There has been a string of high-profile MVPS (Multiple Victim Public Shooting) shootings in the news lately. I want to note some things to keep in mind in general on the issue of MVPS:
a) Shootings can be staged in a variety of ways. One way is to prod mentally unstable and mentally impaired individuals to act out ideas planted by agents (as in the attempted Portland “bombing”). A similar way is to lure a patsy into attempting to commit a crime at the same time and place as a real operation is occurring. This could have been what happened with the JFK assassination and was almost certainly what happened with MLK Jr’s assassination. A patsy is lured to be in the same vicinity at the same time as a planned assassination by a real professional. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination and opportunity.
b) The statistics of MVPS incidents across multiple countries shows that MVPS account for an almost infinitesimal fraction of gun crime, let alone deaths due to crime generally. Their importance is solely a function of the hold they take of the public imagination. Furthermore, the rate of MVPS incidents is highly insensitive to gun laws; to the extent that MVPS incidents are not staged, they are a function of severe mental instability not laws (a mentally unstable individual can be completely unconcerned about the long-run consequences of his behavior to himself and to others).
c) The political left in the US has been following a sophisticated strategy for decades to attempt to get around the pesky 2nd-amendment:
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Amplify MVPS incidents in the media - Waco takes the gold medal for this
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Outlaw gun rights “in the margins”; if you are convicted of almost any crime, you will lose your gun rights, for life. Even if you are hit with a restraining order in some states, you can lose your right to own guns for life. Mental health issues? No guns for you. And so on.
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Attempt to build a Kyoto-protocol for guns; an international gun ban which Americans would have to be “ashamed” not to join. This has the happy benefit that a treaty nullifies an amendment so all that has to be done, politically, is get Congress to agree to sign onto this “must-sign” international treaty.
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Infiltrate pro-2nd amendment political action groups. The NRA is to gun rights what the ACLU is to civil rights - an empty shell of an excuse for popular rights advocacy. The much-advertised fact that the NRA is the “last line of defense” for 2nd amendment rights is all the more reason the State in cooperation with the political left to infiltrate it.
- Create a legal minefield around gun ownership. There are so many ways to unwittingly break the law just merely by owning a firearm that doesn’t comply with this or that regulation. Many of these violations are felonious. The Randy Weaver incident is illustrative of this strategy. By making a public example of Weaver, the Feds demonstrated just how dangerous it is to own a firearm, thus deterring many people who otherwise might have purchased a firearm for home or self-defense. The fewer gun owners there are, the easier it is to find a political solution to the problem of popular gun ownership.
Anyway, these are just some things to generally keep in mind as we will likely continue to see these shootings over the next four years of Obama’s reign.
Clayton -