DEFENDERS OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT -- THOSE POLITICIANS WHO REFUSE TO KOWTOW TO THE ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA OF THE RUTHLESS MULTI-MILLIONAIRE AND BILLIONAIRE TRANSNATIONAL GLOBALISTS.

• GLOBAL CENSORSHIP/CONTROL OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET: UNDERMINING THE SECOND AMENDMENT BY CONTROLLING MESSAGING WITH THE AIM, ULTIMATELY, OF INSIDIOUSLY DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT THROUGH AN UNCONSCIONABLE INFRINGMENT UPON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: AS CONTEMPT FOR ONE AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS SHOWN, SO, AS WELL, IS CONTEMPT FOR THE OTHERS DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN

• DESTRUCTION OF SOVEREIGN NATION STATES AND OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF SOVEREIGN NATION STATES THROUGH THE CREATION OF, ESTABLISHMENT OF AND INEXORABLE EXPANSION OF AN INTERNATIONAL, NEOLIBERAL INSPIRED WORLD ORDER DEDICATED TO AND WORKING TOWARD THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES, AND THE ERADICATION OF PERSONAL AUTONOMY

We intended to do an article on each of these 21 strategies within the series. We didn’t complete the series, but we did write on several of these strategies and some of the strategies were touched upon in other articles. For example, our most recent article on the NY Times new “gag order” policy preventing its employees from exercising their freedom of free speech on their own time in vehicles other than the New York Times newspaper, actually is a response to two strategies we delineated on in “The Arsenal of Destruction":ONE: GLOBAL CENSORSHIP/CONTROL OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET: UNDERMINING THE SECOND AMENDMENT BY CONTROLLING MESSAGING WITH THE AIM, ULTIMATELY, OF INSIDIOUSLY DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT THROUGH AN UNCONSCIONABLE INFRINGMENT UPON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: AS CONTEMPT FOR ONE AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS SHOWN, SO, AS WELL, IS CONTEMPT FOR THE OTHERS DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN; and,TWO: USE OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND INDOCTRINATION OF THE PUBLIC BY MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA GROUPS.Our principal mission and raison d’etre—as mentioned, supra—is to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the preservation of, protection of, and strengthening of the Second Amendment all go hand-in-hand. There exist forces both inside and outside this Country that would like to repeal the Second Amendment. Of course, they realize that repealing, de jure, any one of the Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that comprise the Bill of Rights is virtually impossible. As natural rights, there is no mechanism for repealing these rights and liberties anyway, since no man created them. The Framers of the Constitution merely codified the rights that exist intrinsically in each American citizen. That doesn’t mean that a sacred right cannot be ignored or de facto repealed which effectively reduces the right to a nullity even as the words remain intact. Thus, if the words remain, but the intent behind the words is absent, hollowed out, the right, in essence, ceases to exist. We have seen this before. The fundamental right of Americans to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has been hollowed out, as Government agencies like the CIA and NSA download and keep digital records on everyone and everything. This is patently illegal, but Federal Government agencies do it anyway. The fundamental right of free speech is beginning to be hollowed out, too, as censorship, in the guise of “political correctness” is taking its toll on free speech. The fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms was dying a slow death until the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in two seminal cases, District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570; 128 S. Ct. 2783; 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010)), made clear what that right entails. The high Court made poignantly and categorically clear that this right—a right that must be recognized by both federal Government and by the States—is an individual right, a right, then, not connected to one’s service in a militia. Still, those Legislators and Jurists who seek to disembowel the Second Amendment have either ignored the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court or have actively tinkered with it, working around the edges of the Heller and McDonald holdings to slowly weaken the Second Amendment. But, to weaken the right is tantamount to destroying it; for the rights codified must be understood in the context the framers of the Constitution intended, as absolute imperatives. This doesn’t mean restrictions ought not be enacted that operate as deprivations on some individuals but, this deprivation is justified only if the threat posed by the one threatens the lives of millions of others, or where the threat posed by an individual undermines the sovereignty of this Nation.Consider the Second Amendment. Federal law bars persons adjudged mentally incompetent from owning and possessing firearms. Thus, the absolute right to own and possess firearms infringes the right of a person adjudged mentally incompetent but this is necessary to protect the lives of millions of innocent, law-abiding Americans. Federal law also prohibits illegal aliens from owning and possessing firearms. And, in so doing, we protect the sanctity of the notion of a Nation State comprising a unique citizenry. Antigun groups, though, don’t perceive the Bill of Rights as a set of natural rights, existing intrinsically in the individual, endowed by the Creator to the individual. They see the Bill of Rights in the same vein as do internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elites,” as mere man-made creations-- statutes enacted and repealed at the will and the whim of the of the rulers that draft and enact them. As they see nothing positive in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, they see nothing that mandates the preservation and strengthening of that right. So, those who attempt to restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms do not consider restrictions on the exercise of that right from the standpoint of the restriction's negative impact on the majority of