Minneapolis Shooting and Mental Health

Above, the shooter, Robin Westman.

The following was posted by Jamie Fraser-Page, the administrator of the Facebook page, Gun Owners of New Mexico:

It was impossible to avoid hearing about the shooting at a Catholic Church in Minneapolis, a parish church with a school attached not unlike the one in my neighborhood in Queens where several of my friends went. Some deranged individual, armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol fired all of them into the church where grade school kids were at prayer on the second day of the school year. 

The coward took her own life. Or his life. The shooter was a transgender person, which will no doubt become part of the narrative from one side, just like the three firearms will become the main point from the other side. Neither fact is the reason this happened. It happened because people who knew this person and saw their descent into madness did nothing to stop it.

There were a lot of indicators. Detached, isolated, creating a YouTube manifesto to explain the inexplicable - why anyone would shoot into a church filled with kids from the ages of 6 and 14, killing two, 8 and 10 and wounding 14 others as well as three parishioners in their 80s.  The shooter entered the church only after their deadly fusillade of gunfire ceased to end their life with a self-inflicted gunshot would.

We need to ask why no one saw this coming. Friends, parents, followers on YouTube and other social media must have known. And, assuming they could see it coming, why - why - did they do nothing to intervene and stop it before it started? 

I wonder if this person's change from Robert to Robin was influenced by the increased normalization of transgenderism and by the incessant progressive's preaching abut "toxic masculinity. Perhaps for some M->F transgenders among the young their decision to identify as female is driven or exacerbated by a feeling of being treated as "toxic" by some. 

While transgendered individuals according to several studies are only 0.6% of the population the number of young people ages 13 to 24,  is twice the average across all ages. I am not saying that there is a direct connection between a person identifying as non-binary or transgender means that they will become mass shooters, just that among those who seem driven to this aberration it might be a contributing factor. Food for thought, at least. 

We do a terrible job of identifying and treating the mentally ill. It is still an affliction viewed with a great deal of ignorance and fear - needlessly, since most people with mental health issues pose no threat to others and even little threat to themselves. But those who harbor suicidal and/or homicidal ideation - two sides of the same coin according to some - do pose such a threat. Few mass shooters are taken alive. After inflicting carnage on others they either take their own lives or force suicide by cop by taking precipitous action to trigger a lethal response.

We need to stop using these tragedies to further the agendas of the left or the right and actually *do* something to identify and fix the problem.  So many mass shooters give a lot of notice that they are going to do something horrific. We need to listen, watch and get them the help they need, intervene to prevent them from carrying out these acts. 

And, yes, when identified, they should be prevented from legally acquiring firearms. For nearly 60 years I have advocated for stripping from our laws the infringements to exercising our right to keep and bear arms protected by the 2nd Amendment . But I also feel that if a person is adjudicated a danger to self or others they need to be barred from access to firearms and explosives. And, if evidence is presented to a court of a credible threat, while a person's mental health is evaluated to rule out it posing a threat to self or others, they should not have access to firearms. This does not mean I support so-called Red Flag laws, since those lack due process. No right should be infringed upn nor abridged but by due process.

In the end, we as a society need to actually care - give a damn - about the incidents like this, which, though relatively rare compared to other types of killings happen far too frequently and are often preventable if due care is exercised. We need to push our elected representatives to create and fund programs to identify and get treatment for the millions of people with mental health issues and not turn a cold shoulder and a blind eye to their affliction. Out schools need to be especially observant of the signs and precursors of such acts and move to thwart them early by getting the individuals help. And, we need to consider having trained armed individuals in our schools and other places which have been targets in the past. And we need t avoid situations of command paralysis such as the one in Uvalde, TX. There is a lot we can do but we, the people need to push to make it happen. And it begins with giving a damn.

Court Temporarily Blocks Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness

Thanks to a federal appeals court, His Fraudulency Joe Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan has been stopped in its tracks, at least temporarily.