rational, responsible, law-abiding American citizens, who wish to exercise their right, but, rather, see restrictions on the exercise of that fundamental right from the utilitarian consequentialist position. Consistent with utilitarian consequentialism, it is firearms in the hands of law-abiding rational, individual, not the occasional criminal or lunatic, that is perceived as posing the real danger, the real threat. And, what is that threat? It is a threat perceived as directed against society— against an amorphous collective “hive”—a threat perceived, eventually, as one directed against the entirety of the “free” world, a free world constituted as a "New World Order." It is not the criminal or lunatic possessing a firearm that concerns those that hold to the utilitarian consequentialist theory of morality that poses the greater threat to the well-being of society. In a constant flurry of new draconian firearms bills introduced in Congress, we see, in the draft language of these bills, that it is really the average law-abiding individual--the rational, responsible, law-abiding American citizen--against whom restrictive gun measures are really targeted and leveled. These restrictive gun bills are drafted and enacted in clear defiance of the right guaranteed in the Second Amendment.Our mission, our raison d’être, is to call out those disreputable groups and to call out those legislators and to call out those Hollywood film stars and moguls and to call out those mainstream news commentators and journalists and "comedians" and to call out those inordinately wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, extremely secretive, and absolutely ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist forces that mean—all of them—to destroy our Nation State and that mean to destroy our Bill of Rights, and that mean to do so all the while claiming their efforts have a rational, ethical basis. But their actions belie their assertions. Their actions belie their true intent. These individuals, these groups, these cold-hearted ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist “elites” that control the levers of finance and industry, that control major media organizations, that operate within and control the Deep State of Government within our own Nation mean to destroy the sovereignty and independence of this Nation and they mean to upend and to destroy the supremacy of our laws and of our Constitution.These individuals distort truth; they sow seeds of discord; they confuse and confound the ill-informed masses by challenging the Nation's core values and by interposing false substitutes for those core values. They rail against and dare to rewrite our Nation's history. They attack our Judeo-Christian ethic and our Christian heritage and traditions. They mean to destroy our Nation and our sacred Bill of Rights to pave the way for an antireligious, morally bankrupt trans-global corporate New World Order conglomerate—an amorphous, muddled indistinguishable conglomeration of once proud and unique independent Nation States—a union of populations comprising the entirety of the “free” world, which these internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist financiers and captains of industry plan to rule. We are beginning to see what this portends for the U.S. as they consolidate their power in the EU, with the assistance of their technocrats, their puppets.In their concerted effort to destroy the structure of and the very notion of the sanctity and sovereignty of Nation States, and of the sanctity and sovereignty of our Nation State in particular, we see insidious and perverse attempts by these internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elites”—through the mainstream media whom they control and through members of Congress whom they have bought—to play with language—to suggest that the notion, the idea of ‘American,’ of what the word ‘American’ means is simply a matter of personal belief. Why is such a ridiculous notion fostered? It is fostered for a reason. For, if what it means to be an ‘American,’ or, for that matter, what it means to be a Frenchman, or German, or Italian, or Canadian, for example, comes down to personal opinion and belief, then, the bonds between a person and that person’s Country is tenuous, amorphous, fragile, elusive, even illusive, and, ultimately, unimportant. This has serious ramifications for Nation States and repercussions for the people residing in a Nation State. Thus, if a person is to be deemed an American, for example, who simply and essentially believes him or herself to be an American, then, on that basis, alone, may presumptuously presume a right to live in this Country, to emigrate to this Country and to be endowed with all the rights and liberties that the United States Constitution provides.This open-ended concept of what it means to be an ‘American’ is deliberately and unconscionably fostered by those who seek an end to the very notion of a Nation State; who seek to portray people not as citizens of this or that Country but, literally, as “citizens of the world”—who may freely move about as they wish. This “open borders” philosophy is anathema to the concept of the primacy and sovereignty of Nation States which demands that independent, sovereign Nation States have a right and duty and responsibility to maintain and control their borders, and, in so doing, forestall emigration of undesirables to this Country. To allow essentially anyone and everyone to emigrate to this Country, is to denigrate and ultimately destroy the very foundation of the sovereignty and independence of a Nation State. A Nation State’s core ethical and religious and social values are in danger of erosion. That Nation’s historical roots are in danger of erosion. That Nation’s jurisprudential values and core economic principles are in danger of erosion.When educators, along with news organizations and legislators in the United States proclaim that illegal aliens are Americans, the Arbalest Quarrel has stepped in to set the record straight. Co-Founder and President of Arbalest Group, LLC., Stephen L. D’Andrilli wrote a reply to an article written by the Vice President of the United Federation of Teachers that appeared in the Union’s publication. The Arbalest Quarrel's response was published in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. Stephen has penned other cogent responses to the UFT that we, as strong supporters of America’s Bill of Rights, have taken exception with.

THE WORK AHEAD FOR THE ARBALEST QUARREL IN 2018

In 2018 we will continue to analyze federal and State gun laws; federal and State gun bills; and federal and State Court cases. We anticipate seeing one and perhaps two openings on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is imperative that President Trump have the opportunity to nominate one or more individuals to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.It is in the Courts, no less than in Congress that our Bill of Rights and, especially, our Second Amendment, will be preserved, strengthened, and expanded. We will otherwise see our Bill of Rights debilitated, weakened, and restricted.The House and, more importantly, the U.S. Senate must remain firmly in the hands of Republicans and, more especially, in the hands of those who espouse a conservative philosophy, reflective of the views and philosophy and sensibilities of the Founders of our Nation, the Framers of our Constitution, the Creators of our Free Republic—not those Centrists like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who hold to a decidedly globalist philosophy, who demonstrate globalist sympathies, and whose support of our Bill of Rights is lukewarm at best.The Democrats intend to take control of both Houses of Congress and they intend to weaken our Bill of Rights and to weaken especially the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, and the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. They intend, in league with their internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist benefactors, to weaken, debase and eventually curtail our natural, fundamental rights and liberties. For they mean to draw us insidiously into the arms of a New World Order. They intend to do this through the vehicle of international pacts and treaties and through mainstream news organizations that condition the American public to accept open borders and to accept an amorphous notion of what it means to be a citizen; and by conditioning the American public to accept the legitimacy of foreign courts to hear cases impacting our fundamental rights; and to condition the American public to accept the supremacy of international law over that of our Constitution, and over our system of laws, and over our jurisprudence; and to condition the public to accept historical revisionism, to accept bizarre, alien notions of morality and gender identity; and to condition the public to accept the dismantling of a Nation that is grounded in Christianity and in notions of self-reliance and initiative, individual responsibility. All these things are on the table, as Democrats and many Centrist Republicans seek to weaken the foundation of a Nation as designed and understood by the Founders of it.