According to the Star Tribune:

ST. LOUIS — A federal appeals court late Friday issued an administrative stay temporarily blocking President Joe Biden's plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans, throwing the program into limbo just days after people began applying for loan forgiveness.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay while it considers a motion from six Republican-led states to block the program. The stay ordered the Biden administration not to act on the program while it considers the appeal.

It's unclear what the decision means for the 22 million borrowers who already applied for the relief. The Biden administration had promised not to clear any debt before Oct. 23 as it battled the legal challenges, but the soonest it was expected to begin erasing debt was mid-November.

 To read more, go here.

Egil "Bud" Krogh Dies At 80

Above, President Nixon, Elvis Presley and Egil "Bud" Krogh in the Oval Office in 1971. White House Photo.

Egil "Bud" Krogh, who orchestrated the meeting between President Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley, died January 18.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Egil “Bud” Krogh Jr., 80, a lawyer and Nixon aide who co-chaired the secret White House “Plumbers” unit and was sentenced to prison after approving a break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, died Jan. 18 at a hospital in Washington. Krogh had suffered a stroke in 2015. 

A former deputy assistant to the president and undersecretary of transportation, Krogh was the first member of the Nixon administration sentenced to prison for his conduct in the White House. He later called the Ellsberg episode “a meltdown in personal integrity” and spent years teaching and lecturing about ethics, atoning for his crimes and teaching others how to avoid what he described as a historic error in judgment. 

“If you compromise your integrity, you allow a little piece of your soul to slip through your hands,” he wrote in a memoir, “Integrity” (2007), with his son Matthew Krogh. “Integrity, like trust, is all too easy to lose, and all too difficult to restore.”

Above, Krogh's book cover on the Nixon-Presley meeting.

Krogh had appeared with Presley associate Jerry Schilling at several public programs to discuss the meeting between Nixon and Presley. He also wrote a book about the meeting.

To read more, go here. 

Cowboys For Trump Sends National Monument Sand To Washington

Above, the Cowboys For Trump during their ride through Grants, New Mexico last month. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The New Mexico Cowboys for Trump group may have made a faux pas when they brought sand to Washington, D.C. from White Sands National Monument.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported:

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — The New Mexico group Cowboys for Trump faces criticism after members brought iconic gypsum sands from White Sands National Monument to Washington for the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree lighting ceremony — a possible violation of federal law. 

Otero County Commission Chairman and Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin said the group brought four "big plastic bins" of the extremely fine, pure white sand for the ceremony Wednesday, the Alamogordo Daily News reported. 

"We're bringing Washington, D.C., some of the most beautiful treasure out of New Mexico," Griffin said in a video posted to the Cowboys for Trump Facebook page Nov. 30. 

The sand was given as a gift to New Mexico's congressional delegation so it could be "showcased" with the tree, the group said without providing more details on how it was used. The tree itself is a large blue spruce, from the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. 

But removing natural resources from a U.S. national parks unit, including national monuments, is illegal without permission.

Hopefully, the group obtained permission first. At the very least, if they did mess up, perhaps the sand could be returned to the national monument by New Mexico's aforementioned congressional delegation.

To read more, go here.

UPDATE (12/6/9, 6:49 PM):

About an hour ago, the Washington Post reported:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Iconic gypsum sand that the group Cowboys for Trump had said was from White Sands National Monument in New Mexico and was sent to Washington for the U.S. Capitol Tree lighting ceremony this week was actually gathered just outside the monument, one of the group’s co-founders said Friday. 

The group had caused a political furor after announcing it sent the sand because it’s illegal to remove sand from the park — and Democrats said the group might have violated federal law. 

But Otero County Commission Chairman and Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin told The Associated Press the group collected its four “big plastic bins” of extremely fine, pure white sand from outside the monument’s perimeter for delivery to Wednesday’s tree lighting ceremony after getting permission from the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

To read more, go here.