IN CLOSING, WE SET FORTH THE FOLLOWING POINTS AND CAUTIONARY IMPERATIVES FOR OUR READERS:

If the American people are to maintain their unique roots, we must work, first and foremost to keep sacred the Bill of Rights, and that means we must understand the import and purport of the Bill of Rights as the drafters intended, and we must insist that rights and liberties be preserved, protected, and strengthened. We must argue for the continued primacy of this Country as a sovereign, independent Nation State and we must insist that the federal Government’s first order of business, as servants of the American people, is to see to the needs of and well-being of, and security and safety of the American people. And, who are the American people? They are the citizens of this Country and those citizens, the American people, do not include anyone who resides here illegally, whatever that person's motive or circumstance for being here. And, no individual who resides elsewhere has a right to emigrate to this Country simply because that person seeks to live here, for good or for ill; and no one who has entered this Country illegally, whether consciously or through no fault of their own, can demand, as a matter of right, as a matter of law, the right to remain here. For law is not ad hoc. If Congress deigns to allow illegal aliens to remain here, then Congress must refrain from granting such individuals, citizenship. For, to grant citizenship to those who have consciously or not ignored our law, or who claim an exception to law that does not presently exist in law will serve only to destroy our system of laws. To change law or to ignore law on a whim sets a poor precedent and such action, in the seeming moral sense of it, will destroy this Country from within.We must hold to our core values. We must not be seduced into accepting notions of moral and legal relativism and we must not fall prey to historical revisionism. These notions are poisonous, pernicious, debilitating. We are a People with one common language, English. No Nation has remained a separate and distinct Nation State that has inculcated, internalized a notion of bilingualism or multilingualism or that has abided bilingualism or multilingualism.No one, whether inside or outside Government, shall indoctrinate the American people. Each American citizen has a right to free expression and to freely express his or her mind. That an individual may wish to express an idea or to possess a physical item that another individual may personally dislike, or even abhor, so what of it? The founders of our free Republic and the framers of our Constitution did not undertake to institute or to insinuate into the natural and fundamental rights and liberties of the American people a notion of “political correctness.” Such a notion is of modern invention and vintage, designed to serve an ulterior purpose. Indeed, had the founders of our Republic thought of such an absurd concept at all they would undoubtedly have held political correctness to be decidedly politically incorrect. Nothing is more devastating or destructive to the citizenry of this Nation or, for that matter, to the citizenry of any nation state, than the sins of hypocrisy and sanctimony. Unfortunately, both are in abundance in this Nation. We can for that thank the arrogance of mainstream media and of those with power and money and influence, both here and abroad, who wish to dictate a mode of thought the rest of us are obliged to adhere to. The American people should be particularly wary of those legislators and those presumptuous “elites” who bandy about such expressions as “rule of law,” and “living Constitution,” and “open borders,” and “citizen of the world” and “job creator,” and “commonsense gun laws,” and “social Darwinism, and “identity politics,” and “political correctness.” These expressions, and there are others, have become trite and dangerous clichés, shorthand simplistic sloganeering, that are either misunderstood and therefore misused, or are otherwise given to suggest or convey something overtly positive, even exemplary, when, in fact, their utilization is meant to harm the American citizen, meant to harm you! Always be mindful of seemingly noble sounding and high-minded verbiage thrown out to the masses for consumption like so much popcorn and roasted peanuts and cotton candy. Be observant, be cautious, think critically before throwing your lot in with everyone else simply because everyone else is “doing it” or “believing it.” You are no longer in high school. There is no longer any need for you to belong to this or that “clique,” in order to "fit in."The framers of the Constitution glorified the right of the individual to be individual and to accept personal responsibility for one’s actions. Our sacred rights and liberties as codified in the Bill of Rights are a testament to that fact. That is our birthright. The right of free speech; freedom of association; the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. These are not mere platitudes. These are a few of the most important natural rights, codified in the Bill of Rights. They are absolute and unconditional, and they are slowly being eroded. Americans should consider, critically, how the words of a news commentator, or of a Hollywood star, or of a mega-sports star, or of a legislator, or of a financier, or of a government bureaucrat, or of a highly paid comic on nighttime  television meant to cajole or persuade Americans would impinge on or infringe those rights and liberties before you throw your lot in with them. For you may be hoodwinked into giving up everything of real consequence._________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

SHOULD SCHOOL TEACHERS BE ARMED? THE UFT DOESN’T THINK SO, BUT...

UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS TELLS MEMBERS TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON, BUT ARBALEST QUARREL’S STEPHEN L. D’ANDRILLI RESPONDS, SAYING: “NOT SO FAST!”

In the November 3, 2016 issue of United Federation of Teachers (“UFT”), a New York City affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers ("AFT") the editorial board of the publication posted comments to an article that appeared in the September 8, 2016 edition of its publication, “Teacher.” The title of the article is: “Hillary an ally worthy of your vote.”The author of the article, RTC Chapter leader, Tom Murphy, urges UFT members, as the title of the article makes plain, to vote for Hillary Clinton.Tom Murphy says Clinton, the Democrat Party nominee for U.S. President, supports American labor, suggesting that Donald Trump, as a Republican, and as the Republican Party nominee for U.S. President, does not. Tom Murphy is dead wrong in his observation.Stephen L. D’Andrilli called Tom Murphy out.Stephen is one of three founders of the weblog, the Arbalest Quarrel. Stephen was a licensed New York teacher and receives the UFT publication, “Teacher.”Stephen has previously commented on other articles posted in “Teacher.” He does so whenever necessary to set the record straight.Stephen does not sit idly by as our Country falls prey to powerful, secretive, corrupting interests, bent on destroying our Nation and our Nation’s Constitution, especially when those destructive interests create, through the media, a false aura of protecting the Nation and the Nation’s Constitution.The UFT editorial board published Stephen’s reply to Tom Murphy’s September 8, 2016 article, but did so changing the comment. Stephen wasn’t aware of this and never authorized the changes.The last two paragraphs of Stephen’s comment, as published in, “Teacher,” were heavily edited, and the last paragraph of the comment was deleted, altogether. The unauthorized editing by the editorial board dilutes the strength of Stephen’s message, warning UFT members of the danger posed by a Clinton Presidency. The unauthorized editing also explains why Stephen’s comment appears oddly truncated at the end, as published in “Teacher.”Clearly, the UFT editorial board intended to dilute Stephen’s message before allowing it to be sent to UFT members, who number in the tens of thousands.This should not surprise anyone. For, the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (“AFT”) of which the “UFT” is an affiliate, endorses Hillary Clinton for U.S. President.Stephen’s unedited, unabridged comment as sent to the UFT publication, is set forth below.

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“This responds to Tom Murphy’s article, titled, “Hillary an ally worthy of your vote.” But, is she?Mr. Murphy assumes Clinton supports Labor, suggesting Trump does not. Yet, big money supports Clinton, not Trump. Sanders pointed to the obvious incongruity of Clinton’s relationship with Billionaires.Clinton says she doesn’t support the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact but previously said she did. She referred to it as the “gold standard” of trade deals. She helped draft it. Free trade deals benefit International Capital, not American Labor. President Obama and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support them. American unions do not. They’ve devastated American labor. Trump never supported them and won’t sign them into law. Clinton will. No political analyst doubts that.Hillary Clinton’s inconsistent messaging isn’t the only reason she isn’t worthy of your vote. A more insistent reason exists. Evidence supports a finding that Hillary Clinton is a criminal. She mishandled classified defense information. That violates 18 U.S.C. § 793. She lied to the F.B.I. That violates 18 U.S.C. § 1001. The Clinton Foundation accepted bribes in return for State Department favors. That violates 18 U.S.C. § 201. They’re all felonies.Although the F.B.I. didn’t recommend indictment that doesn’t mean Hillary didn’t break federal law. She did. Yet, mainstream media endlessly, mercilessly attacks Trump, not Clinton. The F.B.I., though, never had cause to investigate Trump for criminal wrongdoing, only Clinton.A person under a cloud of committing felonies isn’t worthy of any American’s vote for U.S. President. That’s unseemly, even grotesque!”

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SHOULD SCHOOL TEACHERS BE ARMED? THE UFT DOESN’T THINK SO, BUT ONE EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE WOULD BE TAXING TO TAX PAYERS.

CO-FOUNDER OF ARBALEST GROUP, LLC., RESPONDS TO UFT OPINION PIECE CONCERNING THE ARMING OF NEW YORK'S SCHOOL TEACHERS

The “United Federation of Teachers (UFT”), a New York City affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, posted an article in its  publication, Teacher, titled, “Gun Fight.” The article appeared in the May 5, 2016 edition of Teacher. The editorial takes aim at the notion that arming teachers to protect students is a bad idea.Stephen L. D’Andrilli, one of three founders of the weblog, the Arbalest Quarrel, was a licensed New York teacher and receives the UFT publication, Teacher.After reading the UFT Op-Ed, Stephen felt a need to respond and did so. Stephen’s response to the Op-Ed was published in the June 2, 2016 edition of Teacher, under the Editor's title, “Editorial shoots blanks.”Stephen's response to the UFT editorial appears, in full, below:“I am responding to your recent editorial (“Gunfight”). The question posed is whether allowing educators to bring firearms to K-12 schools in New York would protect students against gun violence. The editorial considers the question from the standpoint of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.In arguing that arming educators is a bad idea, a few hypothetical situations involving armed educators are presented; outcomes are postulated; and a tacit conclusion is drawn: educators should not be allowed to bring firearms to school.The scenarios are typical straw man arguments. Nothing substantive can be deduced from them. One may argue just as readily that an armed educator would likely successfully protect the lives of his or her students from an armed aggressor. The editorial’s hypotheticals amount to straw man arguments. Straw man arguments obfuscate. They do not elucidate. Any possibility follows from a false antecedent in a counterfactual.The editorial concludes by discussing another matter entirely: the need to provide adequate mental health care for deeply disturbed individuals is no more than a stopgap. The point does not address deeply disturbed individuals who slip through the cracks; nor does it address the issue of criminals and terrorists that threaten soft targets like schools.So, if the invasion of schools by armed lunatics, terrorists, or assorted criminals cannot be contained and, through time, becomes pervasive and, if educators are not armed, what is the alternative? There is one we can think of: an armed contingent of police officers, peace officers, or private armed security to protect students, faculty, and administrators in schools. That will work, but, what will it cost? One armed guard, as the editorial staff of New York Teacher admits, will, arguably, never be enough.”

STEPHEN D'ANDRILLI'S BIO

Stephen was President and CEO of two security consulting and criminological research firms. He was also a business partner in a New York City licensed indoor gun range. Stephen is a decorated veteran police officer of the New York City Police Department. While employed with the N.Y.P.D., Stephen earned three University degrees from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Stephen earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Police Science, a Master of Arts degree in Criminal Justice Administration and a Master in Public Administration degree.Later, Stephen served as an Adjunct Professor/Lecturer of Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Stephen then served as a high school Social Studies Teacher for the New York City Department of Education and served as Dean and Athletic Coach for the Department. He is an expert in personal and corporate security.Stephen is a National Rifle Association Certified Firearms Instructor (pistol, rifle and shotgun) and Training Counselor, and is an active member of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors. He has testified on firearms, crime, and self-defense before governmental committees and at governmental hearings, on many occasions.Stephen has written many articles on these subjects and has appeared on television and radio. Major national and international newspapers, magazines and professional journals have profiled Stephen. Stephen is passionate about the Constitution and passionate about the Bill of Rights, the cornerstone of the Republic. Stephen is aware the Bill of Rights is under attack. Stephen understands that Americans must defend the Bill of Rights if they are to protect and preserve their heritage.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2016 Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.